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Hillary Clinton Begs Forgiveness From Rothschilds In Leaked Email

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The Clintons with Sir and Lady de Rothschild at a 2003 party / Credit – dailymail.co.uk
By Whitney Webb | True Activist | October 18, 2016

Though the influence of money in politics is well-known, many people are amazed to learn that most of that money comes from a very few individuals – the 1% of the 1% as it were. These individuals comprise the global elite, whose mind-boggling fortunes are often used to buy ‘favors’ and even set policy in governments all over the world, not just the United States. Many of these elites made their fortunes through centuries-old banking dynasties. The most infamous of these are undoubtedly the Rothschild family, who have been the world’s wealthiest family for over 200 years.

Indeed, the most well-known Rothschild patriarch, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, once said “Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes its laws.” The Rothschilds and their international banking cartel, ‘Rothschild & Co,’ are majority owners of numerous corporations spanning nearly every industry. They are also co-owners of numerous private banks including the International Monetary Fund, which essentially functions as a global loan shark with no government or international oversight, as well as many of the world’s central banks, which are private entities despite their associations with federal governments.

Several politicians, especially those who are the most willing to bend over backwards for wealthy interests, have made their careers by catering to the whims of the Rothschilds and other families like them. In US politics today, there is no better example of this archetype than Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. In fact, less than two months ago, Clinton flew just 20 miles in a private jet to attend a private Rothschild fundraiser in her honor. Yet, this is just one of the latest examples of her intimate relationship to the banking dynasty.

In emails from her private server made available to the public by WikiLeaks, Clinton’s close relationship to Lady de Rothschild is evident due to their warm exchanges which include phrases such as “You are the best […] Sweet dreams,” “I remain your loyal adoring pal,” and “Much love.” This is significant as, judging by Clinton’s other emails, her communication style is almost always curt and concise, never approaching the outright declarations of affection found only in her exchanges with Lady de Rothschild. Lady de Rothschild, married into the Rothschild family in 2000 after being introduced to Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, who alone is worth $20 billion, at the 1998 Bilderberg Conference. War criminal Henry Kissinger served as the couple’s “match-maker.”

Yet, the most bizarre interaction between Clinton and Lady de Rothschild took place in an email titled “Info for you” (ID#1606), which was sent while Clinton was serving as US Secretary of State. In the email, Clinton tells Lady de Rothschild that she had to ask Tony Blair (then-Prime Minister of England) to accompany her to Israel due to the Middle East peace negotiations taking place at the time. Blair had previously planned to spend the weekend in Aspen, Colorado with the Rothschilds at an unspecified conference, but accepted Clinton’s invitation. Clinton then says “I hope you all understand. […] Let me know what penance I owe you.” For those who are not familiar with the word, penance is defined as follows:

“An act of self-mortification or devotion performed voluntarily to show sorrow for a sin or other wrongdoing.”

Does this sound like something Hillary Clinton would normally say?

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Considering that her former bodyguard once said she could “make Richard Nixon look like Mahatma Gandhi,” this seems doubtful. More importantly, why would someone as powerful as Secretary of State literally grovel for forgiveness from a private citizen? The circumstance is truly bizarre considering Clinton offers “penance” or asking the Prime Minister of England to decline an invitation to the Rothschilds’ weekend getaway in order to attend high-stakes peace negotiations. This email clearly shows where the real power is in politics as well as where Clinton’s true loyalty lies.

October 19, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

A Glimpse into Jewish Guilt and Aggression

By Gilad Atzmon | October 16, 2016

Some Jews were not delighted by Donald Trump’s recent reference to ‘International Bankers”. Trump declared this week that his rival Hillary Clinton is somehow “an instrument of a vast conspiracy involving scads of money and international banks”

You may note that Trump didn’t refer to Jews nor did he point out any ethnicity or religious group. However, Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, was quick to react using the twitter platform. “Trump should avoid rhetoric and tropes that historically have been used against Jews and still spur antisemitism,” Greenblatt said and then added “Let’s keep hate out of campaign.”

One may wonder at this stage why a leading American Jew sees ‘hatred’ in Trump’s critical reference to ‘International Banking’? Is it because Greenblatt knows that the International Bankers who fund Clinton’s presidential affair belong to one particular ethnic group? Is it possible that Greenblatt believes that the bankers at Goldman Sachs, along with individuals like Haim Saban and George Soros, may have one or two things in common apart from being filthy rich?

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency was also alarmed by Trump’s true observation that “This election will determine if we are a free nation or whether we have only the illusion of democracy, but are in fact controlled by a small handful of global special interests rigging the system”

Once again Trump didn’t refer specifically to Jews, yet the JTA must have gathered that he had Jews in mind. The JTA probably knows something many of us may have gathered but prefer to suppress.

I guess the good news is the sudden appearance of Jewish guilt. Greenblatt and the JTA act out of guilt. They do know that international banking is a Jewish territory and that makes them feel uncomfortable.  But the tragic news is that Jewish guilt hardly leads to ethical reflection, and too often it is quick to transform into aggression.

If Greenblatt was genuinely concerned with defamation and the safety of American Jews he should have lobbied the herd of Jewish international bankers to remove themselves from American politics. But for Greenblatt and others within his tribal milieu, Jewish power is the power to silence the very discussion of Jewish power!

In practice, Greenblatt, an American Jewish leader, is telling the Republican presidential candidate which topics to avoid.

I would like to tell Greenblatt and his acolytes that this development is very dangerous to American people and to American Jews, in particular.

October 16, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Swedish MEPs in Soros’ Servitude

Sputnik – 14.10.2016

Swedish politicians, who are known for their penchant for multiculturalism and diversity, have been found to be the most loyal allies of Hungarian-American business magnate George Soros who chairs the Open Society Foundation, leaked documents reveal.

The Open Society Foundation was found to have hired a consulting firm to evaluate members of the European Parliament and assess their support of the foundation’s values until the end of their tenure in 2019, Swedish news outlet Fria Tider reported, referring to the leaked document.

An itemized list of European MPs indicated that Swedish politicians are by far the most loyal to George Soros’ political ambitions. As many as 13 of the 20 Swedish MEPs (equivalent to 65 percent) were classified as “loyal allies.” Remarkably, the list of Swedish Soros loyalists includes representatives of parties from both ends of the political spectrum, who happen to be opponents on the home arena.

Among others, Lars Adaktusson of the Christian Democrats Party, Anna Maria Corazza Bildt of the Conservative Party, Peter Ericsson of the Green Party, Fredrick Federley of the Center Party and Soraya Post of the Feminist Initiative, were pointed out as loyalists. On the opposite side of the list, Eastern European countries like the Czech Republic, Lithuania and Hungary were placed, with only 2 of 21, 1 of 11 and 1 of 21 Soros loyalists among its MEPs.

Previously, 86-year-old financier George Soros, was found to have sponsored Swedish far-left activists Expo to train leftists within the framework of the pan-European election campaign.

Additionally, Swedish entrepreneur Daniel Sachs was found to receive a grant from Soros for combatting “nationalism” during the 2014 parliamentary elections. In 2014, millions of dollars were handed out to various European organizations by the Open Society in an attempt to manipulate the outcome of the elections held in Europe that year, Fria Tider earlier reported, citing the DC Leaks portal, where some 2,500 documents from the Open Society were made public.

In 1992, Soros became famous in Sweden after an extensive currency speculation affair against the Swedish krona, which subsequently triggered a mass shift of deposits to other currencies for fears of the krona’s collapse. In 1998, six years thereafter, Soros was invited to Sweden. In addition to a dinner with the Royal family, a meeting with Swedish magnate Peter Wallenberg and a lecture at the School of Economics, he also held a lecture to at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

October 14, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

New leak reveals extent of Clinton ties with US media

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RT | October 10, 2016

Hillary Clinton has been revealed to have a very cozy relationship with the US media, which has been found to work closely with Clinton’s campaign to present her in a favorable, transparent light – even planting stories, new email leaks suggest.

These facts are laid bare in the latest cache of classified Clinton campaign emails seen by The Intercept, which in turn received them from Guccifer 2.0 – the hacker who’s reportedly behind several high-profile intrusions.

The cache of emails includes campaign strategies aimed at keeping the public perception of Clinton favorable, focusing particularly on her transparency, especially in light of the FBI investigation into her use of a private email server. The strategies sometimes reveal the campaign presiding over stylistic points and emphasizing what is to be described as “on the record.”

Of particular note is one January 2015 document which includes references to Maggie Haberman. Formerly of Politico, Haberman now covers the presidential election for the New York Times. According to the leaked document, she’s a “friendly journalist” who has “never disappointed” in painting a positive picture of Clinton.

Haberman was seemingly put to good use, emerging with two stories which were meant to shed light, among other things, on how Hillary Clinton’s thought process works and how successful her cabinet members were. The New York Times piece entitled ‘Hillary Clinton Begins Process of Vetting — Herself’, talks about how open Clinton is to researching herself and how committed to transparency that makes her. Especially given how her opponents mainly focus on her foundation work, or the millions she’s received in paid speech appearances, as well as her relationship to Wall Street.

Neither Merrill nor Haberman responded to the Intercept’s requests for comment, nor did they deny that the document exists.

One of the documents, entitled ‘The Press and Surrogate Plan’, talked of willing personnel in the media who could always be put to good use, at CNN or elsewhere. Clinton staffers were also careful in distinguishing between “progressive helpers” and those who were potentially friendly, but could be further coerced.

These so-called media surrogates would often include TV pundits whose roles would appear to be neutral, but who were enrolled by the campaign. The metadata for the ‘surrogate’ document traces it back to its author Jennifer Palmieri – the Clinton campaign communications director.

Furthermore, as described in an April 2015 memo, there would be secret get-togethers involving media big shots and celebrity TV personalities – a notable one would take place in the aftermath of Clinton’s running announcement at the home of one of her strategists on the Upper East Side. The informal cocktail party was completely off-the-record, and intended to coordinate how Clinton’s campaign would be presented to the American public.

The strategies were not specifically formulated for the Clinton campaign, however. According to a March 2015 memo by campaign manager Robby Mook, the tried and tested tactic of constantly feeding the press positive stories in order to take away its ability to react to constant outside accusations was particularly important.

These controversial strategies have also been employed by the Republicans, although this latest cache of documents is the first glimpse into just how coordinated the effort is to use the media to political advantage.

The revelations from the Intercept come just as the second round of debating between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump has wrapped up, looking colder than ever, with not so much as a handshake exchanged.

The leak also comes amid the latest official attack on Russia by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. On Friday they released a statement claiming they are ““confident that the Russian government directed” the hacks of emails and documents and their posting on WikiLeaks, DCLeaks, and the blog of the hacker calling himself ‘Guccifer 2.0.’

Russia has been denying all complicity. The United States has still not presented any evidence of an official link to the Russian government.

October 10, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Clinton Scandal: Taxpayers’ Money for the Campaign Election

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By Federico PIERACCINI | Strategic Culture Foundation | 10.10.2016

The American election campaign never ceases to amaze in terms of twists.

The Clinton Foundation has again been the victim of a new hack carried out by Guccifer 2.0, leading to the revelation of some interesting details. Among them is an Excel file with a list of donors.

So far (let’s face it) there is nothing new. But the problem for Clinton, the banks and Barney Frank is the refrain «Tarp Funds»; basically the 2008 financial crisis. The Bush administration, with a $700 billion maxi-loan (made up by citizens’ taxes), granted instant cash and saved the big banks from bankruptcy.

The infamous measure will be called TARP:

The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) is a United States government program to purchase toxic assets from financial institutions, and actions to strengthen the financial sector. It was signed by US President George W. Bush on October 3, 2008.

A small detail to keep in mind: the loan was funded with taxes paid by US citizens.

However, the banks were saved, speculation continued, and two years later, a decree that negatively changed the American financial system was passed, the infamous Dodd-Frank.

The words of the Wall Street Journal thoroughly explain how the financial giants and the big banking conglomerates have profited from this other law-saving bank:

«Dodd-Frank was allegedly written thinking of Wall Street, but has hit Main Street. The financial community institutions, which make up most of loans to small businesses, are overwhelmed by the complexity of the new law. Government figures indicate that the country is losing an average of a community bank or credit union each day.

Before Dodd-Frank, 75% of banks were offering a free account. Two years later, only 39% of bank still offer that free-of-charge savings account.

Due to the Dodd-Frank, the financial markets will have less ability to cope with shocks and are more likely to panic [and panic = speculation = profits for banks and financial institutions]. Many economists believe this could be the source of the next financial crisis».

Two further details if you have not already guessed the extent of these revelations. The Frank in question is Barney Frank, the guy mentioned several times in the the donations. Guess who Frank received the money from. Banks, of course! The same banks for whom Frank significantly increased their revenue thanks to the law with his name. What better way for JP Morgan, Goldman, Bank of America and company to show appreciation for their future gains than by raising tens of thousands of dollars for Frank and his party?

The revelations are likely to be a disaster for Clinton and the Democrats. The large banking corporations have funded them using money from the TARP fund. They have given the Democratic Party money collected from taxes and granted for a completely different purpose (namely, to deal with the failure of the financial giants).

These hidden financial mechanisms reveal the backstory behind the US electoral system. An elite made up of financiers, bankers and lobbies are the real stakeholders and decisive contributors in presidential elections. They fund all central and vital aspects of democratic and republican campaigns, becoming an indispensable support for any candidate. In return, politicians allow direct procurement and assign huge projects to large industries, or turn a blind eye in case of financial fraud. The consequences are clearly visible in America’s deterioration, increasingly grappling with corruption cases, postponed projects, a lagging behind, and a general feeling of backwardness in vital infrastructure.

In the military field, for example, large lobby groups of weapons manufacturers have created a procurement system that threatens to squander forever the tactical and strategic advantage obtained by the United States over the last 70 years. Programs such as the F-35 were delayed and costs surged stratospherically due to likely corruption and a lack of competition in the procurement process. Similarly, a perpetual race to produce more and more weapons systems that are in the end unnecessary and redundant, instead of exploring new pathways, has enriched US policymakers and made the military-industrial complex much wealthier, but in the process has served to reduce the gap between the US and her peer competitors.

This whole process is a vicious cycle that can easily be summarized in the following manner. Politicians often derive their strategies and tactics from the reasoning and the conversations that take place in US think-tanks, which are funded and supported by companies involved in such industries as pharmaceuticals, insurance, the military, and the cyber and space spheres. In the case of war involving weapons systems, for example, it is easy to understand why policymakers are being influenced by their contributors, who often suggest courses of action and strategies based on the need to spend huge amounts of money to acquire their new products, thereby enriching said lobbies and manufacturers in the process. This triangular system – lobby-thinktank-policy – is one of the founding pillars of current American war doctrine that is failing miserably.

In the same manner, the banking and financial system of Wall Street also contributes and enjoys the same privileges. The banks were bound to return the favor, in the form of millions of dollars of donations, to the political class that was responsible for saving them from the 2008 financial crisis stemming from wild speculation and accounting deceptions. Within a few months, billions of dollars were transferred for free into the accounts of the banking giants thanks to the TARP decree, effectively preventing a major bankruptcy. The consequences were so devastating that today we are experiencing a systemic and endemic crisis of the financial sector that is likely to completely overwhelm Western economies the next time a too-big-to-fail scenario arises.

Politicians continue to enact laws in favor of the banking giants, pocketing large sums of money for their election campaigns in the process. The attention is constantly drawn towards effectively increasing the gap between the top 0.1% and the remaining 99.9%, and the politicians are the key factor in this strategy. Laws adopted in recent years have created an environment where banks have become untouchable and beyond reach. It is a situation that is exactly the opposite of what should have happened after the 2008 crisis, with increased oversight and transparency in financial transactions.

The extent of the degeneration of this system has been revealed in recent days with the information released by Guccifer 2.0. Even though nothing should any longer be surprising given what has transpired over the last few years, one is still taken aback by revelations that the banking giants are financing the Clinton campaign directly with American taxpayers’ money. If we add to this the funds that were freely handed over by the government to save those same banking institutions from bankruptcy in 2008, we take another step further into the theater of the absurd.

October 10, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Economics, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

The West’s Weaponisation of Corruption Indexes

By Joseph Thomas – New Eastern Outlook – 08.10.2016

For the Southeast Asian state of Thailand, overcoming corruption could be one of several essential steps required to fully tap the human and natural resources this already influential ASEAN state has benefited from for centuries. However, to tackle corruption, the nation must first define what it is, and what it hopes to achieve by confronting and overcoming it.

Currently, the focus unfortunately appears to be on addressing Thailand’s score upon the so-called Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) put out by alleged nongovernmental organisation (NGO), Transparency International.

Despite describing itself as an NGO, Transparency International’s funding is dominated by the governments of the United States and the European Union.

More specifically, as listed on Transparency International’s own website, its funding comes specifically from the US State Department, the European Commission, the US State Department’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and controversial Open Society, chaired by convicted financial criminal George Soros.

Such funding presents an alarming conflict of interest, considering that these are the same interests who, in Thailand and across the rest of ASEAN, have worked actively to overthrow governments and undermine local institutions, seeking to overwrite them with organisations and institutions promoted by and serving foreign interests via NED and Open Society specifically.

Transparency International Leverages CPI as a Geopolitical Weapon 

Thus, Thailand’s score on the CPI is more a result of politically-motivated interference in Thailand’s internal affairs than it is an honest appraisal of the nation’s corruption. Thailand’s low score and pressure placed upon it by the West to improve this score results not from genuine concern regarding corruption, but instead from the fact that the current government successfully ousted a regime sponsored by and working for Western special interests.

Attempting to “improve” Thailand’s score on a politically-motivated and thus illegitimate index is, to say the least, an exercise in futility.

Despite this glaring reality, there are some in the government who believe improving the nation’s standings on this index should still be a priority. They do so not because a better score will actually address corruption in Thailand in any meaningful manner, thus giving Thais greater confidence and trust in government institutions, but to instead impress foreign investors who a nation like Thailand should not be depending on to begin with.

It is an approach doomed to fail because it is an approach that fundamentally misdiagnoses the problem and thus prescribes the wrong solution.

Alternative Paths

In reality, corruption in Thailand cannot be defined or addressed by Transparency International’s politically-motivated, thus meaningless metrics. Instead, corruption in Thailand, if understood as unprofessionalism and impropriety among government institutions, hindering both the efficient administration of the nation as well as the government’s interaction with the people and local businesses, must be confronted by local interests for local interests.

The Anti-Corruption Organization of Thailand (ACT) (website in Thai only), comprised of business leaders, local media and activists, seeks to confront corruption in Thailand not to improve the nation’s standings on a meaningless foreign-devised scale, but to improve the efficiency of government institutions to better facilitate their administration of the country, to make doing business easier and fairer as well as to improve faith and confidence across Thai society in the government institutions they depend on for the smooth functioning of society.

As ACT incrementally achieves these goals, it helps improve and strengthen Thailand, even if such efforts are not reflected on meaningless indexes like the CPI.

Their activities include exposing corruption using their ties to the media, holding events to raise public awareness regarding both their rights and how they are being violated by corruption and by working with the government to pass legislation to rein in corruption on various levels of society.

In the end, ACT is attempting to solve corruption for Thailand, with their “index score” determined by the improved efficiency of government institutions and the public’s trust in them.

ACT has so far proven itself impartial, calling out the previous government of Yingluck Shinawatra for its blatant and systemic corruption, as well as condemning impropriety and nepotism amid the current government. Unlike Transparency International and its CPI which only seeks to leverage “corruption perceptions” as a political weapon, ACT is fighting corruption for the sake of fighting corruption, because its membership is comprised of those directly affected by it, regardless of who heads the national government.

The current government should work (and is working) closely with groups like ACT to expose and rein in corruption toward very specific goals such as improving the efficiency of government institutions in the administration of their responsibilities and improving public trust in these institutions. Rather than citing the meaningless CPI devised by the politically-motivated Transparency International, Thailand should develop its own metrics for measuring both the level of corruption and gauge success in confronting it.
Thailand, and other developing nations, must also devise a means of communicating their progress in confronting corruption to the world in order to sidestep the “weaponisation” of indexes like Transparency International’s CPI.

By confronting corruption, nations strengthen themselves not only within by improving the efficiency with which resources are utilised toward the progress of their respective nations, they also strengthen themselves against foreign interests that would seek to exploit “corruption perceptions” and use it to seek leverage over them. In this sense, fighting corruption is not only good for business, it is essential for national security.

October 9, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

‘I’m kind of far removed’: Clinton admits estrangement from middle class in Wall Street paid speech

RT | October 8, 2016

The struggles of the middle class are something Hillary Clinton once admitted in a paid speech she is “far removed” from, thanks to the “fortunes” she and her husband “enjoy,” a WikiLeaks-posted email shows. She also admitted she “did all she could” for Wall Street to prosper.

These are just two excerpts from the numerous paid speeches Clinton gave to Wall Street giants behind closed doors between 2013 and 2015.

“I’m kind of far removed because the life I’ve lived and the economic, you know, fortunes that my husband and I now enjoy,” Clinton told members of Goldman-Black Rock in February 2014. “I am not taking a position on any policy, but I do think there is a growing sense of anxiety and even anger in the country over the feeling that the game is rigged.”

Her remarks would never have seen the light of day, but an email found among over 2,000 “Podesta emails” has now shone a spotlight on what Clinton was telling Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and others in between her job as Secretary of State and the current presidential campaign.

“Team, attached are the flags from HRC’s paid speeches we have from HWA. I put some highlights below. There is a lot of policy positions that we should give an extra scrub with policy,” Tony Carrk, the research director of the Clinton campaign, wrote in the email to John Podesta, the campaign chairman, and others on January 25, 2016.

“HWA” stands for Harry Walker Agency, which calls itself “an exclusive speakers bureau” that has been representing Hillary Clinton’s husband Bill “for over a decade.”

The agency also arranged Hillary Clinton’s speeches, which earned $675,000 from three events at Goldman Sachs and reportedly $3 million for speaking at banks and financial firms.

Carrk “flagged” some 25 excerpts that he titled, presumably highlighting the parts the campaign had to take care of: “CLINTON ADMITS SHE IS OUT OF TOUCH,” “CLINTON SAYS YOU NEED TO HAVE A PRIVATE AND PUBLIC POSITION ON POLICY,” and “CLINTON ADMITS NEEDING WALL STREET FUNDING” to name a few.

Clinton’s links to Wall Street is something that she and her team have been trying to downplay since the start of her presidential campaign in April 2015.

However, excerpts from her speeches, most of which she gave in front of Goldman Sachs people, show the scale of her “cozy relationships” with Wall Street.

“When I was a senator from New York, I represented and worked with so many talented principled people who made their living in finance,” Hillary Clinton said in a speech at Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd in San Diego in September 2014. “But even though I represented them and did all I could to make sure they continued to prosper, I called for closing the carried interest loophole and addressing skyrocketing CEO pay.”

Prior to that, in 2013, Clinton was telling Goldman Sachs that running for office has its downsides, such as for example “bias against people who have led successful and/or complicated lives.”

“You know, the divestment of assets, the stripping of all kinds of positions, the sale of stocks. It just becomes very onerous and unnecessary,” she said, adding that is “part of the problem with the political situation.”

In 2014 speeches, Hillary Clinton expressed her pro-Keystone pipeline views, the opinion she appeared to have changed just recently.

Clinton has been known to have to changed her mind on big issues in recent years. However, in 2013 she told a housing trade group that she has “a public and a private position.”

“If everybody’s watching, you know, all of the back room discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous, to say the least,” she said. “So, you need both a public and a private position.”

In her other speeches, which also surfaced from the recent WikiLeaks dump, Clinton discussed countries such as Saudi Arabia, which she said “exported more extreme ideology than any other place on earth” and Libya, where she said “they can’t provide security.”

She also spoke about the UK and the EU, predicting “some pretty unpredictable leaders and political parties coming to the forefront in a lot of countries.”

Clinton has long been under intense pressure to release transcripts of her paid speeches to corporations.

A poll released in June showed that nearly 60 percent of surveyed voters wanted transcripts of her speeches released.

READ MORE: 

Sanders endorses Clinton, reversing everything he’s said about ‘Wall Street candidate’

October 8, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Report: Yahoo helped government with ‘unprecedented, unconstitutional’ email surveillance program

PrivacySOS – 10/05/2016

Big news dropped yesterday in Reuters : In 2015, the US government asked Yahoo to scan all incoming email looking for certain, unknown characters in emails or attachments; unfortunately, Yahoo agreed to do it—without putting up a fight. The demand came in the form of a classified “edict,” as Reuters describes it, to Yahoo’s legal department.

Reuters reports:

According to two of the former employees, Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer’s decision to obey the directive roiled some senior executives and led to the June 2015 departure of Chief Information Security Officer Alex Stamos, who now holds the top security job at Facebook Inc.

…

Mayer and other executives ultimately decided to comply with the directive last year rather than fight it, in part because they thought they would lose, said the people familiar with the matter.

Yahoo in 2007 had fought a FISA demand that it conduct searches on specific email accounts without a court-approved warrant. Details of the case remain sealed, but a partially redacted published opinion showed Yahoo’s challenge was unsuccessful.

Some Yahoo employees were upset about the decision not to contest the more recent edict and thought the company could have prevailed, the sources said.

They were also upset that Mayer and Yahoo General Counsel Ron Bell did not involve the company’s security team in the process, instead asking Yahoo’s email engineers to write a program to siphon off messages containing the character string the spies sought and store them for remote retrieval, according to the sources.

The sources said the program was discovered by Yahoo’s security team in May 2015, within weeks of its installation. The security team initially thought hackers had broken in.

When Stamos found out that Mayer had authorized the program, he resigned as chief information security officer and told his subordinates that he had been left out of a decision that hurt users’ security, the sources said. Due to a programming flaw, he told them hackers could have accessed the stored emails.

In statements to reporters, other major technology companies denied participating in similar surveillance programs at the behest of the US government. Google released a statement categorically denying any such relationship: “We’ve never received such a request, but if we did, our response would be simple: ‘No way.’” Microsoft, which declined to comment on whether it had received a similar request from the government, issued a carefully phrased denial: “We have never engaged in the secret scanning of email traffic like what has been reported today about Yahoo” [emphasis mine]. Apple, meanwhile, was explicit: “We have never received a request of this type. If we were to receive one, we would oppose it in court.” Facebook and Twitter both also said they’d never received such demands, and would fight them if they did.

It’s not clear what legal authority the government thinks gives it the right to make such demands. But we have a good lead, from Senator Ron Wyden, a privacy stalwart who has access to classified intelligence information because of his position on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Wyden, who has made a habit of dropping public hints about what’s really going on in the spy world, responded to the story with this statement:

It is a fact that collection under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has a significant impact on Americans’ privacy. It is public record that this expansive surveillance program is the basis for warrantless searches of Americans’ emails, and that the government has never even counted how many. The NSA has said that it only targets individuals under Section 702 by searching for email addresses and similar identifiers. If that has changed, the executive branch has an obligation to notify the public.

Here’s how I interpret that statement, following the Wyden code: The NSA has been lying to the American public, again, about its domestic surveillance activities. The NSA said it only targets certain people under 702 authorities, but in fact, as the Yahoo story shows, it is searching through everyone’s emails. The NSA ought to be straight with the public about that activity. (Reminder: the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act (FAA for short) of 2008, the law that contains Section 702, put congress’ stamp of approval on the controversial, widely criticized Bush administration warrantless wiretapping program, disclosed by New York Times reporter James Risen in 2005. The ACLU tried to challenge the constitutionality of Section 702 but was stymied when the Supreme Court held the organization’s clients—human rights attorneys among them—lacked standing to bring the lawsuit.)

ACLU attorney Patrick Toomey called the reported program “unprecedented and unconstitutional”:

The government appears to have compelled Yahoo to conduct precisely the type of general, suspicionless search that the Fourth Amendment was intended to prohibit. It is deeply disappointing that Yahoo declined to challenge this sweeping surveillance order, because customers are counting on technology companies to stand up to novel spying demands in court. If this surveillance was conducted under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, this story reinforces the urgent need for Congress to reform the law to prevent dragnet surveillance and require increased transparency.

Back in 2013 when we learned, through Edward Snowden’s leaks, about the NSA and FBI’s vast PRISM surveillance partnership with the major technology companies, Yahoo had this to say: “The notion that Yahoo! gives any federal agency vast or unfettered access to our users’ records is categorically false.” The company’s spokesman later clarified to say that it only hands over to the government the private information of an “infinitesimal percentage” of its users.

The program disclosed yesterday appears to differ from PRISM in at least two core respects: First, the email scanning surveillance is achieved through a special program Yahoo email engineers reportedly wrote on the government’s behalf. Second, the recently disclosed program deals with ‘live’ data, whereas PRISM granted the NSA and FBI access to information stored on company servers, not information in transit.

Over the next couple of days, you will likely hear surveillance state defenders talk about how we need to give the intelligence agencies access to “the whole haystack” if we want them to stop terrorist attacks. But mass surveillance doesn’t stop terrorism; it never once has.

Meanwhile, yet another NSA contractor working for Booz Allen Hamilton has been accused of stealing government secrets.

October 6, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Saudi Arabia: Investigations into War Crimes in Yemen “Prohibited”

Al-Manar – October 5, 2016

Saudi Arabia rejected a request by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Bin Al-Hussein to form an international commission of inquiry into war crimes committed in Yemen.

“Riyadh does not support the call of the High Commissioner to form an international investigation committee,” Saudi Minister of Culture and Information of Adel Tarifi said in a statement, stressing that “the work of the Yemeni National Commission of Inquiry is generally agreed”, according to reports by German Press Agency.

The Human Rights Council of the United Nations had refused on Thursday to open an independent investigation into war crimes in Yemen, and demanded instead a national commission of inquiry to investigate attacks on hospitals and killing of civilians.

October 5, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

FBI Director James Comey Shamelessly Makes Up Excuses For Hillary Clinton

The Humanist Report | September 30, 2016

FBI Director James Comey went before the House Judiciary Committee to discuss the Hillary Clinton email investigation after new evidence emerged which suggested Hillary Clinton’s IT specialist, Paul Combetta (under the “Stonetear” moniker), sought advice on Reddit on how to cover her tracks. He addressed claims about the FBI’s treatment of Hillary Clinton and whether or not the they were biased in her favor. He was angered by such claims, yet continued to make up excuses for Hillary Clinton.

September 30, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

Where Is That Wasteful Government Spending?

By Lawrence Wittner | CounterPunch | September 27, 2016

In early September 2016, Donald Trump announced his plan for a vast expansion of the U.S. military, including 90,000 new soldiers for the Army, nearly 75 new ships for the Navy, and dozens of new fighter aircraft for the Air Force. Although the cost of this increase would be substantial–about $90 billion per year–it would be covered, the GOP presidential candidate said, by cutting wasteful government spending.

But where, exactly, is the waste? In fiscal 2015, the federal government engaged in $1.1 trillion of discretionary spending, but relatively small amounts went for things like education (6 percent), veterans’ benefits (6 percent), energy and the environment (4 percent), and transportation (2 percent). The biggest item, by far, in the U.S. budget was military spending: roughly $600 billion (54 percent). If military spending were increased to $690 billion and other areas were cut to fund this increase, the military would receive roughly 63 percent of the U.S. government’s discretionary spending.

Well, you might say, maybe it’s worth it. After all, the armed forces defend the United States from enemy attack. But, in fact, the U.S. government already has far more powerful military forces than any other country. China, the world’s #2 military power, spends only about a third of what the United States does on the military. Russia spends about a ninth. There are, of course, occasional terrorist attacks within American borders. But the vast and expensive U.S. military machine–in the form of missiles, fighter planes, battleships, and bombers–is simply not effective against this kind of danger.

Furthermore, the U.S. Department of Defense certainly leads the way in wasteful behavior. As William Hartung, the director of the Arms and Security Project of the Center for International Policy, points out, “the military waste machine is running full speed ahead.” There are the helicopter gears worth $500 each purchased by the Army at $8,000 each, the $2.7 billion spent “on an air surveillance balloon that doesn’t work,” and “the accumulation of billions of dollars’ worth of weapons components that will never be used.” Private companies like Halliburton profited handsomely from Pentagon contracts for their projects in Afghanistan, such as “a multimillion-dollar `highway to nowhere,’” a $43 million gas station in nowhere, a $25 million `state of the art’ headquarters for the U.S. military in Helmand Province . . . that no one ever used, and the payment of actual salaries to countless thousands of no ones aptly labeled `ghost soldiers.’” Last year, Pro Publica created an interactive graphic revealing $17 billion in wasteful U.S. spending uncovered by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction.

Not surprisingly, as Hartung reports, the Pentagon functions without an auditing system. Although, a quarter century ago, Congress mandated that the Pentagon audit itself, it has never managed to do so. Thus, the Defense Department doesn’t know how much equipment it has purchased, how much it has been overcharged, or how many contractors it employs. The Project on Government Oversight maintains that the Pentagon has spent about $6 billion thus far on “fixing” its audit problem. But it has done so, Hartung notes, “with no solution in sight.”

The story of the F-35 jet fighter shows how easily U.S. military spending gets out of hand. Back in 2001, when the cost of this aircraft-building program was considered astronomical, the initial estimate was $233 billion. Today, the price tag has more than quadrupled, with estimates ranging from $1.1 trillion to $1.4 trillion, making it the most expensive weapon in human history. The planes reportedly cost $135 million each, and even the pilots’ helmets run $400,000 apiece. Moreover, the planes remain unusable. Although the U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. Air Force recently declared their versions of the F-35 combat ready, the Pentagon’s top testing official blasted that assertion in a 16-page memo, deriding them as thoroughly unsuitable for combat. The planes, he reported, had “outstanding performance deficiencies.” His assessment was reinforced in mid-September 2016, when the Air Force grounded 10 of its first F-35 fighters due to problems with their cooling lines.

U.S. wars, of course, are particularly expensive, as they require the deployment of large military forces and hardware to far-flung places, chew up very costly military equipment, and necessitate veterans’ benefits for the survivors. Taking these and other factors into account, a recent study at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs put the cost to U.S. taxpayers of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at nearly $5 trillion thus far. According to the report’s author, Neta Crawford, this figure is “so large as to be almost incomprehensible.”

Even without war, another military expense is likely to create a U.S. budgetary crisis over the course of the next 30 years: $1 trillion for the rebuilding of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, plus the construction of new nuclear missiles, nuclear submarines, and nuclear-armed aircraft. Aside from the vast cost, an obvious problem with this expenditure is that these weapons will either never be used or, if they are used, will destroy the world.

Wasted money, wasted lives, or maybe both. That’s the promise of increased military spending.

September 27, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Economics, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Billions Down the Afghanistan Drain

By Brian CLOUGHLEY | Strategic Culture Foundation | September 18, 2016

India is reported as being “one of the largest donors of civilian aid to Afghanistan” and has recently undertaken to give the Kabul government another billion dollars, which is extremely generous of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, because, as CNN points out, there is in India “a stark picture of widespread rural poverty and deprivation.” According to the site Poverties “70 per cent of Indians don’t have access to decent toilets (which inspires a multitude of bacteria to host their own disease party); 35% of households don’t have a nearby water source and 85% of villages don’t have a secondary school.”

India’s space program costs 750 million dollars a year, and it spent 4 billion dollars hosting the Commonwealth Games. But although 300 million of its 1.2 billion citizens live in conditions that are wretched to the point of barely credible squalor it can still send a billion dollars to Afghanistan which is ranked as the third most corrupt country in the world.

That billion, indeed, might replace the billion stolen from the Kabul Bank, which, according to the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) last week, “operated as a massive pyramid scheme;  hundreds of millions of dollars had been fraudulently lent to fictitious companies, with no loan ever paid off . . . while ordinary Afghan citizens’ deposits were used to fund the fraudulent loans. Two of the principal beneficiaries of the fraudulent loans were Mahmoud Karzai and Haseen Faheem.”  Mahmoud Karzai is brother to the then President, Hamid Karzai, and now lives in luxury outside Afghanistan. Haseen Faheem is a brother of former Vice-President Mohammad Faheem (who was a corrupt savage) and also lives in luxury outside Afghanistan.

India’s billion dollars were promised during a visit to Delhi by Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani who has been in power for two years and was reported by Reuters in October 2014 as “saying that he would re-open the inquiry into the theft of almost $1 billion from the bank, fulfilling a campaign promise to make fighting corruption a priority.”

As is clear from the SIGAR’s report, Ghani has done no such thing, and after fifteen years of US-NATO military operations and expenditure of colossal amounts of money Afghanistan is a catastrophe in which “the United States contributed to the growth of corruption by injecting tens of billions of dollars into the Afghan economy, using flawed oversight and contracting practices, and partnering with malign powerbrokers.”

As the UK’s Guardian newspaper highlighted : “In one damning episode in 2010, Hamid Karzai, the president at the time, ordered the release of an aide who had been caught on wiretap demanding a bribe to thwart an investigation into a money transfer firm accused of stealing $2.78 billion. Meanwhile, the same aide was also receiving payments from the CIA, even as he was targeted by US law enforcement agencies.”

Oh, what a tangled web is weaved, when the CIA is self-deceived.

Four days after the SIGAR’s indictment of US conduct in Afghanistan, the New York Times carried an Editorial titled The Afghan War Quagmire, which is an accurate description of the situation in the country.  But in all its 628 words of observation and comment the NYT didn’t once mention the SIGAR’s report. Certainly it regrets that “America’s longest war deteriorates into a slow, messy slog” — but it’s been a messy and catastrophic slog for years, and the NYT uses the word ‘corrupt’ once and ‘corruption’ not at all.

There is no criticism by the NYT of Washington’s crass incompetence over fifteen years of futile and poorly-directed military operations, or mention of the fact that 2,384 members of the US forces and 1,136 “Coalition” troops died in Afghanistan. In its single use of the word ‘corrupt’ it observes that “The Afghan government remains weak, corrupt and roiled by internal rivalries. The casualty rate for Afghan troops is unsustainable. The economy is in shambles. Resurgent Taliban forces are gaining ground in rural areas and are carrying out barbaric attacks in the heart of Kabul, the capital.” But that’s nothing new. We’ve known for many years that the US-NATO war in Afghanistan was a lost cause. (The NYT doesn’t mention NATO, either, which is extraordinary.)

The Editorial admits in its last sentence that “American taxpayers and Afghans, who have endured decades of war, need a plan better than the current policy, which offers good intentions, wishful thinking and ever-worsening results.”  Certainly there should be a plan to get Afghanistan out of its quagmire, but the NYT does not point out that American taxpayers were duped into supporting the fatuous US-NATO war by rabid propaganda, led by such as the NYT, which, we should remember, was an enthusiastic supporter of the war on Iraq.

It ignored the SIGAR’s report which records that over the years, among other things: US money flowed to the insurgency via corruption; the Afghan government was so deeply enmeshed in corrupt and criminal networks that dismantling them would mean dismantling major pillars of support for the government itself; the United States collaborated with abusive and corrupt warlords, militias, and other powerbrokers who “gained positions of authority in the Afghan government, which further enabled them to dip their hands into the streams of cash pouring into a small and fragile economy;” and, damningly, “People turned to the Taliban as a way of expressing opposition to the government.”

What the New York Times calls the “Afghan War Quagmire” has been caused by the US government and its NATO allies. The US Pentagon has been criminal in its incompetence. The dead soldiers of US-NATO forces gave their lives for nothing. Yet, in addition to Washington pouring its taxpayers’ money down the Afghan drain, the US-NATO military alliance has pledged “to help fund Afghan security forces to the tune of around $1 billion annually over the next three years.” It is doubtful if many European citizens are aware of this generous commitment.

As the old saying has it : a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money. The 300 million Indians who live in bleak and dismal poverty have no idea that their government is throwing away a billion dollars, but India’s Prime Minister Modi and Afghanistan’s President Ghani declared that the money “would be used for building capacity in education, health, agriculture, energy, and infrastructure in Afghanistan.”

What is certain is that the countless Afghans who also live in bleak and dismal poverty will not reap the benefit of a single cent of that billion dollars.

As the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction put it so well : “Corruption is a corrosive acid — partly of our making — that eats away the base of every pillar of Afghan reconstruction, including security and political stability.” The country is in dire straits, and the only hope is to persuade the Taliban and other nationalist militants to come to the negotiating table. The only difference that billions of dollars will make is to the bank accounts of corrupt Afghans living in luxury.

September 27, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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