The poorest country in the Caribbean has a problem according to Western governments and its global institutions. That problem is with Haiti, a country that does not trust anything that comes out of the West including media propaganda and its experimental injections or what is known as the “Covid-19 vaccines.” Haitians do not accept the West as a savior when it comes to their health or security, they don’t even trust their own government especially since most of them take orders from Washington and Paris. The last president that the Haitian people supported overwhelmingly was ousted by a US-backed coup in 2004 and he was Jean Bertrand Aristide. However, there is some positive news coming out of Haiti regarding Covid-19 and its experimental injections according to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) own words:
In Haiti, from 3 January 2020 to 5:16pm CEST, 13 July 2022, there have been 31,980 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with 837 deaths, reported to WHO. As of 8 July 2022, a total of 348,769 vaccine doses have been administered
It should not be a surprise that Haiti, a country with a population of more than 11 million people has a low vaccination rate since most Haitians do not want the experimental injections to begin with. An article from a liberal website called Coda which you can find online under http://www.codastory.com published a propaganda piece from August 13th, 2021, titled ‘The origins of Haiti’s vaccine hesitancy’ by Erica Hellerstein on why the Haitian population refuse to get the Covid-19 vaccination shots which according to their logic, Haiti is listening to disinformation or conspiracy theories from Russia:
Facebook unearthed a vast Russia-based anti-vaccine disinformation campaign this week. On Tuesday, the social media giant announced that it had removed 65 Facebook and 243 Instagram accounts amplifying anti-vaccine content. Investigators from the company linked the network to British marketing firm Fazze and operated from Russia. The campaign — dubbed a “disinformation laundromat” by Facebook — primarily targeted users in Latin America, India, and the U.S. through fake articles and petitions circulated on Medium, Reddit and Change.org, and then spread on social media via fake Facebook and Instagram accounts. One of the conspiracies, often accompanied in this campaign by images from the “Planet of the Apes” movies, is the claim that the AstraZeneca jab would turn people into chimpanzees – an old favorite of Russian state propaganda
Codastory.com is owned by Coda Media which is managed by a group of people who originally worked for the US mainstream-media such as Natalia Antelava, a former BBC correspondent who is the head of the organization and Ilan Greenberg who was a former staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal is the publisher and editorial director of the news outlet which already shows you the bias reporting they hold against Russia. Hellerstein mentioned Jean-Claude Louis who was speaking to an acquaintance working in the medical field about the Covid-19 vaccine, according to Hellerstein, the acquaintance told Louis, “I will never get the vaccine,” she continued “You don’t know what you’re getting.” Jean-Claude Louis is a coordinator for the Panos Institute which is described as “a Haitian nonprofit that trains journalists and youth on media literacy and identifying disinformation,” The Panos Institute is a non-profit organization that was originally based in the UK is now operating worldwide. Louis has obviously fallen for Western propaganda on the efficacy and safety of the Covid-19 experimental injections:
Louis has been paying close attention to the vaccine myths circulating online and in-person. And he is worried about how much of it is spreading inside Haiti’s medical community. “The problem is there are so many false rumors about vaccines,” he added. “People are very hesitant about getting the vaccines”
Hellerstein said that “I approached Louis after coming across a dataset laying out vaccination rates for the Americas. Topping the list was Uruguay, where nearly 75% of the population has gotten at least one vaccine dose. All the way at the bottom was Haiti, with just 0.14% of the population inoculated against Covid-19.” She also mentioned that Haiti was the last country in Latin America and the Caribbean to receive Covid-19 vaccines from the US and the United Nations (UN) through the COVAX program:
Haiti was one of the last countries in the world –and the last in Latin America and the Caribbean –to begin distributing the shot. In fact, it hadn’t gotten any at all until last month. Then, on July 14, a shipment of 500,000 doses from the United States via the United Nations-backed COVAX program arrived in the country. The delivery came a week after Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was brazenly assassinated in his home, plunging the country into political crisis
According to Hellerstein’s assessment, Haiti’s distribution of the vaccine was a “Bright spot” during the country’s political upheavals, but there was a statistic that was troubling to her:
The vaccine rollout was hailed as a “bright spot” during an otherwise tumultuous moment in Haiti. But another statistic caught my eye: according to a June survey by UNICEF and the University of Haiti, just 22% of adults said they were interested in getting the shot. Compare that with this February survey of global vaccination attitudes, where 88% of Brazilian adults, 85% of Chinese and Mexican adults, and 80% of Spanish and Italian adults said they intended to get the Covid-19 jab. Even in Russia, where vaccine acceptance was the lowest of all countries polled, 42% of adults said they would get a shot if made available — nearly double Haiti’s openness rate
There was an ounce of truth exposed by the article when UN peacekeepers brought cholera to Haiti where close to 10,000 people died from the outbreak:
Haitians have good reasons to distrust international institutions; after all, experts have determined that United Nations peacekeepers brought cholera to Haiti, where at least 10,000 people died of the disease, despite years of vehement denial from U.N. officials
Distrust of the UN and its Western backers is a major issue for the Haitian people:
The incident has left many Haitians deeply distrustful of the very institutions leading the global vaccination drive through the COVAX program. As Brian Concannon, founder of the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, a coalition of Haitian and U.S. human rights advocates, told me: “Basically the international community burned all its credibility on public health messaging by lying about cholera.”He added: “They don’t trust the U.N., they don’t trust the government. The messenger is the problem”
On April 7th, 2021, Haiti has refused a donation of more than 756, 000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine from the WHO also through the COVAX program as reported by Spain’s EFE from a reliable source:
According to this source the Haitian Government refused to receive the AstraZeneca vaccine, manufactured under license by “Serum Institute of India” because of “the global unrest surrounding this vaccine”, considering that the population of Haiti “would not accept it”
In an interesting turn of events “The Haitian authorities have asked the WHO to send vaccines from other laboratories to Haiti, including the vaccine from Johnson & Johnson laboratories which requires only one injection and which can be stored at temperatures between 2 and 8 degrees Celsius.” However, WHO officials are pushing back against Haiti’s demands since the Johnson & Johnson vaccine takes only one shot. However, the J&J vaccine can be just as dangerous as Pfizer and Moderna’s experimental injections, but the idea is maybe that one shot is more convincing to the public than having multiple shots for the long-term, perhaps they just wanted to avoid pushing “forever boosters” on their population who are already skeptical on any vaccine produced by the West to fight Covid-19 or any other disease.
Whatever people say about Haiti and their reaction to Covid-19 in the West and elsewhere may be negative, but one thing is certain, anything to do with Western governments and their institutions such as the WHO or the CDC concerning Covid-19 or any other new disease whether they are promoting vaccines or facemasks have resulted in more deaths and injuries.
Haiti’s example should be proof that whatever the “health authorities” such as the Anthony Fauci’s of the world and their institutions are suggesting have no credibility and whatever they are promoting should be taken with a grain of salt.
Although this news video is typical US mainstream media propaganda, you can watch this video to get a different perspective on the attitude towards Covid-19 in Haiti:
Behold the photo (above) showing President “Joe Biden” getting his booster shot of the Covid-19 “vaccine,” with the news media clustered to the left of what is apparently a stage-set built in a larger chamber. Do you possibly ask yourself: why bother to build a set for this event in or under the White House somewhere — including even fake daylit windows — when there are any number of actual rooms in the White House perfectly suited to holding this grand event in real daylight? What is going on here?
And, by the way, how do we know that “JB” is getting an actual mRNA booster? Or is it just 10 CCs of saline solution? Is not the syringe, after all, just another prop in the show? The video of this event was broadcast on cable TV channels and corporate media websites everywhere. None of them commented on the strange artificiality of the staging. And so, the mystery abides….
It only reinforces the creeping suspicion that absolutely everything about the “Joe Biden” regime is fake. And malevolently so. How else could it be that so many bad things are happening at the same time in this country if there was not some faction seeking to destroy it?
For instance, the vaccine mandates for medical personnel. In upstate New York, WNYT-TV reported yesterday that 200 employees of Albany Med, a large, regional teaching hospital, are placed on seven day’s unpaid leave prior to getting fired for refusing the vaccine. Andrew Cuomo’s replacement, new Governor Kathy Hochul, has blocked unemployment benefits for fired nurses and technicians if they persist in evading the vax. Doctors are included in the mix, too.
Of course, large numbers of health care workers getting kicked out of their jobs will only make it more difficult to care for patients — with Covid or any other health problem — so how does this policy help anyone? (Unless you consider that, with fewer staff on-duty, fewer Covid in-patients will be subjected to the medical malpractice of being placed on ventilators and treated with the killer drug Remdesivir.) Not only has effective early treatment with other drugs been banned from the official medical standards-of-practice across the USA, but mere talk about it has been banned, notably by Google’s YouTube app.
This coercion of health care workers is going on all over the country, of course, not just in New York state. These nurses and techs have been working around Covid patients for going on two years, and many of them have gotten the disease, with symptoms or without, conferring natural immunity. So, what is the point of forcing the vaxes on them? It is also a fact that vaccinated people are susceptible to catching the disease, and that, in any case, the vaccinated carry heavier viral loads than the un-vaxed, making them more efficient spreaders. It is also a fact that mass vaccination in the midst of a pandemic promotes the mutation of new variant viruses that increasingly are not affected by the vaccines.
Thursday night, CNN ran a segment with its house doctor, Sanjay Gupta, hectoring one Andrea Babinski, a La Crosse, Wisconsin, nurse who is quitting her job at Gundersen Hospital there rather than take the vax shot. Dr. Gupta, acting all perplexed, asked her why. Ms. Babinski said she was concerned about blood-clotting. Dr. Gupta dismissed her concern, saying, “If you’ve got a clotting disorder, you should get the vaccine.” Really…?
After the segment, Dr. Gupta and Anderson Cooper shook their heads in amused puzzlement over the nurse’s obdurate foolishness. They are apparently uninformed that the spike protein produced by the vaccine is known to bind onto the endothelial lining of blood vessels and promote blood clots, leading to a range of lethal events such as myocardial infarction and cerebral hemorrhage — heart attack and stroke — plus a broad array of organ damage and neurological disorders.
The Medicare Tracking System states that 48,465 people have died within 14 days of receiving a vax shot. Many had co-morbidities, of course, so not all the deaths can be directly attributed to the vaccines, but the public health authorities are averse to autopsies that might establish the truth of the matter. Anyway, the CDC has ruled recently that they will only count people more than 14 days out from a shot as being considered officially vaccinated — so none of those aforementioned deaths would have counted as vaccinated persons under the rule. Do you see how they are gaming the statistics to keep Americans as misinformed as possible?
Despite all the efforts to bamboozle the public, the “Joe Biden” regime has about run out the string on Covid paranoia, and wrung all of the political usefulness out of it. Going forward, it will only backfire on them. Do they think that wrecking hospital services while depriving thousands of health care workers of their incomes is a winning strategy? These are existential threats to US citizens.
Everything else under “Joe Biden’s” watch looks like a pyromaniac seeking to burn down the country. Over 10,000 Haitian interlopers have been surreptitiously dispersed from Del Rio, Texas, to nether regions of the USA. The government made no effort to vaccinate them — what does that tell you? Over 100,000 more invading opportunists from all over the world are reportedly heading to the southern border. A month after the fall of Afghanistan, and after this week’s hearings in both the House and the Senate, still nobody knows who gave the insane order to surrender Bagram Air Force Base outside Kabul. The Democrats’ dishonest “infrastructure” bill is wilting in Congress. Food and energy prices are rising fast, with shortages on the horizon. The capital markets are wobbling. And Special Counsel John Durham is back on the scene with more actions against Hillary Clinton’s favorite law firm, Perkins Coie, facilitators of the seditious RussiaGate campaign. Put it all together and you have a mechanism that looks like a “Joe Biden” toaster.
Off in a far corner of the News-O-Sphere, someone affecting to be John McAfee dwells on a Telegram channel labeled “OfficialMcAfee.” John McAfee, for those who don’t know, was the wealthy inventor of antivirus computer software who found himself at odds with the US government, went rogue, and supposedly committed suicide in Spain last June. Now, he has apparently turned up on this social media app in a series of videos and cryptic info drops. Whether he is actually still alive, or perhaps recorded these videos before taking his life, is not known. But he had threatened to release terabytes of digital evidence against his antagonists, including video of sexual misconduct among well-known political figures connected to the late Jeffrey Epstein, as well as incriminating documents from the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign files from 2016. Those info dumps have commenced and the figure who appears to be John McAfee in the Telegram videos says that the dumps will contain incrementally more shocking material for weeks to come.
All of this activity is obviously weird to an extreme never before seen in national affairs prior to the deep fake era — to the degree that reality is almost impossible to establish for now. We are a people lost in a dark wood. When you are lost, the first thing you must do is stop your useless, self-defeating locomotion, hunker down in place, and carefully assess what’s around you. Even if everything else is murky and perplexing, one thing is known: there is a way out of these dark woods. Remain calm and alert and it will reveal itself.
Donald Trump displayed his full neocon colors on February 18 during a speech at Florida International University in Miami. With convicted Iran-contra felon Elliott Abrams now acting as his “special envoy” in charge of overthrowing the Venezuelan government of President Nicolas Maduro, Trump urged Venezuelan military officers to rise up in a coup d’état and oust Maduro, who Trump called a “Cuban puppet.”
Trump’s call for a coup in Venezuela is ironic when his most loyal supporter in the U.S. Senate, Lindsey Graham (R-SC), claimed that senior Justice Department officials who were discussing legally invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office in early 2017 were trying to stage a “coup” against Trump. Coups are unconstitutional in any form, while the removal of a president under the 25th Amendment is following the U.S. Constitution to the letter.
As protesters, who carried signs with “No U.S. Coup in Venezuela” and “Hands Off Venezuela,” staged a demonstration on campus and Trump rattled sabers against Venezuela in his speech on the Modesto A. Maidique Campus, covert U.S. operators were busy at Florida airports shipping arms to Venezuelan paramilitary units in Colombia.
At the same time as Trump was threatening Venezuela with a coup, the Haitian government of President Jovenel Moise and Prime Minister Jean-Henry Céant—one of a half dozen remaining allies of the Maduro government in the Western Hemisphere—was faced with an attempted U.S.-led insurrection in his impoverished nation. It is no coincidence that Moise, who was financially buoyed with $2 billion in fuel subsidies and other financial assistance from Venezuela’s state-run PetroCaribe Fund, has faced protests in his country that appear to have been prompted by U.S. “regime change” operatives. Planted in the Haitian media were reports that the Venezuelan fuel assistance funds had been pocketed by Moise and members of his government. That prompted violent protests on the streets of Port-au-Prince, Cap Haïtien, Jeremie, Gonaïves, and Jacmel that have been raging since February 7. More suspicious is that the U.S. State Department ordered all non-essential personnel out of the country following the outbreak of the protests.
On February 17, Haitian police arrested a group of eight heavily-armed men traveling in two cars in the capital of Port-au-Prince. Among the group were five Americans and a Russian, Serbian, and Haitian. The Russian and Serbian may hold permanent residency status in the United States. The Haitian newspaper Le Nouvelliste reported that police discovered in the foreigners’ cars automatic rifles, 45-caliber and Glock pistols, a large amount of ammunition, drones, and satellite phones. Also found in the vehicles were a telescope, backpacks, bullet-proof vests, and various documents, including a list of names of Haitian citizens. The vehicles bore no license plates and the suspects’ passports had no Haitian visa entry stamps. The passports did show extensive travel to other countries prior to being in Haiti. Five Haitian license plates were found in the vehicles.
When arrested by police, the eight men refused to provide identification, insisting that they were on some sort of “government mission.” They did not identify the “government” for whom they were working but insisted that they did not have to talk to the police. One of the arresting police officers said one of those arrested told him, “Our boss would call your boss.” After the eight men were arrested, another vehicle pulled up with a man, who spoke French to the police. He was also arrested. There are unconfirmed reports that the eight men arrested had earlier masqueraded as Haitian National Police officers.
The U.S. corporate media has largely refrained from identifying the arrested Americans and the others. WMR is not bound by protocols with the U.S.
Intelligence Community. The men arrested in Port-au-Prince are:
Kent Leland KROEKER, born February 14, 1967, USA partner and chief operating officer of Kroeker Partners, a private security firm. Kroeker is a Marine Corps officer veteran who flew missions in Iraq and Afghanistan
Christopher Mark McKINLEY, born September 26, 1969, USA
Danilo BAJAVIC, Serbian national, born Belgrade, born May 19, 1982, visa stamp for Karasovici, Croatia, dated July 21, 2017
Vlade JANKOVIC, Russian national, born October 9, 1978, Russia
Talon R. BURTON, U.S. national, born April 9, 1967, USA
Christopher M. OSMAN, U.S. national
Dustin Daniel PORTE, U.S. national, born February 12, 1976, USA
Michael ESTERA, Haitian national, born October 28, 1980, Haiti
In addition to Kroeker, all of the arrested Americans have U.S. military backgrounds. Estera may be a foreign national employee of the U.S. embassy in Port-au-Prince. It is also noteworthy that Blackwater founder Erik Prince, under investigation for conspiring with Russian, Saudi, and Emirati officials on behalf of the 2016 Trump presidential campaign, employs Serbian and Russian ex-military members in his Reflex Responses (R2) mercenary firm, based in Abu Dhabi. Prince’s sister, Betsy DeVos, is education secretary in the Trump administration.
Haitian police chief Michel-Ange Gedeon told reporters that the men would be charged with violation of weapons laws and criminal conspiracy. The U.S. State Department had no comment on whether the arrested Americans had received U.S. consular assistance, to which they are entitled. The Central Directorate of the Judicial Police (DCPJ) is in charge of the investigation of the foreigners.
The 1980s Contra wars of the Ronald Reagan administration were known for the heavy involvement of U.S. mercenaries, who operated in Central America with a “wink and a nod” from the Central Intelligence Agency and a covert coordination team in the basement of the White House, as well as the Pentagon, and State Department. The mercenaries received their orders from National Security Adviser John Poindexter, Marine Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, and Elliott Abrams, now Trump’s regime change coordinator for Venezuela. As the Reagan team attempted to overthrow the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, they were also waging a brutal death squad campaign against leftists in El Salvador and Guatemala. In a repetition of history, the Trump administration has authorized a covert campaign to destabilize the government of Nicaragua, while assisting right-wing governments in Guatemala and Honduras to assassinate leftist journalists, activists, and indigenous leaders. Just as during the 1980s, El Salvador is due to become a staging post for a pro-U.S. rightist government under president-elect Nayib Bukele. Bukele replaces the administration led by the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), which was targeted by the Reagan administration during the 1980s with death squads and paramilitary teams.
At the same time the U.S. mercenaries were arrested in Haiti, Venezuelan authorities seized a Boeing 767 jet, operated by 21Air LLC, said to have been carrying arms to U.S.-backed rebels in Venezuela. The Boeing 767 took off on February 3 from Miami, the same city where Trump, championed by right-wing Cuban-Americans and exiled oligarchs from Venezuela, vowed to overthrow Maduro and “socialism” throughout the hemisphere.
The Boeing’s cargo was seized by Venezuelan authorities at Valencia airport. Included in the secret cargo manifest were 9 assault weapons, including AR-15 rifles, a Micro Draco semi-automatic pistol, and a Colt 7.62 rifle with telescopic sights, in addition to 118 ammunition cartridges and military radio antennas. 21Air LLC’s chairman is Adolfo Moreno, who, according to McClatchy News, is linked to Gemini Air Cargo, an airline involved with the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” program during the George W. Bush administration and identified as such in a report made by the Council of Europe. The Boeing seized by Venezuela has been busy the last few months, making runs from Miami International Airport to Valencia and Caracas, Venezuela, and Bogota and Medellin, Colombia. 21Air claimed to McClatchy that the Boeing 767 had been chartered by another firm called GPS-Air. 21Air operates a sister firm, 21Cargo, formerly called Solar Cargo C.A.
Moreno is listed in Florida corporation records as also owning South Eastern Aviation LLC of Doral, Florida, Conaire LLC of Miramar, Florida, JW Aviation LLC of Doral; Apple Aviation LLC of Doral; Reliable Transport Logistics LLC of Hialeah, Florida; Freighter 23801 LLC of Hialeah, Freighter 23803 of Doral; Direct Warehouse LLC of Doral; Dynamic Travel LLC of Doral; Enduring Ventures LLC of Miami; and Florida Franchise Development LLC of Miramar. Florida Franchise Development was incorporated by Moreno in 2001 as a subsidiary of Gemini Air Cargo. That firm, along with Airline Management Group, incorporated in 1987, and Gemini Cargo Logistics Inc., the latter a subsidiary of Gemini Air Cargo, all had the same business address of 1750 NW 66th Ave., Miami. According to McClatchy, that address is currently used by Avianca, the Colombian national air carrier. When Trump called for the overthrow of the Venezuelan government, he did so in the midst of dozens of CIA front companies that specialize in carrying out coups, murder, and mayhem.
21Air LLC was incorporated in 2014 and is based in Greensboro, North Carolina, but operates out of Miami International Airport. North Carolina was the location of other CIA proprietary airline front companies involved in the agency’s kidnapping program. These included Air Serv International; Aero Contractors Limited, operating out of Johnston County Regional Airport and the Kinston Regional Jetport; Assembly Pointe Aviation, Inc.; and Water Above Mountain Holdings, LLC of Burlington, North Carolina.
Prior to January, when Maduro was sworn in for a second presidential term, the Boeing 767 had been traveling between Miami, Philadelphia, and other continental U.S. cities.
The smuggling of U.S. weapons to Venezuelan rebels has evoked memories of Elliott Abrams’s antics during the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s. CIA contract airlines, including Southern Air Transport, were busy illegally flying U.S. weapons to Honduras and, via air drop, over Nicaragua, for use by the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan Contra guerrillas. One thing about neocons like Abrams and Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton is that they rarely divert from their standard playbooks. Neocons, not being very bright to begin with, find it difficult to “think outside the box,” therefore they repeat the same failed policies and maneuvering over and over again. And that is the clinical diagnosis of insanity.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).
The US wants all nations worldwide colonized, their resources looted, their people exploited as serfs, including ordinary Americans.
Sovereign independent governments everywhere are targeted for regime change—by coups d’état or wars.
That’s what imperialism is all about, a diabolical plot for unchallenged global dominance by whatever it takes for the US to achieve its aims, Republicans and undemocratic Dems allied for the same geopolitical objectives.
Humanitarian intervention, responsibility to protect, and democracy building are code words by both right wings of America’s war party for wanting fascist tyranny replacing governance of, by, and for everyone equitably everywhere—legitimate governments replaced by US-controlled puppet ones.
Post-9/11 alone, the US orchestrated coups in Haiti, Honduras, Paraguay, Brazil, Ukraine, Egypt, and elsewhere in the Middle East.
The so-called Arab spring was made in the USA. Uprisings were orchestrated. Nothing was spontaneous. CIA dirty hands were involved in replacing unpopular regimes with despotic ones considered more reliable.
Spring never bloomed, just the illusion of change for the better. It was pure deception. Everything changed in targeted countries but stayed the same.
In Egypt, Yemen and elsewhere things worsened, notably in Occupied Palestine. No spring bloomed there or anywhere else in the Middle East.
Plan Colombia was and remains all about Washington’s aim to control Latin America, eliminating opposition to regimes it controls, plotting coups against ruling authorities unwilling to bend to its will, along with pursuing anti-Sino/Russian regional policies.
Since Soviet Russia’s dissolution, the US escalated wars on humanity, using NATO as a killing machine. Republicans and Dems colluded to thirdworldize America, banana republicanize it, wrecking the economy, handing its wealth to Wall Street, war-profiteers and other corporate predators.
Both right wings of duopoly governance mock democratic values and rule of law principles they abhor, governing under a police state apparatus, hardened over time, risking global war to achieve its aims.
Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Bolivia are the remaining sovereign independent Latin and Central American nations.
Trump regime hardliners want fascist tyranny replacing their legitimate governments. In early January, State Department deputy spokesman Robert Palladino turned truth on its head, saying the US “support[s] the people of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua in restoring democratic governance and their human rights”—notions Washington abhors.
Venezuelan Bolivarian social democracy is the Trump regime’s top Latin American target for regime change. Pompeo made US intentions clear.
He turned truth on its head, saying President Nicolas Maduro is “illegitimate and the United States will continue . . . to work diligently to restore a real democracy to that country,” adding, “We are very hopeful that we can be a force for good to allow the region to come together to deliver that.”
Fact: Last May, Maduro was overwhelmingly re-elected by a two-thirds majority.
Fact: Scores of international observers from 30 countries monitored the election, judging it open, free and fair.
Fact: Venezuela’s political process is the world’s best.
Fact: It’s polar opposite America’s money-controlled system, one-party rule with two right wings, ordinary people having no say over how they’re governed.
Fact: US democracy is pure fantasy. Venezuelans have the real thing, why Republicans and Dems want its government toppled, their eyes on the prize—the world’s largest oil reserves they want handed to Big Oil.
On January 10, Maduro was inaugurated for a second six-year term, saying he’s committed to continue “fight[ing] for social and economic prosperity and to build 21st century socialism”—despite relentless US political, economic, financial, and propaganda war against the country’s social democracy.
Despite the Trump regime’s all-out efforts to mobilize international opposition to his legitimate rule, delegations from over 90 countries attended the inaugural ceremonies—including from Russia, China, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Mexico, El Salvador, Iran, Turkey, and Ireland’s Sinn Fein.
Representatives from US colonized EU nations were absent, a spokeswoman for foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini lied saying that “the presidential elections were not free nor fair”—a falsified statement, serving US imperial interests.
Representatives from the African Union, CARICOM, the Arab League, the ALBA Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our Americas, OPEC, and the UN also attended.
In his inaugural address, Maduro said, “I tell the people. This presidential sash is yours. This power is yours. It does not belong to the oligarchy or to imperialism. It belongs to the sovereign people of Venezuela.”
He denounced the diabolical aims of “the most powerful empire in history,” urging dialogue to serve Venezuelan interests, including UN support for “peace, mutual recognition, harmony, (and) coexistence of different political visions,” adding: “I would like to sit down with the opposition, stop the sterile, useless, unnecessary conflict, talk about economic issues; with the experience of the UN we can achieve it.”
Trump regime hardliners falsely call genuine democracies dictatorships, how neocon John Bolton reacted to Maduro’s inauguration, saying the US “will not recognize” his legitimacy to rule.
The US-controlled Organization of American States (OAS), headquartered in Washington, reacted the same way. Most of its member states support longstanding US plans for regime change.
The US-controlled 13-nation Lima Group issued a statement, refusing to recognize Maduro’s legitimacy.
Caracas slammed what it called a “humiliating subordination” to US imperial interests—applying to all nations allied with Washington against Venezuela’s social democracy and sovereign independence.
On January 12, State Department deputy spokesman Palladino openly called for regime change, saying, “It is time to begin the orderly transition to a new government.”
Previous US orchestrated coup attempts failed—against Hugo Chavez and Maduro. Will the Trump regime try again in the new year?
If unable to succeed by coup d’etat, will an attempt be made to assassinate Maduro? If economic, financial, political, and other tactics fail, will military intervention be the Trump regime’s fallback option?
Will Iran be targeted the same way in the new year? Imperialism isn’t pretty.
Endless US belligerence and state-sponsored terrorism is virtually certain ahead, the way hardliners in Washington always operate—hostile to peace, stability, equity and justice at home and abroad.
“Trump protects himself with war as Democrats and the rest of the ruling elite support his militarism.”
It is difficult for Americans to find out what is happening in their country and around the world. That is because corporate media outlets have nearly complete control over what they see and hear and because those interests are closely allied with the state. The promise of the internet, the hoped for level playing field for communication and information gathering, is also under corporate control. It is now part of a well coordinated censorship effort and attack against left wing sites such as Black Agenda Report.
The lies which allowed the United States, France and Britain to attack Syria are presented without contradiction. The people with knowledge and expertise who can counter these narratives are disappeared from access to newspapers or television stations. The close relationship between the deep state, the corporate media, and the establishment elite at home and abroad continues without hindrance.
“British prime minister Theresa May refused to allow a parliamentary vote on the Syrian missile strike.”
Donald Trump may be labeled a fascist but he attacked Syria with the help of France and Britain. Apparently every leader of a “free world” country is also a fascist. They certainly behave that way as they trample on the rights of millions of people. Far from being the “civilized” nations that Trump referred to in his televised address, these three countries are among the most criminal that have ever existed. They all grew rich on the slave trade, indigenous genocides, the plantation economies in the Americas, and the theft of resources all over the world. Now they run roughshod over their own people. British prime minister Theresa May refused to allow a parliamentary vote on the Syrian missile strike and showed the hollowness of claims that hers is a democratic nation. The same can be said of her partners in crime.
France impoverished Haiti with nearly 100 years of theft, murdered Algerians in the streets of Paris and keeps its former African colonies financially dependent. Former president Nicolas Sarkozy took millions of dollars from Muammar Gaddafi and then had him murdered, just like a mob boss would do. Now they have connived with the help of press propagandists in all three countries to fool millions of people as they try to continue their gangsterish aggression against Syria.
“Sarkozy took millions of dollars from Muammar Gaddafi and then had him murdered, just like a mob boss would do.”
If even mediocre journalists were allowed to report freely on this issue the crime would be obvious. Consider the timeline of events. On March 4, former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter are poisoned with a chemical agent in Britain. The British government immediately blames Russia, which has no motive to harm a former spy they swapped eight years earlier. Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman arrives in London for an official visit on March 7. On March 12 French president Emmanuel Macron states that France will attack Syria if any chemical weapons are used there. The next day the Russian military claims to have evidence that a chemical attack will be carried out against Syrian civilians as a pretext for war. On March 16 France warns French journalists to leave Syria. Mohammed bin Salman arrives in Washington on March 19. On April 8 he goes to Paris for yet another official visit. That same day Saudi funded jihadist groups and the White Helmets, who were created by a British intelligence officer, claim that a chemical weapons attack occurred in the city of Douma. On April 14 the United States, France and Britain join in the missile strike.
“They have connived with the help of press propagandists in all three countries to fool millions of people.”
The aggressors are very transparent. The plot was carried out in the open. But because they have a compliant media behind them they have no reason to worry. No journalist asked why Sergei Skripal and his daughter are in effect held hostage and denied access to Russian officials as a treaty between the two countries demands. No one questions a strangely worded statement allegedly from Yulia Skripal but issued by the London Metropolitan Police in which she said she didn’t want help from her government or contact with her own relatives.
Why shouldn’t Mohammed bin Salman openly plan with presidents and prime ministers? Who will question him? The New York Times and MSNBC and the Washington Post and the BBC and AFP certainly will not. We will probably never know the name of the person or persons who poisoned the Skripals but common sense tells us that the intended murders were ordered by someone with a motive to create a pretext for war.
“The plot was carried out in the open.”
The actual air strike was limited because of back channel negotiations between these countries. The danger may look like Kabuki theater but no one should assume that the peril is over. The criminals in Washington, London and Paris may yet go too far and provoke a major hot war.
All three heads of state have their own concerns. Macron was put into power to kill off his country’s welfare state and any remnants of left politics. May is struggling with Brexit negotiations and cruel austerity measures that have made her so unpopular she actively avoids voters. Trump may be impeached but he protects himself with war as Democrats and the rest of the ruling elite support his militarism.
Regardless of individual rationales these three people pose a threat to the entire planet. They are aided and abetted by corporate media who act as scribes and present war propaganda as fact. The Nuremberg trials after World War II established that planning aggressive war is a crime and so is the propaganda that promotes it. May, Trump and Macron are guilty but so-called journalists are as well. The criminals could not commit their dirty deeds without their help.
Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com . Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.
+ I’ve spent the week greedily consuming the treats offered up by Wikileaks’s excavation of John Podesta’s inbox. Each day presents juicy new revelations of the venality of the Clinton campaign. In total, the Podesta files provide the most intimate and unadulterated look at how politics really works in late-capitalist America since the release of the Nixon tapes.
+ There’s a big difference, though. With Nixon, the stakes seemed greater, the banter more Machiavellian, the plots and counter-plots darker and more cynical.
+ The Podesta email tranches show the inner mechanics of a much more mundane, petty and banal political machine. Instead of shaping a campaign around an ideological movement, the Clinton operation resembles the packaging of a political mutual fund, a balanced, low-risk portfolio of financial interests, captive NGOs and dependent demographic sectors.
+ The red meat in the emails can be found in the disclosures of the internal rivalries, self-aggrandizement and sycophancy of hired guns and consultants, especially as they gravitate toward Podesta, whose chilly presence looms behind the scenes like the ghost of Thomas Cromwell.
+ The three prevailing obsessions of the Podesta emails: raising money, containing the contamination of the Clinton Foundation and screwing Bernie Sanders. There’s barely any hint of anxiety over Trump. In fact, they relish his every false move, almost as if each faltering step had been pre-visualized, if not orchestrated.
+ If possible, the press corps comes off worse than Team Clinton. Almost every reporter is revealed as pliable, servile and so lazy that they basically beg the Clinton PR shop to write their stories for them.
+ The press has reiterated this obsequiousness over the course of the last seven days with what can only be described as an orgy of coverage of the Trump sex tapes and assorted scandals. By all accounts, the Trump campaign is dead and has been for weeks. The 24/7 obsession now amounts to a kind of political corpse abuse. Forsaken in this feeding frenzy has been any serious attention at all to the Wikileaks email dump, except to echo Clinton camp assertions that they were the victims of a Russian plot to tilt the election to Trump. If so, the Russians have proved even more incompetent than we thought them to be.
+ Of course, the Russian diversion is a convenient excuse for the lapdog press having missed one major scandal after another that has been staring them in the face for months, if not years.
+ Significantly, the email dump also proves what many of us have long suspected: that there are no walls separating the Clinton campaign, its foundation and Super Pacs and the DNC itself. Those supposedly distinct entities are, in fact, all part of one vast, interconnected organization–a syndicate, if you will, that has deftly evaded campaign finance laws (created by Democrats) and rigged its own primary process to ensure a pre-ordained winner.
+ The key thing to remember about the DNC is that it has been under the complete control of the Clintons and their operatives since the 1990s. Obama never cleaned house and installed his own people, a lapse that proved fatal to his own political and legislative agenda. The Clintons’ loyalty to Obama was always paper-thin and conditioned on whether it would advance their own interests: Hillary’s pursuit of the presidency and Bill’s maniacal quest for lucrative speaking fees.
+ It was no surprise that Bill unloaded on ObamaCare a few days ago, calling it the “craziest thing in the world.” The Clintons want to efface Obama’s legacy and replace it with their own, the same way the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt smashed the images of the previous ruler and replaced it with their own visage.
+ So what follows are a few of my favorite revelations from Podesta’s inbox, starting with an email where Podesta is joking about a fundraiser on Martha’s Vineyard. John Podesta: “I didn’t think wet works meant pool parties at the Vineyard.” Another Clinton murder? Check the drain for trace evidence?
+ I can picture the invitation: “HRC Pool Party: Donate or Drown!”
+ Rightwing websites, of course, are taking this as proof, HRC, murdered Scalia.
+ Peter Berlios reminded me of the global outrage when Trump’s special friend, Vladimir Putin, used a similar expression in regard to the Chechens: “We will wet them even in the shit house.”
+ By the way, John Podesta owned 75,000 shares in Leonidio LLC, a firm linked to who? Yes, Vladimir Putin.
+ Podesta’s correspondent in this exchange is Steve Elmendorf, a longtime Democratic powerbroker who was Dick Gephardt’s chief of staff. Over the years, Elmendorf has perfected the art, crucial to any Democratic candidate, of seducing progressive sectors of the party to dutifully line up behind a neoliberal candidate. A few years ago, he explained his strategic thinking this way:
“The bloggers and online donors represent an important resource for the party, but they are not representative of the majority you need to win elections. The trick will be to harness their energy and their money without looking like you are a captive of the activist left.”
+ Bill Richardson is the famously irascible former Governor of New Mexico, who served as Energy Secretary and UN ambassador during Bill Clinton’s second term. The relationship soured when the governor broke ranks and endorsed Barack Obama in 2008. Richardson and the Clintons have been feuding ever since. Indeed, Bill once described the antagonism as a “permanent” state of hostilities.
In August of 2015, Podesta took it on his own initiative to negotiate a detente between the two men. Apparently, Hillary was furious at Podesta’s impertinence. She doesn’t forgive. Podesta writes back urging her to consider the political consequences, especially with Hispanics in must-win western states like Colorado and New Mexico, where Richardson still has pull.
“I had heard that you were upset that I encouraged a call between [Bill Clinton] and Richardson to bury the hatchet. I did that at the request of Jose Villarreal who pushed me and made the point that Richardson is still on TV a lot, especially on Univision and Telemundo and not withstanding the fact that he can be a dick, it was worth getting him in a good place. Probably worth a quick call to ask him to stay stout and publicly endorse, but if it’s too galling, don’t bother.”
+ Even someone as close to the Clintons as Podesta keeps running into the couple’s aversion to apologizing for anything. After issuing a non-apology apology on her email server scandal, Podesta gripes to his number two, Neera Tanden: “No good deed goes unpunished. Press takeaway was the whine of but ‘she really didn’t apologize to the American people. I am beginning to think Trump is on to something.”
Tanden notes: “Everyone wants her to apologize. And she should. Apologies are like her Achilles heel…This apology thing has become like a pathology. I can only imagine what’s happening in the campaign. Is there some way I can be helpful here? I know if I just email her she will dismiss it out of hand.”
Podesta replies tersely: “You should email her. She can say she’s sorry without apologizing to the American people. Tell her to say it and move on, why get hung on this.”
+ Few figures in the Podesta emails come off as more appalling than Neera Tanden, whose primary mission, perhaps the only thing she is really competent at, is detecting even minor deviations from obedience to Clintonian orthodoxy. No one agitates her more than Bernie and his Sandernistas, who she seems ready to dial up a drone strike against at a moment’s notice. She’s the Lee Atwater of neoliberalism, without Atwater’s malign intelligence and sense of humor.
+ Here’s Neera in panic mode over a Wall Street Journal piece on Hillary’s email server quoting an anonymous White House as saying Clinton may have “screwed up” on the matter. Tanden gets so worked up that she seems ready to target Obama: “WH crapping on her is going to send this into orbit.”
+ During one of her speeches-for-hire, Hillary promised Wall Street tycoons that she would block marijuana legalization (don’t want to cut into those tobacco stocks). Here’s her archly worded back and forth with Xerox’s CEO, Ursula Burns, following March 2014 speech. Clinton used Wall Street lingo to express her opposition to ending pot prohibition “in all senses of the word.” Who says she doesn’t have a sense of humor?
URSULA BURNS: So long means thumbs up, short means thumbs down; or long means I support, short means I don’t. I’m going to start with — I’m going to give you about ten long-shorts.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Even if you could make money on a short, you can’t answer short.
URSULA BURNS: You can answer short, but you got to be careful about letting anybody else know that. They will bet against you. So legalization of pot?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Short in all senses of the word.
+ When served with subpoena for records on Benghazi, a seriously agitated Robbie Mook asks, “We’re not releasing EVERYTHING, right?”
+ Among the things the Clinton damage control team must deal with: “Tony Rodham hustling gold mining deals in Haiti.”
+ I wonder if they considered setting up a special squad to deal with Clinton Hustler Eruptions?
+ Mark Siegel, the former executive director of the DNC, emailed Podesta on the eve of the Convention outlining strategies to entice the “self-righteous (Bernie) ideologues” to “work their asses off for Hillary.”
+ “Let’s throw Bernie a bone,” Siegel recommends, in the form of reducing the number of super delegates in 2020 primary campaign. Perhaps “Bernie Bones” could be come a new treat at Ben & Jerry’s?
+ Hillary’s closest advisor and most intimate confident is Huma Abedin. No one more aggressively enforces Hillary’s own wishes or guards her privacy. Abedin, who we must assume is speaking directly for Hillary, is adamant that Hillary continue with her strategy of avoiding press conferences. Each time Hillary answers a few questions at one of her events, the message gets lost, Huma frets. “Can we survive not answering questions from press at message events?”
Podesta swats down this notion emphatically.
“If she thinks we can get to Labor Day without taking press questions, I think that’s suicidal. We have to find some mechanism to let the stream [sic] out of the pressure cooker.”
Not a huge deal, Huma. If HRC is compelled to answer, she can just lie the way she usually does. Hillary’s a natural.
+ One email to Podesta from Hillary’s account in August of 2014 provides confirmation for what we’ve long suspected: Clinton was well aware that Qatar and Saudi Arabia are the principle funders of ISIS in Iraq and Syria:
“While this military/para-military operation is moving forward, we need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to [ISIS] and other radical Sunni groups in the region.”
+ There’s a reason I started calling MSNBC MSDNC. Here we have an email from a producer of “All In with Chris Hayes” slobbering all over Hillary Clinton in an attempt to secure an appearance on Hayes’ tendentious show:
“Hey Adrienne,
Thanks for your help in getting Karen on with Chris the other night. I have a question for you. As you guys have probably seen, we’ve been airing a ‘Hillary Clinton for Millennials’ segment on our program every night this past week.”
“The point of the segment is basically to inform young people about all of the crap and nonsense that Sec. Clinton and President Clinton (but mostly Sec. Clinton) had to face back in the 90s when President Clinton was running for office…everything from cookie-gate to stand-by-your-man-gate to Hillarycare.”
“The point isn’t to dwell on the past but the point is to talk about this amazing, intelligent woman who probably faced more nonsense back in the day because she is a woman…and she continues to have to face it. She is smarter than most men and more qualified than most men to be president.”
This kind of shameless groveling makes Sean Hannity seem like an objective reporter.
+ How to deal with the Sanders phenomenon haunted even veteran political operators on Team Clinton. Here’s an exchange from January 6, 2016 between Mandy Grunwald and Jennifer Palmieri:
Palmieri: “I liked messing with Bernie on wall street at a staff level for the purposes of muddying the waters and throwing them off their game a bit. But don’t know that it is most effective contrast for her. Seems like we are picking the fight he wants to have.”
Grunwald: “Bernie wants a fight on Wall Street. We should not give him one.”
+ Here’s an excerpt from the Clinton campaing’s press policy, cautioning against allowing coverage of the anemic turnouts at Hillary rallies: “‘Less than a 100 people at a rally? No cell phones! No press!”
+ The emails in 2015 show increasing fear that Elizabeth Warren’s freelance attacks on the big banks and investment houses will alienate the tycoons and moguls who fund the DNC. Nancy Pelosi (Net Worth: $58 million) & Co. scurry to reassure Wall Street: “Elizabeth Warren doesn’t speak for Dem Party!”
+ HRC HQ knew she needed to run against a candidate like Trump. It was her only hope of winning the election & they went to work to make it so. It unnerved some her allies, one of whom wrote Podesta: “Right now I am petrified that Hillary is almost totally dependent on Republicans nominating Trump.”
As the World Burns
+ When there’s no opposition to a war, it will go on forever. See Afghanistan, 15 years and counting. Barbara Lee was the lone vote against it then and one of the few who remember it now. The Authorization for Unilateral Military Force, which launched the Afghan War, has been involved 30 times now for other interventions. Lee should get some kind of peace prize, though not the one awarded to Kissinger, Peres and Obama.
+ Russian meddling in US elections? Yet to be proven. US role in trying to overthrow more than 50 governments worldwide in last 65 years? Fact.
+ Twelve Bush officials sign letter denouncing Trump. Get ready for the Fourth Bush Term!
+ Obama announced this week that Russia will pay a price for hacking into the DNC’s computers, implying that some kind of cyber-attack will be launched on the Kremlin. What’s Obama going to do to the person who leaked the Trump tape or Trump’s tax return? Drone them?
+ Chris Christie, now a wanted man, calls Trump’s comments on kissing and grouping unsuspecting women “completely indefensible “. This is rich coming from a man who publicly humiliates women at his press conferences and then mocked, demonized and locked up a nurse named Kaci Hickox, who had shown the humanity to actually treat Ebola victims.
+ Instead of being subjected to condescending Western philanthropy, Haiti desperately needs to be allowed to chart the course of their own reconstruction. Be sure to read Mark Schuller’s important piece in this week’s CounterPunch.
+ Where’s the feminist outrage over the noxious Jeffrey Goldberg being tapped as the new editor-in-chief of The Atlantic? Judy Miller got run out of the reporting biz for her yellow journalism. Goldberg gets promoted for his! Sexism?
+ With Jeffrey Goldberg helming the Atlantic and Hillary heading for White House, everything is aligning for next big bang war. Good morning, Teheran!
+ Glenn Beck is tortured by a simple question: should he or shouldn’t he vote for Hillary Clinton? When he comes to a resolution perhaps can make his announcement live on Rachel Maddow Show? All together now, follow the bouncing bombs…
+ It took Nixon to go to China, and Donald J. Trump to destroy the GOP from the inside-out. Credit where credit is due. The Donald is fragging the entire GOP establishment, from Paul Ryan to John McCain, as his campaign goes down in flames.
+ Those freaking out over Trump’s joke about jailing Hillary have never shown the slightest angst about her policy of assassinating people, including American citizens, by drone without trial, hearing or indictment.
+ Trump didn’t rise from the swamps of the GOP. He is a monster created, promoted and advertised by the media. Even now they feast on him.
+ Of course, if Trump didn’t exist, the Clintons would have had to invent him. In a way, they did, elevating Trump as the “pied-piper candidate.”
+ Here’s the revolting Curt Schilling, another Pervert for Jesus.
+ Bernie Sanders took off enough time this week from campaigning for Hillary to broadcast this platitude: “When the Founding Fathers were writing the Constitution, I’m pretty sure they weren’t thinking ‘Let’s make sure billionaires can buy elections.’”
But Bernie your old buddy Howard Zinn would have told you that is exactly what the Founding “Fathers” were thinking, which is why they only permitted white land-owning men to enjoy the franchise and doubled down by allowing the southern land barons to keep, breed and sell their slaves to buy elections.
+ The Democrats’ decision to reduce the entire closing chapter of the campaign to a rather prudish emphasis on sexual politics represents a retreat from the party’s frail commitment to tolerance and sexual liberation. Of course, it also protects Hillary from having to grapple with her entangled record on trade, economics, criminal justice and militarism. Just wait for the renewed attacks on rap music, heavy metal, and “Game of Thrones.” Will Tipper Gore be named Culture Czar?
+ Few people know where more of the Clintons’ skeletons are buried than Ken Silverstein, the founder of CounterPunch and one of the best investigative journalists around. As pre-Halloween treat, he unearths a few here regarding the Clinton foundation’s deplorable escapades in Colombia. Silverstein quotes a Colombian union organizer as saying:
“They are doing nothing for workers. I don’t even know what they are doing in this country other than exploiting poverty and extracting money.”
+ Every President needs an Axis of Evil to justify their existence (and those all important defense contracts). Here’s Hillary’s. Read it and bleed.
+ Still, people see through her. Latest WSJ/NBC poll from Ohio, taken after the Trump sex tape and the St. Louis debate, shows HRC still below 50%…with WOMEN voters!
+ Someone sent me a link to a story claiming nervously that while Russia Prepares for War, the US Sleeps. Sleeps? Making Russia prepare for war (and sink billions it doesn’t have into a weapons production that will never come close to rivaling the Pentagon’s armory of mass destruction) has been the point of US foreign policy toward Russia for the last 60 years. Putin is walking blindly into same quagmire that doomed the Soviet Union. (See Andrew Cockburn’s indispensable The Threat. The book may be out of print, but it’s central thesis isn’t.)
+ When Human Rights Watch isn’t clamoring for a humanitarian cruise missile intervention or sabotaging the peace deal in Colombia, it can actually produce some compelling documents, such as this important report on the human toll of the war on drugs. The gist of the report is that every 25 seconds someone is the United States is arrested on simple possession of drugs for their own personal use, totaling more than 1.5 million arrests every year. Each day, there are more than 137,000 people in the US in prison or jail on possession charges, with tens of thousands of others under detention, house arrest or some form of probation.
+ The truly deplorable Joy Behar slimes Bill Clinton’s accusers as “tramps.” I guess that means they should feel grateful that Bill mauled them.
+ Perhaps Trump was just besotted with too much Fitzgerald. After all, he does live in a penthouse as big as the Ritz: “Hard to sit here and be close to you and not kiss you.” (Tender is the Night). Nah…
+ The Washington Post frantically conspired to kill off Nate Parker’s incandescent new film on the Nat Turner slave revolt, Birth of a Nation. After weeks of unrelenting negative publicity, the box office results were meager. The Post couldn’t help but gloat, publishing a stupid little piece by Caitlin Gibson titled: “The Big Debate Over ‘Birth of a Nation’ is Over: Audiences Just weren’t that Interested.”
+ Imagine the Post’s verdict on the greatest American novel: “The big debate over Moby-Dick is over. Only sold 500 copies upon release. Likely never hear from that author again…”
+ The concerted effort to destroy Parker and his film reminds me of the sabotaging of Welles’ Magnificent Ambersons (where a third of the footage was actually dumped in the Pacific Ocean) and John Huston’s fiercely anti-war film of Crane’s Red Badge of Courage, which MGM studios mutilated, cutting the film from its original 2-hour length and adding maudlin voice over narration (See Lillian Ross’s Picture for the gory details.)
+ The announcement that Bob Dylan has won the Nobel Prize for Literature induced much carping from uptight academics about the alleged degeneration of the award. How dare they honor a rock singer? My question is what took them so long? The crusty Nobel committee should have recognized the role of popular music at least 35 years ago and given the prize to Bob Marley. Even Dylan would probably admit that Smokey Robinson should have been in line ahead of him.
+ Still Dylan deserves the recognition. He’s the greatest white blues singer and probably the best songwriter of the rock era. My favorites from across the decades: Masters of War, Highway 61 Revisited, Just Like Tom Thumb Blues, Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again, I Want You, All Along the Watchtower, The Man in Me, Forever Young, I Shall be Released, If You See Her Say Hello, This Wheel’s on Fire, Tears of Rage, Hurricane, Precious Angel, Blind Willie McTell, Julius & Ethyl, Heart of Mine, Don’t Fall Apart on Me Tonight, Dark Eyes, Everything is Broken, Love Sick, Not Dark Yet.
+ But I hope he tells the committee to shove it, as did Jean-Paul Sartre. If not, I trust he will stay in character and mumble Dylanesque obscurities to a mystified audience.
+ Wikileaks reports that Keith Richards was on the short list for Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Robbed!
After President Bill Clinton met with Attorney General Loretta Lynch in a secret meeting, Lynch’s Justice Department announced that it would not indict Hillary Clinton for her private email server and destruction of public documents, because she had no obvious intent to break the law, just extreme carelessness for it. Whatever happened to “ignorance of the law is no excuse”?
Reacting to FBI director James Comey whitewashing Hillary’s criminality serious enough to send ordinary people to prison, Trump was right calling the system “rigged.”
In a Tuesday afternoon statement, he said she “compromised the safety of the American people by storing highly classified information on a private email server with no security.”
“Our adversaries almost certainly have a blackmail file on (her), and this fact alone disqualified her from service.”
She lied saying she didn’t use her home server to maintain or send classified information. Comey confirmed over 100 emails classified when sent, including top secret ones.
Deleting thousands of emails compounded her criminality, ordinary Americans held to one standard, figures like Hillary and husband Bill another.
The system isn’t just rigged. It’s too debauched to fix. So far, Bernie Sanders remains noticeably silent on Comey’s whitewash. He acknowledged support for Clinton earlier, saying through a spokesperson the FBI’s decision won’t affect his campaign.
House Speaker Paul Ryan indicated Comey may be called before Congress to testify, saying “(w)e’re going to have hearings. There are a lot of unanswered questions here…”
“What really just mystifies me is the case he makes and then the conclusion he draws. This certainly does underscore the belief that the Clintons live above the law.”
“He shredded the case she had been making all year long. I think we need to know more…” She should be “block(ed) from access to classified material” as a tainted candidate.
“Based on (Comey’s) own statement…damage (was) done to the rule of law.” On the same day, Obama campaigned with Hillary in North Carolina, stumping for her for the first time – leading the crowd in chanting “Hill-a-ry,” adding he’s “fired up! Ready to go for her!”
“I’m here today because I believe in Hillary Clinton, and I want you to help elect her to be the next president of the United States of America,” he ranted, ignoring Comey’s whitewash.
Instead he lied, saying “there has never been any man or woman more qualified for this office than Hillary Clinton. Ever.”
One unindicted war criminal endorsed another. As secretary of state, she orchestrated naked aggression on Libya and Syria, raping and destroying both countries – responsible for mass slaughter, destruction and unspeakable human misery.
Her deplorable rap sheet includes numerous other high crimes, including involvement in toppling foreign leaders, rigging Haiti’s election to install a US-controlled puppet, and racketeering – the Clinton Foundation a self-enrichment, influence peddling, money-laundering scheme masquerading as a charitable NGO.
Her record in office and since leaving government shows support for imperial lawlessness, indifference to human suffering, and addiction to self-aggrandizement, along with using her high office to accumulate great wealth.
She’s the only presidential aspirant in US history responsible for multiple high crimes demanding prosecution, yet favored to succeed Obama, things likely rigged to assure it.
With Democrats meeting later in July to nominate her their standard bearer, there was virtually no chance of Comey throwing party politics into disarray by recommending she be charged and prosecuted.
A loyal soldier, he’ll likely be asked to remain FBI director in a Clinton administration if she’s elected. Reportedly so will ethics-challenged Attorney General Loretta Lynch, longtime close Bill and Hillary ally – virtually certain not to indict her on other major charges.
Her non-recusal recusal gives her final say, Bill and Hillary free from prosecution despite committing high crimes too serious to ignore.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
The Clintons have many problems these days, but the worst of them is probably the information that Charles Ortel started to release from his website and Twitter account (@charlesortel) in early May 2016. Ortel is the financial analyst who exposed General Electric’s stock as being overvalued before it took a dive in 2008. After 15 months’ examination of the public records of the Clinton Foundation entities, he finds that huge sums of money cannot be accounted for, and he believes that it is a family affair for Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton to harm the victims of disasters and the desperately poor throughout the planet. Educated and privileged people like the Clintons should know better, yet they preen, even now, believing we will fall for the hype manufactured by their handlers. The true, damning facts, however, are out there for each of us to see. There is a special revulsion against charity fraud that we did not cover in an earlier interview. We discuss this with Charles Ortel.
Dady Chery: For you, this is a moral issue.
Charles Ortel: It is reprehensible to operate a supposed charity in gross violation of applicable laws and simultaneously seek adulation and the highest political office in the most powerful nation on earth. Such conduct needs to be fully exposed and then punished to set an example.
Charity, the notion of actually helping less fortunate and deserving souls, is an ancient practice prevalent in most cultures. In the United States, it happens that the poorest among us are also the most generous, if you measure their annual donations relative to their annual incomes. Much great work is done by the charitable sector and this important, generally selfless conduct, should be encouraged and admired.
That said, to corrupt a presidential charity under the glare of the publicity that surrounds celebrity followers of the Clinton Foundation is gross, indefensible conduct by educated persons who seem to have no moral compass and no shame.
DC: In your discussions of the Clinton Foundation on your website and elsewhere, Charles, you often bring up the absence of tax audits by the Clinton entities. What is the problem there?
CO: By audits, I mean detailed income statements, balance sheets, cash-flow statements, and footnotes that are double-checked, that is “audited,” by competent, informed and licensed accounting firms. Accounting firms understand the numerous detailed requirements that must be followed as these audits are completed. Furthermore, the management and trustees of large entities, like those of the Clintons, are required to certify that the information contained in these audits is true, accurate, and complete. This is different from the process by which the IRS might decide to audit a given tax return. All financial information provided to the IRS by charities whose revenues are above a low threshold must procure financial statements and supporting information that are audited and must make this work available to taxing authorities and to the general public.
The Clinton entities have repeatedly failed to get their financial statements properly audited. This is an ongoing abuse. I believe they got away with this probably because Lois Lerner was a key person in the IRS who oversaw tax-exempt charities, including the Clinton entities, from 2001 through 2013. She left her post in disgrace. She is alleged to have used the IRS to target conservative and Tea Party groups, and she might also have used her influence with regulators not to target charities of politically allies.
DC: A lot of funds were collected by Clinton entities for recovery from natural disasters.
CO: Shortly after leaving the White House in January 2001, Bill Clinton teamed with Rajat Gupta, then managing partner of consulting giant McKinsey, and since convicted of criminal misconduct, to, in theory, aid victims of an earthquake that struck on January 26, 2001 in Gujarat, India. Records available in the public domain for this charity, American India Foundation, show clearly that it was organized on the basis of a false and materially misleading application to the IRS, that it failed to provide compliant financial audits, and that it failed to make complete, truthful and regular filings in numerous US states where it continues to solicit donations using the mails, telephones, and digital media, in stark violation of applicable laws. Bill Clinton has served as Honorary Chairman for this entity since inception, a fact that is used prominently in fundraising campaigns. Nevertheless, his role with this illegally operated charity is not disclosed in Clinton Foundation filings with state, federal and foreign authorities.
Starting in January 2001, Bill Clinton became involved in international activities that he pursued invoking the name of the Clinton Foundation; these included disaster relief in India and fighting HIV/AIDS in many nations, including in Haiti starting in 2003. None of these international activities were validly authorized in advance by the IRS, US state governments, or foreign governments, as is legally required. Especially in the early period, Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation did not have adequate and sufficiently trained staff to exercise tight and effective controls over these international activities. As a result, it appears that substandard and even adulterateddrugs manufactured by an Indian supplier then called Ranbaxy may have been distributed in numerous countries under the auspices of the Clinton Foundation.
Later, Bill Clinton became involved with George H. W. Bush, starting in 2005, in fundraising efforts to, in theory, aid victims of the Tsunami that devastated many Asian nations in the December 2004. Fundraising efforts in this case were also not documented properly or organized in full compliance with applicable state, federal, and foreign laws.
Beginning in August 2005, former presidents Clinton and George H.W. Bush mounted additional illegal and improperly organized efforts to, in theory, aid victims of Hurricane Katrina. Defective forms and filings related to this effort are available, following persistent digging, but omitted from the Clinton Foundation website, though some of the purported financial effects and other supposed accomplishments are covered in various materials found there, including press releases, annual reports and tax filings, that are riddled with accounting errors for 2005, in particular.
DC: What do you perceive as being the most serious problem with fund collection for disaster relief?
CO: When natural disasters strike, many of us are motivated to help however we may be able to do so. As we became more connected on the internet and more comfortable sending money using internet services, larger and larger sums started flowing towards those who represented they might be capable to aid victims of natural disasters. Unfortunately, this incoming money flow, in tiny bites is a perfect opportunity for fraud. Fraudsters realize that portions of this money might be picked off operating unregistered charities with names and websites that seem legitimate. This is why the FBI warns donors to be wary when it comes to making contributions after natural disasters.
DC: I often say: “What happens in Haiti doesn’t stay in Haiti.” Given the real prospect of another Clinton presidency, should Americans worry?
CO: It is more than ironic that the United Homeless Organization, which used to have seemingly poor people at tables all over New York with glass jars to collect money, was revealed as a fraud back in November 2009.
As it happens, the Clinton family was homeless and in severe financial distress back in 1998. Since then, public reports suggest they have acquired vast wealth during a period when most in America have struggled. It seems more than fair to ask exactly how one squares reaping massive financial gains with efforts supposedly led by the Clintons to engage in “charitable” work, particularly given rampant and material defects in all public filings of Clinton-related charities from inception to date.
When the Clintons last occupied the White House they were destitute, according to published reports, and America was in a far stronger position strategically and economically, compared to other nations, than now.
Absent controls, and a US president is difficult to stop, an enriched Hillary Clinton and her extended family are likely to run roughshod over political enemies and competitors in ways that are terrifying to contemplate.
DC: Could some good come from this?
CO: It is certainly possible that Hillary Clinton may win the presidency before the whole truth becomes known regarding operation of and fundraising for the Clinton Foundation and all its related entities.
Alternatively, if the general public digs into the facts and goes to the public record, justice may be administered to all those centrally involved in perpetrating what seems to be the largest and most far-reaching charity fraud ever attempted anywhere on earth.
The downfall of Hillary Clinton and of her family for having, in my view, illegally used a charity to derive personal financial gains might then become an example not to follow: a cautionary tale useful, in future, to constrain others from even daring to consider such pursuits.
After the Crash 