Mysterious Hillary Emailgate Whistleblower & FBI’s Apparent Decades-Long Cover-Up Ploy
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 30.10.2020
The Hunter Biden scandal recently propelled by the Trump campaign has much in common with the controversy surrounding the Clintons, Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel says, shedding light on a story of a mysterious high-profile whistleblower who was apparently ignored by the FBI in 2016.
Days before The New York Post dropped a bomb on the Bidens alleging that the Democratic presidential contender and his son were involved into a “pay-to-play” scheme, former CIA analyst Larry Johnson and Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel published two separate stories about a neglected State Department whistleblower who informed the FBI about the potential harm to US national interests posed by Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified data in January 2016.
High-Profile Whistleblower’s Report Overlooked by Comey
The whistleblower’s letter dated 10 January 2016 was sent to then-FBI chief Jim Comey. It detailed how the ex-secretary of state used her unclassified server system to conduct government business, thus exposing US secret intelligence information, and suggested that her entourage and other government officials were aware of that the entire time.
In addition to this, the whistleblower, who, according to the document, had served in the Armed Forces and the Department of State for many years, provided specific recommendations as to who the bureau needed to interview in order to get further evidence and expressed willingness to testify before the agency officials having “certain TS/SCI clearances.”
After sending the letter on 10 January, the individual in question personally visited the FBI’s premises in Washington on 27 January 2016 to find out whether the exposé reached its destination and provided his credentials to intelligence officers.
An FBI report describing this visit was written only a month later, on 22 February 2016, with copies sent to FBI agents Jonathan Moffa and Peter Strzok. The rest is history: on 5 July 2016 then FBI Director James Comey announced that no reasonable prosecutor would bring a case against Hillary Clinton for the emails.
Judging from the whistleblower’s credentials, knowledge of the matter and the provided evidence, his letter was worth examination and required certain investigative activities, argued CIA veteran Johnson and Wall Street analyst Ortel in their op-eds.
“Failure by Comey to even interact with the whistleblower in January 2016 stands in stark contrast to anti Trump efforts launched by the FBI before, during and after the 2016 election”, says Charles Ortel. “Moreover, decisions to let Hillary Clinton and others off for mishandling classified information also appear deeply suspicious.”It appears strange that the bureau declined to learn more from the whistleblower given that it had started investigating the Clinton email server on 10 July 2015, according to the analyst.
“Then, when the determined whistleblower followed up by visiting the FBI Washington Field Office later in January 2016, why did it take so long to write an internal FBI report explaining what happened and what the concerns were?” asks Ortel. “More recently, did US Attorney John Huber examine the whistleblower materials? If not, why not? And, is John Durham evaluating all relevant records? I certainly hope so.”
Whistleblowers Apparently Ignored or Intimidated
Apart from investigating the Clinton email case, Jim Comey also started to look into the Clinton Foundation in January 2016, exactly when the whistleblower filed his complaint, the Wall Street analyst notes.
According to Ortel, who has been conducting a private investigation into the Clinton Foundation’s alleged fraud, the charity supposedly worked as a vehicle in the Clintons’ “pay-to-play” operations with foreign governments. Hillary’s unsecured email server potentially could be used to conduct this business while avoiding the Freedom of Information Act provisions since the FOIA requires the full or partial disclosure of the United States government’s documents upon request.
The FBI has an almost two-decade record of overlooking the Clintons’ questionable activities and their charity’s messy financial documentation under former FBI directors Robert Mueller (2001 – 2013) and Jim Comey (2013 – 2017) and later on, according to the analyst.
The aforementioned State Department whistleblower was not the only one who has stepped forward to report the Clintons to the US authorities.
In June 2018, FBI whistleblower Nate Cain delivered 450 pages of documents concerning Hillary Clinton’s supposed role in the Uranium One deal to Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz. In November 2018, 16 FBI agents stormed Cain’s Maryland home, ignoring his argument about whistleblower protection and accused him of possessing “stolen federal property”.
How High Political Offices Were ‘Monetised’
The FBI’s alleged cover-up of political power clans’ questionable activities has not been limited to the Clintons and apparently involved the Department of Justice as well, Ortel believes.
“Going all the way back to 1992, the Clintons and their backers seem to have monetised high political offices to enrich themselves”, he suggests. “Along the way, it seems likely that national security was compromised, and that other dynastic political families emulated the Clintons. The evolution of unregulated globalism and coordinated lowering of benchmark interest rates from 1988 forward created too many opportunities for oligarchs of all nationalities to exploit under-paid but powerful politicians, investigators, judges, and influence shapers.”
The recent scandal surrounding the Bidens’ alleged quid-pro-quo schemes involving foreign businessmen and officials has also triggered public debate over what some see as the FBI’s inaction. Bombshell emails released by The New York Post came from the so-called “hard drive from hell”, a copy of the one allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden’s laptop.
The FBI has acknowledged that it has had possession of Hunter Biden’s laptop for quite a while. It still remains unclear whether the “damning” messages, emails and photos circulated by The Post came from the original hard drive. If they did, the bureau’s silence appears suspicious, according to the analyst.
“If President Trump wins re-election – a strong likelihood at this moment – Durham’s major challenge will be to break the will of co-conspirators to fight at trials, rather than to negotiate guilty plea agreements”, Ortel deems. “The public record strongly suggests that many once-powerful politicians and bureaucrats committed serious crimes. Managing through this will require airing lots of “dirty laundry”. I hope President Trump and his team take the courageous decision to release information that implicates these traitors and details their crimes, little of which may shock thinking members of the electorate.”
US elections: with two weeks to go who’s winning
By William Stroock | October 23, 2020
2016 was a bad year for political pollsters and predictors. At his website, FiveThirtyEight, data guru Nate Silver gave Hillary Clinton a 65% Chance of defeating Donald Trump. Silver’s prediction model was on the low end. The New York Times said Hillary had an 85% chance of winning. The Princeton Election Consortium put Hillary’s chances at 99%. Hillary Clinton was heavily favored in 2016.
But she shouldn’t have been. At the end of the Obama presidency much of the nation was in a malaise. The Obama economic recovery never achieved an annual growth rate of 3% and wasn’t felt throughout large swaths of the country. While Obamacare enabled some Americans to buy health insurance, it didn’t lead to universal coverage and was passed by the Democrats via parliamentary muscle and maneuver. The president’s Iran nuclear deal was never ratified by the senate and did not have the force of law. Under Obama the Democrat Party didn’t grow, it shrank. Obama lost nearly a thousand elected Democrat seats throughout the nation. Obama’s presidency simply wasn’t transformative as he and the Democrats promised.
After eight years of Obama, Hillary had a tough task before her. Replacing a two-term president from your party, while not impossible, is hard to do. Just ask Vice Presidents Richard Nixon and Al Gore. In 2016 had Hillary Clinton been in the White House for eight years, a brilliant Democrat candidate like Barrack Obama would’ve been hard pressed to defeat Donald Trump.
Hillary was not a brilliant candidate. From her first senate run in 2000 she was stiff on the stump and had trouble connecting with voters. One got the sense that everything Hillary said had been presented to a focus group and written into a talking point. Overtime she should have become a better campaigner. But bizarrely, from 2000 through 2016 Hillary only became more awkward, ‘Why aren’t I fifty points ahead!?’ she shouted in a weird televised message during the 2016 campaign. She couldn’t defeat Obama in the 2008 Democrat primary and barely defeated socialist Bernie in 2016
Hillary could have learned a thing or two from her husband. In 1992 Bill Clinton jumped into the Democrat primary. Clinton cast himself as an old fashioned democrat in the model of JFK and FDR, an alternative to the ‘bleeding heart’ liberals that lost five of the last six presidential elections to the GOP. Clinton reinvented campaigning, appearing on talk shows and attending townhalls where he took questions from voters. Clinton had an uncanny knack for connecting with people in these venues. After twelve years of Republicans in the White House and a recession, the circumstances for Clinton were fantastic and he won a three-way race. With a good economy at his back in 1996, Clinton easily defeated Republican dinosaur Bob Dole.
In 2000 Vice President Al Gore won the Democrat nomination. But despite eight years of peace and prosperity, Gore lost the 2000 election by a razor thin margin. The Vice President looked uncomfortable before the cameras as he tried to overcome his reputation for being ‘wooden’. His ideas like a social security ‘lock box’ were the butt of jokes. His three debates with GOP nominee George W. Bush were the turning point of the campaign. Bush was amiable while Gore looked like a smug, know it all bully lacking self-awareness. Gore thought he won the debates. Exasperated staffers showed him clips of Saturday Night Live’s brutal parodies of his performance.
So at this point readers are probably wondering where Trump and Biden fit into this matrix of circumstances, ideas and candidates. Let’s ask ourselves who’s the better candidate. Joe Biden has spent most of the campaign in his Wilmington home. When Biden does come out, he reads cues from a comically large teleprompter, very often losing his place and the context of what he is saying. Biden looks tired and old. On most days he ends press availability before noon. The size of the Trump crowd protesting outside a Biden campaign event usually outnumbers the people attending. Biden just isn’t a big campaign draw. At this point Biden’s best argument is that he’s not Trump. His TV ads are sentimental calls for unity and change but offer no specifics. In essence Biden tells voters nothing about what he would do in the Oval Office.
Despite being 73 years old and having just recovered from the Corona Virus, Trump is campaigning across the country. He often holds two rallies a day; thousands attend. These rallies are visual masterpieces, usually held in local airports with Air Force One in the background. On the trail, Trump is relentlessly on message, touting his record on China, trade war, Corona Virus and the economy. He hammers Biden on his 47 years in Washington and son Hunter’s corruption. As far as circumstances go, who would you rather be right now, Trump or Biden?
FBI used MEDIA REPORTS seeded by British spy to ‘corroborate’ Steele Dossier, declassified spreadsheet shows
By Nebojsa Malic | RT | October 13, 2020
The FBI sought to ‘verify’ information in the notorious dossier at the heart of Russiagate by using media articles seeded by the actual dossier author, British spy Christopher Steele, newly released evidence has shown.
The so-called Steele Dossier is the centerpiece of ‘Russiagate,’ the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump “colluded” with Moscow in the 2016 US presidential election. The dossier’s most bombastic claim was that Russia had “kompromat” on him in the form of sex tapes from a Moscow hotel involving urinating prostitutes.
Steele compiled the dossier for Fusion GPS, a DC-based firm paid by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign through the DNC. The FBI then used it to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page in October 2016, and extended it three times well into 2017.
A 94-page spreadsheet made public on Monday, however, shows the FBI relied heavily on media reports to corroborate Steele’s claims – in many cases, the very same reports Steele had planted himself.
According to analyst Stephen McIntyre, footnotes listed in the spreadsheet show that 39 percent of the footnotes lead to Washington, DC media outlets, another 29 percent are redacted, and Steele himself was cited on 18 occasions, somehow self-verifying his own work.
In one instance, McIntyre notes, the FBI triple counted an article from the Daily Beast as three separate sources. Other media outlets named in the document are CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Yahoo News and Mother Jones.
The FBI had actually decided to fire Steele as a paid informant in September 2016 – before obtaining the Page warrant – because he leaked to the media, specifically Yahoo and Mother Jones, but that never raised any red flags either with the warrant or the corroboration, apparently.
Moreover, the Bureau knew in December 2016 that the “primary sub-source” (PSS) for the dossier was a Russian national they had investigated as a foreign agent in 2009, but the investigation was abandoned without explanation and this fact was never flagged. Even after interviewing the PSS in January 2017, and establishing that most of the dossier was fabricated outright, the FBI continued to use it at the FISA court to extend the Page warrant.
Another source the FBI used to corroborate Steele was Cody Shearer, a long-time Clinton operative who produced a memo alleging that Russian intelligence had a sex tape of Trump. That amounts to more circular reporting, however, as Steele was reportedly given the Shearer dossier by State Department official Jonathan Winer, and then handed it over to his FBI contacts in October 2016.
The spreadsheet is the first confirmation that the FBI actually used the ‘Shearer Dossier,’ whose existence was first reported by the Guardian in January 2018, as part of a push by Democrats to show that the Steele dossier wasn’t the sole grounds for the FISA warrants.
Just last week, however, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe declassified notes from then-CIA chief John Brennan, who said he warned the Obama administration about a plan by Hillary Clinton to smear Trump with allegations of ‘Russian collusion’ as a means of “distracting the public from her use of a private email server” before the 2016 election.
The two-year probe by Special Counsel Robert Mueller came up with zero evidence of “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia, much less Trump himself – and while it argued that Moscow “meddled” in US elections, it offered no evidence beyond its own assertions contained in indictments that were subsequently dropped when challenged in court.
While all these revelations have amounted to an indictment of the entire ‘Russiagate’ affair, the media that gave each other awards for their coverage of ‘collusion’ has never apologized for any of it. To this day, millions of Americans continue to believe their president is a “Russian agent.”
Coming Soon to a U.S. Neighborhood Near You? Regime-Change Foot Soldiers Parading as Social Justice Warriors
By Robert Bridge | Strategic Culture Foundation | September 22, 2020
Is the ‘Trump regime’ about to get a taste of the color revolution tactics that America has employed in the past against “illiberal” foreign governments that refused to toe the neoliberal globalist line? It’s looking highly likely.
Despite great efforts by the mainstream media to play it down, an increasing number of Americans are being subjected to a level of aggression, intimidation and street violence that the authorities seem unable or unwilling to control. This is no accident.
Since 2016, a series of actions by the political left indicate that the chaos unfolding on the streets of America is no grassroots movement on behalf of ‘social justice,’ but rather a carefully coordinated plan to oust Trump in the event the Democrats fail to get Biden into office. Indeed, for the orchestrators of this coup, what happens on Nov. 4 is of far more relevance that what happens on Election Day.
The first sign of trouble came in 2016, when none other than George Soros began spending a king’s ransom in local judicial elections. As the Daily Signal noted, “[r]adical social justice activists will serve as the top prosecutors for three major Washington, D.C., suburbs—including the two wealthiest counties in the U.S.—after George Soros’ political action committee poured $2.1 million into ordinarily sleepy local races.”
Only a crazed conspiracy theorist, like Newt Gingrich, apparently, would see any connection between Soros supporting radical prosecutors, and his other pet project of supporting ‘social justice’ groups, like Black Lives Matter and Antifa, who occasionally find themselves in need of a sympathetic justice system. And if local courts somehow fail to catch and release the hoodlums, Hollywood has shown a disturbing willingness to write out the bail checks. The only thing the looters and ‘peaceful protesters’ need now is a government mandate that requires masks be worn in public to protect their identities, and for property owners to understand they will be prosecuted for demonstrating their 2nd Amendment rights.
Now that the radicals have their institutional support structure all in place, a strange yet not wholly unexpected thing is happening. Although police brutality has been occurring in the United States long before Trump became president, and it effects both whites and blacks, the ‘peaceful protesters’ are venting their outrage primarily against Republicans, which the left has come to associate with ‘white supremacists’ and ‘fascism.’ This demonization of the right, which the mainstream media is happy to accentuate so long Trump is at the helm, gives left-wing groups the bare amount of legitimacy they need to carry out their activities.
By way of example, consider the way members of Black Lives Matter aggressively taunted Republicans as they attempted to leave the Republican National Convention where Trump accepted the nomination for the presidential election. As Senator Rand Paul and his wife Michele walked down the sidewalk, a frenzied mob could be heard shouting, “say her name!” in reference to Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman who was shot to death by police at her home in March during a botched raid. Apparently it did not matter to the rabble, or they never knew, that Paul was responsible for filing legislation to prohibit police officers from using no-knock warrants like the one that led to the fatal shooting of Ms. Taylor.
Another strange coincidence for the coincidence theorists is that a number of Democrats have been calling for exactly the sort of harassment against Trump supporters that is now unfolding across the nation. In June, Maxine Waters, for example, incited her followers to “create a crowd, and you push back on them.” More recently, Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice president nominee, said in an interview with Stephen Colbert, “They [the protesters] are not going to stop before Election Day in November, and they’re not going to stop after Election Day… They’re not going to let up, and they should not, and we should not.”
Reading such comments almost forces one to conclude that the Democrats, at least the radical progressive wing of the Democratic Party, have no illusions about Biden’s real chances for beating Trump. After all, if victory looked certain there would be no need for the threats. In other words, what the Democrats are most concerned about are not the actual results of the election, which have a very high chance of being unfavorable, but rather the reaction to the results. On this point, appearances are everything. Thus the mainstream media, in cahoots with left-leaning polling agencies and colleges, have conditioned Liberals – in the very same way they did in 2016 with their hugely inaccurate polls – to believe that Biden simply cannot lose. It doesn’t require a degree in the theory of revolutions to predict how those BLM/Antifa protesters, many of whom were too young to vote in 2016, are going to react to the news of four more years of a ‘white supremacist in chief.’ Not calmly and rationally, that’s for sure. After all, we are talking about an entire generation that has graduated from Woke U. with a Marxist major in ‘American Imperialism’ and a minor in ‘Mass Destruction’.
Here is where the stage has been rigged for a full-blown ‘color revolution’ erupting on or shortly after November 3rd. If anyone needs more proof, consider Hillary Clinton’s telling comment that “Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances” because he will win if “we don’t give an inch.” In other words, the election has nothing to do with counting votes, or even mail-in ballots, but rather which side, according to the rationale of Hillary Clinton, has the greater staying power.
As witnessed in faraway places where the U.S. State Department prepared the groundwork for regime change operations against governments and leaders they did not like, as in Ukraine, for example, and more recently in Belarus, it will take no effort whatsoever for the puppet masters to mobilize ‘social justice groups’ like BLM and Antifa to come out in massive protest against the results of November’s contest. And since we are talking about a homegrown operation, there is no need for NGOs working secretly behind the scenes to rally the locals into action; the killing of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer was all that was required to mobilize the media and the young radicals of the left against ‘systemic racism,’ which is just another way of saying ‘white supremacy,’ which is just another way of saying ‘Donald Trump.’
Have America’s regime-change vultures come home to roost? Unfortunately, such a grim prospect is looking more likely with each passing day as Nov. 3rd promises to be a presidential election without precedent in U.S. history. That is the day when the American Revolution may go full circle.
“Bipartisan” Washington Insiders Reveal Their Plan for Chaos if Trump Wins the Election
By Whitney Webb |
UNLIMITED HANGOUT| September 3, 2020
A group of Democratic Party insiders and former Obama and Clinton era officials as well as a cadre of “Never Trump” neoconservative Republicans have spent the past few months conducting simulations and “war games” regarding different 2020 election “doomsday” scenarios.
Per several media reports on the group, called the Transition Integrity Project (TIP), they justify these exercises as specifically preparing for a scenario where President Trump loses the 2020 election and refuses to leave office, potentially resulting in a constitutional crisis. However, according to TIP’s own documents, even their simulations involving a “clear win” for Trump in the upcoming election resulted in a constitutional crisis, as they predicted that the Biden campaign would make bold moves aimed at securing the presidency, regardless of the election result.
This is particularly troubling given that TIP has considerable ties to the Obama administration, where Biden served as Vice President, as well as several groups that are adamantly pro-Biden in addition to the Biden campaign itself. Indeed, the fact that a group of openly pro-Biden Washington insiders and former government officials have gamed out scenarios for possible election outcomes and their aftermath, all of which either ended with Biden becoming president or a constitutional crisis, suggest that powerful forces influencing the Biden campaign are pushing the former Vice President to refuse to concede the election even if he loses.
This, of course, gravely undercuts the TIP’s claim to be ensuring “integrity” in the presidential transition process and instead suggests that the group is openly planning on how to ensure that Trump leaves office regardless of the result or to manufacture the very constitutional crisis they claim to be preventing through their simulations.
Such concerns are only magnified by the recent claims made by the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate and former Secretary of State under Obama, Hillary Clinton, that Biden “should not concede under any circumstances.” “I think this is going to drag out, and eventually I do believe he will win if we don’t give an inch, and if we are as focused and relentless as the other side is,” Clinton continued during an interview with Showtime a little over a week ago. The results of the TIP’s simulations notably echo Clinton’s claims that Biden will “eventually” win if the process to determine the election outcome is “dragged out.”
The Uniparty’s “war games”
Members of the TIP met in June to conduct four “war games” that simulated “a dark 11 weeks between Election Day and Inauguration Day” in which “Trump and his Republican allies used every apparatus of government — the Postal Service, state lawmakers, the Justice Department, federal agents, and the military — to hold onto power, and Democrats took to the courts and the streets to try to stop it,” according to a report from The Boston Globe. However, one of those simulations, which examined what would transpire between Election Day and Inauguration Day in the event of a “clear Trump win,” shows that the TIP simulated not only how Republicans could use every option at their disposal to “hold onto power”, but also how Democrats could do so if the 2020 election result is not in their favor.
While some, mostly right-leaning media outlets, such as this article from The National Pulse, did note that the TIP’s simulations involved the Biden campaign refusing to concede, the actual document from TIP on the exercises revealed the specific moves the Biden campaign would take following a “clear win” for the Trump campaign. Unsurprisingly, these moves would greatly exacerbate current political tensions in the United States, an end result that the TIP claims they were created to avoid, gravely undercutting the official justification for their simulations as well as the group’s official reason for existing.
In the TIP’s “clear Trump win” scenario (see page 17), Joe Biden – played in the war game by John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager and chief of staff to former President Bill Clinton – retracted his election night concession and subsequently convinced “three states with Democratic governors – North Carolina, Wisconsin and Michigan – to ask for recounts.” Then, the governors of Wisconsin and Michigan “sent separate slates of electors to counter those sent by the state legislature” to the Electoral College, which Trump had won, in an attempt to undermine, if not prevent, that win.
Next, “the Biden campaign encouraged Western states, particularly California but also Oregon and Washington, and collectively known as “Cascadia,” to secede from the Union unless Congressional Republications agreed to a set of structural reforms. (emphasis added)” Subsequently, “with advice from [former] President Obama,” the Biden campaign laid out those “reforms” as the following:
- Give statehood to Washington, DC and Puerto Rico
- Divide California into five states “to more accurately represent its population in the Senate”
- Require Supreme Court justices to retire at 70
- Eliminate the Electoral College
In other words, these “structural reforms” involve the creation of what essentially amounts to having the U.S. be composed of 56 states, with the new states set to ensure a perpetual majority for Democrats, as only Democrat-majority areas (DC, Puerto Rico and California) are given statehood. Notably, in other scenarios where Biden won the Electoral College, Democrats did not support its elimination.
Also notable is the fact that, in this simulation, the TIP blamed the Trump campaign for the Democrats’ decision to take the “provocative, unprecedented actions” laid out above, asserting that Trump’s campaign had “created the conditions to force the Biden campaign” into taking these actions by doing things like giving “an interview to The Intercept in which he [Trump] stated that he would have lost the election if Bernie Sanders had been nominated” instead of Biden as the Democratic presidential candidate.
The TIP also claimed that the Trump campaign would seek to paint these “provocative, unprecedented actions” as “the Democrats attempting to orchestrate an illegal coup,” despite the fact that that is essentially what those actions entail. Indeed, in other simulations where the Trump campaign behaved along these lines, the TIP’s rhetoric about this category of extreme actions is decidedly different.
Yet, the simulated actions of the Biden campaign in this scenario did not end there, as the Biden campaign subsequently “provoked a breakdown in the joint session of Congress [on January 6th] by getting the House of Representatives to agree to award the presidency to Biden,” adding that this was “based on the alternative pro-Biden submissions sent by pro-Biden governors.” The Republican party obviously did not consent, noting that Trump had won the election through his Electoral College victory. The “clear Trump win” election simulation ended with no president-elect being inaugurated on January 20, with the TIP noting “it was unclear what the military would do in this situation.”
Of course, some TIP members, including its co-founder Rosa Brooks – a former advisor to the Obama era Pentagon and currently a fellow at the “New America” think tank, have their preference for “what the military would do in this situation.” For instance, Brooks, writing less than 2 weeks after Trump’s inauguration in 2017, argued in Foreign Policy that “a military coup, or at least a refusal by military leaders to obey certain orders” was one of four possibilities for removing Trump from office prior to the 2020 election.
Who is behind the TIP?
The TIP was created in late 2019, allegedly “out of concern that the Trump Administration may seek to manipulate, ignore, undermine or disrupt the 2020 presidential election and transition process.” It was co-founded by Rosa Brooks and Nils Gilman and its current director is Zoe Hudson. Brooks, as previously mentioned, was an advisor to the Pentagon and the Hillary Clinton-led State Department during the Obama administration. She was also previously the general counsel to the President of the Open Society Institute, part of the Open Society Foundations (OSF), a controversial organization funded by billionaire George Soros. Zoe Hudson, who is TIP’s director, is also a former top figure at OSF, serving as senior policy analyst and liaison between the foundations and the U.S. government for 11 years.
OSF ties to the TIP are a red flag for a number of reasons, namely due to the fact that OSF and other Soros-funded organizations played a critical role in fomenting so-called “color revolutions” to overthrow non-aligned governments, particularly during the Obama administration. Examples of OSF’s ties to these manufactured “revolutions” include Ukraine in 2014 and the “Arab Spring,” which began in 2011 and saw several governments in the Middle East and North Africa that were troublesome to Western interests conveniently removed from power.
Subsequent leaked emails revealed the cozy ties between Soros and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, including one email where Soros directed Clinton’s policy with respect to unrest in Albania, telling her that “two things need to be done urgently,” which were to “bring the full weight of the international community to bear on Prime Minister Berisha” and “appoint a senior European official as mediator.” Both “urgent” tasks were subsequently performed by Clinton, presumably at Soros’ behest.
In addition to her ties to the Obama administration and OSF, Brooks is currently a scholar at West Point’s Modern War Institute, where she focuses on “the relationship between the military and domestic policing” and also Georgetown’s Innovative Policing Program. She is currently a key player in the documented OSF-led push to “capitalize” off of legitimate calls for police reform to justify the creation of a federalized police force under the guise of defunding and/or eliminating local police departments. Brooks’ interest in the “blurring line” between military and police is notable given her past advocacy of a military coup to remove Trump from office and the TIP’s subsequent conclusion that the military “may” have to step in if Trump manages to win the 2020 election, per the group’s “war games” described above.
Brooks is also a senior fellow at the think tank New America. New America’s mission statement notes that the organization is focused on “honestly confronting the challenges caused by rapid technological and social change, and seizing the opportunities those changes create.” It is largely funded by Silicon Valley billionaires, including Bill Gates (Microsoft), Eric Schmidt (Google), Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Jeffrey Skoll and Pierre Omidyar (eBay). In addition, it has received millions directly from the U.S. State Department to research “ranking digital rights.” Notably, of these funders, Reid Hoffman was caught “meddling” in the most recent Democratic primary to undercut Bernie Sanders’ candidacy during the Iowa caucus and while others, such as Eric Schmidt and Pierre Omidyar, are known for their cozy ties to the Clinton family and even ties to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.
The Never Trumpers
Aside from Brooks, the other co-founder of TIP is Nils Gilman, the current Vice President of Programs at the Berggruen Institute and, prior to that, worked for Salesforce, a major tech company and government contractor. Gilman is particularly focused on artificial intelligence and transhumanism, recently telling the New York Times that his work at the Berggruen Institute is focused on “building [a] transnational networks of philosophers + technologists + policy-makers + artists who are thinking about how A.I. and gene-editing are transfiguring what it means to be human.” Nicholas Berggruen, for whom the Berggruen Institute is named, is part of the billionaire-led faction, alongside Blackstone’s Steve Schwarzman and Eric Schmidt, who seek to develop A.I. and the so-called “Fourth Industrial Revolution” in conjunction with the political leaders and economic elite of China.
They are critics and rivals of those in the “nationalist” camp with respect to A.I. and China, who instead prefer to aggressively “leapfrog” China’s A.I. capabilities in order to maintain U.S. global hegemony as opposed to a “new order” promoted by Berggreun, Schmidt, Schwarzman and Henry Kissinger, another key member of the “cooperation” faction. The battle over the U.S.’ future A.I. policy with respect to China appears to be a major yet widely overlooked reason for some of the antipathy towards Trump by those in the “cooperation” faction, including those who employ TIP’s founders, given Trump’s tendency to, at least publicly, support “America First” policies and increased tensions with China. In contrast, the Biden family is invested in Chinese A.I. companies, suggesting that Biden would be more willing to pursue the interests of the “cooperation” faction than Trump.
While the identities of the TIP’s founders and current director have been made public, the full member list of the TIP has not. However, the TIP’s “sister” organization, called The National Task Force on Election Crises (NTFEC), does have a public membership list and several of its members are also known to be part of the TIP. Some of these overlapping members include Michael Chertoff, former head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Michael Steele, former chairman of the RNC and Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to former Secretary of State, Colin Powell. Chertoff, Steele and Wilkerson, though Republicans, are part of the so-called “Never Trump” Republican faction, as are the TIP’s other known Republican members. Thus, while the “bipartisan” nature of TIP may be accurate in terms of party affiliation, all of known TIP’s members – regardless of party – are united in their opposition to another term for the current president.
Other known members of the TIP include David Frum (the Atlantic), William Kristol (Project for a New American Century, The Bulwark), Max Boot (the Washington Post), Donna Brazile (ex-DNC), John Podesta (former campaign manager – Clinton 2016), Chuck Hagel (former Secretary of Defense), Reed Galen (co-founder of the Lincoln Project) and Norm Ornstein (American Enterprise Institute).
Of their known members, the most outspoken is Lawrence Wilkerson, who has fashioned himself the group’s “unofficial” spokesperson, having done the majority of media interviews promoting the group and its “war games.” In an interview in late June with journalist Paul Jay, Wilkerson notes that the TIP lacks transparency and that, aside from their “war games,” their other activities are largely confidential.
He specifically stated that:
“There is some confidentiality about what we agreed to, and what we’ve put out publicly, and who’s responsible for that, and other aspects of our doing that. The Transition Integrity Project is to this point very, very close, whole, and confidential.”
In that same interview, Wilkerson also noted that the current “combination of events” involving the recent unrest in several U.S. cities, the coronavirus crisis, the national debate over the future of policing, the economic recession and the 2020 election was the foundation for a revolution in the U.S. He told Jay that:
“I want to say this is how things like 1917 and Russia, like 1979 and Tehran, and like 1789 in France. This is how these sorts of things get started. So we’ve got to be very careful about how we deal with these things. And that worries me because we don’t have a very careful individual in the White House.”
Pre-planned chaos – who benefits?
It certainly is possible that, in the event of a clear Biden win, President Trump could refuse to leave the White House or take other actions that would challenge the faith of many Americans in the national election system. However, while the TIP claims to be specifically concerned about this eventuality and about “safe guarding” democracy without favoring either candidate, that is clearly not the case, as their simulation of a clear Trump win shows that extreme, “undemocratic” behavior, in their view, is permissible if it prevents another four years of Trump. Yet, this clear double standard reveals that an influential group of “bipartisan” insiders are intent on creating a “constitutional crisis” if Trump wins and are planning for such a crisis regardless of the 2020 election’s results.
Well before the TIP or any of their affiliated groups emerged to conduct these doomsday election simulations, other groups were similarly engaged in “war games” that predicted complete chaos in the U.S. on election day as well as the imposition of martial law in the U.S. following the emergence of unprecedented unrest and disarray in the country.
Several of these I detailed in a series earlier this year, which mainly focused on the “Operation Blackout” simulations conducted by the U.S.-Israeli company, Cybereason. That company has considerable ties to the U.S. and Israeli intelligence and its largest investor is Softbank. Notably, Softbank is named by the Eric Schmidt-led National Security Commission on AI (NSCAI) as forming the “backbone” of a global framework of A.I.-driven companies favored by the “cooperation” faction as a means of enacting the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” in cooperation with China’s economic and political elite.
In addition to Cybereason, several mainstream media reports and a series of suspect “predictions” from U.S. intelligence and other federal agencies released last year had seeded the narrative that the 2020 election would not only fail spectacularly, but that U.S. democracy “would never recover.” Now, with the TIP’s simulations added to the mix and the advent of the previously predicted chaos throughout the country with the 2020 election just two months away, it is clear that the November 3rd election will not only be a complete disaster, but a pre-planned one.
The question then becomes, who benefits from complete chaos on and following the 2020 election? As the TIP suggested in several of their simulations, the post-election role of the military in terms of domestic policing, incidentally the exact expertise of the TIP’s co-founder Rosa Brooks, looms large, as most of the aforementioned doomsday election simulations ended with the imposition of martial law or the military “stepping in” to resolve order and oversee the transition.
The domestic framework for imposing martial law in the U.S., via “continuity of government” protocols, was activated earlier this year under the guise of the coronavirus crisis and it remains in effect. Now, a series of groups deeply tied to the Washington establishment and domestic and foreign intelligence agencies have predicted the exact ways in which to engineer a failed election and manipulate its aftermath.
Who would stand to benefit the most from the imposition of martial law in the United States? I would argue that one need look no further than the battle within Washington power factions over the future of AI, which has been deemed of critical importance to national security by the public sector, the private sector and prominent think tanks. The Schmidt-led NSCAI and other bodies determining the country’s AI policy plan to implement a series of policies that will be deeply resisted by most Americans – from the elimination of individual car ownership to the elimination of cash as well as the imposition of an Orwellian surveillance system, among other things.
All of these agendas have advanced under the guise of combatting coronavirus, but their advance can only continue to use that justification for so long. For groups like the NSCAI, Americans must welcome these AI-driven advances or else, even if it means Americans face losing their jobs or their civil liberties. Otherwise, these groups and their billionaire backers argue, the U.S. will be “left out” and “left behind” when it comes time to set the new global standards for AI technology, as the U.S. will then be left in the dust by China’s growing AI industry, which is fed by its own implementation of these technologies.
By keeping Americans angry and distracted by the partisan divide through pre-planned election chaos, a “New America” waits in the wings – one that is coming regardless of what happens on election day. That is, of course, unless Americans quickly wake up to the ruse.
2020 Elections: Bourgeois Democracy Meets Global Governance
By Diana Johnstone – Consortium News – August 28, 2020
A small number of very rich men are quite sure they know what is best for the future of the world and have enough wealth and influence to believe they can make it happen. They can be called oligarchs, but the term is inadequate. They are a special category, the shapers of the Global Governance destined to replace bourgeois democracy. I can name two: one who is famous, notorious even, but very old, and another who is a generation younger, not yet so well known or so rich but probably even more influential.
The Global Governors
The old one is of course George Soros, who needs no introduction. He has no doubt that the world should be one big Open Society — in a word, globalization — in which borders and nation states dissolve into a kaleidoscopic mix of cultural identities in which major decisions are taken by brilliant financial oligarchs like himself.
The younger one is Nicolas Berggruen, the dashing 59-year-old Paris-born son of a leading art collector. Berggruen enjoys double U.S.-German citizenship and membership in the Council on Foreign Relations, the NYU Commission on Global Citizenship, the Brookings International Advisory Council, the Leadership Council at Harvard’s Kennedy School Center for Public Leadership, the World Economic Forum – and on and on. He helped get Emmanuel Macron elected president of France and has friendly relations with Ursula von der Leyen, head of the European Union Commission.
The billionaire has his own “think and action tank,” the Berggruen Institute, to promote his interests which center on “global governance.” He is particularly interested in technological ways to shape and guide the world of the future. The future for Berggruen belongs to digitalization and above all transhumanism. In a short video, he muses over whether or not the digital age makes us “less human.”
Nicolas Berggruen, center, in 2017. (Financial Times, Flicker, CC BY 2.0)
We are all connected and “less free” but we are all “part of something bigger — communities, families, friends” … The digital world “looks less human but it’s still being created by us.” (And who is “us” exactly?) Berggruen’s model of the future family may be seen in his own choice: two motherless children manufactured with donated ovules and born by two surrogate wombs.
Like European-born Soros and Berggruen, the United States is above all the current command and control center of the Western world still aspiring to be the nucleus of a global empire. U.S. elections are important to these world visionaries in staying the course of world transformation. For both of them, President Donald Trump can only be an intolerable glitch in the screen. This must be corrected in 2020. The entire liberal elite is in overwhelming agreement.
The Transition Integrity Project
Rosa Brooks, in 2018, during a New America conference. (New America, Flickr, CC BY 2.0)
So, it has been easy to arouse near panic in the Washington Establishment and beyond over the notion that Trump might not be dislodged by the November 2020 election. Fear is being spread less that Trump might win the election (too unthinkable to think) than that he will lose the election but refuse to budge. This possibility received a big boost from a unique social event organized by Professor Rosa Brooks of Georgetown University, a leading champion of women’s participation in the National Security State, and historian Nils Gilman, a head researcher at the Berggruen Institute.
This well-connected pair easily enlisted dozens of power pointers to take part in what The Boston Globe called “a Washington version of Dungeons and Dragons,” on the model of Pentagon planners who form teams to imagine what the U.S. and Russia might do in a nuclear war confrontation. They named their fun and games the Transition Integrity Project (TIP), clearly suggesting that the “integrity” of the anticipated transition from Trump to Biden was their main concern.
Only a few of the 67 participants have been identified: anti-Trump Republican Michael Steele, former President Bill Clinton’s White House Chief of Staff John Podesta, David Frum (ghost writer of President George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” speech), and neoconservative political analyst William Kristol.
On Aug. 3, the Transition Integrity Project issued its report, entitled “Preventing a Disrupted Presidential Election and Transition.” This report gave the results of the make-believe gaming scenarios, which provided imaginary support to the growing liberal Democratic hypothesis that Trump is determined to steal the November election.
“Like many authoritarian leaders, President Trump has begun to lay the groundwork for potentially ignoring or disrupting the voting process, by claiming, for instance, that any mail-in ballots will be fraudulent and that his opponents will seek to have non-citizens vote through fraud.” It was taken for granted throughout that Trump’s fears and accusations are fake whereas his opponents’ fears and accusations are soundly based.
The Transition Integrity Project report made a feeble attempt to appear neutral: “TIP takes no position on how Americans should cast their votes, or on the likely winner of the upcoming election; either party could prevail at the polls in November without resorting to ‘dirty tricks’” — a neutrality consistently violated by the entire exercise.
The exercise comprised four scenarios: (1) an ambiguous voting result, (2) clear victory by the Democratic challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden, (3) clear Trump win, (4) narrow Biden win. The game was played by teams, primarily “Team Biden” and “Team Trump,” but it is pretty clear that none of the players were pro-Trump, including the players on “Team Trump.” But the games claimed to show how Trump supporters would react in these circumstances.
- “Team Trump was consistently more ruthless than Team Biden — more willing to ignore existing democratic norms, to make use of disinformation, to deploy federal agencies to promote Trump’s personal and electoral interests, and to engage in intimidation campaigns.”
But “Team Biden” was much nicer:
- “Team Biden generally felt constrained by a commitment to norms and a desire to tamp down violence and reduce instability.”
- “Team Biden often had the majority of the public on its side, and the ability to mobilize resentment about the structural disenfranchisement in the way we conduct presidential elections.”
Russiagate intruded into the gaming in an odd and even ludicrous way: “There was quite a bit of speculation that Trump might […] attempt to rally nationalist feelings to himself, or placate foreign leaders to whom he may feel beholden, such as Vladimir Putin.” Huh?
Nobody Dares Lose
Campaign image of Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. (2020DemConvention, Twitter)
A particularly alarming and disturbingly credible assumption of the Transition Integrity Project game is that in this election, neither side is prepared to accept defeat. The scenario exercises “revealed that for many Democrats and key Democratic constituencies, this election represents an existential crisis, the last chance to stop a rapid and potentially irreversible U.S. decline into authoritarianism and unbridled nativism.” So, as much as Trump, many Democrats are ready to stop at nothing to win this election – for the best of reasons, of course.
Trump is depicted as equally desperate to win in order to avoid being treated as a criminal. An underlying assumption of this story-telling is that once out of office, Trump will be arrested and tried for unspecified crimes. This would indeed be an incentive for him not to lose.
At this point, it is necessary to recall that democratic election of national leaders depends on a degree of mutual trust that is being lost in America. The United States regularly insists that all foreign countries should elect their leaders by “fair and free elections.” But there are many countries where, at some time of their historical development, this method is not advisable because one party, or tribe, fears for its very life if a rival party, or tribe, should take power.
In such states, peace depends on the rule of a king, a mediator, a dictator. The United States can currently be seen to be regressing to just such a degree of mutual hatred and distrust.
No Compromise
It seems to me that if the Democratic Establishment gave priority to a peaceful election and transition, against the possibility that Trump might reject the results, the smart and reasonable thing to do would be to reassure him on the two counts which they suggest might incite him to balk: postal vote fraud accusations and the threat of criminal charges against him.
As to the latter: “Participants in the scenario exercises universally believed that self-preservation for President Trump and his family will be Trump’s first and possibly only priority if he is forced to concede electoral defeat.” So, it is a bit odd that the Transition Integrity Project goes on to report that: “During several of the TIP exercises, Team Biden attempted to enter into negotiations with Team Trump about a pardon and graceful transition, but those overtures were consistently rejected.”
Since there were no Trump supporters on either team, these game results merely reflect the intention of the Democratic Establishment to assume that Trump will be charged with “state crimes,” as yet unspecified. No compromise deal is desired.
As for postal balloting, it should be conceivable that Trump’s misgivings are justified. Trump is not against absentee ballots, which require identification of the voter, comparable to going to the polls, but is suspicious of mass mailings of ballots back and forth.
In an age when anyone can photocopy any document, when mails are slow and when there are many ways in which ballots might be destroyed, such misgivings are not far-fetched. Indeed, in the course of Game No. 1, “a rogue individual destroyed a large number of ballots believed to have supported Biden.” Why could the gamers imagine Biden ballots being destroyed, but rule out destruction of ballots supporting Trump?
2000 presidential election recount underway in Palm Beach County, Florida, Nov. 18, 2000. (Dtobias, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
For the sake of domestic peace, why not try to find a compromise? Democratic vice-presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) has introduced legislation to generalize postal balloting. Why not, instead, extend polling time, opening polls not only on the second Tuesday in November but on the preceding Saturday and Sunday? This would provide time to allow voters afraid of Covid-19 to keep distances from each other, as they do when they go to the supermarket. It would reduce the number of absentee ballots, the time needed for counting and above all the suspicions attached to postal voting. But the more wary Trump is of postal voting, the more Democrats insist on making it universal.
It becomes clearer and clearer that hatred of Trump has reached such a pitch, that for the Democratic Establishment and its hangers-on, defeating Trump at the polls is not enough. They are practically inciting him to contest the election. Then they can have something more exciting and decisive: a genuine regime change.
Preparing for Regime Change
The classic regime change scenario involves a contested election, mass street demonstrations including civil disobedience and finally, military intervention.
So, to start with, the gamers posit an authoritarian leader who won’t step down. That’s Trump.
Next, “a show of numbers in the streets – and actions in the streets – may be decisive factors in determining what the public perceives as a just and legitimate outcome.” In an interview
stressing “the flaws in our electoral system,” Transition Integrity Project organizer Gilman said that what we need “is for people to be prepared to take to the streets in nonviolent protest” if appeals to officials do not suffice.
“We’ve learned over the last couple of months, since the Movement for Black Lives protest really took off again in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, that taking to the streets and showing commitment to a democratic process beyond just the ballot box is a really important part of driving change.” The demonstrations must be nonviolent, Gilman stressed.
As the Transition Integrity Project report put it, “the scale of recent demonstrations has increased the stakes for the Democratic Party to build strong ties with grassroots organizations and be responsive to the movement’s demands.” Certain of these grassroots organizations – MoveOn and Black Lives Matter – have enjoyed financial support from Soros, as the Democratic Party clearly tries to co-opt the protests.
George Soros. (georgesoros.com)
According to the scenarios, such protests could arise not only in case Trump refused to recognize a Biden win, but also, in Game No. 3, in case of a “comfortable Electoral College victory for President Trump (286-to-252) but also a significant popular vote win (52 percent for Trump, 47 percent for Biden). The game play ended in a constitutional crisis, with threats of secession, and the potential for either a decline into authoritarianism or a radically revamped set of democratic rules that ensure the popular will prevails (abolishment of the Electoral College…)”
The Biden campaign retracted its initial concession, capitalizing “on the public’s outrage that for the third time in 20 years a candidate lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College.” The Biden campaign encouraged California, Oregon and Washington to secede “unless Congressional Republicans agreed to a set of structural reforms to fix our democratic system to ensure majority rule.” Congress supported Biden. “It was unclear what the military would do in this situation”.
In reality, Democrats know that they have managed to keep the Permanent State, including the military and intelligence agencies, on their side throughout Trump’s presidency. Where are the forces that could carry out a pro-Trump coup d’état?
Whose Coup?
Hillary Clinton addressing Democratic convention, July 2016. (Gage Skidmore, Flickr)
“During the exercises,” the report notes, “winning ‘the narrative’ emerged as a potentially decisive factor. Either side can expand or contract the ‘margin of contestation’ if they succeed in substantially changing how key decision makers and the public view the ‘facts,’ the risks of action or inaction, or external events such as civil unrest.”
Winning the narrative appears to be a main purpose of the Transition Integrity Project, and it was quickly seconded in its efforts by top Democrats.
“Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances because I think this is going to drag out, and eventually I do believe he will win if we don’t give an inch and if we are as focused and relentless as the other side is,” Hillary Clinton said in an interview on Aug. 25.
A couple of days later, Al Gore, the former vice president and unsuccessful 2000 Democratic presidential candidate, chimed in. Trump, he said in a particularly loaded image, is “attempting to put his knee on the neck of democracy” by criticizing mail-in ballots. “He seems to have no compunctions at all about trying to rip apart the social fabric and the political equilibrium of the American people, and he’s strategically planting doubts in advance.”
People ask whether Trump will leave office next Jan. 20. “Well,” said Gore, “it doesn’t matter because it’s not up to him. Because at noon on January 20th, if a new president is elected… the police force, the Secret Service, the military, all of the executive branch officers, will respond to the command and the direction of the new president.”
The Bottom Line
Outside the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2020 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, Jan. 24. (World Economic Forum, Mattias Nutt, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Meanwhile, Americans can listen to the extravagant rhetoric of the two enemy camps, calling on them to choose between “authoritarian white supremacy” and “radical Marxist socialism” while offering absolutely nothing in terms of coherent public policy of benefit to the American people and the world. The politicians cling to ineffective office, while the future is being planned elsewhere.
Policy will be designed by the Global Governors, for instance at the next meeting in Davos of the World Economic Forum which, according to its founder and chairman Klaus Schwab, will lay out the “Great Reset” agenda for the Fourth Industrial Revolution that is destined to reshape all our lives. Nicolas Berggruen will be there with his ideas. So will other billionaires.
They will not be “conspiring,” but rather laying plans for what they consider best for the world. There is no political system enabling us to influence or even fully understand the projects they will sponsor. Surely these projects deserve to be sharply debated. But the politicians supposedly representing us are somewhere else, fighting furiously with each other over contrived issues.
The Electoral College is not the most fatal flaw in American democracy. Rather, it’s the monopoly of political discourse by a two-party system fueled essentially by personal ambition, taking its cues from lobbies, the military industrial complex, Wall Street and the Global Governors.
Diana Johnstone lives in Paris. Her latest book is Circle in the Darkness: Memoirs of a World Watcher (Clarity Press, 2020).
Hillary Clinton Gave Ghislaine Maxwell’s Nephew “Very Powerful” Position At State Department: Report
By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – 08/22/2020
Hillary Clinton “gifted” a prestigious job in the Obama State Department to the nephew of accused pedophile and sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, according to OK! Magazine – and whose employment was confirmed by the Daily Beast.
Alexander Djerassi, the son of Maxwell’s sister Isabel, went from working on Hillary Clinton’s 2008 Presidential campaign, to a “very powerful and prestigious position” within the state department, working under Clinton in charge of the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. He returned to Clinton’s 2016 campaign, according to the Beast.
“Secretary Clinton gave Alex a job in one of the most sensitive areas of Obama’s executive apparatus,” an anonymous source told OK!. “The fact Alex Djerassi, fresh out of college, was put in charge of the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, covering the Middle East, was an interesting move.”
“He worked directly on the Arab Spring, and Hillary sent Alex as the US representative to the expatriate rebel groups Friends of Libya and Friends of the Syrian People,” the source continued, adding that Djerassi was given “special treatment.”
A State Department spokesperson confirmed Djerassi’s employment with The Daily Beast, though could not comment on whether the job was in fact “gifted” by Clinton.
A year before Mr. Djerassi’s appointment, his aunt’s ex-boyfriend, Epstein, pleaded guilty to a state charge (one of two) of procuring for prostitution a girl below age 18 and was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
Epstein served almost 13 months before being released for a year of probation on house arrest until August 2010.
What’s more, during his tenure at the State Dept., Maxwell attended Chelsea Clinton’s wedding to Marc Mezvinsky in July 2010. –OK! Magazine
According to Djerassi’s LinkedIn profile, “He worked on matters relating to democratization and civil society in the Arab world, the Arab uprisings, and Israeli-Palestinian peace. Djerassi has served as a U.S. representative to the Friends of Libya conferences, Friends of the Syrian People conferences, U.S.-GCC Strategic Coordination Forum, and several UN General Assemblies.”
Djerassi previously worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, focusing on Tunisia and US foreign policy towards the Middle East and North Africa.
Frequent WikiLeaks mentions
According to the Beast, Derjassi’s name appears in a ‘collection of Clinton’s emails’ published by WikiLeaks – with Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman referring to his “special assistant, Alex Djerassi” in November of 2011 and January 2012.
Meanwhile, the Beast also notes his employment on Clinton’s campaign.
From September 2007 to June 2008, Djerassi was a policy associate for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. He listed his job duties as such: “Researched and drafted memos, briefings, and policy papers for candidate, senior staff, and news media on wide range of domestic and foreign policy issues. Prepared for more than 20 debates.” (In late 2007, Epstein was under investigation for trafficking girls in Palm Beach and working on a secret plea deal with federal prosecutors. Maxwell is believed to be one accomplice who was protected under the controversial agreement.)
The Yale and Princeton alum—the son of Maxwell’s sister Isabel—apparently returned for Clinton’s 2016 presidential run. –Daily Beast
Bill Clinton notably flew 26 times on the infamous “Lolita Express” belonging to Maxwell associate and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. The former US President was notably fingered as having been seen on Epstein’s “pedo island” according to court documents released three weeks ago.
More recently, photos of Clinton receiving a neck rub from one of Epstein’s accusers (who said he was a perfect gentleman) surfaced in the Daily Mail.
Looking back on the Maidan events and its consequences
By Francis Lee for the Saker Blog | August 12, 2020
Victor Yanukovich was elected President of the Ukraine in 2010 narrowly defeating Yulia Timoshenko with 49% of votes cast to Timoshenko’s 45%. The Ukrainian Presidential term of office lasts for five years. Yanukovich’s Party, the Party of the Regions, together with its coalition partner the Communist Party of the Ukraine, also had a majority in the Ukrainian Parliament, with Mykola Azarov as Prime Minister. The membership of the EU was perhaps one of the more salient issues of the time and was the trigger for the ensuing upheavals.
Negotiations for Ukraine’s initial stage of eventual membership of the EU – the so-called Association Agreement – had been dragging on since 2011, but both Yanukovich and Azarov were favourably disposed to an eventual positive outcome, although the Communist part of the coalition were not.
This did not go down at all well in Moscow and Azarov attempted to assuage Russian misgivings by urging Russia ‘’to accept the reality of Ukraine signing the EU agreement’’. The commitment of Yanukovich was eventually tested to destruction since he was being pulled in two directions, by Russia on the one hand and by the EU on the other. For their part, the Russians offered the Ukraine a $15 billion loan, a discount on gas prices, and membership of the Customs Union of Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus. But the EU was having none of it. President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso stated that the EU will not tolerate ‘a veto of a third country’ (Russia) in their negotiations on closer integration with Ukraine. This being the case Yanukovich was forced into a choice which would be certain to alienate and anger one of the powerful interested parties on its borders.
Negotiations continued on into 2013. Yanukovich was invited to sign the Association Agreement, but there were a number of conditions. The most significant of these were those concerning an IMF loan. But anything involving the IMF should have set the alarm bells ringing with regard to the intentions of western institutions vis-à-vis the future of the Ukraine. The conditionality clauses were very much in the tradition of the IMF. Their ‘Structural Adjustment Programmes’ had always been the scourge of the developing world and this offer pact was enough to scupper the EU deal. Prime Minister Azarov at the time stating that ‘’the issue which blocked the signature of the EU deal were the conditions proposed by the IMF loan being negotiated at the same time as the budget cuts and 40% increase in gas prices’’. This for a country already verging on bankruptcy. In store for the Ukraine was the usual neoliberal austerity package. Compliments of the IMF’s Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs) this would involve the following set of prescriptions:
1. Balance of payments deficit reductions through currency devaluation = SAP
2. Budget deficit reduction through higher taxes and lower government spending, aka austerity = SAP
3. Restructuring foreign debts
4. Monetary policy to finance government deficits (loans from central bank – with strings) = SAP
5. Raising food prices to cut the burden of subsidies = SAP
6. Raising the price of public services = SAP
7. Cutting wages = SAP
8. Reducing domestic credit = SAP
9. ‘Reforming’ pensions = SAP. Marvelous word ‘Reforming’
10. Deregulation of labour market. = SAP aka smashing labour unions
Longer-term ‘structural adjustment’ policies usually include:
1. Liberalization of markets to guarantee a price mechanism = SAP
2. Privatization, or divestiture, of all or part of state-owned enterprises = SAP
3. Creating new financial institutions. Hedge Funds, Shadow Banks, Private Equity = SAP
4. Improving governance and fighting corruption – ?
5. Enhancing the rights of foreign investors vis-à-vis national laws = SAP
6. Focusing economic output on direct export and resource extraction = SAP. That is to say, the creation of a peripheral economy a raw material exporter.
7. Increasing the stability of investment (by supplementing foreign direct investment with the opening of domestic stock markets). Financialization of the host economy = SAP
Just what the doctor ordered, no! These policies have been tried everywhere and have failed abysmally. Little wonder Yanukovich took the Russian offer instead.
However, what seemed like a straightforward business decision was greeted with howls of anguish and gnashing of teeth as the Europhiles in Independence Square felt that their future had been taken from them. This was indeed to happen in due course (see below) but this was the outcome of accepting rather than rejecting the IMF package.
THE BATTLE OF THE MAIDAN
Immediately these facts became known the mass protest in Kiev took place and was on the world’s TV screens, with demonstrators waiving Ukrainian and EU flags. (Where they got these EU flags is a mystery to this day.) This seemed to be a mass popular protest and the demonstrators were to set up camps in Independence Square. But the carnival atmosphere was not to last. Ultra-nationalist groups (inveterate fascists) in the shape of Right Sector and Svoboda (1) began to emerge from the shadows and appear among the genuine moderate majority and joined in pitched battles with the Berkut (riot Police) on a daily basis which the opposition forces finally won. This was, according to the Guardian ‘newspaper’ a victory for democracy and peoples’ power. Well it might have started like this but it transmuted into something very different. Nobody should be in any doubt about the political complexion of these ultra-nationalist groups who went on to hold 6 portfolios in the new ‘government’ based in Kiev. Nor should anyone be in any doubt about both the overt and covert roles played by both the US and EU officials in the formation of the future interim government.
Throughout this period the EU and high-ranking US officials were openly engaged in Ukraine’s internal affairs. The US Ambassador, Geoffrey Pyatt, and the US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, were strolling around Independence Square reassuring the protestors that America stood behind them. Also basking in the political sunlight were US NGOs (such as the National Endowment for Democracy – NED – directly funded by the US Government) and (USAID). Also involved was the US Human Rights Watch (HRW) and not forgetting of course the ubiquitous Mr. Soros. Identified as GS in the leaked Open Society Foundation (OSF) documents, others involved in the Ukrainian coup in the planning, were the already named, US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, along with the following: David Meale (Economic Counsellor to Pyatt, Lenny Benardo (Open Society Foundation – OSF) Yevhen Bystry (Executive Director International Renaissance Foundation – IRF) Oleksandr Sushko (Board Chair, IRF) Ivan Krastev (Chairman Centre for Liberal Studies, a Soros and US government-influenced operation in Sofia, Bulgaria) and Deff Barton (Director, US Agency for International Development AID – USAID – Ukraine). USAID is a conduit for the CIA.
Even right-wing thinkers such as George Freidman at Stratfor described these events as being ‘the most blatant coup in history.’
The new ‘government’ in Kiev was represented by a hotch-potch of oligarchs Kolomoiski, Akhmetof, Pinchuk, Poroshenko, et al, and petty fuhrers including Parubiy, Yarosh, Biletsky, from the Western Ukraine with their violent armed squadristi units terrorizing their opponents. The ultra-right Svoboda Party had a presence in the Ukrainian parliament (Rada). It is a neo-nazi, ultra-right, anti-Semitic, Russo phobic party with its base of support in the western Ukraine. The most important governmental post was handed to its fuhrer Andriy Parubiy who was appointed as Secretary of the Security and National Defence Committee, which supervised the defence ministry and the armed forces. The Parubiy appointment to such an important post should, alone, be cause for international outrage. He led the masked Right-Sector thugs who battled riot police in the Maidan in Kiev.
Like Svoboda, Right-Sector led by their own tin-pot fuhrer Dmitry Yarosh is an openly fascist, anti-semitic and anti-Russian organization. Most of the snipers and bomb-throwers in the crowds were connected with this group. Right Sector members had been participating in military training camps for the last 2 years or more in preparation for street activity of the kind witnessed in the Ukraine during the events in Independence Square in 2013-14. The Right Sector as can be seen by the appointment of Parubiy, is not in a position to control major appointments to the provisional government but he has succeeded in achieving his long-term goal of legalizing discrimination against Russians.
This discrimination took the forms of mass murder in the southern Black Sea port of Odessa when pro-Yanukovich supporters were attacked by fascist mobs and chased into a nearby building, a trade union HQ. The building was then set on fire and its exits blocked, the unfortunate people trapped inside were either burnt to death or, jumped out of the windows only to be clubbed to death when they landed. The practices of the political heirs of Bandera had apparently not been forgotten by the present generation. There is a video of the incident, but frankly, it was so horrific that I could only watch it once. These barbarians were described by Luke Harding of the Guardian as being ‘’an eccentric group of people with unpleasant right-wing views.’’ Yes, they were really nice chaps who got a little carried away! One week later with the open support of Washington and its European allies, the regime installed by Washington and Berlin in February’s fascist-led putsch then began extending its reign of terror against all popular resistance in Ukraine. That was the significance of the events in the major eastern Ukrainian sea-port city of Mariupol less than a week after the Odessa outrage.
After tanks, armoured personnel carriers and heavily armed troops were unleashed on unarmed civilians in the city, the Kiev regime claimed to have killed some 20 people. The Obama administration immediately blamed the violent repression on “pro-Russian separatists.’’
Poroshenko, ex-Finance Minister in Yanukovich’s government, was elected as President on 29 May and duly announced that “My first presidential trip will be to Donbass where armed pro-Russian rebels had declared the separatist Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and control a large part of the region.’’ This was the beginning of the Anti-Terrorist Operation the ATO. However, things didn’t quite work out as planned. After 2 heavy defeats at Iloviask and Debaltsevo the Ukie army was stopped in its tracks and the situation has remained static to this day.
In the meantime the Ukraine has become the poorest nation in the whole of Europe. The economic and social ramifications of the 2014 coup were such that that the full weight of the neo-liberal economic policies were foisted on the Ukraine, courtesy of the IMF. This was already apparent in the early 80s, but the trend accelerated after the coup. The standard IMF/WTO Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs) – see above – a package of ‘reforms’ and ‘fiscal consolidation’ (I just love these IMF euphemisms) consisted of cuts in government expenditure, accompanied by extensive liberalisation of product and labour markets, together with abandonment of exchange rate control and capital flows.
These policies along with political instability have had, among other things, a disastrous effect on population growth. Ukraine’s population was 52 million in 1992 and the decline started in that year. By 2016, this figure had fallen to 42.5 million, its 1960 figure, and was accelerated since the coup of 2014. The current Fertility rate stands at 1.3. Any figure less than 2 will mean a shrinking population. The death rate has also increased, along with mass migration with some 2 million Ukrainian guest workers decamping to Russia and Poland in search of work. This is a slow-motion demographic calamity.
This notwithstanding the largesse handed out by the Western powers through the instrumentality of the IMF as pointed out by Michael Hudson. ‘’The IMF in fact broke four of its rules by lending to Ukraine: These included (i) Not to lend to a country that has no visible means to pay back the loan (the “No More Argentinas” rule, adopted after the IMF’s disastrous 2001 loan to that country). (ii) Not to lend to a country that repudiates its debt to official creditors (the rule originally intended to enforce payment to U.S.-based institutions). (iii) Not to lend to a country at war – and indeed, destroying its export capacity and hence its balance-of-payments ability to pay back the loan. Finally (iv), not to lend to a country unlikely to impose the IMF’s austerity ‘conditionalities.’ Ukraine did agree to override democratic opposition and cut back pensions, but its junta proved too unstable to impose the austerity terms on which the IMF insisted.’’
Nothing better illustrated the monumental stupidity of a nation which subordinated economic common-sense to anti-Russian gestures and rhetorical bluster; this was visibly illustrated in the trade deal involving the import of European gas and South African coal to the exclusion of Russian gas and Donbass coal. In both cases, however, Ukraine was simply buying the same goods from Donbass and Russia but resold at a significantly higher price by South Africa and Europe simply acting as middle-men at a huge cost to the Ukrainian tax-payer. (2)
All of which illustrates the intractable political and economic debacle unfolding and goes some way to explaining the present impasse of a backward movement into under-development. Ukraine is becoming deindustrialised – not unlike the fate of many post-soviet nations – its trade with the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) Russia-Belarus-Kazakhstan-Kyrgyzstan severed. This was formerly an exceptionally large and important export-import market, imports consisting of energy commodities coming from the EEU, and exports to the EEU consisting of Ukraine’s advanced industries in the east situated in Donetsk, Lugansk, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Zhaporizyha and Nikolayev oblasts. These exports consisting of machinery, equipment, aircraft, vessels, nuclear reactors and boilers, railway, tramway rolling stocks and inorganic chemicals.
‘’… The machinery industry alone had an annual revenue of nearly US$20 billion and was responsible for employing 600,000 people in the southern and eastern oblasts. Not only would trade disruptions in the EEU devastate the southern and eastern economies, they would also lead to the deindustrialisation of the Ukraine, and this process has already started.’’ (3)
Ukraine is now the poorest country in Europe. And once the process of deindustrialisation starts, charting a way back will be exceedingly difficult, even with the best will in the world and with the necessary manpower, skills, and expertise to carry out such a transformation. Moreover, this imbecility is compounded by military expenditures including the costs of an army of 250,000 that is doing nothing other than getting drunk and occasionally shelling towns and villages – against International Law it might be added – on the front line in the Donbass. Ukraine’s defence expenditure stands at 3.7% of GDP compared with NATO’s 2% and most NATO countries don’t even reach 2%. For the poorest country in Europe this is frankly bizarre. If you wanted to run a country and its economy into the ground this is the way to do it.
It has been suggested that nothing short of a huge ‘Marshall Plan’ to reconfigure Ukraine’s economic composition, requiring massive investment if it is to replace its post-Soviet industry – which seems especially so now that the industry heartlands of the Donbass have been severed from the Ukraine. Unsurprisingly, however, no-one is rushing to pick up the tab for this new ‘Marshall Plan’. Certainly not the EU, and even less so the Americans, who simply wanted yet another east European state (qua protectorate) to serve as a military base aimed at confronting Russia.
But now we may dispose of the customary patter of freedom and democracy together with the rest of the pseudo-rhetoric emanating from the usual sources. Fact: the entire Ukrainian imbroglio was essentially a matter of geopolitical realpolitik with the exalted rhetorical baggage being mere camouflage. US geopolitical strategy being predicated upon a hegemonic project to establish a system of dominance over the entire world. This desired outcome was nothing if not ambitious and is a common feature of all historically crackpot utopian schemes. This explains the US’s concurrent wars in the middle-east, the South China Sea, and in Europe – EUROCOM – with Ukraine as the spearhead. The object was initially to occupy western Europe through NATO and the EU, then spread this to eastern Europe, resulting in a de facto occupation and vassalisation of the European continent, with the role of the EU playing second string to its masters hegemonic requirements. This was the tawdry reality behind the initial euphoria of the short-lived settlement of 1991.
‘’It is pure hypocrisy to argue that the EU is now little more than an extended trading bloc after the Lisbon Treaty. It was institutionally now a core part of the Atlantic Security bloc (NATO) and had thus become geopolitical’’ (4)
In broader terms the Ukraine episode was part of a more general offensive against Putin in particular and Russia in general, and both were subjected to unrelenting demonization. With regard to Putin the venom was such that he was held personally responsible for the Skripal poisonings. That is to say a foreign head of a powerful state was accused of attempted murder of its citizens who resided in another state, the UK. Such unproven allegations between states seem unprecedented and alien to any type of mutual respect and diplomacy. For months the West has been demonizing Putin, it has almost become a national sport, with figures such as the Prince of Wales and Hilary Clinton comparing him with Hitler, oblivious to the fact that Putin had lost members of his own family during USSR’s Great Patriot war against Hitler’s legions. Such is the intellectual prowess, or more likely the lack of it, among the leading spokespersons of the West who combine ignorance in equal measure to arrogance. What set this crisis in motion were the recklessly provocative moves to absorb the Ukraine into the EU. Moreover, if the West’s offhand dismissal of Russia’s power concerns and the continued demonization of Putin continued, then Russia could well shift into a Cold War mode which would be a self-fulfilling prophecy come true.
Thus the contemporary decline of diplomacy reflects the didactic character of the liberal international order, which presumes that Russia is somehow an illegitimate interlocutor and parvenu and therefore its views can be discounted.
Coming full circle, the US relations with other states – particularly Russia and China – are best summarized in the Wolfowitz doctrine which bears repeating. As follows:
‘’Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defence strategy and requires that we endeavour to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.’’ (5)
Thus peaceful coexistence has never really been part of the US foreign policy, only world domination. Episodes like Ukraine, Syria and the middle-east, the South China Sea, Africa and Afghanistan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and not to mention Latin America are all part of the playbook and have all followed a similar if not exact patterns of regime change and/or being dragooned into one-sided relationships, military, commercial or otherwise.
Whoever becomes the next US American President will not in any way mean a departure from the above geopolitical policies. If anything such policies will be even more rigorously pursued.
NOTES
(1) These fascist militias had for some time been made ready for civil conflict against the Ukraine’s elected authorities. In 2012 I was travelling with my wife from Donetsk to a holiday resort in the Khmelnytskyi Oblast in the Western Ukraine. The train stopped at Dnipropetrovsk a major city half-way between. The train was boarded by a large group of young men; they looked like an amateur football team. My wife got talking to them and they described themselves as students. The strange thing was that there were no women or girls among them. Perhaps there were no female students in Ukraine; this seemed unlikely. Then the coin dropped: Right Sector had its main training camp at Dnipropetrovsk and these ‘students’ were going back to the west for the summer vacation. Two years later they were in all probability engaged in ‘political activities’ in Independence Square.
(2) http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n17/keith-gessen-why-not-kill-them-all)
(3) countryeconomy.com
(4) Richard Sakwa – Frontline Ukraine – p.255)
(5) Paul Wolfowitz -Defence Planning Guidance for the 1994–99 fiscal years (dated February 18, 1992) published by US Under Secretary of Défense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz and his deputy Scooter Libby. Not intended for public release, it was leaked to the New York Times on March 7, 1992, and sparked a public controversy about U.S. foreign and defence policy. The document was widely criticized as imperialist, as the document outlined a policy of unilateralism and pre-emptive military action to suppress potential threats from other nations and prevent ‘’dictatorships’’ from rising to superpower status.
Democratic Party Boosters Have Little to Offer
Few want to return to Obama or Clinton
By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • August 4, 2020
Donald Trump might be described as unique as a president of the United States in that he constantly impulsively self-promotes in a bizarre fashion which the Independent has described as “wild days of authoritarian and incoherent outbursts.” But normally politicians are canny enough to steal and connive out of sight without letting on what they are doing or thinking. Given that, you know you are in deep trouble as a nation when a major political party is so tone deaf as to persist in introducing spokesmen who suffer from serious negative perceptions to boost the chances of their current candidates for office. That is precisely what the Democratic Party has been doing when it keeps employing the Obamas and Clintons to promote the Democratic National Committee platform and its candidates for the November elections while also supporting the campaign of Honest Joe Biden.
Reminding the national electorate of the legacies of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama guarantees that voters normally inclined to vote Republican or even independent will be energized and turn out in large numbers in spite of their disdain for Trump’s style. Hillary, after all, should still be in jail for her mishandling of classified information while Barack ought to be in prison for life for having given the orders to assassinate American citizens without due process while also using the intelligence and law enforcement agencies to undermine the Donald Trump campaign. Hillary and Barack were also complicit in unnecessary wars against Libya and Syria that have devastated both countries.
Hillary is a co-founder of Onward Together, a Democratic Party front group that is affiliated to other activist organizations. In a recent e-mail she played the race card in a bid to solidify the black vote behind the Democratic Party, writing “Friend, George Floyd’s life mattered. Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor’s lives mattered. Black lives matter. Against a backdrop of a pandemic that has disproportionately ravaged communities of color, we are being painfully reminded right now that we are long overdue for honest reckoning and meaningful action to dismantle systemic racism.”
It is, of course, a not-so-subtle bid to buy votes using the currently popular code words “systemic racism” as a pledge that the Democrats will take steps to materially benefit blacks if the party wins the White House and a majority in the Senate. She ends her e-mail with an odd commitment, “I promise to keep fighting alongside all of you to make the United States a place where all men and all women are treated as equals, just as we are and just as we deserve to be.” The comment is odd because she is on one hand promising to promote the interests of one group based on skin color while also stating that everyone should be “treated as equals.” Someone should tip her off to the fact that employment and educational racial preferences and reparations are not the hallmarks of a government that treats everyone the same.
But if one really wants to dig into the depths of the Democratic Party soul, or lack thereof, there is no one who is better than former U.N. Ambassador and Secretary of State under Bill Clinton, the estimable Madeleine Albright. She too has written an e-mail that recently went out to Democratic Party supporters, saying:
“I’m deeply concerned. Donald Trump poses an existential threat to our standing in the world and continues to threaten the decades of diplomatic progress we had made. It is easy to forget from the comfort of our homes that for many people, America is a beacon of hope and opportunity. We’re known as a country that keeps our promises and upholds justice and democracy, and that didn’t just happen overnight. We’ve spent decades building our nation’s reputation on the world stage through careful, strategic diplomacy — but in just under four years, Trump has done unspeakable damage to those relationships and has insulted even our closest allies.”
Albright, who is perhaps most famous for having stated that she thought that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children due to U.S. imposed sanctions was “worth it,” is living in a fantasy bubble that many politicians and high government officials seem to inhabit. She embraces the America the “Essential Nation” concept because it makes her and her former boss Bill Clinton look like great statesmen. She once enthused nonsensically that “If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us.”
Madeleine Albright’s view that “America is a beacon of hope and opportunity… known as a country that keeps our promises and upholds justice and democracy” is also, of course, completely delusional, as opinion polls regularly indicate that nearly the entire world considers the U.S. to be extremely dangerous and virtually a rogue state in its blind pursuit of narrow self-interest combined with an unwillingness to uphold international law. And that has been true under both Democratic and Republican recent presidents, including Clinton. It is not just Trump.
Albright is clearly on a roll and has also submitted to a New York Times interview, further enlightening that paper’s readership on why the Trump administration is failing in its job of protecting the American people. The questions and answers are singularly, perhaps deliberately, unexciting and are largely focused on coronavirus and the new world order that it is shaping. Albright faults Trump for not promoting an international effort to defeat the virus, which is perhaps a bridge too far for most Americans who are not even very receptive to a nationally mandated pandemic response, let alone one requiring cooperation with “foreigners.”
Albright’s persistence as a go-to media “expert” on international relations is befuddling given her own history as an integral part of the inept foreign policy promoted by the Clinton Administration. She and Bill Clinton became cheerleaders for an unnecessary Balkan war that still resonates and were responsible for what was possibly the greatest foreign policy blunder (with the possible exception of the Iraq War) since the Second World War. That consisted of ignoring the commitment to post-Soviet Russia to not take advantage of the 1991 end of Communism by expanding U.S. or NATO military presence into Eastern Europe. Clinton/Albright reneged on that understanding and opened the door for many of the former Soviet allied states to enter NATO, thereby introducing a hostile military presence right up to Russia’s border.
Simultaneously, the U.S. enabled the election as Russian president of the hapless drunk Boris Yeltsin, who, guided by advisers sent by the White House, oversaw the western looting of his country’s natural resources. The bad decision-making under the Clintons led inevitably to the rise of Vladimir Putin as a corrective, which, exacerbated by Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State and a maladroit Donald Trump, has in turn produced the poisoned bilateral relationship between Washington and Moscow that currently prevails.
So, one might reasonably suggest to Joe Biden that if he really wants to get elected in November it would be a good idea to keep the Clintons, Albright and maybe even Obama carefully hidden away somewhere. Albright’s interview characteristically concludes with her plan for an “Avengers style dream team” to “fix the world right now.” She said that “Well, it certainly would be a female team. Without naming names, I would really try to look for women who are in office, both in the executive and legislative branch. I would try to have a female C.E.O., but also somebody who heads up a nongovernmental organization. You don’t want everybody that’s exactly the same. Oh, and I’m about to do a program for the National Democratic Institute with Angelina Jolie, and she made the most amazing movie about what was going on in Bosnia, so I would want her on my team.”
No men allowed and a Hollywood actress who is regarded as somewhat odd? Right.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest.
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Is Israel Uniquely Evil?
By Irfan Chowdhury | Palestine Chronicle | July 18, 2020
… Israel has been carrying out the longest-running military occupation in modern history and the longest-running siege in modern history. These two facts alone render Israel unique in terms of the scope of its brutality and criminality.
There are other respects in which Israel stands out from other countries in its use of terror and violence; for example, it is one of the most aggressive countries in the world, having waged wars of aggression against Lebanon in 1978, 1982, 1993, 1996 and 2006, and against Gaza in 2004, 2006, 2008/9, 2012 and 2014, killing huge numbers of civilians in the process (all while issuing threats and carrying out various covert attacks against Iran, which are all in violation of the UN Charter). … continue
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