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#Wikileaks appear to show collusion between #NewYorkTimes & #Clinton - #medias #media Wikileaks has published an e-mail apparently showing that the New York Times was providing the State Department - and Hillary Clinton - with advanced warnings about potentially damaging stories. 
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#BernieSanders Suggests #Election Is Rigged, Unendorses #HillaryClinton People thought it was a horrible double standard when Bernie Sanders endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. However, in an unexpected announcement Bernie Sanders has suggested that the Presidential election may be rigged, leaving many to suggest that he is un-endorsing Hillary Clinton. In a cryptic Facebook message posted on Sunday, Sanders warned the American citizens…
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Oscar Winning Director #OliverStone on Freedom of Speech & Debating Downfalls of #Trump & #Clinton - RT 27 mn Ajoutée le 19 oct. 2016 We speak to award winning director, Oliver Stone about Hillary's hacks, CIA backed cinema and the British government bank that appears to have tried to stop you from seeing this programme. Going Underground producer Pete Bennett and deputy editor Sebastian Pacher, argue which presidential candidate is worse for you and the world at large
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Dr. #DanieleGanser: « Both #Trump and #Clinton are a danger for world peace » #NATO #USA Publié le 21 septembre 2016Mis à jour le 21 septembre 2016 Mohsen Abdelmoumen: Your work focuses essentially on the strategy of the masked war. Can you explain this concept? Dr. Daniele Ganser: A secret war, a covert war is a war where the attacker does not admit that he is attacking the target country. In 1961 for instance the CIA made an invasion of Cuba and tried to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro. It was a secret operation, and therefore at the United Nations the US ambassador lied and said: We have nothing to do with this. What is the role of the media in the strategy of the masked war? Today we have a secret war against Syria. In 2011 the four NATO countries US, Great Britain, France and Turkey attacked Syria, together with Qatar and Saudi Arabia. These six countries want to overthrow the government of President Assad. This is illegal according to the UN Charta. But the media confuse the public. They spread stories that what we have in Syria is a civil war of a brutal dictator against his own population. With this narrative the media hide the international powers who try to make a regime change. But there are always also courageous journalists who try to inform the public about what is really going on. These journalists for instance report how NATO countries cooperate with terrorists in Syria who also want to overthrow Assad. Of course NATO countries then say that they would never cooperate with terrorists like al Nusra, but only with « moderate rebels ». So we are in the middle of an information war. Your doctoral thesis concerned Gladio. Can you enlighten us about this subject? The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the US-led largest military alliance on the planet, had set up secret armies in all countries of Western Europe after the Second World War. In Italy the secret army was codename Gladio. These networks were armed and trained by the CIA and the MI6. Their original mission was to fight behind enemy lines in case of a Soviet invasion, hence the name stay-behind network. But in some countries like Italy and France and Turkey these secret armies became operative in the total absence of a Soviet invasion, targeted the domestic opposition and became tragically linked to crime and terror. How is it possible that in the so-called western « democracies », secret armies often linked to the extreme right, act with impunity? Where are the States and their institutions? In Switzerland, Belgium and Italy there was an investigation into the stay-behind armies, so at least in some countries the local parliaments looked into the delicate affair. But in many other countries including Germany, France and Turkey there was no in depth investigation. Furthermore NATO and CIA refused to comment. It was a big military scandal but US President Bush senior, who was in office in Washington when the existence of the secret armies was revealed in 1990, simply refused to comment. CIA operatives confirmed that the secret armies hat existed but claimed they were designed only to fight against a Soviet invasion. The CIA said the secret Gladio armies had not linked whatsoever with terrorism. The EU parliament in November 1990 protested « vigorously at the assumption by certain US military personnel at SHAPE and in NATO of the right to encourage the establishment in Europe of a clandestine intelligence and operation network » and called for « a full investigation into … these clandestine organizations … and the problem of terrorism in Europe ». But nothing happened, the affair was too delicate and the EU parliament was powerless against NATO and the CIA. You often base your work on declassified documents from various intelligence agencies, CIA, MI6, etc. Have you obtained easily certain confidential or top secret information? No, it was always very difficult to find historical documents on secret warfare in general and operation Gladio in particular. I placed a Freedom of Information Request (FOIA) with the CIA, but the CIA refused to hand me the Gladio documents. Also NATO refused access to the relevant documents. Can we say we are living the continuation of the Cold War, especially with the latent conflict between the EU and the US on one side and Russia on the other, and whose one of epicenters is Ukraine? Yes, in Ukraine we have a new confrontation between Washington and Moscow, a confrontation between two nuclear powers. On February 20, 2014, the US sponsored a coup d’état in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, in order to throw out the government of Janukowitsch and install the new and acting government of Poroschenko. The plan of the US is to drag Ukraine into NATO. Poroschenko wants to join NATO. Responsible for the coup d’état in Kiev was Victoria Newland who became famous for her comment „Fuck the EU“, because she did not care what the EU thinks when the US carries out a coup in Ukraine. But the Russians don’t want that. They don’t want the Ukraine to become a NATO member. So in March Putin reacted and took the Crimea. So right now the Ukraine is split into two parts: one aligned with Washington, the other aligned with Moscow. The United States will elect a new president and choose between Trump and Clinton. Don’t you think that these two candidates are dangerous for the stability and peace in the world? Unfortunately both Trump and Clinton are a danger for world peace, they both will serve the military industrial complex, thus the interest of powerful lobby groups in Washington who want more wars and want to sell more weapons. According to your analysis, leaders fomented plots outside the control of Parliament and their institutions. Some of them are alive like Bush, Blair, Cheney, Sarkozy, etc. Why aren’t they judged? Is it utopian to believe in their trial? Bush, Blair and Cheney should be brought in front of the International Criminal Court ICC in Den Haag because they attacked Iraq in 2003 that was illegal. Sarkozy should also be brought in front of the ICC because he attacked together with Obama and Cameron Libya in 2011. But these leaders of NATO countries are very powerful. It is very difficult to bring them in front of a court, right now it seems impossible. According to you, does this strategy of masked war and of creation of tensions aim at monopolizing the natural resources of the countries, or are there other underlying objectives? Secret wars have always been used to increase the influence of the US empire and aligned NATO countries. So really it’s about the desire to have more power and more money. The so called war on Terror, which started in 2001, is full of lies. Above all the collapse of WTC7 is totally unclear. I think the entire war on terror is not about catching terrorists, but about controlling oil and gas supplies. Based on your work, the occult groups who commit these attacks and plots are a minority. From where do they hold their influence and does the intelligence agencies are not infiltrated by these groups? Yes, the people who start all these wars and lie to the public are a minority. But they are powerful and they control the intelligence services like the CIA and the MI6. We notice an increasing role of the private military companies, as Blackwater now Academi, CACI, etc. Will we see the privatization of sensitive sectors such as Defense and Intelligence? Who is behind these companies? I know that the influence of Academi and other private military companies is growing. But really I don’t know much about this subject because I have not studied it in detail. In your opinion, why the occult powers to imperialism service do they feel the need to accuse those who dispute official theses of being conspiracy theorists, and other pejorative terms? The term conspiracy theory is being used to discredit everybody who criticizes the elite and also the abuse of power by the elite. If you question the terrorist attacks of September 11 you are immediately attacked as a conspiracy theorist. But more and more people start to understand that the entire so called war against terror is full of lies and brutality. All the information we have about these white collar criminals, their mass murders, State lies, aren’t they a drop in the ocean? No, this information is important; we must try to understand what is going on. By manipulating terrorism, don’t the Western countries play with fire? Indeed, it is very dangerous to manipulate terrorists. The CIA did it by arming Al Qaida in Afghanistan in the 1980s. And now the same happens again in Syria. You are also an expert in energy, what are your forecasts about this market? Can humanity afford to remain dependent on fossil fuels? No, we need to move towards renewable energies. We should try to reduce the consumption of oil, gas, coal and nuclear energy and go toward solar energy, wind energy, water energy, and geothermal energy. Interview realized by Mohsen Abdelmoumen Who is the Doctor Daniele Ganser? Daniele Ganser was born in 1972 in Lugano, Switzerland. He is a historian and peace researcher specializing in energy issues, economic history, geo-strategy and international contemporary history since 1945. He is the founder and owner of the Swiss Institute for Peace and Energy Research (SIPER). From 1992 onwards he studied history and international relations at the University of Basel, the University of Amsterdam (UVA) and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He received his licentiate in 1998, summa cum laude, and his PhD in 2001, insigni cum laude. 2001-2003 he conducted research at the think tank Avenir Suisse in Zurich; 2004-2006 he worked for the Center for Security Studies (CSS) at the ETH Zurich. He teaches at the University of St. Gallen (HSG) courses on the history and future of energy systems. At Basel University, he taught in the postgraduate course on conflict analysis with a focus on the global fight over petroleum. He is also on the scientific advisory board of the business association Swisscleantech. Daniele Ganser holds the German IQ-Award 2015 by Mensa in Deutschland e.V., the association for highly skilled people (www.mensa.de). His book « NATO’s secret armies in Europe » has been translated into ten languages. His book « Europe in the oil rush » was published in September 2012 and describes the global struggle for petroleum. The TOP-10 of his presentations and interviews on Youtube count over 3 million views. Daniele Ganser has a daughter and a son and lives with his family close to Basel. Published in American Herald Tribune, September 20, 2016:http://ahtribune.com/us/2016-election/1207-daniele-ganser.html
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Propaganda for #Syria ‘Regime Change’ : Information Clearing House - ICH #neocons #clinton Neocons and liberal hawks have poured millions of dollars into propaganda to justify “regime change” in Syria and are now desperate to keep the war going until President Hillary Clinton gets a chance to escalate, as Rick Sterling describes. In early August, Dennis Ross and Andrew Tabler opined in The New York Times about “The Case for (Finally) Bombing Assad”. Dennis Ross is a favorite Clintonite. In her book Hard Choices, Clinton described how she asked Dennis Ross to come to the State Department to “work on Iran and regional issues.” New York Times regular Nicholas Kristof made his own pitch for war against Syria. According to the self-styled humanitarian, we need “safe zones” as proposed by Clintonite Madeline Albright and retired General James Cartwright. That is risky, Kristof said, but “the risks of doing nothing in Syria are even greater.” PBS broadcast a story titled “Repeatedly targeted by airstrikes, Syrian doctors feel abandoned.” The story features video from the “White Helmets” along with photos from the reported April bombing of Al Quds Hospital. Currently there is a huge media campaign around the situation in Aleppo. Syrian American doctor Zaher Sahloul, of the Syrian American Medical Society, has been interviewed extensively on mainstream media as well as DemocracyNow with widespread promotion in Truthout and other sites. There has been lots of publicity around a letter to President Obama, supposedly written by 15 doctors in East Aleppo. The letter ends “We need your action.” The flow and wording of the letter suggests it may have been composed by a marketing company and there has been no verification of the doctors who supposedly signed it. The letter was likely written by a paid Syria War propagandist or Washington lobby firm. Read the letter here and judge for yourself. For contrast watch this interview with a real Syrian doctor not mouthing propaganda from K Street in Washington D.C. An online Change petition asks German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Barack Obama to “save the people of Aleppo.” The publicly funded Holocaust Memorial Museum has promoted the video #SaveSyria. One of the producers of the video is The Syria Campaign which is the marketing organization which branded the pervasive “White Helmets,” as documented in “Seven Steps of Highly Effective Manipulators”. In parallel with this media campaign, the House Foreign Affairs Committee has introduced HR5732 the “Caesar Syrian Civilian Protection Act of 2016.” The resolution calls for escalating economic/financial pressure on Syria and “Assessment of potential effectiveness of and requirements for the establishment of safe zones or a no fly zone in Syria”. Dr. Sahloul, the Syrian American Medical Society doctor / spokesperson, says that Obama’s legacy will be defined by whether or not he attacks Syria to impose a “no fly zone.” It seems unlikely that Obama would do that at the end of his term. Instead, the goal is to prepare the public for the new war to begin after Hillary Clinton becomes President. Falsehoods and Lies of Omission In his article ““The media are misleading the public on Syria” author Stephen Kinzer recently wrote, “Coverage of the Syrian war will be remembered as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the American press. Reporting about carnage in the ancient city of Aleppo is the latest reason why.” Here a few facts about Aleppo which contradict the mainstream media narrative: –At least 85 percent of Aleppo’s population is in government-controlled areas. –The estimate of 300,000 civilians in rebel/terrorist-controlled east Aleppo is likely a gross exaggeration. In spring 2015, Martin Chulov of the Guardian visited the area and estimated there were 40,000. –While there are very few doctors serving in the opposition-controlled Aleppo, there are thousands of doctors working in the government-controlled area. –The dominant rebel-terrorist group in Aleppo is the Syrian version of Al Qaeda. –The armed groups who invaded Aleppo have been unpopular from the beginning. In the fall of 2012, journalist James Foley wrote: “Aleppo, a city of about 3 million people, was once the financial heart of Syria. As it continues to deteriorate, many civilians here are losing patience with the increasingly violent and unrecognizable opposition — one that is hampered by infighting and a lack of structure, and deeply infiltrated by both foreign fighters and terrorist groups.” (Foley was later captured by Syrian rebels and executed by the Islamic State on Aug. 19, 2014.) –The rebel-terrorists launch dozens and sometimes hundreds of mortars daily into the government-controlled areas causing huge casualties. Western media ignores this destruction and loss of life. –The much publicized April bombing of the supposed Medecins sans Frontieres-supported “Al Quds Hospital” in Aleppo was full of contradictions and discrepancies. These were highlighted in an Open Letter to MSF. To this date, MSF has not provided corroborating information. –Much of the video purporting to show bombing effects in Aleppo are stamped with the “White Helmets” logo. White Helmets is a creation of the U.S. and U.K. and primarily a propaganda tool. The claims they are Syrian, independent and non-partisan are all false. –Much of the information about Syria comes from “activists” trained and paid by the U.S. In her book Hard Choices, Secretary Clinton says the U.S. provided “training for more than a thousand (Syrian) activists, students, and independent journalists” (p464, hardback version). Obviously they are not independent and their reports should be carefully checked. –In contrast with the ambiguous situation at “Al Quds Hospital”, consider what happened to Aleppo’s “Al Kindi Hospital.” Take three minutes to view the suicide bombing of Al Kindi Hospital. Take two minutes to view what the “rebels” did to Syrian soldiers who had been guarding the hospital. –Like NBC correspondent Richard Engels’s fake kidnapping and the contrived CNN reports by “Syrian Danny,” the Aug. 21, 2013 chemical attack in Ghouta has been essentially shown to have been a staged event intended to force a U.S. attack on the Syrian government by making it appear that President Bashar al-Assad had crossed President Obama’s “red line.” –The latest propaganda tool being used to promote U.S. aggression against Syria is the photograph of little Omran in the orange ambulance seat. The video comes from the Aleppo Media Center, or AMC. Like the White Helmets, AMC is a U.S. creation. The photo of Omran has been widely accepted without scrutiny. The insightful Moon of Alabama has raised serious questions about the media sensation. Brad Hoff has documented that the main photographer, Mahmoud Raslan, is an ally of the Nour al Din al Zenki rebel terrorists who beheaded a young Palestinian Syrian a few weeks ago, confirmed step by step in this short video. Another good short video exposing the propaganda around #Syrianboy is here. Why the Burst of Propaganda? The Syrian crisis is at a critical point with the prospect that the rebel/terrorists will collapse. If they are crushed or expelled, it would allow hundreds of thousands of displaced Aleppans to return home as soon as services are restored. This would also allow the Syrian army and allies to focus on attacking the Islamic State in the east and rebel/terrorist groups remaining in Idlib, Hama, the outskirts of Damascus and the south. Until the last year, fanatics and mercenaries were traveling from all parts of the globe into Syria via Turkey. Tens of thousands went to Syria from Southeast Asia, China, Russia, North Africa, Europe and North America. They were given carte blanche to depart their home countries, arrive in Turkey and be guided into Syria. For example, young Canadians such as Damien Clairmont went and died in Syria. His mother has courageously exposed the fact that Canadian Security Intelligence Services (CSIS) knew about his plans yet did nothing to stop him. Progressive Muslim leaders demanded the government identify and start dealing with the radical recruiters. It was evidently the policy of the cynically named “Friends of Syria” to “look the other way” as their citizens were being brainwashed and then recruited to become terrorists attacking Syria. Now, with terrorist blowback in Western Europe, the United States and Turkey, these same “Friends” are feeling consequences from their policies. Terror attacks in Britain, France, Belgium and the U.S. have ended – or at least disrupted – the policy of collusion with Wahhabi terrorists. In the last year, security services have started arresting recruiters and new recruits. In Britain, a long-time promoter of ISIS has been convicted. In Belgium, the court has approved the extradition of a suspected French terrorist. Previously, Belgium was the Western country with the highest per capita number of citizens joining the terrorist fight in Syria. And now Turkey has started arresting people en route to join ISIS in Syria. Since the rebel/terrorists invaded Aleppo in 2012, they have had a constant pipeline bringing weapons, fighters and supplies into the city. For the past few months the Syrian army has been on the verge of encircling and closing the access routes into rebel terrorist sections of east Aleppo. Western media and governments, which support the rebel/terrorists, are doing all they can to delay or prevent this closure. They are trying to stall or prevent a Syrian government victory until someone more hawkish than Barack Obama is in the White House. Driving the Conflict Regional forces supporting the war on Syria include Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. Israel has always been deeply involved, contrary to the faulty analysis of some observers. Israel has provided medical and military support to Nusra/Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups operating near the Golan Heights. Former Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren was explicit: “Israel has wanted Assad ousted since Syria war began.” Oren has said Israel favors that outcome even if it means a victory by Al Qaeda or other Sunni extremists. The U.S. and Western powers are also deeply involved. Working with Saudi Arabia and through Turkey, the U.S. has supplied huge quantities of weapons to the rebel/terrorists. Sophisticated weaponry totaling 994 TONS was provided last winter as documented here. On the other side, Iran and Hezbollah are committed to defending the existing Syrian government. They know that if the Syrian government falls, they will be the next ones under attack. Russia also sees this as a crucial conflict. The U.S. has expanded NATO up to the Russian western border, promoted the 2014 Ukraine coup, and insisted on economic sanctions against Russia. Syria is Russia’s only Arab ally and hosts Russia’s only foreign naval base. Russia probably sees this conflict as a crucial for its own future. In another sign of resistance to U.S. global hegemony, China has indicated it wishes to expand military cooperation with Syria. Following the U.S. lead, Canada, Australia and West European countries have supported the “regime change” effort despite it being in clear violation of the U.N. Charter and international law. Despite five years of tragedy and destruction, the U.S. continues trying to overthrow or destroy the Syrian government. This is not a new U.S. objective. In 2005, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour interviewed Syrian President Assad and said to him “Mr. President, you know the rhetoric of regime change is headed towards you from the United States….They’re talking about isolating you diplomatically and, perhaps, a coup d’etat or your regime crumbling. What are you thinking about that?” Amanpour is not only a CNN host, she is the wife of neocon Clintonite James Rubin. In 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pressed Syria to stop its support of the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah, “loosen” its alliance with Iran and sign a treaty with Israel. Significantly, these are Israel’s demands and of much higher importance to the Zionist state than the U.S. The war in Syria is bringing numerous conflicts to a head: sectarian Wahhabism vs. humanitarian Islam; the “New American Century” with one superpower vs. a multilateral world; Zionist dominance and occupation vs. Lebanese and Palestinian resistance. Hillary Clinton is on record criticizing the decision to not bomb Syria in late summer 2013 after the sarin gas attack outside Damascus. She has continued to promote the idea of a “no fly zone.” She is an avowed Zionist who has said she wants to take the U.S.-Israeli relationship to the “next level.” Zionist Israel is deeply worried by the prospect of a strengthened Syria and Lebanese resistance. In addition, there are many Palestinian refugees and their descendants in Syria and Lebanon. They retain their wish to return home in keeping with international law. Just as Zionist Israeli interests were a major factor in the invasion of Iraq, so they are in continuing the conflict in Syria. In addition, neocons have not given up their goal of a “New American Century.” The Western Left? The Left has been weak in responding and opposing the aggression against Syria. Major factors have included: –Saudi and U.S. State Department-funded Muslim groups which support the aggression against Syria. This includes the recently famous Dr. Zaher Sahloul and the Syrian American Medical Society. SAMS and Zahloul are aligned with Saudi Arabia and receive substantial State Department funding. –Deluded leftist groups which support what they have been told is a people’s “revolution” in Syria, just as happened in Libya. –The flooding of social media and the Internet by “activists” and Syrian “civil society” groups who are actually paid and trained agents of the West. This is confirmed by Clinton herself in her book Hard Choices. –Uncritical acceptance of the claims by major non-governmental organizations (or NGOs), which are predominately funded by billionaires. These organizations need to be viewed with some skepticism because of their financial dependence on a few wealthy individuals with personal agendas. For example, in 1990, Amnesty International mistakenly corroborated the accuracy of the false claim that Iraqi soldiers were stealing incubators from Kuwait, leaving babies to die on the cold floor. In the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Human Rights Watch, which is heavily funded by currency speculator George Soros, did not oppose the Iraq invasion and implicitly accepted it by only criticizing the lack of preparation. (HRW also promoted what turned out to a bogus story claiming that by “vectoring” the flight paths of two rockets it had proved that the Syrian military fired the sarin gas on Aug. 21, 2013, a claim that later collapsed when aeronautical experts determined that the only rocket found to carry sarin had a much shorter range.) Physicians for Human Rights, another Soros project, has issued grossly misleading reports on Syria. –Alternative media, which is progressive on many issues but echoes NPR and mainstream media on critical foreign policy issues including the Syrian conflict. Some groups including Arab Americans for Syria, Syrian American Forum, Black Agenda Report, Syria Solidarity Movement, Answer and Workers World Party have actively challenged the disinformation but their budgets and influence are relatively small in comparison to the heavily funded organizations pushing for Syrian “regime change.” Veterans for Peace, one of the most influential and respected peace organizations, has recently sharpened its understanding and position on Syria. Following a recent visit to Syria, the Vice President of Veterans for Peace, Jerry Condon, said, “Everything we read about Syria in the U.S. media is wrong. The reality is that the U.S. government is supporting armed extremist groups who are terrorizing the Syrian people and trying to destroy Syria’s secular state. “In order to hide that ugly reality and push violent regime change, the U.S. is conducting a psychological warfare campaign to demonize Syria’s president, Bashar al Assad. This is a classic tactic that veterans have seen over and over. It is shocking, however, to realize how willingly the media repeat this propaganda, and how many people believe it to be true.” What the Future Holds Neoconservatives, including Clintonites, are pushing hard for a direct U.S. attack on Syria to prevent the collapse of their “regime change” project. Claiming that the U.S. and NATO can bring a “safe zone” and “protect civilians” is a grotesque falsehood. (In Libya in 2011, similar “humanitarian” claims were simply a cover for another “regime change” project that has unleashed more chaos and death across northern Africa.) If the U.S. tries to impose a “no fly zone” in Syria, it will result in vastly more deaths and risk escalation into direct conflict involving Syria, Russia, Iran and Israel. Former Acting CIA director Mike Morell, who has endorsed Hillary Clinton for President, recently suggested the killing of Russians and Iranians in Syria to make them “pay a price.” There is a clear solution to the Syrian tragedy: the countries who have been supplying tons of weapons and paying tens of thousands of mercenary terrorists should stop. The conflict would soon end. The foreigners would depart with much less fanaticism than what they came with. Many Syrian rebel/terrorists would accept reconciliation. To create the circumstances for a peaceful settlement, there needs to be a global campaign for peace, but there is much responsibility in the U.S. since our government has become the greatest threat to peace with its insistence on global dominance. Following are some specific ideas that could help: –Sen. Bernie Sanders raised expectations when he talked about the need stop the “regime change” foreign policy. Now is when he needs to be clear and unequivocal that U.S. military aggression against Syria will make things worse not better and must not happen. Sanders also proved that a progressive policy is popular. If Sanders abandons this core foreign policy position and does not speak out strongly against the drive for aggression, it will be a huge disappointment and failure. –DemocracyNow and other leading alternative media need to start including different analyses. To a sad extent, their coverage of Syria has echoed NPR and CNN. If DemocracyNow is truly an “Exception to the Rulers,” it needs to start including more critical examinations. DN producers should be studying publications such as Consortiumnews, Global Research, AntiWar, MoonOfAlabama, Al Masdar News, Al Mayadeen, Counterpunch, DissidentVoice, American Herald Tribune, 21stCenturyWire, Black Agenda Report, the Canary, RT, PressTV and TruePublica (not corporate ProPublica). They should be bringing the observations and analysis of journalists such as Sharmine Narwani, Edward Dark, Eva Bartlett, Brad Hoff, Vanessa Beeley, Stephen Sahiounie to name just a few. Syrian academics such as Issa Chaer (U.K.) and Nour al Kadri (Canada) could be interviewed. Followers of DN have heard Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State and other U.S. officials speaking about Syria countless times. Why have Amy and Juan not interviewed the Syrian Ambassador to the UN? –This is an opportunity and challenge for Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka of the Green Party. They are clear on this issue. If they can get a mass audience to hear their message, it could be crucial to their winning support and prompting a necessary national debate. At the moment there is almost no debate on the issue of perpetual war in the Middle East. Instead, the media is filled with propaganda using a boy’s photo to promote more war. The Green Party could play a hugely important role exposing the danger and duplicity of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. They could play a key role in blocking the Clintonite march to a new war. –Veterans for Peace could play a leading role in changing the perception and ending the marginalization of the U.S. peace movement. Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist and member of Syria Solidarity Movement. He can be contacted at rsterling1@gmail.com
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Many donors to #ClintonFoundation met with #HillaryClinton at State - AP - Big Story - 23.08.2016 WASHINGTON (AP) — More than half the people outside the government who met with Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state gave money — either personally or through companies or groups — to the Clinton Foundation. It's an extraordinary proportion indicating her possible ethics challenges if elected president. At least 85 of 154 people from private interests who met or had phone conversations scheduled with Clinton while she led the State Department donated to her family charity or pledged commitments to its international programs, according to a review of State Department calendars released so far to The Associated Press. Combined, the 85 donors contributed as much as $156 million. At least 40 donated more than $100,000 each, and 20 gave more than $1 million. Donors who were granted time with Clinton included an internationally known economist who asked for her help as the Bangladesh government pressured him to resign from a nonprofit bank he ran; a Wall Street executive who sought Clinton's help with a visa problem and Estee Lauder executives who were listed as meeting with Clinton while her department worked with the firm's corporate charity to counter gender-based violence in South Africa. The meetings between the Democratic presidential nominee and foundation donors do not appear to violate legal agreements Clinton and former president Bill Clinton signed before she joined the State Department in 2009. But the frequency of the overlaps shows the intermingling of access and donations, and fuels perceptions that giving the foundation money was a price of admission for face time with Clinton. Her calendars and emails released as recently as this week describe scores of contacts she and her top aides had with foundation donors. The AP's findings represent the first systematic effort to calculate the scope of the intersecting interests of Clinton foundation donors and people who met personally with Clinton or spoke to her by phone about their needs. The 154 did not include U.S. federal employees or foreign government representatives. Clinton met with representatives of at least 16 foreign governments that donated as much as $170 million to the Clinton charity, but they were not included in AP's calculations because such meetings would presumably have been part of her diplomatic duties. Last week, the Clinton Foundation moved to head off ethics concerns about future donations by announcing changes planned if Clinton is elected. On Monday, Bill Clinton said in a statement that if his wife were to win, he would step down from the foundation's board and stop all fundraising for it. The foundation would also accept donations only from U.S. citizens and what it described as independent philanthropies, while no longer taking gifts from foreign groups, U.S. companies or corporate charities. Clinton said the foundation would no longer hold annual meetings of its international aid program, the Clinton Global Initiative, and it would spin off its foreign-based programs to other charities. Those planned changes would not affect more than 6,000 donors who have already provided the Clinton charity with more than $2 billion in funding since its creation in 2000. "There's a lot of potential conflicts and a lot of potential problems," said Douglas White, an expert on nonprofits who previously directed Columbia University's graduate fundraising management program. "The point is, she can't just walk away from these 6,000 donors." Former senior White House ethics officials said a Clinton administration would have to take careful steps to ensure that past foundation donors would not have the same access as she allowed at the State Department. "If Secretary Clinton puts the right people in and she's tough about it and has the right procedures in place and sends a message consistent with a strong commitment to ethics, it can be done," said Norman L. Eisen, who was President Barack Obama's top ethics counsel and later worked for Clinton as ambassador to the Czech Republic. Eisen, now a governance studies fellow at the Brookings Institution, said that at a minimum, Clinton should retain the Obama administration's current ethics commitments and oversight, which include lobbying restrictions and other rules. Richard Painter, a former ethics adviser to President George W. Bush and currently a University of Minnesota law school professor, said Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton should remove themselves completely from foundation leadership roles, but he added that potential conflicts would shadow any policy decision affecting past donors. Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon did not respond to the AP's questions about Clinton transition plans regarding ethics, but said in a statement Tuesday the standard set by the Clinton Foundation's ethics restrictions was "unprecedented, even if it may never satisfy some critics." GOP Vice Presidential candidate Indiana Gov. Mike Pence said the AP analysis was evidence of "pay-to-play" politics at Clinton's State Department. He called for the foundation to be shut down and for an independent prosecutor to be appointed to investigate. Some of Clinton's most influential visitors donated millions to the Clinton Foundation and to her and her husband's political coffers. They are among scores of Clinton visitors and phone contacts in her official calendar turned over by the State Department to AP last year and in more-detailed planning schedules that so far have covered about half her four-year tenure. The AP sought Clinton's calendar and schedules three years ago, but delays led the AP to sue the State Department last year in federal court for those materials and other records. S. Daniel Abraham, whose name also was included in emails released by the State Department as part of another lawsuit, is a Clinton fundraising bundler who was listed in Clinton's planners for eight meetings with her at various times. A billionaire behind the Slim-Fast diet and founder of the Center for Middle East Peace, Abraham told the AP last year his talks with Clinton concerned Mideast issues. Big Clinton Foundation donors with no history of political giving to the Clintons also met or talked by phone with Hillary Clinton and top aides, AP's review showed. Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi economist who won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for pioneering low-interest "microcredit" for poor business owners, met with Clinton three times and talked with her by phone during a period when Bangladeshi government authorities investigated his oversight of a nonprofit bank and ultimately pressured him to resign from the bank's board. Throughout the process, he pleaded for help in messages routed to Clinton, and she ordered aides to find ways to assist him. American affiliates of his nonprofit Grameen Bank had been working with the Clinton Foundation's Clinton Global Initiative programs as early as 2005, pledging millions of dollars in microloans for the poor. Grameen America, the bank's nonprofit U.S. flagship, which Yunus chairs, has given between $100,000 and $250,000 to the foundation — a figure that bank spokeswoman Becky Asch said reflects the institution's annual fees to attend CGI meetings. Another Grameen arm chaired by Yunus, Grameen Research, has donated between $25,000 and $50,000. As a U.S. senator from New York, Clinton, as well as then-Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry and two other senators in 2007 sponsored a bill to award a congressional gold medal to Yunus. He got one but not until 2010, a year after Obama awarded him a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Yunus first met with Clinton in Washington in April 2009. That was followed six months later by an announcement by USAID, the State Department's foreign aid arm, that it was partnering with the Grameen Foundation, a nonprofit charity run by Yunus, in a $162 million commitment to extend its microfinance concept abroad. USAID also began providing loans and grants to the Grameen Foundation, totaling $2.2 million over Clinton's tenure. By September 2009, Yunus began complaining to Clinton's top aides about what he perceived as poor treatment by Bangladesh's government. His bank was accused of financial mismanagement of Norwegian government aid money — a charge that Norway later dismissed as baseless. But Yunus told Melanne Verveer, a long-time Clinton aide who was an ambassador-at-large for global women's issues, that Bangladesh officials refused to meet with him and asked the State Department for help in pressing his case. "Please see if the issues of Grameen Bank can be raised in a friendly way," he asked Verveer. Yunus sent "regards to H" and cited an upcoming Clinton Global Initiative event he planned to attend. Clinton ordered an aide: "Give to EAP rep," referring the problem to the agency's top east Asia expert. Yunus continued writing to Verveer as pressure mounted on his bank. In December 2010, responding to a news report that Bangladesh's prime minister was urging an investigation of Grameen Bank, Clinton told Verveer that she wanted to discuss the matter with her East Asia expert "ASAP." Clinton called Yunus in March 2011 after the Bangladesh government opened an inquiry into his oversight of Grameen Bank. Yunus had told Verveer by email that "the situation does not allow me to leave the country." By mid-May, the Bangladesh government had forced Yunus to step down from the bank's board. Yunus sent Clinton a copy of his resignation letter. In a separate note to Verveer, Clinton wrote: "Sad indeed." Clinton met with Yunus a second time in Washington in August 2011 and again in the Bangladesh capital of Dhaka in May 2012. Clinton's arrival in Bangladesh came after Bangladesh authorities moved to seize control of Grameen Bank's effort to find new leaders. Speaking to a town hall audience, Clinton warned the Bangladesh government that "we do not want to see any action taken that would in any way undermine or interfere in the operations of the Grameen Bank." Grameen America's Asch referred other questions about Yunus to his office, but he had not responded by Tuesday. Earlier this month, State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau acknowledged that agency officials are "regularly in touch with a range of outside individuals and organizations, including nonprofits, NGOs, think tanks and others." But Trudeau said the State Department was not aware of any actions that were influenced by the Clinton Foundation. In another case, Clinton was host at a September 2009 breakfast meeting at the New York Stock Exchange that listed Blackstone Group chairman Stephen Schwarzman as one of the attendees. Schwarzman's firm is a major Clinton Foundation donor, but he personally donates heavily to GOP candidates and causes. One day after the breakfast, according to Clinton emails, the State Department was working on a visa issue at Schwarzman's request. In December that same year, Schwarzman's wife, Christine, sat at Clinton's table during the Kennedy Center Honors. Clinton also introduced Schwarzman, then chairman of the Kennedy Center, before he spoke. Blackstone donated between $250,000 and $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation. Eight Blackstone executives also gave between $375,000 and $800,000 to the foundation. And Blackstone's charitable arm has pledged millions of dollars in commitments to three Clinton Global aid projects ranging from the U.S. to the Mideast. Blackstone officials did not make Schwarzman available for comment. Clinton also met in June 2011 with Nancy Mahon of the MAC AIDS, the charitable arm of MAC Cosmetics, which is owned by Estee Lauder. The meeting occurred before an announcement about a State Department partnership to raise money to finance AIDS education and prevention. The public-private partnership was formed to fight gender-based violence in South Africa, the State Department said at the time. The MAC AIDS fund donated between $5 million and $10 million to the Clinton Foundation. In 2008, Mahon and the MAC AIDS fund made a three-year unspecified commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative. That same year, the fund partnered with two other organizations to beef up a USAID program in Malawi and Ghana. And in 2011, the fund was one of eight organizations to pledge a total of $2 million over a three-year period to help girls in southern Africa. The fund has not made a commitment to CGI since 2011. Estee Lauder executive Fabrizio Freda also met with Clinton at the same Wall Street event attended by Schwarzman. Later that month, Freda was on a list of attendees for a meeting between Clinton and a U.S.-China trade group. Estee Lauder has given between $100,000 and $250,000 to the Clinton Foundation. The company made a commitment to CGI in 2013 with four other organizations to help survivors of sexual slavery in Cambodia. MAC AIDs officials did not make Mahon available to AP for comment. When Clinton appeared before the U.S. Senate in early 2009 for her confirmation hearing as secretary of state, then- Sen. Richard Lugar, a Republican from Indiana, questioned her at length about the foundation and potential conflicts of interest. His concerns were focused on foreign government donations, mostly to CGI. Lugar wanted more transparency than was ultimately agreed upon between the foundation and Obama's transition team. Now, Lugar hopes Hillary and Bill Clinton make a clean break from the foundation. "The Clintons, as they approach the presidency, if they are successful, will have to work with their attorneys to make certain that rules of the road are drawn up to give confidence to them and the American public that there will not be favoritism," Lugar said.
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#Assange : we have proof that the #Clinton camp is rigging the election,we will release it soon - interview 15 mn
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#Washington Has Been Obsessed With Punishing Secrecy Violations — Until #HillaryClinton - by #GlennGreenwald The Intercept - July 5 2016, 9:58 p.m. Perhaps Democrats might start demanding the same leniency and prosecutorial restraint for everyone who isn’t Hillary Clinton. Secrecy is a virtual religion in Washington. Those who violate its dogma have been punished in the harshest and most excessive manner — at least when they possess little political power or influence. As has been widely noted, the Obama administration has prosecuted more leakers under the 1917 Espionage Act than all prior administrations combined. Secrecy in D.C. is so revered that even the most banal documents are reflexively marked classified, making their disclosure or mishandling a felony. As former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden said in 2010, “Everything’s secret. I mean, I got an email saying, ‘Merry Christmas.’ It carried a top-secret NSA classification marking.” People who leak to media outlets for the selfless purpose of informing the public — Daniel Ellsberg, Tom Drake, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden — face decades in prison. Those who leak for more ignoble and self-serving ends — such as enabling hagiography (Leon Panetta, David Petraeus) or ingratiating oneself to one’s mistress (Petraeus) — face career destruction, though they are usually spared if they are sufficiently Important-in-D.C. For low-level, powerless Nobodies-in-D.C., even the mere mishandling of classified information — without any intent to leak but merely to, say, work from home — has resulted in criminal prosecution, career destruction, and the permanent loss of security clearance. This extreme, unforgiving, unreasonable, excessive posture toward classified information came to an instant halt in Washington today — just in time to save Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations. FBI Director James Comey, an Obama appointee who served in the Bush DOJ, held a press conference earlier this afternoon in which he condemned Clinton on the ground that she and her colleagues were “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information,” including top-secret material. Comey also detailed that her key public statements defending her conduct — i.e., that she never sent classified information over her personal email account and had turned over all “work-related” emails to the State Department — were utterly false; insisted “that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position … should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation”; and argued that she endangered national security because of the possibility “that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal email account.” Comey also noted that others who have done what Clinton did “are often subject to security or administrative sanctions” — such as demotion, career harm, or loss of security clearance. Despite all of these highly incriminating findings, Comey explained, the FBI is recommending to the Justice Department that Clinton not be charged with any crime. “Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information,” he said, “our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.” To justify this claim, Comey cited “the context of a person’s actions” and her “intent.” In other words, there is evidence that she did exactly what the criminal law prohibits, but it was more negligent and careless than malicious and deliberate. Looked at in isolation, I have no particular objection to this decision. In fact, I agree with it: I don’t think what Clinton did rose to the level of criminality, and if I were in the Justice Department, I would not want to see her prosecuted for it. I do think there was malignant intent: Using a personal email account and installing a home server always seemed to be designed, at least in part, to control her communications and hide them from FOIA and similar disclosure obligations. As the New York Times noted in May about a highly incriminating report from the State Department’s own Auditor General: “Emails disclosed in the report made it clear that she worried that personal emails could be publicly released under the Freedom of Information Act.” Moreover, Comey expressly found that — contrary to her repeated statements — “the FBI also discovered several thousand work-related emails that were not in the group of 30,000 that were returned by Secretary Clinton to State in 2014.” The Inspector General’s report similarly, in the words of the NYT, “undermined some of Mrs. Clinton’s previous statements defending her use of the server.” Still, charging someone with a felony requires more than lying or unethical motives; it should require a clear intent to break the law along with substantial intended harm, none of which is sufficiently present here. But this case does not exist in isolation. It exists in a political climate where secrecy is regarded as the highest end, where people have their lives destroyed for the most trivial — or, worse, the most well-intentioned — violations of secrecy laws, even in the absence of any evidence of harm or malignant intent. And these are injustices that Hillary Clinton and most of her stalwart Democratic followers have never once opposed — but rather enthusiastically cheered. In 2011, Army Private Chelsea Manning was charged with multiple felonies and faced decades in prison for leaking documents that she firmly believed the public had the right to see; unlike the documents Clinton recklessly mishandled, none of those was top secret. Nonetheless, this is what then-Secretary Clinton said in justifying her prosecution:
Comey’s announcement also takes place in a society that imprisons more of its citizens than any other in the world by far, for more trivial offenses than any Western nation — overwhelmingly when they are poor or otherwise marginalized due to their race or ethnicity. The sort of leniency and mercy and prosecutorial restraint Comey extended today to Hillary Clinton is simply unavailable for most Americans. What happened here is glaringly obvious. It is the tawdry byproduct of a criminal justice mentality in which — as I documented in my 2011 book With Liberty and Justice for Some — those who wield the greatest political and economic power are virtually exempt from the rule of law even when they commit the most egregious crimes, while only those who are powerless and marginalized are harshly punished, often for the most trivial transgressions. Had someone who was obscure and unimportant and powerless done what Hillary Clinton did — recklessly and secretly install a shoddy home server and work on top-secret information on it, then outright lie to the public about it when they were caught — they would have been criminally charged long ago, with little fuss or objection. But Hillary Clinton is the opposite of unimportant. She’s the multimillionaire former first lady, senator from New York, and secretary of state, supported by virtually the entire political, financial, and media establishment to be the next president, arguably the only person standing between Donald Trump and the White House. Like the Wall Street tycoons whose systemic fraud triggered the 2008 global financial crisis, and like the military and political officials who instituted a worldwide regime of torture, Hillary Clinton is too important to be treated the same as everyone else under the law. “Felony charges appear to be reserved for people of the lowest ranks. Everyone else who does it either doesn’t get charged or gets charged with a misdemeanor,” Virginia defense attorney Edward MacMahon told Politico last year about secrecy prosecutions. Washington defense attorney Abbe Lowell has similarly denounced the “profound double standard” governing how the Obama DOJ prosecutes secrecy cases: “Lower-level employees are prosecuted … because they are easy targets and lack the resources and political connections to fight back.” The fact that Clinton is who she is undoubtedly is what caused the FBI to accord her the massive benefit of the doubt when assessing her motives, when finding nothing that was — in the words of Comey — “clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice.” But a system that accords treatment based on who someone is, rather than what they’ve done, is the opposite of one conducted under the rule of law. It is, instead, one of systemic privilege. As Thomas Jefferson put it in a 1784 letter to George Washington, the ultimate foundation of any constitutional order is “the denial of every preeminence.” Hillary Clinton has long been the beneficiary of this systemic privilege in so many ways, and today, she received her biggest gift from it yet. The Obama-appointed FBI director gave a press conference showing that she recklessly handled top-secret information, engaged in conduct prohibited by law, and lied about it repeatedly to the public. But she won’t be prosecuted or imprisoned for any of that, so Democrats are celebrating. But if there is to be anything positive that can come from this lowly affair, perhaps Democrats might start demanding the same reasonable leniency and prosecutorial restraint for everyone else who isn’t Hillary Clinton.
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#WashingtonPost Attacks #Clinton 's Role in #Honduras Coup - 11 mn - The Real News Ajoutée le 14 mars 2016 Mark Weisbrot of CEPR says Hillary's "Hard Choices" include ousting democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya in Honduras and swiftly acknowledging the coup as the legitimate government; this is now haunting her Democratic Party leadership race against Bernie Sanders https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6g5LvFzJqI&feature=em-uploademail
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The #ClintonFoundation 's gender pay gap worried campaign - CNN - 10.21.2016 Hillary Clinton says men and women should make equal pay. But the Clinton Foundation's leadership team had an $81,000 gender pay gap, according to the most recent figures available.
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Facts : #US biggest tax dodgers are #Clinton 's biggest donors - #corruption #NeitherTrumpNorHill
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#Devastating : 'What planet is she on?': #Clinton adviser mocks #Hillary in latest #PodestaEmails
Published time: 19 Oct, 2016 12:31
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M of A - #WashingtonPost - Mocking #Conspiracy Theories While Creating Their Own - #WAPO #Clinton #Putin #Trump
The Washington Post makes fun of the spouting of conspiracy theories over Hillary Clinton's health. "Hehehe - just look at those crazies":
Body doubles, secret doctors: Clinton conspiracy theories blossom after pneumonia diagnosis
Before Sunday morning, the conspiracy theories collected under the hashtag #HillarysHealth were numerous.
...
For a few hours, Clinton's stagger toward the van that took her to her daughter's New York apartment was interpreted as proof that the worst conspiracy theories had been right — and just as importantly, that the media had covered them up.
The accusation of covering up such theories was something Washington Post editors could not stand. They immediately found one to give credit on their own:
The man who discovered CTE thinks Hillary Clinton may have been poisoned
Bennet Omalu, the forensic pathologist who has made the NFL so uncomfortable with his discovery of chronic traumatic encephalopathy in the brains of deceased players, suggests that Hillary Clinton’s campaign be checked for possible poisons after her collapse Sunday in New York.
The only question: Whodunit? Easy for the Washingto(..)
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#US pple R in revolt,rejecting the 2 dominant parties’ –Dr. #JillStein ,candidate US presidency- interview 12 mn
Green Party presidential nominee Dr. Jill Stein joins RT America’s Lindsay France in the FishTank for an in-depth discussion on Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, the pay-to-play atmosphere in Washington, and why Americans are fed up with the two major parties. Dr. Stein tells France that the “American people are being thrown under bus by political parties.”
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Une amie m'a rapporté hier que des pages FB féministes supportent la candidature de Clinton.
Bien, lisez cet article de Counterpunch (pas pro-Trump), un site qui porte bien son nom "Tell The Facts, Names The Names"
#NiHillaryNiTrump
#HillaryClinton: The Anti-Woman ‘Feminist’ #FakeFeminism #Clinton #NeitherTrumpNorHillary
by Eric Draitser - Counterpunch 22 August 2016
Although Hillary Clinton selected Tim Kaine as her Vice President in this campaign, her true running mate might very well be her vagina. Indeed, while Clinton’s support continues to be among the lowest for any Democratic nominee in recent memory, she has managed to position her gender as a focal point of her campaign, a move intended to capture the women’s vote among liberals and conservatives alike. And, considering her opponent is Donald Trump, a man seen by millions of women as a misogynistic loudmouth, she has done this quite successfully.
But beyond the political window-dressing and empty rhetoric, Clinton’s record on women and families should not only lose her the support of American women, it should qualify her as one of the most anti-woman candidates in history. For while modest progress has been made toward some semblance of gender equality, it is the actions of Clinton herself that have done more than any other single individual to harm women and families. Slick public relations aside, Hillary Clinton may very well be the most anti-woman candidate in generations.
Hillary’s Relentless Attack on Women and Families
“I believe that the rights of women and girls is the unfinished business of the 21st Century.” So said Hillary Clinton in a 2011 interview with Newsweek. And this quote, among many others, has been trumpeted by Clinton supporters as the revelation of the angel of feminism, the gospel according to Saint Hillary. But in probing a little more deeply, some disturbing questions emerge which seem to cast doubt on her commitment to the rights of women and girls, both in the 21st Century, as well as at the end of the 20th Century.
As First Lady, Hillary Clinton, along with her then President husband Bill Clinton, did more than anyone to make the lives of poor and working class women and girls all the more precarious. Perhaps no single action taken by the Clintons did more to harm women and families than the evisceration of welfare. As part of a deeply cynical, and unconscionably reckless, strategy to win over racist white voters, the Clintons set their sights on Black and Latino women and children, portraying them as parasitical exploiters of hard-working whites.
After having supported her husband’s goal of “ending welfare as we know it,” Clinton was instrumental in ginning up support for the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA). This bill, passed with the support of a right wing Republican Congress, effectively ended welfare programs designed to provide real assistance to women and children in desperate need. And, despite countless experts denouncing the law, including a close friend and former assistant secretary of social services at the Department of Health of Human Services, Hillary continued to defend it. Speaking of the destruction of welfare, Clinton told the Gettysburg Times in 2002, “Now that we’ve said these people are no longer deadbeats – they’re actually out there being productive – how do we keep them there?”
Such callous disregard for the reality of poverty and the difficult circumstances in which millions of women and children live demonstrates precisely what sort of “feminist” Hillary Clinton is: a neoliberal corporate exploiter without a penis. For Clinton, what matters is not the material reality of women’s lives, but rather how best to exploit them for political gain. As feminist scholars Alejandra Marchevsky and Jeanne Theoharis noted:
“[PRWORA’s] legacy still ripples through the country, where families remain as poor as—or, in many cases, poorer than—before, but with one crucial difference: Today, the “reformed” welfare system provides little safety net, and no hand-up. Instead, it traps poor mothers into exploitative, poverty-wage jobs and dangerous personal situations, deters them from college, and contributes to the growing trend of poor mothers who can neither find a job nor access public assistance. It is our failed social policy—not simply the recession—that is responsible for crisis-level poverty in the United States.”
Of course, such painful realities are taboo subjects for the devout adherents of the Gospel According to Hillary, where the sacred scriptures tell of a crusading archangel come to Earth to protect the downtrodden women from the oppression of patriarchy. Perhaps church dogma will need to be updated to account for the fact that Clinton’s welfare “reform” reduced the percentage of households eligible for assistance from 68 percent to 26 percent, while the value of a Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) check has dropped by 20 percent. Of course, the Church of Latter Day Corporate Feminists will ignore these, and myriad other, statistics which demonstrate that rather than a champion of poor women and families, Hillary has been one of their main antagonists.
But Hillary’s vicious assault on women and families goes far beyond just the gutting of welfare. Indeed, the development of the mass incarceration state and prison-industrial complex is intimately tied to the policies of Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Hillary was the leading edge of the campaign to pass her husband’s infamous 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (aka the “Crime Bill”) which disproportionately targeted people of color and led to the rise of the mass incarceration state or, as Michelle Alexander famously dubbed it, “The New Jim Crow.” Writing in The Nation in 2016, Alexander explained that the Clinton Crime Bill was responsible for:
* the largest increase in federal and state prison inmates of any president in American history
* the 100-to-1 sentencing disparity for crack versus powder cocaine, which produced staggering racial injustice in sentencing and boosted funding for drug-law enforcement
* the idea of a federal “three strikes” law
* a $30 billion crime bill that created dozens of new federal capital crimes
* the mandating of life sentences for some three-time offenders
* authorizing more than $16 billion for state prison grants and the expansion of police forces
* African Americans constituting 80 to 90 percent of all drug offenders sent to prison, even though they’re no more likely than whites to use or sell illegal drugs
* A 50% increase in African American incarceration by the year 2000
While Alexander was highlighting the racial disparities and continued oppression of Black America thanks to the Clintons, embedded in that very same analysis is the obvious fact that Clinton’s Crime Bill devastated Black and Latino families, locking up millions of fathers (and mothers), breaking apart families, displacing children, and doing irreparable harm harm to a generation of minority women and children. And, as if the social impacts weren’t enough, Clinton was quick to refer to the children of these families as “superpredators,” a remarkable two-for-one comment which demonstrated both Hillary’s racism and anti-minority family outlook.
Perhaps real women and children don’t fit into Hillary’s conception of “feminism”? Or, better still, perhaps the real question should be: feminism for whom? Clinton’s domestic track record demonstrates that it is affluent white women who truly are the focus of her brand of corporate neoliberal feminism.
For Clinton, the great triumph of feminist action is not the empowerment of working class and poor women and families, but rather the entry of elite white women into the ruling class. One might call it Feminism for the 1%.
No wonder Madeleine “500,000 dead Iraqi children was worth it” Albright remarked in February 2016 that there was “a special place in hell” for women who don’t support Hillary Clinton. Albright may very well be projecting here as, if there is a hell, her seat at the VIP table is undoubtedly already reserved. Maybe she’ll keep Hillary’s seat warm for her.
Imperial Feminism: Hillary’s Bloody Hands
Clinton hasn’t only built her “feminist” credentials on the oppression and suffering of women and families in the US; her foreign policy achievements have managed to kill, maim, and otherwise destroy the lives of millions of women and children around the world. Such is the record of the corporate imperialist Clinton.
During her husband’s presidency, Hillary was a vocal advocate for the barbaric sanctions regime, as well as the No-Fly Zone and other belligerent actions taken by her husband against the Iraqi Government of Saddam Hussein. In fact, many experts have noted that the Clinton Iraq policy essentially laid the groundwork for George W. Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. In particular, Hillary was a leading proponent of the sanctions which, according to the UN, killed roughly 500,000 children.
And, of course, there’s Hillary’s infamous support for Bush’s Iraq War when she was a Senator from New York. Clinton explained to the Council on Foreign Relations in December 2003, “I was one who supported giving President Bush the authority, if necessary, to use force against Saddam Hussein. I believe that that was the right vote….I stand by the vote.” Of course this was in the immediate aftermath of the invasion of Iraq and subsequent capture of Saddam Hussein, a time when one could still justify support for a war that, just a few years later, proved to be politically unpalatable, to say nothing of it being an egregious war crime, as we all knew from the beginning.
And Hillary was not perturbed in the slightest at the hundreds of thousands of women and children whose lives were irrevocably destroyed by the war and its aftermath, one which is still being reckoned with today.
Hillary and Bill – the power couple tag team of Washington – also led the charge to bomb Serbia in 1999. During the 78 days of “Operation Allied Force” more than 2,000 civilians were killed, including 88 children. Naturally, this was of little consequence to the great feminist heroine Hillary who, according to biographer Gail Sheehy, proudly proclaimed “I urged [Bill Clinton] to bomb [Serbia].” The barbarism and sheer viciousness of someone who gleefully takes credit for the deaths of scores of children and countless thousands of women should give anyone who believes in the Hillary the feminist mythos serious pause.
Who could forget Libya? In the war championed by Hillary Clinton, who is regarded by experts as being the loudest voice in favor of regime change against Gaddafi and the destruction of the country, tens of thousands of women were raped, lynched, and murdered by the glorious “rebels” (read terrorists) backed by Clinton and her imperial coterie. Perhaps the great feminist hero could speak to the children of Misrata, Sirte, and Bani Walid who have now grown up without their mothers and fathers, and explain to them just how “worth it” the war was. Maybe Clinton could look mothers in the eyes and tell them how the deaths of their children from war, disease, and terrorism is a small price to pay for the foreign policy objectives of Washington.
And let us not forget about Honduras, the country suffering under a right wing dictatorship helped into office by then Secretary Clinton. Hillary brazenly, and rather despicably, took credit for her handiwork in her autobiography Hard Choices where she explained that, “In the subsequent days [after the coup] I spoke with my counterparts around the hemisphere, including Secretary [Patricia] Espinosa in Mexico… We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of [elected President Manuel] Zelaya moot.”
Indeed, Clinton was instrumental in bringing the right wing coup government to power. And that government today carries out systematic oppression of women and indigenous communities throughout the country. In a high profile assassination, renowned indigenous activist and feminist Berta Cáceres was gunned down by assailants tied to the government installed by Clinton. In fact, Cáceres herself called out Hillary Clinton prior to her death. In a 2014 interview, Cáceres said:
“We’re coming out of a coup that we can’t put behind us. We can’t reverse it. It just kept going. And after, there was the issue of the elections. The same Hillary Clinton, in her book, ‘Hard Choices,’ practically said what was going to happen in Honduras. This demonstrates the meddling of North Americans in our country. The return of the president, Mel Zelaya, became a secondary issue. There were going to be elections in Honduras. And here she [Clinton] recognized that they didn’t permit Mel Zelaya’s return to the presidency.”
It would be impossible to catalog all of Hillary’s crimes against women and children in this short piece. One should remember the children of Haiti living in inhumane conditions thanks in no small part to the continued exploitation of their country by the likes of Bill, Hillary, and the Clinton Global Initiative. One should remember the children of Afghanistan living with what peace activist and frequent visitor to Afghanistan, Kathy Kelly, describes as permanent post-traumatic stress disorder. One should remember the women and children of Sudan who died after Bill Clinton deliberately bombed a pharmaceutical factory in that country, thereby depriving women and children of much needed medicines. And Syria. And Venezuela. And Pakistan. And Iran. And Russia. And Ukraine. The list goes on and on.
And let’s recall also Hillary’s support for the Obama Administration’s policy of child deportations. What a champion of the rights of children. Do you wonder if Hillary loses any sleep over the fates of thousands of children from Honduras, El Salvador and elsewhere in Central America, knowing that she is directly responsible for their suffering? And how about Hillary’s cozy relationship with Saudi Arabia, the world’s most oppressive country for women?
Far from being a feminist, Hillary Clinton is a serial exploiter, and serial killer, of women and children; her track record speaks for itself. The ongoing economic oppression and suffering of women and children in poverty can be directly traced to Hillary’s “pioneering work” as an advocate for the welfare reform now almost universally seen as a disaster for poor women and children. Clinton’s record on children in other countries is equally disturbing.
In short, Clinton is no feminist, at least not in the real sense. She is not interested in true empowerment of women, only in the empowerment of herself. And she cares not a whit how many women and children will be trampled along the way.
Corporate imperialism is not feminism, even when done by a woman. Hopefully more American women will realize that before it’s too late. Needless to say, Hillary’s betting that they won’t.
Eric Draitser is the founder of StopImperialism.org and host of CounterPunch Radio. He is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City. You can reach him at ericdraitser@gmail.com.
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un email d'Hillary révélé par Wikileaks ... écrit en 2012 à propos de la Syrie et .. d'israel
les vrais terroristes sont parmi nous
La presse dominante a-t'elle repris cet email ? Il ne me semble pas ..
#Clinton : Destroy #Syria for #israel - #wikileaks #HillaryGate #TheRealTerrorists #Obama #IS #terrorism
A newly-released Hilary Clinton email confirmed that the Obama administration has deliberately provoked the civil war in Syria as the “best way to help Israel.”
In an indication of her murderous and psychopathic nature, Clinton also wrote that it was the “right thing” to personally threaten Bashar Assad’s family with death.
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#Facts - #GlennGreenwald: #HillaryClinton Has Embraced Some of the Most Brutal Dictators in the World - 8mn
http://democracynow.org - With the Republican establishment attempting to stop real estate mogul Donald Trump from receiving the GOP nomination, a new anti-Trump ad produced by the Emergency Committee for Israel alleges that Trump supports dictators. But what about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s record on dictators? Earlier this week, Clinton addressed the annual AIPAC conference, seeking to cast herself as a stronger ally to Israel than Donald Trump. We examine her record on Israel and U.S. foreign relations at large with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald, co-founder of The Intercept.
