Donald Trump, who has railed against the political influence of military contractors, denounced wasteful Pentagon spending, and promised a less interventionist foreign policy has nevertheless added to his transition team the leader of a group of defense contractors who advocate greater American militarism.
Michael Rogers, the hawkish former chair of the House Intelligence Committee, will be advising the Trump transition team on national security, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.
After leaving Congress, Rogers founded a pressure group called Americans for Peace, Prosperity, and Security, intended to “help elect a president who supports American engagement and a strong foreign policy.”
As Lee Fang reported for The Intercept last year, the business executives helping APPS included several defense contractors who stand to gain financially from continued militarism.
At a rally in February, Trump criticized defense spending. “I will build a military bigger, better, stronger,” he said. “I guarantee we can do it for less money. I hear stories like they are ordering missiles they do not want because of politics; because of special interests. Because the company that makes the missiles is a contributor. … We are ordering missiles that the generals do not want because of politics.”
Trump has also advocated reduced military intervention. In July, when asked about the attempted coup in Turkey, he told the New York Times: “I think right now when it comes to civil liberties, our country has a lot of problems, and I think it’s very hard for us to get involved in other countries when we don’t know what we are doing and we can’t see straight in our own country.”
In the same interview, he argued against the NATO alliance: “We’re talking about countries that are doing very well. Then yes, I would be absolutely prepared to tell those countries, ‘Congratulations, you will be defending yourself.’”
Despite Trump’s noninterventionist talk, a financial analyst predicted in April that a Trump presidency would be good for the defense industry. In June, the Trump campaign met with representatives of defense contractors Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin, the Daily Beast reported.
Defense contractors were also an important part of Rogers’s congressional bids. During his 2014 run, for example, he took campaign contributions from ManTech International, L-3 Communications, Motorola Solutions, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin.
Rogers founded APPS with leftover campaign money after he retired from Congress last year. The group has held campaign events in which candidates discussed national security. Most recently, APPS held a national security forum at the RNC with Chris Christie.
Since last April, the group has held 27 forums on national security with 14 GOP candidates.
Rogers is part of a minority in the national security community that supports Trump — none of the other leaders at APPS has endorsed the candidate, for example.
APPS advisory board member Danielle Pletka, who is vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote in CNN last month that Trump “not only knows nothing about national security, he doesn’t care to know.”
Kevin Madden, national advisor to APPS and senior advisor to Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign, told the Daily Beast in May that he will not vote for Trump.
And George W. Bush’s national security advisor, Stephen Hadley, a board member at APPS and Raytheon, declined to endorse either candidate.
Fifty Republican former national security officials recently signed a letter opposing Trump. Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush’s first defense secretary, is the most prominent national security expert to endorse Trump.
On Monday, Trump attacked the former national security officials who came out against him. He said in a statement that the letter was “politically motivated,” and that “they are nothing more than the failed Washington elite looking to hold onto their power.”
I keep wondering why is it exactly “fifty” Republican former national security officials?? That seems like a very unlikely number to come up randomly — it sounds like some type of public relations number, intended to show that a “critical mass” (and not one less!) of militaristic, rabid neocon types are concerned about our nation’s future. Really? Since most of these individuals were involved a series of disastrous wars (at least from Vietnam onward), wasting trillions of dollars, killing many Americans soldiers & crippling (physically and mentally) for life many more, and destroying civilian populations in foreign countries . . . oh, I get it, now they have seen the “light of day”, have finally come to their senses, and I am so thankful they are speaking out to provide guidance for “the less enlightened” among us. Makes perfect sense. We should be grateful.
A rabid Donald Trump supporter is spamming this comment section with complete reproductions of articles — a copyright violation — form other sites in an attempt to dilute the discussion of Trump. Scroll past “Victoria Boulevard” to read the actual conversation.
Mona, look in the mirror. You have matched Victoria Boulevard post for post.
You can’t count. Moreover, I do not commit copyright violations. Additionally, my comments are on-topic.
It is extremely silly to draw such labored attention to each new idiot that slobbers down the pike her.
I engage with these morons more than I should too, but your “public announcements” come off as nothing but a really dumb rhetorical move. What in the world is the point of this? It is very condescending to these imaginary “new readers” who frankly probably avoid the comments sections like the plague, and you aren’t helping with this stuff.
And I say that as somebody who agrees with you about most of what is covered here, and trusts your good intentions.
oops correction: “slobbers down the pike her”
is more poetic than I intended.
“her” should be “here”
Hillary Clinton is a war criminal, racketeer
“US Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is an exposed racketeer, a war criminal who should never be elected president of the United States, American author and radio host Stephen Lendman says.
During her nomination speech on Thursday at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Clinton said Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is not qualified to be the commander-in-chief of the US military because of his volatile temperament.
She tried to scare the Democratic National Convention audience with the image of a President Trump having the power to call a nuclear strike.
“A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons,” the former secretary of state said before accepting the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.
Commenting on this Lendman said, “Donald Trump has a lot to answer for in terms of his own policy. He’s no solution to America’s problems. But he has one redeeming feature: He’s not Hillary Clinton.”
“Hillary Clinton is a recklessly dangerous woman. ‘A war goddess,’ I call her, an exposed racketeer. The FBI has let her off the hook, despite her committing high crimes along with her husband, Bill,” she told Press TV on Saturday.
“In the 1990s, we had a cold Clinton crime family presidency. Do we want a second one? Elected in Nonmember 2016, taking office in January 2017. Do we want four more years of Clinton and Clinton?” he asked.
“And make no mistake. It’s a crime family. The evidence is overwhelming, whether it’s geopolitical, whether it’s personnel. You know the Clinton Foundation is a money laundering self-enrichment racket posing as a charitable NGO, stuffing millions of dollars, multi millions of dollars in tax havens to make the Clintons super rich, declining to do good for the world,” the analyst stated.
“Well, Trump is right when he calls Hillary ‘Crooked Hillary’. He should call her Super Crooked Hillary, because that’s what she is,” he said.
“Trump has no public record to judge him on. He’s a businessman. He’s a billionaire, a real estate tycoon, involved in other businesses, but his record is not public. So there’s not really much we know about him, except of what comes out of him in public,” the journalist observed. ”
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2016/07/30/477693/Hillary-Clinton-war-criminal-racketeer
and her support for a coup in the Honduras constitutes treason
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/9/hillary-clinton-honduraslatinamericaforeignpolicy.html
Hillary Clinton deserves credit for poverty and instability in Haiti
In Haiti, the first state ever founded by freed black slaves, citizens are still fighting for political and economic freedom today, largely due to the influence of Bill and Hillary Clinton.
In 2011, Wikileaks published US State Department cables from 2008 and 2009 confirming that State Department officials were meeting behind closed doors with Haitian business leaders, plotting on how to stop the Haitian government from implementing a 37-cent hike in the minimum wage from $0.24 an hour to $0.61 cents an hour.
http://usuncut.com/politics/hillary-clinton-foreign-policy-record/
Hillary Clinton’s war crimes are unforgivable. No real progressive could ever support her.
Zach Cartwright | June 3, 2016
“Hillary Clinton made headlines with a June speech in San Diego casting Donald Trump as unfit for the presidency due to the damage his incendiary rhetoric could cause. Simultaneously, the former Secretary of State sought to convince the California audience that she was the safer choice in foreign policy matters.
But when taking a closer look at US foreign policy under her leadership as the nation’s top diplomat, it’s obvious that Clinton could potentially be as disastrous as Trump if given the position of Commander-in-Chief.
Here are a few examples of countries where conditions are tremendously worse as a result of Hillary Clinton’s policies.
In an April interview with Fox News, President Barack Obama, reflecting on his 7 years as Commander-in-Chief, admitted that ousting Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi was the biggest mistake of his presidency. While Obama took responsibility for the failure of Libya in that interview, he relied on the input of Hillary Clinton, his Secretary of State at the time.
In March of 2011, Clinton met with Mahmoud Jibril, who was leading the opposition to Gaddafi. As the New York Times reported, Clinton asked Jibril a series of questions about how his coalition planned to fill the power vacuum that would be created by Gaddafi’s ouster. And in the end, it was Clinton who convinced the White House that deposing Gaddafi was the right thing to do:
Her conviction would be critical in persuading Mr. Obama to join allies in bombing Colonel Qaddafi’s forces. In fact, Mr. Obama’s defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, would later say that in a “51-49” decision, it was Mrs. Clinton’s support that put the ambivalent president over the line.
The 2011 NATO-led invasion of Libya that took place after Clinton’s visit has since allowed extremist groups to seize power in an unprecedented takeover of much of the country over the last five years.
In 2014, the US State Department shut down the US embassy in Libya and issued a travel warning urging all Americans to stay away from the country. Roughly one year ago, Libya’s central bank, the last remaining institution in the failed state, was forced to flee to a city in the Eastern region of the country due to rebel forces encroaching on the bank’s facility in Tripoli, the capital. Libya is now a haven for terrorists, with thousands of ISIS soldiers using the country as a staging ground.
In an interview on CBS, Clinton laughed about Gaddafi’s slaying, proudly exclaiming, “We came, we saw, he died.”
http://usuncut.com/politics/hillary-clinton-foreign-policy-record/
Black Lives Matter is joining the fight against deportations—and it could be a game changer
Trump Says Americans Could Be Tried, Held in Guantanamo
People have died… Yeah sure let us send Americans to Guantanamo! Trumplestiltskining human rights. He can beat Obama’s record.
In Seattle, Jewish and Muslim Business Partners Agree to Dump Trump
How a Jew, or especially a Muslim, could ever have supported Trump is incomprehensible, but that attack on the Khans appears to have been a bridge too far.
US military prepares new offensives in Syria and Iraq
By Peter Symonds
12 August 2016
“Even as tensions are rising with Russia in Eastern Europe and China in Asia, the United States has launched a new war in Libya and is preparing a major military escalation in the Middle East, nominally directed against Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
In an interview yesterday with USA Today, Air Force Lieutenant General Jeffrey Harrigan confirmed that the US-led coalition is planning coordinated offensives against two ISIS-held cities—Mosul in northern Iraq and Raqqa in Syria. “If we are able to do simultaneous operations and synchronise the Mosul piece and the Raqqa piece, think about the problem that generates for [ISIS],” he said.
Harrigan, who recently took over command of air operations in the Middle East, said coalition war planes had been striking targets in both cities in recent months. “The team is focussed on force generation to try and make that simultaneous operation occur, because we see huge benefits from it,” he said, referring to the build-up of anti-ISIS ground forces in Iraq and Syria.
USA Today reported US troops are already operating extensively inside Syria, stating: “US Special Operations Forces are helping to identify and organise Syrian rebel groups into a force that can take on the Islamic State [ISIS]. The force now numbers about 30,000 and had generated some surprisingly early successes, particularly around the northern city of Manbij.”
Within Iraq, US-led preparations have been underway for months to retake Mosul, the country’s second largest city, which still has a population of up to one million despite a mass exodus. Iraqi government forces last month seized the Qayyarah air base, 60 kilometres south of Mosul, which is being transformed into a major hub of operations for the upcoming offensive.
The US has funnelled in around 400 troops to carry out repairs, as well as to provide military advice, logistics, communications and intelligence to Iraqi ground troops, which have already begun seizing villages and towns to the south of Mosul. The air base’s runways are being upgraded and extended to allow large military transports to land, along with US and Iraqi fighters and helicopter gunships.
The anti-ISIS forces preparing for the Mosul offensive consist of an unstable coalition of Kurdish peshmerga militia, regular Iraqi army troops and Shiite-dominated Popular Mobilisation Forces, which are notorious for their atrocities against Sunni civilians during the battle for Fallujah. Already concerns are being raised about the potential for sectarian fighting and human rights abuses once Mosul is recaptured.
Lieutenant General Sean MacFarland, the top US commander in Syria and Iraq, declared this week: “We are going to try to get Mosul back as fast as we can. It’s one million people living under an oppressive rule under terrible conditions… The Iraqi security forces around Qayyarah are in a position now to begin that process and we’ll try to hurry that along as fast as we possibly can but putting an exact time on it, I’d rather not.”
MacFarland, who is due to be replaced, declared the US was winning the war against ISIS, reducing their territory in Iraq by more than half. “Although it’s not a measure of success and it’s difficult to confirm, we estimate that over the past 11 months we’ve killed about 25,000 enemy figures.” He provided no estimate of the number of civilians killed in the fighting or in US air raids.
The general also downplayed the role of US military forces, declaring they were only playing an “advise and assist” role at a distance and in specific locations. It is clear, however, that US troops are increasingly involved closer to the frontlines.
In an article late last month, the Washington Post reported: “While US Special Operations forces have already been advising elite counterterrorism troops and Kurdish peshmerga forces at their lower levels, the Qayyarah mission marks the first time since 2014 that US forces have advised Iraqi army battalions in the field.”
A small team of American combat engineers accompanied Iraqi forces on July 20 to advise on the task of constructing a temporary bridge over the Tigris River to the southeast of the town of Qayyarah. According to the Post, the US troops spent a few hours in the field in what was a “narrowly targeted mission, with limited battlefield exposure”—a model for “the restricted role that American commanders are planning for US ground forces in the Mosul operation.”
US generals are clearly concerned that American battlefield deaths will fuel anti-war sentiment at home, but have not ruled out putting US troops on the frontline. “In private, other senior officers are even more blunt, making reference to troops they lost in earlier Iraq deployments. This time, they will place Americans in the thick of fighting only if the overall mission is at risk,” the newspaper stated.
The timing of offensives in Iraq and Syria is also being driven by political considerations. Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party are increasingly attacking Republican nominee Donald Trump as being unfit to be commander-in-chief of US forces. A substantial military victory in the Middle East, no matter what the cost in Syrian and Iraqi lives, has the potential to boost Clinton.
The issue is clearly being discussed in Washington circles. An article on the Politico website on August 1, entitled “Get ready for Obama’s ‘October Surprise’ in Iraq,” suggested that “the American public could be treated to a major US-led military victory in Iraq this fall, just as voters are deciding who will be the nation’s next president.”
The article cited unnamed senior US officers who insisted the Mosul offensive’s timing was not bound up with politics, but it did not rule out the possibility. “If Mosul is retaken, it would both mark a political triumph for Barack Obama and likely benefit his party’s nominee at the polls, Hillary Clinton, undercutting Republican claims that the Obama administration has failed to take the gloves off against Islamic State,” it noted.
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/08/12/mosu-a12.html
You appear to be spamming comments with wholesale copyright violations. All or most of articles from other sites cannot be reposted. A fair use excerpt and link, however, is not a copyright violation.
So sue me, you unhinged stalker.
People have been banned for copyright violations.
Mona’s ok. i appreciate the info – which is very good info – but it risks the validity/reputation of theintercept and people on this board who do their own research – especially Mona who is quite good.
Perhaps if you c/p a couple sentences and put them in a blockquote, made a statement about the issue, then the link, because such references in that format can garner a better welcome and appreciation to the board here – as wild as it may be at times.
thank you for reading
have a wonderful day
WikiLeaks offers $20,000 reward over murder of DNC staffer linked to email leak
By E.P. Bannon
12 August 2016
WikiLeaks head Julian Assange has offered $20,000 for information leading to a conviction of the killer of a young staffer for the Democratic National Committee. The staffer, a 27-year-old named Seth Rich, was shot twice on his way home in Washington, D.C. around 4 a.m. on July 10. He died later in the hospital.
The circumstances of the murder remain murky. According to D.C. police, the murder was the result of a botched armed robbery. Strangely, Rich still had his wallet, cell phone and watch on his person when his body was found. Because Rich was in charge of DNC voter expansion data and had access to a wide range of information about the inner workings of the Democratic party, some believe that his murder may have been politically motivated.
Though the details of his death are still very unclear, the fact that Assange himself has weighed in so heavily on the case is significant. In a recent interview with Dutch television station Nieuwsurr with Assange via Skype, he openly questioned the official narrative regarding Rich’s death:
Assange: Whistleblowers go to significant efforts to get us material and often significant risks. There was a 27-year old that works for the DNC who was shot in the back … murdered … for unknown reasons as he was walking down the street in Washington.
Host: That was just a robbery wasn’t it?
Assange: No. There’s no finding.
Host: What are you suggesting?
Assange: I am suggesting that our sources take risks and they become concerned to see things occurring like that.
Host: But was he one of your sources, then?
Assange: We don’t comment on who our sources are.
Host: But why make the suggestion?
Assange: Because we have to understand how high the stakes are in the United States and that our sources face serious risks … that’s why they come to us so we can protect their anonymity.
The announcement by Wikileaks comes after the Washington, D.C. Police Department issued a $25,000 reward for information that could solve the case. A police spokesperson said there is “no evidence at this time” that linked Rich’s murder to any other ongoing case. The same spokesperson went on to say, “We are very pleased if anyone is going to assist us with the giving of reward money.”
It is now suspected that Rich may have been behind the leak of 20,000 emails from the Democratic National Committee server that established widespread corruption and anti-democratic practices within the party. In particular, the leak revealed that the DNC had specifically targeted the Sanders campaign and undermined it in order to assist Hillary Clinton’s rise to the nomination. It also showed the corrupt funding practices within the Democratic Party.
One scheme was the Hillary Victory Fund (HVF), which appealed for hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions for Clinton. The fund could accept checks as large as $356,100, with individuals limited to $10,000 per state party, $33,400 for the DNC and $2,700 for Clinton’s campaign. Most of the funds, however, were channeled into the Clinton campaign and the DNC.
A new revelation concerning emails from her personal server has shown that Clinton has consistently done the bidding of her Wall Street donors, while her office gave out high-level positions for those connected to the Clinton Foundation. In particular, one email directly connects her financial backer Morgan Stanley to her diplomatic maneuvers in China.
What is equally significant is the tone of the response from the major corporate news outlets to Assange’s intervention. The headlines hardly contain impartiality, calling his statements a “conspiracy theory” deserving of a “tin foil hat.” Others describe Assange as attempting to “politicize” Rich’s death, with the Daily Mail referring to it as an “outrage.” Several papers even allege that the story has gained interest due to the machinations of Clinton’s Republican opponents in an attempt to smear anyone questioning the official narrative. Clearly, the press is working overtime to discredit Assange’s remarks.
The political fallout from the DNC and personal server leaks has deeply worried the Democratic Party. In an effort to distance Clinton from the party machinations, DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz stepped down on the eve of the convention in Philadelphia. The political officialdom is now making every effort to downplay the significance of the revelations, while officially implicating Moscow and moving to crush whistleblowers.
The corporate media immediately set about painting the DNC email leak as the result of Russian intelligence, as part of a broader campaign aimed at whipping up pro-war sentiment. The statement in which hacker “Guccifer 2.0” claimed sole responsibility for accessing the DNC servers has since disproved such claims.
One might also note that investigative journalist Michael Hastings died in a fiery car crash in June of 2013 while working on a story concerning CIA director John Brennan. An email obtained by WikiLeaks alleged “Brennan is behind the witch-hunts of investigative journalists” who reveal government secrets. The correspondence was from an internal communication within Stratfor, a global intelligence company with connections to the US state, with a subject line stating that the message was for internal use only and should not be forwarded.
Assange himself has been the target of a six-year-long politically motivated witch-hunt over an alleged sexual assault in Sweden. Originally consisting of four allegations, three have since been dropped due to lack of evidence and a five-year statute of limitations. The case has been spearheaded by the United States, likely in the hopes a conviction against him would allow for his transfer to the American judicial system. Assange has been forced to seek political asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, unable to leave due to fear of arrest.
Some sections of the American ruling elite have begun to argue for more barbaric methods in dealing with their political opponents. Bob Becker, a Democratic Party strategist and pundit for CNN, has called for Assange’s illegal assassination. Having previously denounced Assange as a “traitor” (despite the fact Assange is an Australian national), he bluntly stated, “Just kill the son of a bitch.”
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/08/12/wiki-a12.html
Hillary Clinton Is Living Proof That Crime Pays in Spectacular Ways
“There’s something darkly instructive about Chelsea Manning’s attempted suicide just a day after the FBI announced that it would not recommend charges against Hillary Clinton.
Manning, as you might recall, is the Benedict Arnold turncoat who exposed U.S. war crimes and is now serving 35 solitary years in a military prison in Kansas. This venomous traitor should not be confused with Mrs. Clinton, who created a private e-mail server to avoid FOIA requests, shared classified material with her posse of yesmen, sold her influence in the State Department to the highest bidders, attempted to destroy evidence of criminal wrongdoing, and will almost certainly be our next president.
The media has focused primarily on how Clinton mishandled sensitive or classified material, but the worst of her crimes have remained hidden from the public. As Politico points out, there’s a very good reason why Hillary deleted thousands of “private” emails:
There’s an email silence in June 2010, when Hillary Clinton was in South America for a series of high-level meetings. According to her memoir, “by coincidence” Bill was in Bogota, Colombia, apparently for Clinton Foundation work, at the same time she was in the country. Also there with Bill was Frank Giustra, one of the Clinton Foundation’s largest contributors. Bill, Hillary and Giustra reportedly had dinner together, and the next morning, Bill met with Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe, followed immediately by Hillary’s meeting with Uribe. In the weeks that follow, Giustra’s companies scored concessions from the Colombian government on matters ranging from oil to timber.
The Clinton Foundation is a massive money-laundering scheme. Money goes in, State Department weapons deals come out.
Sorry, but it’s not a vast right-wing conspiracy: The Clintons have been up to their eyeballs in shady deals and corruption scandals since their humble country bumpkin beginnings in Arkansas, which strangely enough was the staging ground for a massive CIA cocaine drug smuggling operation while Bill was governor. Coincidence or fate?
Enough already. When you’re taking millions of dollars from the Saudis, and private rides on the “Lolita Express”, you have no business being anywhere near the White House.
Just imagine the nightmare before us: Four years of Hillary Clinton lecturing the rest of the world about human rights and the rule of law; four years of Libya-style “humanitarian interventions”; four years of Boss Tweed in a pantsuit.
Crime doesn’t pay? Tell that to the Clintons. Lie, cheat and steal and maybe one day you can be president, too.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/riley-waggaman/hillary-clinton-is-living_b_10862558.html
New Emails Shed Further Light On Hillary Clinton’s Corruption As Secretary Of State
by Evan Blake — August 12, 2016
“On Tuesday, the conservative legal group Judicial Watch released 296 pages of State Department records spanning Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. These records include 44 email exchanges that were deliberately withheld from the 55,000 pages of emails that Clinton gave the State Department for their investigation into her use of a private email server.
The newly released emails, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, implicate Clinton in incriminating conflict-of-interest deals, in which Clinton’s aides worked to hire a Clinton Foundation associate and provided political connections for at least one of the Foundation’s wealthy donors. Another email directly connects the finance giant and Clinton backer Morgan Stanley to her diplomatic maneuvers in China.
Upon being appointed secretary of state by Obama in 2009, Clinton sent a letter to State Department Designated Agency Ethics Official James H. Thessin that read in part, “For the duration of my appointment as secretary if I am confirmed, I will not participate personally and substantially in any particular matter involving specific parties in which The William J. Clinton Foundation (or the Clinton Global Initiative) is a party or represents a party.”
The most recent email leak exposes this as a complete lie, as Clinton continually did the bidding of her Wall Street donors, while her office secured prestigious positions for those connected to the Clinton Foundation.
The most damning email exchange revealed Tuesday took place in February 2009, between Hillary Clinton and Stephen Roach, then chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia.
Shortly before Clinton began her first diplomatic tour in Asia, Roach sent her a copy of his upcoming testimony before Congress, requesting a meeting with her in person and saying, “Best regards and good luck on this important and timely trip.” Clinton then instructed one of her top aides, Huma Abedin, to set up a meeting between herself and Roach in Beijing, where Roach traveled on February 19 and 20.
In his statements before Congress, Roach condemned US efforts “to criticize Chinese monetary policy or enact trade barriers,” according to Judicial Watch.
Days later, evidently after meeting with Roach, Clinton pressured Beijing to continue its massive purchases of US Treasury notes, which by that time already exceeded $700 billion. As the World Socialist Web Site wrote at the time, “On her first overseas trip since being tapped by President Barack Obama, […] Clinton assumed the role of an official high-pressure bond saleswoman.”
Over the course of her political career, Clinton has received over $550,000 from PACs affiliated with Morgan Stanley, as well as employees of the firm, making the firm her sixth biggest donor. In 2014, Morgan Stanley donated over $25 million to the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), a subsidiary of the Clinton Foundation.
The other significant email exchanges involve Doug Band, a Clinton Foundation official and longtime personal advisor to former President Bill Clinton, and Hillary Clinton’s former top aides at the State Department, Abedin and Cheryl Mills.
While still working for the State Department in 2012, Abedin received a special designation that enabled her to hold positions at the Clinton Foundation and at Teneo, a global advisory firm founded by Band in 2011 with assistance from the Clintons. During her time with Teneo, she earned upwards of $15,000 per month as a consultant.
On April 22, 2009, three months after Hillary Clinton was sworn in as secretary of state, Band received an email from a source whose name was redacted by the State Department. The email, titled “A favor…” reads, “I really appreciated the opportunity to go on the Haiti trip; it was an eye-opening experience seeing both the depravity and the promise of that island.” The rest of the email was entirely redacted.
Ten minutes later, Band forwarded the email to Abedin and Mills, writing, “Important to take care of _____,” to which Abedin immediately replied, “We have all had him on our radar. Personnel has been sending him options.”
The Clintons and the Clinton Foundation have a long history in Haiti. During his time as president, Bill Clinton imposed three years of devastating economic sanctions against the country, in an effort to destabilize the military junta. With the failure of this policy, Clinton sent Marines to Haiti to restore Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the presidency. During Aristide’s term, Clinton demanded Haiti’s adherence to brutal IMF austerity policies, while cracking down on Haitian migrants trying to flee the devastated country to the US.
In the immediate aftermath of the 2010 Haitian earthquake, which killed upwards of 300,000 people, Clinton was dispatched as a UN special envoy and co-chairman of the Interim Haiti Recovery Committee to oversee the international aid and investment efforts in the country. Under his watch, there has been a continual looting of the country, with investment designed to exploit the country’s low-paid working class.
At the time that the email was sent, Band was a paid employee of the CGI, which he helped found in 2005. Clearly, the redacted associate of Band and the Clinton Foundation was sent to Haiti, and upon their return may have gotten a position within the Obama administration in a blatant conflict of interest. The State Department deleted details about the associate, including his name and the outcome of the job referral, when it turned over the emails to Judicial Watch.
Another incriminating email exchange released Tuesday was written on April 25, 2009, and is less heavily redacted. In this one, Band writes to Abedin and Mills, “We need Gilbert chagoury to speak to the substance person re lebanon. As you know, he’s key guy there and to us and is loved in lebanon. Very imp[ortant].”
Abedin replied, “Its jeff feltman. I’m sure he knows him. I’ll talk to jeff,” referring to Jeffrey Feltman, the American ambassador to Lebanon at the time. Band quickly responded, “Better if you call him. Now preferable. This is very important. ____________ He’s awake I’m sure.”
Gilbert Chagoury is a billionaire Nigerian-Lebanese construction magnate and friend of former President Bill Clinton who was closely connected to the military dictatorship of Sani Abacha in Nigeria during the mid-1990s. Chagoury was convicted of money laundering in Switzerland in 2000 and paid a $66 million fine in a plea deal. In 2009, his company pledged $1 billion to the Clinton Global Initiative, and he has personally donated between $1 and $5 million, according to the Clinton Foundation’s website.
Seeking to curry favor with the Clintons, a broad swath of the international corporate and financial elite, including 168 individuals and organizations that have each given more than $1 million, donate to the Clinton Foundation. Some of the most influential donors include defense contractors such as Boeing and Booz Allen Hamilton, finance giants Barclays and Goldman Sachs, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Foreign governments, in particular the reactionary Persian Gulf monarchies, are some of the largest and most frequent donors to the Clinton Foundation. Last year, these included Saudi Arabia ($10 to $25 million), Kuwait, ($5 to $10 million), Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates ($1 to $5 million).
These favors were handsomely returned. The State Department approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to Clinton Foundation donors while Clinton was at the helm.
The most recent Clinton email leaks—following those that detailed her numerous war crimes committed as secretary of state—reiterate Clinton’s thoroughgoing corruption and her political role as a lackey for Wall Street and the Pentagon.
The Clinton Foundation, which has raised roughly $2 billion since its inception 19 years ago, has been the vehicle through which the Clintons have amassed a vast fortune of over $111 million, placing them in the wealthiest 0.1 percent of society. If elected president in November, Hillary Clinton will continue to protect the interests of her fellow multimillionaires and billionaires.”
First published in WSWS.org
Donald Trump is a walking constitutional violation
As the ACLU has explained, Trump’s proposals taken together would violate the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Eighth Amendments to the Constitution. Their analysis here.
Hillary Clinton’s Embrace of Kissinger Is Inexcusable
“Word comes from Politico that Hillary Clinton is courting the endorsement of Henry Kissinger. No surprise. Kissinger and the Clintons go back a ways, to when Bill in the early 1990s sought out Kissinger’s support to pass NAFTA and to, in the words of the economist Jeff Faux, serve as “the perfect tutor for a new Democratic president trying to convince Republicans and their business allies that they could count on him to champion Reagan’s vision.” Hillary has continued the apprenticeship, soliciting Kissinger’s advice and calling him “friend.”
Still, Bernie Sanders, and Sanders supporters and surrogates, should use the Politico story to draw a line, making clear that they will withdraw their support of Clinton if Clinton accepts Kissinger’s endorsement. If Sanders stands for anything, it is the promise of decency and civil equality, qualities that he has worked hard to bestow on Clinton since the Democratic National Convention. By accepting Kissinger’s endorsement, Clinton wouldn’t just be mocking that gift. She’d be sending the clearest signal yet to grassroots peace and social-justice Democrats that her presidency wouldn’t be a “popular front” against Trumpian fascism. It would be bloody business as usual.
Kissinger is a unique monster. He stands not as a bulwark against Donald Trump’s feared recklessness and immorality but as his progenitor. As Richard Nixon’s aide-de-camp, Kissinger helped plan and execute a murderous, illegal foreign policy—in Southeast and South Asia, Southern Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America—as reckless and immoral as anything Trump now portends. Millions died as a result of his actions. Kissinger and Nixon threatened to use nuclear weapons, and, indeed, Kissinger helped inscribe the threat of “limited nuclear war” into doctrine. Kissinger, in the 1970s, not only dug the hole that the greater Middle East finds itself in, but, as an influential cheerleader for both the first Gulf War in 1991 and its 2003 sequel, helped drive the United States into that ditch.
Kissinger’s crimes aren’t just related to covert murder, genocide, and illegal bombing. In 1975, for example, as Gerald Ford’s secretary of state, he
helped Union Carbide set up its chemical plant in Bhopal, India, working with the Indian government and helping secure a loan from the Export-Import Bank of the United States to cover a portion of the plant’s construction. Then, after the plant’s 1984 chemical-leak disaster, Kissinger Associates, the consultancy firm he set up after leaving the State Department, represented Union Carbide, helping to broker, in 1989, a $470 million out-of-court settlement for victims of the spill. The payout was widely condemned as paltry in relation to the scale of the disaster: The spill caused nearly 4,000 immediate deaths and exposed another half a million people to toxic gases. Kissinger Associates is a private company—Kissinger famously quit as chair of the 9/11 Commission so he wouldn’t have to reveal his client list—so the fees it extracted from Union Carbide for this service is unknown. But Bhopal is a good example of the way Kissinger, as a private consultant, profited from the work he did as a public servant (for Kissinger’s role in negotiating the settlement, see the 1988 letter obtained by the environmental reporter Rob Edwards, found here; also, see New York Times reports that Kissinger’s firm had an account with Union Carbide).
Kissinger’s role in helping to create today’s immiserating global economy and structural inequality didn’t start with NAFTA. As Gerald Ford’s secretary of state, Kissinger was key to making sure Saudi Arabia’s and, until its revolution, Iran’s growing mountain of petrodollars were recycled through private banks and arms merchants in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States—undercutting Third World demands that capital be used to fund a more equitable global economy, what was then called a New International Economic Order. Likewise, in Latin America and Eastern Europe, Kissinger Associates profited from what one of its consultants called the “massive sale” of public utilities and industries, a sell-off that, in many countries, was initiated by Kissinger-supported dictators and military regimes (Kissinger’s fudging of the line between public policy and private finance, especially as it relates to the arms trade and petroleum extraction, echoes through many of the controversies of the Clinton Foundation; see David Sirota and Andrew Perez’s reporting, especially “Clinton Foundation Donors Got Weapons Deals from Hillary Clinton’s State Department” and “As Colombian Money Flowed to Clintons, State Department Took No Action to Prevent Labor Violations”). This sell-off was part of the global transformation to what is commonly called “neoliberalism,” and what in this campaign season has come to be known as Clintonism, as opposed to Sanders’s vision of a restored New Deal: the privatization of the world’s political economy and, in the name of “free its transformation into a series of speculative bubbles, cyanide-spewing open-pit mines, and toxic spills.
Keep an eye out for Kissinger’s response to Hillary Clinton’s overture, for over the long course of his public life he’s served as a good bellwether. With every right-wing lurch of the foreign-policy establishment, Kissinger lurched with it: supporting Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush. It is to this list that Clinton now asks to be added.
Sanders shouldn’t wait for Kissinger’s answer. He should use the Politico story to proactively repudiate, as he did during the primary debates, Kissingerism, and demand that the Clinton campaign stop sniffing around for Kissinger’s nod. The point of such a move wouldn’t be to hold Kissinger responsible for all that is wrong with US foreign and economic policy. There are many fingerprints, not just Kissinger’s, on America’s imperial crimes, and Clinton has the backing of a large number of bipartisan war criminals and the intellectual authors of a good portion of the world’s misery.
Rather, making Kissinger a deal-breaker would recommit the Sanders movement to its original promise (unfortunately more often implied than explicitly stated in Sanders’s primary criticism of Clinton) of breaking this vicious cycle between war and “free trade,” helping to clarify how the mutually dependent relationship between militarism and neoliberalism was institutionalized during Bill Clinton’s presidency and affirmed during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.
Polls are moving in Hillary Clinton’s favor, which means that the danger this country—and the world—faces is not fascism but the leveraging of the fear of fascism for more horrible economic policies and more war. As Bill Kristol tweeted, “When Dems are finished running vs Trump’s foreign policy, they’ll be more hawkish than me.”
https://www.thenation.com/article/hillary-clintons-embrace-of-kissinger-is-inexcusable/
Trump might pick John Bolton for Secretary of State
Trumps’ supporters are such dupes. He sends out enough mixed (bullshit) messages for them to project anti-militarism and foreign policy restraint, if that’s what they want to believe.
But he was just on the Hugh Hewitt show where he said this:
John Bolton is one of the most unhinged, warmongering neoconservatives on the planet —Dick Cheney loves him. Trump supporters are such idiots, however, they’ll no doubt find some justification for that, or way to ignore it.
John Bolton as fucking head diplomat would be one of the most likely people to get us into innumerable wars.
Spot on! To believe that Trump’s non-interventionist rhetoric is genuine is a grand delusion. I hope this author doesn’t even begin to truly entertain it.
It is simply political opportunism. A wedge position for Trump to distinguish himself from Clinton’s thirst for intervention. Problem is, is that Trump is an aggressor by nature. People need to spend less time looking at what Trump the campaigner says, and more time on his past comments when he lacked the political calculus. For example:
– Trump, Time to Get Tough, p. 87 [2011]
That is not the strategy of a non-interventionist. Hell, No. 6 floats uncomfortably close to the Bush doctrine of preemptive strike. The closest Trump gets to non-intervention is not from some moral or principled perspective, but from a business perspective:
Trump, Time to Get Tough, p. 14
You want our help, pay up! To Trump, life is one big monetary “deal.”
PS: source is Google books. Hell no, I didn’t buy it…
Of course she doesn’t. Her writing has been smart and sensible.
Trump has said some shit that appeals to be paleo-conservative, Buchananite, isolationist wing of conservatism. He is not himself an isolationist (or, if he is, he’s said enough things to contradict such a position it can’t be known for sure), but those who are can project that belief into him.
We know what Clinton would like to do (the bidding of Wall St.); we don’t know what she could do as she won’t be an absolute monarch and the congress has not been elected yet. Trump? Who knows what he could or would do; here you not only have congress and the supremes but the man himself, not the clown act he portrays on stage; I’m not at all sure he knows. He may be brilliant at what he does but he has never done this before, not even been a town councilor. What a mess you have got us in Ollie. Thank god for the checks and balances and universal corruption in the US government and ruling classes.
The US pull out of NATO – please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please!!!
50 happy years later… …OMG! The Russians didn’t invade us and eat all out babies and send us to the gulags like Uncle Scam said they would!!! All those nukes and weapons were a waste of our money just to protect America from decent peace-loving people putting an end to their greedy imperialist shit!
Can the US pull the fuck out of everywhere else and shove its fat head up its even fatter arse and just fuck off for a change? What a happier place it would be.
Tech Companies Apple, Twitter, Google, and Instagram Collude to Defeat Trump
“There is no such thing as Pro-Trump free speech as Clinton corporate allies serve up a carefully curated view of the campaign”
By Liz Crokin • 08/12/16 8:30am
“My dad always told me that conservative candidates have to work twice as hard as their liberal opponents to win elections because they’re fighting two opponents: the Democratic Party and the media.
The usual suspects from left-leaning major media outlets like The New York Times, MSNBC, CNN and even entertainment networks are doing everything in their power to ensure a Clinton victory. Look no further than to Wolf Blitzer mincing around and drinking wine at the Democratic convention, celebrating Hillary’s nomination. But the propaganda skewing this election runs much deeper than just the media: our iPhones, iPads, social media networks, Google and even video games are all in the tank for Hillary Clinton—and it’s chilling.
I began looking into how strong the bias and censorship runs in these forums after I did an interview on the pro-Trump podcast, MAGA. The show’s host, Mark Hammond, was disappointed Apple wouldn’t run his show without an “explicit” warning. Hammond’s podcast didn’t contain content that would be deemed explicit under Apple’s policy, and most other shows in the News & Politics category aren’t labeled as such.
On June 18, Hammond talked to Sandra, a representative from Apple. She explained that, since the description of his show is pro-Trump, his show is explicit in nature—because the subject matter is Donald Trump. So, an Apple employee concluded the Republican presidential candidate is explicit.
iTunes has dozens of podcasts discussing Osama Bin Laden and Adolf Hitler—none of which is marked explicit. I encouraged Hammond to contact Apple again, via email to their podcast support team. Within 48 hours he received a response from “Tim,” who informed Hammond that his podcast would be updated to “clean” within 24 hours.
Further digging on Apple revealed more evidence that the computer giant is feeding users pro-Hillary and anti-Trump propaganda.
Over the past year, Apple twice refused to publish a satirical Clinton Emailgate game, “Capitol HillAwry,” claiming it was “offensive” and “mean spirited” even though the game’s developer, John Matze, cited in communications with Apple that the game fits the standards of Apple’s own satire policy. Apple has, however, approved dozens of games poking fun at Donald Trump—including a game called “Dump Trump,” which depicts the GOP nominee as a giant turd.
On July 25, Breitbart exposed this blatant double standard and favoritism toward Clinton. A few days after the article was released, Apple caved and published Capitol HillAwry, 15 months after Matze’s first attempt to go live.
While it’s commendable that Apple resolved both situations, Trump supporters and conservative users should never have faced such biased treatment in the first place.
Around the same time I was a guest on MAGA, a friend complained to me about how biased his Apple News feed is against Trump. I set up an Apple News account on my iPhone.
First step: select an outlet. Fox News. Conservative. But my news feed? Liberal.
And if there are articles above the fold from more right-leaning sites? They paint Trump in a negative light and Hillary in a positive light. Of all the channels listed in the Apple News politics section, only two of the 16 arguably lean right—the rest are reliably left-wing.
This has, of course, been pointed out before, and anyone with an iPhone or iPad can go to Apple News to determine on his or her own if Apple is pushing leftist propaganda. Apple claims not to endorse candidates, but their actions suggest otherwise, and some of their executives—including CEO Tim Cook—actively support Clinton’s campaign. Buzzfeed recently obtained an invitation to a private $50,000-per-plate fundraiser Cook is hosting for Clinton with his Apple colleague, Lisa Jackson, at the end of this month.
Apple isn’t the only corporation doing Clinton’s bidding. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said Clinton made a deal with Google and that the tech giant is “directly engaged” in her campaign. It’s been widely reported Clinton hired Eric Schmidt—chairman of Alphabet, the parent company of Google—to set up a tech company called The Groundwork. Assange claims this was to ensure Clinton had the “engineering talent to win the election.” He also pointed out that many members of Clinton’s staff have worked for Google, and some of her former employees now work at Google.
So it should come as no surprise that there have been multiple reports accusing Google of manipulating searches to bury negative stories about Clinton. SourceFed details how Google alters its auto-complete functions to paint Clinton in a positive light.
For example, when you type “Hillary Clinton cri” into other engines like Yahoo! or Bing, the most popular autofills are “Hillary Clinton criminal charges” but in Google it’s “Hillary Clinton crime reform.” Google denies they changed their algorithm to help Clinton, and insists the company does not favor any candidate. They also claim their algorithms don’t show predicted queries that are offensive or disparaging.
But Google has gotten into hot water on multiple occasions for connecting Trump to Adolf Hitler. In June, when users searched “when Hitler was born” it generated the expected information on Hitler but also an image of Trump. In July, searches for Trump’s book, Crippled America, returned images of Adolf Hitler’s manifesto Mein Kempf. Google has since fixed both—but again, why do these issues always conveniently disparage Trump and help Clinton?
Twitter is another culprit. The company has gotten a lot of slack for banning conservatives and Trump supporters such as Breitbart’s Milo Yiannopoulos and, most recently, rapper Azealia Banks after she came out in support of Trump. Twitter has provided vague answers as to why conservative voices have been banned while they’ve allowed other users to call for the killing of cops.
Just yesterday, Buzzfeed revealed that the social media giant’s top executive personally protected the President from seeing critical messages last year. “In 2015, then-Twitter CEO Dick Costolo secretly ordered employees to filter out abusive and hateful replies to President Barack Obama.”
This year, Twitter isn’t just banning conservatives—the platform also changed its algorithms to promote Clinton while giving negative exposure to Trump.
The founders of some of the most popular pro-Trump Twitter handles—including @USAforTrump2016 and @WeNeedTrump—insist Twitter is censoring their content. They’ve pointed out that Twitter changes trending hashtags associated with negative tweets about Clinton (which has been reported before). On August 4, shortly after the hashtag “HillaryAccomplishment” began trending, it was taken over by anti-Clinton users, who used it to mention Benghazi or Emailgate. Eric Spracklen, @USAforTrump2016 founder, noticed the hashtag was quickly changed—pluralized to #HillarysAccomplishments.
“They take away the hashtag that has negative tweets for Clinton and replace it with something that doesn’t so the average person doesn’t see what was really trending,” Spracklen said. “This happens every day.”
Jack Murphy, founder of @WeNeedTrump, says followers complain they often aren’t able to retweet his pro-Trump tweets.
Instagram has also banned accounts that depict Clinton in a negative light. In June, a conservative comedy group called Toughen Up America was banned with no warning or explanation. Last week, the popular Australian-based graffiti artist, Lushsux, was banned from Instagram after he posted photos of a bikini-clad Clinton mural he painted.
“I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist with a tin foil hat, but the timing of the Hillary Clinton mural posting and the deletion that ensued can’t just be a coincidence,” he told the Daily Mail Australia. Lushsux has posted photos of way more graphic murals, including a topless Melania Trump and a naked Donald with his package in full sight. These images did not trigger any censorship from Instagram.
Facebook has a long history of shutting down pages and blocking conservative users while promoting progressive voices like Black Lives Matter activists. The problem became so transparent that Sen. John Thune sent a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg asking him to explain their practices.
Facebook denies it discriminates against “any sources of ideological origin” and Zuckerberg did meet with conservatives in an attempt to resolve this issue. While some walked away from the meeting encouraged that Zuckerberg wants to repair their relationship, other prominent conservatives rejected the invitation as a publicity stunt. It should be noted that Facebook employees have donated more to Clinton than to any other candidate.
Many conservatives have come to expect this kind of thing from the mainstream media. CNN, which paints itself as the centrist antidote to right-leaning Fox News and left-leaning MSNBC, has actually been among the most disingenuous offenders during this cycle, fully earning its derisive nickname “Clinton News Network.” For example, as NewsBusters pointed out for just one day, “CNN set aside nearly half of its air time on Wednesday’s New Day to various recent controversies involving the Trump campaign — 1 hour, 24 minutes, and 18 seconds over three hours. By contrast, the program clearly didn’t think much of the Wall Street Journal‘s revelation that the Obama administration secretly airlifted $400 million in cash to Iran. John Berman gave a 27-second news brief to the report, but didn’t mention that the payment was sent on “an unmarked cargo plane.” New Day, therefore, devoted over 187 times more coverage to Trump than to the millions to Iran.”
Another favored CNN trick is to present a “balanced” panel comprised of two Republicans, two Democrats and a host, as they did on the afternoon of July 29, just to name one instance of a hundred. However, the Republican side always features one Trump supporter and one “Never Trump” Republican, with the host grilling the Trump Supporter—often a beleaguered Jeffrey Lord—in what amounts to a 4-on-1. So much for balance.
Right now, CNN has a story on its site called “Which Republicans oppose Trump and why?” There’s no corresponding story about Democrats who oppose Clinton, even though her underdog challenger in the primary lasted far longer and received far more votes than any of Trump’s Republican challengers.
No Republican willing to criticize Trump is too insignificant to merit coverage on CNN. When a minor Christie staffer announced on her personal Facebook that she’d be backing Hillary, she somehow merited a 1200 word story on CNN’s website and euphoric coverage on the air by Brooke Baldwin for “splitting with her party.”
So that’s the traditional media. But this new strand, where one cannot even search for alternative viewpoints amid technology companies who stand to benefit from the free-trade policies and eased immigration regulations of a Clinton presidence, represents a dangerous sea change. There’s absolutely no question the digital forums we use every day are censoring conservatives and favoring Clinton. You can’t simply scroll through photos on Instagram, look for a video game in the App Store or do a quick Google search without being fed anti-Trump and pro-Clinton propaganda.”
Another of Trump’s close advisors, touted to be his running mate just a month or two ago, is lifelong Democrat and 3 Star Lieutenant General Michael Flynn.
Flynn is the guy who was head of the Defense Intelligence Agency when they produced the document predicting the rise of Daesh.The document was declassified a few years ago, and it shows that the US, contrary to what the Gov’t and media will tell you, were fully aware of what arming the “rebels” would lead to..He presented the DIA document to the Obama administration and whoever really is running things, and he was promptly forced from his position..
So when Trump has been saying recently that Obama and Hillary created “isis”…that they are “mvp’s of isis”…he has Michael Flynn backing him up.
Here’s a great piece exposing it all, complete with a downloadable link to the actual declassified document.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-23/secret-pentagon-report-reveals-us-created-isis-tool-overthrow-syrias-president-assad
This article is over a year old,; and has been viewed well over a million times..
Your conspiracy theory suffers from a few factual problems. The report you mention was published in July 2012 less than a month after Flynn took charge of the DIA (in August), and so he had little to do with its preparation. Flynn was an advocate of greater integration of the IC, and as such made many enemies. He took retirement after about two years on the job as a result of his many clashes within the IC. Obama was an ally if anything because he was among those who pushed for greater integration.
Sorry, I was wrong about when he worked there…I really did think I had read that last year sometime..
He did, though, say that he believes that the Government willfully dismissed the reports findings..
In the big picture though, it certainly does not change the gist of my point..
Of course Trump has a point: a small but nonetheless significant portion of the annual defense appropriation is pork in one sense or another. But what neither Trump nor his supporters (see below) appear to comprehend is that there is nothing that the President can do about it, aside from vetoing the entire appropriation bill. That is because the add-ons to the Administration’s budget come from Congress. Various representatives and senators add in amendments to benefit their constituents: their state or local district, or the defense contractor there, or the defense contractor contributing to their campaign.
Years ago there was talk of a line item veto, but it never got anywhere because of the fear that it would give the President too much power. Given that there is no tool available for the President to use to deal with this abuse, perhaps the concerned citizens should focus on defeating the members of Congress who most egregiously engage in this practice. (But I guess that would take some of the steam out of the Trump for Führer campaign)
This is a very common argument one hears from the executive about their inability to affect budgetary decisions made by the legislature, but it is really just an effort to pass the blame onto someone else.
Take for example the “nuclear modernization” program pushed by Obama and whose funding runs through DOD, DOE and the NNSA:
A drastic cut has no security risks; get rid of all the bomber-based nukes, cut down the number of land silo-based nukes, and retain the submarine nukes and toss all the new designs; this would save several hundred billion dollars over the next decade, and Congress would not be able to recreate it via add-ons – if they tried, the whole bill could be vetoed and the Congressmembers could be blamed and forced out of office in the next election, since nukes are generally unpopular.
It’s going to happen, one way or the other; current military budget projects are like the Soviet military spending projections of the Central Committee in the early 1980s – highly unlikely to mean anything a few years from now.
But I think what the defense contractors are worried about is if NATO and the Saudis stop buying U.S.-made weapons systems due to cuts in NATO’s budget or alienation of the Saudis by Trump; hence all the neocons running over to the Hillary camp.
It’d be amusing to get defense contractors to go on the record as to why they haven’t offshored weapons manufacturing to China or India, as has happened with so many other manufacturing jobs in the U.S. . . wouldn’t this mean greater corporate profits due to lower labor costs? Free trade!
This is how the empire ends. . . not with a bang, but a whimper.
Your first statement is in no way supported by what follows. If you doubt what I wrote, I suggest you consult the Constitution, in particular Article I, Section 8.
I absolutely agree with you on the issue of nuclear arms reduction, and that the modernization program is a step in the wrong direction. Much though we now malign him, it was Bill Clinton who pushed for things like the Comprehensive Test Ban treaty, which most nations have signed but was not ratified by the US Senate. His successors have done stupid things like GW Bush’s technically nonsensical nuclear bunker buster and now Obama’s modernization program. But though the executive can propose, only Congress can fund.
No president yet has had the temerity to veto the entire DoD appropriation, because to do so would bring the entire defense establishment to a crashing halt, with large and immediate impact on the economy, not to mention military readiness. Nobody in their right mind would do something that exposes the country to anyone who wanted to attack us, and put hundreds of thousands out of work. Moreover, your proposition that the Congressional representatives would pay with their seats is contrary to experience. For years now Congress has enjoyed single digit popularity ratings among the electorate, but yet incumbents are only rarely thrown out of office. Why? Because people delude themselves into believing that their particular representative is exceptional, that it’s all the other folks who are no good.
Look carefully at your own Congressional or Senatorial representative’s campaign literature and speeches this fall. See if they don’t brag about some military contract, facility or jobs they’ve brought to your state or district. See if they are proposing to cut the DoD budget. Chances are they are part of the problem, and chances are, it will help them get re-elected.
Finally, defense contractors are prohibited by law from offshoring what is termed critical defense technology. Congress might be stupid, but they are not that stupid.
The US are engaged in foreign conflicts, on their own “behalf” or “allied”, for a mere century on a nearly ongoing basis.
One really can’t take Donald serious, who IMHO suffers severely from Tourette Syndrome, while he chucks out one commercial after another.
Donald nor Hillary will get rid of the big-money-funded lobby that dictate US. Politics & foreign policy that cripples our democracy for decades on the go. They are no more then little cogs in the corporate machine, no matter what they promise.
How idealistic Barack’s approach for change might have been, and I still believe that is what he really stands for, he too has been sucked-up into the corporate money making war-machine that will do anything to undermine change.
This indefinite search and appointment of “enemies”, whoever they are as long as they fit the bill even if they have to create them, have become an endemic illness of the US.
If nobody goes to the war…..
Trump has some psych issues, type unknown. The American Psychiatric Association had to caution their members against trying to diagnose him without administering a Mental Status Exam. His delusions of grandeur notwithstanding, he would probably be classified under a non-psychotic disorder, IMO.
“has railed against the political influence of military contractors,…promised a less interventionist foreign policy…has…added… contractors who advocate greater American militarism.”
So? Trump is a pure breed american fascist exactly like hitlery cunton. The US is a fascist regime with a one party rule. It is completely irrelevant which one of the two factions of The Party wins.
that one party are the zionistas who print money to pay military for conquer the planet and rule by TPP?
not the Donald.
GOOD FOR HIM, GOOD FOR US.
Perhaps you never heard of Fort Nonsense?
I think this basically sums up the Intercept’s balanced reporting about the Presidential elections in the US of 2016.
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2016/08/07/20160811_media.jpg
Pity, this used to be quite a good website. Probably to attract readers only. Know the only interesting reads from the Intercept (Greenwald excluded) are the readers’ comments. And they don’t even get paid for their opinion!
Goodbye Intercept
Anyone interested in this?:
Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi Debacle: Arming Jihadists in Libya . . . and Syria
“As U.S. armed forces attack ISIS in Libya, WikiLeaks is poised to remind us that ISIS is in Libya — indeed, that ISIS is ISIS — thanks to disastrous policies championed by Hillary Clinton as President Obama’s secretary of state. Also raised, yet again, is the specter of Mrs. Clinton’s lying to Congress and the American people — this time regarding a matter some of us have been trying for years to get answers about: What mission was so important the United States kept personnel in the jihadist hellhole of Benghazi in 2012?
Specifically, did that mission involve arming the Syrian “rebels” — including al-Qaeda and forces that became ISIS — just as, at Mrs. Clinton’s urging, our government had armed Libyan “rebels” (again, jihadists) to catastrophic effect?”
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/438605/
Your link is dead, here’s the proper one.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/438605/hillary-clinton-wikileaks-benghazi-scandal-arm-syrian-rebels-al-qaeda-isis-libya-turkey
Hillary receiving blame for ISIS’ conquest into Libya is fair game.
But saying that “ISIS is ISIS” because of her policies is ridiculous. ISIS became what it is today because of many reasons, the least of which were State Department “policies.” The invasion destroyed Iraq’s social fabric and gave purpose to Zarqawi who came to Iraq in 2004 and started al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). The occupation organized (Bucca…) and galvanized jihadist recruitment. After Zarqawi’s death, AQI became the islamic state of iraq (ISI) but were pretty much dismantled due to the so-called “Sunni awakening.” ISI gained a second life as a result of Maliki’s political failures (disarming, arresting and marginalizing the Sunnis that had helped drive ISI out of Iraq in the first place) and Assad’s crackdown on protesters creating civil war. Those factors, not Clinton’s policies, are what made ISIS what it is today.
The rest of this article is filled to the brim with speculation.
If the U.S. indeed recklessly armed Syrian groups, who is handing out the arms? It’s not going to be the State Department but the CIA, per usual. The most interesting potential revelations are therefore the role Hillary Clinton had in pushing the Obama administration to hand out arms and what she was aiming for. If she is saying “how about we arm that al Nusrah front!?” then she’s in trouble.
Assuming Assange isn’t blowing smoke, maybe we will be able to perform an autopsy on this article’s accuracy and Hillary’s role!
Nice post. Part of me is thinking that Victoria Blowhard is the latest of Louise Cypher’s monikers, but I guess it’s only the stylistic resemblance, as Blowhard doesn’t seem to be such an over the top apologist for Bibi and his gang.
Or maybe this:
Inside the debate over probing the Clinton Foundation
”
(CNN) — Officials from the FBI and Department of Justice met several months ago to discuss opening a public corruption case into the Clinton Foundation, according to a US official.
At the time, three field offices were in agreement an investigation should be launched after the FBI received notification from a bank of suspicious activity from a foreigner who had donated to the Clinton Foundation, according to the official.”
http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/11/politics/hillary-clinton-state-department-clinton-foundation/index.html
Since you want to get down and dirty, how about this for a story:
Is Something Wrong With Hillary: Bizarre Behavior, Seizure Allegations Raise Doubts About Her Health
“As the presidential campaign enters its final stages, probing questions have emerged about the health condition of Hillary Clinton.
Hillary’ bizarre, erratic behavior on the campaign trail (culminating with last week’s perplexing “short-circuit” comment) has left many wondering whether she is seriously ill. Hillary has at multiple times had convulsions that appear to be seizures on camera, including a series of seemingly inexplicable coughing fits.”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-08-08/something-wrong-hillary-bizarre-behavior-seizure-allegations-raise-doubts-about-her-
she has “congestivitis”.
lack of exercise has allowed poisons to build up in her
she is too old and worn out
aside from being certifiably crazy and pimped out for genocide of Palestinians and wallstreet
Of course, TI is now part of the MSM, and must do a daily pile-on of Donald Trump – because Queen Rag Hillary is pure and honest, and must not be denied her rightful throne…
Quit making excuses for Trump.
He has only himself to blame for he scrutiny he receives.