Sgt Preston
Sgt Preston's JournalClinton Foundation paid Blumenthal $10K per month while he advised on Libya
Source: Politico
Sidney Blumenthal, a longtime confidant of Bill and Hillary Clinton, earned about $10,000 a month as a full-time employee of the Clinton Foundation while he was providing unsolicited intelligence on Libya to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, according to multiple sources familiar with the arrangement.
Blumenthal was added to the payroll of the Clintons’ global philanthropy in 2009 — not long after advising Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign — at the behest of former president Bill Clinton, for whom he had worked in the White House, say the sources.
While Blumenthal’s foundation job focused on highlighting the legacy of Clinton’s presidency, some officials at the charity questioned his value and grumbled that his hiring was a favor from the Clintons, according to people familiar with the foundation. They say that, during a 2013 reform push, Blumenthal was moved to a consulting contract that came with a similar pay rate but without benefits — an arrangement that endured until March.
A Clinton loyalist who first earned the family’s trust as an aggressive combatant in the political battles of the 1990s, Blumenthal continues to work as a paid consultant to two groups supporting Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign — American Bridge and Media Matters — both of which are run by David Brock, a close ally of both Clinton and Blumenthal.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/clinton-foundation-sidney-blumenthal-salary-libya-118359.html#ixzz3bRToB2rZ
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/clinton-foundation-sidney-blumenthal-salary-libya-118359.html
The fall of Ramadi and the criminality of US imperialism
Nearly a year after the debacle suffered by US imperialism and the regime it imposed during more than eight bloody years of war and occupation of Iraq—the fall of the country’s second largest city, Mosul to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)—a similar collapse has unfolded in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar, Iraq’s largest province.
Attempts by the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon to dismiss the events in Ramadi as a minor setback are either disingenuous or delusional. As in Mosul, Iraq’s US-trained and armed regular army largely melted away in the face of an offensive by the Islamist guerrillas. And once again, it has left behind large stores of US-supplied weaponry, ranging from dozens of armored cars and tanks to artillery and other armaments and vast quantities of ammunition, all of it now in ISIS hands.
Just as with Mosul, the fall of Ramadi has unleashed a new humanitarian catastrophe on the war-ravaged people of Iraq, with hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians killed and tens of thousands turned into homeless refugees. Those who remain face the threat of violence at the hands of ISIS as well as sectarian reprisals from the Shiite militias that are massing for a bid to retake the city.
This latest debacle has unfolded nearly 10 months into the Obama administration’s “Operation Inherent Resolve,” the title given to Washington’s latest military intervention in the Middle East. It has provoked criticism within ruling circles of US strategy, which has consisted of US airstrikes against both Iraq and Syria, the deployment of nearly 5,000 US ground troops in Iraq and the launching of a $500 million program to train and arm so-called Syrian “rebels.”
There is a growing drumbeat for sending greater numbers of US ground forces more directly into the fighting. The Washington Post published an editorial Tuesday charging that “the US lacks a strategy to fulfill President Obama’s pledge to ‘degrade and ultimately destroy’” ISIS. It demands that the administration commit US military units to “work with Iraqi forces on the ground.”
Similarly, the Wall Street Journal published a column urging “more ground operations by Special Operations forces” as well as the deployment of “Apache attack helicopters and transport planes,” along with an entire brigade “dedicated to improving operational command and intelligence support.”
It is no accident that amid this drive for the escalation of the ongoing US intervention another, thoroughly dishonest, debate has played out in the context of the 2016 presidential election campaign, over whether the launching of the March 2003 invasion of Iraq was a “mistake” or a justified response to what proved “faulty intelligence.”
The immediate impetus for this phony debate has been calls for Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush—and other Republicans—to account for the actions of the younger Bush’s brother, George W. The cynical aim of both the capitalist politicians and media, however, is to erase from the consciousness of the American people the bitter lessons of being dragged into a criminal war of aggression foisted upon them through scaremongering about “weapons of mass destruction” and ties between Baghdad and Al Qaeda. Both were fabrications employed to promote a war whose real aim was securing US hegemony over the energy-rich Middle East.
That there is a difference between “faulty intelligence” and lies is self-evident, just as a “mistake” is not the same thing as a premeditated war of aggression, the principal crime for which the Nazi leadership was tried at Nuremberg.
Jeb Bush’s response has consisted in large measure of the undeniable assertion that not only did he and his brother support the war in Iraq, but that so did the Democratic frontrunner, former senator and secretary of state Hillary Clinton, along with virtually the entire US ruling establishment. In short, there are no clean hands; everyone is implicated in a crime of historic proportions.
Nor, clearly, have these crimes stopped with either the end of the Bush administration or the 2011 withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. The US-NATO war that destroyed Libya was launched on the pretext of “human rights.” It was necessary, the public was told, to protect the people of Benghazi from imminent massacre. Today, much of Benghazi—and the entire country—has been reduced to rubble by fighting between rival militias. The death toll mounts daily and millions of Libyans have become refugees.
The predatory aims of this imperialist intervention have been further exposed by the recent revelation that Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, was promoting the Libya policy recommendations of former Bill Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal, who was in turn working with a group of capitalist investors on schemes to exploit the oil-rich country’s wealth once its government was smashed and its leader, Muammar Gaddafi, murdered.
What incredible mayhem and destruction has been wrought upon the Middle East through the last dozen years of US military aggression! Promoted and defended by Democrats and Republicans alike, this criminal bloodletting has been carried out in the service of naked profit interests. Well over a million people have lost their lives, with millions more maimed or driven from their homes.
Entire countries have been destroyed. In the drive to overthrow and assassinate one secular Arab head of state after another—from Saddam Hussein to Gaddafi to Bashar al Assad—the Pentagon and the CIA have deliberately fomented sectarian tensions, pitting Sunnis against Shia in an even bloodier version of the old colonial strategy of divide and conquer. ISIS is the direct product of this process, spawned by the US intervention in Iraq and then strengthened by the proxy war for regime change in Syria, where it and similar Sunni Islamist militias were armed and funded by Washington’s regional allies, under the guiding hand of the CIA.
As one crime and debacle follows another, what is most remarkable is that no one is held accountable. Not only is no one involved fired from their posts—much less tried for war crimes—there are not even serious public hearings held to expose the decisions and policies that produced these disasters.
Every element of the ruling strata and every institution of American society are implicated, from the Bushes, Clintons and Obama to Congress, the profit-hungry corporations, the lying media and an overwhelmingly cowardly and self-satisfied academia.
The impunity they have all enjoyed after each criminal war only paves the way for even greater conflagrations. Preventing such global catastrophes is the task of the American and international working class, which alone can mount a genuine struggle against war and the capitalist system that produces it.
Bill Van Auken
World Socialist Web Site
20 May 2015
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/05/20/pers-m20.html
Ohio patrolman acquitted in 2 deaths amid 137-shot barrage
Source: AP
CLEVELAND (AP) — A white patrolman who fired down through the windshield of a suspect's car at the end of a 137-shot barrage that left the two unarmed black occupants dead was acquitted Saturday of criminal charges by a judge who said he could not determine the Cleveland officer alone fired the fatal shots.
Michael Brelo, 31, put his head in hands as the judge issued a verdict followed by angry, but peaceful, protests: Outside the courthouse police blocked furious protesters from going inside while across the city others held a mock funeral with some carrying signs asking, "Will I be next?"
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Brelo — who fired a total of 49 shots, including 15 while standing on the hood of the suspects' vehicle — faced as many as 22 years in prison had the judge convicted him of voluntary manslaughter in the shooting that happened after Timothy Russell's beat-up Chevy Malibu backfired while speeding by police headquarters.
Russell, 43, and Malissa Williams, 30, were each shot more than 20 times at the end of the Nov. 29, 2012, pursuit. Prosecutors argued they were alive until Brelo's final salvo but medical examiners for both sides testified they could not determine the order in which the deadly shots were fired.
O'Donnell said he believed Brelo caused some of the fatal wounds — four shots would have killed Russell and seven would have killed Williams — but that other officers must have as well.
O'Donnell said a voluntary manslaughter conviction would require that Brelo's shots alone were the causes of death or the final wounds tipped the balance between life and death.
Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/verdict-reached-officer-over-deaths-137-shot-barrage-122057059.html
Bizarre "justification" for the verdict.
White House calls Seymour Hersh story about Osama bin Laden raid ‘baseless’
Source: Yahoo news
Famed investigative journalist Seymour Hersh is standing by his controversial account of the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden despite a growing chorus of critics, including the White House, who say his version is flat-out wrong.
“This is not a wager,” Hersh told CNN’s “New Day” Monday. “This is a story that has to be dealt with by this government very seriously.”
“The White House’s story might have been written by Lewis Carroll,” Hersh wrote in a 10,356-word report published in the London Review of Books Sunday. “Would bin Laden, target of a massive international manhunt, really decide that a resort town 40 miles from Islamabad would be the safest place to live and command al-Qaida’s operations? He was hiding in the open. So America said.”
The White House refuted Hersh’s account Monday, calling his report “baseless.”
“There are too many inaccuracies and baseless assertions in this piece to fact-check each one,” White House National Security spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.
Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/politics/white-house-calls-seymour-hersh-story-about-osama-118704190246.html
State Department will not review Clinton ethics pledge breaches
Source: Reuters
(Reuters) - The U.S. State Department will not review the breaches of the 2008 ethics agreement Hillary Clinton signed in order to become secretary of state after her family's charities admitted in March that they had not complied, a spokesman said on Thursday.
Clinton, now the Democratic front-runner in the 2016 presidential election, had promised the federal government that the Clinton Foundation and its associated charities would name all donors annually while she was the nation's top diplomat.
She also promised that the charities would let the State Department's ethics office review beforehand any proposed new foreign governments donations.
In March, the charities confirmed to Reuters for the first time that they had not complied with those pledges for most of Clinton's four years at the State Department.
The State Department "regrets" that it did not get to review the new foreign government funding, but does not plan to look into the matter further, spokesman Jeff Rathke said on Thursday.
Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/state-dept-not-review-clinton-ethics-pledge-breaches-204846487.html
Missouri lawmakers override veto to enact welfare limits
Source: AP
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri lawmakers voted Tuesday to remove several thousand families from a welfare program by imposing shorter time limits for people to receive the benefits, overriding a veto by the state's Democratic governor.
The new law will reduce Missouri's lifetime limit for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families cash assistance program from five years to three years and nine months, starting in January. The law also imposes stricter work requirements.
The Republican-led House voted 113-42 Tuesday to override Gov. Jay Nixon's veto, largely along party lines. The Senate voted 25-9 to override the veto on Monday.
Missouri Republicans argued that low-income families ultimately would benefit by receiving government aid for less time.
"They want their independence; they don't want to be in this poverty trap all their lives and they don't want their kids to be in this poverty trap. They want and they say that we can be successful if we have the tools," said Rep. Diane Franklin, R-Camdenton, who handled the bill in the House.
About 3,000 families are projected to lose benefits — which are capped at $292 a month for a parent with two children — because of the lower lifetime limit starting Jan. 1, according to the Department of Social Services. Nixon said that translates to about 6,400 children.
Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/missouri-lawmakers-override-veto-enact-welfare-limits-170810108.html
This is not just targeted at current welfare recipients. It's aimed at everyone who works for a living. People are supposed to be terrified of losing their jobs so that they will put up with whatever working conditions are imposed on them, and anyone who is out of work will have to take any available job, no matter how oppressive or what the pay.
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