Some News, views and opinion from the Alternative Media ... week ending Sunday Dec 18

From InfomationClearingHouse (video)
Duterte Says 'Bye Bye America' 
We Don't Need Your Money
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte told the United States on Saturday to prepare for repeal of an agreement on deployment of troops and equipment for exercises, declaring "bye-bye America", and we don't need your money....

From RT
‘They slaughtered my family & told me to go’: 
Heart-wrenching stories of Aleppo orphans (EXCLUSIVE)

As Aleppo has been almost entirely liberated from militants by the Syrian Army, the daunting task of rebuilding people’s lives lies ahead. RT’s Lizzie Phelan met with orphaned children from the city whose harrowing stories epitomize the horrors of war.

Over the past few days, some 100,000 civilians, including 40,000 children, have left eastern Aleppo, according to the Russian Reconciliation Center.

The UN says one in four children have been affected by the Syrian war. In Aleppo, that figure appears a gross understatement, Phelan reports.

Children such as Moussa, who is around eight, Jamil, 14, and Asma – around the same age – shared their chilling experience of watching their parents and siblings killed by terrorists before their eyes while they had to flee the fighting on their own.

“My father was killed five days ago,” says the tearful Asma, who’s been left to fend for herself with her five younger brothers and sisters. The Red Crescent picked them up as it did countless other children from what was the rebel-held Aleppo. Dirty, hungry and too traumatized to talk about their ordeal, they were dropped off at an orphanage a few days ago....

From KurdishDaily
Turkish police and soldiers execute more than 400 people in 2016

AKP’s police and soldiers have captured more than 400 Kurds alive and executed them during the genocidal attacks of 2016. The number of people executed by the police and the army under enemy law just this year has surpassed 400 according to data from the Human Rights Association (Insan Haklari Dernegi – IHD).
A small sample from AKP’s political murders are as follows:

Sêvê Demir, Pakize Nayir and Fatma Uyar were murdered by state forces in Sirnak’s Silopi district on the evening of January 4. It was later found out that the person murdered alongside with the female politicians was Islam Atak (20).

In Van’s Edremit district, 12 HPG members were executed on January 10 in a house raid by the special operations units with the claim that “there was a clash”. Access to the file and autopsy reports on the massacre was barred.

In Mardin’s Kiziltepe district, 4 people lost their lives when special operations police opened fire on a vehicle in Turgut Özal neighborhood on January 12. Witness accounts say the vehicle with the license plate 63 F 1579 was in motion when suddenly it was raked by the police armored vehicles. After the attack, 4 unidentified persons were killed in the vehicle and dozens of bullet holes were seen on the vehicle. Later it was found out that one of the people who were executed was DBP administrator Cengiz Erdem, brother of Aydin Erdem who was murdered by the police in a student protest in Amed in 2009.

In Van, a young man named Nadir Tezgel was executed during a raid by the special operations units on January 21.....

Jing Cao at Bloomberg
IBM Lays Out Plans to Hire 25,000 in U.S.
Ahead of Trump Meeting
IBM Chief Executive Officer Ginni Rometty said she plans to hire about 25,000 people in the U.S. and invest $1 billion over the next four years, laying out her vision for filling technology jobs in America on the eve of a meeting of industry leaders with President-elect Donald Trump....

From VoltaireNet
Yet again Washington allows Palmyra 
to be occupied by Daesh
Once again, Daesh has seized Palmyra following a surprise attack in the period 9 - 12 December 2016.

The “High Representative” of the “Syrian Opposition”, Riad Hijab, has denounced the forces of the Syrian “regime” who pounce on “unarmed civilians” at Aleppo but “jump ship like rats when confronted by the jihadists of the Islamic State at Palmyra.” The reality is a very different story.

In a synchronized [manoeuvre], 5,000 jihadists arrived at Rakka and Mosul to catch in a vice, the thousands of Syrian soldiers defending the city. The Syrian Arab Army had barely enough time to evacuate the civilians and to destroy its arsenal before retreating.

The United States has pushed Daesh to invade the Sunni part of Iraq in June 2014, in order to cut land communications between Tehran and Damascus, the final stage in the “Silk Route”. Once Mosul (Iraq) has been taken, Daesh moved on to Palmyra (Syria) in May 2015. Its troops had then crossed the border under the watch of the US forces who had not intervened and had not even sounded an alert. However, the town had been liberated in March 2016.....

From KurdishQuestion
A bomb blast targeting a bus carrying dozens of soldiers 
in Turkey's central Kayseri province at 08:45 local time has injured and killed several according to reports.

An immediate broadcast ban was issued by the Turkish government.

According to eye-witness reports a car ploughed into the bus, exploding immediately.

Reuters has said the bus, carrying off duty soldiers and civilians was hit by a car laden bomb outside Kayseri University.

Other reports say the bus was carrying special forces soldiers going on leave.

Andrea Germanos at CommonDreams
Amid Finger Pointing at Russia,
US Brings Tanks Back to Cold War Depot
'We need to take action,' says President Obama

As President Barack Obama vows that the United States will take "action" in response to the allegations that Russia interfered with the November election, the U.S. army has started to bring tanks back to a Cold War site in the Netherlands as a show of its "commitment to deterrence in Europe."

The U.S. and Dutch military reopened the Eygelshoven site on Thursday. It will contain "strategically prepositioned critical war stock" including M1 Abrams Tanks and M109 Paladin Self-Propelled Howitzers.....

Depravity has another name "Art" given to it by those who want to make depravity seem normal behaviour.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLbFugaFyAA

From ConsortiumNews
As the hysteria about Russia’s alleged interference 
in the U.S. election grows, a key mystery is why U.S. intelligence would rely on “circumstantial evidence” when it has the capability for hard evidence, say U.S. intelligence veterans.

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
MEMORANDUM
Allegations of Hacking Election Are Baseless
A New York Times report on Monday alluding to “overwhelming circumstantial evidence” leading the CIA to believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin “deployed computer hackers with the goal of tipping the election to Donald J. Trump” is, sadly, evidence-free. This is no surprise, because harder evidence of a technical nature points to an inside leak, not hacking – by Russians or anyone else
Monday’s Washington Post reports that Sen. James Lankford, R-Oklahoma, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has joined other senators in calling for a bipartisan investigation of suspected cyber-intrusion by Russia. Reading our short memo could save the Senate from endemic partisanship, expense and unnecessary delay.

In what follows, we draw on decades of senior-level experience – with emphasis on cyber-intelligence and security – to cut through uninformed, largely partisan fog. Far from hiding behind anonymity, we are proud to speak out with the hope of gaining an audience appropriate to what we merit – given our long labors in government and other areas of technology. And corny though it may sound these days, our ethos as intelligence professionals remains, simply, to tell it like it is – without fear or favor.

We have gone through the various claims about hacking. For us, it is child’s play to dismiss them. The email disclosures in question are the result of a leak, not a hack. Here’s the difference between leaking and hacking:

Leak: When someone physically takes data out of an organization and .....

From RT
‘Lies are their agenda’:
Canadian journalist blasts MSM Syria coverage at UN event (VIDEO)
 Western mainstream media’s coverage of the Syrian war is “compromised” as their local sources are “not credible” and, in the case of Aleppo, not even there, a Canadian journalist said in an emotional speech at the UN.

“I’ve been many times to Homs, to Maaloula, to Latakia and Tartus [in Syria] and again, Aleppo, four times. And people’s support of their government is absolutely true. Whatever you hear in the corporate media is completely opposite,” Eva Bartlett, a Canadian journalist and rights activist, told a press conference arranged by the Syrian mission to the UN.

“And, on that note, what you hear in the corporate media, and I will name them – BBC, Guardian, the New York Times etc. – on Aleppo is also the opposite of reality,” she added. The mainstream media narrative, she argued, is meant to mislead the public about what is really happening in Syria by demonizing President Bashar Assad’s government and altering the facts on Russia’s support for Damascus.......




Alex Christoforou at TheDuran
Watch Stephen Colbert spread fake news,
 blast Rex Tillerson, and expose his bigotry towards Russian people
If Stephen Colbert made fun of any other culture in such a manner, it would be blasted as racism and bigotry.

.......Colbert uses that power to spread his liberal religion on to the masses. It’s a religion that has Hillary Clinton as savior, Trump as the devil, and all Russians as lower than life, bumbling Soviet fools, controlled by a strong man dictator.

Colbert seems to always ignore that his liberal ideology has destroyed millions of lives in Iraq, Libya, Serbia, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Syria…while his savior knowingly rigged the primary election against Bernie Sanders, and is now ready to lie about Russian hackers in order to create a constitutional crisis in the USA.

Never mind the small little fact that the RNC was never hacked, that Craig Murray and Julian Assange have both met the individual who leaked the Podesta emails, and that the FBI refuses to corroborate the CIA’s “Russia election hack” story because of lack of evidence.

Evidence and fact are like kryptonite to liberal minds. Its all about holier than thou values, that today’s hollywood forces upon you at gun point......

Alice Salles at AntiMedia
Someone Has Officially Called the CIA’s Bluff over Russia

The scapegoating of Russia is now so widespread, Dirty Wars author and investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill took to The Intercept to call the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on its bluff.

In the article, “Obama Must Declassify Evidence Of Russian Hacking,” Scahill and Jon Schwartz called out U.S. intelligence agencies for their record of deceit, asserting that the American people are not going to simply “take their word for it.”

“U.S. intelligence agencies have repeatedly demonstrated that they regularly both lie and get things horribly wrong,” the article argues. But when it comes to the CIA’s case against Russia’s alleged interference with the latest U.S. presidential elections, it’s impossible to claim the hearsay is based on facts if evidence is not made available to support the agency’s claims.

Nevertheless, Scahill and Schwartz argue, it’s possible that Russia may have pulled some strings. But even if the Kremlin had its reasons and acted on them, America is the country with the long history of election meddling — not Russia.

Take Hillary Clinton’s comments on the Palestinian elections, for instance. A leaked audio recording from 2006 revealed then-senator Clinton advocated doing “something to determine who was going to win” in Palestine’s elections. And yet here she is, hoping to use the “Russia did it” talking point to give censorship a boost. The CIA has its own history of meddling in foreign elections.

In order to give Barack Obama’s administration that extra push to release any “proof” the CIA has that the 2016 U.S. elections were “rigged,” the Intercept’s duo encouraged feds or whistleblowers to use the publication’s secure drop link, where a “patriotic whistleblower” within the U.S. intelligence community may drop the leak that proves Russia is behind President-elect Donald Trump’s win. “[W]e will verify its legitimacy and publish it,” they added.......

Ok...she is a bad girl, she lied.  But what about the parents. They shaved off her hair and eyebrows as punishment?  They need to face some sort of punishment for that abuse.  It's more than possible the teen lied because she wanted to stop wearing the hijab and this made-up incident was to make her parents see that wearing the headwear was dangerous for Muslim girls.

#cdnpoli #tcot #TOpoli This is a very sick story in more ways than one. "BuzzFeed And The NYDN.... : https://t.co/qHplgfwoq5

— MariaS Nunes (@Dodocanspell) December 17, 2016

Isabella Mackie at VICE
The ongoing Yemeni civil war
has pushed the country closer to collapse and to the brink of famine. New figures released by children’s charity UNICEF show that more than 462,000 children there are coping with severe acute malnutrition and are at risk of starvation — a staggering 200 percent increase since 2014 — and 2.2. million children require urgent care.

“Malnutrition in Yemen is at an all-time high and increasing,” said Dr. Meritxell Relano, a UNICEF representative in Yemen. “The state of health of children in the Middle East’s poorest country has never been as catastrophic as it is today.”....

#cdnpoli #tcot #TOpoli Obama, Kerry, Clinton, A Carter SHOULD BE THROWN IN JAIL. "Congresswoman Says US Is Arming... https://t.co/N4a4XjMWP9

— MariaS Nunes (@Dodocanspell) December 14, 2016

From WitnessIraq
9th Circuit hears oral argument in Saleh v. Bush, et al.

San Francisco, Calif. — December 12, 2016 was a historic day, marking the first time that a U.S. court heard argument related to the actions of senior Bush-era officials who were responsible for the planning and waging of the Iraq War.

Circuit court judges Andrew Hurwitz and Susan Graber and District Court judge Richard Boulware (sitting by designation on the 9th Circuit), heard argument that the immunity granted to former President George W. Bush and other officials by the federal district court related to their conduct in waging the Iraq War should be overturned. This immunity was provided in December 2014, resulting in the current appeal.

The judges spent most of oral argument focusing on the nature of the domestic immunity, questioning both counsel for the Iraqi plaintiff, Sundus Saleh, as well as counsel for the United States about where immunity ends for government officials.

The judges will issue their opinion as to whether the immunity should be overturned in the coming weeks.....

#cdnpolj #tcot #TOpoli  Citizen's indepth research in2BBC fake news""Napalm bomb"school located https://t.co/QpsqBV5WN9 via @wordpressdotcom

— MariaS Nunes (@Dodocanspell) December 18, 2016

Junaid Ghoto at GlobalResearch
The Myth of India 
as an Upcoming Asian Economic Powerhouse. Rising Poverty and Social Inequality
A common myth around the world is that, India is developing country at a very rapid pace and going to be a powerhouse in Asia soon. Some even argue we should learn from them and some argue independence should have never happened and we would have been a better off with India rather than independent. And even some pessimist especially Pakistani and Bangladeshi people regret the independence in 1947 and common chorus can be heard “look where India has reached today and where we are”.

Regret or not, but it is important to see where India stands today, the idea to write regarding this is to differentiate the illusion from fact and give reason so the sane understanding follows. A nation is called developing not because of its population, or defense budget, but how good the people fare in that country; it is about the human development and economic growth which include improving education and health by having less people as possible under the poverty line and high incomes per capita of citizen in the country, this will come when the state will have a sound economic system.

India is no doubt one of the biggest democracy in the world; because it has the highest population, Simple! (China highly populist, and officially “communist”). India is the second biggest nation in the world in terms of population and seventh largest in terms of area. According to the IMF as of 2015, the Indian economically nominally worth US$ 2.182 trillion, it, it’s the eleventh largest economy in terms of market exchange rates at US$ 8.027 trillion, third largest by PPP, with an annual GDP growth of last decade’s 5.8%.[1]...