Oct 31

Today’s News 31st October 2016

  • The Loosening Grip – A Beginner's Guide To The Death Throes Of Empire

    Submitted by Fred Reed via FredOnEverything.com,

    Oh good. The world reaches a crossroads, or probably a road off a cliff, just when I want to relax and watch gratuitous violence on the tube. To judge by the rapid drift of events aboard our planetary asylum, the talons of Washington and New York on the world’s throat are fast being pried a-loose. The Global American Imperium is dying. Or so it sure looks anyway.

    I say talons of  “New York and Washington” because America’s foreign policy, forged in those two cities, belongs entirely to them. Americans have no influence on it. Further, none of of what the Empire does abroad is of any benefit to Americans. Do you care at all what happens in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, or the South China Sea?  Do you want to pay for it? America has been hijacked.

    And the Empire prospereth not. It prospereth very not. Consider the recent record of the world’s  hyperpower:

    Washington does not have control of Afghanistan, and obviously is not going to.

     

    Washington does not have control  of Iraq, and appears unlikely to.

     

    Washington did not back Iran down, and isn’t going to.

     

    Washington did not back Russia down in Ukraine and Crimea, and isn’t going to.

     

    Washington did not back China down in the South China Sea and, while this is perhaps not over, the Empire seems to be losing.

     

    Washington has not backed North Korea down and is not going to.

     

    In the Philippines, President Duterte has told Obama to “go to hell” as being “the son of a whore,” which may be taken to indicate latent hostility. He is vigorously seeking rapprochement with China. While Washington may have him murdered, it seems to be losing control of the Little Vassals of ASEAN.

     

    Turkey seems to be cuddling up to Russia–that is, looking East like Duterte. Maybe Washington can turn this around temporarily, but there-s a whole lot of wavering going on.

     

    Meanwhile Washington thrashes around impotently as per usual in Syria, and, though the jury remains out on this one, looks to have poor prospects. If Washington–AKA New York–loses here, after doing so in Iraq, Libya, Somalia, and Afghanistan, the Empire will beyond redemption be on the downward slope.

    The United States is not in danger. The Empire is. This is not good. Empires, the Soviet Union notwithstanding, seldom go quietly. Either Washington gambles on war of some sort against Russia, or Russia and China, in the desperate hope of reversing things, or the Empire  gets slowly eaten. Or not so slowly. Once one country pries itself loose, many may rush for the door.

    New York may go for calculated war against Russia–say, cyberwar expected not to turn into shooting war, shooting war in Syria not expected to turn into global shooting war, global shooting war not expected to turn into nuclear war. This will be a  crapshoot. Note that America has badly misguessed the outcomes of every war since Korea.

    This is why the American election actually matters, unusual in Presidential contests. It is Blowhard against Corruption, a swell choice, but Trump is firmly against war with Russia, and Hillary for. Her military understanding is that of a fried egg.

    The woman is both a fool and a knave but, it seems, Trump has talked trash, and therefore she will likely be President. Weirdly, the future of the world depends on how an excited electorate of political middle-schoolers responds to one candidate’s dirty talk. From a curmudgeon’s point of view, it is pretty funny. It is funnier if one lives  outside of the radiation footprint.

    But back to business. The seaboard Axis of Evil needs a war because almost every tide runs against it. Proximately, the Axis has pushed China, Russia, and Iran together against the Empire. (First rule of empire: Do not let the dissidents unite.) Many signs suggest that the world, or much of it, is beginning to see China as its future. The BRICS, the SCO, the NDB, the AAIB–all exclude the US. China becomes the major trading partner of country after country. The twilight deepens.

    Not all goes wrong for the Empire–not yet, but things are getting spooky. On the European Peninsula of Asia, countries remain docile, especially England and, much more importantly, Germany. Yet even among Washington’s European harem, there seem to be faint stirrings of a forgotten independence. As I understand it, Germany’s businessmen would very much like to end Washington’s sanctions on Russia and improve trade with China, which would be greatly to the benefit of the Peninsula.  Washington won’t let them. It can’t. If the Europeans did what would be good for themselves, and looked to Eurasia, then the fat lady, already warming up, would burst into full bellow.

    Which, methinks, raises the likelihood that Washington will in desperation do something phenomenally stupid. At this writing Hillary’s camp seems to be prepping the public for war with Russia. The telescreen tells us day after day that Putin is Hitler, that Russia is expanding, that the Russkies are hacking the election, that they cause indigestion and falling hair. Is this just Hillary waggling her codpiece in the expectation that Moscow will demurely back down, as God intended? Or will she again send other people’s children to fight for her in somebody else’s country? 

    The larger picture, assuredly obvious to New York, is truly grim–for New York, not for Americans. China has a huge population of a billion Han Chinese, versus two hundred million Caucasian Americans–these being the scientific, technological and entrepreneurial brains of the Empire. One must not notice this, but you can bet that New York and Beijing do. Economically China is growing hugely, advancing technologically at a high rate, building rail lines that now extend from  the Chinese Pacific coast to Madrid. It will increasingly dwarf the Empire no matter what happens–short of a world war.

    The curtain falls in ways unnoticed. China recently launched a communications satellite, the world’s first employing quantum cryptographic links, which cannot be intercepted. The intention of this, as well of the QC link from Beijing to Shanghai, is to keep the NSA off China’s back. A small thing, perhaps. Yet if successful and adopted en masse by other countries weary of Washington’s meddling, the result will be a loosening of the Empire’s grip on everybody’s communications.

    For the Empire it is, as Elvis sang, “now or never.” Lenin spoke of “useful idiots.” Ours aren’t even useful, but they call the shots.

  • American Dream, Revisited

    Authored by Pepe Escobar, originally posted op-ed via Strategic-Culture.org,

    Will Trump pull a Brexit times ten? What would it take, beyond WikiLeaks, to bring the Clinton (cash) machine down? Will Hillary win and then declare WWIII against her Russia / Iran / Syria «axis of evil»? Will the Middle East totally explode? Will the pivot to Asia totally implode? Will China be ruling the world by 2025?

    Amidst so many frenetic fragments of geopolitical reality precariously shored against our ruins, the temptation is irresistible to hark back to the late, great, deconstructionist master Jean Baudrillard. During the post-mod 1980s it was hip to be Baudrillardian to the core; his America, originally published in France in 1986, should still be read today as the definitive metaphysical/geological/cultural Instagram of Exceptionalistan.

    By the late 1990s, at the end of the millennium, two years before 9/11 – that seminal «before and after» event – Baudrillard was already stressing how we live in a black market maze. Now, it’s a black market paroxysm.

    Global multitudes are subjected to a black market of work – as in the deregulation of the official market; a black market of unemployment; a black market of financial speculation; a black market of misery and poverty; a black market of sex (as in prostitution); a black market of information (as in espionage and shadow wars); a black market of weapons; and even a black market of thinking.

    Way beyond the late 20th century, in the 2010s what the West praises as «liberal democracy» – actually a neoliberal diktat – has virtually absorbed every ideological divergence, while leaving behind a heap of differences floating in some sort of trompe l’oeil effect. What’s left is a widespread, noxious condition; the pre-emptive prohibition of any critical thought, which has no way to express itself other than becoming clandestine (or finding the right internet niche).

    Baudrillard already knew that the concept of «alter» – killed by conviviality – does not exist in the official market. So an «alter» black market also sprung up, co-opted by traffickers; that’s, for instance, the realm of racism, nativism and other forms of exclusion. Baudrillard already identified how a «contraband alter», expressed by sects and every form of nationalism (nowadays, think about the spectrum between jihadism and extreme-right wing political parties) was bound to become more virulent in a society that is desperately intolerant, obsessed with regimentation, and totally homogenized.

    There could be so much exhilaration inbuilt in life lived in a bewildering chimera cocktail of cultures, signs, differences and «values»; but then came the coupling of thinking with its exact IT replica – artificial intelligence, playing with the line of demarcation between human and non-human in the domain of thought.

    The result, previewed by Baudrillard, was the secretion of a parapolitical society – with a sort of mafia controlling this secret form of generalized corruption (think the financial Masters of the Universe). Power is unable to fight this mafia – and that would be, on top of it, hypocritical, because the mafia itself emanates from power.

    The end result is that what really matters today, anywhere, mostly tends to happen outside all official circuits; like in a social black market.

    Is there any information «truth»?

    Baudrillard showed how political economy is a massive machine, producing value, producing signs of wealth, but not wealth itself. The whole media / information system – still ruled by America – is a massive machine producing events as signs; exchangeable value in the universal market of ideology, the star system and catastrophism.

    This abstraction of information works as in the economy – disgorging a coded material, deciphered in advance, and negotiable in terms of models, as much as the economy disgorges products negotiable in terms of price and value.

    Since all merchandise, thanks to this abstraction of value, is exchangeable, then every event (or non-event) is also exchangeable, all replacing one another in the cultural market of information.

    And that takes us to where we live now; Trans-History, and Trans-Politics – where events have really not happened, as they get lost in the vacuum of information (as much as the economy gets lost in the vacuum of speculation).

    Thus this quintessential Baudrillard insight; if we consider History as a movie – and that’s what it is now – then the «truth» of information is no more than post-production synch, dubbing and subtitles.

    Still, as we all keep an intense desire for devouring events, there is immense disappointment as well, because the content of information is desperately inferior to the means of broadcasting them. Call it a pathetic, universal contagion; people don’t know what to do about their sadness or enthusiasm – in parallel to our societies becoming theaters of the absurd where nothing has consequences.

    No acts, deeds, crimes (the 2008 financial crisis), political events (the WikiLeaks emails showing virtually no distinction between the «nonprofit» Clinton cash machine, what’s private and what’s public, the obsessive pursuit of personal wealth, and the affairs of the state) seem to have real consequences.

    Immunity, impunity, corruption, speculation – we veer towards a state of zero responsibility (think Goldman Sachs). So, automatically, we yearn for an event of maximum consequence, a «fatal» event to repair that scandalous non-equivalence. Like a symbolic re-equilibrium of the scales of destiny.

    So we dream of an amazing event – Trump winning the election? Hillary declaring WWIII? – that would free us from the tyranny of meaning and the constraint of always searching for the equivalence between effects and causes.

    Shadowing the world

    Just like Baudrillard, I got to see «deep» America in the 1980s and 1990s by driving across America.

    So sooner or later one develops a metaphysical relationship with that ubiquitous warning, «Objects in this mirror may be closer than they appear».

    But what if they may also be further than they appear?

    The contemporary instant event/celebrity culture deluge of images upon us; does it get us closer to a so-called «real» world that is in fact very far away from us? Or does it in fact keep the world at a distance – creating an artificial depth of field that protects us from the imminence of objects and the virtual danger they represent?

    In parallel, we keep slouching towards a single future language – the language of algorithms, as designed across the Wall Street / Silicon Valley axis – that would represent a real anthropological catastrophe, just like the globalist/New World Order dream of One Thought and One Culture.

    Languages are multiple and singular – by definition. If there were a single language, words would become univocal, regulating themselves in an autopilot of meaning. There would be no interplay – as in artificial languages there’s no interplay. Language would be just the meek appendix of a unified reality – the negative destiny of a languidly unified human species.

    That’s where the American «dream» seems to be heading. It’s time to take the next exit ramp.

  • Harry Reid Blasts Comey As Mainstream Media Admits "This Is The Worst Possible Situation" For Hillary

    You now it's bad when…

    MSNBC anchor and commentator Andrea Mitchell (second only to John Harwood in the media pecking order of suck-up-iness to Clinton) is forced to admit: "This is the just worst possible situation for the FBI for the country, for Hillary Clinton certainly."

    "For Hillary Clinton to go nuclear on Comey yesterday was a deliberate decision. They’re trying to rally the base. And she did this in Daytona. She did this going then to an historically African-American college and had a huge rally there on the football field.”

    “She’s really now taking this to Comey."

    “And they made a deliberate decision to do this. If she’s elected, she has to live with James Comey who has a ten-year term. That is a very hostile situation and a dangerous situation. Let me point out, John Kerry in Ireland said he has not been notified. Comey did not know what these emails were and whether they were work-related.That is the question that is raising so many concerns.”

    * * *

    Of course, it's not just the media, Democrats have blasted Comey for making the announcement less than two weeks before Election Day, with Senate minority leader Harry Reid claiming Comey may have violated federal law…

    “I am writing to inform you that my office has determined that these actions may violate the Hatch Act,” Reid wrote in a letter to Comey, according to the Wall Street Journal.

    The Hatch act prohibits government officials from using their positions to influence an election.

    “Through your partisan actions, you may have broken the law.”

     

    “When Republicans filibustered your nomination and delayed your confirmation longer than any previous nominee to your position, I led the fight to get you confirmed because I believed you to be a principled public servant,” Reid wrote.

     

    “With the deepest regret, I now see that I was wrong."

    Full letter below:

    Which is esecially ironic as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was so full of priase just 3 months ago… calling Comey, a former George W. Bush administration official, as “a great man” that Americans “are very privileged” to have leading the federal agency.

    Forward to 6:45…

    But we conclude with the utter desperation of the Democrats to distract (through lies and obfuscation) once again via Harry Reid…

  • Looming Philadelphia Public Transit Strike Threatens To Backfire On Unions' Election Hopes

    With Democratic"Get Out The Vote" rallies springing up everywhere around Philadelphia (culminating with a Katy Perry concert this weekend) and Hillary clinging to a lead in Pennsylvania, perhaps the Transport Workers Union should have picked a better week to start a mass transit strike – potentially threatening to cut turnout among the African-American community dramatically on election day.

    As FiveThirtyEight wrote, when most people think of battleground America, they think of Florida and Ohio, two of only three states (along with Nevada) that have voted for the winner of every presidential election since 1996. They tend not to think of Pennsylvania as a classic “swing state” — it has voted for the Democrat in every election since 1992, and it didn’t even crack the top 10 in 2012 campaign ad spending.

    But in 2016, Pennsylvania could be the keystone of the Electoral College and the ultimate arbiter of whether Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

    Which perhaps explains the major push to increase turnout and "get out the vote"…

    So far so good as far as polls go, Pennsylvania is leaning to Hillary (pre-FBI emails)…

     

    But there may be a problem for Hillary Clinton's campaign turnout (aside from the FBI emails debacle), as 6ABC news reports, members of the Transport Workers Union are set to walk off the job on Monday night bringing public transportation in the city to a halt unless an agreement can be reached.

     

    Talk continued on Wednesday, but negotiations have been very slow going, and issues like pensions remain to be resolved. That is why at this point people are starting to talk about strike contingency plans.

    "People are going to have to be creative. They're going to have to think of ways to get to work," says SEPTA's Director of Media Relations, Carla Showell-Lee.

    If there is a TWU walkout November 1st, city buses, trolleys, the subway and EL will not run.

    *  *  *

    With Trump winning among blue-collar and disaffected voters, Philadelphia’s large African-American population is key for Clinton to ensure the state and a public transport shutdown in the city is far more likely to affect Hillary's base ability to get to polling stations than Trump's.
     

  • Wikileaks Warns It Is Launching "Phase Three" Of Its Election Coverage

    On Sunday night, Wikileaks enigmatically tweeted that it would launch “phase 3 of [its] US election coverage” in the coming week. The site put politicians on notice Sunday evening in a tweet that also included a plea for donations.

    “We commence phase 3 of our US election coverage next week. You can contribute: https://shop.wikileaks.org/donate  @WLTaskForce” the whistleblower website announced moments ago.

    As the Hill noted, Wiki did not provide information about what the third phase entails or if there are still more revelations to come. As a reminder, Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange currently finds himself in the Ecuador embassy where his internet access has been revoked for the duration of the presidential campaign to avoid the appearance of intervention.

    Wikileaks supporters, now including a number of disgruntled GOP nominee Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders supporters, promptly replied with tweets expressing hope that phase three would ultimately damage Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign. User “CorruptMedia” responded with a Photoshopped estimating what CNN coverage of Clinton being escorted to jail would look like.

    A new archive of Clinton-related documents would further irk a campaign still reeling from FBI director James Comey’s announcement on Friday that new emails related to the Clinton server probe had been discovered.

    But there is at least some reason to believe Wikileaks could release material that is not solely Clinton related. Julian Assange, the head of Wikileaks, has stated that he would publish information from Trump if the site were sent any.

    Wikileaks has already posted hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chief John Podesta: the former led to the resignation of former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz after it was revealed that the DNC was actively scheming to prevent Bernie Sanders’ nomination;  the former has led to a series of dramatic revelations into the strategic operations of the Clinton campaign, with the most damaging emails exposing the Clinton Foundation and WJC’s consulting outfit Teneo as an “influence-peddling” pay-to-play organization as noted most recently in “Doug Band To John Podesta: “If This Story Gets Out, We Are Screwed”“

  • 'Anonymous' Threatens North Dakota Governor After Pipeline Employees Caught Infiltrating Protests To Incite Violence

    You know the Dakota Access Pipeline protests are working when oil interests start resorting to underhanded tricks to paint water protectors in a negative light. TheAntiMedia.org's Nick Bernabe reports that, as the fight against the pipeline grows in North Dakota and around the country, dirty tricks are being deployed in an apparent attempt to delegitimize the opposition.

    Dakota Access Employee Tries to Incite Violence, Sheriff’s Department Makes False Report That He Was Shot by Protesters

    Mother Jones journalist Wes Enzinna, who was at the protests, says he witnessed a Dakota Access LLC employee try to infiltrate the Dakota Access Pipeline protests:

    “An armed security agent employed by the company behind the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline was arrested Thursday after he was caught entering the camp of activists protesting near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in southern North Dakota. After a car chase and a standoff during which he allegedly pointed his assault rifle at a local Sioux teenager, the man, whose ID indicated he was an employee of Dakota Access LLC, was arrested and handed over to the FBI.”

    According to an official statement from the tribe, the man fired several shots from his gun before being peacefully apprehended by tribal police. Witnesses at the scene say he pointed his gun at several protesters. The man was clearly trying to provoke violence that could later be used to demonize protesters who have so far remained peaceful.

    The Morton County Sheriff’s Department circulated a false report claiming the man was shot, presumably by protesters. As you can see in the images above, the man was not harmed. The Sheriff’s Department has since retracted that report. Anti-Media’s attempts to obtain clarifying comments from Morton County Sheriff’s were ignored.

    Fake Internet Trolls Slam Dakota Access Pipeline Protests, Promote Pipeline on Twitter

    dakota access sock puppet

    With very little organic support for the Dakota Access Pipeline remaining, groups allied with the pipeline builders now seem to be creating paid Internet trolls or bots to slam protesters while praising the pipeline.

    DESMOG, an environmental blog, conducted an investigation and found what it says are “sock puppet” accounts tied to an oil industry lobby operating on Twitter:

    “A DeSmog investigation has revealed the possibility that a front group supporting the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) — the Midwest Alliance for Infrastructure Now (MAIN) — may have created fake Twitter profiles, known by some as ‘sock puppets,’ to convey a pro-pipeline message over social media. And MAIN may be employing the PR services of the firm DCI Group, which has connections to the Republican Party, in order to do so.

     

    “DeSmog tracked down at least 16 different questionable Twitter accounts which used the #NoDAPL hashtag employed by protesters, in order to claim that opposition to the pipeline kills jobs, that those protesting the pipeline at the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s encampment use violence, and that the pipeline does not pose a risk to water sources or cross over tribal land.

     

    “On September 13, people began to suspect these accounts were fake, calling them out on Twitter, and by September 14, most of the accounts no longer existed.”

     

     

    With the Dakota Access Pipeline builders resorting to backhanded trickery, it’s clear the tide is turning against the pipeline following law enforcement’s overwhelming militarized crackdown of the protests.

    And now, as Anonews reports, Anonymous warns the governor to back off or they will release documents showing the conflict of interest and then goes on to say that if one protestor on the Indian side is harmed, Anonymous will “release docs on” the individuals responsible.

    “We decided to stand with the Native Americans whose land you raped, whose sacred lands you destroyed.”

     

    “We know where you live. Everyone you know. And everything there is to know about you.”

    While translating that threat—which extends to individual Guardsmen—is perilous, according to Anonymous, it has in the past involved monkey wrenching individual credit ratings, cancelling credit cards—electronic mischief ranging from embarrassing to harmful.

  • "We Decided To Close Our Firm" – A Hedge Fund's Lament

    Several astute observations on the ongoing transition from active to passive management in general, and what is shaping up as the worst year for hedge funds since the financial crisis in particular, that are sure to resonate among our hedge fund readers courtesy of Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management.

    “We decided to close our firm,” read the email from a friend.

    I moved it to a folder that’s filling up fast. Been a brutal year in an unforgiving industry. Change is in the air. It usually arrives slowly, quietly, fog. But sometimes change is a hurricane.

    Today’s tempest is snapping saplings, uprooting oaks. A large state pension just announced a “Back to Basics” investment strategy; the commission voted unanimously to fully redeem from seven of the industry’s most prestigious hedge funds. They’re not the only ones heading Back to Basics.

    Industry redemptions this year are $60bln; on track to match the 2009 record. Back then outflows were driven by losses. Now they’re driven by insufficient profits, high fees, and a general aversion by hedge fund managers to take enough risk to earn 8% annual returns.

    Because that’s what investors must generate to meet long-term retiree obligations.

    And if states can’t meet those obligations they’ll raise taxes, reduce investments, or cut pensions – leaving broke Baby Boomers diaper-less.

    But raising taxes and reducing investment is self-defeating; slowing growth, reducing productivity.

    So how will “Back to Basics” solve America’s intractable pension problem? With bond yields at 5,000 year lows, and stocks at valuations exceeded only during the 1929 and dotcom bubbles, a Back to Basics solution is an oxymoron.

    Back to Basics is the exact opposite of what’s needed. Unless of course it means liquidating your portfolio and going short because everything’s overvalued. Or unless Back to Basics means market timing, because overvalued assets can still rally, just not indefinitely. And of course, shorting and market-timing are things that hedge funds do uniquely well.

    Which is why we’re not the problem, we’re part of the solution. That’s why today’s hedge fund tempest presents extraordinary opportunity. For those who evolve, bend, and survive this storm.

    * * *

    “My company is in structural decline,” he said gazing across Gotham, high in the corner office.

    “Made it through denial, anger, bargaining, and given that we’re having this conversation, I suppose I’m mostly through depression.” Which leaves the final stage of grief and loss; acceptance.

    The transition from active management to passive has been devastating for those who’ve devoted their lives to the former.

    “I wonder whether the deep pessimism that we confront every day in our own businesses helps explain why we’re so skeptical of all time S&P highs.”

  • Doug Band To John Podesta: "If This Story Gets Out, We Are Screwed"

    Until the Friday blockbuster news that the FBI was reopening its probe into the Hillary email server, the biggest overhang facing the Clinton Campaign was the escalating scandal involving the Clinton Foundation, Doug Band’s consultancy firm Teneo, and Bill Clinton who as a result of a leaked memo emerged was generously compensated for potential political favors by prominent corporate clients using Teneo as a passthru vehicle for purchasing influence.

    In a section of the memo entitled “Leveraging Teneo For The Foundation,” Band spelled out all of the donations he solicited from Teneo “clients” for the Clinton Foundation.  In all, there are roughly $14mm of donations listed with the largest contributors being Coca-Cola, Barclays, The Rockefeller Foundation and Laureate International Universities. Some of these are shown below (the full details can be found in “Leaked Memo Exposes Shady Dealings Between Clinton Foundation Donors And Bill’s “For-Profit” Activities“)

    Foundation Donations

     

    Band also laid out the millions in speaking fees arranged by Teneo:

    Foundation Donations

    Further, the head of Teneo also offered the following commentary on the “$50 million in for-profit activity” he was able to secure for Bill Clinton (as of November 2011) as well as the “$66 million in future contracts, should he choose to continue with those engagements.”

    Independent of our fundraising and decision-making activities on behalf of the Foundation, we have dedicated ourselves to helping the President secure and engage in for-profit activities – including speeches, books, and advisory service engagements.  In that context, we have in effect served as agents, lawyers, managers and implementers to secure speaking, business and advisory service deals.  In support of the President’s for-profit activity, we also have solicited and obtained, as appropriate, in-kind services for the President and his family – for personal travel, hospitality, vacation and the like.  Neither Justin nor I are separately compensated for these activities (e.g., we do not receive a fee for, or percentage  of, the more than $50 million in for-profit activity we have personally helped to secure for President Clinton to date or the $66 million in future contracts, should he choose to continue with those engagements).

     

    With respect to business deals for his advisory services, Justin and I found, developed and brought to President Clinton multiple arrangements for him to accept or reject. Of his current 4 arrangements, we secured all of them; and, we have helped manage and maintain all of his for-profit business relationships.  Since 2001, President Clinton’s business arrangements have yielded more than $30 million for him personally, with $66 million to be paid out over the next nine years should he choose to continue with the current engagements.

    In effect, what Band was doing, as the NYT’s Nick Confessore summarized, “was selling his clients on idea that giving to foundation was, in essence, a way to bolster their influence. Clinton & Band built a platform for executives to bolster their companies’ images, bathe in BC’s praise, and do some good, while Teneo extracted earnings for Band and, depending on what you see in these e-mails, Clinton himself. Teneo paid Clinton until late ’11.“

    As Confessore also pointed out, “I guess you can wave it all off as a nothingburger. But Chelsea Clinton and some of Clinton’s other aides were clearly freaking out.”

    And he concluded by saying “Generally, the emails show Clinton’s *own closest aides* troubled or horrified by things that her surrogates have spent years waving off.“

    Today, with this context, we focus on one particular email disclosed in the latest Podesta email release, in which an email from Doug Band to Cheryl Mills and John Podesta dated November 12, 2011, or just days before the abovementioned memo was sent out, admits that “I’m starting to worry that if this story gets out, we are screwed.”

    Here is the full email:

    Need get this asap to them although I’m sure cvc [Chelsea Clinton] won’t believe it to be true bc she doesn’t want to Even though the facts speak for themselves.

     

    John, I would appreciate your feedback and any suggestions I’m also starting to worry that if this story gets out, we are screwed. Dk [Declan Kelly] and I built a business. 65 people work for us who have wives and husbands and kids, they all depend on us. Our business has almost nothing to do with the clintons, the foundation or cgi in any way. The chairman of ubs could care a less about cgi. Our fund clients who we do restructuring and m and a advising the same just as bhp nor tivo do. These are real companies who we provide real advice to through very serious people. Comm head for goldman, dep press secretary to bloomberg, former head of banking, and his team, from morgan stanley for asia and latin am.

     

    I realize it is difficult to confront and reason with her but this could go to far and then we all will have a real serious set of other problems. I don’t deserve this from her and deserve a tad more respect or at least a direct dialogue for me to explain these things. She is acting like a spoiled brat kid who has nothing else to do but create issues to justify what she’s doing because she, as she has said, hasn’t found her way and has a lack of focus in her life. I realize she will be off of this soon but if it doesn’t come soon enough…

    Four years later, the story is out, not thanks to Chelsea Clinton as Doug Band was concerned, but due to a hack of John Podesta’s email account.

    However, in light of the latest FBI scandal involving Anthony Weiner, It remains to be seen if either Band or the Clintons are screwed – it appears that the general public has more than enough distractions to forget about this potential graft scandal involving the Clintons and their influence-peddling clients.

  • Should Democrats Ask Clinton To Step Aside?

    Authored by John Kass, originally posted at The Chicago Tribune,

    Has America become so numb by the decades of lies and cynicism oozing from Clinton Inc. that it could elect Hillary Clinton as president, even after Friday's FBI announcement that it had reopened an investigation of her emails while secretary of state?

    We'll find out soon enough.

    It's obvious the American political system is breaking down. It's been crumbling for some time now, and the establishment elite know it and they're properly frightened. Donald Trump, the vulgarian at their gates, is a symptom, not a cause. Hillary Clinton and husband Bill are both cause and effect.

    FBI director James Comey's announcement about the renewed Clinton email investigation is the bombshell in the presidential campaign. That he announced this so close to Election Day should tell every thinking person that what the FBI is looking at is extremely serious.

    This can't be about pervert Anthony Weiner and his reported desire for a teenage girl. But it can be about the laptop of Weiner's wife, Clinton aide Huma Abedin, and emails between her and Hillary. It comes after the FBI investigation in which Comey concluded Clinton had lied and been "reckless" with national secrets, but said he could not recommend prosecution.

    So what should the Democrats do now?

    If ruling Democrats hold themselves to the high moral standards they impose on the people they govern, they would follow a simple process:

    They would demand that Mrs. Clinton step down, immediately, and let her vice presidential nominee, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, stand in her place.

    Democrats should say, honestly, that with a new criminal investigation going on into events around her home-brew email server from the time she was secretary of state, having Clinton anywhere near the White House is just not a good idea.

    Since Oct. 7, WikiLeaks has released 35,000 emails hacked from Clinton campaign boss John Podesta. Now WikiLeaks, no longer a neutral player but an active anti-Clinton agency, plans to release another 15,000 emails.

    What if she is elected? Think of a nation suffering a bad economy and continuing chaos in the Middle East, and now also facing a criminal investigation of a president. Add to that congressional investigations and a public vision of Clinton as a Nixonian figure wandering the halls, wringing her hands.

    The best thing would be for Democrats to ask her to step down now. It would be the most responsible thing to do, if the nation were more important to them than power. And the American news media — fairly or not firmly identified in the public mind as Mrs. Clinton's political action committee — should begin demanding it.

    But what will Hillary do?

    She'll stick and ride this out and turn her anger toward Comey. For Hillary and Bill Clinton, it has always been about power, about the Clinton Restoration and protecting fortunes already made by selling nothing but political influence.

    She'll remind the nation that she's a woman and that Donald Trump said terrible things about women. If there is another notorious Trump video to be leaked, the Clintons should probably leak it now. Then her allies in media can talk about misogyny and sexual politics and the headlines can be all about Trump as the boor he is and Hillary as champion of female victims, which she has never been.

    Remember that Bill Clinton leveraged the "Year of the Woman." Then he preyed on women in the White House and Hillary protected him. But the political left — most particularly the women of the left — defended him because he promised to protect abortion rights and their other agendas.

    If you take a step back from tribal politics, you'll see that Mrs. Clinton has clearly disqualified herself from ever coming near classified information again. If she were a young person straight out of grad school hoping to land a government job, Hillary Clinton would be laughed out of Washington with her record. She'd never be hired.

    As secretary of state she kept classified documents on the home-brew server in her basement, which is against the law. She lied about it to the American people. She couldn't remember details dozens of times when questioned by the FBI. Her aides destroyed evidence by BleachBit and hammers. Her husband, Bill, met secretly on an airport tarmac with Attorney General Loretta Lynch for about a half-hour, and all they said they talked about was golf and the grandkids.

    And there was no prosecution of Hillary.

    That isn't merely wrong and unethical. It is poisonous.

    And during this presidential campaign, Americans were confronted with a two-tiered system of federal justice: one for standards for the Clintons and one for the peasants.

    I've always figured that, as secretary of state, Clinton kept her home-brew email server — from which foreign intelligence agencies could hack top secret information — so she could shield the influence peddling that helped make the Clintons several fortunes.

    The Clintons weren't skilled merchants. They weren't traders or manufacturers. The Clintons never produced anything tangible. They had no science, patents or devices to make them millions upon millions of dollars.

    All they had to sell, really, was influence. And they used our federal government to leverage it.

    If a presidential election is as much about the people as it is about the candidates, then we'll learn plenty about ourselves in the coming days, won't we?

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