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99th_Monkey

99th_Monkey's Journal
99th_Monkey's Journal
May 6, 2016

Game Changer? "FBI Confirms They Will Question Hillary Clinton"

FBI Confirms They Will Question Hillary Clinton
by Tom Cahill * May 5, 2016 * US Uncut

FBI officials have confirmed that Hillary Clinton will be interviewed about her use of a private email server, possibly before the California primary.

CNN reported Thursday evening that the Federal Bureau of Investigation interviewed top Clinton aide Huma Abedin over the server, along with other senior aides, some more than once. While investigators confirmed that Clinton herself would be interviewed, no official date has been announced.

Bryan Pagliano, who originally built Clinton’s private server, has agreed to provide testimony to the Department of Justice in exchange for legal immunity. FBI officials stated they had yet to procure sufficient evidence that any laws were willfully broken, though the investigation is still ongoing.

As of May 5, the investigation is still limited to Clinton’s handling of classified information on her private email server, and the security of the server itself. While the former Secretary of State has cooperated with federal authorities in making thousands of emails public, 22 of the emails in her private server were classified as “top secret” and deemed too sensitive to national security to release to the general public.

http://usuncut.com/politics/fbi-question-hillary-clinton-email/
May 5, 2016

Hillary Clinton and Wall Street’s Neoliberal War on Latin America

Wow! This is a longish read, but exceedingly informative, connecting so many dots -- including the social upheavals and economic turmoil in many Latin American nations -- it makes ones head swim (at least if does mine). And you guessed it, Hillary and Goldman Sachs are heavily involved, and not in a good way.


____________________

Hillary Clinton and Wall Street’s Neoliberal War on Latin America
MAY 4, 2016 * by ERIC DRAGSTER * Counterpunch

By now it is old news that there is a coup afoot in Brazil and that the right-wing is using extraordinary political measures to overthrow of Dilma Rousseff.

What is little discussed amid all the talk of impeachment and corruption in Brazil is the larger context: how international finance capital is working with Hillary Clinton and other U.S. political elites to reassert the Washington Consensus in Latin America; how the right wing throughout the region is collaborating in this project; and how this is manifesting in the targeted countries. Though the pieces of this puzzle may be partially concealed, it is time to put them all together to see the big picture. ...snip...

There is no doubt that one of the targets in Latin America remains raw materials and commodities: both Brazil and Argentina are recognized as major sources for energy and other commodities, while Venezuela remains one of the world’s leading oil producers. So from that perspective alone, these countries are obviously highly prized by the Wall Street jackals. But it goes much deeper than that as Latin America is now seen as a focal point of the broader drive to extend U.S.-Wall Street-London hegemony both economically and politically.

Perhaps the centerpieces of this push are the much-discussed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which would create a corporate supranational trade infrastructure that would essentially subordinate individual nations to the hegemony of corporations and capital. Naturally, the left-progressive forces in Latin America, and their allies, have been the major stumbling block to implementing the TPP and TTIP. But that is now set to change.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/04/hillary-clinton-and-wall-streets-neoliberal-war-on-latin-america/

May 3, 2016

An Australian POV: "What So Many Americans Can’t Grasp About Bernie Sanders"

From abroad, the USA looks as stupid as a bag of rocks.

Here’s the Thing So Many Americans Can’t Grasp About Bernie Sanders
The U.S. likes to brand itself 'the land of opportunity'—yet our poster boys for innovation go to Harvard
By Pete Ross * 04/25/16 * The Observer

Watching this year’s presidential nomination process from Australia has been a very interesting affair. I can’t say I’ve followed every single speech or piece of news, but I’ve certainly kept abreast of what is going on and have seen plenty of articles and commentary from people on my feed putting their opinions forward. What interests me the most are the people and media pundits who emphatically denounce Bernie Sanders and his supporters. The reasons all generally boil down to the fact that he is the reincarnation of Karl Marx and he wants to turn the U.S. into a communist state. That he is so far left of centre that he’s basically off the chart.

For those people, here’s a reality check.

Around the rest of the world, Mr. Sanders represents a point on the political spectrum that is mildly left of centre. His “wacky” ideas of free (and we’ll get to that term a bit later) education, free healthcare, regulating banks and corporations and so on are all actually staple ideas of many of the happiest and most prosperous countries in the world. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the happiest countries in the world index for 2016. The U.S. doesn’t make the top 10—but almost every single country that does has the kind of policies Mr. Sanders is promoting at some level. Looking at the other candidates, Hillary Clinton would in most countries be considered right of centre, not left. Donald and Ted? Man, those guys are so far right of centre you couldn’t plot where they exist—they’re pretty much off the spectrum.

But back to Bernie. Throughout the nomination process, Bernie’s critics always seem to be asking the wrong questions. The most common one I see is “how is he going to pay for all of this?” This question misses the point entirely. Even if economists say that he can’t, does that really invalidate everything he’s aiming to achieve? If he can’t pay for all of it and the only thing that actually gets passed is universal college education and a reinstatement of Glass-Steagall, is that such a horrible thing? Why does it have to be so all or nothing? That’s why it also baffles me when people say that they don’t want the kind of revolution Mr. Sanders is pushing—the reality is that even if he is swept to victory, the amount of change he’ll actually be able to implement won’t be half of what he wants to do.

No wonder Gallup polling shows over 85 percent of you are disengaged and miserable at your jobs.

The other elephant in the room is that the current political status quo is to spend over half a trillion dollars per year on the military. So you’re against universal health care or college education because you don’t think it can be paid for, but you’re happy for your government to spend that amount of money on your military when the last time you actually had to defend yourselves was over two centuries ago? When you’re willing to sacrifice so many of the best parts of a socialist democracy in order to fund a military juggernaut that has to go out looking for things to shoot, your priorities are ridiculously lopsided. The War on Terror started with over 3,000 people being killed in a terrorist attack on your own soil. It has since cost the U.S. over 5 trillion dollars—money that could have been used to save far more lives than were lost in the first place, if they had been provided with adequate health care.

http://observer.com/2016/04/heres-the-thing-so-many-americans-cant-grasp-about-bernie-sanders/

May 1, 2016

To me "Bernie or Bust" means two things

1) The Primary is NOT over, Bernie's still in it, and in it to WIN. I find the whole question of who I'll vote for if Bernie loses to be an insulting distraction from the fact that the Primary is not over until the moment the nominee is decided conclusively, and not a minute before.

2) IF when it's over Berine does not win, it's none of anyone's damnd business who I will vote for, i;e; I'm not much onto Loyalty Oaths, never have been. That's why we have a secret ballot in this nation. Besides, If ever there was a Primary season that is volatile and totally unpredictable it is this one; so it's presumptuous and totally premature to even ask who I'dl vote for should Bernie not be the nominee.

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