US Asian Allies “Worried” By Muted Response To Drone Seizure, As Fears Grow China “Stole Secrets”

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While Friday’s seizure by China of a US underwater drone may end up as just a tempest in a teapot after China grudgingly agreed to return the US equipment this week after a formal protest by the Pentagon, and Trump’s tweet slamming the “unprecedented act”, two new concerns have emerged. According to John McCain, China may be poring over a seized underwater drone to unearth secret information about Navy technology, hours after Trump suggested Beijing should ‘keep it.’
Quoted by Bloomberg, McCain, head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told CNN’s State of the Union that ‘The Chinese are able to do a thing called reverse-engineering, where they are able to – while they hold this drone, able to find out all of the technical information. And some of it is pretty valuable.”
McCain said China’s seizure was ‘a gross violation of international law,’ echoing the prevailing U. S. response and Trump’s initial blast via a tweet. The president-elect told his 17.5 million Twitter followers: ‘China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters – rips it out of water and takes it to China in unprecedented act.’
His comments highlighted the U. S. political tensions touched off by China’s decision to scoop up the submersible in international waters, which was not even located within the confines of the contested nine-dash line. Assurances from China that the vessel would be returned failed to quiet U. S. critics — including Trump, who initially denounced the snatch-and-grab move and then reversed himself hours later. Trump said on Twitter late Saturday that ‘We should tell China that we don’t want the drone they stole back – let them keep it!’

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Dec 18, 2016.

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TWO ENTIRE POLICE DEPTS SHUT DOWN DURING FBI RAIDS OVER MASSIVE DEA DRUG RING CONSPIRACY

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Tangipahoa Parish, LA – A massive raid was carried out by the FBI on Thursday of Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office and the Hammond Police Department. The raids were part of a year-long investigation into a U. S. Drug Enforcement Agency task force accused of a massive conspiracy to rob drug dealers and profit from selling the stolen narcotics.
According to the Advocate, two former members of the New Orleans-based task force – both of whom worked for the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office – are facing federal charges, and one pleaded guilty earlier this year to state drug conspiracy charges.
During the raids on Thursday, both departments were completely shut down as FBI agents seized computers, cellphones and case files. The raids involved an earlier investigation the Free Thought Project reported on in March.
After Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office Deputy and DEA task force member Johnny Domingue took a plea deal and began rolling over on his co-conspirators, the FBI has nabbed more crooked cops.


This post was published at The Daily Sheeple on DECEMBER 17, 2016.

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A Total Disregard for Fiscal Responsibility

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While we aren’t sure the coast is clear – yet – the show must indeed go on. There are topics that need to be discussed. Now with the whole new concept of ‘fake news’ out there for the sole purpose of discrediting anything the establishment wants off the radar we’re going to have to ask you to look at the decade’s worth of work that has been poured into this column and decide if we are fake or not.
For the sake of honesty, it must be pointed out that the mainstream media, in a classic false flag type move, created the whole idea of fake news with its own ridiculous material, then used the whole stunt to say ‘see, we need to be careful because there are lots of phonies out there’. Darn right there are. We’ll allow that there are quite a few shills in the alternative media. Their betrayal will be exposed in time, but for the most part the phonies have three letter network affiliations attached to them.
That said, we are going to take a dangerous path this week. We’re going to mix the economic with the political since (unfortunately) politics and politicians are the faces of economic policy. Our goal this week is simple. We’re going to point out the national debt and look at it in a slightly different way from how it is normally analyzed. We’re going to look at it in terms of the political sway and some significant events that took place during four year periods – specifically, the four year Presidential cycles. Since most of the people in this country seem to think the President runs the country, we’re going to use Presidential terms of office as demarcation lines in our study.

This post was published at GoldSeek on Graham Mehl / 18 December 2016.

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HYPOCRITE INSPECTOR WHO CRITICIZED SNOWDEN FOR NOT USING ‘OFFICIAL’ CHANNELS FOUND GUILTY OF RETALIATING AGAINST A WHISTLEBLOWER WHO DID

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National Security Agency (NSA) inspector general George Ellard, an outspoken critic of whistleblower Edward Snowden, personally retaliated against another NSA whistleblower, Adam Zagorin reported at the Project on Government Overreach (POGO) on Thursday.
An intelligence community panel earlier this year found that Ellard had retaliated against a whistleblower, Zagorin writes, in a judgment that has still not been made public.
The finding is remarkable because Ellard first made headlines two years ago when he publicly condemned Snowden for leaking information about the NSA’s mass surveillance of private citizens, wherein Ellard claimed that Snowden should have raised concerns through internal channels. The agency would have protected him from any retaliation, Ellard said at the time.
Politico reported on Ellard’s 2014 comments:
‘We have surprising success in resolving the complaints that are brought to us,’ he said.

This post was published at The Daily Sheeple on DECEMBER 16, 2016.

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Judge Jeanine Slams “Hopeless” Michelle: “Americans Rejected You And Everything You Stand For”

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Yesterday we noted Michelle Obama’s appearance on Oprah in which she hinted that Trump’s election was the end of “hope” for America, saying “now we’re feeling what not having hope feels like.”
The comments from Michelle have received a lot of backlash over the past two days but perhaps no one has crushed her new “hopelessness” narrative better than Judge Jeanine Pirro of Fox News. Pirro’s opening monologue last night was full of epic one-liners slamming the First Lady’s comments….below are a couple of favorite quotes but the full video is definitely worth a listen.
“This from a woman, who in 2008, at 44 years old, said for the first time in her life she was proud of her country when her husband was running for president. And now, 8 years later, you’re out of “hope,” Michelle?”
“An outrage is when your husband struts up to the microphone at a national prayer breakfast and tells Christians to get off their high horses because Christians are afraid of Muslim terrorists cutting their heads off.”
“Like the 13 hours those heroes were on a rooftop in Benghazi, your all powerful husband never bothered to explain to us where he was and what he was doing that night. All we know is that the only power that he was ready to unleash was Air Force One to fly to Las Vegas for a fundraiser the next morning so that you guys could live the life another four years in the White House.”

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Dec 18, 2016.

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As Obama Plans Retaliation Against “Russian Hacking”, A Problem Emerges

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In a fiery press conference on Friday, shortly before departing for his last Hawaiian vacation, president Obama accused the press of being responsible for Hillary Clinton’s loss, slammed “domestic propagandists” who he said were responsible for the risk of “fake news” and assisting foreign counter-US propaganda, but more importantly Obama vowed to ‘send a clear message to Russia’ in retaliation for its election hacking – of which the CIA still has to demonstrate evidence – as both a punishment and a deterrent. However, a problem has emerged as the outgoing president plans how to “punish or deter” Russia – according to the NYT, some of the options were rejected as ineffective, others as too risky.
If the choices had been better, one of the aides involved in the debate noted recently, the president would have acted by now, although the fact that he hasn’t demonstrates just how ineffective US counter-cyberwar planning has been despite spending billions of dollars in preparation for just this eventuality.
In its latest expose on US-Russian cyberrelations, the NYT writes that over the past four months, American intelligence agencies and aides to Obama had assembled a menu of options to respond to Russia’s hacking during the election, ranging from the obvious – exposing President Vladimir V. Putin’s financial ties to oligarchs, and something which has already been done on various occasions in the past – to the innovative, including manipulating the computer code that Russia uses in designing its cyberweapons.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Dec 18, 2016.

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The Striking Audacity of the Coup-in-Process – Paul Craig Roberts

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Unsubstantiated stories have been planted throughout the presstitute media by anonymous CIA officials that Donald Trump’s electoral victory was the result of Russian intervention. This absurd claim has now been elevated to the even more absurd claim that Putin himself oversaw and even conducted the manipulation of the US presidential election.
No evidence has been provided for these amazing claims. The presstitutes are reporting unsubstantiated wild accusations that portend both a constitutional crisis in the US and a crisis with Russia. We know that the presstitutes lie. The presstitutes lied when they reported contrary to the weapons inspectors in Iraq that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. They lied about fake evidence of yellowcake and alumninum tubes. They lied about Saddam Hussein’s al-Qaeda connections. They lied about Iranian nukes despite the unanimous report of all US intelligence agencies that Iran had abandoned interest in nuclear weapons years ago. The presstitutes lied about Assad using chemical weapons against the Syrian people. They lied about Gadaffi. They lied about Russian invasion of Ukraine. They lied about the cause of the Russian/Georgian conflict. They lied about the Sochi Olympics. Now the presstitutes are claiming that Russian interference determined the outcome of the US presidential election and the Brexit vote.

This post was published at Paul Craig Roberts on December 18, 2016.

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Syrian “Rebels” Attack, Burn Aleppo Evacuation Buses

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While the UN condemns Syrian and Russian “atrocities” in the battle over East Aleppo, which as noted previously was a key victory for the Assad regime in the past week, one which will end the stalemate and sway the balance of power in the ongoing war between regime forces and US-coalition armed rebels, little attention had been paid to the subversive tactics employed by such “moderate rebels” as the al Qaeda linked al-Nusra front.
That may change after five buses en route to evacuate the sick and injured from two government-held villages in Syria’s Idlib province were attacked and burned by rebels.
PHOTOS: Reports coming in that an "unknown rebel group" has attacked buses going to evacuate civilians from Kafraya and Fuah – @Ald_Aba pic.twitter.com/7xMPhumeu5
— Conflict News (@Conflicts) December 18, 2016

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Dec 18, 2016.

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