In the last two News and Views from the Nefarium I've been concentrating not only on the geopolitical realignments that the coming year(s) portend, but also on the international and domestic realignments that are concomitant with them, including what I have been calling "international mafia wars," as the neo-con globalist-Atlanticist factions within various great powers attempt to hold on to power and chorale and channel their unanticipated opposition into policies acceptable to them. In that vein, consider the following stories shared by various readers here:

Trump on Alleged Russian Hacking: I know things others don't

As this RT article citing Sean Spicer points out, the Russian hacking meme has been getting all the attention - no doubt in part in an attempt to de-legitimize the election results - while Chinese hacking has been downplayed, if it is mentioned at all:

Political retribution? Trump press sec questions Russia sanctions, brings up unanswered ‘China hack’

And finally, these articles from our friends at The Daily Bell about a possible looming battle between the incoming Trump administration and the CIA:

A similar story is being reported by Zero Hedge:

Trump Is Working On A Plan To Restructure, Pare Back The CIA And America's Top Spy Agency

And finally, this find, by one alert reader of this website:

Note the conclusion of the last article:

The IP addresses that DHS provided may have been used for an attack by a state actor like Russia. But they don’t appear to provide any association with Russia. They are probably used by a wide range of other malicious actors, especially the 15% of IP addresses that are Tor exit nodes. The malware sample is old, widely used and appears to be Ukrainian. It has no apparent relationship with Russian intelligence and it would be an indicator of compromise for any website.

The relationship of the malware sample, originating from the Ukraine, raises unpleasant but necessary questions: since it it widely known that the USA was a main sponsor of the events in the Ukraine that overthrew a legitimate (if corrupt) government with a new (and even more corrupt) government, that question is rather obvious: could the entire hacking meme have been an attempt at a "cyber false flag" originating in the West to embarrass Russia? Possibly, but here our criticism of the hacking meme and a Russian origin for the hacking, works in reverse: if the Russians were unlikely to have used such a clumsy method, perhaps the West would be too. And as the conclusions point out, the mere use of addresses in Russia does not, as any hacker knows, mean that Russia is the one using them. In effect, it proves nothing. And we must hold out the possibility of non-state actors, and such a possibility would fit well with my "emergent international Mafia wars" hypothesis, as factions of Globaloneyists and the fascist sympathizers in various nations' deep states close ranks.

In my high octane speculation of the day, it appears that what is looming here is a showdown between Mr. Trump and his deep state supporters, and the neo-con factions within the American intelligence community, represented by the CIA (which, let it be noted, is not a monolithic anti-Trump agency either, if one takes the pre-election revelations of Dr. Steve Pieczenik at face value). The Daily Bell suggests this looking showdown:

It seems obvious at this point that the CIA and Trump have entirely different positions when it comes to Russian maliciousness, which Trump downplays while the CIA works to advertise it. But the issue is even more serious than that. The larger issue is one we’ve been talking about for 15 years or more. The CIA is accountable to overseas banking interests in the City of London, not to American intelligence operations. The latter accountability is just a smokescreen. The split has now become public knowledge and Trump is being directly threatened as a result.

Such statements strongly imply a showdown is looming, and give even more credence to those stories that Mr. Trump has retained his private security for protection, and of course, they give credence to those rumors that perhaps even Russian speznaz units are running security interference for Mr. Trump without his knowledge or involvement. If so, then this means that Mr. Trump is very aware of the power blocs aligned domestically against him, and give strong support to those rumors that he, like Mr. Kennedy, may be planning to reign in the agency. Unlike Mr. Kennedy, it appears that Mr. Trump is not so naive to believe he can do so without his own private and trusted security.

Time of course, will tell, and this is definitely a case of "you tell me."

See you on the flip side.