If you had any doubt that Obama is trying to provoke a war before he leaves office, question it no more.

(If you’re wondering why he is so adamant to go head-to-head with Putin, here’s an in-depth analysis.)

Greta Blasts Tucker Carlson Calling Him A Liar On Mike Tyson Comments

As pressure mounts for President Obama to grant clemency to 71-year-old Native American activist Leonard Peltier.

Sir Ivan Rogers could “not be trusted” as Britain’s EU ambassador and must be succeeded by a negotiator with a more positive view of Brexit, according to his critics.

Sir Ivan, who resigned on Tuesday, had been expected to play a key role in Brexit talks and was due to remain in his post until November. His supporters say the government’s Brexit plans have now been thrown into “chaos” without its most seasoned EU negotiator at the helm.

The black teenager who was thrown to the ground by a police officer at a pool party in McKinney, Texas is suing the city, police department and former officer Eric Casebolt.

Dajerria Becton claims Casebolt used excessive force and that the police force wasn’t properly trained. Casebolt was captured on cellphone video pushing the 15-year-old, bikini-clad Becton to the ground at a pool party in June 2015 and pointing his gun at other teens, as well as briefly running after other teenagers before being stopped by fellow police officers. About a dozen officers had responded to reports of teens fighting at a community pool in the Dallas suburb.

Third World invaders pretending to be refugees in Germany carried out at least 1,964 serious sex attacks in Germany during 2016, preying on 2,000 adults and 1,000 children, a new study by monitoring group XZ Einzefall has shown.

The true number of attacks and victims is much higher, because police are under orders to withhold hundreds of reports and only respond if the media makes inquiries.

Green charity Friends of the Earth denies it was forced to stop publishing an anti-fracking leaflet after energy giant Cuadrilla complained to the advertising watchdog.

The campaign group said the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) dropped the case without a ruling when the charity confirmed the ad is no longer in use.

Privacy experts are keeping a close watch on the case of a Bentonville, Arkansas, man who was charged with murder after prosecutors obtained a warrant to receive data from his Amazon Echo, a voice-activated device that is always listening and often recording. James Andrew Bates says he’s innocent of the murder of Victor Collins, who was found strangled in Bates’s hot tub. Prosecutors hope to search audio recordings on Bates’s Amazon Echo for clues. So far, lawyers for Amazon have refused to comply with the warrant, but the case has drawn national attention and alarmed civil liberties groups. We speak with Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Somewhat surprisingly, a genuine grassroots, broad-based movement has emerged to oppose the incoming Trump administration, but perhaps less surprisingly – given the American left’s self-marginalizing tendencies – the nascent efforts may already be descending into sectarianism, finger-pointing and divisive identity-based politics.

The poor helpless Baltic state of Lithuania, languishing under constant terror of Russian invasion, has just received much need reinforcement courtesy of lame-duck Obama's Pentagon... This comes as a welcome relief. Especially since Lithuania has you know, a big long border with hostile Russia. Oh never mind - they don't... Yeah there's Kaliningrad (the small part of Russia west of Lithuania), but the idea Russia could launch an invasion of NATO from the small exclave, or amass troops (which would have to come by sea and air) without being detected, is ludicrous. Of course, whenever Russia does invade Lithuania, Moscow seems to punish the Lithuanians (like the Ukrainians) by rewarding them with increased territory. After Stalin annexed Lithuania in 1940, he bolstered the fledgling republic with a large swath of former Polish territory - including their current capital Vilnius - formerly the Polish city of Wilno.

An Oregon couple have been ordered to stop collecting rainwater and destroy a 2-acre pond on their property because the government says it is illegal.

MSF has been 'reporting' atrocities from Syria's Aleppo where it actually has no presence... Here is a paradox for you. The exalted humanitarian outfit (and fundraising wonder) Doctors Without Borders (MSF), aside from providing medical services to people in some of the world's worst hellholes, also believes its mission is to speak out against human rights violations that they witness doing so. In keeping with this mission of "bearing witness" the MSF has therefore repeatedly spoken of attacks by the Syrian government on hospitals and civilians, particularly in Eastern Aleppo. Except here is the catch: Since 2015 MSF has had no international staff on the ground in Syria and has no facilities whatsoever in Aleppo. (The supposed "MSF hospitals" that were supposedly kept being hit in Aleppo upon closer reading actually turn out to merely be "hospitals supported by MSF and other organizations".) So then how is MSF able to "bear witness" to attacks that it could not possibly have seen?

President Vladimir Putin has been warned he is doomed to failure in Ukraine and that 2017 will be a year of aggression against Russia.

Foreign fighters dominate rebel casualty rolls according to the anti-Assad Syrian Observatory for Human Rights... End of year means one thing. The "Syrian Observatory for Human Rights", an anti-Assad activist network originally set up in 2006, updates its casualty figures for the Syrian civil war. According to SOHR's updated figures from January 1st 2015 through December 31st 2016 the conflict in Syria cost the lives of: 13,607 civilians (according to SOHR the vast majority killed by the Syrian military); 12,886 Syrian soldiers and pro-government militiamen; 2,306 foreign pro-government fighters; and: 8,130 Syrian opposition fighters (by which SOHR means all rebels including ISIS); 13,297 foreign fighters with the opposition. One may wonder how SOHR is able to gather such precise numbers. Despite the thick fog of war over Syria made worse by the competing propaganda campaigns of the various sides every single number that SOHR provides is given down to a single digit...

Are All These Lies Deliberately Pushed FOR WORLD WAR?!?!

First, The Washington Post released a report in which Russian hackers supposedly penetrated the U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont— as of Friday, December 30th, 2016. Although there is no evidence of Russian hacking when it comes to the U.S. power grid, the 2016 "elections," or anywhere, this is the narrative mainstream media heavily pushes...

Deputy Chief of Staff of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Colonel Mark Andrusyak reported that this year they have planned a large-scale mobilization of reserve officers. "We are planning this year to hold a call. The number of about four thousand ", Andrusyak said. Covered under the call are those who have completed military departments, but did not serve in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. "According to the guidance documents, the call covers persons up to 43 years of age who did not serve in the armed forces.", said the Colonel General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

I cannot understand what the Intelligence Community is saying anymore.

The US-led military coalition in Iraq has doubled the number of its military personnel in Iraq as parts of the country’s second largest city, Mosul, still remain under the control of Daesh Takfiri terrorists,

There are now roughly 450 military advisers, said US Air Force Colonel John Dorrian in Baghdad, while speaking to reporters at the Pentagon.

The President of Moldova, Igor Dodon, former head of the Socialist Party of Moldova, signed a decree on the resignation of Defense Minister Anatol Salaru, he announced on Facebook. "The Minister flirted with NATO, knowing full well that, under the Constitution, Moldova is a neutral state. He was behind the appearance of American military equipment at the Great National Assembly square on Victory Day, which can be qualified not only as a provocation. He openly advocated for the unification of Moldova with Romania, which is also unacceptable. In addition, he fired a solid number of professionals from defense and state security, replacing them with pro-Liberal party supporters of the unionist ideology," - wrote Igor Dodon. As reported, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Prime Minister of Moldova Pavel Filip have signed an agreement to open a NATO office in Chisinau.

2016 has tied 1998 for temperatures with dramatic cooling in the latter part of the year. Using 8 temperature data sets measuring the lower troposphere, interesting how NOAA temps are so far above everything else our there.

President Trump was not elected because the American people want to be Bullsh*tted. We picked him because he take problems head on and comes out on top.

It isn’t just unscrupulous tabloid journalists who are happy to snoop through other people’s phones – 22 percent of British people admit to illicitly spying on their partners devices.

We're entering a new era, folks.

"Four black people were charged with hate crimes Thursday in connection with a video broadcast live on Facebook that showed a mentally disabled white man being beaten and taunted, threatened with a knife and forced to drink from a toilet."

President-elect Donald Trump has supported WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s assertions that the Russian government was not the source of leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

Trump also blasted the political organization for its “carelessness” around its tech security when responding on Twitter Wednesday to an exclusive Fox interview with Assange.

Worst. Persuasion. Ever. Someone needs to do an intervention. This is officially embarrassing.

I’ve been saying in this blog for some time that we can’t tax and budget our way to a better future. We need to work on dramatically lowering the average cost of a high-quality lifestyle. Technology can make that happen if the right startups are nurtured.

Main goal of the news media is not objective information, but its purpose is to manipulate us and influence our way of thinking to suit the wealthy corporations to keep us in ignorance and hear, what they want us to hear, protecting their interests. Money talks. Any garbage will do: sensations, suggestive news, gossip, speculating, making up stories, etc, etc. and truth is irrelevant. Contemporary media forces us their colored and manipulated news, in order to control us, and brainwash us! "Whoever controls the media controls the mind" - Jim Morrison. "In the Netherlands, the media, the news over the years also become more of a hatch and part of other large multinationals, only the VPRO and VARA have partial independent journalism.

British Prime Minister Theresa May intends to use Brexit to prevent EU migrants from claiming benefits, according to a report.

Senior government sources are working on plans to stop migrants from getting tax credits and other in-work benefits, according to a Times report on Monday.

Link to Medium about "Breaking News":
>"" BreakingNews.com and the Breaking News app stopped providing updates and alerts on Dec. 31.
https://medium.com/@breakingnews/breaking-news-is-shutting-down-49104e...

---

Link to the ongoing demise of "Medium", which is more or less a NBC umbrella for other multinational Corporations posing as independent, but can't seem to get folks to pay for stuff that is worthless:
>"" (I)n building out this model, we realized we didn't yet have the right solution to the big question of driving payment for quality[sic] content.
http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/medium-just-laid-50-employees-an...

Go ahead and gloat, you deserve it ?!

The Obama administration and the corporate media are still pushing the Russian hacking story. They want America to believe that Russia is ready to bring the power grid, the problem is that there is no real evidence

The year 2017 promises to be one of increasing class struggle in the United States and around the world. In every country, the ruling elites and their political servants want to make the working class pay for the global economic crisis and the costs of war.

By Jon Quealley

A controversial set of new rules quietly given final approval over the recent holiday—allowing national parks in the United States to expand corporate sponsorships and commercial contracts with private companies—is being called a “disgrace” by those who say the move is a betrayal of what the nation’s parks should be...

A Liberal Democrat peer has claimed that the UK’s Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, is frustrating his own department by not reading briefs and alienating EU foreign ministers.

Baron William Wallace described how civil servants are “in despair” over Johnson, who is not giving “clear guidance” to his officials.

New anti-surveillance clothing has been developed, allowing wearers to prevent security cameras which use facial recognition technology from recognizing them. The clothing uses complex colored patterns of digitalized faces, and parts of faces, to overload and trick facial recognition software. The patterned design of the clothing overwhelm and confuse facial recognition systems by presenting them with too many faces to read simultaneously.

Ultrasounds emitted by ads or JavaScript code hidden on a page accessed through the Tor Browser can deanonymize Tor users by making nearby phones or computers send identity beacons back to advertisers, data which contains sensitive information that state-sponsored actors can easily obtain via a subpoena.

Webmaster addition: This looks like a bluff to scare people from using Tor. Even the best computer speakers are not able to produce sounds above 20,000; the upper end of the human hearing range.

A "be prepared" warning has been issued in Moscow ahead of the approaching major winter storm, the Russian Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring (Roshydromet) said on Wednesday. Forecasters warned that over 20% of monthly precipitation was expected to cover Moscow in the next 24 hours. Along with this, northern winds will bring cold air masses into the Moscow region. The winds will get stronger to 5-10 meters per second, with gusts up to 17 meters per second. A severe hoar frost is expected to grip Moscow on Thursday night after the snowfall. On Eastern Christmas Eve the temperatures will plunge to -23C, or even -28C and on Christmas Day, January 7, to -24-29C. Average temperatures are expected to be 14C below normal.

More on James Clapper's "raising on a busted flush" gambit . . . lol

The mechanism of control over migrants’ entry and stay in Russia should be improved, Head of the Russian Interior Ministry’s Main Department for Migration Olga Kirillova told TASS on Thursday. "Foreign citizens may enter and exit the country upon their compulsory compliance with the requirements of the existing legislation. The implementation of the laws on countering illegal migration and migrants’ illegal labor has contributed to the positive development of the migration situation," she said. "At the same time, we need to understand who arrives in our country, from where and with what goals. Due to this, the mechanism of control of foreigners’ entry and stay in Russia should be improved," she added. The basic instruments for organizing work to counter illegal migration are available while its higher efficiency will help consolidate efforts and coordinate the activity of all the departments concerned, Kirillova said.

Controversial legislation to subject the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy powers to outside scrutiny is getting new life in Washington.

The US dollar dopped 54 kopecks against the Russian ruble to reach 59.92 rubles per dollar. This is the first time the dollar is worth below 60 rubles since July 31, 2015. The euro dropped 55 kopecks comapered with Wednesday's close to reach 62.81 rubles. The Russian currency is strengthening on higher oil prices. Brent crude futures with February delivery grew 0.34% on the ICE in London to $56.65 per barrel.

China’s economy may grow at a rate of 6.5% in 2017, the Chinese Academy of Sciences said in its forecast on Thursday. China’s foreign trade may shrink by 5% to $3.53 trillion and its trade surplus is expected to equal $471 billion in 2017 amid the slowing global economy and some depreciation of the Chinese national currency, the report says. China’s Consumer Price Index (CPI), a key gauge of inflation in the country, may reach about 2.3% in 2017, the report says. According to official data, China’s economy grew by 6.9% in 2015, the slowest pace since 1990. Therefore, China’s economic growth has tended to slow down in the past few years. China’s GDP grew by 10.4% in 2010, 9.2% in 2011 and 7.8% in 2012. This growth slowed down to 7.7% in 2013 and 7.4% in 2014. China’s CPI grew by 1.4% in 2015 and by 2% in 2014.

An engine dropped out of a B-52 bomber during a training flight on Wednesday, the Air Force has confirmed following questions from Defense News. Because the B-52 runs on eight Pratt & Whitney TF33-P-3/103 turbofan engines, pilots were able to land the aircraft safely without any injury to the five personnel on board. The Air Force has since dispatched a UH-1N Huey helicopter to recover engine debris, which was found located in an unpopulated area about 25 nautical miles northeast of Minot Air Force Base, an Air Force spokesman said in a statement. There were no weapons onboard the B-52, which belongs to Minot Air Force Base's 5th Bomb Wing and was conducting a training mission, he said. The service was not able to provide the root cause of the mishap, but the spokesman said an initial safety investigation has been initiated. The incident could also ignite debate about whether and how to re-engine the service’s B-52 inventory.

Heading out to make a cash purchase? Heading to the bank to make deposit a from your food truck earnings? Heading home with your poker winnings?

The good news is that as of today, California law enforcement can no longer grab and keep your cash (if under $40,000); neither can they permanently take your property of any value, including cars, wedding rings and homes — unless they secure a conviction. If you didn’t know about this unjust law, one that essentially gave law enforcement free reign to take your stuff with almost no recourse, consider yourself lucky.

As the Republican leadership of the 115th Congress prepares to fulfill US President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign promise of repealing and replacing Obamacare, Democrats are digging in to defend President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law.

Donald Trump’s inauguration is shaping up to be the most mellow inauguration in history.

Saying he represents “a threat to all of our civil rights,” roughly 30 people led by the NAACP on Tuesday occupied the Mobile, Ala. office of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R.), President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general.

By Brandon Turbeville

Human Rights Watch and its Executive Director, Kenneth Roth, have managed a number of brazen failures in their attempt to support Western-backed terrorists in their goal of advancing Western imperialism in Syria. From using photos of cities the United States has bombed in order to blame the destruction on Bashar al-Assad to attacking Syrian nuns who attempted to correct Western media propaganda about kidnapped civilians in Lattakia, HRW has made a name for itself as one of the loudest shill organizations originating out of Soros Land.

Kenneth Roth, however, appears to be in a race with his own organization to see who can discredit and/or humiliate him/itself the most...

The Syrian government—a dictatorship known for imprisoning, torturing and disappearing dissidents—is easy to vilify. And over the last five years of Syria’s civil war, it has committed its share of atrocities. But there is more than one side to every story, and US media coverage has mainly reflected one side—that of the rebels—without regard for accuracy or basic context.

A personal note. My comments below reflect a commitment to rule of law principles, not support or rejection of Trump as America’s 45th president. Judge him based on how he serves once in office, no other way.

Deplorable treatment he got while campaigning and continuing post-election as president-elect is unprecedented in US political history – one of many examples of a rogue state off-the-rails, bipartisan corruption too entrenched to fix.

Russian hacking efforts "did not change the vote tallies"

Since Nasa's New Horizons probe started examining Pluto, a mountain of evidence has revealed the dwarf planet, once thought a cold, dead world, is filled with geological activity.

From the discovery of clouds in its atmosphere to a syrupy ocean beneath its surface, the tiny world at the edge of our solar system has become much more interesting to scientists since its demotion from planet status over ten years ago.

Now a new study has revealed Pluto is home to icy ridges called 'penitentes', that had only before been found on our home planet, in the Andes.

A version of the following piece was originally published in June 2016. However, since then, India’s PM Narendra Modi has embarked on a ‘demonetisation’ policy, which saw around 85 percent of India’s bank notes becoming invalid overnight.

Some small-town residents of Rutland, Vt., are upset at their mayor’s decision to resettle 100 Syrian refugees throughout 2017 in the area.

Rutland Mayor Christopher Louras defended his decision, saying the town’s demographics are declining, and they are having trouble recruiting younger workers. He also thinks refugees will bring cultural diversity.

Assange, who received the computer-data from what U.S. President Barack Obama alleges was ‘Russian hackers’, had an opportunity, in his 3 January 2017 interview with Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity, to deny the allegation by Craig Murray (a former British Ambassador and longtime friend of Assange) that no Russian or any other hackers were involved passing that information to Wikileaks; and, in reply, Assange declined the invitation to deny it, and he said, in short: Obama and his Administration are flat-out lying about this matter.

A BIZARRE new bout of ransomware has appeared online that infects your computer, locks all of your files, and threatens to delete the encrypted files unless you read two articles online in an allotted time.

This new ransomware might be one of the strangest – and most frustrating – we've ever seen.

The nightmarish ransomware is an in-development variant of the Koolova Ransomware capable of encrypting and deleting every file on your computer.

But what makes this new virus so unusual is the fact that it gives users the chance to avoid the catastrophic deletion of everything on their machine – by simply educating themselves about the dangers of ransomware.

“In a cashless society, gold is going to be worth even more.”

NASA satellite Voyager 2, which is an incredible 10 BILLION miles from Earth, has fired thrusters that will allow it to leave our solar system for interstellar space.

Voyager 2, which was launched in August 1977 and is still functioning despite the mind-boggling distances and numbers involved, has set course for Sirius – the brightest star in the sky.

Astonishingly, even travelling at around 40,000mph it will take 296,000 years to reach Sirius.

Most experts believe mankind will have long since become extinct, or will have evolved into an entirely different species by that time.

OIL workers were forced to throw themselves off a rig into the sea after a massive fire engulfed the platform.

The US Coast Guard are at the scene 80 miles off the coast of Grand Isle, near New Orleans, Louisiana, in the Gulf of Mexico.

...

The fire is thought to have started at 2.30am local time (8.30am GMT).

The Clean Gulf oil spill cooperative have dispatched an emergency oil response team to the fire, the US Coast Guard said.

Criminals are posing as job applicants to drop ransomware into human resources departments.

The ransomware vector contains two attachments. One is a harmless PDF cover letter designed to convince the human resources operative that the criminal's email exchange is legitimate.

A second Excel spreadsheet attachment contains the ransomware payload – a variant of Petya which Check Point researchers designated GoldenEye.

Staff are requested to enable macros – an ancient but sadly effective means of Windows box popping, according to Microsoft – which allows the ransomware to begin encrypting the local drive.