Tag Archives: Clinton Emails

The Top 10 Most Damaging WikiLeaks (so far)

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From MostDamagingWikileaks.com

1. Obama lied: he knew about Hillary’s secret server and wrote to her using a pseudonym, cover-up happened (intent to destroy evidence)

  • I cannot state how huge this is, it’s a cover-up involving the President of the United States. There are a lot of emails implying this, but this email states it very clearly so anyone can understand.  The email proves obstruction of justice and shows how they lied to the FBI, and likely perjury of Congress. This at the very least proves intent by her Chief of Staff.

  • Obama used executive privilege in their correspondence. Cheryl Mills (who was given immunity) states they need to “clean up” the Clinton/Obama e-mails because they lacked state.gov.

  • Additionally, Obama on video publicly denied knowing about the server. He also claimed on video that he learned about the secret server through the news like everyone else. The corruption goes all the way to the top! Obama is lying to the American public.

  • Hillary Clinton set up her private server to hide her pay to play deals discovered throughout these leaks, and to prevent FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests.

  • Paul Combetta was hired to modify the email headers that referred to a VERY VERY VIP individual, i.e. change the name of who it was from. If you read Stonetear/Combetta story, it’s easy to see this is exactly what he was attempting. He wanted to change header information on already sent mail to show “state.gov” instead of Hillary’s private email address. Multiple people informed him of the infeasibility (and illegality) of it, so somewhere in the next 6 days, it was decided that simply eradicating them was the only option left.

  • The FBI said they could find no intent to break the law, therefore no recommendation of prosecution.  This email proves, in plain language, that there was intention, and knowingly broke the law.

  • Ask yourselves: Why would they both be communicating on a secret server to each other? Why not through normal proper channels? What were they hiding? We may soon find out.

 

2. Hillary Clinton dreams of completely “open borders”

  • This was stated at one of her $225,000 paid secret speeches to Wall Street that she has tried desperately to hide. This email contains those speeches in those attachments.

  • Border protection is important. Borders add safety and sovereignty to a country. Borders help prevent illegal immigration, which limits crime, drugs, human/sex trafficking across the border and allows more Americans (including African Americans and Latinos) to get jobs. It also costs the working class an exorbitant amount of money in higher taxes and leads to higher national debt. Mexico protects their southern border (with the help of $75 million from Obama).

  • During the 3rd debate, Hillary tried to pivot away from this damning topic by stating she only meant energy. Read the quote for yourself, energy is just one aspect of her open borders policy.

 

3. Hillary Clinton received money from and supported nations that she KNEW funded ISIS and terrorists

  • Hillary’s Chief of Staff admits in the 2nd link that foreign interests sway Hillary to do what they want her to do (money for mandatory appearances).  She also admits that the “Friend of Hillary” list is available and rentable to people who want to influence, but that it’s too sensitive to talk in email.

  • This leak shows Hillary knows Saudis and Qatar are funding ISIS, which is an enemy of the state.  After knowing this, Hillary accepted tens of millions in donations from these terrorist-funding governments (of course they are getting something back in return). She also supported arms deals to them.

  • Saudi Arabia and Qatar commit horrible acts under Sharia law, including throwing gay people off of buildings, persecuting Christians, Jews, and atheists, and making it legal to rape and beat women. They are the leading funders of Hillary and her campaign through the Clinton Foundation.

 

4. Hillary has public positions on policy and her private ones

  • https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/927

  • “But If Everybody’s Watching, You Know, All Of The Back Room Discussions And The Deals, You Know, Then People Get A Little Nervous, To Say The Least. So, You Need Both A Public And A Private Position.”

  • This leak is a big one because anything she tells us that she will do can and should be considered questionable. Whenever Hillary tells the public a position, a goal, or what she will do for America, there is no way we can be sure if she has an opposite, private position.

  • This was one of her private paid $225,000 speeches to Wall Street. Behind closed doors she is telling her Wall Street donors one thing, and the American people another thing.  Think about that for a moment…

 

5. Paying people to incite violence and unrest at Trump rallies

  • https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/3833

  • https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/31335

  • “Engage immigrant rights organizations. DREAMers have been bird dogging Republican presidential candidates on DACA/DAPA, but they’ve learned to respond. There’s an opportunity to bird dog and record questions about Trump’s comments and connect it to the policy.”

  • “It doesn’t matter what the friggin’ legal and ethics people say, we need to win this motherfucker” (from video below)

  • “I mean honestly, it is not hard to get some of these ass holes to pop off, it’s a matter of showing up, to want to get into the rally, in a Planned Parenthood t-shirt. Or, Trump is a Nazi, you know? You can message to draw them out, and draw them to punch you.”

  • This video is the proof, please watch it!

  • “Bird-dogging” is a term coined by high level Clinton staffers who openly talk about it in the video.  They boast about inciting violence at Trump rallies, paying for every “protest”, manipulating Americans through the media to think that Trump is dangerous, and tricking people into thinking Trump supporters are violent and bad.

  • They laugh about paying off mentally ill and homeless people for years to incite violence against conservatives.  Truly despicable.  And they pretended to be Bernie supporters while they were “protesting”.

  • They admit to starting the Chicago riot where police were seriously hurt, and admit to shutting down the freeway in Arizona, partnering with Black Lives Matter. We even have proof that Hillary paid people to shut down the Chicago rally.

  • Inciting a riot is illegal under 18 US Code § 2102.

  • They also think 50% of people in Iowa and Wisconsin are racists, as they state in the video.

  • Robby Mook, Clinton Campaign Manager, mentions the Priorities SuperPAC in a leak, which is implicated in the video.

  • Bob Creamer (who was fired) claims in the video that the campaign knew about everything.  Bob Creamer visited the White House 340 times and personally met with Obama 45 times.

 

6. Hillary’s campaign wants “unaware” and “compliant” citizens

  • https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/3599

  • “And as I’ve mentioned, we’ve all been quite content to demean government, drop civics and in general conspire to produce an unaware and compliant citizenry. The unawareness remains strong but compliance is obviously fading rapidly. This problem demands some serious, serious thinking – and not just poll driven, demographically-inspired messaging.”

  • The Clinton campaign is literally conspiring to keep the population unaware of what is going on, and they admitted it in this email. Very scary ‘1984’ level thinking (group-think). If Hillary is the right choice for president and the truth is on her side, they should encourage their supporters to be aware and do research on both candidates.

  • Watch this video about it.

 

7. Top Hillary aides mock Catholics for their faith

  • Top Clinton aides, John Halpin and Jennifer Palmieri mock Catholics for their faith. They complain about the large number of Catholics in prominent positions.

  • This was one of the few emails to actually make it to the mainstream media (FOX) and Palmieri when confronted about this revelation didn’t apologize.

  • Brian Burch, CatholicVote.org president released a statement proclaiming, “Hillary Clinton has already called half of her opponents’ supporters ‘a basket of deplorables’ and ‘irredeemable,’ and now it comes out that her campaign spokeswoman dismissively question[ed] the sincerity of Catholic Americans’ faith. Had Palmieri spoken this way about other groups, she [would be] dismissed. Palmieri must resign immediately or be fired.”

  • This revelation was brought up at the Al Smith dinner for Catholics.

 

8. Hillary deleted her incriminating emails. State covered it up. Asked about using White House executive privilege to hide from Congress.

  • https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/9272#efmBI2BOJ

  • https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/9545

  • https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/34370

  • https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/32007

  • “They do not plan to release anything publicly, so no posting online or anything public-facing, just to the committee.”

  • “That of course includes the emails Sid turned over that HRC didn’t, which will make clear to them that she didn’t have them in the first place, deleted them, or didn’t turn them over. It also includes emails that HRC had that Sid didn’t.”

  • “Think we should hold emails to and from potus? That’s the heart of his exec privilege. We could get them to ask for that. They may not care, but I seems like they will.”

  • “We brought up the existence of emails in reserach this summer but were told that everything was taken care of.”

  • “That of course includes the emails Sid turned over that HRC didn’t, which will make clear to them that she didn’t have them in the first place, deleted them, or didn’t turn them over.”

  • The State Department was:

    • (1) Coordinating with the Clinton political campaign.

    • (2) Colluding with the press to spin it positively.

    • (3) Doing so BEFORE they released it to AN EQUAL BRANCH OF GOVERNMENT. The Clinton campaign was always a step ahead of the committee investigating them. Shameful.

  • Nick states “Just spoke to State” He goes on to reveal that State colluded with him about which emails are being revealed to committee and that the State plans to plant a story with AP.

  • Shows intent to withhold emails from the subpoena.

 

9. Bribery: King of Morocco gave Clinton Foundation $12 million for a meeting with Hillary, 6 months later Morocco gets weapons

  • This is AFTER her candidacy announcement!

  • Very important e-mail in that it demonstrates Hillary’s poor judgement (her idea) in the face of influence money and foreshadows how a Clinton Administration would be indebted to bad actors and criminal regimes.

  • The “same issues we discussed” mentioned by Robbie Mook in this email is a veiled reference to Morocco’s many human rights abuses.

  • Her campaign staff is rightly concerned about the optics of the Clinton Foundation/Clinton Global Initiative accepting huge sums of money from a regime that so frequently violates international law and acts in a way that you’d expect the Clinton Foundation to publicly rebuke.

  • It seems $12 million is just too much money to allow morals, ethics, and the best interests and values of American citizens to intervene.

  • The Intercept explores how Morocco is exploiting Hillary’s weakness for huge donations, and her desire to be President, to support their own geopolitical interests.

 

10. “Spirit Cooking” (Warning: satanic/extremely graphic)

  • The email is from Marina Abramovic and John Podesta’s brother Tony, asking John to come “to the Spirit Cooking dinner”. It is safe to assume that John knows who Marina Abramovic is, as his brother refers to only her first name. John also invited Marina Abramovic to Hillary’s campaign launch.

  • Here’s where it gets graphic: Marina Abramovic has a webpage that shows the graphical book she created, which goes over what “Spirit Cooking” is.

  • And here is a video on what Spirit Cooking actually is.  Not for the faint of heart (satanic/occult).  Hillary’s team (potential future leaders of our country) are into some really messed up stuff.

  • Note: they will try to claim it is just “art” but than the invitation for “Spirit Cooking dinner” would seem out of place. Additionally, she also had a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) where she states, “If you are doing the occult magic in the context of art or in a gallery, then it is the art. If you are doing it in different context, in spiritual circles or private house or on TV shows, it is not art.”

  • Abramovic’s Twitter username is AbramovicM666 as well.

  • There are photos of her cradling a decapitated goat head, and that is on the tame side considering her other actions.

  • At a Hillary concert, Jay Z (a Hillary endorser) has been photographed with the Spirit Cooker herself, who appears to be motivating him before the concert.

  • Here is Lady Gaga (a Hillary endorser) in an EXTREMELY graphic photo with Abramovic participating in a Spirit Cooking dinner.

  • Is Hillary involved with these satanic rituals? All we know is that in recently released State Department emails, Hillary asks if Marina is coming to an event. The Clinton Foundation gave $10,000 (p. 66) to Marina Abramovic.  According to CNN, Hillary has been written about participating in rituals to contact dead people such as Eleanor Roosevelt and Mahatma Gandhi. Bill Clinton’s book describes how he and Hillary would partake in voodoo rituals in Haiti. Hillary’s mentor is Saul Alinski, who praises Lucifer in his book Rules for Radicals. No concrete evidence, just circumstantial.

  • John Podesta also has incredibly deranged artwork inside his house as documented by the Washington Post.  Once this Spirit Cooking story broke, it sppread like wildfire over social media, and the Washington Post (who has been proven in the leaks to be in Hillary’s pocket) deleted the art

  • This video sums up this incredibly bizarre and disturbing story.  This picture includes even more info.

WikiLeaks’ 10 Most Damning Clinton Emails that Prove Mainstream Media is Scripted and Controlled

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By Jay Syrmopoulos

Source: The Free Thought Project

Washington, D.C. – With information coming out of WikiLeaks at a fast and furious pace, it’s difficult for the average person to keep up with the many bombshell revelations being exposed.  This is happening so much that the most damning evidence is ending up as background noise in the 24-hour election news cycle without ever making it into the mainstream news.

On October 7th, 2016, WikiLeaks publish thousands of emails belonging to John Podesta’s private email archives. More emails have been released in the days that followed. Podesta is Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign Chairman. He previously served as Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton and Counselor to President Barack Obama.

The Podesta emails give insight into why there has been such little fanfare in the mainstream media regarding many of the most damning allegations against Clinton.

The fact that most of the newsworthy information contained in the emails is not being reported by the corporate media is indicative of the incestuous relationship between the mainstream media and the Clinton campaign – and is on full display in the Podesta emails.

While there are dozens of bombshell revelations contained within the emails –including transcripts of speeches to Wall St. banks that Clinton had refused to release, hidden policy positions, and evidence of collusion with brutal regimes – the most damning is the collusion and control of the U.S. media on display in the emails.

Essentially, the media has been weaponized as a means of controlling public opinion by propagandizing the American people. World renowned academic Noam Chomsky, in his book “Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media,” detailed how U.S. media frequently serve as an errand boy for U.S. corporate, military and imperial interests.

Chomsky forwarded the idea of what he called a “propaganda model.” Although the book was written in 1988, it speaks precisely to what is currently taking place and clearly revealed  in the Podesta emails.

“The media serve, and propagandize on behalf of, the powerful societal interests that control and finance them. The representatives of these interests have important agendas and principles that they want to advance, and they are well positioned to shape and constrain media policy.” -Chomsky

With knowledge of what is currently transpiring, here are the ten most damning Clinton emails regarding the media’s collusion with her presidential campaign, with hotlinks to the original WikiLeaks release.

1. Clinton Staff hosts private “off-the-record cocktail party” with 38 “influential” reporters, journalists, editors, and anchors (from 16 different mainstream media outlets including CNN, NBC, CBS, NYT, MSNBC, & more) with the stated goal of “framing the race.”

2. Donna Brazile (CNN contributor at the time, and current DNC Chairman now) leaked CNN town hall questions to Hillary Clinton’s staff prior to the debate.

3. Clinton campaign and the New York Times coordinating attack strategy against Trump.

4. Glen Thrush, POLITICO’s chief political correspondent and senior staff writer for POLITICO Magazine, sends John Podesta an article for his approval. Writes: “Please don’t share or tell anyone I did this. Tell me if I fucked up anything.”

5. Huffington Post contributor Frank Islam writes to John Podesta in an email titled “My blogs in the Huffington Post”, says “I am committed to make sure she is elected the next president.” “Please let me know if I can be of any service to you.”

6. Clinton staffer “Placing a story” with Politico / New York Times: “place a story with a friendly journalist” “we have a very good relationship with Maggie Haberman of Politico” “we should shape likely leaks in the best light for HRC.”

7. John Podesta receiving drafts of New York Times articles before they’re published.

Clinton staff “placing a story with a friendly at the AP (Matt Lee or Bradley Klapper).”

More media collusion: NYT and AP “helpful” to Clinton campaign.

8. Clinton staff colluding with New York Times and Wall Street Journal to paint Hillary’s economic policies in a “progressive” light.

9. CNBC panelist colluding with John Podesta on what to ask Trump when he calls in for an interview.

10. Clinton staff appearing to control the release times of Associated Press articles.

The reality revealed in these emails is one of media collusion with powerful interests, which only serve to keep the American people in the dark about what is actually transpiring. The exact opposite of transparency.

Please share this article to wake people up to the fact that their news is scripted by powerful entities as a means of influencing people’s perceptions!

BREAKING: Benghazi Documents FINALLY Found – Hidden In Hillary’s Deleted Email File

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By Melissa Davis

Source: US Herald

Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton may have thought she could breathe a sigh of relief when FBI Director James Comey did not recommend charges be filed against her in connection with her unprecedented secret server set-up, but she hadn’t counted on federal judges, who are not quite as forgiving.

U.S. District Court Judge William P. Dimitrouleas has ordered the State Department to search 14,900 newly found Clinton emails to determine if any are responsive to requests in a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed last year.

The FOIA requests sought all communications between then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Obama White House related to the 2012 terror attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi from the day it took place – the anniversary of 9/11 – through the following week.

This week, the State Department was forced to admit in court filings it had “received positive hits” for Benghazi-related documents among the nearly 15,000 Clinton emails uncovered by the FBI during its more than year-long investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s unauthorized use of a private server housed at her home during her tenure as President Obama’s first Secretary of State.

Judge Dimitrouleas gave the Department until September 13 to review the emails, in addition to other communications, and turn over responsive records, but Clinton’s former department claimed it cannot comply with the order by the deadline due to the large number of emails to be reviewed, estimating that it will take until well after the November 8 election.

In a potentially devastating development it was learned that not only did Clinton withhold emails from State when she left the position, contrary to federal law and regulation, but utilized software to degrade the digital data to the extent that it cannot be retrieved.

The use of “bleach bit” technology could, conceivably, lead to allegations of obstruction of justice and evidence of intent.

Finally: the Eruption of the Clinton Foundation Scandal

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By Gary Leupp

Source: CounterPunch

“It’s getting really hard to know where any lines were drawn.”

-CNN

I confess I’d been looking forward to this. My son, following the Judicial Watch website, has been saying for months that the big email scandal will involve the State Department-Clinton Foundation ties and Hillary’s use of her office to acquire contributions from Saudi and other donors. As someone opposed to World War III (beginning in Syria and/or Ukraine), I was hoping that they (and he) were right.

It might not be all that immediately clear to many why this is another big deal. After all, it follows Hillary’s ongoing private server email scandal, involving not just issues of the Secretary’s “judgment” and so-called “national security” but also revealing details about Clinton’s key role in the bloody destruction of Libya and her hawkish views in all circumstances.

CNN commentators assure us that the FBI investigation “went nowhere” because the FBI decided she’d committed no crime. (Just move on, folks; this was political all along.)

These new revelations come just after the scandal of the DNC rigging the primaries for Hillary, revealed by email leaks (from an unknown source) provided through Wikileaks. The content of these has been avoided like the plague by mainstream media, which is in Hillary’s camp and is generally protecting her. The focus instead is on alleged Russian efforts to influence the U.S. election, and the imagined Putin-Trump “bromance.” Respectable news agencies have been announcing, as fact, the idea that Wikileaks got the emails from Russia; and that Moscow is trying to swing the election towards Trump (because he’ll accept an invasion of Estonia, wreck NATO etc.). It’s (or it should be) obvious bullshit, an effort to change the subject while exploiting the McCarthyite paranoid sentiments of the most backward.

The headlines are so far cautious. “Emails renew questions about Clinton Foundation and State Department Overlap.” “Newly released Clinton emails shed light on relationship between State Dept. and Clinton Foundation.” They are not (yet) shrieking, “Sheik bought State Dept. favors from Clinton Foundation donation” but we shall see.

What do the emails show so far? Two examples have been highlighted by the conservative Judicial Watch, which requested the email transcripts through the FOIA. In the first, in 2009, Gilbert Chagoury, a Lebanese-born billionaire who has given the foundation up to five million dollars and used its assistance to build a project in Nigeria, and is one of the foundation’s top donors, contacted Doug Band, head of the foundation’s Clinton Global Initiative, asking to be put in touch with a high ranking State Department official connected to Lebanon.

Band emailed Hillary’s top aide Huma Abedin and advisor Cheryl Mills, expressing a need. He writes: “We need Gilbert Chagoury to speak to the substance person re Lebanon. As you know, he’s a key guy there and to us and is loved in Lebanon. Very imp.”

A key guy to us. To the Clinton Foundation? The U.S.A.? Abedin did not ask that question before responding, “It’s jeff feltman. I’m sure he knows him. I’ll talk to jeff.” Feltman had been U.S. ambassador to Lebanon from July 2004 to January 2008 but was apparently still seen as the go-to guy. So Hillary’s chief aide took it upon herself to contact the former ambassador to tell him Chagoury (whom she might mention is a major contributor to the Clintons) needed to talk with him.

Nothing illegal there, they will say. Why shouldn’t the State Department arrange contact between a billionaire Lebanese Clinton donor, loved in Lebanon, and the ex-ambassador, if it contributes to regional stability or U.S. national security? And the hard-core Hillary supporters will nod their heads, and maybe point out that Feltman has denied any “meeting.” (Maybe Huma just passed on his address and they chatted online.)

(CNN I notice is showing a video of Bill Clinton with Chagoury in Nigeria, inaugurating a multi-billion dollar waterfront development on the coastline established “under the umbrella of the Clinton Global Initiative.”)

The other instance of “overlap” central to the discussion so far is a request of Band to Abedin and Mills for “a favor.” Someone who had recently been on a Clinton Foundation trip to Haiti wanted a State Department job. He indicated that it was “important to take care of” this person. Abedin, apparently without questioning Band about why this person was important, got right back to him: “We all have him on our radar. Personnel has been sending him options.” So the head of the Clinton Foundation could snap his fingers, again stressing how “important” his demand was, and Hillary aides Huma and Cheryl paid by your tax dollars would snap into action.

A CNN report deplores “the intermingling of emails between State and Clinton Foundation and others, giving the overall effect that it’s getting really hard to know where any lines were drawn.”

Maybe nothing illegal here. But there is an ongoing FBI investigation, no longer about Hillary’s multiple phones and private server, nor about the content of the communications (revealing her hawkish savagery), but about the routine trade-off of foundation connections for political rewards.

Those transactions are mere corruption, not war crimes. But the U.S. mass media never targets politicians for their bloodiness, and they love the conventional corruption scandal. So let there be more leaks that will absorb the attention of the talking heads! Let’s see clearer pay-for-play evidence! And let’s see more details about how the DNC midwifed Hillary’s nomination, actively sabotaging a supposedly democratic process.

Let the American people see how thoroughly rotten both candidates are, and how thoroughly rotten the system that barfed them up.

Bernie in a fair process would be the Democratic nominee now. Clinton didn’t so much steal the election as buy it in advance, arranging the details through lackey Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Trump would not be the Republican nominee but for the editorial decisions of cable news producers to—from the very inception of his campaign—announce BREAKING NEWS and cover his nearly identical rants every time he held a rally.

This gratuitous coverage obviated the need for any (other) Trump advertising. Even as the anchors, commentators and other talking heads ridiculed, denounced and appeared puzzled about the Trump phenomenon, the networks made the viewers imbibe his vapid rants. They hooked the most reactionary elements of the population on this blowhard billionaire nut case.

In the Democrats’ case, Wall Street and Wasserman Schultz controlled the primaries. In the Republican case, the corporate news media (for its immediate profit motives) advertised a total dick who happened to be a billionaire and represent the One Percent every bit as much as Hillary.

So they’re now in our faces, day after day. Hideous people with their news-anchor supporters, and cable commentators so ready to dismiss serious issues, put the very best face on their candidate, and change the subject to attack the other candidate. In the end it comes down to: We have a two-party system. The parties made their choices. So you HAVE to choose one.

Julian Assange described the U.S. presidential race as a choice between cholera and gonorrhea. Why should the people of this great country of 310,000,000 people—many with great creativity, integrity and intelligence—be assigned this sick choice of Clinton or Trump by the One Percent that controls everything?

Why should any Bernie supporter so debase himself or herself as to say, “Okay, I know the primaries were fixed and that Bernie could not win because the cards were stacked against him. And despite the fact that I put passion and effort into an anti-Wall Street campaign, now I’ll support the Wall Street candidate, who’s also a liar, who’s going to flip-flop again on TPP and bomb Syria to produce regime change, and provoke Russia in Syria and Ukraine—because well anyway she’s better than Trump, and we all have to vote, don’t we”?

But why should anybody have to hold their nose while they vote? The whole process has been exposed as never before as a farce. Why participate at all in something so corrupt? Do you want to vote just to vote, to publicly display the fact that you believe in the system itself, like the North Koreans who routinely go to the polls patriotically to vote for the options available? (As you may know, in some elections in the DPRK you can vote for a candidate of the Workers’ Party of Korea, Chondoist Chogu Party, Korean Social Democratic Party or independent. There is the manicured appearance of multiparty democracy—just like here. And no doubt some people feel good after the voting, knowing they’ve done their civic duty in a system they believe in. But what if you’ve woken up and don’t believe in the system anymore?)

Why not think bigger, and beyond? Either Clinton or Trump will likely take office in January, as the most unpopular newly elected president of all time. Either will have been brought to power by a manifestly anti-democratic, corrupt process that, more than in past years, is well exposed this time. Either will be vulnerable to mass upheaval, in the wake of Mexico wall construction or the announcement of a Syrian no-fly zone. Appalled by the election choices and result, the majority could maybe consider targeting the rigged system itself.

Just a suggestion. Massive demonstrations in Washington on Inaugural Day by people who have come to reject its legitimacy itself, knowing that it’s run by the One Percent to whom black lives don’t matter, drone warfare is cool and global warming is a hoax. Posters and banners with the curt, easy-to-understand and undeniably true popular slogan: THE WHOLE SYSTEM IS RIGGED!

Imagine a huge rally Jan. 20 demanding its overthrow, or at least the immediate resignation of the system’s illegitimate new executive, even if we don’t know what comes next.  Imagine the admiration that would invite throughout the world, the hope it would inspire should the people of this country rise up to challenge not just a war, policy or person but the corrupt (capitalist and imperialist) system under which we live.

***

Now I read that the FBI, directed by James Comey (who recommended no charges for Clinton for her private cell phone use but left open the prospect of recommending criminal charges against Clinton for abusing her office to profit the Clinton Foundation) in fact has recommended charges against Hillary.

But the Department of Justice headed by Clinton loyalist Loretta Lynch rejected the recommendation. Because—don’t you see?—Hillary has to be the next president. To stop Trump, at all costs! And to stop Putin, that aggressive Putin. And to keep together the “Clinton Coalition.”

Good job, Loretta! But regardless of your effort, Hillary’s Pinocchio nose grows longer by the day, while the whole system is exposed as a cancer requiring the most aggressive treatment.

Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, (AK Press). He can be reached at: gleupp@tufts.edu

Hillary Clinton’s Email Absolution: Two Parties, One Criminal Regime

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By Eric Draitser

Source: StopImperialism.org

What was your reaction when you heard FBI Director James Comey announce to the world that the Bureau would not be recommending that charges be filed against Hillary Clinton over her handling of emails while she was Secretary of State?  Did you do a humorous spit take with your coffee like some modern day Danny Thomas?  Were you frozen in place like Americans were on November 22, 1963?  Did your jaw hit the floor with your tongue rolling out like a flabbergasted cartoon character?

Chances are you weren’t the least bit surprised that no charges were recommended.  But what does that tell you about our political system?

That millions of Americans weren’t remotely caught off guard by the exculpation of Hillary Clinton is less a commentary about American attitudes than it is a clear indication of the all-pervasive criminality that is at the heart of America’s political ruling class.  And the fact that such criminality is seen as par for the course demonstrates once again that the rule of law is more a rhetorical veneer than a juridical reality.

But consider further what the developments of recent days tell us both about the US and, perhaps even more importantly, the perception of the US internationally. For while Washington consistently wields as weapons political abstractions such as transparency, corruption, and freedom, it is unwilling to apply to itself those same cornerstones of America’s collective self-conception. Hypocrisy is perhaps not strong enough a word.

Not Even Hiding It Anymore…    

Remember the good old days when corrupt politicians committed their crimes in smoke-filled rooms, making handshake deals in quiet corners of luxury hotel suites or over lobster at five star restaurants? Those things certainly still happen, but the transgressions, like all things, seem to have lost a bit of their classiness. It may not be the Plaza Hotel, but the Phoenix airport was no less a scene of wanton lawlessness and impropriety when former President, and soon to be First Gentleman, Bill Clinton met privately with Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

The meeting, which only came to light thanks to the work of local ABC15 morning anchor Christopher Sign, has been widely criticized by pundits and legal experts from both sides of the political spectrum.  Naturally, questions about impropriety, and potential illegal tampering in a federal investigation, were immediately raised once the meeting was made public.  Of course, nothing was done to alleviate any of those concerns, calling into question the very impartiality of the investigation.

But the larger story has to do with symbolic message being sent by the meeting.  Specifically, there is one set of laws for American citizens, and an entirely different set of laws for political elites like the Clintons.

Moreover, there’s more to it than just criminality.  There is the air of superiority which oozes from every action taken by the Clintons who have made hundreds of millions of dollars unscrupulously pandering to, and serving the interests of, the financial elite of Wall Street and the corporate oligarchy.  That feeling of invincibility is what drives someone like Bill Clinton to demand that the FBI surrounding him at the Phoenix airport dictate to bystanders that there are to be “no photos, no pictures, no cell phones.”  To make such a demand is to see oneself as above the law, above the First Amendment, above the plebs, as it were.

And this sort of behavior is what we’ve come to expect from the Clintons.  Who can forget the seemingly endless rap sheet that the dynamic Democrat duo has earned over the decades?  The Whitewater Scandal, in many ways a template for the Clinton email scandal, involved shady business practices and political insider dealing by the Clintons and their real estate developer cronies.  And, like the email scandal, Whitewater was an example of the Clintons deliberately destroying records that likely implicate them in very serious crimes.

As the New York Times reported in 1992, “The Clintons and Mr. McDougal disagree about what happened to Whitewater’s records. Mr. McDougal says that at Mr. Clinton’s request they were delivered to the Governor’s mansion. The Clintons say many of them have disappeared. Many questions about the enterprise cannot be fully answered without the records.”

So it seems the Clintons have this nasty habit of committing crimes and then destroying the records of those crimes and claiming complete ignorance about what happened.  For you and me, such a flimsy excuse would go over like a lead balloon, likely leading to jail time.  For the Clintons, the controversy quietly fades away and slips down the memory hole.

And then of course there’s the mysterious death of Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster, the man who filed three years of delinquent Whitewater corporate tax returns, and then was subsequently found dead a month later.  While his death was officially ruled a suicide, the serendipitous development for the Clintons led to speculation that Foster was killed on the order of the Clintons in order to silence a potentially damning source of information about Clinton misdeeds.

Indeed, some claim that evidence exists that Foster was in fact murdered, including the statements from one of the lead prosecutors investigating the death, Miguel Rodriguez, who claims that photos showed a gunshot wound on Foster’s neck, a wound that was not mentioned in the official report.  Whether true or not, the speculation about the Clintons’ involvement in a political assassination has only grown.

But of course there are so many more scandals it’s hard to keep count.  From appointments of Clinton Foundation donors to key State Department positions in a sort of “pay for play” scheme, to the salaries paid to people like Hillary’s Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin who, while working for the State Department, alsoworked for Teneo, a consulting firm run by another close Clinton crony.  And who could forget the Clinton Foundation and the myriad conflict of interest issues, lack of transparency, and outright criminality associated with it?

This article would go on for tens of thousands more words were it to chronicle all of Clinton’s scandals.  But the true focus here is not even simply on Clinton crimes, but rather on the culture of corruption and lawlessness that exists unfettered in Washington; it is the endemic corruption that the Clintons represent, perhaps better than anyone.

Corruption and Malfeasance: As American as Apple Pie

It is difficult to encapsulate in a few short paragraphs the multi-layered forms of corruption that are embedded in the very fabric of America’s political culture. Perhaps it could be best separated into three distinct, though interrelated, categories: the open door, the closed door, and the revolving door.

The open door of corruption and criminality represents the kind of wrongdoing that takes place out in the open, in full view of the public, but which is treated as anything but criminal.  Whether it be lying the US into wars of aggression – the Iraq War was based on lies about weapons of mass destruction, the war on Libya was sold on the pretext of lies about civilians being murdered by the government – or simply the obviously corrupt form of campaign financing that allows Wall Street and the corporate elites to bankroll the alleged “democracy” that the US so proudly proselytizes the world over; these forms of corruption and criminality are in many ways the bedrock of American politics.

As the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg famously stated, “To initiate a war of aggression…is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” By this very definition, every political leader in the US going back decades is guilty of war crimes.

Going further, one can draw on the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt who, in a now legendary speech at Madison Square Garden in 1936, unequivocally proclaimed:

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace–business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me–and I welcome their hatred.

But today, rather than welcoming the hatred of Wall Street and the corporate oligarchy, America’s politicians pander to them, grovel before them, kiss their rings in hopes of securing for themselves a financially and professionally lucrative future. So deep is the rot that most Americans passively accept this as business as usual, failing to understand that it is anything but acceptable.

The closed door forms of criminality are often completely concealed from public view, and what does become known is only thanks to courageous actions by reporters and whistleblowers.  Take for instance the activities of the CIA, only a fraction of which were exposed by the Church and Pike Committees, which included obviously criminal activities ranging from the overthrow of governments to assassination of political leaders to domestic spying and propaganda, all of which being blatantly illegal.

But the closed door also conceals the activities of prominent political figures such as Hillary Clinton, whosesecret lobbying for things like right wing coup governments in Honduras, shows the degree to which politicians literally conspire in secret.  Clinton, like so many of her colleagues, also grovels at the feet of Wall Street financiers, including taking massive payoffs for speeches with the tacit wink-wink-nudge-nudge that goes along with them.

Finally, the revolving door is one of the shining examples of America’s political corruption, or perhaps better put, complete subservience to the corporate oligarchy.  When key government officials leave public life and head to that oft-lionized “private sector,” what they are actually providing is access – access to government for corporations and capital.

When the head of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) leaves her government post and takes a job as President of Merck & Co. Inc’s vaccine division, no one bats an eye.

When the architect of Obamacare, who before working on the health plan was an executive at one of the nation’s largest health insurance providers, leaves her government job and takes a position with Johnson & Johnson’s government affairs and policy group, it garners barely a passing comment.

When Wall Street executives take positions at head of the Treasury Department – Tim Geithner and Hank Paulsen both worked for Goldman Sachs, as just one example – it is simply “the way things are.”  This revolving door form of political corruption may not be anything new, but it is so rarely defined as corruption.  But that’s exactly what it is.

However, none of this prevents Washington from publicly admonishing other countries for their corruption problems.  Russia? Zimbabwe? Venezuela? China? Nigeria? All corrupt.  United States? Well, er, ummm…Democracy! Freedom!  This is the sort of reflexive hypocrisy that typifies American exceptionalism or, as the rest of the world might call it, the arrogance of empire.

 

Related Podcast:

Progressive Commentary Hour – 7.19.16

New Hillary leak: Wikileaks releases 20K DNC emails; reveals anti-Sanders bias, pro-Clinton collusion among top officials

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Source: RT

A WikiLeaks dump of nearly 20,000 Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails, the supposedly neutral governing organization of the Democratic Party, indicates that the committee strategized with the Clinton campaign and plotted against Bernie Sanders.

Collusion with Clinton and the media

A communication from late May laid out the pros and cons of DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz accepting an invitation to CBS’s ‘Face the Nation’, and indicated that the DNC was plotting its moves based on what would be amenable to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

“Clinton campaign is a mess, they’re afraid of their own shadow and didn’t like that we engaged,” DNC communications director Luis Miranda wrote. “But they’ll be unhappy regardless, so better to get out there and do some strong pivots and land good punches on Trump. They can’t tell us NOT to do TV right now, we shouldn’t pull ourselves out until they actually do.”

“It’s clear that Bernie messed up and that we’re on the right side of history,” Miranda wrote in another bullet point, referring to the Nevada convention.

“Let’s take this offline,” Wasserman Schultz said in response. “I basically agree with you.”

Wasserman Schultz and Miranda brainstormed ideas to attack Sanders’ position on the Israel/Palestine conflict with her communications team in one thread, with Wasserman Schultz saying that “the Israel stuff is disturbing” in reference to Sanders’ platform committee appointees attempts to include language denouncing the occupation of Palestinian territory in the Democratic platform.

The chairwoman says that the idea “HFA,” or Hillary For America, originally proposed the idea of using Israel/Palestine as “an ideal issue to marginalize Sanders on,” suggesting that the DNC were exchanging communications about anti-Sanders strategies with the Clinton campaign.

The DNC also appears to have made a secret “agreement” with Kenneth Vogel, an influential report for Politico.

An email from late April with the subject line “per agreement… any thoughts appreciated” shows that Vogel sent an advanced copy of a story about Hillary Clinton’s fundraising to the DNC even before his editor even saw it.

“Vogel gave me his story ahead of time/before it goes to his editors as long as I didn’t share it,” DNC press secretary Mark Paustenbach wrote to  Miranda. “Let me know if you see anything that’s missing and I’ll push back.”

The published version of the story did not appear to have any significant edits from and was not favorable to the Clinton campaign, but the sending of a full, advanced copy to the subject of a story is considered to be a violation of journalistic ethics.

A source with familiar with the interaction between Politico and the DNC told RT America that the message was sent to officials to ensure accuracy in the story, and that it would have been difficult to ask for piecemeal clarifications due to its complexity. The “agreement,” in fact, referred to the DNC promising not to pass the story to a more favorable news outlet who might publish before  Politco.

Another email released in the Friday leak indicates that the DNC was in close contact with news websites on articles related to the Democratic Party.

A Real Clear Politics article said that Sanders supporters were causing a lack of unity at the Nevada Democratic Convention.

“This headline needs to be changed,”  Wasserman Schultz wrote to Miranda.

“We need to push back… Patrice, what happened, DNC had nothing to do with this, right?” Miranda replied, referring to DNC Director of Party Affairs Patrice Taylor.

Taylor responded saying that the article should be changed the event was run by the state party and the disorder “sounds like internal issues amount [sic] Sanders supporters.”

“Walter, please connect with Stewart and get him to push back,” Miranda wrote. The last email on the thread says: “Done. Article has been updated.”

Plotting against Sanders

In a May 5 email, two top DNC executives plotted a smear against Sanders by drawing his Jewish faith into question and painting him as an atheist in strongly religious states.

READ MORE: New Hillary leak: Wikileaks releases 20K DNC emails

“It might may no difference, but for KY and WVA can we get someone to ask his belief,” DNC Chief Financial Officer Brad Marshall wrote. “Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.”

“AMEN,” DNC Chief Executive Officer Amy K. Dacey replied.

In an email that concerned Sanders out-polling Clinton in Rhode Island, where the state reportedly only had a fraction of voting stations open, one staffer took a contemptuous tone of Sanders’ supporters,  speaking about them more as a nuisance than an arm of the party.

“If she outperforms this polling, the Bernie camp will go nuts and allege misconduct,” the staffer writes, “They’ll probably complain regardless, actually.”

Another email shows similar ‘us and them’ language being directed at Sanders supporters.

“We have the Sanders folks admitting that they lost fair and square, not because we ‘rigged’ anything,” the email said. “Clinton likely to win the state convention with a slim margin and we’ll send a release with final delegate numbers.”

An email titled ‘Bernie narrative’ sent by DNC National Press Secretary Mark Paustenbach to Miranda indicates that top officials in the party were trying to find an angle to disparage the Vermont senator in the media.

“Wondering if there’s a good Bernie narrative for a story, which is that Bernie never ever had his act together, that his campaign was a mess,” Paustenbach wrote in the May 21 message. “Specifically, [Debbie Wasserman Schultz] had to call Bernie directly in order to get the campaign to do things because they’d either ignored or forgotten to something critical.”

“It’s not a DNC conspiracy, it’s because they never had their act together,” Paustenbach suggested.

Writing off Bernie

Wasserman Schultz seemed to have already counted Sanders out of the race in a May 21 email, when there were still nine primaries to go.

“This is a silly story,” the chairwoman said. “He isn’t going to be president.”

In another email, Paustenbach informed her that Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver said the candidate should continue to the convention, Wasserman Shultz said: “He is an ASS,” referring to Weaver.

The chairwoman made her opinion clear about Sanders in an message concerning the candidate alleging that the party hadn’t been fair to him.

“Spoken like someone who has never been a member of the Democratic Party and has no understanding of what we do,” she said.

Search the DNC Email Database: https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/

Latest Guccifer 2.0 Leak Reaffirms Primaries Were Rigged for Clinton

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And, of course, a dodgy DNC blames Russian hackers

By Michael Sainato

Source: Observer

On July 18, hacker Guccifer 2.0 released a new batch of documents obtained from DNC servers. Among the files given exclusively to The Hill is a DNC memo to Clinton political operatives on March 24, 2015—before she formally announced her candidacy—outlining how to legally solicit pro-Clinton super-PACs. “The memo was sent to political consultant John Podesta, now Clinton’s campaign chairman; Clinton fundraising guru Dennis Cheng; and campaign manager Robby Mook,” reported The Hill.

The memo is just one of several documents released by Guccifer 2.0 proving the Democratic National Committee rigged the system for Clinton. Before the primaries began, DNC strategies were developed with Clinton in mind as the presidential nominee. The leak affirms claims by Bernie Sanders’ supporters that the Democratic primaries were not an election, but rather a coronation for Hillary Clinton.

Because many of the documents implicate mainstream media outlets in their complacency to adhere to the DNC’s strategy, the Guccifer 2.0 hacks have gone largely unreported. Some of the documents even unveil how the Clinton campaign fed specific stories to the media in order to boost their political agenda.In May 2015, The Intercept alluded to similar strategies, when it discovered that a CNN op-ed published under Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed’s name had actually been written by a Clinton lobbyist, edited by a Clinton super-PAC, and sent directly to CNN from the super-PAC. In June, Daily Beast reporter Olivia Nuzzi tweeted that she might lend some credence to the Bernie Bros narrative if the Clinton Campaign hadn’t pitched her Bernie Bros stories to write. In refusing to cover how the DNC and the Clinton campaign united, mainstream media has rewarded corruption.

Instead of confirming or denying the validity of the documents, the DNC has reverberated the same tired excuse, claiming Russian hackers are responsible: “Our experts are confident in their assessment that the Russian government hackers were the actors responsible for the breach detected in April and we believe that the subsequent release and the claims around it may be a part of a disinformation campaign by the Russians. We’ve deployed the recommended.”

While the DNC and Clinton campaign have called for party unity, Clinton has continued the politically-expedient tactic of adopting several of Sanders’ popular ideas. Even though Clinton claimed to support a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizen’s United, she has profited off of the decision in the past—receiving millions of dollars from super-PACs and wealthy billionaires, including George Soros, James Simons and Haim Saban. Her highly-publicized support to overturn Citizens United comes shortly after Sanders’ formal endorsement for Clinton resulted in a wave of backlash and resentment against Clinton—rather than the increase in favorability her campaign had hoped to generate.

Although Hillary Clinton’s coronation may have widespread Establishment support, the Democratic Party has disenfranchised millions of voters—hurting Democrats’ chances not only in the upcoming general election, but for years to come.