September 27, 2015

When Hillary voted in favor of cluster bombs, did this advance the best interests of the US?

No, it didn't. And neither did drones. In fact, the massive civilian death toll associated with an idiotic foreign policy simply angered an entire region to rally around the motto "Death to America".

Oops. Her bad.

She'll do better when she's president, right?

September 27, 2015

You can't blame Hillary for using a home server for confidential US State Dept. comms...

Comcast bundled her with free HBO.

September 26, 2015

IBM Announces Email Reform, Partnership with GoDaddy.com

SAN FRANCISCO - 24 Sep 2015: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced a revolutionary new email policy that allows employees to utilize their own email servers for sensitive corporate communications. The change, disclosed in a formerly confidential company-wide email, is considered a major political victory for internet privacy advocate Hillary Clinton, who has made email reform the centerpiece of her presidential campaign.

Clinton supporters were quick to cheer the new rules. “This is a huge relief. For years, I’ve had to run my companies email through a server I’ve kept hidden in my bedroom closet. I’m pretty good about Windows updates, so it’s totally safe, perfectly normal,” said a long time Clinton supporter and IBM employee who requested anonymity.

The memo credits the high level of security afforded by today’s internet technology for the relaxed email rules. While not mentioning Clinton's open email initiative by name, the presidential contender has long argued that internet safety has made burdensome email regulations obsolete.

In order to help employees adjust to the new policy, IBM has partnered with GoDaddy.com to provide discounted internet domain and email hosting support to anyone who signs up to store IBM email on their servers.

Tech industry analysts point out that IBM is just following a government sponsored trend of relaxed workplace rules. “It makes perfect sense for IBM to offer their employees the same benefits enjoyed by US Government employees,” according to CNET industry analyst Richard Headthunker. Headthunker believes other companies will quickly follow suit in order to attract and retain high demand tech workers in a competitive labor market.

Formerly Not for Outside Distribution

Dear valued employee,

In these competitive times, email and internet usage has never been more secure.

After carefully reviewing the success of Hillary Clinton and her innovative use of private email, we have decided to let all employees conduct company business on any server of their own choosing. There will be no oversight; however, at such time as deemed necessary, we may ask you to turn over any communications that relate to our company's business. Don't worry, we'll let you decide what you should give us and we’ll give you as much time as you need to prepare it all.

In addition, if you decide not to run a basement server from your Time Warner internet account, we've arranged for a 15% discount on Go Daddy and Name Cheap servers to help you manage your own domain and subdomain.

For example, now you can have a cool internet domain address like:

"ibm.slimjim.com"

I hope you'll join me in celebrating our new benefits! As always we value your opinion. Fee free to get in touch at my new email address below.

Regards,

Ginni Rometty, CEO, IBM
[email protected]

p.s. We kindly ask that you run some sort of anti-virus thingy and please do not send email related to our most advanced computer designs to any Chinese intelligence agencies.

September 26, 2015

If Debbie Wasserman Schultz and DNC oppose voter suppression strategies...

then, why Hillary?

September 26, 2015

Reality Check - Working people would be fired and prosecuted for using a Hillary server. And...

I assure you they give a damn.

They give a damn that Eric Holder let rich Wall Street CEOs walk away from the global disaster caused by criminal fraud.

They give a damn about corporate profiteering from endless wars and State Dept. disasters in Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Honduras.

They give a damn about Wall Street CEO billionaires profiteering by charging non-rich working families outrageous health care and education fees.

They give a damn about wages, virtually unchanged since the late 1970s.

They give a damn about someone who lies about being "dead broke", lies about being an "outsider", lies about being under "sniper fire".

They give a damn about politicians using a public Government office as their own private corporation.

And they DO give a damn about electing a President who is honest, ethical and willing to fight for the 300 million unrepresented people in this nation who cannot afford to pay-to-play.

Hillary is the WRONG candidate for the Democratic Party. She WILL lose the general election. In one of the most cynical political moves in recent History, the DNC is making sure the non-rich keep getting screwed by appointing an unlikable, self-serving, neo-conservative Wall Street shill as the Democratic Party's role model.

We must do what we believe is right to protest the injustice spreading like cancer over every part of our Government.

Protest is mandatory.

September 13, 2015

"...neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that," Robert Kagan, leading neocon

But Exhibit A for what Robert Kagan describes as his “mainstream” view of American force is his relationship with former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who remains the vessel into which many interventionists are pouring their hopes. Mr. Kagan pointed out that he had recently attended a dinner of foreign-policy experts at which Mrs. Clinton was the guest of honor, and that he had served on her bipartisan group of foreign-policy heavy hitters at the State Department, where his wife worked as her spokeswoman.

“I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy,” Mr. Kagan said, adding that the next step after Mr. Obama’s more realist approach “could theoretically be whatever Hillary brings to the table” if elected president. “If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue,” he added, “it’s something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/16/us/politics/historians-critique-of-obama-foreign-policy-is-brought-alive-by-events-in-iraq.html

Robert Kagan (born September 26, 1958 in Athens, Greece) is an American historian, author, columnist, and foreign-policy commentator. Kagan is often characterized as a leading neoconservative, but prefers to call himself a "liberal interventionist".[1]

A co-founder of the neocon Project for the New American Century,[2][3][4] he is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.[5] Kagan has been a foreign policy adviser to U.S. Republican presidential candidates as well as Democrats such as Hillary Clinton, when Clinton was Secretary of State under President Obama. He writes a monthly column on world affairs for the Washington Post, and is a contributing editor at The New Republic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kagan

By the way, all those millions of refugees streaming out of Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, (and yes, Honduras) are a direct result of the violent, interventionist policies favored by Hillary Clinton. And they are leaving as many dead behind.

The Clinton State Dept. and its "projection of force" put Russia and China on the defensive, and ultimately spawned ISIS. While all of this is a defense industry wet dream come to life, what other advantage does Hillary's neocon advocacy for violence over diplomacy bring the United States?

Well, there's this...

In Honduras, Clinton allies beat back a minimum wage increase with a corporate backed military coup. Since then, unionists are being slaughtered and poverty is near 70%. You might save a few pennies on a pair of jeans, but even that is doubtful since corporations are mostly pocketing the savings themselves.

In case you were wondering...

The homicide rate in Honduras, already the highest in the world, increased by 50 percent from 2008 to 2011; political repression, the murder of opposition political candidates, peasant organizers and LGBT activists increased and continue to this day. Femicides skyrocketed. The violence and insecurity were exacerbated by a generalized institutional collapse. Drug-related violence has worsened amid allegations of rampant corruption in Honduras’ police and government. While the gangs are responsible for much of the violence, Honduran security forces have engaged in a wave of killings and other human rights crimes with impunity.

Despite this, however, both under Clinton and Kerry, the State Department’s response to the violence and military and police impunity has largely been silence, along with continued U.S. aid to Honduran security forces. In “Hard Choices,” Clinton describes her role in the aftermath of the coup that brought about this dire situation. Her firsthand account is significant both for the confession of an important truth and for a crucial false testimony.

First, the confession: Clinton admits that she used the power of her office to make sure that Zelaya would not return to office. “In the subsequent days [after the coup] I spoke with my counterparts around the hemisphere, including Secretary [Patricia] Espinosa in Mexico,” Clinton writes. “We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot.”

This may not come as a surprise to those who followed the post-coup drama closely. (See my commentary from 2009 on Washington’s role in helping the coup succeed here, here and here.) But the official storyline, which was dutifully accepted by most in the media, was that the Obama administration actually opposed the coup and wanted Zelaya to return to office.
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/9/hillary-clinton-honduraslatinamericaforeignpolicy.html

Hillary Clinton’s Honduran Disgrace
http://www.progressive.org/wx030510.html

Hillary Clinton's Central American foreign policy blunder ought to darken her presidential prospects.
http://fpif.org/hillary-clintons-real-scandal-honduras-benghazi/

Want to know why Clinton's State Dept. failed to help an elected leader? Follow the money and stench of Lanny Davis
http://www.salon.com/2015/06/08/exclusive_hillary_clinton_sold_out_honduras_lanny_davis_corporate_cash_and_the_real_story_about_the_death_of_a_latin_america_democracy/

September 13, 2015

"Wall Street is installing updates... your candidate will restart in 10 minutes."

And for fuck’s sake, stop whining about DNC's inept handlers not creating a more authentic Hillary candidate. Hillary IS being absolutely authentic.

Her doctrine of regime change in Iraq, Honduras, Egypt, Libya, Syria

Her trickle-down, supply-side, voodoo economic policies

Claiming US State Dept. business is her private business

While promoting US Govt. spying for the rest of us

Her role as interloper to reduce IRS fines for UBS bank

A loyal champion of fracking and big oil

Fearless defender of Wall Street's rights

Even her opposition to gay marriage (before her recent update)

And every single carefully orchestrated evasive maneuver of her campaign.

It is all 100% pure, honest-to-goodness, authentic Hillary Clinton.

Let’s hope Hillary keeps being Hillary. The more people know about the real Hillary, the better. And when we reject her based on history, policies and politics, we reject the intransigent, self-serving money interests who have held the Democratic Party hostage for almost three decades.

The truth will set us free.

UBS Bank

The Swiss bank UBS is one of the biggest, most powerful financial institutions in the world. As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton intervened to help it out with the IRS. And after that, the Swiss bank paid Bill Clinton $1.5 million for speaking gigs. The Wall Street Journal reported all that and more Thursday in an article that highlights huge conflicts of interest that the Clintons have created in the recent past. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/hillary-helps-a-bankand-then-it-pays-bill-15-million-in-speaking-fees/400067/

Regime Change Iraq

In 2002, Senator Clinton voted in favor of the authorization to use force in Iraq. In addition to this vote, Senator Clinton gave a 20 minute speech in which she stated that Saddaam Hussein was rebuilding his WMD stockpile, pursuing nuclear weapons, and giving aid and comfort to terrorists. She stated that left unchecked, he would continue to do this and would likely destabilize the middle east which would affect American security.
http://www.thepoliticalguide.com/Profiles/Secretary%20of%20State/New_York/Hillary_Clinton/Views/The_War_in_Iraq/

"Obviously, I've thought about that a lot in the months since," she said. "No, I don't regret giving the president authority because at the time it was in the context of weapons of mass destruction, grave threats to the United States, and clearly, Saddam Hussein had been a real problem for the international community for more than a decade."

"How could they have been so poorly prepared for the aftermath of the toppling of Saddam Hussein?" the New York Democrat asked Tuesday night on CNN's "Larry King Live."

"I don't understand how they had such an unrealistic view of what was going to happen."

She also said the failure to plan properly for the post-war period "is the hardest to understand."
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/21/iraq.hillary/

Indeed, in March 2003, Clinton did something she’ll probably never willingly do again: She met with CODEPINK to explain her support for the Iraq war. “I like pink tulips around this time of the year,” she began. They “kind of remind ya that there may be a spring. Well, you guys look like a big bunch of big tulips!” It got progressively more awkward after that. “I admire your willingness to speak out on behalf of the women and children of Iraq,” said Clinton, but “There is a very easy way to prevent anyone from being put into harm’s way and that is for Saddam Hussein to disarm and I have absolutely no belief that he will.”

We thought the easiest way to prevent harming the women, children, and other living things in Iraq was to stop a war of aggression, ostensibly over weapons of mass destruction that UN inspectors on the ground couldn’t find and which were, in fact, never found — because they didn’t exist. Clinton, however, was steadfast: “If Saddam were serious about disarming he would have been much more forthcoming,” she claimed. “The very difficult question for all of us is how does one bring about the disarmament of someone with such a proven track record of a commitment, if not an obsession, with weapons of mass destruction?”
http://fpif.org/when-hillary-clinton-pitched-the-iraq-war-to-codepink/

By November of 2005, Senator Clinton was stating that she regretted her vote and that had she known now what she knew then, she would voted differently. [...] By June of 2008, Senator Clinton was claiming that she was under the impression that the vote she took to authorize the use of force in Iraq was really just one to force the UN inspectors back into Iraq.
http://www.thepoliticalguide.com/Profiles/Secretary%20of%20State/New_York/Hillary_Clinton/Views/The_War_in_Iraq/

Regime Change Honduras

This sort of engineering of regional politics in the service of the economic elite appears to be something of a hallmark of the Clinton camp. A case is being built that it’s the family business to cater to the global elite, despite the Clinton campaign’s salt-of-the-earth optics in Iowa and New Hampshire, which appears disingenuous in light of virtually everything else we know about Clinton. And with a growing list of Clinton associates being complicit, concerns about a President Clinton’s criteria for cabinet and agency appointments grow, as well.
Keeping wages down in places like Honduras and Haiti virtually ensure that those formerly decently paying, often unionized, jobs will never return to the U.S. Going to bat by proxy for Bechtel, a conglomerate with close ties to the GOP and the military industrial complex, doesn’t seem like the best use of the political talent of members of the Clintons’ braintrust. It becomes fair to ask, “Who do the Clintons work for?” http://www.salon.com/2015/06/08/exclusive_hillary_clinton_sold_out_honduras_lanny_davis_corporate_cash_and_the_real_story_about_the_death_of_a_latin_america_democracy/

Regime Change Libya

The statement said Obama and Erdogan had reaffirmed their support for implementation of United Nations security resolutions authorizing force in Libya. After noting that this would require a broad-based international effort, the statement said the two leaders “underscored their shared commitment to the goal of helping provide the Libyan people an opportunity to transform their country, by installing a democratic system that respects the people’s will.”
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/151191-white-house-suggests-regime-change-is-goal-of-libya-mission

But an examination by The Times suggests that Mr. Blumenthal’s involvement was more wide-ranging and more complicated than previously known, embodying the blurry lines between business, politics and philanthropy that have enriched and vexed the Clintons and their inner circle for years.
“When Qaddafi himself is finally removed, you should of course make a public statement before the cameras wherever you are, even in the driveway of your vacation home,” Mr. Blumenthal wrote. “You must go on camera. You must establish yourself in the historical record at this moment.”
He added: “The most important phrase is: ‘successful strategy.’ “
Mrs. Clinton forwarded the advice to one of her closest aides at the State Department, Jake Sullivan.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/30/us/politics/benghazi-emails-put-focus-on-hillary-clintons-encouragement-of-adviser.html?_r=0

"We came, we saw, he died," Clinton joked with a television reporter in the wake of the death of the fugitive Gadhafi at the hands of a mob, days after she visited Tripoli in support of Libya's transitional government. (edit: Apparently, "Mission Accomplished" didn't focus test very well.)
http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/08/politics/hillary-clinton-libya-election-2016/

Eight years after her hawkishness cost her the presidency, Clinton must be looking at events in Libya and thinking, "Uh oh, staff, how am I going to address this?" Perhaps she'll do her utmost to bully Democrats who opposed the Libya intervention out of the Democratic primary and hope the GOP nominates a hawk. Then voters can choose among two candidates with a history of urging failed wars.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/02/hillary-clintons-hawkishness-could-cost-her-the-presidency-again/385629/

Regime Change Syria

Over the weekend, on a visit to Turkey, a NATO member, to meet with Syrian opposition leaders and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton explicitly declared that Washington’s policy toward Syria is now in what she called the “operational” phase. “We have been closely coordinating over the course of this conflict, but now we need to get into the real details of such operational planning,” she said, adding: “Our intelligence services, our military have very important responsibilities and roles to play, so we are going to be setting up a working group to do exactly that.”
Make no mistake: this is regime change by force. It’s not exactly like Iraq, and it’s not exactly like Libya (yet)—but it’s regime change by force anyway.
http://www.thenation.com/article/obamas-regime-change-policy-syria/

Regime Change Egypt

(Democracy 1.0) U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also said that the United States believed that the government of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, in power for three decades, was stable and looking for ways to meet the Egyptian people's aspirations.
http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE70O0KF20110125

(Democracy 2.0) Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has urged Hosni Mubarak to allow an "orderly transition" to a "real democracy" in Egypt and said U.S. wants to see free and fair elections in Egypt as a result of the antigovernment unrest.
http://www.globalpost.com/article/5613918/2011/01/30/hillary-clinton-urges-egypt-allow-orderly-transition-democracy-video

( And finally, democracy 3.0) United States Secretary of State John Kerry said that Egypt's army had "restored democracy" by removing Morsi from power. "The military was asked to intervene by millions and millions of people, all of whom were afraid of a descendance into chaos, into violence. And the military did not take over, to the best of our judgement - so far. To run the country, there's a civilian government. In effect, they were restoring democracy."
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-23543744

Drones, Cluster Bombs and Regime Change Yemen

Clinton claims drone attacks as "one of the most effective and controversial elements of the Obama Administration’s strategy against al Qaeda and like-minded terrorists."
Chapter 9, http://www.amazon.com/Hard-Choices-Hillary-Rodham-Clinton/dp/1476751471/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1442160326&sr=8-1&keywords=hard+choices

Over 150 nations have signed the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty. It pains me that our great nation has not. But in the autumn of 2006, there was a chance to take a step in the right direction: Senate Amendment No. 4882, an amendment to a Pentagon appropriations bill that would have banned the use of cluster bombs in civilian areas. Senator Obama of Illinois voted IN FAVOR of the ban. Senator Clinton of New York voted AGAINST the ban. Analysts say Clinton did not want to risk appearing "soft on terror," as it would have harmed her electibility.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-rees/clinton-obama-and-cluster_b_84811.html

LONDON — A US cruise missile carrying cluster bombs was behind a December attack in Yemen that killed 55 people, most of them civilians, Amnesty International (AI) said on Monday.

The London-based rights group released photographs that it said showed the remains of a US-made Tomahawk missile and unexploded cluster bombs that were apparently used in the December 17, 2009 attack on the rural community of Al-Maajala in
Yemen's southern Abyan province.

"Amnesty International is gravely concerned by evidence that cluster munitions appear to have been used in Yemen," said Mike Lewis, the group's arms control researcher.

"Cluster munitions have indiscriminate effects and unexploded bomblets threaten lives and livelihoods for years afterwards," he said.
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2010/06/07/us-used-cluster-bombs-yemen-civilians-amnesty

NEW YORK -- A former State Department official in Yemen says every U.S. drone killing there of an al Qaeda operative creates 40 to 60 new enemies of America.

In an article for the Cairo Review posted Wednesday, Nabeel Khoury, the deputy chief of mission in Yemen from 2004 to 2007, writes, "Drone strikes take out a few bad guys to be sure, but they also kill a large number of innocent civilians. Given Yemen’s tribal structure, the U.S. generates roughly forty to sixty new enemies for every AQAP [al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] operative killed by drones."

Khoury says in the article that drones cannot substitute for coherent foreign policy in Yemen.

Khoury, now retired from State and working as a fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, told HuffPost, "My former colleagues are probably going to get upset with me, because the policy now is to do this." U.S. drone strikes in Yemen have intensified in the years since he left his post there.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/23/yemen-drones_n_4152159.html

Sanaa – Yemeni President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, his prime minister and entire government cabinet resigned en masse today, just 24 hours after Houthi rebels occupied the presidential compound in Sanaa. The resignations give unprecedented power to the Houthis, a Shiite minority from the country’s isolated northern highlands.

The Houthis, however, are quickly proving that the old adage, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” is not always true. While they are bitter enemies of AQAP, the Houthis manning the checkpoints often adorn their AK-47s with stickers bearing the group’s motto: “Death to America, death to Israel, curse on the Jews, victory to Islam.”
https://theintercept.com/2015/01/22/yemens-de-facto-coup-detat/

NSA Spying


Depending on the Kindness of Corporations

Many of Mrs. Clinton’s proposals, including profit-sharing, are in line with an economic philosophy called inclusive capitalism. The philosophy holds that corporations have a role in easing poverty and that they should put less focus on stock buybacks and short-term returns to shareholders and more on long-term investment in employees, communities and the environment.
http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/07/16/profit-sharing-makes-good-business-sense-hillary-clinton-says/

The preferred solutions of the Democratic corporate class -- continued deregulation and under-regulation of finance and industry, job-killing trade agreements, and the Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid cuts they've been pushing relentlessly for 20 years -- are disliked by American majorities. They are economically disastrous for most Americans. And yet, Big Money's stranglehold on the political process has left the voters bereft of alternatives.

Washington operators like Jonathan Cowan and Jim Kessler aren't really afraid of Sen. Warren. They're afraid of what she represents, both politically and economically.

They're right to worry. This isn't a fight about Cowan and Kessler, or about Elizabeth Warren, or about whether the Democratic Party is a "big enough tent" to hold people of varying opinions. It's a fight to determine whether that party will represent the public's interests unsparingly in the years to come, or will continue to be swayed by corporate interests.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/the-democrats-third-way-q_b_4410394.html

Big Oil

PERIES: Steve, what do you make of Hillary Clinton and energy and environmental policy going into this presidential election campaign year?
HORN: Well, I do think that this clearly show--I think it's another example of the role that her State Department that she led, the push that they have led to spread fracking technology around the world. More broadly looking at this, her State Department ran a program called the Global Shale Gas Initiative that still exists now. It's called the Unconventional Gas Technical Engagement Program. This is part of her legacy at the State Department. It's a program that still exists, as I said.
And it sort of, I think it should be [obv], I mean, to people watching. She's very friendly to oil and gas interest now. She has heavy funding from bundlers who are in the oil and gas industry. She's of course never, ever said anything critical about things like fracking. So she's sort of, I mean, at this point still trying to posture as somebody who cares about the climate, that sort of thing. But the track record shows complete opposite. It shouldn't be surprising people if she does become president and ends up pushing these same things she was pushing during her four years in the State Department.
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=14499

In a campaign finance filing yesterday, Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton disclosed the registered lobbyists that have "bundled" donations from people in their personal networks for her campaign. $2.1 million of the money Clinton has raised so far was bundled by registered lobbyists.

Clinton, an ally of the oil and gas industry during her tenure as Secretary of State, brought in $811,828 from lobbyists that work for oil and gas companies. Another $321,950 came from lobbyists who don't advocate for industry clients themselves, but who work for firms that lobby for industry clients.
http://littlesis.org/maps/814-oil-gas-lobbyists-bundle-for-clinton#

Bundles and Bundles of Wall Street

Just how incestuous is the small world of big money politics? The leading Democratic candidate and at least three major Republican candidates are all relying on members of the same lobbying firm to help them raise presidential campaign cash: Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld.

Akin Gump is hardly a household name, but the law and lobbying firm is famous in Washington for its ability to sell access to those in power. Akin Gump’s employee roster is filled with former members of Congress, and its client list is a veritable who’s who of elite interests, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Monsanto, Boeing, Chevron, Gilead Sciences, Pfizer and AT&T. The United Arab Emirates and Japan are among the foreign governments represented by the firm.
https://theintercept.com/2015/07/22/top-fundraisers-hillary-clinton-jeb-bush-work-lobbying-firm/

On edit: Out of curiosity I wondered what and how the Hillary candidate was being spun these days by party hacks and was amused to see the usual minions desperate for something real from Hillary. The irony didn't escape me. It shouldn't escape you. Until we meet again