It all started with the FBI investigation regarding a ‘sexting‘ scandal. A 15-year-old girl reported having received compromising photos from Anthony Weiner, former husband of Hillary Clinton’s top advisor Huma Abedin. It is the type of situation where the person of interest’s computing devices are reviewed by the FBI to check the contents for clues or evidence. The problem is that Anthony Weiner’s computer is not just like any other but rather one that he shared with his then wife, Huma Abedin. From the small amount of information leaked, it seems that the New York FBI division charged with investigating the affair has for a long time been silent over the enormous 650,000 email archive found. That was until a few days ago, when the director of the FBI revealed, with a letter to Congress, that this data was considered relevant to the ongoing investigation regarding Hillary Clinton and her private email server. It is a huge revelation given the few days left before the elections, causing huge problems for the Democratic campaign.
The more appropriate question to ask is why the director of the FBI, James Comey, decided to inform Congress. The most likely answer points to a leak that would have otherwise caused irreparable damage the reputation of the FBI. Had the new information about Clinton been withheld by the FBI, then it is easy to imagine that the reaction would have been far worse for Comey than the criticism he is currently enduring.
The FBI and Wikileaks
While it is easy to assume that senior federal employees are mostly expressions of political interests, Andrew McCabe being an indicative example, it is unlikely that there is a complete control of all the employees of a large agency like the FBI. This is essentially what the story of Anthony Weiner, former husband of Abedin, centers on. Fox News reported that the FBI detachment in New York had for months ignored the email archive in the computer thanks to the plausible excuse of the lack of a mandate. It almost looks as if the FBI had managed to conceal this new discovery for a long time. It is a fact that in the past Clinton has repeatedly been saved from catastrophe, managing to block federal investigations and forcing the FBI chief to a ridiculous testimony before Congress in order that she not be investigated. It is her trail of scandals that has outraged many federal agents and members of the intelligence community. More than one source has revealed that the Bureau was facing the risk of an internal revolt driven by agents eager to release to the American public basic information regarding an ongoing investigation on one of the presidential candidates.
Therefore it is very difficult to believe that 650,000 emails were found on Abedin’s computer that were of little significance or even irrelevant. Otherwise what sense would there be in trying to keep them hidden? Evidently the agents working on the case have discovered explosive information.
Who is Huma Abedin?
Huma Mahmood Abedin is a good starting point down the rabbit hole of dirty and dangerous money. Born in 1976 in the United States, she moved with her family to Saudi Arabia two years later, returning to the US at the age of 18 to enrol at George Washington University. Certainly more interesting is the story of her parents, both Muslims and both heavily involved in Muslim Brotherhood networks as well as opaque financing mechanisms to structures linked Al Qaeda. How the daughter of two such controversial characters could come to occupy such an important role explains how deep down the rabbit hole this story goes.
To understand the influence of Abedin on Hillary Clinton, just think of all the latest scandals involving Clinton that revolve around the funding and indirect support of radical Islamist groups. From Libya to Egypt to Syria and Iraq, the trail of the State Department and the Clinton Foundation is everywhere. It is no wonder that a family like the Abedins have been able to forge such important friendships as the one with the possible future president of the United States. Abedin seems likely to be an intermediary connecting worlds that are adjacent but never fully overlapping. No American could ever accept the idea that alongside the next POTUS could be a person deeply embedded in such a milieu. But that is how it is. On September 11, 2001, for example, Abedin was simultaneously working for the Clinton Foundation as well as a charity subsequently discovered to be a front for money laundering on behalf of Bin Laden, as covered by Newsweek. The day when the twin towers collapsed, the current top advisor to the probable next US president was working for an organisation indirectly linked to Al Qaeda.
The American Deep State
When addressing the topic of Huma Mahmood Abedin, top advisor to Hillary Clinton, it is good to ask how deep we are willing to go to discover the mechanisms of American power, penetrating into the dark caverns and complex entrails of a state within a state, the so-called deep state.
To answer this question, it is good to define it. Generally, when we talk about the deep state, it means the various branches of power. The best known are certainly the military-industrial complex, energy giants, Wall Street, the mainstream news media, extremist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and its Wahhabi ideology, in addition to foreign lobbies, especially the Israeli and Saudi lobbies. Their interests are mainly based around the accumulation of money and their ability to generate more of it to buy influence.
Generally the major representatives of deep-state interests are the so-called think-tanks. These organisations, made up of experts and former members of the public and private sectors, exist primarily to influence and condition the political discussions, favoring the interests of their funders, which not surprisingly are precisely the industries and people related to the various branches of American power. As a result, think-tanks have now taken on a more central role in defining the domestic and foreign-policy postures of the United States.
Of course money also buys people in addition to associations. This is the case with direct donations to the election campaigns of senators and members of Congress by the giants of the deep state. Large companies, banks, financial institutions and the military industry use think-tanks, the media and politicians through their money with only one purpose: to protect and nurture their interests and their vision of the state within the state. Put simply, their objective is to continue to enrich themselves at the expense of taxpayers.
Wahhabism, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Deep State
In addition to the neo-conservative and liberal factions, as well as the Israel lobby, we find the ideological component of Wahhabi Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood participating in the US political system, playing an important role in the fashioning of American foreign policy. Suffice it to say that this trio has for more than two decades completely dominated the choices about foreign policy of the United States, with dire consequences. The Muslim Brotherhood, a creation inspired by the British MI6 in the early 1900s to fight nationalism and Arab governments with communist inclinations, quickly became the spiritual fathers of the Afghan freedom fighters. It is a monster that has continued to morph in our day from the Taliban in Afghanistan to Al Qaeda in the late 1990s to the 2000s, and currently metamorphosing into Al Nusra Front/Daesh. Of course in each of its historical iterations, Islamic extremism has been fomented and directed against nations hostile to American imperialism.
In recent years the once peaceful Arab Spring turned into violent riots thanks to the ideological inspiration of movements such as Saudi Wahhabism or the Muslim Brotherhood. This distorted view of Islam has often been the catalyst transforming initially peaceful movements into violent anti-government clashes. The Wahhabi ideology and the Muslim Brotherhood’s political interpretation of Islam unites such capitals as Riyadh, Doha and Ankara with those fighting for the Islamic caliphate, namely Al Nusra Front/Al Qaeda. US geopolitical ambitions have increased over the years through terrorist attacks and the consequent destabilization of nations opposed to Washington. The use of terrorism as a geopolitical weapon is not new for the United States when one remembers the stay-behind networks that operated in Europe during the Cold War.
This conglomerate of power has in the last 30 years guided American foreign policy, justifying interventions in foreign countries under the pretext of fighting terrorism (Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan), or by using terrorism as a tool of destabilization (Syria, Egypt, Yemen). Consequently, the Wahabi/Brotherhood component continues to play to this day a major role in the constant quest for global supremacy by the US deep state.
Clinton Foundation, Huma Abedin and US Deep State
The deep corruption that permeates the deep state has consistently enabled countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey to buy modern and advanced means of warfare produced in the US. A summary of the so-called pay-to-play scheme goes as follows: money comes into the coffers of the Clinton Foundation thanks to generous donations from Riyadh and Doha, and in return they are cleared by the State Department (headed for many years precisely by Clinton) for the sale of weapons. It is a simple mechanism that satisfies everyone: the foreign countries are able to get their hands on advanced weapons to be employed in future bloody wars; the weapons traders receive hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts; and the Clinton Foundation, as payment, receives millions of dollars in donations.
In a rather agreeable arrangement, the arms manufacturers earn back the money invested in election campaigns many times over, thanks to the resulting lucrative contracts closed with foreign countries. The consequences of such a wicked arrangement have been seen in wars of aggression by the Saudis against the Yemenis and the Turks against the Kurdish minority, all thanks to weapons sold by Washington. Another aspect of this arrangement relates to the sale of weapons to terrorists in the Middle East from the US thanks to the sponsorship of the Gulf nations. It is an evil system that in addition to enriching the producers of American weapons, as well as the Clinton Foundation together with satisfying the regional allies of the US, uses Gulf nations to provide cover to the US to directly provide advanced weaponry to terrorists. A typical example of this perverse arrangement is easily verifiable in the events in Benghazi, which still awaits truth and justice.
Consequences
The drama around the emails contained on the computer of Huma Abedin and her ex-husband is probably attributable to the concrete risk that all this mess gets uncovered, including the unspeakable role of Clinton and her foundation in international terrorism. It remains to be seen in this complicated journey into the deep state what role the FBI and Donald Trump are playing. Although personally I have many doubts about the figure of Trump, one thing I am quite certain of is that a vast chasm separates him from the center of America’s deep-state establishment. While Clinton is a direct product of this tumor, Donald Trump comes from another set of circumstances, marshalling around him that patriotic feeling that many, even within the US government, are beginning to feel, particularly given that America’s international credibility, together with its confidence domestically, has collapsed dramatically.
Despite the constant efforts of the mainstream media to refute this representation of reality, the feeling is increasingly common in the minds of Americans that much of what ails the country today is this degenerate web of economic, political and strategic corruption. Many Americans are tired of seeing their nation fighting senseless wars far away from home without any real threat to their national security but with costs in the order of trillions of dollars.
Conclusions
The United States has been flirting immorally and illegally with organizations dedicated to terrorism, thanks to the many deep-state links. Such collusion existed before and after September 11, subsequently triggering the Arab Spring and destabilizing countries like Libya, Syria and Iraq. What we have seen in the last few days with Comey’s revelations may represent a veritable Pandora’s box. It is impossible to determine whether this scandal will eventually overwhelm Hillary Clinton. Perhaps the leaders of the deep state have decided to destroy the nomination of the Democratic nominee in favor of Donald Trump. Or maybe not; right now every hypothesis is valid. But if Trump wins on November 8, it may represent the triumph of the American people’s will to discard once and for all anything that even remotely smells of the ‘deep state’, the redolence of which hangs heavily over Clinton and her aide Huma Mahmood Abedin.
The American people don’t know very much about war even if Washington has been fighting on multiple fronts since 9/11. The continental United States has not experienced the presence a hostile military force for more than 100 years and war for the current generation of Americans consists largely of the insights provided by video games and movies. The Pentagon’s invention of embedded journalists, which limits any independent media insight into what is going on overseas, has contributed to the rendering of war as some kind of abstraction. Gone forever is anything like the press coverage of Vietnam, with nightly news and other media presentations showing prisoners being executed and young girls screaming while racing down the street in flames.
Given all of that, it is perhaps no surprise that both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, neither of whom has served in uniform, should regard violence inflicted on people overseas with a considerable level of detachment. Hillary is notorious for her assessment of the brutal killing of Libya’s Moammar Gaddafi, saying “We came, we saw, he died.” They both share to an extent the dominant New York-Washington policy consensus view that dealing with foreigners can sometimes get a bit bloody, but that is a price that someone in power has to be prepared to pay. One of Hillary’s top advisers, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, famously declared that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children due to U.S. led sanctions were “worth it.”
In the election campaign there has, in fact, been little discussion of the issue of war and peace or even of America’s place in the world, though Trump did at one point note correctly that implementation of Hillary’s suggested foreign policy could escalate into World War III. It has been my contention that the issue of war should be more front and center in the minds of Americans when they cast their ballots as the prospect of an armed conflict in which little is actually at stake escalating and going nuclear could conceivably end life on this planet as we know it.
With that in mind, it is useful to consider what the two candidates have been promising. First, Hillary, who might reasonably be designated the Establishment’s war candidate though she carefully wraps it in humanitarian “liberal interventionism.” As Senator and Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton has always viewed a foreign crisis as an opportunity to use aggressive measures to seek a resolution. She can always be relied upon to “do something,” a reflection of the neocon driven Washington foreign policy consensus.
Hillary Clinton and her advisors, who believe strongly in Washington’s leadership role globally and embrace their own definition of American exceptionalism, have been explicit in terms of what they would do to employ our military power. She would be an extremely proactive president in foreign policy, with a particular animus directed against Russia. And, unfortunately, there would be little or no pushback against the exercise of her admittedly poor instincts regarding what to do, as was demonstrated regarding Libya and also with Benghazi. She would find little opposition in Congress and the media for an extremely risky foreign policy, and would benefit from the Washington groupthink that prevails over the alleged threats emanating from Russia, Iran, and China.
Hillary has received support from foreign policy hawks, including a large number of formerly Republican neocons, to include Robert Kagan, Michael Chertoff, Michael Hayden, Eliot Cohen and Eric Edelman. James Stavridis, a retired admiral who was once vetted by Clinton as a possible vice president, recently warned of “the need to use deadly force against the Iranians. I think it’s coming. It’s going to be maritime confrontation and if it doesn’t happen immediately, I’ll bet you a dollar it’s going to be happening after the presidential election, whoever is elected.”
Hillary believes that Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad is the root cause of the turmoil in that country and must be removed as the first priority. It is a foolish policy as al-Assad in no way threatens the United States while his enemy ISIS does and regime change would create a power vacuum that will benefit the latter. She has also called for a no-fly zone in Syria to protect the local population as well as the insurgent groups that the U.S. supports, some of which had been labeled as terrorists before they were renamed by current Secretary of State John Kerry. Such a zone would dramatically raise the prospect of armed conflict with Russia and it puts Washington in an odd position vis-à-vis what is occurring in Syria. The U.S. is not at war with the Syrian government, which, like it or not, is under international law sovereign within its own recognized borders. Damascus has invited the Russians in to help against the rebels and objects to any other foreign presence on Syrian territory. In spite of all that, Washington is asserting some kind of authority to intervene and to confront the Russians as both a humanitarian mission and as an “inherent right of self-defense.”
Hillary has not recommended doing anything about Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, all of which have at one time or another for various reasons supported ISIS, but she is clearly no friend of Iran, which has been fighting ISIS. As a Senator, she threatened to “totally obliterate” Iran but she has more recently reluctantly supported the recent nuclear agreement with that country negotiated by President Barack Obama. But she has nevertheless warned that she will monitor the situation closely for possible violations and will otherwise push back against activity by the Islamic Republic. As one of her key financial supporters is Israeli Haim Saban, who has said he is a one issue guy and that issue is Israel, she is likely to pursue aggressive policies in the Persian Gulf. She has also promised to move America’s relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a “new level” and has repeatedly declared that her support for Israel is unconditional.
One of Hillary’s advisors, former CIA acting Director Michael Morell, has called for new sanctions on Tehran and has also recently recommended that the U.S. begin intercepting Iranian ships presumed to be carrying arms to the Houthis in Yemen. Washington is not at war with either Iran or Yemen and the Houthis are not on the State Department terrorist list but our good friends the Saudis have been assiduously bombing them for reasons that seem obscure. Stopping ships in international waters without any legal pretext would be considered by many an act of piracy. Morell has also called for covertly assassinating Iranians and Russians to express our displeasure with the foreign policies of their respective governments.
Hillary’s dislike for Russia’s Vladimir Putin is notorious. Syria aside, she has advocated arming Ukraine with game changing offensive weapons and also bringing Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, which would force a sharp Russian reaction. One suspects that she might be sympathetic to the views expressed recently by Carl Gershman in a Washington Postop-ed that received curiously little additional coverage in the media. Gershman is the head of the taxpayer funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which means that he is a powerful figure in Washington’s foreign-policy establishment. NED has plausibly been described as doing the sorts of things that the CIA used to do.
After making a number of bumper-sticker claims about Russia and Putin that are either partially true, unproven or even ridiculous, Gershman concluded that “the United States has the power to contain and defeat this danger. The issue is whether we can summon the will to do so.” It is basically a call for the next administration to remove Putin from power—as foolish a suggestion as has ever been seen in a leading newspaper, as it implies that the risk of nuclear war is completely acceptable to bring about regime change in a country whose very popular, democratically elected leadership we disapprove of. But it is nevertheless symptomatic of the kind of thinking that goes on inside the beltway and is quite possibly a position that Hillary Clinton will embrace. She also benefits from having the perfect implementer of such a policy in Robert Kagan’s wife Victoria Nuland, her extremely dangerous protégé who is currently Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs and who might wind up as Secretary of State in a Clinton Administration.
Shifting to East Asia, Hillary sees the admittedly genuine threat from North Korea but her response is focused more on China. She would increase U.S. military presence in the South China Sea to deter any further attempts by Beijing to develop disputed islands and would also “ring China with defensive missiles,” ostensibly as “protection” against Pyongyang but also to convince China to pressure North Korea over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. One wonders what Beijing might think about being surrounded by made-in-America missiles.
Trump’s foreign policy is admittedly quite sketchy and he has not always been consistent. He has been appropriately enough slammed for being simple minded in saying that he would “bomb the crap out of ISIS,” but he has also taken on the Republican establishment by specifically condemning the George W. Bush invasion of Iraq and has more than once indicated that he is not interested in either being the world’s policeman or in new wars in the Middle East. He has repeatedly stated that he supports NATO but it should not be construed as hostile to Russia. He would work with Putin to address concerns over Syria and Eastern Europe. He would demand that NATO countries spend more for their own defense and also help pay for the maintenance of U.S. bases.
Trump’s controversial call to stop all Muslim immigration has been rightly condemned but it contains a kernel of truth in that the current process for vetting new arrivals in this country is far from transparent and apparently not very effective. The Obama Administration has not been very forthcoming on what might be done to fix the entire immigration process but Trump is promising to shake things up, which is overdue, though what exactly a Trump Administration would try to accomplish is far from clear.
Continuing on the negative side, Trump, who is largely ignorant of the world and its leaders, has relied on a mixed bag of advisors. Former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency General Michael Flynn appears to be the most prominent. Flynn is associated with arch neocon Michael Ledeen and both are rabid about Iran, with Flynn suggesting that nearly all the unrest in the Middle East should be laid at Tehran’s door. Ledeen is, of course, a prominent Israel-firster who has long had Iran in his sights. The advice of Ledeen and Flynn may have been instrumental in Trump’s vehement denunciation of the Iran nuclear agreement, which he has called a “disgrace,” which he has said he would “tear up.” It is vintage dumb-think. The agreement cannot be canceled because there are five other signatories to it and the denial of a nuclear weapons program to Tehran benefits everyone in the region, including Israel. It is far better to have the agreement than to scrap it, if that were even possible.
Trump has said that he would be an even-handed negotiator between Israel and the Palestinians but he has also declared that he is strongly pro-Israel and would move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, which is a bad idea, not in America’s interest, even if Netanyahu would like it. It would produce serious blowback from the Arab world and would inspire a new wave of terrorism directed against the U.S.
Regarding the rest of the Middle East, Trump would prefer strong leaders, i.e. autocrats, who are friendly rather than chaotic reformers. He rejects arming rebels as in Syria because we know little about whom we are dealing with and find that we cannot control what develops. He is against foreign aid in principle, particularly to countries like Pakistan where the U.S. is strongly disliked.
In East Asia, Trump would encourage Japan and South Korea to develop their own nuclear arsenals to deter North Korea. It is a very bad idea, a proliferation nightmare. Like Hillary, he would prefer that China intervene in North Korea and make Kim Jong Un “step down.” He would put pressure on China to devalue its currency because it is “bilking us of billions of dollars” and would also increase U.S. military presence in the region to limit Beijing’s expansion in the South China Sea.
So there you have it as you enter the voting booth. President Obama is going around warning that “the fate of the world is teetering” over the electoral verdict, which he intends to be a ringing endorsement of Hillary even though the choice is not nearly that clear cut. Part of the problem with Trump is that he has some very bad ideas mixed in with a few good ones and no one knows what he would actually do if he were president. Unfortunately, it is all too clear what Hillary would do.
Amid claims of silent coup and counter-coup, this year’s “October Surprise” has yet to fully play out. Neither – with lasts weekend’s reopening of the ‘Servergate’ saga that has so dogged HRC – will it be concluded by the November 8th polling day. As this can only be viewed as to be by design – prepare for an explosive finale.
In its current iteration ‘Weinergate’ concerns 650,000 ‘additional’ emails kept on a phone and laptop belonging to Anthony Weiner – former US Congressman and estranged husband of Huma Abedin – HRC’s top aide. These emails are widely presumed to be the legacy of when Weiner had shared access with his then wife to the documents. It is speculated she kept them as ‘Life Insurance’ and he backed them up (presumably for the same reason.)
The reason I’m writing this in vague terminology is the truth is – no one knows. The devices were surrendered on an ‘unrelated matter’ – that matter being the alleged paedophilia of Weiner (notice that the Orwellian M$M have sanitised this activity as ‘sexting’ – but if you send photos of your manhood to an under age girl – that’s paedophilia.)
As I understand it, when FBI Director Comey wrote his letter of intent to reinvestigate last Friday – he can’t of legally even seen the content. The FBI didn’t obtain a warrant until Sunday to begin cross referencing between the two cases. His leaked letter has been described as “long on innuendo but short on fact.” So how can he be sure that the current crop of emails are pertinent and will shed new light? Despite the Democrat cat-call for elucidation – Comey has been silent since.
It appears that the FBI is investigating Pandora’s Box – the lid is on at the moment – but of all the worldly ills that may come out to haunt Hillary when the lid is finally lifted – are racketeering and ‘pay-to-play’ by the Clinton Foundation; political cronyism; corruption; vote rigging by the DNC; perjury and possible felony by Huma Abedin and other aides (for not turning over all devices related to the original investigation.)[1] This would all be on the mild end of a spectrum running all the way up to the treasonous acceptance of donations from terrorist backing foreign powers (KSA and Qatar) [2]; high level espionage (by Huma Abedin) [3] and being a member of an international paedophile ring.[4]
The new paedophilia allegation against Hillary and Bill surfaced yesterday (03/11/16). It comes from Steve Pieczenik – who in his videos claims to be the face of the counter-coup.[5] He only came on my radar yesterday morning but his credentials are real and impressive – his resume could be summed up as “consummate White House insider” going back to the Ford regime. Apart from being a veteran of the State Department, with expertise in foreign policy, international crisis management and intelligence (high ranking CIA.) He also is credited as a founding father of modern psychological warfare (psyops.) If you are conspiratorially minded (like me) – you could also consider him a perfect candidate for a Deep State actor. In one of his videos he even admits he was involved in the “continuity of the Republic” (Continuity of Government) process under Nixon and Reagan. Now he is the new and friendly face of the Deep State.
His claim is that Hill and Bill often travelled (six times together and twenty-six times for Bill alone) on the ‘Lolita Express’ to the US Virgin Isles – a plane belonging to Clinton Foundation donor, multi-billionaire and convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. [6] During these flights and on Epsteins island…
I can’t find words to sanitise some of the most reprehensible crimes known to man – so I’ll let you fill in the blanks.
Manufactured or not – I very much doubt this to be a baseless claim – as it has much wider implications than even the current election. Pieczenik seems to confirm earlier leaks from the NYPD Special Victims Unit (SVU) ongoing investigation into Weiner. Sources from within the SVU claim that his laptop contained “evidence of an international child smuggling and child sex ring.” [7] Their probe now extends into the alleged endemic deviance of a ‘Washington Paedophile Ring’ – the possible repercussions of which could be international and dire enough to bring down “the entire federal government.” This would be a very bold claim indeed for an insider to make were it not credible – or at least backable.
My guess is that the very nature and magnitude of the crime is meant to force HRC to think twice about taking up residence in the Oval Office should she be elected. But she is too power crazed, criminally insane and possibly even demented to take notice. Because she always has – she thinks she can still walk on water – though to me it seems that she is no longer waving – but drowning.
(I seem to remember that should she succumb to illness in the first few months of office – First Lady Bill could reign by proxy – but lets not go there!)
In the meanwhile – in the absence of anything concrete and factual to go on – rumour is running wild. Everyone knows that the Russian Hack Plot is BS – the rantings of the deranged finally losing the plot. Yet for the Mockingbird M$M – it serves as a weak smokescreen to cover the enormity of the allegations being made and the substantive content of the various earlier data dumps on Wikileaks.
Julian Assange himself has felt the need to deny that Russia is the source (In an upcoming interview with John Pilger to be broadcast by RT on Saturday – excerpts of which are already available.) [8]
In a previous video Assange somewhat awkwardly seems to confirm Seth Rich as a probable source for the earlier DNC hack related to this case (the Clinton Campaign manager John Podesta emails.) [9] Rich was Director of Voter Expansion Data for the DNC – so he would have had all the relevant security keys and was at least well placed to collate the data prior to the leak. He was scheduled to talk to the FBI over the leaks. He was on the street near his home – talking to his girlfriend on the phone when he was shot in the back several times – in a robbery-gone-wrong where nothing was taken. Draw your own conclusion – but can we possibly add conspiracy to murder to the crimes in Pandora’s Box?.[10]
What seems more credible than ‘the Russians did it’ – and as Pieczenik contends – is that elements within the Washington intelligence community do not want HRC as POTUS. Those elements are ‘pissed’ about HRC’s as yet unpunished criminal inability to correctly handle State secrets – content to leave them “on the internet version of a park bench.” That this is the source of the current leaks surfacing through Wikileaks was also attested to by former UK ambassador Craig Murray – whom – although he is a friend of Assange – I would consider a trusted source without a dog in the presidential race. [11]
Among the theories circulating is that the Department of Justice (DoJ) under Lorretta Lynch is so compromised that investigations cannot proceed through proper channels – hence the resort to data dumps. This would seem to be borne out by Lynch’s extra-judicial meeting with Bill the night before Comey initially dropped the investigation.[12] [13]
Not only is Lynch seen as compromised or co-opted (as part of the Clinton coup according to Pieczenik); but so is Comey. Either by his own ineptness or possible corruption – he now finds himself pressured by a grass roots rebellion from within his own ranks – of those sick of the Clinton’s decades long history of criminality. “The FBI is Trumpland” as the Guardian put it. [14] Add to that the NYPD SVU investigators have claimed to uncover evidence so vile that they have threatened the FBI that they will go public if he does not follow through with the original investigation. “People are going to jail.” And Comey and Lynch may be joining them.
Another strand to this was the impropriety reported in the Wall Street Journal a few days before Comey wrote his letter to Congress – the $500,000 ‘campaign contribution’ made by long time Clinton ally and leading Democrat Terry McCauliffe – to the wife of the very FBI official (Deputy Director Andrew McCabe) who oversaw the original email investigation. So to political cronyism – can we add attempted cover up into Pandora’s box? [15]
If I wanted to get really conspiratorial – I could add that the FBI themselves have told us that a literal “Shadow Government” (the 7th Floor Committee including John Kerry) oversaw which of Hillary’s emails we got to see back in February. [16] Could they have sanitised the original emails or be sitting on evidence? Could this “Shadow Government” yet be attempting to manipulate the election for their own gain? Who knows – but probably.
If you did want to control – or at least influence the electorate – would there be a better way to do it than have an open-ended multi-faceted investigation involving one or both candidates – that you could close down or otherwise direct and manipulate at will – like the directed energy of a shaped charge you could ignite and control the blast radius? Just speculating – of course that is delusional – and anyway, it wouldn’t happen in the Land of the Free – would it?
So are we watching a re-envisioned 1776 in the form of a bloodless silent coup – a 21st century American rebellion by the honest and decent folk of the Intelligence Community to re-establish the Republic?
Or are we watching the chainstoking and death throes of an Empire as it passes into history?
Time will tell but I’m not fully bought into either of those just yet. Whatever dirt they have on HRC and the Establishment faction that constitute her backers – I feel sure that is fully accredited. If and when it’s let out of the box – I very much doubt that Hillary’s Hope will be left within. She could be a double first. The first female POTUS – and also the first POTUS to be impeached on their first day in office.
The battle lines of American power politics are drawn – the Establishment v the Intelligence Community – the deep state divisions are moving into place – but the real war is yet to come.
“This will continue as a revolution, hopefully civil, hopefully without violence.” Steve Pieczenik
It’s hard to see how this will play out – and harder still to see how anyone could hope to ‘keep a lid’ on it and control the collateral damage. The potential for internecine destruction is assured if things were to get out of hand – I haven’t even mentioned the dodgy Diebold voting machines or even Trump himself. He is unlikely to come up smelling of roses – not given that he is also a friend of Jeffrey Epstein – and they are both under the shadow of the upcoming ignominy of a shared rape trial (due in court in December.) A recent appearance by the plaintiff ‘Jane Doe’ – in which she was to reveal her identity was cancelled amid death threats to her.[17]
[What chance to have both candidates potentially hamstrung by their connection to a Tier 1 sex offender (Epstein) and to ongoing rape allegations?]
Should he win the popular vote his Presidency will be blighted by the smear that the vote was tainted and ‘Democracy overturned’ by these unprecedented and ‘illegal’ events. Or put more simplistically – “the Russians hacked the election.” The Establishment backing Hillary has already cried foul and has threatened to instigate the Hatch Act prosecution of Comey (I think that boys goose is cooked however this goes down!) [18]
Divide and rule comes to mind – the potential for civil war is real and should not be understated. That may be the design yet somehow I doubt it. Whoever wins the coming power struggle will want to control the damage and preserve the fabric of the State. Even though this could potentially be “bigger than Watergate” the Mockingbird M$M will do their best to make sure as little of this as possible comes to light. The thinning veneer of ‘real democracy’ as practised in the ‘exceptional and indispensable’ nation must be maintained. At any cost.
In all of this though, you can be assured – that the will of the American people is but a minor consideration.
Why are they lying? Everything is being done to convince the public that Russia wants war; that it has annexed Ukraine; that it will attack Western Europe; that it will crush the Baltic states and Poland in its advance; that it’s committing war crimes in Syria; that Assad is a dictator and a butcher; that he has met peaceful demands for reform with brutal repression; that those fighting Assad are moderate rebels; that he is dropping barrel bombs on civilians.
Why are they lying? Because the people don’t want war: they want jobs and bread. They will not agree to murder people who have done them no harm. They will consent to war if told they are under attack or that the war will save other people from genocide, rape, or other gross violations of human rights. The people are not interested in world domination, but the elite are. The people are, therefore, the enemy within. They must be persuaded to support the elite’s plan by perverting their decency. They must be made to cringe in fear. They must be made to believe that war—any war—will be defensive.
This is the tactic of terrorists: terrorizing the population to obtain political ends.
Hillary Clinton is lying: a no-fly zone in Syria will not “save lives.”
In her last presidential debate, Clinton said that she wants a no-fly zone in Syria because it will “save lives”:
“I’m going to continue to push for a no-fly zone and safe havens within Syria, not only to help protect the Syrians and prevent the constant outflow of refugees, but to, frankly, gain some leverage on both the Syrian government and the Russians.”
The “leverage” she is seeking is Russian roulette with the planet. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dunford, noted in response that a no-fly zone in Syria might trigger a war with Russia, a nuclear power. Neither does she believe that a no-fly zone will save lives. In a closed-door speech to Goldman Sachs in 2013, Clinton said:
“To have a no-fly zone you have to take out all of the air defense, many of which are located in populated areas. So our missiles, even if they are standoff missiles so we’re not putting our pilots at risk—you’re going to kill a lot of Syrians.”
She knows what is at stake with a no-fly zone in Syria, and yet she tells us the opposite of what she knows will happen. In other words, she’s lying.
What has changed Clinton’s mind since 2013?
In 2013, there was no need to risk nuclear war over Syria. The so-called Free Syrian Army and assorted rebel groups were doing just fine in their offensive. In 2013, Syria stood alone, apart from some Iranian assistance. Until 2015, the Assad government was on its last breath, in retreat from the provinces of Raqqa, Aleppo, Hama, Idlib, and Latakia. By September 2015, the generous financial, military, and operational support by the United States, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey to the “anti-Syrian coalition”– Islamic State, the Jabbat al-Nusra, the “Free Syrian Army”–was paying great dividends in advancing the destabilization of the Assad government. Soon, it could be expected that the symbolic head of Assad would sit on a silver platter in the White House, along with other colonial trophies.
The humanitarian consequences for Syrians, however, were catastrophic. Fleeing the terror of a Syria in the clutches of cutthroat mercenary armies, refugees flooded Turkey, Jordan, Greece, and other countries, becoming human barter between Turkey and the European Union. The EU paid Turkey two billion euro to keep within its borders this human avalanche of “collateral damage.”
That was the situation in September of 2015, when Russia, invited by the legitimate Syrian government, legitimately intervened in Syria with aircraft, support personnel, military advisors and equipment. In a year of Russian efforts to establish a premise for a peaceful solution in Syria by eliminating the militant rabble the Western chorus of “Assad must go” has mutated into a furious hiss of impotent rage. No one expects Assad to go now, unless the US comes up with a strategy to reverse the losses the Russian intervention has inflicted.
Enter Hillary’s reversal on the no-fly zone, which now, contrary to her judgment in 2013, will “save lives.”
What is a no-fly zone?
A no-fly zone is a coercive appropriation of the partial airspace of a sovereign country. It is the arbitrary creation of a demilitarized zone in the sky to prevent belligerent powers from flying in that air space. In Syria, the “belligerent power,” ironically, would be the internationally recognized legitimate Syrian government and its legitimate ally, Russia.
According to former UN Secretary Boutros Boutros-Ghali, in an interview with John Pilger, a no-fly zone is illegal under international law. No-fly zones are post-Soviet inventions. The measure was never proposed, used, or authorized to this day by the UN Security Council until the Soviet Union virtually dissolved. This restraint was exercised by the US for the excellent reason that no such aggression on a sovereign state would have been tolerated without massive fuss at the UN Security Council and a bad rap for the US. There have been only three instances of a no-fly zone so far, all in the wake of the disappearance of the USSR: Iraq (1991-2003), Bosnia (1993-95), and Libya (2011), all initiated on the hypocritical pretense of “saving lives.”
What is Plan B?
In one word: escalation. Apart from partitioning the air space of Syria, Plan B would provide for supplying, through Qatar or Saudi Arabia, man-portable air defense systems to the “moderate opposition,” including if it is acknowledged that the “moderate opposition” has allied itself openly with the al-Nusra front. Plan B has not been approved, but the media has floated a series of reports throughout October as being under consideration.
On October 28, the New York Times published an astonishing conclusion about an aspect of the Obama administration’s strategy in Syria, though gently and benevolently worded. The Times indicated that it was being felt that Obama had insufficiently armed the “moderate opposition,” so that in Aleppo it had “no choice” but to partner with al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (formerly al-Nusra) to fight off Putin and Assad. At the same time, Reuters noted that the Obama administration had formerly considered arming the “moderates” with anti-air missiles but was constrained by the fear that such weapons would fall in the hands of ”extremists.”
Such reports suggest, rather boldly, I think, that “former restraint” might have to give way to greater support for the “moderate” militants, including if they partner with “extremists.” Thus, we arrive at a point of utter bewilderment in which we verify the absurdity of launching a War on Terror to end up fighting a War with Terror.
Oppose US imperialism
It is good and proper that we should denounce Hillary Clinton for her vile record of regime change (in Honduras), crime of aggression (Libya), threats to Russia and China, corruption, illegality, and abuse of power. She’s clearly unfit to be president of any decent country that calls itself democratic.
However, fixating on her individual agency lets the policy off the hook. The US is not yet a banana republic, in which the patriarch of some rich landowning family becomes the patriarch-autocrat of a country. An intricate network of powerful interests, which determine the policy, rules the US, frantic to maintain global economic and military dominance. This ruling class selects the candidate who will best carry out the policy. Hillary Clinton will be the servant of the interests of the ruling class of which she is a member. She will be their president.
So it’s the policy that must be opposed, and this policy is imperialist. We must develop a principled opposition to this policy, without prevarications. The task falls on the left, but it cannot be a left divided by relativist consideration of “evil” on all sides. However we may feel about the morality of governments in Russia, China, Syria, Iran, etc., one thing is clear: they did not launch a war on Iraq, opening the door to all the crimes that followed from that original crime. It is time to decide whether we want to live with things as they are or change them. And we must begin by changing them at home.
Luciana Bohne is co-founder of Film Criticism, a journal of cinema studies, and teaches at Edinboro University in Pennsylvania. She can be reached at: lbohne@edinboro.edu
We’re within 48 hours of deciding who will be the next leader of the United States, and Wikileaks has just upped the ante in the high-stakes presidential election by releasing yet another batch of hacked Democratic National Committee emails. This time, Julian Assange’s organization has provided an even clearer picture of who’s in bed with the Clintons, and the revelations might surprise a lot of people.
In one email exchange between the DNC’s Mark Paustenbach (National Press Secretary & Deputy Communications Director) and the DNC’s Luis Miranda (Communications Director), Politico’s Peter Vogel appears to have passed along a story about Hillary Clinton’s fundraising campaign. While the content of Vogel’s story is unimportant, questions now arise as to why the Politico reporter felt the need to share his pre-published story with the DNC before sending it to his editor in chief.
Paustenbach wrote, “Vogel gave me his story ahead of time/before it goes to his editors as long as I didn’t share it. Let me know if you see anything that’s missing and I’ll push back.”
Was it because he was wanting permission to publish the story? Was he fact-checking with the DNC before running it? Or was he likely colluding with the DNC to paint Clinton and her campaign in a favorable light? These questions and more are now being raised about the apparently cozy relationship Vogel maintained with the DNC. Paustenbach even implied he had the potential to sway the article by using the words “push back.”
In another telling email, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer received questions to be asked of Donald Trump in an interview just a few days ahead of Trump’s foreign policy speech. Yes, the Democratic National Committee crafted the questions Blitzer was supposed to ask Trump. Many members of the DNC contributed questions to Blitzer’s interview of the billionaire Republican presidential nominee, adding credibility to critics’ claims CNN is actually the Clinton News Network. Here’s a sampling of the questions Blitzer was charged with asking. “Who helped you write the foreign policy speech you’re giving tomorrow?,” and, “What would you do if the military refused to listen to you?”
According to yet another email, it was CNN who was reaching out to the DNC for those questions. Lauren Dillon, the DNC’s Research Director, wrote, “CNN is looking for questions.”
The latest Wikileaks email dump is trending on Twitter with the hashtag #DNCLeak2, and is taking off like a wildfire. More details may emerge as the country moves closer to Tuesday evening’s election hours.
As The Free Thought Project has reported, it used to be a conspiracy theory that a secretive project called “Operation Mockingbird” was responsible for disseminating government sponsored talking points to the media, to be used in an echo chamber and repeated to various news outlets. But as of September 2016, the project is no longer secret and no longer hidden, and it could be that the aforementioned members of the mainstream media are all members of said project. With the FBI not bringing charges against Clinton, it appears she’s now the official government-sponsored candidate to win the election of 2016, by any means necessary, including working with the mainstream media to do so.
As the Free Thought Project covers the presidential candidates and their various blunders, depending on which candidate we criticize, we are accused of supporting the ‘other guy.’ It is important to note that the Free Thought Project does not and has not endorsed any individual candidate. If you look through our archives, you will find that we have exposed dirt on all of them.
The presidential campaign has mortified millions of Americans in part because the presidency has become far more dangerous in recent times. Since 9/11, we have lived in a perpetual emergency which supposedly justifies trampling the law and Constitution. And the illegalities will not end after Tuesday’s vote count. Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have signaled that they will perpetuate power grabs in the next four years.
For generations, politicians have touted voting as a magical process which almost automatically protects the rights of everyone within a 50 mile radius of the polling booth. But the ballots Americans have cast in presidential elections since 2000 did nothing to constrain the commander-in-chief.
Bush’s declaration in 2000 that America needed a more “humble” foreign policy did not deter him from vowing to “rid the world of evil” and launching the most catastrophic war in modern American history. Eight years later, Barack Obama campaigned as the candidate of peace and promised “a new birth of freedom.” But that did not stop him from bombing seven nations, claiming a right to assassinate American ciizens, and championing Orwellian total surveillance.
Bush was famous for “signing statements” decrees that nullified hundreds of provisions of laws enacted by Congress. Obama is renown for unilaterally endlessly rewriting laws such as the Affordable Care Act to postpone political backlashes against the Democratic Party and for effectively waiving federal immigration law. Both Bush and Obama exploited the “state secrets doctrine” to shield their most controversial policies from the American public.
While many conservatives applauded Bush’s power grabs, many liberals cheered Obama’s decrees. After 16 years of Bush-Obama, the federal government is far more arbitrary and lethal. Richard Nixon’s maxim – ‘it’s not illegal if the president does it’ – is the lodestar for commanders-in-chief in the new century.
There is no reason to expect the next president to be less power hungry than the last two White House occupants. Both Trump and Clinton can be expected to trample the First Amendment. Trump has talked of shutting down mosques and changing libel laws to make it far more perilous for the media to reveal abuses by the nation’s elite. Clinton was in the forefront of an administration that broke all records for prosecuting leakers and journalists who exposed government abuses. She could smash the remnants of the Freedom of Information Act like her aides hammered her Blackberry phones to obliterate her email trail.
Neither candidate seems to recognize any limit on presidential power. Trump calls for reviving the torture that profoundly disgraced the United States during the George W. Bush era. Clinton opposes torture but believes presidents have a right to launch wars whenever they decide it is in the national interest. After Clinton helped persuade Obama to bomb Libya in 2011, she signaled that the administration would scorn any congressional cease-and-desist order under the War Powers Act. She continues to tout the bombing of Libya as “smart power at its best.”
If Americans could be confident that either Trump or Clinton would be leashed by the law, there would be less dread about who wins on Tuesday. But elections are becoming simply coronations via vote counts. The president will take an oath of office on Inaugural Day but then can do as he or she damn well pleases.
We now have a political system which is nominally democratic but increasingly authoritarian. The proliferation of despotic precedents in the past 15 years would have horrified America’s Founding Fathers. The Rule of Law has been defined down to finding a single federal lawyer to write a secret memo vindicating the president’s latest unpublished executive order. And Washington has never had a shortage of weasely lawyers.
By the end of the next presidential term, America will have had almost a 20-year stretch of dictatorial democracy. Washington’s disdain for the highest law of the land is torpedoing the citizenry’s faith in representative government. Forty percent of registered voters have “lost faith in American democracy,” according to recent Survey Monkey poll.
The United States may be on the verge of the biggest legitimacy crisis since the Civil War. Whoever wins in November will be profoundly distrusted even before being sworn in. The combination of a widely-detested new president and unrestrained power almost guarantees greater crises in the coming years.
Neither Trump nor Clinton are promising to “make America constitutional again.” But, as Thomas Jefferson declared in 1786, “an elective despotism was not the government we fought for.” If presidents are lawless, then voters are merely designating the most dangerous criminal in the land.
FBI Director James Comey has told Congress that a new investigation by his agency of Hillary Clinton’s private email server has not unearthed any information that would warrant any charges being brought against the Democratic candidate.
Saying that his team “has been working around the clock,” studying emails on a laptop belonging to the husband of an aide of Hillary Clinton’s, Comey claimed the review of the additional material “from a device obtained in connection with an unrelated criminal investigation” did not change the investigators’ previous conclusion regarding Clinton’s email practices.
In July, the FBI said no charges were warranted in the case of the former secretary of state concerning her use of a private email server.
“[We] have not changed our conclusions that we expressed in July with respect to Secretary Clinton,” Comey wrote in his letter on Sunday.
Since late October, the FBI director has found himself in hot water following his announcement of new “appropriate investigative steps” in the months-long investigation into Clinton’s use of a private server while she served as America’s secretary of state.
The FBI then obtained a search warrant that allowed it to scour through some 650,000 emails discovered on a laptop belonging to ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner and apparently also used by his wife, Clinton’s closest aide, Huma Abedin.
Commenting on the announcement that there would be no charges, Clinton’s campaign spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri told reporters they were “glad that this matter is resolved.”
Earlier Sunday, the chairman of Clinton’s campaign, John Podesta, accused the FBI chief of revealing the new investigation in the first place by calling it a “mistake.”
“I think the men and women of the FBI are doing a tremendous job out here across the country, but the leakers should shut up,” Podesta said in an interview with NBC News’ Meet the Press.
The chairman of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, John Podesta, has harshly criticized the FBI chief’s recent announcement of a new investigation into his candidate’s private email server. Podesta said letting the public know of what’s going on before the election was a “mistake.”
“I think what [FBI director] Mr. Comey did just nine days ago was a mistake,” Clinton’s campaign chairman said on Sunday in an interview with NBC News’ Meet the Press.
When asked whether the agency’s revelation benefited their rival, Republicans’ Donald Trump, Podesta said he had “never questioned his [Comey’s] motivation,” but claimed it had a certain purpose.
“It broke with precedent, there is a reason for that policy, it looked like it was interfering with the election,” he said, adding: “I think the men and women of the FBI are doing a tremendous job out here across the country, but the leakers should shut up.”
In late October, Director Comey revealed that after his agency had learned of new emails involving Hillary Clinton’s private email server during her time as a Secretary of State, it would “take appropriate investigative steps.”
The news prompted one US Democratic senator, Tim Ryan, to allege that it was Moscow who might be behind the new leak that caused the reopening of the FBI probe.
In his NBC News’ interview, Podesta also emphasized Russia’s alleged involvement with the upcoming elections. Saying that WikiLeaks’ exposure of his emails do not bother him on “a personal level” due to his “pretty thick skin,” he blamed Russia for “helping” Donald Trump to become the next president.
“[T]his is an unprecedented situation where a foreign power hacked my emails, is working with WikiLeaks and Julian Assange to dribble them out in order to maximize the damage to Hillary and to maximize the help to Donald Trump who has adopted essentially Russian foreign policy and rejected bipartisan US foreign policy,” Podesta said.
Show me an American Neocon today and I will show you a pro-Clinton supporter. In fact, it is indicative of Hillary Clinton’s particular brand of foreign policy that Republican hawks have fled the GOP standard to join ranks with the warmongering Democrats.
In order to guarantee another 4-8 years of US-led military aggression in the Middle East, and heightened tensions with Russia and China (which all translates into lucrative defense spending), the Neocons have found it necessary to drag Russian President Vladimir Putin into the 2016 presidential race as a means of deflecting attention away from a devastating series of leaked emails, courtesy of Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, that portray Clinton and her campaign team in less than glowing terms.
The latest Neocon to grease the wheels of Clinton’s War & Wall Street machine is Madeleine Albright, 79, the former Secretary of State, who is perhaps most famous for two quotes, “What’s the point of having this superb military… if we can’t use it?” And second, when asked in a 1996 interview with the news program 60 Minutes if the price of UN sanctions against Iraq – which was half a million dead Iraqi children – was worth it, Albright unhesitatingly responded, “We think the price is worth it.”
Albright opened her opinion piece in USA Today with a fast curve ball, no easy feat even for professional throwers: “Democrats have been renewing their call this week for the FBI to release more information on the connections among Donald Trump, his top advisers and the Russian government. But it is already clear that Russia’s intervention in our election on Trump’s side is the real scandal of 2016… ”
Like a veteran manipulator, Albright attempts to control the narrative, not to mention the history books, by telling the reader that Russia’s (unproven) intervention in the 2016 presidential election is the “real scandal” of the year, as opposed, of course, to Julian Assange’s torturous, slow-drip outing of Hillary Clinton and her mind-boggling list of ‘poor decision-making.’
“The Russian government has already hacked into the emails of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta in an effort to create confusion and turn voters off from politics,” Albright wrote, essentially telling Americans ‘nothing to look at here, please move on and have a nice day.’
Nowhere does Albright question the meaty contents of the emails. Instead, she waxes poetic about the undefiled beauty of the democratic landscape and the authoritarian governments and their “shadow campaigns” that would trash them. This deliberate oversight explains why Albright and her fellow Neocons found it so necessary to drag Russia into this scandal. The allegations contained in the WikiLeaks emails are so potentially damaging to Clinton’s chances at the White House that they required a diversion as large as Russia to conceal them.
Yet, even the FBI admits there is no convincing evidence linking the leaked emails as an effort by Russia to boost Trump’s victory chances on Nov.8th. And judging by the tarnished reputations of the Republican and Democratic contenders, it should come as no surprise that Russia should have no clear favorite in this dog race even if they could rig the game.
But all this misses the main point, indeed as it is cunningly designed to do. With all of the spin going on, can anybody still recall what the released Clinton emails revealed?
In short, the leaked documents revealed that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) had colluded with the Clinton campaign to ensure Hillary Clinton received the nomination ahead of other potential candidates, including the popular Bernie Sanders. These damning revelations led to the ouster of DNC chief Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
The Russians clearly had nothing to do with that.
Second, the woman who replaced Schultz, Democratic strategist and former CNN contributor, Donna Brazile, was found to have tipped off the Clinton campaign on the content of two questions ahead of the final Clinton-Trump CNN-hosted debate. The horrific implications of that explosive finding, which could have tipped the scales in favor of Clinton, deserves nothing short of a Watergate-style investigation.
By the way, the Russians had nothing to do with that bit of insider intrigue, either.
But that’s mere child’s play compared to documents that show how Clinton, as the Secretary of State, severely mishandled the 2012 Benghazi attack, which was orchestrated by a radical Islamic group. US Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens was killed in the attack. In an interview with Democracy Now, Assange said Clinton was even responsible for arming Islamic State fighters in Syria in an effort to bring down the government of President Bashar Assad.
Clinton’s leaky emails point to “the disastrous, absolutely disastrous intervention in Libya, the destruction of the Gaddafi government, which led to the occupation of ISIS of large segments of that country, weapons flows going over to Syria, being pushed by Hillary Clinton, into jihadists within Syria, including ISIS, that’s there in those emails,” the WikiLeaks co-founder said. “There’s more than 1,700 emails in Hillary Clinton’s collection, that we have released, just about Libya alone,” he added.
Nor did the Russians help the United States to bungle Benghazi, or command Clinton to furnish arms to Islamic State, as the correspondences suggest she did.
So why all the mindless media chatter about Russia?
There was yet another potential bit of ‘collateral damage’ in the ongoing WikiLeaks drama that has largely gone overlooked. Since it is preposterous to think that Russia would have any need or desire to influence the US elections, nor has there been a single piece of convincing evidence to support the claim, WikiLeaks somehow managed to get the leaked documents. Why not from a DNC insider? In fact, why not from Seth Rich, the director of voter expansion with DNC who would have had access to the incriminating emails?
We’ll probably never know because Mr. Rich is no longer around to provide his testimony.
In the early hours of July 10th, Rich was shot multiple times in the back as he walked home alone from a Washington pub. Was Rich the victim of a robbery? If so, investigators were baffled as to why his wallet, credit cards, wrist watch and cellphone were not removed from his body.
Police Chief Cathy Lanier admitted at a press conference, “Right now, we have more questions than answers.”
Julian Assange, falling short of admitting Rich – as opposed to Russia – was the source of the leaked information, offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the individual(s) responsible for the premature death of Mr. Rich.
Neverthless, Newsweek was just one of many media outlets that brushed off the incident as “yet another round of Clinton conspiracy theories, this one claiming that Rich was murdered—at dawn—as he was on his way to sing to the FBI about damning internal DNC emails.”
Funny how the Western media regularly accuses foreign media of jumping on wild “conspiracy theories,” yet they have no qualms saddling up their own highly questionable ideas about “Russian involvement” in the WikiLeaks.
Although it may be true that Mr. Rich died the victim of a robbery gone awry, there are still grounds to believe that he was the DNC whistleblower. Somehow the mainstream media, however, found it more expedient to pin the blame on a foreign power without a shred of evidence.
Indeed, Newsweek was apparently satisfied that it had performed due diligence by quoting an anonymous source that said: “There was no indication that any insider was involved in this… Every indication is this was a remote attack from a foreign government—the Russians.”
When the Neocon defection began
When Donald Trump first announced he would scale back the size of America’s global military footprint if elected president, neo-conservatives unleashed a collective howl of pain as they began fleeing en masse the ship of the Republican Party.
Robert Kagan, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and a top Neocon ideologue, signaled the defection when he said a Trump presidency would herald in a new age of American-style fascism.
Today, the tattered flag of the Neocons is flapping high above the Clinton camp, distant fires glowing, as they continue to spearhead a scathing attack on Trump just days before the election. What is the source for this great defection against their own party? Quite simply, it shows the Neocons have no allegiance except to individuals – like George W. Bush and, yes, Barack Obama – who pledge to continue America’s wars of expansion and empire.
Clinton’s past record in Iraq, Libya and Syria strongly suggest she will lead the Neocons to more plunder; Trump has pledged to bring home the troops in order to “Make America Great Again.” Neocons are not big fans of filling potholes and spending on schools.
Trump alienated the Republican warhorses when he pledged to pursue, like a real disciple of the conservative political creed, a foreign policy that does not send American men and women off to distant battlefields to be killed and maimed in senseless military adventures.
The following passage by Joseph A. Mussomeli – in the Washington Post, of all places – really nailed it as to why the Neocons hate Donald Trump:
“Our cadre of neoconservative foreign policy experts, unhumbled after marching us into a reckless war in Iraq and a poorly conceived one in Afghanistan, who applauded as we bombed Libya and bitterly resent our having failed to bomb Bashar al-Assad in Syria, are frightened… But what really troubles them is [Trump’s] generally level-headed and unmessianic attitude toward foreign affairs… Clinton is just another neocon, though wrapped in sheep’s clothing — just as on some foreign policy issues Trump is little more than Bernie Sanders in wolf’s clothing.”
Anne Applebaum, perennial anti-Russia scaremonger and notable Neocon, tossed a smoke grenade into the WikiLeaks scandal, attempting to obfuscate Julian Assange’s work with groundless accusations:
“Russia will continue to distribute and publish the material its hackers have already obtained from attacks on the Democratic National Committee, George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, former NATO supreme commander Gen. Philip Breedlove and probably others. The point will be to discredit not just Hillary Clinton but also the U.S. democratic process and, again, the “elite” who supposedly run it.”
Applebaum wants the distracted public to forget that the leaks already discredited Clinton. Moreover, the lesson between the lines of Applebaum’s diatribe is that all the bad things Clinton has been connected with should be forgiven and forgotten because, well, Russia allegedly had a hand in the mess. A disturbing example of ‘killing the messenger’ who never delivered the message to begin with. Now, all the news is about the fictional messenger who should know better than to be the bearer of bad news, or meddle in America’s lily-white affairs.
Albright claimed that Russia seeks to “undermine Western leaders by making them seem corrupt or malicious.” The reader may discern, based on what we already know from Mr. Assange, the value of that statement for themselves.
So in closing, here we have the very same provocateurs that cheered when former Secretary of State Colin Powell shook a vial of fake anthrax in the UN General Assembly, spooking the world into believing Saddam Hussein was sitting on a hoard of WMDs, thereby triggering war against a sovereign state that has killed over 1 million Iraqis and counting, now would like us to believe Russia is behind the WiliLeaks emails that threaten to sink Clinton’s rat-infested ship once and for all.
We would be fools to let them get away with such deliberate deception again.
Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist based in Moscow, Russia. His articles have been featured in many publications, including Russia in Global Affairs, The Moscow Times, Lew Rockwell and Global Research. Bridge is the author of the book on corporate power, “Midnight in the American Empire”, which was released in 2013. email: robertvbridge@yahoo.com
Seven is a winning throw of the dice. But in our civil society, seven now signifies the multi-thong scourge, the whip used by the Western world as its instrument of punishment and, in response; seven signifies Nemesis and her sisters, the inescapable agents of the West’s downfall.
The seven scourges of the Western world are used against the people of Asia, Africa, Latin and North America. These whips are constructed, wielded and unleashed especially by the US and the UK.
The seven sisters of Nemesis, the Erinyes, are the Furies who pursue the injustices committed by the Western world against Asia, Latin America, Africa and Europe. Those holding the scourge detest and fear Nemesis and the Furies, but are incapable of destroying them. Try as they might, their whip is in corrupt and feeble hands and, of course, it can only follow their orders: Otherwise, it just twitches and remains immobile, while Nemesis pursues the scourgers of humanity.
The Seven-Tailed Scourge of the Western World
The ‘whip’ wielded by the Western world, is used to punish disobedient, ‘rebellious’ people, movements and states. Their multiple lashes have bloodied countless generations and buried millions.
The seven scourges against humanity are unrepentant in their promotion of ‘Western values’ – visible to the terrified world on the red raw backs of oppressed people, their wounds flayed open by the faceless drones proclaiming their gifts of freedom and democracy.
Let us go forward now and describe the pillars holding up the Western empire, the seven-tailed scourge of humanity.
1. Mexico: The Cartel, the Narco-State, US Bankers and Death Squads
Over the last two decades, over a quarter million Mexicans have been murdered by the joint forces of the drug cartels, the Mexican State and its death squads, presided over by the US state and backed by its rapacious financial sector. Cartels and complicit Mexican officials prosper because US banks launder their narco-dollars by the billions. On their part, US corporations grow even richer by relocating their plants to Mexico where terrorized workers can be exploited for 1/5 the cost. Amidst the terror and exploitation, over 11 million Mexican workers and family members have fled to the US running from their local scourges, only to confront the US scourge of deportation. Over 2 million have been imprisoned and expelled under Obama.
2. Honduras and Guatemala: Imperial Wars, Drug Gangs and Narco-Oligarchs
Destitution and state terror are direct products of US–installed regimes in Honduras and Guatemala. Guatemala’s indigenous majority was ravaged by US and Israeli-trained military battalions and death squads. In their wake, scores of narco-gangs, sponsored by local oligarchs and their own private death squads, have emerged. The Honduran people attempted to elect an enlightened liberal President, and were ‘rewarded’ for their peaceful democratic election with a military coup orchestrated by the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. They further underscore the lesson of ‘Western values’: Scores of human rights activists and peasant leaders have been murdered and the scourges continue unabated.
3. Colombia: Nobel Prize for Death Squad President
For the past fifteen years, (2001-2016), the Clinton-Bush-Obama regimes launched the seven-billion-dollar ‘Plan Colombia’ terror campaign against the Colombian people. This scourge was so powerful that over two and a half million peasants, Indigenous peoples, and Afro-Colombians have been driven from their homes and villages while, tens of thousands of peasants, trade unionists, human rights activists and civic leaders have been killed. The notorious narco-President Alvaro Uribe and his Vice President Santos worked with the death squads and the Colombian military under the instruction of over one thousand US military advisers and contract mercenaries as they imposed a scorched earth policy – to consolidate a ‘reign of Western values’.
In Colombia, the three-tailed scourge of narco-presidents, death squads and the military decimated rural communities throughout that large and populous nation. They finally induced the FARC guerrillas to submit to a ‘peace’ agreement, which perpetuated the oligarchy. The US remains free to exploit Colombia for its military bases against the rest of Latin America, while foreign corporations exploit its mineral riches. For his part in promoting the ‘peace of the dead’, Colombian President Santos received the Nobel ‘Peace’ Prize.
4. Saudi Arabia: A Household Name Among the Middle East Scourges
No country in the Middle East has financed, organized and directed terrorism in the Middle East, South Asia, North and East Africa, the former Soviet Union and even North America, more than the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It currently scourges the tiny nation of Yemen. Using its ISIS mercenaries, backed by jets, missiles, and logistical support from the UK and the USA, the Saudi despots have invaded maimed and murdered tens of thousands of Yemenis, while hundreds of thousands face starvation in a Saudi-imposed blockade.
The Saudi billionaire regime bankrolled thousands of terrorists in Syria and Iraq, giving billions of dollars of business to US and UK arms manufacturers. Saudi monarchs and their extended clans form a parasitic rentier regime unique in the world. They rely on the skills and labor of imported professionals, workers, household servants, mercenary solders, financial managers and even their praetorian guards. They confine their women behind the veil and closed doors, under the absolute rule of male relatives. They chop off the hands, feet and heads of foreign workers and their own citizens for minor offenses, including ‘blasphemy’, criticism of the king or resisting an employer’s abuse. Saudi Arabia, which is totally dependent on Washington’s protection, has become a scourge especially against Muslim people throughout the Middle East and beyond.
5. Israel: The Scourge of Palestine and Free People Near and Far
The Israeli State is the head commanding the tentacles of a far-reaching Zionist Power Configuration operating in the US, Canada, England, France and, to a less degree, in satellite states and institutions. Israel was established on the dispossession and ethnic cleansing of millions of Palestinians from their homes and villages since 1948. For almost 50 years, 600,000 ‘Israeli’ Jews (immigrants given automatic ‘citizenship’ and stolen property based solely on their ‘ethno-religious’ identity) have illegally moved into what remained of historical Palestine, building exclusive ‘Jews-only’ colonial towns on land ripped from its original inhabitants. The Palestinians are herded into apartheid militarized enclaves and squalid camps. Israel invaded and devastated large parts of Lebanon, Egypt and Syria. They have bombed other nations, like Jordan and Iraq, with impunity. The Israeli state uses a virtual fifth column of loyalist organizations and billionaire financiers in the US and EU who ultimately dictate Middle East policy to the ‘elected’ Western politicians. Presidents and Prime Ministers, Cabinet members and legislators must publicly bow to the increasing demands of the overseas Zionist power structure. This has undermined the will and interests of national electorates and democratic procedures. All public discourse on this vital issue has been censored because critics of Israel’s influence are subjected to unremitting campaigns of overt coercion, threats, jailing on trumped up charges, vilification and job loss – within their own countries in the ‘democratic’ West. Meanwhile, Israel has sold its much-vaunted expertise in surveillance, torture and counter-insurgency to its fellow scourgers in Guatemala, Colombia, Mexico and even Afghanistan.
6. Egypt: Modern Scourges of an Ancient People
For decades, Egyptian military dictators have served the Anglo-American Empire and Israel’s ruling colonists in the Middle East, North and East Africa. Generals-turned-‘Presidents’ Hosni Mubarak and Abdel Fattah al-Sisi specialized in murdering, torturing and jailing thousands of Egyptian trade unionists, dissident activists, peasant leaders and the restless urban poor. These violently installed Egyptian rulers are expected to collaborate with Israel and trap millions of desperate Palestinians in the world’s largest open air prison: Gaza. Cairo actively collaborates with the US and Israel in subverting the people and institutions of Gaza, Libya, Somalia and Sudan – guaranteeing that none will be functioning, independent modern states. Egypt’s first and only elected president Mohamed Morsi was overthrown by General Sisi and sentenced to twenty years in a military torture dungeon (a virtual death sentence for a 65 year old) by a kangaroo court under the direction of Washington and Tel Aviv. Egypt, once the epicenter for civil democratic expression — ‘the Arab Spring’ — has become the a major staging area for US-backed jihadi terrorists entering Syria.
7. ISIS, NUSRA Front, Ukraine and Syria: Puppets, Kleptocrats, Fascists and Terrorists
In this very modern Western world, where democratic values are sold to the cheapest buyer, the US, the UK and the EU shop for mercenaries and puppet regimes in order to scourge their critics and adversaries.
The West, led by the Grand Scourger Hillary Clinton, bombed Libya and destroyed its entire modern state apparatus. They opened the floodgates to thousands of mercenaries and terrorist-thugs of all colors and stripes to feed off the carcass of what Mouammar Gaddafi and the modern Libyan state had built over the past 40 years. These criminals, draped in the banners of ‘humanitarian intervention’ or ‘mission civilisatice’, ran amok, killing and ravaging tens of thousands of Libyan citizens and contract workers of sub-Saharan African origin. The tens of thousands of Africans desperately fleeing each year into the Mediterranean are the result of this Western rampage against the Libyan state. The jihadis have moved on… by those who forgot to distinguish between terrorists who support our ‘democratic values’ and those who would attack the West. The West can’t be blamed: Mercenaries change sides so often.
The ethnic cleansing scourges of the past returned to the Ukraine: as (neo) fascists took power in Kiev, storming the Parliament and forcing the President to flee. Nazi-era banners decorated the streets of Kiev under the approving gaze of the US State Department. Neo-Nazi thugs massacred scores of unarmed ethnic Russian citizens in the port city of Odessa when they set fire to the main trade union hall where the trapped men, women and youths were burned alive or bludgeoned while fleeing the flames. The US State Department had spent $5 billion dollars to replace an elected government with a pliant regime in Kiev while large parts of the country fell into civil war. The ethnic Russian populations of the industrialized Donbas region resisted and were invaded by an ethnically cleansed and neo-fascist putschist Ukrainian army – under US-EU supervision. The war has cost tens of thousands of lives, a million refugees fled to Russia and a divided failing state now festers in the heart of Europe. Kleptocrats and Fascists in Kiev oversee an utterly bankrupt economy. The destitute citizens abandon the towns and cities; some fleeing to Poland to pick potatoes as their serf ancestors did a century ago.
Syria has been ravaged by an immense army of mercenary scourges, financed and supplied by the US, EU, Turkey and, of course, Saudi Arabia. Al Qaeda had merely to change its battle flags to NUSRA and receive the US benediction as ‘moderate pro-Western democrats’ resisting a Baathist dictatorship in Damascus. In the course of their ‘democratic’ mission they destroyed the ancient, critical cultural and economic center of Aleppo – scourging the Christians and non-jihadi Muslims and other ancient minorities. Over two million Syrians have died or fled the fiery scourge of Anglo-American and Saudi-Turkish terror.
The Seven Sisters: Nemesis and the Furies Confront the Western World
The scourges are falling on hard times: East and West, North and South they face their inescapable Nemesis. Their exposed injustices, crimes and grotesque failures herald their inevitable downfall. The seven furies are even emerging in unusual places:
1. The economic and trade power of China challenges the West throughout world, expanding even into the heartland of the empire. The West’s fear over China’s peaceful economic expansion has led Western political leaders to revive protectionist policies, claiming that barriers against Chinese investors must be raised to prevent takeovers by Beijing. From July 2015 to September 2016, the West blocked nearly $40 billion in productive Chinese investment. This comes after decades of preaching the virtues of foreign investment and the universal benefits of ‘globalization’. Suddenly Western leaders claim that Chinese investment is a ‘threat to national security’ and ‘profits Chinese businesses over Western-owned enterprises.’
Meanwhile, far from this Sino-phobic hysteria, the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America actively seek greater economic ties with China to the detriment of US-EU multinationals. Once servile Asian countries, like the Philippines, have declared unfettered US access to frontline imperial military bases in doubt, as they sign favorable multi-billion trade and investment agreements with China. Western imperial ideology about investment and globalization has boomeranged and met its Nemesis.
2. The Russian Furies: Vladimir Putin
During the 1990s, the US plundered Russia at will. Washington imposed a uni-polar world, celebrated as the New World Order. They bombed and devastated former Russian allies like Yugoslavia and Iraq, setting up ethnically cleansed rump states like Kosovo for their huge military bases. Meanwhile, Washington reduced Russia, under the inebriate Yeltsin regime, to a backwater vassal stripped of its resources, its institutions, scientists, and research centers. In the absence of war, the Russian economy declined by 50% and life expectancy fell below that of Bangladesh. The US celebrated this ‘victory of democracy’ over a helpless, deteriorating state by welcoming the most obscene new gangster oligarchs and pillagers and laundering their bloodstained loot.
The door slammed shut on the pillage with the election of Vladimir Putin and the demise of the Yeltsin gangster-government. Russia was transformed. Putin reversed Russia’s demise: the economy recovered, living standards rose abruptly, employment in all sectors increased, and cultural, educational and scientific centers were restored. Vladimir Putin was elected and re-elected by overwhelming majorities of the Russian electorate despite huge sums of Western money going to his opponents. Russia systematically recovered many strategic sectors of the economy illegally seized by Western-backed Israeli-Russian oligarchs Even more important, Putin restored Russian statecraft and diplomacy – formulating a strategy for an independent, democratic foreign policy and restoring Russia’s defense capability. The loss of this critical vassal state under its dipsomaniacal Boris Yeltsin shook the US EU-NATO alliance to its very core.
In the beginning President Putin did not oppose the US-NATO military invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. It went along with the economic sanctions imposed on Iran. It even maintained its cooperation despite a US-sponsored attack by the government of Georgia against South Ossetia killing scores of Russian peacekeepers. In the wake of those destabilizing disasters, what finally led the Russian government to reverse its complicity with the West was the horrific US-financed invasion of Syria where Russian jihadis from the Caucasus were playing an important role as mercenaries, threatening to return and undermine the stability of Russia. This was quickly followed by the US-sponsored putsch in Ukraine, fomenting a civil war on Russia’s frontiers, threatening is vital naval base in Crimea and repressing millions of ethnic Russian-Ukrainian citizens in the industrialized Donbas region. This blatant aggression finally pushed Putin to challenge the expansionist policies of Washington and the EU.
Putin backed a plebiscite in Crimea and won when its citizens voted overwhelmingly to re-join and preserve the Russian bases. Putin has backed the rebel defense of the Donbas against a NATO-neo-fascist Kiev invasion.
Putin accepted a request for aid from the Syrian government as it battled mercenaries and jihadis to preserve its national integrity. The Russians sent arms, troops and air support for the Syrian Arab Army, rolling back the Western and Saudi armed terrorists.
In response to the Washington-EU economic sanctions against Russia over the Crimean plebiscite, Putin signed multi-billion-dollar trade and investment agreements and joint defense pacts with China – mitigating the impact of the sanctions.
Wherever Washington seeks to seize and control territory and regimes in Eurasia, it now faces the Putin nemesis. In Russia and overseas, in the Middle East and the Caucuses, in the Persian Gulf and Asia, the US meets stalemates at best, and roll-back at worst.
The CIA-stooge Yeltsin and his cronies were evicted from the Kremlin to the indignation of Washington and the EU. Many of the kleptocrats, politicos, thugs and swindlers fled to their new homes in Langley, on Wall Street, in Washington or set up talk-shops at Harvard. Even the gruesome Chechens had their ‘color-coded’ support center (the CIA-American Committee for Peace in Chechnya) based in Boston. Never in modern history has a country so rapidly transformed from degraded vassalage to a dynamic global power as Russia. Never has the US seen its grand imperial design so successfully challenged in so many places at the same time.
The Putin Nemesis has become the inescapable agent of the downfall of the US Empire.
3. The Islamic Republic of Iran became a Muslim-nationalist alternative to the US-Israeli dominated Muslim dictatorships and monarchies in the Middle East. The Iranian Revolutions inspired citizens throughout Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Iraq and Yemen. As a result of its growing influence, Iran was punished by the US and EU with crippling economic sanctions pushed especially by Tel Aviv and its Western agents. Fearful that Iran’s example would destabilize its control, the US invaded Lebanon, promoted the Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon and has backed the terrorist campaign to dismember Syria. The results have been dismal for Washington: Iran continues to support the powerful Hezbollah, a major political and military power in Lebanon. The Saudi’s war against Yemen is largely an ethno-religious campaign to destroy Yeminis who favor independence over Saudi-US control and have Iran’s support. Iraq’s Shia resistance forces are leading the attack against the Saudi-funded ISIS terrorists, with Iranian commanders playing a significant role.
Hezbollah, Iran’s ally in Lebanon, drove out the Israeli occupation forces and raised the cost of another invasion by Tel Aviv.
Against all the impotent, corrupt Arab puppets in the Middle East, only Iran has supported the Palestinians. It is the only force capable of retaliating against an Israeli sneak attack – which is why it is demonized.
Iran is the Nemesis against US plans to conquer and dismember Syria. It has provided arms and volunteers on the battlefield against terrorist mercenaries.
Iran effectively negotiated a partial lifting of Western sanctions, overcoming Israeli intransigence and securing billion-dollar trade agreements with Germany, Russia and China. It holds the prospects for productive trade and diplomatic deals in the near future – to the howling consternation of its enemies in Washington, Riyadh, London and Tel Aviv.
For all the efforts by the tentacles of Israel’s fifth column, Iran has survived and emerged as the Nemesis of Anglo-American and Israeli ambitions in the Middle East.
4. Venezuela became the leading proponent for an independent foreign policy in Latin America. For almost twenty years, the US tried repeatedly to overthrow the government in Caracas. They failed. By ballot or by bullet, despite slapping economic sanctions on Venezuela, the US suffered humiliating defeats and failed coups and aborted uprisings. Venezuela remains Washington’s principal Nemesis, thwarting its efforts to make ‘free trade’ pacts and deepen military alliances in Latin America.
5. Upon taking office in June 2016, the Philippines new president Rodrigo Duterte assumed the lead role of Washington’s most colorful ‘Nemesis’ in Southeast Asia. Under his widely popular presidency, he pivoted to China, promising to sharply reduce joint Philippine-US military exercises in the South China Sea directed against Beijing and, in return, he secured the co-operation of several hundred leading Philippine entrepreneurs in winning an initial $13 billion dollar public-private Chinese investment package for critical infrastructure and trade development..
President Duterte has frequently denounced Washington’s interference in his domestic war on drug traffickers – citing the US hypocrisy in its criticism of his human rights record. He has personally held President Obama responsible for meddling in Philippine affairs. Drawing on the history of the bloody US colonial war against the Philippine people in 1898, he holds the US responsible for inciting ethno-religious conflicts in the southern island of Mindanao – Duterte’s home region.
President Duterte’s declaration of independence from Washington (“I am no one’s ‘tuta’ [puppy dog]”)and his foreign policy priority of ‘pivoting’ from US military domination to regional economic co-operation with Beijing has turned the Philippines into Washington’s prime Nemesis in Southeast Asia.
6. The resistance of the Yemeni people, mainly ethnic Houthi freedom fighters, against the onslaught of bombing and missile strikes by the Saudi-US-UK air force, has aroused widespread solidarity throughout the Middle East.
Despite the ongoing massacre of over 10,000 Yeminis, mostly civilians, the Saudi ‘alliance’ has failed to impose a puppet regime. US links with the Saudi dictatorship have undermined its claims of humanitarian concerns for the people of Yemen. The embattled Houthi rebels have secured the support of Iran, Iraq and the majority of people in the Persian Gulf countries. As the war continues, the Saudi’s increasingly rely on military trainers, fighter bombers and logistical experts from the US, UK and NATO to pick the targets and maintain the starvation blockade. Sooner or later the courageous and tenacious resistance of the free people of Yemen against the Saudi overlords will inspire a domestic Saudi uprising against its grotesque and decrepit theocratic-monarchist state. The fall of the Royal House of Saud will bury a major scourge in the Middle East. In a word, the battle for Yemen has become the Nemesis of US-Saudi domination.
7. Everywhere in the Western world the ruling classes and their media outlets fear and loath ‘populists’ – leaders, movements, electorates – who reject their austerity programs designed to deepen inequalities and further enrich the elite. Throughout the European Union and in North and South America, workers and middle class majorities are on the march to oust the ‘free market’ regimes and restore the ‘populist’ welfare state, with its emphasis on social services, living wages and humane working conditions.
From the UK to France, Poland to Portugal, China to North America, Mexico to Argentina, the Nemesis and Furies of populist rollbacks threaten to dislodge the scourge held by the bankers, conglomerates and billionaires. Scattered populists may hold diverse ideologies; some may be nationalists, leftists, workers, farmers, petit bourgeois and public employees, indebted students, ecologists or protectionists. All are both united and divided by disparate interests and beliefs. And all are preparing for the inevitable downfall of the empire of the free market and wars.
Conclusion
Today the world’s greatest global conflicts have lined up the Imperial West and its frontline scourging allies against the Furies and Nemesis emerging on all continents. These are the inescapable agents of the Empire’s downfall.
The scourges of the West have been free to plunder the wealth of subject peoples and launch wars, which ravage both ancient and modern states and cultures while slaughtering and dispossessing scores of millions. The West derives its lifeblood through its seven-tailed scourge. Western elites rule through a chain of scourging puppet states with their bloody accomplices, from narco-murderers, Islamists terrorists, death squads to ordinary ‘piecework’ torturers.
Without resorting too much to the wisdom of the ancient Greek myths, we have come to believe that states, regimes, movements and people finally will emerge to act as the inescapable agents of the justice leading to the downfall of the Western empire. Modern Nemesis and Furies have a dual existence: While bringing down the old order they seek to create alternatives.
The ‘scourgers’ are by their nature specialists in wanton crimes against humanity. Nemesis and her sisters challenge and oust the latter as they construct their own new centers of wealth and power. China, Russia and Iran have gone beyond the role of Nemesis to the West – they are poised to build a new civilization on its ruins.
It remains an open question whether they can avoid becoming the new scourge against the people and nations who have risen in revolt.
Russian forces operating in Syria upon Damascus’ request have met several close calls during military and humanitarian missions over the past two months. In late October, Syrian and Russian organised humanitarian corridors came under heavy fire in Aleppo in a brazen attempt by Western-backed militants to prevent civilians from crossing over into government-controlled western Aleppo.
Buses ready to ‘evacuate’ civilians from east – so far no one has crossed. A rebel mortar just landed 50 ft from us. No injuries thank God.
Alex Thomson of British Channel 4 would also Tweet:
Confirmed – rebels are firing mortars into the checkpoint areas making it extremely dangerous to attempt to leave E Aleppo…
It is important to cite Western journalists present at the corridors dodging incoming mortars particularly because the incoming fire went otherwise unreported by the Western media. The Washington Post would allude to it in an article strategically titled, “Russia says Aleppo escape corridors under fire,” in an attempt to make the claims appear to be baseless Russian propaganda.
Then early this month, Russian helicopters came under fire by designated foreign terrorist organisation, the Islamic State in western Syria with Newsweek in its article, “ISIS Claims to Have Shot Russian Helicopter,” claiming:
Russia’s Ministry of Defense confirmed militants hit one of its aircraft during a flight in Syria, but denied reports of any fatalities in the incident, Russian state news agency Itar-Tass reports.
Extremist militant group Islamic State (ISIS) reported via their news agency Amaq they had destroyed a Russian attack helicopter in Syria’s Homs Governorate using guided missiles on Thursday, according to news website SITE Intelligence.
And again, strategically, Newsweek decides to conclude its article by stating:
The Russian government has come under heavy scrutiny for not upholding a ceasefire agreement and continuing military operations in Syria, in support of the Assad regime.
Could these serendipitous setbacks for Russia simply be a coincidence? Or are they the manifestation of Western desires to remove Russia from the Syrian conflict by targeting its forces by proxy?
US Has Openly Threatened to “Covertly” Kill Russians in Syria
In 2015, former acting director of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Michael Morell would openly declare his desire to see Iran and Russia “pay a little price“ amid the ongoing conflict in Syria. When interviewer Charlie Rose attempted to clarify Morell’s comments by asking if he meant, “by killing Russians, by killing Iranians,” Morell emphatically responded, “yes, covertly.”
Morell justified this by making the incomprehensible comparison between America’s illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 and alleged Iranian support for militias fighting the US occupation, and the current conflict in Syria in which Russia and Iran are backing the legitimate government of Syria, upon Damascus’ request. It should be noted that Morell’s desire to “kill Russians” was never even so much as incomprehensibly linked to the 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq.
Since his comments, and similar sentiments made throughout the entirety of America’s foreign policy and media circles in 2015, there have been a string of incidents where designated terrorist organisations, either Jabhat Al Nusra or the Islamic State, have targeted Russian forces, particularly their aircraft and have done so using US and European missiles and rockets. In other words, Russians were being targeted and even killed, “covertly.”
Hating Russia Enough to Kill?
The real question for observers worldwide is, why would the US find itself at such odds with Russia regarding Syria to want to begin targeting and killing Russians?
The United States’ official purpose for being involved in Syria is to fight the Islamic State.
Under the Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF–OIR), the United States’ official mission according to US President Barack Obama is to:
…degrade, and ultimately destroy, [the Islamic State] through a comprehensive and sustained counter-terrorism strategy.
With Russian forces suffering losses fighting the Islamic State in Syria, it would appear that the US and Russia should be natural allies, yet they clearly are not.
That is either because the US believes Russia isn’t truly fighting the Islamic State, despite losing one of their helicopters just this month while doing so, or because the US itself is not really in Syria to fight the Islamic State. The latter, is clearly the case, with US policy think tanks, American media op-eds and even US presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton declaring that their collective intent is the overthrow of the Syrian government, which Russia most certainly is not a party to.
In essence, Russia’s mortal sin is not allowing Syria to be rendered a divided, destroyed and ultimately failed state by the United States and its allies just as has been done to Libya and Iraq before it. So determined to dismember Syria, the United States is willing to “covertly” target and destroy forces openly engaged in combat against alleged enemies of the United States, including Al Qaeda’s Jabhat Al Nusra Front and the Islamic State, enemies who just so happen to also be America’s best bet for ousting the government in Damascus.
Understanding and communicating to the public the fact that each and every “covert” attack on Russian forces carried out by Al Qaeda affiliates and the Islamic State not only proves Russia is actually in Syria to combat terrorism, but it also further proves how the United States has used the excuse of fighting terrorism to hide its true agenda behind, rather than uphold as its primary mission.
In a sane world, Syria would never have been set upon in the first place, and those nations seeking to use terrorism as a geopolitical tool would instead be isolated and neutralised by a coalition including both Russia and America. In reality, however, terrorism is but one of many tools of US power used against Damascus in a long-planned bid to overthrow it, and Russia has responded in an attempt to stop these dominoes of chaos from falling, started in 2011 under the cover of the Arab Spring, and aimed ultimately right at Moscow’s front door itself.
On the heels of damning WikiLeaks revelations, the Clinton Foundation has confirmed allegations that it received a $1 million ‘gift’ from Qatar without telling the State Department, breaking a signed agreement requiring it to reveal all foreign donations.
The payment, which was first revealed in an email exchange with Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta a month ago, has just been officially confirmed by the Foundation. The check was reportedly a gift to former President Bill Clinton in 2011 for his 65h birthday. A meeting was to take place between him and Qatari officials at some point, according to an email published last month. It is not clear if this ever took place, however.
Earlier in 2009, when Clinton became Secretary of State, she had to sign an agreement to prevent any conflicts of interest which stipulated that her influential global foundation could not receive any support from foreign sources without her notifying the State Department, according to Reuters. This was intended to ensure transparency and combat public perception that US foreign policy could be dictated by foreign money.
The agreement was also designed to give the State Department time to examine donations and raise any concerns in cases when a foreign entity wanted to “increase materially” the funding for any of the Foundation’s programs.
However, Clinton kept the $1 million check from Qatar a secret. While Foundation officials declined to confirm its existence last month, with just days to go before the election, the daily WikiLeaks revelations, and the FBI’s relaunched investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server gaining momentum, its spokesman, Brian Cookstra, finally admitted to receiving the money, though he insisted that the sum did not qualify as a “material increase” in Qatari support of the foundation.
When Cookstra was asked by Reuters what the Foundation considered an increase in funding, he refused to specify, only saying that the Qatar donations were intended for “overall humanitarian work.”
For additional comments, Reuters tried to contact the Qatari embassy, the Clinton presidential campaign and Bill Clinton personally, but received no response from any.
Although Cookstra said the sum did not constitute an increase in funding, there is evidence of at least eight other countries besides Qatar whose donations can clearly be construed as an ‘increase in funding.’ This includes the UK, which tripled the sum slated for the Foundation’s health project to $11.2 million in the years 2009-2012.
When questioned by Reuters last year, Cookstra admitted that a complete list of donors hadn’t been published since 2010. In other cases, the Foundation said that there was either no increase in funding, or that a particular donation had simply slipped past unnoticed, and should have been caught earlier.
The only thing that’s certain, and spelled out on the Foundation’s website, is that it received up to $5 million from the Gulf Kingdom over the years. However, the Foundation appears to want all of this to be relegated to the past. It promised in August that, if Hillary becomes president, it will stop accepting money from all foreign governments and close down any ongoing programs sustained by those funds.
According to Foundation records and testimony, the Qatar money continued to come in at “equal or lower” levels after 2009, but it declined to specify the differences in the funding before and after that period, or if it had changed significantly after Clinton took on the post of secretary of state.
A former Foundation fundraiser details some $21 million raised for Bill Clinton’s birthday in another email.
The Foundation’s somewhat forced admission that it had received Qatari money comes shortly after a recently leaked email exchange between Clinton and her campaign manager, John Podesta, from 2014 startlingly revealed that she was aware Qatar and Saudi Arabia are directly funding Islamic State [IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL] terrorists. This was discussed at length in John Pilger’s exclusive interview with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange that airs on RT on Saturday and can be viewed in full here.
The WikiLeaks founder points to clear evidence that Clinton knew about her donors’ questionable dealings as early as several years back. The 2014 email from Clinton to Podesta says “that ISIL, ISIS is funded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar – the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar,” according to Assange.
Assange admitted to Pilger, “I actually think this is the most significant email in the whole collection.”
“And perhaps because Saudi and Qatari money is spread all over the place, including into many media institutions, all serious analysts know, even the US government has mentioned or agreed with that some Saudi figures have been supporting ISIS, funding ISIS. But the dodge has always been, that’s… what… it’s just some rogue princes using their cut of the oil money to do what they like, but actually the government disapproves. But that email says that – no, it is the governments of Saudi and the government of Qatar that have been funding ISIS.”
Pilger and Assange go on to discuss Clinton as a “cog” in a greater machine involving big business, banks, and “a network of relationships with particular states.” According to Assange, she is “the centralizer that interconnects all these different cogs.”
By Alan Mosley | The Libertarian Institute | April 22, 2026
Palantir CEO Alex Karp’s book, The Technological Republic, is a clarion call for Silicon Valley to abandon its consumer trinkets and rush headlong into the arms of the military-industrial complex. According to Karp, America’s future depends on wielding hard power through technology—arming soldiers, AI-weaponry, and mass surveillance systems—rather than on the “soft” influence demonstrated by free markets and liberty-first principles. The book claims that “the survival of the American experiment depends on the technological revitalization of the military-industrial complex” and urges the country’s engineering talent to focus on national defense. Karp and his co-author, Nicholas Zamiska, argue that tech bros should “grow up” and start killing America’s enemies before they kill us. … continue
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