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Why Hillary is the perfect person to secure Obama’s legacy

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By John Chuckman | Aletho News | August 30, 2016

I read a piece that said Hillary, with her speech about racism and extremists taking over the Republican Party, was making a play for a one-party state. That seems rather an exaggeration, but it does contain an important bit of truth. I do indeed believe Hillary thinks along the lines of a one-party state as suggested, but without ever saying so directly, and she is not focused on the particular political party with which she is now associated.

Hillary stands for the establishment, and her views appear to include the idea that anyone without attachment to that establishment is to be designated as a kind of “plebe,” as in 1984, or even “untouchable,” as in the old Indian caste system. That’s the approach that she took in her “racism” speech. It is, if you will, very much a one-party approach to politics as well as an implicitly anti-democratic one.

And, of course, it represents a truly super-arrogant attitude.

But isn’t that the natural inclination of all tyrant temperaments? And there is every indication in Hillary’s past acts and words of a tyrant’s temperament.

Her views on the military and on a long history of events from the FBI Waco massacre (she advocated for aggressive FBI action to get the event out of the headlines) and the bombing of Belgrade (which she advocated privately to her husband) to the invasion of Iraq (which she supported as a Senator) and the death of Libya’s Gadhafi (there’s her infamous, “We came, we saw, he died. Ha, ha, ha,” quote as Secretary of State) to the employment of paid terrorists and poison gas in Syria (an operation she oversaw as Secretary of State), could provide a good working definition of a tyrant’s temperament.

And just look at her close friends and associates in, or formerly in, government, people like Victoria Nuland or Madeleine Albright, extreme Neocon advocates for violence and America’s right to dictate how others should live. Madelaine Albright is best remembered for answering a journalist in an interview, when questioned about tens of thousands of Iraqi children dying in America’s embargo, “We think it’s worth it.” She is also remembered for her dirty, behind-the-scenes work in dumping as Secretary General of the UN, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, a highly intelligent, fair-minded, and decent man who just happened to disagree with the United States once too often. Victoria Nuland’s claims to fame include being recorded talking about America’s spending $5 billion to create the coup in Ukraine. There is also her wonderfully diplomatic quote, “Fuck Europe,” and a seemingly endless stream of photos of her scowling into cameras.

And the same temperament is revealed in her record of ‘I know better than the expert’ when it comes to matters such as a Secretary of State’s protocols around computer security. Again, her record as First Lady with the Secret Service agents assigned to her protection was so unpleasantly arrogant that there is a residual of ill will still towards her in the Secret Service, enough to cause a number of past agents to tell tales out of school to journalists and in books.

Hillary likes to use language in public speeches which puts her ‘on the side of the angels’ where various social issues are concerned, but it is entirely an advertising campaign of no substance, much resembling the big, clown-like or grimacing smiles she puts on at public events. Many mistakenly associate her with the historic traditions of the liberal left in the older Democratic Party, the kind of traditions Bernie Sanders brought momentarily flickering back to life, although they are in reality now virtually dead in the Democratic Party. Her actual record of behavior, as opposed to her sound bites and slogans, just cannot support that view of her as a liberal or progressive light.

Just to start, Hillary conducted the most corrupt campaign against Bernie Sanders I can recall in my adult lifetime. It included an inappropriate insider relationship with the Chairman of the Party, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who used every opportunity with the press and other means to disadvantage Bernie Sanders. It included voter suppression in a number of states as well as outright vote fraud in a number of others. Academic statistical analysis of the primaries’ data suggests that Bernie Sanders in fact won the nomination.

Search as you might, you will not find a history of Hillary actually being involved, beyond uttering slogans every so often, with social issues. She has no record at all. But her history does very much include such acts as being fired from her early job as a Watergate Committee lawyer for unethical behavior (the man who fired the young lawyer still has his contemporary notes of the event) and, in an early volunteer case, grinding down a 12-year old rape victim about fanaticizing over older men and getting her brutal 42-year old attacker freed, smiling in an interview later that she in fact knew he was guilty.

There is literally a line of women who were her predator husband’s lovers at one time or another who say that Hillary afterwards approached them with threats about keeping their mouths shut. And, perhaps her single clearest achievement on social issues, is her record of enabling her husband to carry on with a convicted pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein, who lives on a private island and keeps a stable of underage girls for the use of visitors. He is a very wealthy man with wealthy friends and arranges large political contributions, so he receives visitors such as Bill. Epstein actually once claimed he co-founded the Clinton Foundation, and he and associates have made large donations, tens of millions. We have a documented record of 28 trips to the island by Bill, and there is no way on earth Hillary wouldn’t know about them. Just as there is no way she could not know about important developments with the Clinton Foundation. She implicitly approved of the relationship with her often seen money-before-morals attitude.

Her husband’s office-leaving pardon of Marc Rich is often regarded as corrupt and having been paid for by Mr. Rich’s family and friends who donated large and continuing sums over time. Mr. Rich had been indicted in New York for tax evasion and fraud, but perhaps the outstanding aspect of his career, as it relates to Hillary and her slogans about social issues, is the way he made a considerable part of his fortune. He smuggled oil to the apartheid government of South Africa over time against international sanctions, and he is said to have made $2 billion doing so. Well, it does seem more than a little hypocritical to have supported a pardon for this man and then today to be giving speeches on someone else’s purported racism, and even to have been photographed, with toe-scrunching smarminess, eating fried chicken with a group of black voters.

We also have the fact of her talking, quite fiercely and recorded on video, about black “super-predators” when she was First Lady. Her husband signed legislation which likely put more young black males in prison than any other piece of legislation. Bill also bragged, as he signed another bill, of ending “welfare as we know it,” again legislation which hit poor black people hard. And, in all these acts, we know he had Hillary’s support. By a great many reports, Bill Clinton never dared do anything major of which his wife disapproved. With his years of flagrant sexual adventures and his need, on more than one political occasion, for her public lies of support when he was caught out, she had a virtual hammer over his head. Besides, Hillary has always regarded herself as having considerable acumen in such policy matters, and hers is a personality type you do not comfortably ignore.

In terms of pure competence, despite her assuming a public air of swaggering competence, her record is simply meagre to poor. We can return to that early instance, her dismissal from the Watergate Investigation for what her boss called unethical conduct and lying. Later, as First Lady, she took over the healthcare portfolio from her husband, the President, with unprecedented arrogance for an unelected person and one holding no formal appointment to office, and she failed badly in the complicated task.

As a Senator from New York, her eight-year record is remarkably undistinguished. Only three bills she sponsored became law, a bill to rename a highway, a bill to re-name a post office building, and a bill to designate a house as a national historic site. As Secretary of State, she of course ran the Benghazi operation which saw an American Ambassador and others killed, and her handling of the families of the dead afterwards, as the bodies were returned, echoes to this day with insensitivity and even brutality. She is deeply resented by family members and accused of lying.

I do believe it would be a difficult task to come up with a more fitting candidate than Hillary Clinton for carrying on the Obama legacy, a legacy of killing in a half dozen lands on behalf of America’s establishment, lying daily, and leaving your own people, the people who elected you with great hopes more than seven years ago, with nothing.

August 30, 2016 Posted by | Corruption | , , | Leave a comment

Refocusing the US Global Change Research Program

By David Wojick | Climate Etc. | August 29, 2016

Our goal here is to begin to articulate a research program into the role of recent long-term natural variability in climate change.

Long-term natural variability has implications for the modeling of future climate changes, on the scale of decades to centuries. It is called dec-cen variability. Dec-cen variability also relates to explaining the climate changes that have occurred over the last century or so. This is what is called the attribution problem; that is, how much of these historical changes are attributable to human activity, versus natural variability?

Our investigations indicate that the $2.5 billion a year US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) is doing very little research of this sort [link]. There is a great deal of research on short-term variability, on the scale of a season to a decade or so. There is also some paleoclimate research looking at long periods of past climate, which may be useful. But there is very little research specifically on near term dec-cen variability, especially in relation to observed climate change over the last century or so.

This lack of research is unfortunate because the attribution problem is clearly the central policy-relevant question in climate change science. The National Academy of Sciences put the importance of attribution very succinctly way back in 1998, in their report titled “Natural Climate Variability on Decade-to-Century Timescales (NAP, 1995). The Preface of the 1998 Report provides a clear statement of the attribution problem:

“The climate change and variability that we experience will be a commingling of the ever changing natural climate state with any anthropogenic change. While we are ultimately interested in understanding and predicting how climate will change, regardless of the cause, an ability to differentiate anthropogenic change from natural variability is fundamental to help guide policy decisions, treaty negotiations, and adaptation versus mitigation strategies. Without a clear understanding of how climate has changed naturally in the past, and the mechanisms involved, our ability to interpret any future change will be significantly confounded and our ability to predict future change severely curtailed.”

In stark contrast, the USGCRP seems to assume that human activity is all that matters and this is a great mistake. For example, semantic analysis of USGCRP annual reports indicates that their attention is heavily weighted to what is called “anthropogenic global warming” or AGW. Then too, analysis of NSF research awards under the program that arguably anchors the USGCRP indicates that the vast majority of awards are directed at short-term variability, typically on a scale from a season to a decade. Modeling makes up a great deal of climate research and it too looks to be biased toward AGW. It might even be argued that AGW-based modeling dominates climate change science.

In contrast to the above, it is entirely possible that much, perhaps most, of the climate change observed over the last century or so is natural. We simply do not know because the crucial research is not being done. This central question is the attribution problem.

Our Proposal:

The USGCRP needs to be expanded or redirected to look deeply into the attribution problem. Here is our candidate list of research topics for a research program on recent long-term natural variability.

1) Low climate sensitivity to CO2 increases. Recent research suggests that climate sensitivity is much lower than most models assume.

2) Sun-climate mechanisms, especially indirect effects. Several indirect solar effects have been proposed.

3) Natural oscillations (ENSO, AMO, PDO, etc.). The role of these natural oscillations in recent long-term climate variation should be a major USGCRP research area.

4) Ocean circulation (upwelling, Gulf Stream, conveyor belt, etc.). Changes in ocean circulation are thought to be able to produce large rapid temperature changes. What role they play in recent long-term changes needs to be determined.

5) Long-term natural variations (Little Ice Age, Medieval Warm Period, etc.). We need to know if climate oscillates naturally on the decade to millennial scale.

6) Negative feedbacks (Lindzen’s Iris, convection, etc.). The climate models generally do not include strong negative feedbacks, but these have been proposed.

7) Chaotic oscillations. Climate is known to be chaotic on relatively small time scales. Whether it is on larger scales needs to be investigated. It might explain the long-term natural variations.

8) Alternative model parameterizations and assumptions.

9) Other hypotheses and new approaches.

10) Modeling the above. (It will be important to do new modeling, to explore these various processes and hypotheses, and their potential role in recent long-term climate change.)

Congress and the USGCRP should work together to develop and fund this Dec-cen Research Program.

August 30, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

US Cultural Colonisation in Asia Pacific

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By Joseph Thomas | New Eastern Outlook | August 30, 2016

Ancient Roman historian Tacitus (c. AD 56 – after 117) would adeptly describe the systematic manner in which Rome pacified foreign peoples and the manner in which it would extend its sociocultural and institutional influence over conquered lands.

Far from simple military conquest, the Romans engaged in sophisticated cultural colonisation.

In chapter 21 of his book Agricola, named so after his father-in-law whose methods of conquest were the subject of the text, Tacitus would explain:

His object was to accustom them to a life of peace and quiet by the provision of amenities. He therefore gave official assistance to the building of temples, public squares and good houses. He educated the sons of the chiefs in the liberal arts, and expressed a preference for British ability as compared to the trained skills of the Gauls. The result was that instead of loathing the Latin language they became eager to speak it effectively. In the same way, our national dress came into favour and the toga was everywhere to be seen. And so the population was gradually led into the demoralizing temptation of arcades, baths and sumptuous banquets. The unsuspecting Britons spoke of such novelties as ‘civilization’, when in fact they were only a feature of their enslavement.

Compare what Tacitus wrote nearly 2,000 years ago with the United States’ Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative (YSEALI). Upon the YSEALI website, a description of the programme reads:

Launched in 2013, the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative (YSEALI) is U.S. government’s signature program to strengthen leadership development and networking in Southeast Asia. Through a variety of programs and engagements, including U.S. educational and cultural exchanges, regional exchanges, and seed funding, YSEALI seeks to build the leadership capabilities of youth in the region, strengthen ties between the United States and Southeast Asia, and nurture an ASEAN community. YSEALI focuses on critical topics identified by youth in the region: civic engagement, environment and natural resources management, and entrepreneurship and economic development.

At face value, the notion of the United States “training” the “leaders” of Asia makes little sense, considering such training would be endowing such leaders with American values serving American interests, not Asia’s. Thus, their role as “leaders” is questionable. Their role as “facilitators” or “collaborators” seems like a much more accurate description.

The programme includes academic and professional fellowships to the United States.

The Academic Fellows Program is described as:

The YSEALI Academic Fellows Program brings undergraduates or recently graduated students between the ages of 18 and 25 to the United States for a five-week institute held on the campus of a U.S. college or university.

These five week institutes, held on the campus of a U.S. university or college, will include an academic residency, leadership development, an educational study tour, local community service activities, and opportunities to engage with American peers. The program will conclude in Washington, D.C., to allow for engagement with policymakers, governmental representatives, businesses, and think tanks.

This, quite literally, is the modern day version of what Tacitus described in his writings nearly 2,00 years ago, where the US is educating the youth of Southeast Asian states in the liberal arts, indoctrinating them into networks built to establish, maintain and expand American hegemony, encouraging an expressed preference for American culture, values and institutions while placing those of their homelands as subordinate.

It is interesting to note that “think tanks” are mentioned as part of the YSEALI experience. Those familiar with the board of directors and corporate sponsors of these think tanks will understand that it is within their halls, unelected policymakers representing immense corporate and financial interests, create foreign and domestic policy that is implemented regardless of who the American people vote into office and regardless of whether the American people agree with such policies or not, saying nothing of whether such policies even benefit the American people.

Those partaking in the YSEALI will likely believe they are at the cutting edge of “democracy,” while in fact, they are instead becoming extra weight behind the bludgeoner of dictatorial corporate special interests.

The Professional Fellows Program is described as:

The YSEALI Professional Fellows Program gives participants ages 25-35 the opportunity to spend five weeks in the United States, including four weeks working directly with American counterparts in individually tailored work placements with non-profit organizations, state and local government, and private-sector offices across the country. During these placements, Fellows build their practical expertise, leadership skills, and professional networks. 

The Professional Fellows Program places young Asians at work places in areas including economic empowerment, environmental sustainability, legislative process and governance/civic engagement and civil society and NGO (nongovernmental organisation) development.

Just as the Roman Empire did two millennia ago, the United States is today recruiting cadres of young people from across Southeast Asia, indoctrinating them into America’s hegemonic networks and sending these cadres back to their home countries to culturally colonise them.

Instead of building up media platforms, institutions and NGOs based on local values, culture and the best interests of the people living in Southeast Asia, these cadres, with “seed funding” provided through both the US State Department and the YSEALI itself, will be building networks that serve US special interests, locked directly into the very institutions and networks YSEALI alumni met and worked with during their various fellowships.

Empire has not died. It has simply evolved, with much of that evolution being superficial and the underlying networks and methods remaining nearly indistinguishable to those employed by the Romans, British and even by 19th century American “Manifest Destiny.”

Empire has not died because the fundamental aspects of human nature; greed, the need to dominate, avarice and all other negative qualities associated with absolute power corrupting absolutely have not changed.  No matter how progressive the US attempts to dress up its “fellowships,” the YSEALI and other programmes like it will continue to be spoken of  by those who are drawn into them as “civilisation” when in fact they are only a “feature of their enslavement.”

Joseph Thomas is chief editor of Thailand-based geopolitical journal, The New Atlas.

August 30, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | | Leave a comment

Hillary and the Clinton Foundation: Exemplars of America’s Political Rot

By Eric Draitser | CounterPunch | August 29, 2016

Hillary Clinton may be enjoying a comfortable lead in national polls, but she is far from enjoying a comfortable night’s sleep given the ever-widening maelstrom of scandals engulfing her presidential bid.  And while Clinton delights in bloviating about a decades-long “vast, right wing conspiracy” against her, the fact is that it’s the Clinton political machine’s long and storied track record of criminality, duplicity, and corruption that haunts her like Lincoln’s ghost silently skulking through White House bedrooms.

The latest in a string of embarrassing scandals is centered on the powerful Clinton Foundation, and the obvious impropriety of its acceptance of large donations from foreign governments (and wealthy individuals connected to them), especially those governments universally recognized as oppressive dictatorships whose foreign policy orientation places them squarely in the US orbit.

Of particular note are the Gulf monarchies such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar whose massive donations belie the fact that their oppression of women runs contradictory to Clinton’s self-styled ‘feminism’ and belief “that the rights of women and girls is the unfinished business of the 21st Century.” Is collaborating with feudal monarchies whose subjugation of women is the stuff of infamy really Clinton’s idea of feminism? Or, is it rather that Clinton merely uses issues such as women’s rights as a dog whistle for loyal liberals while groveling before the high councilors of the imperial priesthood?

What the Clinton Foundation hullabaloo really demonstrates is that Clinton’s will to power is single-minded, entirely simpatico with the corruption of the military-industrial-financial-surveillance complex; that she is a handmaiden for, and member of, the ruling establishment; that Clinton represents the marriage of all the worst aspects of the political class. In short, Clinton is more than just corrupt, she is corruption personified.

Clinton’s Dirty Dealing and Even Dirtier Laundry

In a hilariously pig-headed, but rather telling, statement, former President Bill Clinton responded to allegations of impropriety with the Clinton Foundation by saying, “We’re trying to do good things… If there’s something wrong with creating jobs and saving lives, I don’t know what it is. The people who gave the money knew exactly what they were doing. I have nothing to say about it except that I’m really proud.”

Leaving aside the fact that such an arrogant comment demonstrates Bill Clinton’s complete contempt for ethics and the basic standards of proper conduct, the salient point is that the argument from the Clintons is that the foundation is inherently good, that it helps people around the world, and that, as such, it can’t possibly be corrupt and unethical. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire – except when it comes to the Clintons who stand proudly enveloped in billowing clouds of smoke swearing up and down that not only is there no fire, but anyone who mentions the existence of flames is both a sexist and Trump-loving Putin stooge.

But indeed there is a fire, and it is raging on the American political scene.  And nowhere is the heat more palpable than in the deserts of the Middle East where wealthy benefactors write massive checks for access to America’s 21st Century Queen of Mean (apologies to Leona Helmsley).

Consider the 2011 sale of $29 billion worth of advanced fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, a gargantuan deal that made the feudal monarchy into an overnight air power.  Were there any doubts as to the uses of the hardware, look no further than the humanitarian nightmare that is Yemen, a country under relentless air war carried out by the Saudis. And, lo and behold, the Saudis had been major contributors to the Clinton Foundation in the years leading up to the sale. And it should be equally unsurprising that just weeks before the deal was finalized, Boeing, the manufacturer of the F-15 jets that were the centerpiece of the massive arms deal, donated $900,000 to the Foundation.

Of course, according to Bubba and Hil, it’s all conspiracy theory to suggest that the Clinton Foundation is essentially a pay-for-play scheme in which large sums of money translate into access to the uppermost echelons of state power in the US. As the International Business Times noted:

The Saudi deal was one of dozens of arms sales approved by Hillary Clinton’s State Department that placed weapons in the hands of governments that had also donated money to the Clinton family philanthropic empire… Under Clinton’s leadership, the State Department approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to 20 nations whose governments have given money to the Clinton Foundation… That figure — derived from the three full fiscal years of Clinton’s term as Secretary of State (from October 2010 to September 2012) — represented nearly double the value of American arms sales made to the those countries and approved by the State Department during the same period of President George W. Bush’s second term.

The Clinton-led State Department also authorized $151 billion of separate Pentagon-brokered deals for 16 of the countries that donated to the Clinton Foundation, resulting in a 143 percent increase in completed sales to those nations over the same time frame during the Bush administration. These extra sales were part of a broad increase in American military exports that accompanied Obama’s arrival in the White House. The 143 percent increase in U.S. arms sales to Clinton Foundation donors compares to an 80 percent increase in such sales to all countries over the same time period.

Additionally, as Glenn Greenwald explained earlier this year,

The Saudi regime by itself has donated between $10 million and $25 million to the Clinton Foundation, with donations coming as late as 2014, as she prepared her presidential run. A group called “Friends of Saudi Arabia,” co-founded “by a Saudi Prince,” gave an additional amount between $1 million and $5 million. The Clinton Foundation says that between $1 million and $5 million was also donated by “the State of Qatar,” the United Arab Emirates, and the government of Brunei. “The State of Kuwait” has donated between $5 million and $10 million.

The sheer dollar amounts are staggering. Perhaps then it comes as no surprise just why nearly every single influential figure in the military-industrial-financial-surveillance complex – from General John Allen to death squad coordinator extraordinaire John Negroponte, from neocon tapeworms such as Max Boot, Robert Kagan, and Eliot Cohen to billionaire barbarocrats like the Koch Brothers, George Soros, and Warren Buffett – is backing Hillary Clinton. Not only is she good for Empire, she’s good for business. And ultimately, that’s what this is all about, isn’t it?

But of course, Hillary’s devotion to the oil oligarchs of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf goes much deeper than simply an exchange of money for weapons. In fact, Hillary is deeply committed to the Saudi royal family’s foreign policy outlook and tactics, in particular the weaponization of terrorism as a means of achieving strategic objectives.

Libya provides perhaps the paragon of Clintonian-Saudi strategy: regime change by terrorism.  Using terror groups linked to Al Qaeda and backed by Saudi Arabia, Clinton’s State Department and the Obama Administration managed to topple the government of Muammar Gaddafi, thereby throwing the former “jewel of Africa” into turmoil and political, economic, and social devastation. To be fair, it was not the Saudis alone involved in fomenting war in Libya, as Hillary’s brothers-from-other-mothers in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates were also directly involved in sowing the seeds of the current chaos in the country.

And of course, this strategic partnership between Clinton and the Gangsters of the Gulf extends far beyond Libya. In Syria, Clinton’s stated policies of regime change and war are aligned with those of Riyadh, Doha, and Abu Dhabi. And, of course, it was during Clinton’s tenure at the State Department that US intelligence was involved in funneling weapons and fighters into Syria in hopes of doing to Syria what had already been done to Libya.

Huma Abedin: Clinton’s Woman in Riyadh

Just in case all the political and financial ties between Clinton and the Gulf monarchies wasn’t enough to make people stop being #WithHer, perhaps the role of her closest adviser might do the trick. Huma Abedin, Clinton’s campaign chief of staff, has long-standing ties to Saudi Arabia, the country where Huma spent her childhood from the age of two. As a Vanity Fair exposé revealed earlier this year:

When Abedin was two years old, the family moved to Jidda, Saudi Arabia, where, with the backing of Abdullah Omar Nasseef, then the president of King Abdulaziz University, her father founded the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, a think tank, and became the first editor of its Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs… After [Abedin’s father] Syed died, in 1993, his wife succeeded him as director of the institute and editor of the Journal, positions she still holds… Abdullah Omar Nasseef, the man who set up the Abedins in Jidda… is a high-ranking insider in the Saudi government and sits on the king’s Shura Council, there are claims that Nasseef once had ties to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda—a charge that he has denied through a spokesman—and that he remains a “major” figure in the Muslim Brotherhood. In his early years as the patron of the Abedins’ journal, Nasseef was the secretary-general of the Muslim World League, which Andrew McCarthy, the former assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the “Blind Sheik,” Omar Abdel Rahman, in the wake of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, claims “has long been the Muslim Brotherhood’s principal vehicle for the international propagation of Islamic supremacist ideology.”

Consider the implications of this information: Clinton’s closest adviser comes from a family connected at the highest levels with the Saudi royal family as well as the Muslim Brotherhood. While right wing pundits portray the Muslim Brotherhood as some sort of straightforward international terror organization, the reality is much more complex as the Brotherhood is more an international political movement whose tentacles stretch into nearly every corner of the Muslim world. Its vast reserves of cash and political influence, backed by Gulf monarchies such as Qatar, allows the Brotherhood to peddle influence throughout the West, while also being connected to more radical salafist elements. An obvious two-for-one for Clinton.

In effect then, Abedin represents a bridge connecting Hillary with both the ruling elites in Riyadh, as well as influential clerics, businesspeople, and political leaders throughout the Middle East. Perhaps then it makes sense why Abedin, in contravention of every standard of ethics, was employed by Teneo Holdings – a pro-Clinton consultancy founded by former Clinton aide Doug Band – while also working for the State Department. Such ethical violations are as instinctive for Hillary as breathing, or calling children superpredators.

Trump, Assange, Putin, and Clinton’s Sleight of Hand

Despite being embroiled in multiple scandals, any one of which being enough to sink the campaign of most other candidates, Clinton and her army of fawning corporate media sycophants, have attempted to deflect attention away from her own misdeeds, corruption, and nefarious ties by instead portraying everyone who opposes them as puppets, stooges, and useful idiots.

Let’s begin with Republican nominee and gasbag deluxe, Donald Trump, who Clinton trolls have attempted to portray as a stooge of Russian President Putin. While it’s indeed quite likely that the Kremlin sees Trump as far less of a threat to Russia’s interests than Clinton – just look at Clinton’s roster of neocon psychopath supporters to see that Putin has a point – the notion that Trump is somehow a creation of Putin, or at the very least is working for him is utterly absurd.

And the “evidence”? Trump’s connections with wealthy Russian oligarchs. I suppose those who have made their homes under rocks these last 25 years might not know this, but nearly every billionaire investor has gone to Russia in that time, forged ties with influential Russians, and attempted to make money by stripping clean the bones of what was once the Soviet Union. Sorry Naomi Klein, I guess the Clintonistas expect no one to have read Shock Doctrine which details the sort of disaster capitalism run amok that took place in Russia in the 1990s.

And then, of course, there’s that great confabulator Julian Assange who has also been smeared as a Putin puppet by the #ImWithHer media somnambulists. I guess the lords of corporate capital didn’t like the fact that Assange and WikiLeaks have managed to expose countless dirty deeds by Clinton’s Tammany Hall of the 21stCentury. From using the DNC as a political appendage of the Clinton campaign (as revealed by the WikiLeaks dump of DNC emails) to his recent promise to make public the “most interesting and serious” dirt on Hillary, Assange has become a thorn in the side – or thumb in the eye, as it were – for Hillary.

And what would a rundown of the specters haunting Clinton’s dreams be without mention of the rabid bear of Russia, big bad Vlad? Clinton recently referred to Putin as the “grand godfather of this global brand of extreme nationalism.” Leaving aside the asinine phraseology, Clinton’s attacks on Putin reveal the weakness of the Democratic nominee, the hollowness of her arguments, and the unmitigated gall of a hypocrite for whom casting stones in glass houses is second nature.

For, at the very moment that she takes rhetorical swipes at Putin, Clinton herself is implicated in a worldwide network of extremism that promotes terrorism, rains death and destruction on millions of innocent civilians, and moves the world closer to global conflict. If Putin represents the éminence grise of a “global brand of extreme nationalism,” then Clinton is the fairy godmother of global extremism and terror. It’s a good thing she has access to the best personal grooming products Goldman Sachs money can buy as it is not easy to wash decades-worth of blood off your hands.

And so, the quadrennial danse macabre that is the US presidential election has turned into an embarrassing sideshow of dull-witted infantilism. But amid the idiocy there is wanton criminality and corruption to be exposed before the world. For while Trump is undoubtedly the bearded lady of America’s freak show, Hillary is the carnival barker.

She knows the ring toss and other games are rigged, but she coaxes the feeble-minded to play nonetheless. She knows the carnies are drunk and reckless, but she urges the children to pay for another ride anyway. She understands that her job is to sell a rigged game, and to call security when someone challenges her lies. And, unfortunately, whether you want it or not, the Hillary Roadshow is coming to a town, or country, near you.

Eric Draitser is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City. You can reach him at ericdraitser@gmail.com.

August 29, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Saudi Prince Demanded US Ground Troops Remove Bashar al-Assad

By Kurt Nimmo | Another Day In The Empire | August 26, 2016

“You can’t simply deal with ISIS and not deal with Assad,” Prince Turki al-Faisal told CBS News in 2014.

The former ambassador to the United States said “if the need” for US ground troops arises in the effort to depose al-Assad he “hopes the president will change his mind.”

Asked if Saudi Arabia would send ground troops, al-Faisal said no way.

”It would be a mistake for the United States, or Great Britain… to send in ground troops and overthrow the Assad regime,” Obama told the BBC in April.

However, around the time Obama made this remark the United States sent 250 ground troops into Syria—in direct violation of that country’s national sovereignty—under the pretense of fighting the Islamic State.

The Saudis scoffed and said the move was little more than “window dressing.”

Asked about a remark by Iran that Saudi Arabia’s participation in the coalition bombing of Syria is illegal, al-Faisal said Iran’s troops on the ground “killing Syrians” is illegal.

The Saudi prince failed to mention that Russia, Syria, Iran, and Iraq formed a coalition to fight the Islamic State in September 2015. The United States was offered to join the coalition but its response was “unconstructive,” according a statement by Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov.

As a former diplomat, al-Faisal is undoubtedly aware of the invitation by Syria, but then we have to keep in mind he was talking to an American television audience that knows virtually nothing about the real situation in Syria.

CBS did not clarify.

That would be a deviation from the script.

August 26, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Lots of Smoke Here, Hillary

By Pat Buchanan • Unz Review • August 26, 2016

Prediction: If Hillary Clinton wins, within a year of her inauguration, she will be under investigation by a special prosecutor on charges of political corruption, thereby continuing a family tradition.

For consider what the Associated Press reported this week:

The surest way for a person with private interests to get a meeting with Secretary of State Clinton, or a phone call returned by her, it seems, was to dump a bundle of cash into the Clinton Foundation.

Of 154 outsiders whom Clinton phoned or met with in her first two years at State, 85 had made contributions to the Clinton Foundation, and their contributions, taken together, totaled $156 million.

Conclusion: Access to Secretary of State Clinton could be bought, but it was not cheap. Forty of the 85 donors gave $100,000 or more. Twenty of those whom Clinton met with or phoned dumped in $1 million or more.

To get to the seventh floor of the Clinton State Department for a hearing for one’s plea, the cover charge was high.

Among those who got face time with Hillary Clinton were a Ukrainian oligarch and steel magnate who shipped oil pipe to Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions and a Bangladeshi economist who was under investigation by his government and was eventually pressured to leave his own bank.

The stench is familiar, and all too Clintonian in character.

Recall. On his last day in office, Jan. 20, 2001, Bill Clinton issued a presidential pardon to financier-crook and fugitive from justice Marc Rich, whose wife, Denise, had contributed $450,000 to the Clinton Library.

The Clintons appear belatedly to have recognized their political peril.

Bill has promised that, if Hillary is elected, he will end his big dog days at the foundation and stop taking checks from foreign regimes and entities, and corporate donors. Cash contributions from wealthy Americans will still be gratefully accepted.

One wonders: Will Bill be writing thank-you notes for the millions that will roll in to the family foundation — on White House stationery?

By his actions, Bill is all but conceding that there is a serious conflict of interest between his foundation raking in millions that enhance the family’s prestige and sustain its travel and lifestyle, while providing its big donors with privileged access to the secretary of state.

Yet if Hillary Clinton becomes president, the scheme is unsustainable. Even the Obama-Clinton media might not be able to stomach this.

And even Clinton seems to be conceding the game is up. “I know there’s a lot of smoke, and there’s no fire,” she said in self-defense this week.

She is certainly right about the smoke.

And if, as Democratic apparatchik Steve McMahon assures us that there is “no smoking gun,” no quid-pro-quo, no open-and-shut case of Secretary Clinton taking official action in gratitude to a donor of the family foundation, how can we predict a special prosecutor?

Answer: We are not at the end of this scandal. We are at what Churchill called the “end of the beginning.”

Missing emails are being unearthed at State, through Freedom of Information Act requests, that are filling out the picture Clinton thought had been blotted out when her 33,000 “private” emails were erased by her lawyers.

Someone out there, Julian Assange, Russia, or the rogue websites doing all this hacking, are believed to have many more explosive emails they are preparing to drop before Election Day.

And why is Clinton keeping her State Department calendar secret from the AP, if it does not contain meetings or calls she does not want to defend? She has defied requests and the AP had to sue to get the schedule of her first two years at State.

Moreover, the AP story on the State Department-Clinton Foundation links was so stunning it is sure to trigger follow-up by investigative journalists who can smell a Pulitzer.

Then there are the contacts between Huma Abedin, her closest aide at State, and Doug Band at the Clinton Foundation, the go-betweens for the donor-Clinton meetings, which has opened a new avenue for investigators.

These were unearthed by Judicial Watch, which is not going away.

The number of persons of interest involved in this suppurating scandal, which has gone from an illicit server, to a panoply of Clinton lies to the public that disgusted the FBI director, to erased emails, to “pay for play,” and now deep into the Clinton Foundation continues to grow.

All that is needed now, to bring us to an independent counsel, is calls for the FBI to reopen and broaden its investigation in light of all that has been revealed since Director Comey said there was not evidence enough to recommend an indictment.

If Clinton controls the Justice Department, calls for a special prosecutor will be resisted, but only until public demand becomes too great.

For there were independent counsels called in Watergate, Iran-Contra and the scandals that led to the impeachment of Bill Clinton.

Hillary Clinton says there is no fire. But something is causing all that smoke.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the new book “The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority.”

Copyright 2016 Creators.com.

August 26, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Colombia: Peace in the Shadow of the Death Squads

By Daniel Kovalik | CounterPunch | August 25, 2016

As the Colombian government and left-wing FARC rebels near the signing of a comprehensive peace accord, and though they have already signed a bi-lateral ceasefire which is largely holding, Colombia is still suffering from the worst human rights abuses in the Western Hemisphere. These abuses are being carried out by right-wing paramilitary groups (aka, death squads), which the U.S. and Colombian governments conveniently deny even exist.

These paramilitary groups, in accord with their long-time friend and ally, former President Alvaro Uribe, are openly and aggressively opposed to the peace accords, and will most certainly escalate their violence as a national referendum which will be held to ratify, or reject, these accords draws near.   Thus, as Insight Crime recently reported, the Colombian Electoral Observation Mission (MOE) estimates that nearly 250 municipalities (or more than 25% of the 1,105 municipalities in all of Colombia) “are at risk of violence or fraud affecting the referendum on an anticipated peace deal” with the FARC. The departments of Choco, Arauca, Cauca and Putumayo – that is, departments with heavy concentrations of Afro-Colombians and indigenous – are among the departments with the greatest risk. Antioquia, the department of Alvaro Uribe who was governor there, has the greatest number of municipalities at risk.

Meanwhile, the paramilitaries are already exploiting the opportunity presented by the FARC’s ceasefire to gain territory and exact more advantage for the economic elites – both domestic and foreign – which they serve.

For starters, Colombia again, according to the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), suffered more assassinations of trade unionists than any country on earth in 2015, and therefore earned its spot as one of the 10 worst countries in the world for workers’ rights. As the ITUC explains in its annual report: “Trade unionists have been murdered with impunity for decades in Colombia. In 2015, 20 murders of trade unionists were recorded in Colombia – the highest number in any country.” And, not surprisingly, it is the paramilitaries who are carrying out such assassinations in the interest of capital.

In addition, 35 human rights defenders have already been killed in the first half of 2016.  This is an incredible figure.   Indeed, according to Colombia’s El Espectador, this year has been “one of the most violent in regards to the murder of human rights defenders and land claimants,” with the paramilitaries being the perpetrators of these crimes. Indeed, one of the chief perpetrators of the violence, particularly against those advocating for the return of land stolen during the armed conflict, is the paramilitary group known as the “Anti-Restitution of Land Army.” This group has been reinvigorated by the release from jail of infamous paramilitary leader Jose Gregorio Mongonez Lugo, also known as “Carlos Scissors.” He was responsible in the first place for the violent theft of land in the banana region of Magdelena, Colombia, and has now returned to make sure that it is not given back to its rightful owners.

All of this bodes very badly for the prospects of peace in Colombia. And indeed, one of Colombia’s great human rights defenders, Father Javier Giraldo, S.J., recently penned a sobering piece on this very subject, entitled, “Peace in Colombia?” This article was translated by the Colombia Support Network, and is well-worth a read, especially as you will never hear a voice such as his in the mainstream press.

As Father Giraldo opines, despite the progress of the peace talks in Havana which are quickly nearing a conclusion, “the country is profoundly polarized by the growth and the growing power of extreme right-wing forces.  It appears as if the forces of the Cold War are coming back to life, powered by the monstrous economic strength of multinational businesses that are rapidly defending their exclusionary interests, using their extremely powerful resources.”

Father Giraldo rightly notes that the Colombian government, while paying lip-service to peace, in fact seeks the surrender and ultimate destruction of both the guerillas as well as Colombia’s peaceful forces for social change. As he explains:

… the methods of persuasion that have been used to promote the peace agreements rely mostly on the practical impossibility of achieving social change by means of armed conflict, given the gigantic and overwhelming military power of the government, supported by the imperial power with the greatest destructive reach in the recent history of humanity: the United States. . . . President Santos has instead, above all, on a peace that will benefit business leaders and transnational investors, who will be able to intensify their extraction of natural resources. But meanwhile his government represses with cruel violence the social protests of communities affected by the ecological and social destruction that has been caused and continues to be caused by these multinational companies.

Father Giraldo then expresses a seldom-uttered truth which I have certainly learned upon my numerous trips to Colombia in the past 17 years – that while the paramilitaries oppose the peace process because it will grant some immunity for rebels, the “popular movements feel more fear of the impunity of the powerful and of the paramilitaries and the agents of the government, whose war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide greatly exceed, both in quality and in cruelty, the crimes of the insurgency.”

And, it is the impunity for the right-wing paramilitaries, who now control large swaths of the Colombian government, which is nearly total. And again, this impunity is made  possible by the Colombian and U.S. governments’ denial of the very existence of the paramilitaries, as well as the mainstream media’s near total silence about Colombia and its horrible human rights situation – certainly the worst in the Western Hemisphere. If peace in Colombia has any chance of succeeding, it will need to be supported and cultivated by people of good will throughout the world who are willing to tell the truth about Colombia and who are willing to provide accompaniment to the peace process.

Daniel Kovalik teaches International Human Rights at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.

August 25, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Guns sold, guns lost: What Pentagon sent to Iraq & Afghanistan after 9/11

RT | August 24, 2016

Since September 2001, the Pentagon has listed $40 billion worth of contracts for small arms intended for Afghanistan and Iraq, supplying 1.45 million guns to both countries while only accounting for 3 percent of them, says a new report by a British NGO.

The London-based nonprofit Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) pored over 14 years’ worth of contracts issued by the US Department of Defense, documenting the purchases of small arms – defined as anything under 30mm in caliber – ammunition and attachments, such as sniper scopes or tripods. They found a massive amount of weapons supplied by the US to the primary theaters of the “War on Terror,” and remarkably little accounting of whose hands they ended up in.

“Our findings raise concerns about the DOD’s own transparency and accountability when it comes to issuing contracts,” Iain Overton, AOAV’s director of investigations, said when announcing the report’s publication Wednesday.

Not only has the Pentagon’s contract database listed only 3 percent of the approximately 1.45 million small arms sent to Iraq and Afghanistan over the years, “we also know the US government has acknowledged they don’t know where many of these weapons now are,” Overton added.

A team of AOAV researchers spent almost a year looking into every contract published by the Pentagon between September 11, 2001 and September 10, 2015, said the organization, whose mission is “research and advocacy in order to reduce the incidence and impact of global armed violence.”

What they found was just over $40 billion of solicitations for small arms, ammunition and attachments, with just under $20 billion actually paid out to contractors. Of the 412 published contracts, 137 – or 33 percent – contained errors and discrepancies.

Ten companies accounted for 65 percent of the total published contract values, the researchers found. The top five contractors were Alliant Techsystems – now split into OrbitalATK and Vista Outdoor – DRS Technologies, BAE Systems Inc., Knight’s Armament Co, and General Dynamics. The largest single contract was for the modernization of Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in Independence, Missouri, worth up to $8.48 billion.

Some 949,582 small arms were sent to Iraq, and another 503,328 to Afghanistan, amounting to 1,452,910 assault and sniper rifles, pistols, machine guns and other unspecified firearms. Yet the Department of Defense contract publications listed only 19,602 of these weapons, just over 1 percent of the total. When AOAV pressed for verification, the DOD provided itemized lists for 719,474 weapons provided through June 2016.

The numbers “tell the story of two wars that did not go as pitched,” veteran military correspondent CJ Chivers wrote in the New York Times Magazine, commenting on AOAV’s findings.

The retired Marine and author of The Gun also filled in a piece of the puzzle the researchers missed by not counting the grenade launchers and anti-tank weapons provided by the Pentagon.

“The data offer no insight into a startlingly risky aspect of the Pentagon’s arming of local forces with infantry arms: the wide distribution of anti-armor weapons, including RPG-7s,” Chivers wrote.

After the first few weeks of each war, the only armor on either battlefield was either American or allied, “which made the Pentagon’s practice of providing anti-armor weapons to Afghan and Iraqi security forces puzzling,” Chivers wrote. “Why would they need anti-armor weapons when they had no armor to fight? All the while rockets were somehow mysteriously being fired at American convoys and patrols in each war.”

August 24, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Clinton gets more donations from arms industry: Report

Press TV – August 24, 2016

American weapon manufacturers have made bigger contributions to the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, a major turnaround after years of backing the Republican ticket.

According to a report by Politico released on Wednesday, Clinton has received more donations from high-ranking employees of giant Pentagon contractors like Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics, outperforming her GOP rival Donald Trump by a 5-to-1 ratio.

According to filings with the Federal Election Committee, Trump’s campaign has banked nearly $55,000 in contributions from executives of the 25 major defense contractors, compared to $273,000 given to Clinton.

This marks a significant break from the years-old habit of supporting the Republican candidate. In fact, the arms industry has teamed with Republican congressional and presidential candidates in eight of the past 10 election cycles.

In the 2012 election cycle, for example, then-Republican nominee Mitt Romney received far more support from military contractors, compared to President Barack Obama.

Analysts attribute the change to Trump’s stance on national security, including his criticism of NATO and other military allies.

The real estate mogul said in late July that if he is elected president, the US would only aid the allies who have “fulfilled their obligations to us.”

The New York businessman has also blasted military contractors for the way they influence government spending.

Clinton, however, made a reputation for having good relations with military contractors during her run in the US Senate, where she served on the Armed Services Committee.

“I’ve worked with Republicans and Democrats of all stripes over the years, and it’s the first time I’ve seen one who scares the hell out of me if he were to become president,” said Linda Hudson, who once headed the US branch of British arms provider BAE Systems, which is the Pentagon’s eighth largest contractor.

One Republican defense lobbyist told Politico that the arms manufacturing “community is just much more comfortable with Clinton.”

“With Hillary Clinton we have some sense of where she would go, and with Trump we have none,” the lobbyist said. “He knows nothing about the system.”

August 24, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Obamacare Supporters Oppose ColoradoCare

By Renee Parsons | CounterPunch | August 24, 2016

As the nation’s largest health insurance companies scale back  participation in  Obamacare (aka Affordable Care Act) creating what insurance jargon refers to as a death spiral, it was only a matter of time before state Democratic leaders and their agents announced their opposition to ColoradoCare (Amendment 69), a medicare-for-all health care system that will appear on the statewide November 8th ballot.

State Democratic establishment leaders who had already announced their opposition to ColoradoCare include Governor John Hickenlooper, former Governor Bill Ritter and Senator Michael Bennett who is running for re-election.

In an effort to salvage what is left of the President’s most significant (and perhaps only) legislative achievement as Obamacare struggles for relevance, ProgressNow Colorado (PN) held a press conference on August 17th (“ProgressNow Colorado Opposes Amendment 69, Calls For Nationwide Health Reform”) to announce their opposition to CC.

Featured speaker at the PN news conference was State House Majority Leader Cristina Duran, considered a ‘rising star’ who recently spoke on behalf of Hillary Clinton at the Democratic National Convention.   In 2016, it has been reported that Duran received campaign contributions from at least a dozen special interest groups associated with the health insurance industry.

In addition, Colorado NARAL joined the PN news event, again voicing their opposition to CC.   The lack of availability for abortions is what keeps NARAL functioning. The obvious irony is that if CC is adopted (which will allow abortions), NARAL’s raison d’etre will cease to exist and they will be able to close their doors.

Since it is essential for the President to have a functioning Affordable Care Act to top his Legacy List of accomplishments, it would be foolishly naïve to believe that the DNC’s fingerprints are not all over the opposition to ColoradoCare.

As the state’s ‘largest on line environmental and advocacy organization,’ the PN Colorado’s website identifies its vision to “act as a public relations shop promoting progressive ideals while pushing back on bad policies and bad behavior…”   The archives of PN press releases reveals the organization acting as a thinly-veiled extension of the neo-liberal Democratic party as a pr flack rather than an issue-oriented, independent thinking progressive organization focused on societal concerns of Colorado citizens.

Curiously, the PN press release called for “nationwide healthcare reform” but isn’t that what the Democrats offered as the Affordable Care Act in 2010?

Since March, 2012, PN has issued twenty press releases solely dedicated to the benefits of Obamacare including “Colorado Progressives Celebrate Upholding of Obamacare” (June 28, 2012) and “Colorado Progressives Celebrate Another Big Obamacare Victory”  (June 25, 2015).

In retrospect, it is now apparent that any mention of CC’s successful petition drive with 156,000 submitted signatures in October, 2015 was a deliberate omission by PN. Even as ‘Petitions Delivered Let CU Students Attend GOP Debate” earned a press release from PN on October 22, 2015,  the CC ability to secure a place on the 2016 ballot  (November 9, 2015), no small feat, was not applauded by the PN.

State Senator Irene Aquilar (also a doctor), one of the authors of CC, said that when “Organizations mislabeled as ‘progressive’ choose to support the status quo, choose moneyed influence over the lives of the 535 Coloradans who die each year because of lack of health care, it makes me angry.”

As the Colorado Democratic party has exposed its true nature; willing to choose narrow political gain and greed over the long-term health of their citizens, they have revealed little social conscience, except when its suits their partisan agenda.

But what do we expect from a party that has opened its doors to Wall Street money, big business that continues to send American jobs abroad, trade agreements that undermine a nation’s sovereignty, pro war neo cons, drone attacks on civilians, support for the MISI (military-intelligence-surveillance industry) and other corporate globalist leeches that care nothing about our native country or its citizens.

Originally dubbed in 2010 by the President as ‘comprehensive health reform’ and given the Act’s controversial nature throughout its short legislative life, it should come as no surprise that success of the Act relied on competition between insurance companies [and] has failed abysmally. The Act was never a panacea to provide health care; it was always a vehicle to provide insurance to cover health care costs. Therein lies a big difference between Obamacare and CC.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, competition among insurance companies will be completely absent in five states (Alabama, Alaska, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wyoming).

In what promises to be a futile attempt at a legislative fix, the Democrats have come up with a ‘reinsurance’ scheme to cover insurance industry losses while attempting to cover the cost of individual coverage. The mounting evidence, however, confirms that the politics of statutory resuscitation is formidable, if not impossible.

Apparently no one at the White House realized how many sick Americans there are, how expensive it would be to provide them with insurance coverage and that healthy Americans would prefer to take the risk and pay the penalty rather than pay double digit premium increases and exorbitant deductibles. Who did not see that coming?

Who believed that younger, healthier Americans would jump at the chance to sign up, take on health care debt on top of student loan debt – just to impress the President they had supported in 2008? My faith in the millennial generation is restored knowing they have the smarts to put the numbers together.

Some of those departing big leaguers who are abandoning their health care customers due to lack of profits include Aetna which covered 900,000 people in fifteen states and has announced a cut back to four states and suffered a loss of $300 M; Humana is cutting back its coverage from 1,350 counties to 156; Blue Cross lost $715 M in just three states and the nation’s largest health care insurance company, UnitedHealthGroup lost $450 M in 2015  and is cutting back to three states.

In late July, the Department of Justice filed suit to prevent the Humana – Aetna and the Cigna – Anthem mergers from taking place. By mid August, Aetna and Anthem informed the DOJ that they would totally pull out of Obamacare unless their mergers were approved. Any bets on whether these mergers will go forward after the Presidential election?

To date, 70% of the original Obamacare insurance participants have backed out because of financial problems with only seven of the original twenty three insurance providers still offering policies.

Those insurance companies not exiting the marketplace have announced premiums with a nationwide average increase of 24% that is not affordable for many families and yet many Americans have an urgent need for health care.

With a $600,000 bank balance, CC is up against what looks like a omnipotent wall of opposition not limited to such community-minded organizations as the Sheet Metal Workers Union, the Denver Center for Performing Arts, the Colorado Black Chamber of Commerce and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, all of which chose to publicly oppose the CC rather than remain in the background and thus support their fellow citizens who need reliable, affordable health care.

Meanwhile the main opposition group, Coloradans for Coloradans, which crowed about the Democrats joining the opposition, have collected $1 M from Anthem, $450,000 from UnitedHealthCare Services, Healthone Systems and Centura Health $250,000 each, Cigna Health $100,000, PHRMA $100,000, the Colorado Association of Realtors $100,000 and so forth – you might imagine the rest of the list.

Contributions from some of the very same insurance companies that have either pulled out or are dramatically scaling back their participation is indicative of how corporations can afford to sit and wait – until the Federal government sweetens the pot for their re-entry into the healthcare marketplace.

In addition, the Koch Brothers Americans for Prosperity are partners with the Democrats in pummeling  Amendment 69 into the ground. This may be the first time that the Koch Brothers and the Democratic party have officially and publicly lined up on the same issue, excluding campaign contributions.

If the Democrats (along with the medical care/health insurance industrial complex and Koch Bros) succeed in defeating CC, they can expect to take the blame for depriving Colorado citizens of an alternative to Obamacare which will predictably continue its spiral.

If, by some miracle of divine intervention, Colorado voters approve Amendment 69, they are telling the Obama Administration that they have no faith in the President’s Affordable Care Act, no faith in the Federal government to fix it  and no faith in the Democratic party to protect the public interest.

Renee Parsons has been a member of the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist and staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She can be found on Twitter @reneedove31

August 24, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Economics | , , , | Leave a comment

Sanders’ Dubious Our Revolution Initiative

By Stephen Lendman | August 24, 2106

He’s no more a progressive revolutionary than any other member of Congress, nor Washington’s bipartisan criminal class, bureaucrats included – Sanders a card-carrying member throughout his deplorable political career.

Endorsing Hillary Clinton after rhetorically campaigning against what she represents exposed his duplicity – a progressive in name only. An opportunist for his own self-interest, he wants his extended 15 minutes of fame made more long-lasting.

Claiming his new initiative “will fight to transform America and advance the progressive agenda (he) believe(s) in” belies his deplorable House and Senate voting records, on the wrong side of most major issues, especially supporting most US wars of aggression.

A separate Sanders Institute intends operating like his Our Revolution initiative. Maybe his real aim is cashing in on his high-profile persona – including a new book due out in mid-November titled “Our Revolution: A Future To Believe In.”

Save your money. Its contents are clear without reading it – the same mumbo jumbo rubbish he used while campaigning.

It excludes his deplorable history of promising one thing, doing another, going along with Washington scoundrels like Hillary to get along, betraying his loyal supporters – the real Sanders he wants concealed.

On August 24, the New York Times said his Our Revolution initiative “has been met with criticism and controversy over its financing and management.”

It’s “draw(ing) from the same pool of ‘dark money’ (he) condemned” while campaigning. After his former campaign manager Jeff Weaver was hired to lead the group, “the majority of its staff resigned,” said The Times – described as “eight core staff members…”

“The group’s entire organizing department quit this week, along with people working in digital and data positions.” They refused to reconsider after Sanders urged them to stay on.

A major concern is the group’s tax status as a 501(c)(4) organization able to get large donations from anonymous sources – meaning the usual ones buying influence, letting Sanders pretend to be progressive and revolutionary while operating otherwise.

Claire Sandberg was the initiative’s organizing director. “I left and others left because we were alarmed that Jeff (Weaver) would mismanage this organization as he mismanaged the campaign,” she explained.

She fears Weaver will “betray its core purpose by accepting money from billionaires and not remaining grassroots funded and plowing that billionaire cash into TV instead of investing it in building a genuine movement.”

Vermont GOP vice chairman Brady Toensing blasted Sanders for “preach(ing) transparency and then tr(ying) to set up the most shadowy of shadowy fund-raising organization to support” what he claims to endorse.

“What I’m seeing here is a senator who is against big money in politics, but only when” it applies to others, not himself, Toensing added.

Campaign Legal Center’s Paul S. Ryan said “(t)here are definitely some red flags with respect to the formation of this group…We’re in a murky area.”

Is Sanders’ real aim self-promotion and enrichment? Is his Our Revolution more a scheme than an honest initiative?

Is it sort of like the Clinton Foundation, Sanders wanting to grab all he can – only much less able to match the kind of super-wealth Bill and Hillary amassed?

Stephen Lendman can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.

August 24, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

The Clinton and Powell War Criminal Charade

By Margaret Kimberley | Black Agenda Report | August 24, 2016

Despite her best efforts and those of her friends in the corporate media, Hillary Clinton cannot escape her email scandal. In an attempt to comingle her responsibilities as secretary of state with her influence peddling at the Clinton Foundation, she used a private server to conduct all of her official, classified government duties.

Hillary Clinton is quite a liar but she was never a very good one. It was only a matter of time before her use of the private email server came to light. She was fortunate to have Barack Obama let her off the hook. Her only punishment was public criticism from the FBI director who nonetheless said that he would prosecute anyone else who did the same thing.

Yet the story is still highly problematic at this stage in her presidential campaign. So much so that damage control was in order. Clintonite courtier and author Joe Conason volunteered to help by shoving former secretary of state Colin Powell under a bus. Conason coincidentally released excerpts from his soon to be published biography of Bill Clinton at just the right moment. It is interesting that the New York Times uses the passive voice in discussing its role in the saga, “The New York Times received an advance copy.” In the nick of time Conason gave his friends an advance copy of the book to repeat Clinton’s claim that Powell made her do wrong.

The gangsterish “no honor among war criminals” back stabbing shouldn’t make anyone feel badly for Powell. As secretary of state in the George W. Bush administration Powell kidnapped Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and sent him into exile. Colin Powell made the most important public case for invading Iraq and the subsequent killing of one million people.

At a now infamous United Nations presentation he lied to the entire world about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Using nothing but aerial photographs and a laboratory vial as a dramatic prop he claimed to have proof of chemical weapons production. United Nations inspectors had discovered nothing of the kind despite numerous visits to Iraq, but no matter. Powell was the public face of regime change and mass death.

The Conason version of events is also telling in a way that the author may not have intended. Conason and Clinton say that Powell dispensed his sage advice at a dinner party hosted by Madeleine Albright. Not only were Albright, Powell and Clinton in attendance but so were Condoleezza Rice and Henry Kissinger. It was a reunion of war criminals past and present. The gathering is proof that there is always foreign policy continuity from president to president, whether Democrat or Republican.

While millions of people agonize over presidential campaigns and stridently make the case for their choice, foreign policy decisions differ very little no matter which party is in the White House. That much is obvious to anyone who pays attention but the gathering of the in-crowd at Albright’s house ought to get as much attention as Clinton using Powell for cover.

When the story first broke Powell said he had “no recollection” of the conversation. But he is a “made” man in the foreign policy/ruling class mafia and realized he had to stick with the rest of the gang. So he had a different response 24 hours later. He conceded that he told Clinton his limited personal email use “transformed communications” in the State Department. It doesn’t matter because rules became far more strict by the time Clinton took office. Her actions were clearly a violation of the law. The last gasp effort to put Powell’s name in her mess is obviously borne of desperation.

Of course Powell is human and the Clintonian lies still rankle. He was somewhat peevish even after seeming to make peace with the rest of the gangsters. “Her people have been trying to pin it on me,” he whined. “The truth is she was using [the private email server] for a year before I sent her a memo and telling her what I did.” When asked to explain why he was the subject of Hillary’s finger pointing, Powell made an obvious point. “Why do you think?” He then added a lie of his own. “It doesn’t bother me. But it’s OK. I’m free.”

Obviously the blame Colin game does bother him. How could it not? But Colin Powell’s history of his own lies makes it hard for him to be the object of sympathy. Even in giving his version of events he lets his co-criminal off the hook with “her people” pinning the blame. The underlings get Colin’s wrath but the rules of omerta prevent him from mentioning the true culprit by name.

The back and forth between Clinton and Powell is misdirection for the naïve. None of these people are worthy of trust and none of them can ever come out looking very good. The two mass murderers are behaving true to form and Conason represents the corporate media lackeys who always find a powerful person to latch onto. They make connections and money with their high profile patrons and present their collusion as if it were truly journalism.

The public have to thank a right wing organization, Judicial Watch, for keeping Hillary on the hot seat. Their lawsuit resulted in a federal judge ordering Clinton to respond to their questions in writing and the last minute repeat of blaming Powell had to be resurrected.

The fact that a right wing group is bringing the dirt to light shouldn’t dissuade anyone else from using it against Hillary Clinton. If progressives were truly progressive they would have dumped her long ago. Instead she is the meal ticket du jour for NGOs, the black misleadership class of politicians and civil rights organizations and others beholden to Democratic Party success to stay on the gravy train.

To a person, the guests at Albright’s soiree are among the worst people on the planet. All have a horrendous body count on their ledgers. Kissinger killed millions of people in raining destruction upon Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Madeleine Albright said it was “worth it” to kill thousands of Iraqi children through the use of sanctions, Powell has Haiti and Iraq on his bloody resume, Rice was always a true believer in regime change and Hillary Clinton made the case for destroying Libya and then moving on to do the same to Syria.

Of course any of them would use the other to get out of jail free. None of them are worthy of respect or should be thought of in any positive light. The people in charge of American foreign policy are, to a person, killers for hire and should be thought of in the same vein as mob hit men and women. No one should cry for Colin Powell or vote for Hillary Clinton either. The two criminals certainly deserve one another.

Margaret Kimberley can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

August 24, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

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