In #Aleppo civilians ‘shouldn’t have to leave,’ in #Mosul displacement ‘inevitable’ - #US State Dept
The US State Department appears to have double standards when it comes to humanitarian crises and civilian displacement due to conflicts. When it comes to Aleppo, the US State Department says civilians “shouldn’t have to leave, they shouldn’t be bombed by their own government and the Russian military.” But when it comes to Mosul, where a US-backed operation to retake the city from ISIS is under way, the State Department says, “Civilian displacement is inevitable.” RT correspondent Gayane Chichakyan explores the contradiction and Janice Atkinson, member of the European parliament, joins RT to discuss the issue.
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
Oliver Stone, Platoon, Snowden, Edward Snowden, Wikileaks, Julian Assange, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, UK, parliament, Chilcot, British, war, Guardian, Edward Snowden, Tony Blair, Iraq, , Theresa May, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Labour, Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, David Cameron, London, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Hillary Clinton, MI5,MI6, ISIS,
Les bombardements US sur Syrte, personne n'en parle ..
Ah oui, j'oubliais, eux ne tuent jamais de civils .... #doublestandards
#US air strikes pound #Libya 's Sirte to oust #IslamicState militants - Reuters 17.10.16 #NoCiviliansKilledHere ?
U.S. aircraft hit Islamic State targets with more 30 strikes over the last three days on the Libyan city of Sirte as pro-government forces push into its last militant-held districts, the U.S. military said on Monday.
Democratic nominee revealed her real views on Syria and Saudi Arabia only behind closed doors.
A batch of internal Clinton campaign emails published by Wikileaks in recent days reveals the extent to which campaign donors drive Hillary Clinton’s rhetoric and policy positions on Israel and the broader Middle East.
Last year, Hillary Clinton wrote a letter to billionaire media mogul Haim Saban on her campaign stationery vowing “to make countering BDS a priority” if she wins the presidency.
Saban has donated at least $7 million to getting Clinton elected president and openly confesses that his number one priority is influencing US policy in Israel’s favor.
According to the emails between Clinton’s senior campaign aides, the letter to Saban was deliberately leaked to friendly media to attract pro-Israel donors concerned about the rise of the BDS – boycott, divestment and sanctions – movement.
The way the campaign aides discuss the issue is completely devoid of emotion or ideology. It’s all about the donors.
Opposing BDS to please donors
In a 3 July 2015 email to campaign staffers, Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook wrote, “I was just thinking: has she made a clear statement on Israel yet? I get this question from donors all the time. Does she need to state her principles on Israel before Iran? Or do both at the same time?”
“That’s basically the goal of the BDS letter,” responded Clinton speechwriter Dan Schwerin.
“We could either get a donor to leak it or just give it to a reporter if we want to get it out there. I’m semi-surprised it’s not out yet,” replied deputy communications director Christina Reynolds.
Clinton’s voice is nowhere to be seen in the correspondence. “We have a two pager I’m getting clearance from her on. That is what we have to ship around,” Jake Sullivan, a senior foreign policy adviser to Clinton, wrote.
“Let’s def give it to someone. I see zero downside to a story. Then we can circulate around right away (hopefully) in advance of Iran,” reasoned Mook.
“If Haim’s going to give it to the Jewish media, I think that solves our problem. Once they write, we can make sure it gets picked up by some of our beat guys,” Christina Reynolds responded.
Three days later, Politicoreported on and published the letter.
The emails show Saban coordinating directly with the Clinton campaign, offering positive reinforcement for Clinton’s pro-Israel messaging and strategizing with Clinton aides against BDS.
Israel’s liaison
The emails show that Stuart Eizenstat, a former US ambassador to the EU under President Bill Clinton, acted as a liaison between the Israeli government and the Hillary Clinton campaign, counseling senior staffers on how to adjust their messaging to the liking of the Israeli leadership.
Eizenstat wrote lengthy and detailed emails to campaign aides summarizing his meetings with Israeli government officials and recommending talking points for Clinton to adopt.
The Clinton campaign frequently thanked Eizenstat for his counsel, regularly implemented his suggestions and often sought his approval on speeches related to Israel.
“I took some of your concepts but left out the specifics,” foreign policy adviser Sullivan wrote in a July 2015 email to Eizenstat.
Sullivan was seeking pointers for Clinton’s statement in response to the passage of the Iran nuclear deal.
A month earlier, Sullivan messaged Eizenstat for advice on BDS: “I was talking to HRC [Hillary Clinton] today about the idea of having her meet with some Jewish leaders later this week about BDS/delegitimization efforts. She and the leaders could go out and make a statement following the meeting.”
Sullivan sought Eizenstat’s opinion on who Clinton should include in such an initiative.
Netanyahu is ready for Hillary
In December 2015, Eizenstat reported on his “meeting with a senior [Israeli] official who is very close to the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu], and knows his thinking.”
“The prime minister always had a ‘surprising good relationship’ with Hillary; she is ‘easy to work with,’ and that she is more instinctively sympathetic to Israel than the White House,” Eizenstat wrote.
The official also told Eizenstat that “Israel [sic] Arabs are a ‘real problem.’ The government had to dismantle the northern branch of the Islamic Association because they were radicalizing the Israeli Arabs, who are 20 percent of the population.”
Eizenstat was referring to Israel’s ban on the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement, a political party with a large following among Palestinian citizens of Israel.
Eizenstat’s emails also reflect the Israeli leadership’s intense hostility toward President Barack Obama.
In a May 2015 email to the Clinton campaign, Eizenstat noted that in his meeting with the Israelis, “The level of vitriol against the president was striking, to such a degree that one participant urged that he was being unfairly demonized.”
In June 2015, Eizenstat wrote, “I was struck in my week in Israel, not only among Israeli officials, but among my friends across the political spectrum (most are former officials) and apolitical relatives, at the depth of antipathy and distrust of President Obama, as ‘weak,’ ‘pro-Muslim’ and ‘anti-Israel.’”
“Attack, attack, attack”
In another June 2015 email, Eizenstat provides details of a meeting with Netanyahu and his cabinet in which Netanyahu urges attacking BDS and recruiting Latinos, Evangelical Christians and Asian Americans to assist in the effort.
Summarizing Netanyahu’s views, Eizenstat wrote: “On BDS, Israel should move from the defense to the offense. It should be attacked on moral grounds. It is ‘unjust’ and ‘cruel.’ Israel must attack its attackers. The best defense is a good offense: ‘attack, attack, attack.’”
Smearing BDS
In an August 2015 email labeled “NOT FOR CIRCULATION,” Eizenstat passed along advice to Hillary Clinton from Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador in Washington.
A US-born right-winger who has been called “Bibi’s brain,” Dermer told Eizenstat that the Israeli government was plotting to smear Palestine solidarity activism on college campuses as terrorism.
“They will shortly expose the funding base for the main BDS group on campus, Students for Justice in Palestine, which tie it with terrorist funding,” Eizenstat wrote. “The key is to expose BDS as anti-Semitic and anti-Israel.”
No-fly zone would “kill a lot of Syrians”
During the Democratic Party primary race, Bernie Sanders repeatedly called on Clinton to release the transcripts of her paid speeches to Wall Street banks, but she refused.
One of the most damning aspects of the latest Wikileaks dump is the excerpts of Clinton’s paid speeches.
In a speech to Goldman Sachs in 2013, Clinton confessed that a no-fly zone in Syria would “kill a lot of Syrians.” This is because it would require bombing Syria’s air defenses, “many of which are located in populated areas,” according to Clinton.
While making this assessment in private, Clinton has continued to publicly advocate for a no-fly zone, ostensibly to protect Syrian civilians.
Saudi support for ISIS
Clinton told the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago at a luncheon in 2013 that Israel and Jordan were working in close partnership for the purpose of “shoring up King Abdullah.”
That same year she told congregants at a synagogue, “One of the developments of the Arab Spring is that you now have Israel and Saudi Arabia more closely aligned in their foreign policy” in the region.
Publicly, Clinton frequently casts Iran as the single greatest funder of terrorism in the world. But privately she has repeatedly acknowledged Saudi Arabia’s contribution to violent extremism.
At a Jewish United Fund dinner in 2013, Clinton said she preferred “a more robust, covert action” to arm Syrian rebels against the government of Bashar al-Assad.
But she added that this was complicated because, “the Saudis and others are shipping large amounts of weapons – and pretty indiscriminately – not at all targeted toward the people that we think would be the more moderate.”
She also described Saudi Arabia’s fierce opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood as “kind of ironic since the Saudis have exported more extreme ideology than any other place on earth over the course of the last 30 years.”
In one of the leaked emails Clinton accuses Saudi Arabia and Qatar of funding the Islamic State, sometimes referred to as ISIS or ISIL.
Citing “Western intelligence, US intelligence and sources in the region,” Clinton wrote, “We need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region.”
It’s all about the donors
The Clinton Foundation has accepted millions of dollars from Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
And while serving as secretary of state, Clinton greenlighted enormous weapons deals to those countries.
From Israel to Saudi Arabia, it is clear that Clinton’s donors are in charge. They exert more influence over her public positions and policy prescriptions than she does.
If Clinton were running against Senators Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio, these emails would be scandalous.
Instead, the leaks have been completely overshadowed by the even more sensational and lurid October surprise that befell Republican nominee Donald Trump.
Clinton is lucky her opponent is more disliked and disingenuous than she is.
How the #WarOnTerror has killed 1.3 million people (at least) #StateTerrorism #US
Ajoutée le 12 oct. 2016
The Physicians for Social Responsibility is an organization based in Washington DC. They actually won the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize. And they released a report entitled, “Body Count: Casualty Figures after 10 Years of the War on Terror.” The report takes on the huge task of trying to add up all the people who have lost their lives to our 15-year-old War on Terror, and the number they came up with is around 1.3 million people. They report we’ve killed about 1 million people in Iraq, 220,000 people in Afghanistan, and 80,000 people in Pakistan. They also say that these estimates are probably low, as it’s really hard for anyone to try to tally since we keep dropping bombs from unmanned drones. It’s nearly impossible to account for every life lost, so the 1.3 million is actually a conservative estimate. It doesn’t even take into account everything going on in Yemen, or Libya, for instance. The researchers say the real number could easily be in excess of 2 million. The Resident discusses. Follow The Resident at http://www.twitter.com/TheResident
What happens when the #US gov is asked the difference between #Russia in #Syria and #SaudiArabia in #Yemen - The Independent
A US government spokesperson has struggled to answer questions put to him on why the US condemns Russian bombing in Syria, and supports Saudi-led bombing in Yemen, both of which have killed thousands of civilians.
During a media briefing in Washington DC on Tuesday, State Department spokesperson John Kirby was asked repeatedly about whether Saudi coalition bombing of Houthi rebels in Sanaa - facilitated by US arms sales to the Gulf state - deliberately targets civilian infrastructure.
On Saturday, an air strike in the Yemeni capital killed 140 people at a funeral hall, in one of the worst single incidents of violence in the 18-month-old civil war between the exiled Yemeni government and Houthi rebels who are in contro (...)
#Syrie #BombardementduConvoiHumanitaire Tout le monde accuse tout le monde.Sans preuves.Quelqu'un ment. Et mon ptit doigt, au vu du passé, me dit que c'est Washington qui ment
#Putin : We know who destroyed aid convoy in Aleppo, #Syria
The attack on a UN humanitarian aid convoy near the Syrian city of Aleppo last month, which Washington has blamed on Russia, was actually carried out by one of the terrorist groups present in the area, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.
It was one of the terrorist groups. And we know that, say, the Americans know it too, but prefer to take a different position, to falsely accuse Russia. This is not helping,” Putin said at an economic forum in Moscow.
The aid convoy was attacked on the night of September 20. The International Committee of the Red Cross reported 20 civilians killed and 18 vehicles destroyed.
The Pentagon alleged that the convoy was destroyed from the air and that Russian warplanes were present in the area, concluding that it was a Russian strike that was responsible.
Russia denied the accusation and said a US drone was monitoring the convoy, so Washington should know the truth about the attack.
(...) (là.. il y a un passage sur la crise diplomatique entre la France et la Russie suite à l'annulation de sa visite à Paris par Poutine . Je l'ai censuré car, internationalement, tout le monde s'en tape de cette France qui, depuis Sarko et avec Hollande, le président le plus con du monde, est devenu un nain que personne ou presque n'écoute si ce n'est les éditocrates parisiens sur l'échiquier international)
The situation in Syria will be discussed on Saturday in Lausanne, Switzerland, where top diplomats from the US, Russia, Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are to gather for a meeting.
#ChrisHedges: It’s Our Bombs, Not #Trump ’s Comments, that Fuel Hatred Towards the #US - 15 mn - The Real News
Ajoutée le 10 oct. 2016
Veteran journalist Chris Hedge says though Clinton’s rhetoric on Muslims is more palatable, she has been an enthusiastic supporter of 'bombing our way to peace' in the Middle East Visit http://therealnews.com for more videos.
‘Only partially true’: #AP says #Trump wrong about #Assad fighting #ISIS, retracts in hours - #Syria #Media While providing fact check comments on the latest presidential debate, the Associated Press claimed Donald Trump’s assertion that Syrian President Bashar Assad was fighting Islamic State was not true. Their comment was retracted just hours later, however.
#Exclusive: New #Leak on #Clinton's Cozy #Press Relationship - The Intercept 09th Oct. 2016
Glenn Greenwald
Off-the-record Manhattan cocktail parties. Planting stories with “friendly journalists.” All of it laid bare.
Internal strategy documents and emails among Clinton staffers shed light on friendly and highly useful relationships between the campaign and various members of the U.S. media, as well as the campaign’s strategies for manipulating those relationships.
The emails were provided to The Intercept by the source identifying himself as Guccifer 2.0, who was reportedly responsible for prior significant hacks, including one that targeted the Democratic National Committee and resulted in the resignations of its top four officials. On Friday, Obama administration officials claimed that Russia’s “senior-most officials” were responsible for that hack and others, although they provided no evidence for that assertion.
As these internal documents demonstrate, a central component of the Clinton campaign strategy is ensuring that journalists they believe are favorable to Clinton are tasked to report the stories the campaign wants circulated.
At times, Clinton’s campaign staff not only internally drafted the stories they wanted published but even specified what should be quoted “on background” and what should be described as “on the record.”
One January 2015 strategy document — designed to plant stories on Clinton’s decision-making process about whether to run for president — singled out reporter Maggie Haberman, th(..)
How #US #Torture Left Legacy of Damaged Minds - The New York Times #HumanRights
Beatings, sleep deprivation, menacing and other brutal tactics have led to persistent mental health problems among detainees held in secret C.I.A. prisons and at Guantánamo.
After serving as key protector of South Africa's apartheid, U.S. playing the same role for Israel.
n 2010, Israel’s then-defense minister, Ehud Barak, explicitly warned that Israel would become a permanent “apartheid” state if it failed to reach a peace agreement with Palestinians that creates their own sovereign nation and vests them with full political rights. “As long as in this territory west of the Jordan River there is only one political entity called Israel, it is going to be either non-Jewish, or non-democratic,” Barak said. “If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state.”
Honest observers on both sides of the conflict have long acknowledged that the prospects for a two-state solution are virtually non-existent: another way of saying that Israel’s status as a permanent apartheid regime is inevitable. Indeed, U.S. intelligence agencies as early as 45 years ago explicitly warned that Israeli occupation would become permanent if it did not end quickly.
All relevant evidence makes clear this is what has happened. There has been no progress toward a two-state solution for many years. The composition of Israel’s Jewish popu(...)
October 17, 2016 "Information Clearing House" - "WSWS"- One month before the presidential election of 2008, the giant Wall Street bank Citigroup submitted to the Obama campaign a list of its preferred candidates for cabinet positions in an Obama administration. This list corresponds almost exactly to the eventual composition of Barack Obama’s cabinet.
The memorandum, revealed by WikiLeaks in a recent document release from the email account of John Podesta, who currently serves as Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair, was written by Michael Froman, who was then an executive with Citigroup and currently serves as US trade representative. The email is dated Oct. 6, 2008 and bears the subject line “Lists.” It went to Podesta a month before he was named chairman of President-Elect Obama’s transition team.
The email was sent at the height of the financial meltdown that erupted after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on September 15. Even as Citigroup and its Wall Street counterparts were dragging the US and world economy into its deepest crisis since the 1930s, they remained, as the email shows, the real power behind the façade of American democracy and its electoral process.
Froman’s list proved remarkably prescient. As it proposed, Robert Gates, a Bush holdover, became secretary of Defense; Eric Holder became attorney general; Janet Napolitano, secretary of Homeland Security; Rahm Emanuel, White House chief of staff; Susan Rice, United Nations ambassador; Arne Duncan, secretary of Education; Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services; Peter Orszag, head of the Office of Management and Budget; Eric Shinseki, secretary of Veterans Affairs; and Melody Barnes, chief of the Domestic Policy Council.
For the highly sensitive position of secretary of the Treasury, three possibilities were presented: Robert Rubin and Rubin’s close disciples Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner. Obama chose Geithner, then president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Geithner, along with Bush Treasury Secretary (and former Goldman Sachs CEO) Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, had played the leading role in organizing the Wall Street bailout.
Rubin had served as Treasury secretary in the Bill Clinton administration from 1995 until 1999, when he was succeeded by Summers. In that capacity, Rubin and Summers oversaw the dismantling of the Glass-Steagall Act (1933), which had imposed a legal wall separating commercial banking from investment banking. Immediately after leaving Treasury, Rubin became a top executive at Citigroup, remaining there until 2009.
A notable aspect of the Froman memo is its use of identity politics. Among the Citigroup executive’s lists of proposed hires to Podesta were a “Diversity List” including “African American, Latino and Asian American candidates, broken down by Cabinet/Deputy and Under/Assistant/Deputy Assistant level,” in Froman’s words, and “a similar document on women.” Froman also took diversity into account for his White House cabinet list, “probability-weighting the likelihood of appointing a diverse candidate for each position.” This list concluded with a table breaking down the 31 assignments by race and gender.
Citigroup’s recommendations came just three days after then-President George W. Bush signed into law the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which allocated $700 billion in taxpayer money to rescue the largest Wall Street banks. The single biggest beneficiary was Citigroup, which was given $45 billion in cash in the form of a government stock purchase, plus a $306 billion government guarantee to back up its worthless mortgage-related assets.
Then-presidential candidate Obama played a critical political role in shepherding the massively unpopular bank bailout through Congress. The September financial crash convinced decisive sections of the US corporate-financial elite that the Democratic candidate of “hope” and “change” would be better positioned to contain popular opposition to the bailout than his Republican rival, Senator John McCain of Arizona.
As president, Obama not only funneled trillions of dollars to the banks, he saw to it that not a single leading Wall Street executive faced prosecution for the orgy of speculation and swindling that led to the financial collapse and Great Recession, and he personally intervened to block legislation capping executive pay at bailed-out firms.
The same furtive and corrupt process is underway in relation to a Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump administration. Froman’s email is one of many thousands released by WikiLeaks from the account of Podesta. Those communications, such as the Froman email, which expose who really rules America, have been virtually ignored by the media. The pro-Democratic Party New Republic called attention to it in an article published Friday, but the story has received little if any further coverage.
The media has instead focused on salacious details of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s sexual activities, designed, in part, to divert attention from the substance of the Clinton campaign-related emails being released by WikiLeaks and other sources.
The New Republic drew attention to the Froman memo not because it opposes such machinations, but as a warning to the interests it represents that they must move now to influence the eventual composition of a Hillary Clinton administration.
“If the 2008 Podesta emails are any indication, the next four years of public policy are being hashed out right now, behind closed doors,” wrote New Republic author David Dayen. “And if liberals want to have an impact on that process, waiting until after the election will be too late.”
Encore du très lourd sur la profonde corruption de #HillaryClinton revélée par Wikileaks
Pendant ce temps, on pointe nos regards sur le sexisme de Trump tout en nous cachant ces révélations
#WIKILEAKS :Emails Show #HillaryClinton Selling Access 2 #HumanRights Abusing Govt of #Morocco #corruption #Maroc
By Andrew Stiles | 12:33 pm, October 11, 2016
Hillary Clinton agreed to attend a Clinton Foundation event in Morocco as a “condition” set by the country’s authoritarian government, according to a November 2014 email published by WikiLeaks.
In the email, top Clinton aide Huma Abedin discusses some of the former secretary of state’s “schedule issues” for 2015. One of the bullet points reads [emphasis added]:
– Morocco: No matter what happens, she will be in Morocco hosting CGI on May 5-7, 2015. Her presence was a condition for the Moroccans to proceed so there is no going back on this. Important that you know background.
The Clinton Global Initiative conference in Marrakesh, hosted by Moroccan King Mohammed VI, was a lavish affair funded by a $1 million contribution from OCP, a phosphate conglomerate owned by the Moroccan royal family.
Hillary Clinton announced the conference in September 2015, calling Morocco a “vital hub for economic and cultural exchange,” and thanking the Moroccan government “for welcoming us and for its hospitality.”
Ultimately, Hillary did back out of the commitment. By April 2015, shortly before formally launching her presidential campaign, scrutiny of the Clinton Foundation and its long list of shady foreign donors had increased dramatically. The political optics of attending the conference would have been terrible for a candidate who had just announced her candidacy.
Politicoreported at the time that Hillary was “unlikely” to attend the CGI event, although former President Bill Clinton did make an appearance at the ritzy gathering, where he cited “Morocco’s longstanding friendship to my family,” and personally thanked King Mohammed, who pledged as much as $500,000 to the construction toward the construction of the Clinton Library in Arkansas.
The CGI conference took place at a “lavish palm-tree-lined golf resort with a cocktail reception featuring Moroccan hors d’oeuvres and a saxophonist serenading about 50 donors, non-profit leaders and dignitaries including Saudi Prince Turki Al Faisal.”
The Washington Postreported that attendees in Marrakesh were “chauffeured across the city to an opulent 56-room palace that boasts a private collection of Arabian horses, overlooks the snow-capped Atlas Mountains and serves a fine-dining menu of ‘biolight’ cuisine.”
The Moroccan government is one of several foreign donors to the Clinton Foundation that have been widely denounced for abusing human rights. Amnesty International, in a report published several days after the CGI conference in 2015, blasted the Moroccan government for its abusive treatment of political prisoners.
According to the report, dissidents in Morocco are subjected to “beatings, stress positions, asphyxiation, simulated drowning, psychological and sexual violence,” as a means of securing confessions for alleged crimes against the state. One tactic, known as the “roast chicken,” involves “suspending detainees from an iron bar by their wrists and knees.”
Amnesty International Secretary General Salil Shetty denounced the Moroccan government’s human rights record in a statement. “Morocco’s leaders portray the image of a liberal, human-rights-friendly country,” said Shetty. “But as long as the threat of torture hangs over detention and dissent that image will just be a mirage.
Leaked #HillaryClinton Emails: Could #BernieSanders Have Won Primary If Leak Occurred Earlier? - DemocracyNow
On Friday, WikiLeaks began releasing thousands of John Podesta’s emails, including excerpts of Hillary Clinton’s paid remarks to Wall Street firms. The emails showed Clinton’s closed-door remarks were starkly at odds with many of her public positions. In one speech to a housing trade group in 2013, Clinton spoke of needing "both a public and a private position" when crafting laws. In other speeches, Clinton largely absolved Wall Street firms for the crash of 2008 and said financial reform "really has to come from the industry itself." The leaked emails also show Clinton openly boasted about her support of fracking while secretary of state. In a speech to Deutsche Bank in 2013, she said, "I’ve promoted fracking in other places around the world." We speak to Lee Fang of The Intercept, co-author of the recent piece, "Memo Shows What Major Donors Like Goldman Sachs Want from Democratic Party."
‘It’s different’: #US justifies #Saudi ‘self-defense’ in #Yemen , slams #Russia ’s actions in #Syria
The US says Saudi Arabia’s bombing of Yemen was an act of “self-defense” against Iranian missiles on its border. While there are similarities with the Syrian conflict, Washington sees “differences” between the deaths of over 150 civilians, blamed on Riyadh, and the situation in Aleppo.
“It is different,” the State Department’s John Kirby has told AP’s Matt Lee, when asked whether Capitol Hill sees a difference between the recent attack in Yemen and “what you accuse the Russians and the Syrians and the Iranians of doing in Syria, particularly Aleppo?”
The question specifically referred to an airstrike that targeted a funeral service in the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, killing more than 150 civilians and injuring over 525.
Located on opposite sides of Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Syria bear few similarities, but have one thing in common: a civil conflict between their governments and rebels, which later evolved into larger-scale wars, with the intervention of foreign forces. However, the rules of the game appear to be different for each case.
For the State Department, the Saudi pledge to investigate the bombing seems to offer some reduction in the significance of its actions.
“The Saudis publicly said that they were going to investigate this as – for the potential of it being, in fact, wrongly implemented and wrongly executed,” Kirby said. That is something, he added, he hasn’t seen the Syrian army or the Russian military do “not once.”
When asked about Russia’s recent demand for an investigation into an attack on a humanitarian convoy in Syria, Kirby said “it’s not exactly been a clarion call.”
Addressing the attack in Sana’a, the UN called the bombing “outrageous” and pointed out constant strikes, specifically at places of mass congregation, which lacked proper recourse.
“Since the beginning of this conflict in Yemen, weddings, marketplaces, hospitals, schools – and now mourners at a funeral – have been hit, resulting in massive civilian casualties and zero accountability for those responsible,” the UN said in a statement Monday.
Yet, when it comes to Saudi Arabia and its intervention in Yemen, the State Department said it is important to remember that Riyadh has a “pressing requirement for self-defense” because of threats it faces from Iranian missiles launched by Houthi rebels near the border.
However, there is no similar judgment regarding Syria, where rebel groups along with Al-Qaeda-linked terrorists presumably hold people at gunpoint in Aleppo.
Kirby accused Moscow and the Assad forces of “a concerted” and “very deliberate” effort to take “to subdue” the city by force.
As RT learned from locals still living in western Aleppo, it was not Russian forces that terrified them.
A woman said that everyone trying to get water from a well was also shot at while children described shells destroying their house.
RT has asked the State Department to comment on whether the people were effectively being “held” in Aleppo.
“I can’t confirm that report. You know I don’t get into battlefield reports; I’m not going to do that,” Kirby. “And your question about being held hostage, there should be – and I’ve seen reports that they’re allowed to leave,” he added, blaming the Syrian government and the Russian military.
The Department’s spokesman also declined to speak about Al-Qaeda-linked terrorists, who remain in the area along with anti-Assad rebels. Moscow has unsuccessfully been asking the US to dissociate terrorists from the so-called moderate opposition.
Kirby says it’s unlikely they would want to leave Aleppo, hinting that the responsibility also lay with Russia.
“They’re not likely to want to leave while they’re continuing to be bombed,” he said.
When specifically asked whether it was America’s strategy to let Al-Qaeda run the area, Kirby declined to answer.
Washington has been supplying rebels with arms, some of which it has admitted ended up in the hands on terrorists.
In September, a US military spokesman said that rebels surrendered six pick-up trucks and about one-quarter of their ammunition to Al-Qaeda linked Al-Nusra Front, now known as Jabhat Fatah al Sham, in exchange for safe passage.
When it comes to Yemen, the US also played, though indirectly, its part in the conflict aiding Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners with weapons, often used in attacks targeting civilians. Following the airstrike, the White House said it would reassess its help to Saudi Arabia.
Despite massive casualties and some opposition among lawmakers, US-Saudi arms sales have been thriving with the Senate just recently blocking a bipartisan bill that would stop the deal with Riyadh.
un scoop de ABC News et une casserole de plus pour Hillary
By Matthew Mosk
Brian Ross
BRIAN EPSTEIN
CHO PARK
CAP HAITIEN, Haiti — Oct 11, 2016, 1:42 PM ET
In #Haiti , a Factory Where #BigMoney, #StateDepartment & the #Clinton s Meet - ABCNews #hillary #humanitarian
ill and Hillary Clinton have hailed the factory churning out Old Navy sweatshirts in an industrial park here as a shining achievement in their efforts to rebuild this island nation after a destructive earthquake in 2010.
But the garment factory has underdelivered on projected jobs. Haitian workers have accused managers of bullying and sexual harassment. And an ABC News investigation has found that after opening its factory in the Haitian industrial park — built with $400 million of global aid — the Korean firm became a Clinton Foundation donor and its owner invested in a startup company owned by Hillary Clinton’s former chief of staff.
“This was ‘building back better,’ in the words of Bill Clinton,” said Jake Johnston, an analyst with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a nonpartisan group that has studied the earthquake reconstruction. “Haiti was going to stand on its own two feet. Certainly, by that standard, it’s been a complete failure … Six years later, it’s pretty clear that hasn’t happened.”(...)
L’avantage, avec Hillary Clinton, c’est qu’elle annonce clairement la couleur. A grand renfort de rhétorique chauvine, la candidate démocrate galvanise les énergies du complexe militaro-industriel, du lobby sioniste et de la finance mondialisée. Elle est fière comme un Artaban de ses exploits guerriers en Libye. Elle promet de liquider sans délai Bachar Al-Assad. Elle couvre d’injures le président de la Russie et l’accuse de comploter contre son élection. D’une arrogance à toute épreuve, Hillary version 2016 incarne cette fraction de l’oligarchie yankee qui est prête à tout pour étendre sa domination. Mais pour bien comprendre cette séquence politique que j’appellerai le « moment Hillary », il faut la resituer dans un continuum historique.
Clinton, Bush Jr, Obama : depuis 1992, les trois présidents qui se sont succédé à la Maison Blanche n’ont pas ménagé leur peine pour servir une oligarchie qui se gave des prodigieux dividendes de la merveilleuse mondialisation libérale. Le plus décrié des trois, George W. Bush, n’a pas eu besoin, pourtant, d’inféoder la politique de son pays aux majors pétrolières et aux magnats de l’armement : elle était déjà sous leur coupe depuis longtemps ! Prototype du guerrier pacifiste, redoutable expert en communication, son prédécesseur Bill Clinton a largement contribué à cette inféodation, et il a légué un héritage politique dont on a parfois tendance à oublier l’importance.
Cet héritage, il faut le rappeler, est inséparable des circonstances exceptionnelles qui l’ont vu naître. L’élection de Bill Clinton eut lieu au lendemain d’un événement majeur, l’effondrement de l’URSS. Cette disparition de la superpuissance rivale ouvrit la voie à l’instauration d’un monde unipolaire. Poussant les feux de la globalisation économique, servant docilement les intérêts du capital financier, cet apôtre décontracté du mondialisme conforta la domination sans partage de Washington. Bill Clinton n’a pas inventé l’impérialisme, mais il l’a étendu à la planète. De quelle manière ? En réalisant trois avancées hégémoniques auxquelles Hillary compte bien s’arc-bouter pour repousser encore plus loin les limites du leadership US.
Lourde de conséquences, la première avancée hégémonique fut la transformation de l’OTAN en machine de guerre agressive. Bras séculier d’une alliance défensive destinée à parer à la « menace soviétique », cet appareil guerrier survécut à son ennemi potentiel. Au lieu de le dissoudre, les dirigeants US en firent une machine à émasculer les vieilles nations occidentales et l’instrument d’une offensive permanente contre Moscou. Provocation sans précédent, cette alliance belliqueuse élargie aux pays de l’Est européen a atteint les frontières occidentales de la Russie.
La deuxième avancée hégémonique de l’ère Clinton est de nature idéologique. Pour justifier l’intervention militaire contre un Etat souverain, on invoquerait désormais le prétexte des droits de l’homme. Cette doctrine fut expérimentée dans les Balkans, où la propagande humanitaire servit de paravent à l’ingérence dans les affaires intérieures de la Serbie, ce petit Etat au nationalisme ombrageux et jaloux de son intégrité territoriale. On inventa alors au Kosovo un génocide qui n’eut jamais lieu, on bombarda les infrastructures serbes, puis on confia le service après-vente de ce désastre à Bernard Kouchner, dont le don pour le maniement de la serpillière est de notoriété mondiale.
Cette opération militaire eut pour résultat de créer un Etat voyou, livré clé en main à une mafia particulièrement glauque dont le ralliement à l’Occident lui permit d’accroître les marges bénéficiaires de ses trafics en tout genre. Pour la première fois, un Etat-croupion fut porté sur les fonts baptismaux par une intervention militaire de l’OTAN en l’absence de mandat de l’ONU et en violation flagrante de la loi internationale. On croyait naïvement que l’intangibilité des frontières était un principe de droit international. C’est fini. La politique des droits de l’homme lui a tordu le cou.
Troisième avancée hégémonique, enfin : le génie inventif de la présidence Clinton porta sur la façon de faire la guerre. Avec les bombardements frénétiques infligés à la Somalie, à l’Irak et à la Serbie, le Pentagone expérimenta sa « révolution dans les affaires militaires ». Au lieu d’expédier sur place des troupes risquant de se faire hacher menu, Washington frappa ses ennemis, du haut du ciel, en déchaînant attaques aériennes et missiles de croisière. D’une parfaite asymétrie, ces frappes chirurgicales cumulaient les avantages de l’ubiquité, de la précision et de l’absence de pertes dans le camp du bien.
Embrigadement des alliés dans une OTAN sans frontières, droit-de-l’hommisme en casque lourd et déchaînement du feu céleste contre les récalcitrants : ces trois sauts qualitatifs ont fourni un modèle inoxydable de politique étrangère. Même les détracteurs républicains de Bill Clinton ont retenu la leçon. Ses successeurs George W. Bush et Barack Obama n’y ont pas dérogé. Le premier a profité du 11 septembre pour lâcher les faucons du Pentagone sur le Moyen-Orient, mais cet interventionnisme a fait l’effet d’un éléphant dans un magasin de porcelaine. Devant ce fiasco, le peuple américain élut en 2008 un démocrate plutôt avenant qui avait pour carte de visite son opposition à cette aventure guerrière. Hélas l’illusion fut de courte durée, et la politique néo-conservatrice continua de plus belle.
Afin de limiter l’envoi de troupes sur le champ de bataille, Barack Obama a préféré le « leading from behind » à l’intervention directe. Mais il a aussi intensifié la guerre des drones et maintenu le bagne de Guantanamo. Jouant avec le feu, il a pactisé avec Al-Qaida, fait détruire la Libye par ses larbins européens et vainement tenté d’anéantir la Syrie, où il est tombé sur un os nommé Poutine. C’est pourquoi il a installé en Europe un bouclier anti-missile qui menace Moscou, favorisé un coup d’Etat à Kiev et imposé à la Russie des sanctions que rien ne justifie.
La campagne au lance-flammes d’Hillary Clinton montre que la fraction belliciste de l’oligarchie est décidée à poursuivre cette politique agressive. Le secrétaire à la Défense, Ashton Carter, a récemment déclaré que les Etats-Unis se réservaient le droit d’utiliser l’arme nucléaire en première frappe. Sans état d’âme, les Docteur Folamour du néoconservatisme évoquent une future guerre avec la Russie ou la Chine. Une chose est sûre. Cette stratégie de la tension l’emportera si la candidate démocrate gagne l’élection du 8 novembre. Et le « moment Hillary » mettra la planète au bord du gouffre.
Bruno Guigue, ancien élève de l’École Normale Supérieure et de l’ENA, Haut fonctionnaire d’Etat français, essayiste et politologue, professeur de philosophie dans l’enseignement secondaire, chargé de cours en relations internationales à l’Université de La Réunion. Il est l’auteur de cinq ouvrages, dont Aux origines du conflit israélo-arabe, L’invisible remords de l’Occident, L’Harmattan, 2002, et de centaines d’articles.
#Saudi to investigate attack on #Yemen funeral denounced as 'heinous' by #UN - #WarCrime
The Saudi-led coalition fighting rebels in Yemen said Sunday it will investigate an air raid that killed more than 140 people, after Washington announced it was reviewing support for the alliance.
Excerpts of #HillaryClinton ’s Paid Speeches to #GoldmanSachs Finally Leaked #finance #corruption
Oct. 8 2016, 12:31 a.m. - The Intercept
Excerpts of Hillary Clinton’s remarks during paid speeches to Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, and other groups were leaked online Friday afternoon by WikiLeaks. Clinton, who was paid upwards of $225,000 per speech, earned more than $22 million on the paid speaking circuit after resigning as secretary of state.
The excerpts are revealed in an email from Tony Carrk, the research director of the Clinton campaign, to John Podesta, the campaign chairman, and other top campaign officials. Carrk, who did not respond to a request for comment, highlighted in the memo the most politically damaging quotes from each paid speech, under headers including “CLINTON ADMITS SHE IS OUT OF TOUCH,” “CLINTON SAY (...)
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