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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHow did I miss the Uranium One deal?
In case anyone else did too, here is 5,000 words of investigative journalism by the Gray Lady, from a year ago.
At the heart of the tale are several men, leaders of the Canadian mining industry, who have been major donors to the charitable endeavors of former President Bill Clinton and his family. Members of that group built, financed and eventually sold off to the Russians a company that would become known as Uranium One.
Beyond mines in Kazakhstan that are among the most lucrative in the world, the sale gave the Russians control of one-fifth of all uranium production capacity in the United States. Since uranium is considered a strategic asset, with implications for national security, the deal had to be approved by a committee composed of representatives from a number of United States government agencies. Among the agencies that eventually signed off was the State Department, then headed by Mr. Clintons wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium Ones chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.
And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.
I've always suspected Good Ol' Bill's ethics, right back to the beginning.
[center]
Good Ol' Bill, picking up some early pointers at the monsters' table.[/center]
haikugal
(6,476 posts)AxionExcel
(755 posts)MisterP
(23,730 posts)global1
(25,225 posts)Are they kind of a way to pay off someone for services rendered but make it look like it is an honorable fee for inviting a person to speak and thereby rendering what looks like a legitimate service?
peacebird
(14,195 posts)elehhhhna
(32,076 posts)Scuba
(53,475 posts)It's very altruistic. If you can't see that, you must hate women.
sarcasm thingy here for those w/o the gene
AgerolanAmerican
(1,000 posts)there are so many corrupt and questionable dealings where the Clintons are concerned it takes quite a bit of time and effort to keep track of them
yourpaljoey
(2,166 posts)They thought they would not get caught; ain't that something?
chknltl
(10,558 posts)nuff said.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)knowledge to allow actions to come right up to the edge of the law. Still legal but not moral. This post is an example of one way to use that.
If we think this is going to stop once Hillary is president then we are dreaming.
scottie55
(1,400 posts)If you don't understand how the system works, you must live in a cave, or under a rock.
One candidate is trying to change this bribery ran form of government.
One is getting rich off it......
Time to wake up.
New York??????????
http://mic.com/articles/125813/jimmy-carter-tells-oprah-america-is-no-longer-a-democracy-now-an-oligarchy#.hN9vp6KqN
Else You Are Mad
(3,040 posts)Don't point out Hillary's flaws because that's not fair and is a GOP talking point!!!
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)I was just talking about Bill...
Else You Are Mad
(3,040 posts)so they are one and the same.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)glinda
(14,807 posts)Ferd Berfel
(3,687 posts)GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)greiner3
(5,214 posts)Democat
(11,617 posts)Non stop Democrat bashing by a bunch of right wing trolls.
What happened to DU?
kracer20
(199 posts)To me, this is a place that supported people, and it was us against the party establishment (mostly the R's, but some D's).
Still is as far as I can tell.
Maybe you're looking in from the wrong side?
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)I'm not exactly right-wing:
Hell, I'm not even American. I just have slightly higher ethical standards than Slick Willie and his blushing bride.
Scuba
(53,475 posts)GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)and the fundamental problem we have with any of the candidates.
kracer20
(199 posts)of the questionable ethics of the Clintons and their foundation.
I'm afraid if she makes it to the general these types of things will be brought out front and center and will completely destroy any hopes of her winning.
But one of their talking points as to why Hillary needs to be the candidate is 'she's been thoroughly vetted'. If that's the case both she and Bill would be in jail.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Leontius
(2,270 posts)Your dislike for the Clintons is well known but again thanks for the comments.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)You shall be known by the company you keep.
What you sow is what you reap.
I don't know about you, but I wouldn't vote for that even if I could!
Response to Leontius (Reply #25)
SocialLibFiscalCon This message was self-deleted by its author.
scottie55
(1,400 posts)If I told you what I thought of someone calling me a Republican I would be banned for 100 lifetimes.
The Clinton Foundation is DIRTY.
Deal with it.
Our whole system is corrupt.
Deal with it.
Pretending corruption doesn't exist means one lives in a cave, or under a rock.
I can see another member deleted their post. Must have been pissed off at you too, and didn't want to show the world how they feel about being called a Republican by a corruption enabler.
enough
(13,255 posts)about all kinds of crazy stuff. One of the craziest was something about uranium, the Russians, and the Clintons. I thought at first that this was just another one of their many delusions. How could anything that far-fetched be true?
Then I looked it up.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Hydra
(14,459 posts)Is how little money it actually takes to bribe them. It's highly possible they are getting other types of favors with it, but really, a million here and there for hundreds of millions or billions in profits or strategic gain? That's pretty cheap.
Jeffersons Ghost
(15,235 posts)["idiots" I saw the Joe Biden vehicle arcade today AND drew Chinese satellite attacks away from IT today, before getting 4 teeth - Chinese satellites broke with illegal biologicla implaqnts - pulled by "MOM" = Mother Russia! fuck-ups]
Scuba
(53,475 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)Take gold. Greg Palast explains how Barrick Gold became one of Poppy Bush's favorite charities.
The guy really gave rise to compassionate conservative, as in helping the rich and their corporations.
Poppy Strikes Gold
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Originally Posted July 9, 2003
By Greg Palast
EXCERPT...
And while the Bush family steadfastly believes that ex-felons should not have the right to vote for president, they have no objection to ex-cons putting presidents on their payroll. In 1996, despite pleas by U.S. church leaders, Poppy Bush gave several speeches (he charges $100,000 per talk) sponsored by organizations run by Rev. Sun Myung Moon, cult leader, tax cheatand formerly the guest of the U.S. federal prison system. Some of the loot for the Republican effort in the 19972000 election cycles came from an outfit called Barrick Corporation.
The sum, while over $100,000, is comparatively small change for the GOP, yet it seemed quite a gesture for a corporation based in Canada. Technically, the funds came from those associated with the Canadian's U.S. unit, Barrick Gold Strike.
They could well afford it. [font color="green"]In the final days of the Bush (Senior) administration, the Interior Department made an extraordinary but little noticed change in procedures under the 1872 Mining Law, the gold rushera act that permitted those whiskered small-time prospectors with their tin pans and mules to stake claims on their tiny plots. The department initiated an expedited procedure for mining companies that allowed Barrick to swiftly lay claim to the largest gold find in America. In the terminology of the law, Barrick could "perfect its patent" on the estimated $10 billion in orefor which Barrick paid the U.S. Treasury a little under $10,000. Eureka![/font color]
Barrick, of course, had to put up cash for the initial property rights and the cost of digging out the booty (and the cost of donations, in smaller amounts, to support Nevada's Democratic senator, Harry Reid). Still, the shift in rules paid off big time: According to experts at the Mineral Policy Center of Washington, DC, Barrick savedand the U.S. taxpayer losta cool billion or so. Upon taking office, Bill Clinton's new interior secretary, Bruce Babbitt, called Barrick's claim the "biggest gold heist since the days of Butch Cassidy." Nevertheless, because the company followed the fast-track process laid out for them under Bush, this corporate Goldfinger had Babbitt by the legal nuggets. Clinton had no choice but to give them the gold mine while the public got the shaft.
Barrick says it had no contact whatsoever with the president at the time of the rules change.(1) There was always a place in Barrick's heart for the older Bushand a place on its payroll. In 1995, Barrick hired the former president as Honorary Senior Advisor to the Toronto company's International Advisory Board. Bush joined at the suggestion of former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney, who, like Bush, had been ignominiously booted from office. I was a bit surprised that the president had signed on. When Bush was voted out of the White House, he vowed never to lobby or join a corporate board. The chairman of Barrick openly boasts that granting the title "Senior Advisor" was a sly maneuver to help Bush tiptoe around this promise.
CONTINUED...
http://www.gregpalast.com/poppy-strikes-gold/
The story continues, in which Mr. Palast details how said gold mining company employed pure fascist tactics to take over the mine, a plan which involved bulldozing the miners' homes and mines, some with the miners and their families still inside.
Let that, uh, sink in for a moment. For his trouble in reporting the story, Barrick threatened to sue.
The Truth Buried Alive
By Greg Palast, From The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (Penguin/Plume, 2003)
Source: UTNE Reader
April 2003 Issue
EXCERPT...
Bad news. In July 2001, in the middle of trying to get out the word of the theft of the election in Florida, [font color="red"]I was about to become the guinea pig, the test case, for an attempt by a multinational corporation to suppress free speech in the USA using British libel law. I have a U.S.-based Web site for Americans who cant otherwise read my columns or view my BBC television reports. The gold-mining company held my English newspaper liable for aggravated damages for my publishing the story in the USA. If I did not pull the Bush-Barrick story off my U.S. Web site, my paper would face a ruinously costly fight.(1)[/font color]
Panicked, the Guardian legal department begged me to delete not just the English versions of the story but also my Spanish translation, printed in Bolivia. (Caramba!)
The Goldfingers didnt stop there. [font color="green"]Barricks lawyers told our papers that I personally would be sued in the United Kingdom over Web publications of my story in America, because the Web could be accessed in Britain. The success of this legal strategy would effectively annul the U.S. Bill of Rights.[/font color] Speak freely in the USA, but if your words are carried on a U.S. Web site, you may be sued in Britain. The Declaration of Independence would be null and void, at least for libel law. Suddenly, instead of the Internet becoming a means of spreading press freedom, the means to break through censorship, it would become the electronic highway for delivering repression.
And repression was winning. InterPress Services (IPS) of Washington, DC, sent a reporter to Tanzania with Lissu. They received a note from Barrick that said if the wire service ran a story that repeated the allegations, the company would sue. IPS did not run the story.
I was worried about Lissu. On July 19, 2001, a group of Tanzanian police interest lawyers wrote the nations president asking for an investigationinstead, Lissus law partner in Dar es Salaam was arrested. The police were hunting for Lissu. They broke into his home and office and turned them upside down looking for the names of Lissus sources, his whereabouts and the evidence he gathered on the mine site clearance. This was more than a legal skirmish. Over the next months, demonstrations by vicims families were broken up by police thugs. A member of Parliament joining protesters was beaten and hospitalized. I had to raise cash quick to get Lissu out, and with him, his copies of police files with more evidence of the killings. I called Maude Barlow, the Ralph Nader of Canada, head of the Council of Canadians. Without hesitation, she teamed up with Friends of the Earth in Holland, raised funds and prepared a press conferenceand in August tipped the story to the Globe & Mail, Canadas national paper.
CONTINUED...
http://www.mapcruzin.com/palast-2.htm
Greg Palast did something very, very bad from the secret government and secret government beneficiary insider's perspective: He told the truth, including the bits about the buried alive gold miners, as it happens. So, the Big Corporation sued and sued and sued. With their deep pockets, they can buy justice, judges, prime ministers and whoever and whatever else they need to turn a buck, even presidents and their dim sons.