Puppet MastersS


Cult

Robert Kagan and his neocon cronies back Killary

Rania Khalek
The Intercept
Mon, 25 Jul 2016 03:44 UTC
nuland kagan
As Hillary Clinton puts together what she hopes will be a winning coalition in November, many progressives remain wary — but she has the war-hawks firmly behind her.

"I would say all Republican foreign policy professionals are anti-Trump," leading neoconservative Robert Kagan told a group gathered around him, groupie-style, at a "foreign policy professionals for Hillary" fundraiser I attended last week. "I would say that a majority of people in my circle will vote for Hillary."

As the co-founder of the neoconservative think tank Project for the New American Century, Kagan played a leading role in pushing for America's unilateral invasion of Iraq, and insisted for years afterwards that it had turned out great.

Despite the catastrophic effects of that war, Kagan insisted at last week's fundraiser that U.S. foreign policy over the last 25 years has been "an extraordinary success."


Comment: Of course they would. The military-industrial complex has been making out like bandits from the chaos sown by the American Empire.


Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's know-nothing isolationism has led many neocons to flee the Republican ticket. And some, like Kagan, are actively helping Clinton, whose hawkishness in many ways resembles their own.

The event raised $25,000 for Clinton. Two rising stars in the Democratic foreign policy establishment, Amanda Sloat and Julianne Smith, also spoke.

The way they described Clinton's foreign policy vision suggested that if elected president in November, she will escalate tensions with Russia, double down on military belligerence in the Middle East and generally ignore the American public's growing hostility to intervention.

Sloat, the former deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, boasted that Clinton will be "more interventionist and forward-leaning than Obama's been" in Syria.
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Dominoes

Switzerland agreed to provide US HSBC bank client data


RT
Tue, 26 Jul 2016 14:50 UTC
HSBC
© Hannah McKay / Reuters
Swiss authorities have agreed to provide information to US tax authorities on accounts at HSBC.

The Swiss branch of HSBC has paid tens of millions of dollars in fines after admitting substandard compliance on tax evasion.

The Swiss government announced its plan on Tuesday to give HSBC clients the opportunity to appeal the decision, if they don't want their information passed to the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

According to the Swiss Federal Tax Administration, the IRS is targeting HSBC accounts "where there is evidence the US beneficial owner exercised control, directly or indirectly, over the account in violation of corporate governance ... by withdrawing funds from the account for personal use."
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Propaganda

Ex-showbiz agent and political has-been Michael Foster throws tantrum that Corbyn was placed on ballot


RT
Tue, 26 Jul 2016 03:07 UTC
Jeremy Corbyn
© Peter Nicholls / ReutersLeader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was placed on the leadership ballot because officials "misapplied" the party's rules, a millionaire and failed politician told the High Court on Tuesday. One time showbiz agent Michael Foster is suing his own party's general secretary Iain McNicol after Labour's national executive council (NEC) decided Corbyn was entitled to be automatically included on the leadership ballot.

Neither McNicol nor Corbyn were in court for the one day trial, but Corbyn's name was added to the legal documents last week after the leader won a bid to personally challenge Foster's case. Foster's legal team insisted the meaning applied to Labour's rules by a majority of the NEC during an extraordinary meeting on June 12 was not "reasonable." "The claimant has no wish to deny the second defendant [Corbyn] a fair opportunity ... of obtaining the requisite number of nominations," Gavin Millar QC said.
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Bad Guys

Hillary Clinton: A threat to all of humanity - VIDEO

James Corbett
Activist Post
Mon, 25 Jul 2016 00:00 UTC
Killary threat
Hillary Rodham Clinton is a Wall Street-backed warmonger whose potential election as President of the United States this November poses an existential threat not just to Americans but to all of humanity. As First Lady and then as Senator, she actively supported the US' illegal wars of aggression abroad.

Comment: See also: John Pilger: Why Clinton is certainly more dangerous than Trump

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Pirates

Wikileaks latest - DNC sought to hide shady details of Killary 'Victory Fund' money tactics

Kenneth P. Vogel and Isaac Arnsdorf
Politico
Tue, 26 Jul 2016 02:43 UTC
hillary clinton
© GettyThe Hillary Victory Fund still had $42 million in the bank at the end of June, and it seems likely that more money will be moved to the state parties in the coming months.
Leaked emails show officials tried to obscure fact that Clinton allowed states to keep only a tiny fraction of proceeds from joint fundraising.

Leaked emails show the Democratic National Committee scrambled this spring to conceal the details of a joint fundraising arrangement with Hillary Clinton that funneled money through state Democratic parties.

But during the three-month period when the DNC was working to spin the situation, state parties kept less than one half of one percent of the $82 million raised through the arrangement — validating concerns raised by campaign finance watchdogs, state party allies and Bernie Sanders supporters.

The arrangement, called the Hillary Victory Fund, allowed the Clinton campaign to seek contributions of hundreds of thousands of dollars to attend extravagant fundraisers including a dinner at George Clooney's house and a concert at Radio City Music Hall featuring Katy Perry and Elton John. That's resulted in criticism for Clinton, who has made opposition to big money in politics a key plank in her campaign platform.

Clinton's allies have responded publicly by arguing that the fund is raising big money to boost down-ballot Democratic candidates by helping the 40 state parties that are now participating in the fund.

But privately, officials at the DNC and on Clinton's campaign worked to parry questions raised by reporters, as well as Sanders' since-aborted campaign, about the distribution of the money, according to a cache of hacked emails made public late last week by WikiLeaks.

Comment: No surprise here. The Clinton Foundation is run the same way.

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Light Saber

Russia seeks to beef up anti-corruption laws for civil servants and former officials


RT
Tue, 26 Jul 2016 02:57 UTC
russia anti-corruption
© Denis Sinyakov / Reuters
Russian prosecutors have prepared a bill that would impose control on civil servants' incomes, even after they leave their posts. It would also allow for the confiscation of property purchased with unconfirmed funds. The Russian Prosecutor General's Office initiated the motion, which seeks to broaden the list of persons subject to obligatory control of income and spending, the head of the agency's Directorate for Control of Execution of Anti-Corruption Laws Aleksandr Rusetskiy said in an interview with Izvestia daily.

The bill extends these obligations not only to current civil servants, but also to former officials. The document also allows for the confiscation of the cash equivalent of any property that has been purchased with funds of unconfirmed origin. In addition, the draft imposes tougher control on the existing ban on accounts and securities held in foreign banks for Russian officials, by allowing the Prosecutor General's Office and the state financial watchdog Rosfinmonitoring to request information about such assets from foreign partners.

Comment: Could you imagine such a bill being prepared in the West? Not in your dreams! Such tyrannical oppression against the freedom of corruption would never be allowed!

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Vader

No sovereignty in EU: European Commission considering sanctioning Spain and Portugal for not following orders


RT
Wed, 27 Jul 2016 02:49 UTC
flags
© Sergio Perez / Reuters
The European Union should suspend structural funds to Spain and Portugal after they failed to reduce their budget deficits to below prescribed levels, AFP reports citing a letter from the EU's executive arm.

The eurozone finance ministers decided this month to start sanctions procedures against the two countries for breaching EU spending rules. Sanctions could be a fine of up to 0.2 percent of a country's GDP and the suspension of commitments or payments from EU structural funds of up to 0.5 percent.

European Commission Vice President Jyrki Katainen said "socio-economic factors," including the countries' high rates of unemployment, should be taken into account when deciding how much to suspend.

"We remain at your disposal to participate in a structural dialogue with the European Parliament on the application of these measures, with a view to make a balanced proposal," Katainen said in a letter to the president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz.
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Play

South Front: NATO's information ops, Russia bombs U.S. base in Syria, wave of terror shapes EU political landscape (VIDEOS)


South Front
Tue, 26 Jul 2016 02:37 UTC
south front
War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery - NATO Information Operations

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Sheeple

Clinton aide blames Russia for hacking DNC to 'distract Americans from its use of rigged game'


RT
Mon, 25 Jul 2016 14:53 UTC
clinton_sanders supporters
© Brian Snyder / ReutersDemocratic U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton greets supporters during a campaign rally in Miami, Florida, U.S. July 23, 2016.
It was predicted months ago that the DNC would find some way to squash Bernie Sanders' revolution and assuage his supporters into voting for Clinton, says Arvin Vohra, vice chair of the Libertarian National Committee.

As the US Democratic party convention in Philadelphia opened on Monday to formally choose a presidential candidate, WikiLeaks released nearly 20,000 e-mails from the party's governing group which reveal the National Committee's been busy mudslinging at opponents and even its own members.

Following the scandal, hundreds of protesters marched through the streets of Philadelphia. They're hoping presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton will not be proclaimed the Democratic Party's presidential candidate. Lots of them expressed their support for a previous runner, Bernie Sanders. But Sanders himself has already endorsed Clinton.

The WikiLeaks revelations have led to the chairperson of the Democratic Party, Debbie Wasserman Schultz saying she'll quit after the convention. Although Clinton's campaign manager Robby Mook said he believes Russia should be blamed for the scandal.
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Attention

Best of the Web: John Pilger: Why Clinton is certainly more dangerous than Trump

John Pilger
New Matilda
Wed, 23 Mar 2016 02:06 UTC
clinton
© US Embassy/FlickrPresidential demon-o-cratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
The following is an edited version of an address given by John Pilger at the University of Sydney, entitled 'A World War Has Begun'.

I have been filming in the Marshall Islands, which lie north of Australia, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Whenever I tell people where I have been, they ask, "Where is that?" If I offer a clue by referring to "Bikini", they say, "You mean the swimsuit."

Few seem aware that the bikini swimsuit was named to celebrate the nuclear explosions that destroyed Bikini island. Sixty-six nuclear devices were exploded by the United States in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958 - the equivalent of 1.6 Hiroshima bombs every day for twelve years.

Bikini is silent today, mutated and contaminated. Palm trees grow in a strange grid formation. Nothing moves. There are no birds. The headstones in the old cemetery are alive with radiation. My shoes registered "unsafe" on a Geiger counter.

Standing on the beach, I watched the emerald green of the Pacific fall away into a vast black hole. This was the crater left by the hydrogen bomb they called "Bravo". The explosion poisoned people and their environment for hundreds of miles, perhaps forever.

Comment: See also: Hillary proffered as alternative to Trump, no one cares she's a warmongering psychopath

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