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Hillary: An Existential Threat to Humanity

By Stephen Lendman | August 1, 2016

Hillary is unique in the annals of US presidential politics, a despicable aspirant like no other, an unprecedented threat to world peace, security and humanity’s survival.

Letting her succeed Obama is an unacceptable risk no thinking, peace loving person should tolerate.

It’s inconceivable for anyone knowing her public record to support her – an untrustworthy, widely reviled she-devil, war goddess, racketeer, serial liar threat to virtually everything peace-loving people everywhere hold most dear.

New York Times – led media scoundrels deplorably endorse her, serving as virtual press agents, abandoning journalistic ethics and principles altogether, inventing a nonexistent Hillary persona, suppressing her dark side demanding condemnation, brainwashing readers and viewers to believe she’s the one, bashing Trump relentlessly, way over-the-top in how they one-sidedly go at him.

The risk in November is electoral rigging, installing her as president the way primaries and caucuses were stolen to anoint her Democrat nominee.

America’s electoral process is more scandalous than legitimate, electoral fraud longstanding since the republic’s early days – things rigged today with electronic ease, voter roll purging, millions of votes left uncounted and other dirty tricks.

Democracy in America is pure fantasy. What powerful interests want, they get. Ordinary people have no say whatever, voting a waste of time.

Hillary is clearly the establishment’s choice, Trump the unwanted outlier. US elections are farcical when held, illegitimate by any standard.

In 2000, five Supreme Court justices chose George Bush for president – overriding the popular and Electoral College votes for Al Gore, denying him the office he won.

Will grand theft anoint Hillary Obama’s successor? Are things already decided? Is November’s election (sic) an exercise in futility – theater to create the illusion of democracy?

Hillary represents the worst of Obama’s deplorable record on steroids – beholden to Wall Street, war-profiteers and other monied interests, disdainful of fundamental human rights and needs, a self-serving power-hungry woman lusting for endless wars, risking possible WW III.

Why defeating her is so essential, the choice between remaining freedoms or full-blown tyranny, perhaps life or death!

The horror of a 2nd Clinton crime family co-presidency is too unacceptable a threat to tolerate.


Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

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

August 1, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Clinton’s ‘Absurd’ Hacking Accusations Based on Emotions – Kremlin

Sputnik — 01.08.2016

US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s statements on Russia’s alleged involvement in the Democratic Party hacking scandal are “absurd” and based on emotions, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday.

“Such statement by Mrs. Clinton are part of the pre-election rhetoric and do not include any specifics, because, of course, accusing Russian hackers of certain actions is not the same thing as accusing Russia’s leadership or government. Statements that Russia is behind the actions of certain hackers are quite absurd as well, because Russia is a country,” Peskov said.

“Accordingly, there are no specifics in her accusations. Therefore we believe that they are of an emotional character. Of course, Russian government agencies are not, have not and will never be involved in cyberterrorism,” he underlined.

August 1, 2016 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Hillary Lies on Fox News Sunday

By Stephen Lendman | July 31, 2016

On Fox News Sunday, July 31, Hillary willfully and maliciously lied, claiming she knows Russia hacked DNC emails – despite no evidence suggesting it, plenty indicating otherwise.

“We know that Russian intelligence services hacked into the DNC, and we know that they arranged for a lot of those emails to be released, and we know that Donald Trump has shown a very troubling willingness to back up Putin, to support Putin,” she blustered.

All of the above is false. A same day article explained Israeli military intelligence/Mossad connected DEBKAfile (DF) said “an analysis by (its) intelligence and cyber defense sources has determined that” DNC emails hacking “almost certainly (was) not carried out by (Russia’s GRU) cyber warfare branch.”

It gave credible reasons, notably explaining weeks or months of analysis are required, using “extra-powerful computers,” to determine the origin of the hack attack.

Hillary claiming she knows is more evidence of someone not to be trusted. She knows nothing. She willfully lied on national television. She’s done it for years on domestic and geopolitical issues.

Irresponsibly blaming Russia is a thinly veiled attempt to shift attention from her becoming Democrat standard bearer by electoral rigging – stealing, not winning it.

The possibility of her succeeding Obama should terrify everyone worldwide. Her rage for endless wars makes the risk of WW III on her watch greater than at any other previous time.


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

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

July 31, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

Middle East prepares for Hillary’s war

hillaryforisrael

By M K Bhadrakumar | Indian Punchline | July 28, 2016

The big question this week ought to be about Hillary Clinton’s wars, if she gets elected as the next US president. Her hawkish temperament and her bandwagon comprising neoconservative ideologues, Israeli-Saudi lobbies, military-industrial complex and so on brings us to the epilogue of the ‘Obama Doctrine’ in US foreign policies.

Where will it be that Hillary will choose to wage her war? The high probability is that she will choose the Middle East – not Eurasia or Asia-Pacific. Why is it so?

For a start, Hillary Clinton, unlike her predecessor Barack Obama will not seek indeterminate wars. She will calculate how a war in her first term would help her win a second term in the 2020 election. Neither Russia nor China can be defeated in a short, swift war, while on the contrary, there is the real danger of her triggering World War III with horrific consequences that are impossible to predict.

It is in the Middle East that the neo-conservatives in the US will look for action, given their unfinished agenda of sending Iran to the Stone Age, an outcome without which the destruction of Iraq and Syria hasn’t ensured Israel’s regional hegemony.

Israel and Saudi Arabia, estranged allies of the US, are expecting a Middle Eastern war under Hillary. Last week, a former Saudi general visited Tel Aviv and held discussions with Israeli officials. (Times of Israel ) See an analysis by Simon Henderson at the Washington Institute titled Riyadh’s Diplomatic Dance with Israel.

The bottom line is, Israel and Saudi Arabia feel regional isolation. They failed to entrap Iran in a quagmire in Syria and/or Iraq. With Turkey’s course correction on Syria, Iran’s position further strengthens. The Islamic State and the extremist organizations, which Israel and Saudi Arabia covertly supported, are in retreat.

The latest incident of a Hezbollah drone flying over Israeli skies, photographing military deployments on the Golan Heights dramatically highlights that regional military balance is shifting. Meanwhile, Russia also refuses to ‘moderate’ Iran or Hezbollah, contrary to Israeli expectations.

Similarly, Turkey’s course correction following the July 15 coup attempt is a devastating blow to Saudi hopes of challenging Iran in Syria and Iraq. Saudi Arabia also cannot expect Israel to come and fight its war in Yemen or suppress the uprising in Bahrain. Israel knows it will get overstretched in any such misadventure in a Muslim country. Alas, Saudi Arabia cannot count on Egypt’s support, either. Egypt is a much weakened country and is also having serious problems in the Sinai region, apart from domestic political disarray.

In such a bleak scenario, how will Hillary manage to start a war in the Middle East? By the time she settles down in the White House, the ‘moderate’ rebel groups in Syria may have become an extinct species. Besides, without access to Turkey’s territory, the US will be had-pressed to stoke the fires of renewed conflict in Syria and Iraq.

Therefore, all things taken into account, Hillary may have to settle for a war directly involving Iran. Of course, that will also be the preferred choice and demand of her Saudi Arabian and Israeli friends.

But, how can Hillary provoke Iran into a war? Tehran has the intellectual resources and diplomatic acumen to avoid fighting wasteful wars to secure its interests.

However, there is one way out of this strategic dilemma – ratchet up tensions by undermining the 2015 nuclear deal, notwithstanding Iran’s compliance with its terms. If the US undermines the deal, that is sure to provoke Iran to retaliate by reviving its nuclear program. There is a powerful lobby in the US Congress that favors a return to confrontation with Iran.

Of course, if Iran retaliates by restarting its nuclear program, that can be the perfect alibi for Hillary to clamp sanctions and revert to the ‘containment strategy’. There is speculation that a Saudi-Iranian conflict is also within the realms of possibility. The Saudis are also coordinating with Israel. (New York Times )

Make no mistake, Iran will defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity with all the force at its command. It may even seek the help of Hezbollah. The recent appearance of a Hezbollah drone on Israeli skies could have been a display of capability. (See my blog Hezbollah thumbs the nose at Israel.)

Indeed, the US would have the perfect excuse to get involved militarily in the event of such a conflict affecting Saudi-Israeli security. Weakening Iran and setting it back by a few years will immensely help restore Israel’s regional supremacy, apart from removing from the Middle East region an insufferable thorn in the American flesh. An outright invasion is not necessary for that purpose. In geopolitical terms, it is a double whammy insofar as Russia will also be deprived of an irreplaceable ally without which its effective role on the Middle Eastern chessboard is unsustainable.

July 31, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Hillary’s Convention Con

By Ralph Nader | July 29, 2016

The 2016 Democratic Convention in Philadelphia was a multi-layered, raucous display of political theater. A host of delegates loyal to Senator Bernie Sanders were inside in large numbers exclaiming “No more war” during former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s speech and raising all kinds of progressive, rebellious signs and banners against the Hillary crowd. Although Hillary addressed them directly in her acceptance speech, “Your cause is my cause,” those dissatisfied delegates in the hall saw her rhetoric for what it was: insincere and opportunistic.

She said she’d tax the wealthy for public necessities, but declined to mention a sales tax on Wall Street speculation that could bring in as much as $300 billion a year to support such initiatives. She opposed “unfair trade agreements,” but remarkably omitted saying she was against the TPP (the notorious pending Trans Pacific Trade Agreement backed by Obama that is receiving wide left/right opposition).

She paid lip service to a “living wage” but avoided endorsing a $15 an hour minimum wage, which would help single moms and their children – people she wants us to believe have been her enduring cause. Few people know that it took until the spring of 2014 before candidate Clinton would come out for even a $10.10 minimum wage. News reports noted that Clinton, a former member of Walmart’s board of directors and Arkansas corporate lawyer, was wrestling with how to support $10.10 per hour without alienating her Wall Street friends.

“Caring for kids” doesn’t extend to encircled Gaza’s defenseless children, hundreds of whom were killed by American-made weapons wielded by the all powerful Israeli military. Gaza is the the world’s largest open air prison and under illegal blockade. Remember, as Secretary of State, Hillary fully backed war crimes, condemned by almost all countries in the world. On the stage in Philadelphia, she spoke of backing Israel’s security without any mention of Palestinian rights or the need to end Israel’s illegal occupation of the territories.

It is true, as numerous speakers repeated, Clinton is “most qualified and experienced,” but her record shows those qualities have led to belligerent, unlawful military actions that are now boomeranging against U.S. interests. The intervention she insistently called for in Libya, with Obama’s foolish consent, over-rode the wiser counsel of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (and his generals), who warned of the chaos that would follow. He was proven right, with chaotic  violence now all over Libya spilling into other African countries. This is but one example of what Bernie Sanders meant during the debates when he referenced her “poor judgement.”

The media coverage of political conventions tends to sink to the level of the circus. The PBS/NPR coverage with some half dozen reporters and two commentators proved to be thin, light, soft and superficial. Otherwise smart media communicators were reduced to very heavy focus on exactly what the Party’s manipulators wanted. “What is Hillary really like?” Of course the stage was filled with frothy admiration, awe and acclamation. But why didn’t the media point out some of the factual omissions, the contradictions to the endless sugarcoating of the nominee?

To her credit, NPR/PBS reporter, Susan Davis, did blurt out that the Convention program was mostly about personality and character with little policy. Reporters did, however, point out that unlike all other candidates, Hillary Clinton has not had a news conference since last December to showcase her supposed experience, qualifications and knowledge!

Why wouldn’t Hillary Clinton, in her attack on Donald Trump, demand the release of his tax returns? Hillary and Bill have regularly released their tax returns. Maybe because Trump would demand Hillary release her secret Wall Street transcripts of her $5,000-a-minute paid speeches to big bankers and other businesses.

To her verbal credit, Hillary Clinton raised the “unpatriotic” charge against too many U.S. corporations (not all she added) when it comes to our country. Born in the U.S.A, grown to profit on the backs of American workers, bailed out by American taxpayers and occasionally by the U.S. Marines overseas, these giant companies have no allegiance to country or community. They are, with trade agreements and other inducements, abandoning America’s workers and escaping America’s laws and taxes.

Hearing the word “unpatriotic” applied to those companies I could imagine these firms’ executives and P.R. flacks shuddering for the only time during her 55-minute address. The stigma of being “unpatriotic” to their enabling native country can have consequential legs for turning public opinion even more deeply against these monetized corporate Goliaths.

Stung by the consistently high “untrustworthy” ratings since polling started asking that question (only Trump exceeds her in most polls), she declared again that no one achieves greatness alone, that it takes us working together, that it “Takes a Village,” alluding to her earlier book. If that is true, then Together must have more power than the Few. “Together” should include workers, consumers, small taxpayers, voters and communities who are excluded from power, from the tools of democracy – electoral reforms and clean elections, more unions and cooperatives, access to justice for wrongful injuries and against crony capitalism and corporate crime and greater citizen empowerment. Does she have an agenda for a devolution of power from the few to the many so that we can be “stronger together,” (her slogan for 2016)? No way. Mum’s the word!

This immense gap has been the Clinton duo’s con job on America for many years. Sugarcoating phrases, populist flattery, getting the election over with and jumping back into the fold of the plutocracy is their customary M.O.

An anti-Hillary campaign button sums it up. Imagine a nice picture of Hillary with the words “More Wall Street” above her head and the words “More War” below her head.

Alert voters could see it coming at the Convention: the militarism for Hillary the Hawk on day four in Philadelphia and the arrival of the corporate fat cats. Or, as the New York Times headlined: “Top Donors Leave Sidelines, Checkbooks in Hand.”

The best thing Hillary Clinton has going for her is the self-destructive, unstable, unorganized, fact and truth-starved, egomaniacal, cheating, plutocratic, Donald Trump (See my column “Cheating Donald”).

That’s where our nation’s two-party political leadership is today. When will the vast left/right majority rise to take over and reverse the eviscerating policies and practices of this political duopoly?

July 30, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Long Live the Queen of Chaos

By Rob Urie | CounterPunch | July 29, 2016

For those to whom this hasn’t yet occurred, if Hillary Clinton is elected President she will be President. The Democratic Party platform, Bernie Sanders’ program proposals and Mrs. Clinton’s theorized move Left will be but distant memories. If Mrs. Clinton brings with her a Democratic Congress (or not) she will use it to pass the TPP and TTIP ‘trade’ agreements, to launch ‘liberal’ wars across the Middle East and rattle sabers against Russia, she will re-launch the ‘Grand Bargain’ to cut Social Security and Medicare under the pretext of a fiscal crisis and should Wall Street falter, she will ‘hold her nose’ and once again bail out her benefactors. This is the program her supporters are voting for.

By analogy, when Barack Obama entered office with a Democratic Congress in 2009 he had the best opportunity since the early 1930s to enact a new New Deal in favor of social justice and against the forces of neoliberal militarism. After bailing out Wall Street and institutionalizing the worst ‘unitary President’ excesses of the George W. Bush administration Mr. Obama ran and won again in 2012 on the well-instantiated delusion that once freed from having to run for office again he would be the ‘progressive’ his supporters always thought him to be. This despite his self-description as a ‘moderate Republican’ and his actual record at the center of the Democrats’ three decade turn to the political hard-right.

The Democratic Party line that a vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein or a write-in vote for Bernie Sanders is a vote for Donald Trump overlooks that establishment Democrats rigged the primary process in favor of Mrs. Clinton and that it is their policies that are responsible for widespread political disaffection. The odds have it that if a vote were taken to exile both Party establishments to poorly provisioned outposts on Mars they would be on the way there now. What is so frighteningly irresponsible about Mrs. Clinton’s insertion / assertion as the Democratic Party candidate is the same problem posed by Barack Obama’s posture as a ‘progressive’ President— it leaves the radical right as the only alternative for disaffected voters.

uriechaos

Graph: prime-age employment— jobs for those who must work to live, have been declining since 2000. Each subsequent economic ‘recovery’ has proceeded from a lower, and more desperate, base. Democrats had available to them the New Deal economic template to work from. But they chose restoration of the unstable, destabilizing neoliberal project instead. Source: St. Louis Federal Reserve.

The illusion of political choice only works as long as the status quo functions in some basic sense. The recurring financial bubbles from Savings and Loan deregulation (1980s), privatization and equitization of government-funded research in the tech boom – bust (late 1990s) and the housing boom – bust demonstrated the fleeting nature of Wall Street fueled ‘prosperity.’ With the Middle Class on the ropes, the working class all but disappeared and the poor desperately clinging to the few crumbs that fall to them, the U.S. is but one recession away from being economically (and politically) untenable. The only programs that Democrats have— ‘free-trade,’ private debt fueled consumption, deregulation, privatization and Wall Street bailouts, are proven losers for all but a few in 2016.

One of the reasons the American political leadership needs foreign ‘enemies’ is to divert attention away from the damage that nominal Americans do— Wall Street, corporate executives, the NSA and carceral state, trade deals that act as firewalls against social and environmental resolution and local government actors for corporate power (ALEC-American Legislative Exchange Council). Another is the ‘business’ of nominal governance, the nexus of state and corporate interests that promotes geopolitical tensions, fear and paranoia as business ventures from which profits are earned through mass destruction (Vietnam, Iraq). As the most despised candidate for U.S. President in recent history, Hillary Clinton needs foreign enemies.

Flip the Democratic Party script for a moment to consider that Vladimir Putin might have a point. Hillary Clinton is the most dangerous person on the planet because she is a neoliberal militarist who is absolutely immune from the consequences of the crises she creates. Armed with nuclear weapons freshly ‘upgraded’ by Barack Obama, Mrs. Clinton and the neocon cabal she hopes to lead have destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, have surrounded Russia with NATO troops and weapons, staged a neo-fascist coup in Ukraine, supported a right-wing coup in Honduras and have indicated their intentions to proceed apace turning entire regions of the planet into chaotic rubble with body-counts already in the millions.

This isn’t speculation about some future state of affairs. Hillary Clinton sold U.S. sanctions against Iraq in which one-half million of Iraq’s most vulnerable citizens were starved and denied life-saving medicines to ‘teach Saddam Hussein a lesson.’ And the Clinton-Bush war against Iraq cost one million more innocent lives and created chaos across the Middle East. ISIS is a direct result of Clinton-Bush policies. The liberal pretense that the U.S. War of Aggression against Iraq was ‘Bush’s war’ requires overlooking the eight years of liberal bombing and sanctions that preceded it and that Bill Clinton gave Mr. Bush political cover for the war as his wife voted for it. The U.S. war against Iraq— catastrophe that it was / is, was as bi-partisan as they come.

The system that Mrs. Clinton and Donald Trump— past friends who attend each other’s public functions and private affairs and whose children thrive together in the closed lootocracy of officialdom, are vying against one another to ‘lead’ a spoils system where ‘leadership’ means the ability to arrange profitable outcomes for private interests through ‘public’ means. Neoliberal militarism is private profits created through public death, destruction and misery. The profits explain why Hillary Clinton is never held to account for deadly sanctions, gratuitous wars that turn into geopolitical catastrophes, social policies that turned the poorest 40% of the country into a beggar class and racist strategies like mass incarceration to divide the working class. Given her actual record, Black support for Mrs. Clinton is akin to choosing between AIDS and cancer.

Americans exhibit near-heroic aversion to history and the consequences of American policies that now constitute the core of the Democratic Party’s domestic agenda. The IMF has been pushing these policies on ‘client’ (victim) states for the last half-century. The capitalist lootocracy that the Democrats (and Republicans) serve has long installed puppet governments to reign with impunity as long as they deliver local wealth to back ‘up’ to it. The Clintons are corrupt puppets who serve this system of un-enlightened self-interest as domestic agents of international capital. The sooner the youth of America and the residual Left realize that there is no hope for a better, or even livable, future through establishment politics the sooner we can get to the task at hand: a (real) political revolution.

The title of this piece is taken from Diana Johnstone’s book Queen of Chaos.

July 30, 2016 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Hillary Clinton and Her Hawks

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By Gareth Porter | Consortium News | July 29, 2016

As Hillary Clinton begins her final charge for the White House, her advisers are already recommending air strikes and other new military measures against the Assad regime in Syria.

The clear signals of Clinton’s readiness to go to war appears to be aimed at influencing the course of the war in Syria as well as U.S. policy over the remaining six months of the Obama administration. (She also may be hoping to corral the votes of Republican neoconservatives concerned about Donald Trump’s “America First” foreign policy.)

Last month, the think tank run by Michele Flournoy, the former Defense Department official considered to be most likely to be Clinton’s choice to be Secretary of Defense, explicitly called for “limited military strikes” against the Assad regime.

And earlier this month Leon Panetta, former Defense Secretary and CIA Director, who has been advising candidate Clinton, declared in an interview that the next president would have to increase the number of Special Forces and carry out air strikes to help “moderate” groups against President Bashal al-Assad. (When Panetta gave a belligerent speech at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday night, he was interrupted by chants from the delegates on the floor of “no more war!”

Flournoy co-founded the Center for New American Security (CNAS) in 2007 to promote support for U.S. war policies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then became Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the Obama administration in 2009.

Flournoy left her Pentagon position in 2012 and returned to CNAS as Chief Executive Officer. She has been described by ultimate insider journalist David Ignatius of the Washington Post, as being on a “short, short list” for the job Secretary of Defense in a Clinton administration.

Last month, CNAS published a report of a “Study Group” on military policy in Syria on the eve of the organization’s annual conference. Ostensibly focused on how to defeat the Islamic State, the report recommends new U.S. military actions against the Assad regime.

Flournoy chaired the task force, along with CNAS president Richard Fontaine, and publicly embraced its main policy recommendation in remarks at the conference.

She called for “using limited military coercion” to help support the forces seeking to force President Assad from power, in part by creating a “no bombing” zone over those areas in which the opposition groups backed by the United States could operate safely.

In an interview with Defense One, Flournoy described the no-bomb zone as saying to the Russian and Syrian governments, “If you bomb the folks we support, we will retaliate using standoff means to destroy [Russian] proxy forces, or, in this case, Syrian assets.”  That would “stop the bombing of certain civilian populations,” Flournoy said.

In a letter to the editor of Defense One, Flournoy denied having advocated “putting U.S. combat troops on the ground to take territory from Assad’s forces or remove Assad from power,” which she said the title and content of the article had suggested.

But she confirmed that she had argued that “the U.S. should under some circumstances consider using limited military coercion – primarily trikes using standoff weapons – to retaliate against Syrian military targets” for attacks on civilian or opposition groups “and to set more favorable conditions on the ground for a negotiated political settlement.”

Renaming a ‘No-Fly’ Zone

The proposal for a “no bombing zone” has clearly replaced the “no fly zone,” which Clinton has repeatedly supported in the past as the slogan to cover a much broader U.S. military role in Syria.

Panetta served as Defense Secretary and CIA Director in the Obama administration when Clinton was Secretary of State, and was Clinton’s ally on Syria policy. On July 17, he gave an interview to CBS News in which he called for steps that partly complemented and partly paralleled the recommendations in the CNAS paper.

“I think the likelihood is that the next president is gonna have to consider adding additional special forces on the ground,” Panetta said, “to try to assist those moderate forces that are taking on ISIS and that are taking on Assad’s forces.”

Panetta was deliberately conflating two different issues in supporting more U.S. Special Forces in Syria. The existing military mission for those forces is to support the anti-ISIS forces made up overwhelmingly of the Kurdish YPG and a few opposition groups.

Neither the Kurds nor the opposition groups the Special Forces are supporting are fighting against the Assad regime. What Panetta presented as a need only for additional personnel is in fact a completely new U.S. mission for Special Forces of putting military pressure on the Assad regime.

He also called for increasing “strikes” in order to “put increasing pressure on ISIS but also on Assad.” That wording, which jibes with the Flournoy-CNAS recommendation, again conflates two entirely different strategic programs as a single program.

The Panetta ploys in confusing two separate policy issues reflects the reality that the majority of the American public strongly supports doing more militarily to defeat ISIS but has been opposed to U.S. war against the government in Syria.

A poll taken last spring showed 57 percent in favor of a more aggressive U.S. military force against ISIS. The last time public opinion was surveyed on the issue of war against the Assad regime, however, was in September 2013, just as Congress was about to vote on authorizing such a strike.

At that time, 55 percent to 77 percent of those surveyed opposed the use of military force against the Syrian regime, depending on whether Congress voted to authorize such a strike or to oppose it.

Shaping the Debate

It is highly unusual, if not unprecedented, for figures known to be close to a presidential candidate to make public recommendations for new and broader war abroad. The fact that such explicit plans for military strikes against the Assad regime were aired so openly soon after Clinton had clinched the Democratic nomination suggests that Clinton had encouraged Flournoy and Panetta to do so.

The rationale for doing so is evidently not to strengthen her public support at home but to shape the policy decisions made by the Obama administration and the coalition of external supporters of the armed opposition to Assad.

Obama’s refusal to threaten to use military force on behalf of the anti-Assad forces or to step up military assistance to them has provoked a series of leaks to the news media by unnamed officials – primarily from the Defense Department – criticizing Obama’s willingness to cooperate with Russia in seeking a Syrian ceasefire and political settlement as “naïve.”

The news of Clinton’s advisers calling openly for military measures signals to those critics in the administration to continue to push for a more aggressive policy on the premise that she will do just that as president.

Even more important to Clinton and close associates, however, is the hope of encouraging Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which have been supporting the armed opposition to Assad, to persist in and even intensify their efforts in the face of the prospect of U.S.-Russian cooperation in Syria.

Even before the recommendations were revealed, specialists on Syria in Washington think tanks were already observing signs that Saudi and Qatari policymakers were waiting for the Obama administration to end in the hope that Clinton would be elected and take a more activist role in the war against Assad.

The new Prime Minister of Turkey, Binali Yildirim, however, made a statement on July 13 suggesting that Turkish President Recep Yayyip Erdogan may be considering a deal with Russia and the Assad regime at the expense of both Syrian Kurds and the anti-Assad opposition.

That certainly would have alarmed Clinton’s advisers, and four days later, Panetta made his comments on network television about what “the next president” would have to do in Syria.

July 29, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Owen Jones: vote for Hillary because when she’s POTUS we can ask her nice to be progressive

By Catte | OffGuardian | July 26, 2016

Owen Jones – one time darling of the liberal Left, is now, officially, endorsing Hillary Clinton.

True, they changed the headline shortly after publication. It originally read “The Sanders movement is bigger than Bernie. Now it must work with Hillary” But someone snuck in with the scissors and paste and now the headline reads “The Sanders movement is bigger than Bernie. Now it must defeat Trump”.

But even if this might make Jones and his supporters feel a tad less queasy, it changes nothing. No matter how many sophisms and evasions are employed to try and make it seem he’s still standing by his principles even while he’s openly flouting all of them, Jones, who last year was defending Corbyn, is now endorsing Hillary “I will obliterate Iran” Clinton,

But you see Owen wants us to understand that Clinton isn’t Trump. And being not-Trump is always better than being Trump. So, even though Clinton also isn’t progressive, or honest, or sane, and even though she has no interest in helping the disadvantaged or rebuilding social infrastructure, and even though she conducted state business on a private email server so no one would be able to tell what nefarious and illegal, and potentially insanely dangerous things she was doing, and even though she presided over the Honduras debacle, and even though she authorised and gloated over the illegal murder of a foreign head of state, and even though she has threatened to “obliterate” Iran and take the confrontations with Russia and China to new heights that really might result in WW3, we absolutely have to get behind her because – hello – she isn’t Trump. And anyhow if we get her to be POTUS and make sure there are lots of lovely Democrats in Congress, maybe we can ask them to please do some of the socialist things Bernie talked about. They will probably say yes, of course And anyhow, Owen’s not sure if he mentioned this but Hillary isn’t Trump…

Yes, this is what passes for political analysis when the neolibs are slipping you wads of cash to endorse the unendorsable, the discredited and the morally broken.

The likes of Jones are paid to surrender their dignity and ethics and pretend this macabre farce is something called “democracy”, and to sell the decaying relics offered up for candidacy as if they were real choices. That doesn’t mean we have to pretend to believe them. If I were a US citizen I’d take the only truly free choice left and decline to play this game of fake reality any longer. And if we all did that, the game would be over, wouldn’t it.

July 27, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

Hillary Clinton Is A Threat To All Of Humanity

corbettreport – July 25, 2016

TRANSCRIPT AND SOURCES: https://www.corbettreport.com/?p=19281

Hillary Rodham Clinton is a Wall Street-backed warmonger whose potential election as President of the United States this November poses an existential threat not just to Americans but to all of humanity.

July 26, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

The Spectacle of Sanders in Philadelphia As Hillary Puppet

By Stephen Lendman | July 26, 2016

Sanders didn’t just fall from grace. He crashed, burned and resoundingly proved politicians can never be trusted.

Nothing they say is credible. For months, supporters believed he was the anti-Clinton, campaigning against what she represents – an agenda of endless wars of aggression, world peace at risk, neoliberal harshness, police state terror, the worst of all possible worlds.

She’s the most recklessly dangerous choice for president in US history, the most wicked, the most legally, ethically and morally challenged.

In mid-July, Sanders sold out, betrayed his loyal supporters, proved himself just another self-serving dirty politician by endorsing Clinton, embarrassing himself in the process.

On day one of the Democrat War Party convention, he again made a spectacle of himself before a nationwide audience – assuming the role of Clinton puppet, relegating himself to irrelevance.

He touted a “political revolution” the whole world knows is fake. His populist rhetoric resoundingly rang hollow. Who can believe anything a Judas says, a despicable scoundrel selling out to wealth and power while continuing the charade of supporting populism over privilege.

Bush/Obama policies created a protracted Main Street Depression. Half of US households are impoverished or bordering it. Workers need two or more rotten jobs to survive if they can find them.

America resembles Guatemala, not the home of the free and the brave, beautiful for its privileged class alone, a classic example of thirdworldism.

Sanders lied claiming “(w)e have come a long way in the last 7 1/2 years, and I thank President Obama and Vice President Biden for their leadership in pulling us out of that terrible recession.”

What a shameless misrepresentation of harsh reality! He put his thumb in the eyes of tens of millions of suffering Americans – one missed paycheck away from homelessness, hunger and despair.

He praised Obama instead of condemning him, duplicitously claiming Clinton supports a progressive agenda, a scandalous perversion of truth.

The rest of his remarks included similar mumbo jumbo rubbish repeated endlessly while campaigning -meaningless rhetoric, exposed by endorsing Clinton, shamelessly praising her, bashing Trump.

He reduced himself to a caricature of the phony persona he displayed on the stump. Support for Clinton means endorsing imperial wars, democracy for the few alone and tyranny heading toward becoming full-blown while pretending otherwise.

Saying “Hillary Clinton will make an outstanding president, and I am proud to stand with her here tonight” showed everything he claims to stand for is a Big Lie.

It’s pure fantasy, duplicitous doublespeak, the lowest denominator of political dishonesty, stringing along his supporters, betraying them when it most mattered.

His soul was for sale all along. He’s now a footnote in the deplorable history of US politics, hugely corrupted, impossible to fix.


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

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

July 26, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Economics | , , , , | Leave a comment

Clinton, Wasserman Schultz and the Wheezing Corpse of the Democratic Process Revealed

Ted Cruz has more balls than Bernie Sanders

By Peter Van Buren | We Meant Well | July 25, 2016

Wikileaks over the last few days dumped tens of thousands of emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) server.

The disclosures of dirty tricks directed against Bernie Sanders contained in those emails are startling, and only add to the whirlpool of corruption and sleaze surrounding Hillary Clinton and the wheezing corpse of the democratic process.

There’s a lot to unpack here:

— The same people on the Clinton team who made enormous efforts to claim her private email server, which operated unencrypted over the Internet for three months including during trips to China and Russia and which contained Top Secret national security data, was not hacked by the Russians now are certain that the DNC server was hacked by the Russians.

— Many in Camp Clinton and the media labeled Bernie Sanders’ supporters as paranoid when they made claims during the primaries that the DNC was working against them. The hacked emails confirm the DNC was working against them, including suggestions that the DNC find ways to suggest Sanders was an atheist to discredit him in religious areas.

— Persons who claimed many in the media, including CNN, were biased in favor of the Clinton campaign during the primaries were dismissed. The hacked emails confirm the DNC was working closely with the media to seek negative coverage of Sanders and positive coverage of Clinton.

— Politico now admits it was a “mistake” sending the DNC an article draft in advance. The writer showed the draft to the DNC even before his own editors saw it.

— Facebook admits to blocking Wikileaks links to the DNC email hack from its newsfeeds (but blames spam filters.)

— The DNC appears to have expended significantly more effort toward defeating Bernie Sanders than they did against any of the Republican candidates.

And some more:

— Instead of focusing on the contents of the hacked emails and the dirty tricks they exposed, many mainstream media outlets headlined instead the Clinton campaign talking points that the Russians hacked the emails and released them in an effort to derail her candidacy in favor of Donald Trump. Many of the same stories suggest Trump is some sort of pro-Putin stooge.

— On 60 Minutes, Clinton refused to say intervention by the DNC to favor one candidate was “improper.” Her non-answer was edited out of the interview broadcast.

— After DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced her resignation following this week’s Democratic convention, the Clinton campaign announced Wasserman Schultz would be hired by them as “honorary chair of Hillary’s campaign’s 50-state program to elect Democrats in every part of the country, and as a surrogate for her campaign nationally.”

— Debbie Wasserman Schultz will be replaced as DNC chair by (only now former) CNN commentator Donna Brazile. Brazile argued the pro-Clinton side of debates on CNN throughout the primary season.

— In the hacked emails, Brazile said “I will cuss out the Sanders camp!” over complaints by Sanders of inadequate representation by the DNC. In March while still employed by CNN, Brazile called Sanders’ decision to run as a Democrat for the additional media exposure “extremely disgraceful.”

And very sadly:

— Bernie Sanders, his campaign sabotaged by the DNC with what were once “paranoid” accusations now proved, still endorses Hillary Clinton and will still speak at the Democratic National Convention.

It pains me to say as his once-supporter that the man has no courage. Even Ted Cruz stood up for himself in front of the Republicans in Cleveland. It is a sad day when we learn Ted Cruz has more balls than Bernie Sanders.

Those who are calling all this a coup of sorts, they’re wrong. It’s a surrender. But in the words of Hillary Clinton, what difference does it make?

July 26, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

Might The Donald Be Good for Peace?

By Brian CLOUGHLEY | Strategic Culture Foundation | 25.07.2016

Donald Trump is erratic. We all know that. It is insulting to assert, in the words of Britain’s new Foreign Secretary, the erratic Boris Johnson, that he is «frankly unfit to hold the office of President of the United States», but he’s certainly unpredictable and says some things that are, to put it mildly, intriguing. The fact remains that he could be next president of the United States, which makes it important to look at what he might do if that comes about, especially in the light of America’s military catastrophes so far this century.

Obama followed his predecessors in expanding America’s iron fist as self-appointed global policeman. He vastly increased the US military presence around the world and intensified the Pentagon’s aggressive confrontations with China and Russia.

In China’s case this was effected by sending US Naval E-P3 electronic surveillance aircraft on missions close to the mainland, deploying EA-18G Growler electronic attack aircraft to Clark Air Base in the Philippines, ordering B-52 nuclear bombers to overfly the South China Sea where the US Navy also carried out extended manoeuvres by massive strike groups of nuclear-armed aircraft carriers and guided missile cruisers. All this in a region where the US has not the slightest territorial interest or claim. China’s Sea is 12,000 kilometres, 7,000 miles, from the American mainland, yet Washington considers it the sacred right and duty of the United States to act as a global gendarme and give orders to China about its posture in its own back yard, where there has not been one instance of interference with commercial shipping passing through that region.

As to confrontation with Russia, the US has ensured that its Brussels sub-office, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, will go on playing its toy-soldier games right up to Russia’s borders. The official statement after NATO’s war drum-thumping conclave in Warsaw on July 8-9 is indicative of its determination to continue its attempts to menace Russia, which has not made the slightest move to threaten a single NATO member. It is absurd to claim that «the security situation has deteriorated» in the Black Sea and the Baltic because of Russian action.

These regions would be perfectly calm if it were not for constant provocations by US-NATO warships and combat and electronic warfare aircraft which deliberately trail their coasts in attempts to incite reaction by Russian forces. NATO’s Warsaw Declaration is a farrago of contrived accusations compiled to justify the existence of the farcical grouping that destroyed Libya and proved incapable of overcoming a few thousand raggy baggy insurgents in Afghanistan. So the military alliance is spending vast sums to deploy soldiers, aircraft, ships and missiles right up to Russia’s borders in deliberate confrontation. As Russian spokesman Dmitry Peskov explained «Russia is not looking [for an enemy] but it actually sees it happening. When NATO soldiers march along our border and NATO jets fly by, it’s not us who are moving closer to NATO’s borders».

There’s no answer to that, but the Obama-Pentagon administration is not going to relax its anti-China and anti-Russia attitude, and if Hillary Clinton becomes president – she of the infamous «We came; We saw; He died» giggling interview in which she rejoiced in the savage murder of President Gaddafi of Libya – there will be more of the same. In fact, probably a lot more of the same, only harder, faster and of more financial benefit to US manufacturers of weapons systems. She described President Putin as «someone that you have to continuously stand up to because, like many bullies, he is somebody who will take as much as he possibly can unless you do. And we need to get the Europeans to be more willing to stand up».

So might The Donald be different?

He’s arrogant and impulsive, but although the official Republican stance on China is predictably belligerent, it isn’t likely that The Donald will support confrontation by the nuclear-armed armadas that at the moment plough so aggressively around China’s shores. And he isn’t likely to endorse the Pentagon’s happy fandangos concerning Russia, either.

His comments about the US-contrived shambles in Ukraine are illuminating, in that he says «we’re the ones always fighting [figuratively] on the Ukraine. I never hear any other countries even mentioned and we’re fighting constantly. We’re talking about Ukraine, get out, do this, do that. And I mean Ukraine is very far away from us. How come the countries near the Ukraine, surrounding the Ukraine, how come they’re not opening up and they’re not at least protesting? I never hear anything from anybody except the United States».

They’re not protesting because they have to bow the knee to the Pentagon and its palatial branch office in Brussels (recently built at a cost of over a billion euros) – but The Donald made a good point: Why on earth does the US meddle in Ukraine? Has it benefited economically, politically, socially or culturally from its blatant interference?

Not only that, but The Donald says that the United States has to «fix our own mess» before «lecturing» other nations on how to behave.

No matter how extreme he may be in some of his statements, that one strikes a truly sensible note. Why does America consider that it has the right to hector and lecture China and Russia and so many other countries? It is, of course, because, as Obama announced, America considers itself the «one indispensable nation in world affairs».

What crass conceit. And Obama laboured the point in declaring that «I see an American century because no other nation seeks the role that we play in global affairs, and no other nation can play the role that we play in global affairs». This comes from the president of the country that destroyed Iraq and Libya, and is now itself in chaos caused by deliberate killing of black people by police and a surge in black protests against such slaughter.

Certainly The Donald shouts that he wants to «Make America Great Again» and such xenophobic nonsense – but that’s for the sake of vote-catching. As he rightly said, «When the world sees how bad the United States is and we start talking about civil liberties, I don’t think we are a very good messenger».

Then The Donald went further in common sense and suggested that as president he might close some of the hundreds of US military bases abroad because «if we decide we have to defend the United States, we can always deploy» from American soil, which would be «a lot less expensive». How very sensible.

Hillary came back with the predictable rejoinder that the president of the United States «is supposed to be the leader of the Free World. Donald Trump apparently doesn’t even believe in the Free World». This is straight out of the Cold War vocabulary of divisive confrontation – and if she becomes president, there will be even more pugnacious patronising baloney about «leadership of the Free World» and «the one indispensable nation». As The Donald said, «How are we going to lecture when you see the riots and the horror going on in our own country».

So there might be hope for the future if The Donald drops his more outlandish ideas about Muslims and Mexicans and institutes a policy of rapprochement and live-and-let-live with China and Russia. He’s a better bet on that score than confrontational Hillary.

It just might be that The Donald would be good for rapprochement and peace.

July 25, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment