Category Archives: Dirty Politics

The National Endowment for Democracy: Not National and Not for Democracy

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By Tony Cartalucci

Source: New Eastern Outlook

Using a front to hide illegal or immoral activities has been a feature of human criminality since the beginning of human civilization itself. Facades, both ideological and economical, have helped criminal enterprises conceal the true nature of their activities for centuries.
In ages past, organized religion would often take systems of legitimate philosophy and spirituality, and transform them into a means of organizing the masses for the benefit of an elite few, often those heading empires, kingdoms, or nation-states. More recently, patriotism and now the notion of “democracy” have been used successfully by similar cadres of special interests to conceal their self-serving agendas behind notions likely to recruit support from large segments of a population that would otherwise be disinterested.

There is no example of this more transparent than that of the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED). According to its own website, it claims:

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a private, nonprofit foundation dedicated to the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world. Each year, NED makes more than 1,200 grants to support the projects of non-governmental groups abroad who are working for democratic goals in more than 90 countries.

“The growth and strengthening  of democratic institutions around the world” sounds noble enough. One would expect, then, that the NED would be led by a collection of some of the most notable activists involved in the empowerment of “the people.” Instead, upon NED’s board of directors, we find people representing corporate-financier interests notorious for instead, exploiting and subjugating “the people.”

Unfortunately, for those receiving the millions upon millions of dollars the NED hands out annually to “nongovernmental organizations” (NGOs) around the world, few bother to actually check who it is underwriting their daily activities, and fewer still have the integrity to both turn down the money let alone inform the people they claim to represent just who is attempting to reach into their respective nations and subvert their political systems, and to what end.

Quite literally, each and every member of the NED’s board of directors represents Fortune 500 corporations, insidious corporate-financier funded policy think-tanks, and a wide variety of other obvious conflicts of interest unbecoming of an organization truly interested in, “the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world.” 

NED: Who’s Who

The worst part of NED’s activities worldwide and the fact that allegedly liberal progressive NGOs are taking money from them and aiding and abetting their agenda, is the fact that the background of NED’s board of directors is posted directly on NED’s own website. This means recipients of NED cash either recklessly didn’t bother to look into the organization sponsoring them, or simply do not care about the compromised nature of their sponsors.

For example, Marilyn Carlson Nelson (NED secretary) is co-CEO of one of the largest privately held companies in the world, Carlson Holdings operating hotels around the world. She also serves on the board of Exxon Mobil and chairs the U.S. Travel and Tourism Advisory Board. She alone represents such a tangled web of compromising and conflicting interests, it calls into question the integrity and true agenda of NED.

Carlson Nelson’s company, Carlson Holdings, deals in hotels, yet she concurrently sits on a government board under the International Trade Administration which makes decisions and policies on behalf of the US that directly benefits private industry specifically like that of Carlson Holdings. Her position upon Exxon Mobil’s board of directors is also troublesome. Exxon, a gargantuan multinational corporation, conducts business around the world and by necessity, requires political (and military) interventions to enter into and overwhelm those few remaining markets it has yet to dominate.

Carlson Nelson’s role in the NED, then, could be (and is) easily abused to subvert foreign governments that pose barriers to Carlson Holdings or Exxon, and put into power opposition parties that would deal in favor of such multinations – all under the guise of “the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world.” 

Other NED board members representing compromising corporate-financier special interests include Marne Levine (Facebook, Coo, Instagram), Mark Ordan (WP Glimcher – real estate), and with Carl Gershman, Princeton Lyman, Stephen Sestanovich, and Melanne Verveer serving as members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) – a corporate-financier funded think-tank representing the collective economic and geopolitical ambitions of Wall Street, London, and Brussels’ most powerful special interests.
The CFR’s corporate sponsors include Bank of America, Chevron, Citi, Exxon, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, PepsiCo, Shell Oil, Coca-Cola, BP, Google, Lockheed Martin, AT&T, Boeing, Facebook, DynCorp, Northrop Grumman, Pfizer, Raytheon, Microsoft, and Merck – a virtual who’s who of abusive special interests plaguing the world with socioeconomic disparity, compromising “free trade” deals, and driving conflicts ranging from “color revolutions” and proxy wars to full-scale invasions and decade-long occupations.

NED – which poses as a liberal-progressive organization – includes a surprising number of right-wing Neoconservatives (Neocons). This includes Vin Weber, a Bush-era Neocon who strongly advocated the invasion and occupation of Iraq – a war now revealed to have been predicated on an intentional lie regarding Iraq’s supposed chemical and biological weapons program.

Weber is a partner at the public strategy firm, Mercury. There, he consults and lobbies for multinational corporations, governments, and corporate-funded foundations including Microsoft, Visa, Pfizer, AT&T, Ebay, the Ford Foundation, pharmaceutical firm Gilead, NBC, the government of Qatar, and many others.

For what reason would NED include a pro-war corporate lobbyist on its board of directors if not for the fact that NED itself is but a facade for carrying out pro-corporate-financier agendas under the guise of promoting “democracy” around the world?

Other Neocons populating NED’s board of directors includes Elliot Abrams, Francis Fukuyama, Zalmay Khalilzad,  and Will Marshall. One pro-war Neocon could have been an anomaly – five begins to fit a pattern. It should be noted that NED’s subsidiary, Freedom House, also hosts corporate lobbyists and pro-war Neocons as well, including Kenneth Adelman.

NED Funds Your Local “Pro-Democracy Activists,” But Who Funds NED? 

One of NED’s subsidiaries, Freedom House, is admittedly funded by multinational corporations including AT&T, defense contractors BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman, industrial equipment exporter Caterpillar, tech-giants Google and Facebook, and financiers including Goldman Sachs.

NED itself – according to a 2013 disclosure (.pdf) – is funded by among others, Chevron, Coca-Cola, Goldman Sachs, Google, Microsoft, and the US Chamber of Commerce.

What do these corporations have to do with “the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world?” 

The US Chamber of Commerce in particular is also heavily involved in post-regime change operations carried out by the US government either through direct military conflict or proxy wars and “color revolutions,” being the first to appear in front of new proxy governments to establish Western corporate-financier hegemony over newly “opened” market space.

NED’s individual donors also are telling. They include Frank Carlucci of the notorious Bush-family linked equity firm, the Carlyle Group. There is also former NED board member Kenneth Duberstein, a board member of defense contractor Boeing, big oil’s ConocoPhillips, and the Mack-Cali Realty Corporation. Duberstein also served as a director of Fannie Mae until 2007. He too is a CFR member as are two of the companies he chairs, Boeing and ConocoPhillips.

Also listed as an individual donor to NED is Neocon Paula Dobriansky – a trustee at NED’s subsidiary Freedom House, as well as former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who served during the Bush administration.

Supposedly liberal-progress NGOs around the world taking money from corporate-financiers, warmongers, and right-wing ideologues embodies perfectly the notion of a fraudulent front used to conceal criminal intentions under the guise of a noble cause.

How it Works: A Case Study 

The Southeast Asian state of Thailand is currently gripped by a long-running political crisis centered around Thailand’s indigenous institutions and political order, and that of US-backed proxy Thaksin Shinawatra. Shinawatra himself was – like NED individual donor Frank Carlucci, a member of the Carlyle Group. Before becoming prime minister in 2001, Shinawatra would pledge to his friends in the US business community that he would use his office to serve as a “matchmaker” between Wall Street and Thailand’s people and resources.

Upon taking office, he would carry out a series of abusive and unpopular moves including the commitment of  Thai troops to America’s illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, the hosting of the CIA’s abhorrent rendition program on Thai soil, and an attempt to ram through a US-Thai free trade agreement in 2004 without parliamentary approval.

In 2006, Shinawatra would ultimately be ousted from power by the Thai military. Since then, he has been represented by some of the largest lobbying firms in Washington, including by the above mentioned Freedom House trustee Kenneth Adelman. However, that is not the limit to which the NED has helped prop up Shinawatra’s political front in Thailand.

The NED also funds a myriad of “NGOs” in Thailand aimed specifically at undermining Thailand’s institutions – most notably the military, monarchy, courts, and even the economy itself. These are included on a long list on NED’s own website and include:

  • Thai Poor Act;
  • Thai Civil Rights and Investigative Journalism;
  • Thai Volunteer Service;
  • Makhampom Foundation;
  • Cafe Democracy;
  • Media Inside Out Group;
  • ENLAWTHAI Foundation;
  • Human Rights Lawyers Association and;
  • Foundation for Community Educational Media

It should be noted that in recent years, NED has become as ambiguous as possible about listing which NGOs it specifically funds – while NGOs in Thailand receiving NED funding regularly attempt to conceal NED funding and have been caught on several occasions outright lying about it.

For instance, while NED lists “Foundation for Community Educational Media,” it actually includes organizations like Thai Netizen and Prachatai – two entwined media fronts who have habitually covered up their foreign funding all while asking for donations locally.

Such behavior indicates that NGOs like Thai Netizen and Prachatai are fully aware of the impropriety they are a party to.

Each and every NED-funded NGO in Thailand is currently engaged in daily attacks against the current government, and serves a direct supporting role in bolstering opposition fronts directly tied to the ousted regime of Thaksin Shinawatra. “Human rights lawyers” underwritten by NED regularly represent US-backed agitators rounded and charged for various crimes while media fronts like Prachatai churn out a daily tidal wave of disinformation in support of US interests both in Thailand and across Asia.

Legitimate grassroots campaigns such as opposition to foreign multinational agribusiness and attempts to impose genetically modified organisms (GMOs) upon Thai agriculture receive little to no support from this milieu of US-funded fronts. Likewise, pragmatic and constructive opposition to current government policies done within a framework of cooperating with government agencies to arrive at compromises are also ignored entirely by NED’s networks.

NED’s various fronts are solely focused on pressuring the government into arranging elections and giving America’s proxies, Thaksin Shinawatra and his political allies, another opportunity at seizing power.

Shinawata, once back in power, and after sufficiently diminishing the power of Thailand’s existing political order, would return to destructive pro-US policies ranging from “free trade” with Wall Street special interests to supporting America’s unending wars worldwide. His regime would also likely mobilize Thailand’s population and resources on behalf of Washington’s proxy war with China – costing Thailand a valuable trade and military partner along with peace and stability across Asia.

When political instability surfaces around the world – opposition forces mobilizing in the streets and over the airwaves must be carefully scrutinized. Determining from where they receive their funding and political support is essential in determining whether these opposition forces are legitimate or the manufactured pawns of Western corporate-financier special interests being funded through fronts like the National Endowment for Democracy – a front that is private – not national, and that is for corporate-financier special interests – only under the guise as being “for democracy.”

 

The Rise of the Corporatocracy

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By Graham Vanbergen

Source: The European Financial Review

Transnational corporations are wreaking havoc on financial, economic, social and ecological systems in a creeping colonisation of public life where just 147 organisations now controls 40 per cent of global trade.

We all have a feeling that something is not quite right any more. We know there is a creeping colonisation of public life by corporations because we know a slow motion coup d’état is taking place by transnational organisations facilitated by our political leaders. The incontrovertible proof stares at us in the face every day with wave after wave of financial, economic, social and ecological crisis.

A clear and troublesome picture of corporate power has emerged in recent years where rising inequality is now simply the distinction of expanding corporate activity and those being left behind.

A study in 2000 by Corporate Watch, Global Policy Forum and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) revealed some alarming facts about a rising corporatocracy that should have been brought to heel by western government’s years ago. Instead, corporations are now literally at the helm.

At the turn of the millennia this study confirmed that whilst there were around 40,000 worldwide corporations, just 200 had true global reach and influence. These colossal organisations, many larger than national economies controlled well over one quarter of global economic activity whilst 80 per cent of the world’s population were either left out completely, marginalised or were net losers as a direct result of their activities.1

The decade long IPS study made for very uncomfortable reading. The most alarming amongst a long list of culpability is that as corporate profits soared – wealth concentration followed, and it did so in an environment of stagnating workers wages.

For perspective, the report highlighted that of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 were corporations; only 49 were countries. Wal-Mart for example, was bigger than 161 countries. Mitsubishi was larger than the fourth most populous nation on earth: Indonesia. General Motors was bigger than Denmark. Ford was bigger than South Africa.

The top 200 corporations were bigger than the combined economies of 182 countries and have twice the economic influence than 80 per cent of all humanity.

You might find it something of a surprise to learn that these same 200 global corporations employed less than one third of one per cent of the world’s people – just 18.8 million.

Trading, automobiles, banking, retailing and electronics are where most corporate concentration accumulates and even then one third of all trade is transactions among various units of the same corporation.

By 2012, the top 25 corporations in the world were earning $177,000 per second with Wal-Mart’s annual revenue having risen to $470 billion.

Today the outlook is even worse. Three mathematicians at Zurich Polytechnic Institute published a quite remarkable in-depth report on transnational corporations (TNCs) according to their connections to other TNCs. Beginning with a data base that has now grown to 43,000 corporations, they refine the ownership connections, up and downstream and highlight the most interconnected of these companies. Finally, they arrive at a “core” of 147 companies that now controls an astonishing 40 per cent of the economic value of the entire sample and therefore, global trade.

In little more than a decade, TNCs share of the global market place has increased dramatically whilst competition fell by almost the same factor.

And yet, armed with such damning and conclusive information, the situation continues to deteriorate as politicians abandon any fragments of morality in favour of lucrative revolving door careers leaving entire nations with little more than the hollowed out remains of once thriving economies based on manufacturing and the corpse of democracy.

In the late 1970’s the share of economic value going to labour in the form of wages in Europe was around 70 per cent of GDP. Over the decades there has been a dire shift. Capital has had a very favourable 10 per cent rise in returns and by contrast labour a 10 per cent fall. With an economy worth €13 trillion, the loss to an already stretched working and middle class is €1.3 trillion a year. Shareholders used to be content with returns of say 3 or 4 per cent but now demand near on double digit returns or the CEO is ousted. The consequence being that corporations want to win no matter what the cost.

In Susan George’s “State of Corporations” the observation is made that “From the mid-1990s, the largest American banking, securities, insurance and accounting transnational corporations joined forces and, employing 3000 people, spent $5 billion to get rid of all the New Deal laws passed under the Roosevelt administration in the 1930s – the very laws that had protected the American economy for over sixty years. Through this collective lobbying push, they won total freedom to remove any money-losing assets from their balance-sheets and move them into “shadow” banks that appeared nowhere on their balance sheets. They became free to create and trade hundreds of billions worth of toxic derivative products, such as bundles of sub-prime mortgages, with no regulation whatever.”2

The peak of their collective effort was a global implosion of the finance industry in 2008 and eight years later its lingering state of decline now threatens the Great Depression of 1929 as the longest running recession in history – already the slowest recovery ever recorded.

In the US alone, over 10 million families had their homes repossessed and according to Bloomberg, $14.5 trillion, or 33%, of the value of the world’s companies and nearly 14% of US GDP was wiped out by the crisis. This forgets the effects on developing and third world economies where $3.3 trillion of promised aid remains just that – promised and unpaid.

In the era of “too big to fail and jail” virtually no one was brought to heel or sent to prison for such devastating crimes. Today, the banking industry is almost totally out of control. Daily derivative trading is now a third greater than at the peak of the 2008 crisis. Fraud, rigging, insider dealing and money laundering reach a new summit of lawlessness each day. In the top twenty of global corporations, five are banks.

In the meantime, learning from previous successes, corporate lobbyists now termed “expert committees” meet daily with EU Commission officials to hammer out a trade deal whilst almost no consumer or environmental organisations are represented. Civil society is excluded, as are their representatives in the guise of MEP’s with the illusion of democracy fading fast.

Corporations now place their profits in ultra low or no tax jurisdictions and their losses in high-tax ones, where an estimated $32 trillion is shielded from making any contribution to the societies they extract their wealth from with little or no scrutiny from government’s.

What we now have is anarchy by very rich and powerful corporations. The roll call of shame is never-ending – auto manufacturers, banking, pharmaceutical, food manufacturers, energy industries to name few.

Epic financial crimes, monumental tax evasion, ecological damage on an industrial scale and non-stop illegal wars to ensure a never-ending resource supply is a shameful system based on corporate greed. In its wake we now have 1920’s style rampant inequality and rising poverty reminiscent of the era of Dickens. All of this somehow is the new normal.3

Steal a loaf of bread and it’s prison for you, loot an entire country and it’s a Knighthood. For instance, the British public believes as a result of a long, malicious class-war style political campaign, that benefits fraud is a huge social problem. A recent poll by the workers union TUC showed people believe that 27% of the welfare budget is fraudulently claimed. The figure is in fact 0.7%. As it turns out benefit underpayments by the government outweighs benefit fraud.

Contrast that with one of Britain’s biggest fraudsters – HSBC. In a few short years it has been caught laundering billions of ill-gotten gains on behalf of dictators and despots, international gangsters, traffickers, drug barons, murderers and every other criminal down a particularly odious food chain. It was also caught red-handed in the huge Swiss tax evasion scandal benefitting corporations before we even got to hear of the Panama Papers. The Conservatives gave its boss Stephen Green a plum ministerial role as trade minister in 2011 and he sits in the House of Lords as a Tory peer in an irony lost on themselves and the media.4

Globalisation has continually compounded corporate power and consolidated its influential reach on global governance. Again, trade deals such as TTP and TTIP where entire continents are subjected to corporate domination are evidence of that, but their reach has a more sinister outcome. Corporate lobbyists who now have unprecedented privilege granted by global decision makers to sideline sovereign regulations designed to protect citizen rights and the environment have infiltrated the United Nations.

The UN has a special section for corporations called the “Global Compact” founded about fifteen years ago by Kofi Annan and the then President of Nestle. To become a member, a corporation need only sign on for fifteen principles in the areas of human or labour rights and the environment.5

The corporations of the Global Compact added themselves to members of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and other trade bodies such as the Chambers of Commerce. When the UN held its “environmental” conference in Rio 2012, business completely dominated proceedings for the first time. Corporate interests now have a disproportionality high level of political influence on a truly global scale.

A good example would be Cecilia Malmstrom, the lead EU Trade Commissioner of the TTIP negotiations between Europe and the US. She was questioned by a reporter from The Independent a few months back on why she continued her persistent promotion of the deal against such massive public opposition, her response was: “I do not take my mandate from the European people.”6

Just a few weeks ago we discover that the European Parliament voted in favour of the “Trade Secrets Protection Directive” – a law that gives corporations alarming new superpowers to prosecute and criminalise whistleblowers, journalists, and news organisations that publish leaked internal documents.

As Dr. Paul Craig Roberts former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal put it recently “politically powerful corporations have gained the power in Western “democracies” to sacrifice the welfare of all populations to corporate greed for profit regardless of the cost to peoples, countries, and societies. American “democratic capitalism” is total and irredeemable. TTIP gives corporations unaccountable power over governments and peoples”

Democracy is now on the verge of going from farce to tragedy as a direct result of the indomitable rise of corporate power.

We now live in an era where the fetid reality between rich and poor is demonstrated no better than the rapidly rising inequality of wealth distribution. In 1976 America, the top 1% earned 9 per cent of the national wealth. Thirty years later and their take of national wealth has almost tripled to 24 per cent.7

One of the greatest challenges of our time is to understand the influence of transnational corporations over public policy and how we can engineer a form of capitalism that benefits a wider range of people whilst wrestling social and environmental injustice back into the safe arms of a fully functional democracy.

Currently, the only thing left in opposition now is a general public under siege who protest in cities across Europe and America and present petitions to their respective governments representing millions of citizens. These are the same people who have to pay for all this (legalised) criminality in lost services, employment and savings, yet remain unheard.

 

References
1. The rise of corporations – Global Policy Forum https://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/221/47211.html
2. Susan George – State of Corporations
3. https://www.tni.org/sites/www.tni.org/files/download/state_of_corporation_chapter.pdf
4. UK has poorest people in Western Europe
5. http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/uks-poorest-among-most-financially-stricken-europe-1452895
6. HSBC’s Stephen Green appointed trade minister amid banking scandal
7. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/hsbc-scandal-banks-former-boss-stephen-green-resigns-from-uk-finance-lobbying-group-10046438.html
8. UN infiltrated by corporations
9. https://www.unglobalcompact.org/docs/news_events/9.1_news_archives/2013_12_06/Secretary-GeneralReportA68326.pdf
10. Head of EU TTIP negotiations quote
11. Wealth inequality in America – VIDEO

Hillary Clinton revealed to have serious health issues and probably permanent brain damage

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(Editor’s Note: The more indebted a politician is to corporate interests, indicated by sources of their personal income and campaign funding, the more of a puppet figure they become. As much as I dislike Clinton and similar puppets for all the harm they enable, I dislike the puppet masters even more. If allegations about Hillary’s health are true, shame on them for pushing her through the campaign trail to get their interests served at all costs).

By TBR

Source: Regated via TBR News

Washington, D.C. August 9, 2016:”Although I do  not consider myself to be a Hillary Clinton fan, I admit to having mixed emotions about her mental state. I once worked in Washington and know many officials still there and many of them are aware of various psychological and now, physical, problems she had and does have now. Two Secret Service agents I know, both now retired, have said she had Borderline Personality Disorder when she was First Lady. She would suddenly, and for no reason, erupt into screaming rages directed any anyone near her, staff, her husband, Secret Service agents, government officials and others. Now, I think her bizarre public behavior has become evident to a large number of the American public. There are far too many television clips circulating and increasing discussion by legitimate sources about her serious impairments to ignore them or blame them on the Republicans or the Russians. Hillary Clinton is quite simply unfit to occupy the Oval Office and ought to have the good grace to withdraw from the race but such is not the way of those who have had power and crave for more. Her personal staff and her family may suffer her incoherent rages and bizarre behavior but the country ought not to.”

HILLARY CLINTON REVEALED TO POSSIBLY HAVE SERIOUS HEALTH ISSUES AND BRAIN DAMAGE

By Robert Powell

Increasing evidence has emerged over the past several months that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton may be suffering serious physical health problems that would very likely be impacting her judgement and mental faculties. A photo recently released would appear to confirm rumors that Clinton is suffering some type of physical or mental impairment.

On December 17, 2012, CNN reported that then-Secretary of State Clinton sustained a concussion after becoming dehydrated and fainting, rendering her unable to testify that coming Thursday before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Benghazi. Her press aide reached out to the NFL for PR advice on the concussion. She was later hospitalized after doctors discovered a blood clot during a follow-up exam. Neurologists have noted that Clinton was at a relatively increased risk of developing post-concussion syndrome, which is more likely in women and older individuals.

Post-concussion syndrome is a form of traumatic brain injury and is associated with a range of symptoms, not limited to but including difficulty concentrating, headaches, irritability, mood swings, dizziness, and memory loss; Clinton was referred to as “often confused” in an email by top aide Huma Abedin, and she is known by her staff to suffer severe headaches. Her celebration of Nancy Reagan as a hero in the fight against AIDS was met with bewilderment, as one of the biggest criticisms of the Reagans by gay groups was their handling of the AIDS crisis. Clinton actually attempted to march in New York’s Pride Parade  in June, but only managed to walk around four blocks before she was rushed into a waiting vehicle.

Clinton has been having “coughing fits” since she began her campaign, the hacking sometimes interrupting her in the middle of a speech or meeting. Perhaps most obvious are her sudden, bizarre emotional reactions and sharp head movements; this video of Clinton “reacting” to an unexpected mob of reporters strongly resembles a seizure. Another such moment occurred at the DNC when Clinton accepted her nomination. Experts note that sufferers of these types of seizures become adept at playing them off by quickly altering their facial expressions.

On August 4th, Secret Service rushed the stage at one of Clinton’s rallies to protect her when protestors showed up, a very common occurrence at Donald Trump’s rallies that generally doesn’t require security to storm the stage. On stage was a man who appeared to be a Secret Service agent holding Clinton’s hand, patting her on the back and telling her softly, “It’s OK, keep talking, we’ll handle it, we’re not going anywhere”. Clinton replies, “OK, we’ll keep talking”. Whatever his position, he appeared to be in charge, moving quickly around and directing the other agents on stage.

This same man appears in this photo walking next to Clinton, carrying what has been identified as an emergency Diazepam syringe in his hand. Diazepam, the generic name zWoxT0-1-288x300for Valium, is a benzodiazepine used to treat anxiety, muscle spasms, and a range of conditions, but its primary purpose in emergency epi-pen style syringes is a first line medication to stop seizures.

Following the spreading of this image on social media, the hashtag #HillarysHealth began trending on Twitter before it was removed by Twitter staff. Clinton’s campaign has refused to comment or elaborate on her health conditions. Although she released her medical records last year, details are scant on the exact nature of the aftermath of her concussion. According to those records, she remains on blood thinners.

Update:

https://twitter.com/_AltRight_Anew/status/762718618249367552

 

ANOTHER MYSTERIOUS DEATH – Activist and Sanders Supporter Who Served Papers to DNC on Fraud Case Found Dead

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By Jim Hoft

Source: Gateway Pundit

On July 3, 2016, Shawn Lucas and filmmaker Ricardo Villaba served the DNC Services Corp. and Chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz at DNC’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., in the fraud class action suit against the Democrat Party on behalf of Bernie Sanders supporters.

Shawn Lucas was thrilled about serving the papers to the DNC before Independence Day.

** This was before Wikileaks released documents proving the DNC was working against the Sanders campaign during the 2016 primary.

Shawn Lucas was found dead this week.

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According to Snopes Lucas was found dead on his bathroom floor.

We contacted Lucas’ employer on 4 August 2016 to ask whether there was any truth to the rumor. According to an individual with whom we spoke at that company, Shawn Lucas died on 2 August 2016. The audibly and understandably shaken employee stated that interest in the circumstances of Lucas’ death had prompted a number of phone calls and other queries, but the company had not yet ascertained any details about Lucas’ cause of death and were unable to confirm anything more than the fact he had passed away.

An unconfirmed report holds that Lucas was found lying on the bathroom floor by his girlfriend when she returned home on the evening of 2 August 2016. Paramedics responding to her 911 call found no signs of life.

This follows the death of 27 year-old Democratic staffer Seth Conrad Rich who was murdered in Washington DC on July 8. The killer or killers appear to have taken nothing from their victim, leaving behind his wallet, watch and phone. Shortly after the killing, Redditors and social media users were pursuing a “lead” saying that Rich was en route to the FBI the morning of his murder, apparently intending to speak to special agents about an “ongoing court case” possibly involving the Clinton family.

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And on June 22, 2016, former UN official John Ashe “accidentally” crushed his own throat and died a week before he was scheduled to testify against the Clintons and Democrat Party.

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John Ashes died before his court appearance.

 

Related Podcast:

The Opperman Report – 08.07.16 Niko House; DNC Infiltration, Rigging, Deaths

 

 

 

Fellow Americans, Wake Up & Escape The Matrix

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Where Do Matters Stand?

On the eve of World War II the United States was still mired in the Great Depression and found itself facing war on two fronts with Japan and Germany. However bleak the outlook, it was nothing compared to the outlook today.

By Paul Craig Roberts

Source: Covert Geopolitics

Has anyone in Washington, the presstitute Western media, the EU, or NATO ever considered the consequences of constant military and propaganda provocations against Russia? Is there anyone in any responsible position anywhere in the Western world who has enough sense to ask: “What if the Russians believe us? What if we convince Russia that we are going to attack her?”

The same can be asked about China.

The recklessness of the White House Fool and the media whores has gone far beyond mere danger. What do the Russians think when they see that the Democratic Party intends to elect Hillary Clinton president of the US? Hillary is a person so crazed that she declared the president of Russia to be “the new Hitler” and organized through her underling, neocon monster Victoria Nuland, the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Ukraine. Nuland installed Washington’s puppet government in a former Russian province that until about 20 years ago was part of Russia for centuries.

I would bet that this tells even the naive pro-western part of the Russian government and population that the United States intends war with Russia.

Ever since Russia stood up to Obama over Syria, the Russians have been experiencing hostile propaganda and military operations on their borders. These provocations are justified by Washington and its NATO vassals as a response to “Russian aggression.” Russian aggression consists of nothing but obviously false assertions that Russia is about to invade the Baltics, Poland, and Romania and recreate the Soviet Empire, the Eastern European part of which, together with the former Russian provinces of Georgia and Ukraine, now belong to the American Empire.

The Russians know that the propaganda about “Russian aggression” is a lie. What is the purpose of the lie other than to prepare the Western peoples for war with Russia?

There is no other explanation.

Even morons such as Obama, Merkel, Hollande, and Cameron should be capable of understanding that it is extremely dangerous to convince a major military power that you are going to attack. To simultaneously also convince China doubles the danger.

Clearly, the West is incapable of producing leadership capable of preserving life on earth.

What can be done when the entire West demonstrates a death wish for Planet Earth?

Until the criminal regimes of Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama, American presidents from John F. Kennedy forward worked to reduce tensions with the Soviets. Kennedy worked with Khrushchev to reduce tensions caused by US missiles in Turkey and Soviet missiles in Cuba. President Nixon negotiated SALT I (the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. President Carter negotiated SALT II, which was never ratified by the US Senate but was observed by the executive branch. President Reagan negotiated with Soviet leader Gorbachev the end of the Cold War. President George H.W. Bush in exchange for Gorbachev’s agreement to the reunification of Germany promised that NATO would not move one inch to the East.

All of these achievements were thrown away by the neoconized Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes, each a criminal regime on par with Nazi Germany.

Today life on Planet Earth is far less secure than during the darkest days of the Cold War. Whatever threat global warming poses, it is miniscule compared to the threat of nuclear winter. If the evil that is concentrated in Washington and its vassals perpetrates nuclear war, cockroaches will inherit the earth.

I have been warning about the growing danger of a nuclear war resulting from the arrogance, hubris, ignorance, and evil personified by Washington. Recently, four knowledgable Russian-Americans spelled out the likely consequences of trying to drive Russia to submission with war threats: http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/06/03/41522/

See also: http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/05/28/as-our-past-wars-are-glorified-this-memorial-day-weekend-give-some-thought-to-our-prospects-against-the-russians-and-chinese-in-world-war-iii/

Don’t expect the brainwashed American population to have the moral conscience and fortitude to prevent nuclear war or even the intelligence to prevent their own vaporization. In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal Scott Sagan and Benjamin Valentino report that 59% of the US population support attacking Iran with nuclear weapons in the event that Iran sank one US Navy ship: http://www.wsj.com/articles/would-the-u-s-drop-the-bomb-again-1463682867

Republicans were much more likely than Democrats to approve attacking Iran with nuclear weapons with 81% of Republicans approving nuclear war compared to 47% of Democrats. Yet, the Democrats are behind Hillary who would be the first to use nuclear weapons. After all, a feminized woman has to prove how tough she is, just as Margaret Thatcher was “the Iron Lady.”

Before it is too late for Americans and all of humanity, arrogant Americans need to recall that “those who live by the sword, die by the sword.”

The economic picture is equally dismal and unpromising. The latest payroll jobs report was even more awful than reported. Hardly any new jobs were created, but what largely escaped reporting is the fact that the economy actually lost 59,000 full-time jobs.

Increasingly the US economy consists of part-time jobs that cannot support an independent existence. Thus, more Americans age 19-34 live at home with parents than independently with spouses or partners. Fully half of 25-year old Americans live in their childhood rooms in their parents’ homes.

This is the “New Economy” that the filthy lying neoliberal economists promised would be reward for the American work force giving up their manufacturing and professional skill jobs to foreigners. What a monstrous lie the neoliberal economists told so that corporate executives and shareholders could put into their own pockets the living wage of the American work force. These neoliberal economists, and, alas, libertarian “free market” ones, have not been held accountable for their impoverishment of the American work force deeply buried in debt with no future prospects.

Those few Americans who have any awareness are beginning to realize that the One Percent and the western governments that serve them are re-establishing feudalism. The brilliant and learned economist, Michael Hudson, has labeled our era the era of neo-feudalism.

He is correct. The majority of young Americans come out of university heavily indebted, primed for debtor prison. When half of 25-year olds cannot marry and form households, how can anyone believe that housing sales and prices are rising except as a result of speculative investors banking on rental income from a population that cannot even pay its student loans.

The United States is the sickest place on earth. There is no public or political discussion of any important issue or of the multiple crises that confront America or the crises that America brings to the world.

The American people are so stupid and unaware that they are capable of electing a criminal and a warmonger like Hillary president of the United States and be proud of it.

These “tough” Americans are so frightened of hoax dangers, such as “Muslim terrorists” and “Russian aggression” that they willingly sacrificed their depleted pocketbooks, the Constitution of the United States—an act of treason on the part of the American people who utterly failed their responsibility to protect the Constitution—and their own liberty to a universal police state that has all power over them.

It is extraordinary that once-proud, once-great European peoples look for leadership from a country of moronic non-entities who have pissed away the liberty, security, and prosperity that their Founding Fathers gave to them.

Fellow Americans, if you care to avoid vaporization and, assuming we do avoid it, live a life other than serfdom, you must wake up and realize that your most deadly enemy is Washington, not the hoax of “Russian aggression,” not the hoax of “Muslim terrorism,” not the hoax of “domestic extremism,” not the hoax of welfare bankrupting America, not the hoax of democracy voting away your wealth, which Wall Street and the corporations have already stolen and stuck in their pockets.

If you cannot wake up and escape The Matrix, your doom will bring the doom of the planet.

2016 election decides who controls the drug trade

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By Daniel Hopsicker

(Mad Cow Morning News)

In the Presidential Election of 2016, Republican and Democratic insiders are wrestling like two dogs over a bone over who controls the illegal drug trade.

To the victor go the spoils. Who wins the election wins control of America’s vast drug bazaar, largest in the world, whose proceeds prop up lucky bankers and politicians lapping at the trough of  the biggest richest slush fund in the history of the world.

It’s the smart play

It’s the biggest business in the world, and the No. 1 industry on the face of the planet, in terms of foreign trade. And if you didn’t know that about the illegal drug trade, then the vast amounts spent on propaganda and disinformation every year in the so-called “War on Drugs” is working.

The first industry to globalize vertically was the illegal drug business. It’s an open question whether drug trafficking drove globalization, or the other way around.

Negotiated by Bill Clinton, the chief beneficiary of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement)—by dollar volume and impact on the economy—was the drug trade.

The Democrats, committed to globalization, will continue to farm out transportation and money laundering to, among others,  minions of Mexico’s President Enrique Nieto Pena, cronies of retired Colombian strongman Alvaro Uribe, and a host of eager bankers from the world’s largest banks.

Will a Republican victory will bring back Oliver North? No, it’ll be a Trump Administration appointee with a certain erect posture and short-but-stylishly-cut hair,  chosen to occupy the Oliver North seat on the National Security Council.

The Enterprise Lives. And prospers.

Why there’s no Global War on Johnnie Walker Red

Although America’s sun is slowly sinking  below the horizon, the country still boasts the biggest and the best illegal drug delivery pipeline on the planet, so efficient it’s sick, the and envy of the world. The UK and Europe may be nipping at our heels, growing bigger vis a vis the U.S. as drug consumers, but the U.S. remains the biggest market.

This market is what we sell to the world; one of a few businesses where we’re still No. 1, along with financial services, which basically means meaning laundering drug money, and movies based on comic books.

Here’s a statistic from the UN’s World Drug Report for 2016:

207,000 drug-related deaths globally.

Compare that with this fact from the UN’s World Health Organization:

“In 2012, 3.3 million deaths, or 5.9 percent of all global deaths, were due to alcohol consumption.”

If the U.S. cares about the health of its citizens we’ll soon have a Liquor Enforcement Administration(an LEA), with approximately sixteen times the funding that the War on Drugs receives every year, which is 40 billion dollars.

That’s within reach of the Pentagon budget; its safe to say it ain’t gonna happen.

It doesn’t happen, becauses of the banks, and also because, as the UN World Drug Report also states, and flatly, worldwide people spend more money on drugs every day than on food.

Yup. You can look it up.

An even bigger reason: Global Too Big to Jail Banks.

London’s Financial Times has warning for global elite

Even when you think you’re talking about something else, you’re talking about drugs, even if you don’t know it. London’s Financial Times briefly surfaced from the 19th Century with a headline reading “Global elites must heed the warning of populist rage’

“The explanation for the prolonged stagnation in real incomes are repeated financial crises and subsequent weak recoveries, which have destroyed popular confidence in the competence and moral principles, honesty, and decency of the elite.”

The greedy parasitic elite that betrayed the middle class, and the country.

The Times continues, “The role of finance is excessive. The financial system remains riddled with perverse incentives.”

Without drug money there is no financialization. Because the banks by themselves don’t have the capital. Some say that sounds like a good thing.

“Air America meets  Traffic meets Pineapple Express”

A steady diet of movies like the upcoming ‘Mena’ starring Tom Cruise playing the supposedly-swashbuckling former Air America  pilot Barry Seal, has given the movie-going public the idea that the real action in the illegal drug trade is in drug trafficking.

That’s not the case. The real action is in money laundering. Because if you can’t wash clean the money you end up with, it quickly becomes useless to anyone with more long-term goals than throwing the biggest party or longest orgy the world has ever seen. And because money weighs more than drugs—and is way more bulky unless you’re smuggling marijuana which is today considered more out of the stone age than old school.

So there’s a problem. Providing a solution are casinos, bodegas, cambios, Western Union, grocery stores, restaurants, even dry cleaners, and banks. Especially banks. In fact it they weren’t for laundering drug money, HSBC, JP Morgan, Barclays and Bank of America would have already gone the way of Mario Brothers or YAHOO, which only makes news anymore when pieces are sold off in foreclosure.

Three brief moments  in time in the drug trade

A Turkish boat carrying a massive 3.2 tonnes of high purity cocaine hidden in a ballast tank at the front of the MV Hamal was busted 100 miles east of the Aberdeenshire coast.

It was a record $673 million (£512 million) cocaine haul.The captain and second in command—Mumin Sahin and Emin Ozmen—were convicted, and sent to prison.

“The Captain and the second in command” are the drug trade’s equivalent of David Letterman Show favorites Mujibur and Sirajul, who ran a t-shirt shop in a tiny frontage near the Ed Sullivan Theater. They were ordinary people who Letterman found exceptional just because there were so ordinary.

Is there a shortage of people ready to take a chance smuggling a half-billion cargo?  Is that the plan?

“Operation SCREENPLAY” gets a tentative green light

“OPERATION Screenplay will go down as one of the all-time great UK drug busts,” enthused John McGowan, head of border investigations.

“To put it in perspective, the total seizure of cocaine by all police forces in England and Wales in 2014-15 was 3.4 tons. That was for everything.  This single seizure was 3.2 tons.”

In a blatant pitch for more government funding—so that he could presumably really go to town, he added, “And all we had was intelligence from the French that there was a considerable quantity of cocaine on board.”

The paper seemed not so sure. The report ended, “Despite the size of the seizure, anecdotal evidence suggests police did not record a dip in the amount of cocaine on our streets.”

Playing whack-a–mole around the world

An expert who testified at their trial about “recognised trade routes” for shipping cocaine was perhaps a little too candid. He told the jury:

“It is now south of Venezuela and Guyana because of a lot of enforcement activity by the USA patrolling the coast. It’s massive importation – unprecedented in my experience.”

Those sneaky traffickers. Always playing whack-a-mole.

Cocaine production in Colombia increased dramatically—shooting up a staggering 46 percent—last year.  The country now has the resources to produce 712 tons of cocaine annually. Growth exploded in lawless areas in the Sierra Nevada mountains in the north and in the Amazon region, on the Venezuelan and Ecuadorean borders and along the Pacific coast.

But cultivation dropped in central Colombia, where the people running  both Colombia’s government and drug trade of Colombia.

Huh. Imagine that.

The Mexican Navy left with many barrels of zesty condiments

The Mexican navy found 13 tons of cocaine inside barrels of hot sauce in Manzanillo, 500 miles west of Mexico City. The barrels full of zesty condiment and cocaine were believed to belong to the Sinaloa Cartel.

A week earlier, busy Mexican sailors discovered almost a ton of cocaine—more than 900 keys—floating in the open sea off the coast of Chiapas.

A ton of cocaine. Just… floating…100 miles from shore.

The world’s richest industries

How much money an industry makes is the best rule of thumb for how much clout that industry exerts on the countries in which it operates. The illegal drug trade has yearly revenues exceeding the 946 billion in annual revenue of Walmart, Microsoft, Google, Ebay, and British Petroleum, combined.

In the U.S., and almost everywhere else, it’s a cash cow of almost unimaginable proportions.

The richest industries are all based on at assets we use in our lives every day, from computers to entertainment, to oil, to shopping, to drugs. According to therichest.com, “They are industries we give our hard-earned money to out of necessity, desire, or a mix of the two. And they also tend to be the most valuable, and not just from a monetary standpoint.  Their value lies in the fact that they’re needed to help society advance and function smoothly.”

Imagine several hundred million people trying to get through Monday morning with coffee. Luckily, that won’t ever happen.

 

About Daniel Hopsicker

Daniel Hopsicker is an investigative journalist dubious about the self-serving assertion of U.S. officials that there are no American Drug Lords.

‘Stop Drinking the Kool-Aid, America: Political Fiction in an Age of Televised Lies’

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By John W. Whitehead

Source: A Government of Wolves

“We’ve got to face it. Politics have entered a new stage, the television stage. Instead of long-winded public debates, the people want capsule slogans—‘Time for a change’—‘The mess in Washington’—‘More bang for a buck’—punch lines and glamour.”— A Face in the Crowd (1957)

Politics is entertainment.

It is a heavily scripted, tightly choreographed, star-studded, ratings-driven, mass-marketed, costly exercise in how to sell a product—in this case, a presidential candidate—to dazzled consumers who will choose image over substance almost every time.

This year’s presidential election, much like every other election in recent years, is what historian Daniel Boorstin referred to as a “pseudo-event”: manufactured, contrived, confected and devoid of any intrinsic value save the value of being advertised. It is the end result of a culture that is moving away from substance toward sensationalism in an era of mass media.

As author Noam Chomsky rightly observed, “It is important to bear in mind that political campaigns are designed by the same people who sell toothpaste and cars.” In other words, we’re being sold a carefully crafted product by a monied elite who are masters in the art of making the public believe that they need exactly what is being sold to them, whether it’s the latest high-tech gadget, the hottest toy, or the most charismatic politician.

Tune into a political convention and you will find yourself being sucked into an alternate reality so glossy, star-studded, emotionally charged and entertaining as to make you forget that you live in a police state. The elaborate stage show, the costumes, the actors, the screenplay, the lighting, the music, the drama: all carefully calibrated to appeal to the public’s need for bread and circuses, diversion and entertainment, and pomp and circumstance.

Politics is a reality show, America’s favorite form of entertainment, dominated by money and profit, imagery and spin, hype and personality and guaranteed to ensure that nothing in the way of real truth reaches the populace.

After all, who cares about police shootings, drone killings, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture schemes, private prisons, school-to-prison pipelines, overcriminalization, censorship or any of the other evils that plague our nation when you can listen to the croonings of Paul Simon, laugh along with Sarah Silverman, and get misty-eyed over the First Lady’s vision of progress in America.

But make no mistake: Americans only think they’re choosing the next president.

In truth, however, they’re engaging in the illusion of participation culminating in the reassurance ritual of voting. It’s just another Blue Pill, a manufactured reality conjured up by the matrix in order to keep the populace compliant and convinced that their vote counts and that they still have some influence over the political process.

Stop drinking the Kool-Aid, America.

The nation is drowning in debt, crippled by a slowing economy, overrun by militarized police, swarming with surveillance, besieged by endless wars and a military industrial complex intent on starting new ones, and riddled with corrupt politicians at every level of government. All the while, we’re arguing over which corporate puppet will be given the honor of stealing our money, invading our privacy, abusing our trust, undermining our freedoms, and shackling us with debt and misery for years to come.

Nothing taking place on Election Day will alleviate the suffering of the American people.

The government as we have come to know it—corrupt, bloated and controlled by big-money corporations, lobbyists and special interest groups—will remain unchanged. And “we the people”—overtaxed, overpoliced, overburdened by big government, underrepresented by those who should speak for us and blissfully ignorant of the prison walls closing in on us—will continue to trudge along a path of misery.

With roughly 22 lobbyists per Congressman, corporate greed will continue to call the shots in the nation’s capital, while our elected representatives will grow richer and the people poorer. And elections will continue to be driven by war chests and corporate benefactors rather than such values as honesty, integrity and public service. Just consider: it’s estimated that more than $5 billion will be spent on the elections this year, yet not a dime of that money will actually help the average American in their day-to-day struggles to just get by.

And the military industrial complex will continue to bleed us dry. Since 2001 Americans have spent $10.5 million every hour for numerous foreign military occupations, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. There’s also the $2.2 million spent every hour on maintaining the United States’ nuclear stockpile, and the $35,000 spent every hour to produce and maintain our collection of Tomahawk missiles. And then there’s the money the government exports to other countries to support their arsenals, at the cost of $1.61 million every hour for the American taxpayers.

Then again, when faced with the grim, seemingly hopeless reality of the American police state, it’s understandable why Americans might opt for escapism. “Humankind cannot bear too much reality,” T. S. Eliot once said. Perhaps that is one reason we are so drawn to the unreality of the American political experience: it is spectacle and fiction and farce all rolled up into one glossy dose of escapism.

Frankly, escapism or not, Americans should be mad as hell.

Many of our politicians live like kings. Chauffeured around in limousines, flying in private jets and eating gourmet meals, all paid for by the American taxpayer, they are far removed from those they represent. Such a luxurious lifestyle makes it difficult to identify with the “little guy”—the roofers, plumbers and blue-collar workers who live from paycheck to paycheck and keep the country running with their hard-earned dollars and the sweat of their brows.

Conveniently, politicians only seem to remember their constituents in the months leading up to an election, and yet “we the people” continue to take the abuse, the neglect, the corruption and the lies. We make excuses for the shoddy treatment, we cover up for them when they cheat on us, and we keep hoping that if we just stick with them long enough, eventually they’ll treat us right.

People get the government they deserve.

No matter who wins the presidential election come November, it’s a sure bet that the losers will be the American people.

As political science professor Gene Sharp notes in starker terms, “Dictators are not in the business of allowing elections that could remove them from their thrones.” As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the Establishment—the shadow government and its corporate partners that really run the show, pull the strings and dictate the policies, no matter who occupies the Oval Office—are not going to allow anyone to take office who will unravel their power structures. Those who have attempted to do so in the past have been effectively put out of commission.

So what is the solution to this blatant display of imperial elitism disguising itself as a populist exercise in representative government?

Stop playing the game. Stop supporting the system. Stop defending the insanity. Just stop.

Washington thrives on money, so stop giving them your money. Stop throwing your hard-earned dollars away on politicians and Super PACs who view you as nothing more than a means to an end. There are countless worthy grassroots organizations and nonprofits working in your community to address real needs like injustice, poverty, homelessness, etc. Support them and you’ll see change you really can believe in in your own backyard.

Politicians depend on votes, so stop giving them your vote unless they have a proven track record of listening to their constituents, abiding by their wishes and working hard to earn and keep their trust.

Stop buying into the lie that your vote matters. Your vote doesn’t elect a president. Despite the fact that there are 218 million eligible voters in this country (only half of whom actually vote), it is the electoral college, made up of 538 individuals handpicked by the candidates’ respective parties, that actually selects the next president. The only thing you’re accomplishing by taking part in the “reassurance ritual” of voting is sustaining the illusion that we have a democratic republic. What we have is a dictatorship, or as political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page more accurately term it, we are suffering from an “economic élite domination.”

A healthy, representative government is hard work. It takes a citizenry that is informed about the issues, educated about how the government operates, and willing to make the sacrifices necessary to stay involved, whether that means forgoing Monday night football in order to attend a city council meeting or risking arrest by picketing in front of a politician’s office.

It takes a citizenry willing to do more than grouse and complain. We must act—and act responsibly—keeping in mind that the duties of citizenship extend beyond the act of voting.

Most of all, it takes a citizenry that cares enough to get mad and get active. As Howard Beale declares in the 1976 film Network:

“I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell, ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore.’ Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!…You’ve got to say, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Then we’ll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it.”

 

Wikileaks Emails Bring New Attention to Hillary Victory Fund “Money Laundering” Charges

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By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

Source: Wall Street on Parade

The problem with conspiracy theorists is that, quite frequently, the theorists lack adequate imagination. That seems to be the case when it comes to the Democratic National Committee’s behind-the-scenes machinations to muscle Hillary Clinton into the White House while plotting against her main challenger, Bernie Sanders. That conclusion stems from the trove of 20,000 DNC emails dumped into the public sphere by Wikileaks last Friday.

The leaked emails have cost Debbie Wasserman Schultz her job as Chair of the DNC but other top DNC officials captured in devious plots against Sanders in the email exchanges still have their jobs – or at least no official firings have been announced. This makes the conspiracies seem more like a DNC business model.

The DNC’s own charter demands that it treat all Democratic primary candidates fairly and impartially, but top DNC officials made a mockery of that mandate. In addition to conjuring up ways to smear Clinton challenger Bernie Sanders during the primary battles, the leaked emails show a coordinated effort to cover up what the Sanders camp called “money laundering” between the Hillary Victory Fund and the DNC.

Despite the fact that the Sanders campaign had no such active arrangement with the DNC, the DNC agreed to participate in the Hillary Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee that sluiced money to both Hillary’s main candidate committee, Hillary for America, as well as into the DNC. To a much tinier degree, funds also went to dozens of separate State Democratic committees.

On May 2 of this year, the Sanders campaign released a statement charging Clinton with “looting funds meant for the state parties to skirt fundraising limits on her presidential campaign,” and exploiting “the rules in ways that let her high-dollar donors like Alice Walton of Wal-Mart fame and the actor George Clooney and his super-rich Hollywood friends skirt legal limits on campaign contributions.”

Despite Clinton’s promise to rein in tax dodges by hedge funds, Wall Street On Parade reported in April that major hedge fund titans were also big donors to the Hillary Victory Fund. We wrote at the time:

“Federal Election Commission records show that S. Donald Sussman, founder of hedge fund Paloma Partners, gave $343,400 to the Hillary Victory Fund while also donating $2.5 million to Priorities USA, the Super Pac supporting Hillary. Hedge Fund billionaire George Soros donated $343,400 to the Hillary Victory Fund while sluicing a whopping $7 million into Priorities USA to enhance Hillary’s efforts to move into the Oval Office.”

Today, reporters Ken Vogel and Isaac Arnsdorf of Politico have provided significant new details from the leaked emails to show how the DNC worked behind the scenes to control the media’s handling of revelations involving the Hillary Victory Fund.

Vogel was criticized by some media outlets when the Wikileaks emails revealed he had allowed a DNC official to review one of his articles critical of the joint fundraising operation prior to publication. Erik Wemple of the Washington Post has provided some necessary clarity to that issue here.

The Clinton camp and the DNC had attempted publicly to defend the joint fundraising operation as providing critical help to State Committees in order to help down-ticket candidates. But today, Vogel and Arnsdorf report the following:

“Between the creation of the victory fund in September and the end of last month, the fund had brought in $142 million, the lion’s share of which — 44 percent — has wound up in the coffers of the DNC ($24.4 million) and Hillary for America ($37.6 million), according to a POLITICO analysis of FEC filings. By comparison, the analysis found that the state parties have kept less than $800,000 of all the cash brought in by the committee — or only 0.56 percent.”

Vogel and Arnsdorf also detail how the DNC attempted to stonewall reporters on the topic, writing:

“The emails show the officials agreeing to withhold information from reporters about the Hillary Victory Fund’s allocation formula, working to align their stories about when — or if — the DNC had begun funding coordinated campaign committees with the states.”

The Politico reporters also note that Hillary Clinton’s campaign attorney, Marc Elias of law firm Perkins Coie, also appears in a Wikileaks email suggesting media strategy to the DNC:

“ ‘The DNC should push back DIRECTLY at Sanders and say that what he is saying is false and harmful to the Democratic party,’ Marc Elias, an attorney who advises the DNC and the Clinton campaign, wrote in an email to DNC officials. [DNC] CEO Amy Dacey responded ‘I do think there is too much of this narrative out there — I also worry since they are emailing to their list (which has overlap with ours!)’

“In another email, Miranda, the [DNC] communications director, suggested that the campaign tell other journalists seeking to follow POLITICO’s story that “Politico got it wrong.” But the rest of his email failed to indicate any errors in POLITICO’s story, nor did the DNC or the Clinton campaign seek a correction.”

Politico’s latest revelations build on the allegations in the class action lawsuit that has been filed against the DNC and Wasserman Schultz by Sanders’ supporters. One document submitted in that lawsuit came from a previous hack of the DNC server by an individual known as Guccifer 2.0. That document shows that even after Bernie Sanders had announced he was entering the race on April 30, 2015, the DNC was brainstorming on how it could advance Hillary Clinton to the top of the ticket. The memo is described as follows in the lawsuit:

“Among the documents released by Guccifer 2.0 on June 15th is a two-page Microsoft Word file with a ‘Confidential’ watermark that appears to be a memorandum written to the Democratic National Committee regarding ‘2016 GOP presidential candidates’ and dated May 26, 2015. A true and correct copy of this document (hereinafter, ‘DNC Memo’) is attached as Exhibit 1. The DNC Memo presents, ‘a suggested strategy for positioning and public messaging around the 2016 Republican presidential field.’ It states that, ‘Our goals in the coming months will be to frame the Republican field and the eventual nominee early and to provide a contrast between the GOP field and HRC.’ [HRC means Hillary Rodham Clinton.] The DNC Memo also advises that the DNC, ‘[u]se specific hits to muddy the waters around ethics, transparency and campaign finance attacks on HRC.’ In order to ‘muddy the waters’ around Clinton’s perceived vulnerabilities, the DNC Memo suggests ‘several different methods’ of attack including: (a) ‘[w]orking through the DNC’ to ‘utilize reporters’ and create stories in the media ‘with no fingerprints’; (b) ‘prep[ping]’ reporters for interviews with GOP candidates and having off-the-record conversations with them; (c) making use of social media attacks; and (d) using the DNC to ‘insert our messaging’ into Republican-favorable press.” [Read the full memorandum here.]

The response to all of this from Hillary Clinton has further enraged Sanders’ supporters. After the emails were leaked and written about in the media over the weekend, Hillary Clinton made Wasserman Schultz the honorary chairperson of her 50-state program and President Obama praised Wasserman Schultz in a statement that can only be described as bizarre, given the contents of the leaked emails. Obama said on Sunday:

“For the last eight years, Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz has had my back. This afternoon, I called her to let her know that I am grateful. Her leadership of the DNC has meant that we had someone who brought Democrats together not just for my re-election campaign, but for accomplishing the shared goals we have had for our country.”

Apparently, missing from those “shared goals” is allowing a fair primary process within the Democratic party or a challenge to the political machine that controls Washington.

 

Related Article: IRS Will Investigate Clinton Foundation ‘Pay-to-Play’ Corruption Accusations