Chavistas Take 17 of 23 States in Venezuelan Regional Elections as Opposition Cries Fraud
By Lucas Koerner – Venezuelanalysis – October 16, 2017
Caracas – President Nicolás Maduro’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) won 17 of 23 states in Sunday’s gubernatorial elections, the National Electoral Council (CNE) has confirmed.
According to CNE President Tibisay Lucena, 61.14 percent of Venezuela’s eighteen-million-strong electorate came out to vote, marking a record participation in the country’s regional elections, second only to the 65.45 percent turnout in 2008.
The result defied forecasts of high abstention fueled by the current economic crisis as well as polls showing dissatisfaction with the leadership of both the government and political opposition.
With 95 percent of all votes counted, the governing PSUV won in the states of Amazonas, Apure, Aragua, Barinas, Carabobo, Cojedes, Falcon, Guarico, Lara, Miranda, Monagas, Sucre, Trujillo, Yaracuy, Delta Amacuro, and Vargas.
For its part, the opposition Democratic Action party triumphed in Anzoátegui, Merida, Tachira, and Nueva Esparta, while the First Justice party took the strategic northwestern border state of Zulia.
The CNE has yet to release final results for the mineral rich Amazonian state of Bolivar in the country’s southeast border.
The PSUV won 54 percent of the total vote, marking a significant recovery since the ruling party’s landslide defeat in the 2015 parliamentary elections when it garnered only 40.8 percent of the vote. The pro-government upswing follows on the heels of July 30 National Constituent Assembly (ANC) elections, which saw over eight million people turn out to vote amid deadly opposition protests and escalating US pressure.
The CNE indicated that the right-wing opposition coalition, the Democratic Unity Roundtable, won 45 percent of votes, amounting to a loss of 2.2 million votes relative to 2015.
Speaking late Sunday evening, President Maduro welcomed the result, vowing to work with the newly elected opposition governors.
“I extend my hand to the opposition governors to work with them for the peace and calm of the country,” he declared.
The head of state likewise called on the CNE to carry out a “100 percent audit” of all paper ballots from Sunday’s vote.
Under Venezuela’s electoral system, every electronic vote is backed up by a paper ballot, 50 percent of which are by law subject to recount in any given electoral cycle.
Despite scoring important victories in several key states, the MUD responded to the CNE announcement by refusing to recognize the results, alleging “fraud”.
In a press conference early Monday morning, MUD campaign head Gerardo Blyde rejected the outcome as “not reliable”.
Blyde cited the CNE’s controversial decision announced several weeks ago to relocate 334 voting centers – predominantly located in opposition areas and targeted by anti-government violence during the July 30 ANC vote– which he claimed impacted 700,000 people.
The Baruta mayor called on the CNE to “audit the whole process”, echoing President Maduro’s remarks several hours earlier.
Blyde urged opposition candidates to mobilize their supporters in the streets in the coming days to put pressure on the nation’s electoral authority.
Hillary Clinton Calls Alleged Russian Interference in Election ‘Cyber 9/11’
Sputnik – 16.10.2017
Former US Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has referred to the alleged interference of Russian actors into the 2016 election that she lost to Donald Trump as a “cyber 9/11.”
In an interview with BuzzFeed News (whose most significant contribution to Russia Gate was publishing a dossier filled with scandalous and uncorroborated claims of Trump watching Russian sex workers pee on beds,) Hillary compared the alleged hacking to a savage terrorist attack that killed thousands of civilians.
“We had really well-respected security, intelligence veterans saying this was a cyber 9/11, in the sense it was a direct attack on our institutions,” said Clinton. “That may sound dramatic, but we know that they probed and tried to intrude into election systems — not just the social media propaganda part of their campaign.”
She didn’t explain how this interference, if it’s even real, was somehow comparable to the fiery and tragic deaths of thousands of innocent people.
The “election systems” comment is a seeming reference to the FBI warning 21 states that “bad actors” may be targeting their election systems prior to the election. Several states performed independent investigations and found no evidence of tampering with their voting systems. Four states reported that someone stole the information of some of their voters — but did not change or manipulate any data.
In other words, while there are unanswered questions about the election systems, there is no proof besides the FBI’s claim that Russian hackers tried to rig the US election in Trump’s favor by meddling with election systems.
Clinton added that the Russians are “not done,” and the “ongoing threat” of Russian interference is something she would have gotten “to the bottom of” if she had been elected president.
“[Russian President Vladimir Putin] believes that [undermining NATO and the EU] will then give Russia a real chance to be dominant, certainly in Europe and certainly along its borders,” she added. “And that the United States, which he views as his primary adversary, will be weakened.”
Clinton went on to say that Putin sought to weaken the US by dividing the American people from within. “He got some of what he was looking for. He hasn’t gotten everything. But keep an eye on him, because he’s not done.”
Hillary is one to talk about dividing the American people. Since her loss in 2016, she has blamed her loss on sexist men and self-hating women, on more popular Democrats like Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders, on former FBI Director James Comey, on the people who didn’t vote for her being stupid or emotional or bigoted or paranoid, on the Republican Party’s voter suppression and the Democratic Party’s incompetence, on the mainstream media (which gave Clinton favorable coverage) and on campaign finance laws (when Clinton raised around twice as much money as Trump and still managed to lose.) And that’s only a partial list.
DEA, Congress complicit in US opioid epidemic – whistleblowers
RT | October 16, 2017
The US Drug Enforcement Administration ‘shut off’ investigations into large distributors of addictive opioid pills, while a new law made it nearly impossible to prosecute them, the agency’s former employees said.
During the Obama administration, the drug industry used their money and influence to pressure top lawyers at the DEA to take a softer approach to investigating large distributors of opioid pills, even when there was ample evidence of suspicious dealings, Joe Rannazzisi, former head of the DEA’s Office of Diversion Control, told CBS’ 60 Minutes program.
Rannazzisi accused America’s largest painkiller distributors, including Cardinal Health, McKesson, and AmerisourceBergen, of “knowingly” turning a blind eye to the addictive pills being diverted to illicit use.
Former attorney at the DEA Jonathan Novak told CBS that in 2013 he also noticed a sea change in the way prosecutions of big distributors were handled, as his supervisors turned down cases they would have once easily approved. The DEA operates under the Department of Justice.
“These were not cases where it was black – where it was grey… These were cases where the evidence was crystal clear that there was wrongdoing going on,” Novak said.
Jim Geldhof, another former DEA investigator, told the program about a West Virginia case he was looking into where 11 million pills wound up in one of its counties with a population of just 25,000. He said he suddenly ran into roadblocks from one DEA supervisor.
“Every time I talked to this guy he wants something else. And I get it for him and that’s still not good enough,” Geldhof said. “And this goes on and on and on. When these roadblocks keep get thrown up in your face, at that point you know they just don’t want the case.”
“There was a lotta pills, a lotta people dying, and and we had tools in our toolbox to try to use and stem that flow. But it seemed down in headquarters that that toolbox was shut off,” said another former DEA official, Frank Younker.
The ex-employees said one of the reasons for the roadblocks was the “revolving door” between the DEA and the drug industry, as a number of the administration’s top lawyers landed lobbying jobs for the pharmaceutical companies and drug distributors upon leaving the government.
One such former DEA attorney wrote legislation which “made it all but impossible” to prosecute unscrupulous distributors, according to DEA chief administrative law judge, John J. Mulrooney.
The bill, called Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act, was signed into law by president Obama last year, after it was passed by both chambers of Congress. Critics say it effectively stripped the DEA of its authority to investigate suspicious transactions as the government is now required to meet a higher standard before taking enforcement actions.
After Rannazzisi accused the bill’s co-sponsors Tom Marino (R-Pennsylvania) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) of protecting distributors under his investigation, the lawmakers wrote the inspector general for the Justice Department, demanding that Rannazzisi be investigated for trying to “intimidate the United States Congress.”
Soon after, Rannazzisi was stripped of his responsibilities. He told CBS he went from supervising 600 people to supervising none – so he resigned.
Seven months after the bill became law, Marino’s chief of staff Bill Tighe became a lobbyist for the National Association of Chain Drug Stores.
Last month, President Donald Trump nominated Marino to lead the Office of National Drug Control Policy. In the wake of the 60 Minute investigation, some congressional Democrats called on the president to withdraw his nomination
Acting DEA chief Chuck Rosenberg, who led the agency under President Barack Obama, resigned at the end of September, reportedly over disagreements with Trump’s policies.
Prescription painkillers have stoked the epidemic of opioid overdoses and addictions across the US.
In August, Trump declared the opioid epidemic a national emergency after his Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis reported that the US faces the death toll equal to “September 11th every three weeks” as the epidemic claims the lives of up to 142 Americans every day.
“60,000 Americans lost their lives to drug overdoses” in 2016, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said later that month.
“That will be the highest drug death toll and the fastest increase in that death toll in American history,” Session stated, adding that “this is not a sustainable trend nor an acceptable America.”
“80 percent of heroin addictions in America started with prescription drug addiction,” Sessions added, saying that the abuse of prescription drugs needs to be stopped.
Tossing bribery charges against Sen. Menendez to ‘decriminalize corruption’
Press TV – October 16, 2017
Prosecutors warn that tossing bribery charges against US Senator Robert Menendez – as being considered by a federal judge—would “decriminalize corruption” and “jettison the vast majority of bribery prosecutions.”
US District Judge William Walls suggested last week that the Justice Department’s bribery charges against Menendez may not move forward based on his reading of a 2016 Supreme Court opinion overturning the conviction of former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell.
McDonnell had been convicted of corruption charges for taking gifts from a businessman in exchange for arranging a meeting between him and state officials.
In that ruling, the top court invalidated the “stream of benefits” theory of bribery that prosecutors have used to make legal cases against Menendez and other public officials.
“I know the prosecution had a heyday before McDonnell, and now they have a doomsday after McDonnell,” Walls said.
Federal prosecutors allege that Menendez accepted bribes from his co-defendant Salomon Melgen, a Florida ophthalmologist and longtime friend, in anticipation for the senator’s help “as opportunities arose” in the future.
Melgen has already been convicted in Florida for overbilling the Medicare program by millions of dollars, and faces a potentially lengthy prison sentence.
Prosecutors allege that Menendez intervened with federal agencies on Melgen’s behalf to resolve the billing dispute, to assist a $500 million port security contract, and to obtain US visas for Melgen’s girlfriends.
Menendez and Melgan have both denied the charges, with their attorneys arguing that what prosecutors call bribes were gifts exchanged between friends.
The high-profile case resumes Monday.
Both the Justice Department of defense attorneys filed motions during the weekend to bolster their arguments.
Prosecutors wrote that to dismiss charges against Menendez “would decriminalize the most egregious forms of corruption, incentivizing greedy businessmen to put politicians on retainer and immunizing lawmakers who solicit bribes in exchange for a promise to perform official acts.”
“The Supreme Court did not, and this Court should not, render a decision that has the unsettling effect of legalizing all such conduct.”
In total, the New Jersey Democrat faces six counts of bribery, three counts of honest services fraud, one count of conspiracy, one count of interstate travel to carry out bribery, and one count of making false statements on his congressional financial disclosures.
Neocon Max Boot: Legal and illegal aliens need to enlist in the US army and die for Israel
By Jonas E. Alexis | Veterans Today | October 16, 2107
In 1973 Irving Kristol, the godfather of the Neoconservative movement, made a stunning statement which is still relevant to understanding the Israeli influence in US foreign policy. Kristol said:
“Senator McGovern is very sincere when he says that he will try to cut the military budget by 30%. And this is to drive a knife in the heart of Israel… Jews don’t like big military budgets. But it is now an interest of the Jews to have a large and powerful military establishment in the United States…
“American Jews who care about the survival of the state of Israel have to say, no, we don’t want to cut the military budget, it is important to keep that military budget big, so that we can defend Israel.”
Read the statement again very carefully. A big military budget, said Kristol, is only good for Israel, not America or much of the Western World. In other words, precious American soldiers who go to the Middle East to fight so-called terrorism are just working for Israel, not for America.
So, whenever the Neocons use words such as “democracy” or “freedom,” they are essentially conning decent Americans to support Israel’s perpetual wars. John Tirman, Principal Research Scientist and Executive Director of the Center for International Studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is saying similar things in his book The Death of Others.[1]
In fact, warmongers like Henry Kissinger do not consider American soldiers as decent human beings. Kissinger said very explicitly that military men are “dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.”[2]
People like Kissinger have been killing those “dumb, stupid animals” like chickens in the Middle East for decade. Keep in mind that at least 4,486 American soldiers have already lost their precious lives in Iraq.[3] At least 6,845 Americans died and 900,000 were wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.[4] In the space of eight years alone, the Iraq war has taken the lives of at least 116,000 civilians.[5] Under Obama, at least 2,500 Americans died in Iraq and Afghanistan.[6] And what have those soldiers received in return? Well…
“The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have produced more disability claims per veteran than other wars on the books, including Vietnam, Korea and World War II. While Vietnam extracted a far higher death toll – 58,000 died in that war – the total number of documented disabilities suffered by recent veterans is approaching that of the earlier conflict, according to VA documents.”[7]
This is just the tip of the iceberg. If you think that the Zionist project has always been in the business of rebuilding countries it has literally destroyed, think again. Tirman writes:
“The money that did finally arrive in Afghanistan, if not siphoned off by President Karzai and his allies, frequently aided American or other foreign contractors who were in some cases doing the work Afghans could do. Even the best intentions were skewed. ‘Instead of giving aid money for Afghan schools to the Ministry of Education, for example, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) funds private American contractors to start literacy programs for adults,’ wrote Ann Jones, a veteran of Afghan reconstruction. ‘As a result, Afghan teachers abandon the public schools and education administrators leave the Ministry for higher paying jobs with those contractors, further undermining public education and governance.’
“In several locales, the contractors and USAID workers felt compelled to spend money faster than it could usefully be absorbed; private American firms would not get renewed contracts if their financial ‘burn rate’ left over funds at the end of the year, leading to shoddy workmanship and other waste. Frequently, outright fraud and failed projects were the result. To a troubling extent, Afghanistan also witness the uneasy marriage of security and development–projects like building roads but were essential to the U.S. military.
“The failure of both security and development in Afghanistan is attributable to the social and political dynamics that were misread by U.S. officials… By framing the deaths of innocents as mistakes, the U.S. sought to avoid the deeper moral and legal questions as to whether it was attacking legitimate military targets; whether such actions satisfied the proportionality rule; and whether its ground forces were placing themselves at sufficient risk in order to mitigate the horrors of war for innocent civilians.’
“The typical story was a U.S. warplane or helicopter killing ‘terrorists’ that turned out to be no more than civilians at a social gathering. A dispute over who was killed and why would occasionally be visible in the Western press, with villagers claiming civilians were the victims and the military spokesman insisting they were terrorists. Evidence would be brought forward, typically by eyewitnesses, and the American or NATO commanders would retreat to the safe confines of ordering an investigation into the ‘tragic incident.’”[8]
Neocon hawks like Max Boot know that American soldiers are dying by the thousands for Israel. As a result, Boot proposed what seemed to be a diabolical project in 2005, and here it is:
“The military would do well today to open its ranks not only to legal immigrants but also to illegal ones and, as important, to untold numbers of young men and women who are not here now but would like to come.
“No doubt many would be willing to serve for some set period in return for one of the world’s most precious commodities — U.S. citizenship.”
Did you catch that? The U.S. military should open its ranks to everyone, both legal and illegal, so that they can go ahead and die in the Middle East. Boot never told the American people about the cost of this diabolical plan. He never told people that no country on earth can survive with that principle.
What we are seeing here is that the deaths of American soldiers in the Middle East aren’t enough for Boot. He has to enlist other Goyim in his essentially Talmudic plan. If people like Max Boot aren’t dangerous to America and much of the world, then no one is. It was good that Tucker Carlson told Boot to pick up a decent job like house painting.
[1] John Tirman, The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians in America’s Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).
[2] Quoted in Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, The Final Days (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976), 194.
[3] H. A. Goodman, “4,486 American Soldiers Have Died in Iraq. President Obama Is Continuing a Pointless and Deadly Quagmire,” Huffington Post, November 17, 2014.
[4] H. A. Goodman, “6,845 Americans Died and 900,000 Were Injured in Iraq and Afghanistan. Say ‘No’ to Obama’s War,” Huffington Post, February 12, 2015.
[5] David Blair, “Iraq war 10 years on: at least 116,000 civilians killed,” Telegraph, March 15, 2013.
[6] Tessa Stuart, “Some 2,500 Americans Have Died in Afghanistan and Iraq Under Obama,” Rolling Stone, May 30, 2016.
[7] Chris Adams, “Millions went to war in Iraq, Afghanistan, leaving many with lifelong scars,” McClatchy Newspapers, March 14, 2013.
[8] Tirman, The Deaths of Others, 272.
14,000 orphans among Rohingya refugees: Bangladesh
Press TV – October 15, 2017
A new influx of Rohingya refugees that hit Bangladesh contains around 14,000 orphans, authorities say, as new details emerge of a brutal crackdown in neighboring Myanmar which forced over half a million Rohingya Muslims to flee their homes.
Bangladesh’s social services department said Sunday that some 13,751 children without a parent or parents were identified in the crowded refugee camps along the country’s border with Myanmar.
“The majority of them said they lost one or both parents in the violence in Rakhine,” said Pritam Kumar Chowdhury, a department deputy director, adding, “Others said they didn’t know what happened to their parents, and they came to Bangladesh with relatives.”
The United Nations says children comprise the bulk of the exodus of Rohingya refugees who have fled Myanmar since violence erupted in the country’s western state of Rakhine in late August. The total number of arrivals currently stands at 536,000, of which some 320,000 are children, one-third under five years of age.
The exodus began when the army and Buddhist mobs launched sweeping attacks on villages populated by Muslims to the north of Rakhine. The government rejected claims about torching of villages and killing of innocent residents, saying military forces were simply hunting for suspected militants who had carried out deadly attacks on border and police posts on August 25.
However, rights campaigners and international organizations have documented numerous accounts of gang rapes and massacres against the Rohingya Muslims as the refugees continue to recount the violence they suffered back home.
The UN and other agencies have also warned about humanitarian problems that could occur in crowded refugee camps in Bangladesh, especially given the high number of vulnerable children and women living in those areas. Bangladesh is building the world’s largest refugee camp in the area with plans in place for setting up an orphanage to deliver extra assistance and familial support to unaccompanied minors and those without a parent.
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