republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:

“I have ordered a number of actions in response to the Russian
government’s aggressive harassment of U.S. officials and
cyber-operations aimed at the U.S. election,” President Obama announced
this week. He added, “These actions follow repeated private and public
warnings that we have issued to the Russian government and are a
necessary and appropriate response to efforts to harm U.S. interests in
violation of established international norms of behavior.”

Obama’s statement was an explanation for his expulsion of 35 Russian
intelligence operatives, and the sanctioning of five Russian entities
and four individuals as a reaction to Obama’s charge that the Russian
government interfered in the 2016 presidential campaign. Democrats
contend that Russian hacking probably altered the outcome of the
election in which former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lost to
Donald Trump.

The president is giving the Russians 72 hours to get out of the country.
Obama stated that all Americans “should be alarmed by Russia’s
actions,” however, because it interfered with U.S. election process.”
While Obama and other leading Democrats are not explicitly saying so,
the impression has been left with many Americans that the Russians
somehow hacked voting machines, switching votes from Clinton to Trump.
This is reminiscent of the widespread but inaccurate belief that Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein attacked the United States on September 11,
2001. While the Bush administration never said directly that Iraq was
behind 9/11, they certainly led millions of Americans to think so.

A similar ploy appears to be in the making with this “Russian
hacking” story. Many Americans mistakenly believe that if the Russians
“hacked” the election, this means they changed the results recorded on
voting machines. The clever use of the word “election,” instead of
“campaign,” for example, would understandably lead the casual observer
to conclude that a foreign power, Russia, “stole” the election for
Donald Trump.
What Obama, Clinton, and the DNC are complaining about is that the
released e-mails demonstrated that Clinton and her allies at the DNC
were involved in many questionable activities. The e-mails were
published by WikiLeaks (which has flatly denied obtaining them from the
Russians). In a clever political move, however, the Democrats have
diverted attention away from the content of the leaks to the source of the leaks.
Obama recently said that he directly told Russian President Vladimir
Putin in September to “knock it off” in his alleged hacking activities,
supposedly directed toward altering the outcome of the U.S. election.
Obama added that this alleged hacking was greatly reduced after this
“stern” warning, which leads one to wonder why the Russian agents were
not expelled then, instead of now.
One could conclude that Obama’s actions,only three weeks from the end
of his term, were taken more for domestic political advantage than a
true retaliatory action against the Russians.
Obama also claimed that American diplomats had “experienced an
unacceptable level of harassment in Moscow by Russian security services
and police over the last year,” adding, “Such activities have
consequences.”
In addition to the expulsions, Obama also announced that the State
Department will shut down two Russian compounds, one in Maryland and the
other in New York, that are used by Russian personnel for
intelligence-related purposes.
State Department spokesman Mark Toner issued a statement charging the
Russians with other actions that had led to Obama’s reaction. “The
Russian government has impeded our diplomatic operations by, among other
actions: forcing the closure of 28 American corners which hosted
cultural programs and English-language teaching; blocking our efforts to
begin the construction of a new, safer facility for our consulate
general in St. Petersburg; and rejecting to improve perimeter security
at the current, outdated facility in St. Petersburg.”
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) added their own complaints
about the Russians. While supporting the president’s actions, they
contended that the measures were inadequate, stating, “These intrusions
are not just hacks. They were attacks on the United States by a foreign
power and should be treated as such. Therefore, today’s action alone by
the White House is insufficient.”
Then, the DNC statement revealed that its members intend to use these allegations of Russian
hacking as a political weapon against the Republican Congress and the
soon-to-be Republican president Donald Trump: “Now it’s time for
resident-elect Trump and the Republican leadership in Congress to put
our national security before politics and show the American people that
they are serious about protecting our democracy [sic].”
Obama promised to hold the Russians accountable, and said the U.S.
would “work together” with American allies to “oppose Russia’s efforts
to undermine established international norms of behavior and interfere with democratic governance.”
(Emphasis added.) Again, it is clear that with less than a month left
in his term, Obama and the Democrats intend to use this issue to
question the legitimacy of the election of Trump.
Trump appears to understand this, arguing that is “time for our
country to move on to bigger and better things. Nevertheless, in the
interest of our country and its great people, I will meet with leaders
of the intelligence community next week in order to be updated on the
facts of this situation.” (But if Trump really thinks the Democrats and
the media will “move on” from this story, we can predict he would be
mistaken. They will “move on” only if something more useful to attack
Trump comes along).
Of course, the intelligence “community” is a part of the Obama
administration, and they paint a dark picture of the Russians. The
Department of Homeland Security reported that “These cyber-operations
have included spear phishing campaigns targeting government
organizations, critical infrastructure entities, think tanks,
universities, political organizations and corporations leading to the
theft of information.”
Dimitry Peskov, a Russian government spokesman, charged that the
Obama administration’s sanctions are intended to “spoil” U.S. relations
with Russia and “undermine” the presidency of Donald Trump. Still,
Russian President Putin has so far declined to retaliate by expelling a
like number of U.S. diplomats, despite the urging of his foreign
minister, Sergey Lavrov. Lavrov argued that Putin should expel 31 U.S.
diplomats from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and four more from the U.S.
Consulate in St. Petersburg. He insisted that Russia “cannot leave these
sanctions unanswered.”
Peskov concluded that Obama’s sanctions are “groundless,” and are
“aimed directly at undermining” U.S. and Russian relations. And, of
course, since Obama will be out of the White House after January 20,
that means relations between the Russians and the incoming Trump
administration.
In short, the Obama/Clinton/DNC narrative appears to be that Trump
was Putin’s preferred winner in the presidential race, and that Russian
hacking was responsible for the release of multiple e-mails damaging to
the Clinton campaign.
But one could just as easily make the case that Clinton should have
been Putin’s preferred choice, not Trump. After all, shortly after Obama
took over the White House in 2009, Secretary of State Clinton implied
that the new U.S. administration wanted better relations with the
Russians, even going so far as to give Russian Foreign Minister Sergey
Lavrov a “reset button.”
Meeting with Lavrov in Geneva, Switzerland, she handed him a small
green box with a ribbon. Inside there was a red button, with the Russian
word “peregruzka” printed on it. “I would like to present you with a
little gift that President Obama and Vice President Biden and I have
been saying and that is: ‘We want to reset our relationship, and so we
will do it together.”
Unfortunately, the word was not the Russian word for “reset,” but
rather their word for ‘overcharged.’ This led to some scrambling within
the State Department to find the right Russian word for “reset.”
Regardless, it was clear that Clinton intended to “reset” at least her personal relations with the Russians.
An examination of some of the leaked Hillary Clinton e-mails reveals
that perhaps the candidate who had a closer relationship with the
Russian oligarchs was Clinton, not Trump. For example, while Clinton was
secretary of state, the better relations with Putin’s Russia enabled
the Clinton Foundation and its donors to make millions of dollars off a
deal that sold Uranium One (and 25 percent of America’s strategic
uranium production) to Russia.
In a recent article for The New American, C. Mitchell Shaw
cited the involvement of Clinton campaign manager John Podesta in a
“huge financial/national security scandal involving his position as an
executive board member of Joule Global Sticthing, a company owned by
Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg and Putin’s state-owned RUSNANO
corporation.” Even more directly, Clinton, while she was secretary of
state (and supposedly working for American national interests),
“set up multi-billion dollar deals and transfers of U.S. technology to
help Vladimir Putin build Skolkovo, Russia’s high-tech Silicone Valley,
concerning which the FBI has issued ‘an extraordinary warning’ noting
that Russia may use this cooperation to obtain America’s ‘sensitive or
classified research development facilities and dual-use technologies.’”
But, when Trump is sworn in as president next month, we can expect
that the mantra of the Democrats, backed by their progressive allies in
the media, will be that he owes his election to the machinations of
Vladimir Putin and the Russian government. This story would seem to be
more about delegitimizing the incoming administration and influencing
the outcome of future elections in the United States than about the
just-concluded presidential election.
________________________________________________________

Obama Retaliates Against Russians Over Purported Cyber Attack, But Is There a Double Standard?

Why prosecute the Russians if the DHS is involved in the same illicit activity?

BY SHEPARD AMBELLAS

SEE: http://www.infowars.com/obama-retaliates-against-russians-over-purported-cyberattack-but-is-there-a-double-standard/; 

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:

While President Obama is eagerly awaiting National Security
Director James Clapper’s full investigative report on the ‘Russian
hacking’ fiasco to hit his desk in the Oval Office, the administration
retaliated against Russia Thursday by imposing new sanctions and
expelling 35 intelligence operative from US soil.
However,
as it stands now, the White House is in somewhat of a catch-22 and is
finding it difficult to legally retaliate against the purported Russian
hacks in the digital realm over specifics listed in a 2015 executive order
which indirectly excludes counteroffensive measures to be taken against
foreign cyber-actions aimed at influencing the U.S. electoral system.
But despite formalities, after making adjustments, the White House plans
to make it burdensome not only for the Russians but also plans to make
it challenging for a newly-elect President Trump to reverse any actions
taken by the current Administration once in office.
According to the Washington Post:

Obama issued the executive order
in April 2015, creating the sanctions tool as a way to hold accountable
people who harm computer systems related to critical functions such as
electricity generation or transportation, or who gain a competitive
advantage through the cyber­­theft of commercial secrets.

States
of people overseas who have engaged in cyber-acts that have threatened
U.S. national security or financial stability. The sanctions would also
block commercial transactions with the designated individuals and bar
their entry into the country.

[…]
inciting the push, Sen. Graham told CNN, “There are a hundred U.S.
senators [and] ninety-nine of us believe the Russians did this and we’re
going to do something about it, along with Senator McCain.”

“We’re
going to put sanctions together and hit Putin as an individual and his
inner circle for interfering in our election,” said Sen. Graham before
carrying on to insinuate that the Russians are “doing it all over the
world.”

Sen. Graham told CNN that has
intel that the Russians are conducting a “massive military buildup […]
in the western district of Russia along the Balkans border and Poland”
and that the Russians “are absolutely increasing their military
capability in this region.”

Graham also
said that he and Sen. McCain will “advise the President-elect, when he
becomes president, to continually keep U.S. troops in the region —
partnering with, training, advising, assisting, exercising, with our
Balkan partners to reassure them of our commitment.”

“You
would (a) have to be able to say that the actual electoral
infrastructure, such as state databases, was critical infrastructure,
and (b) that what the Russians did actually harmed it,” said the
administration official. “Those are two high bars.”

Although
Russian government hackers are believed to have penetrated at least one
state voter-registration database, they did not tamper with the data,
officials said.