Digging deep into Hillary’s connections to Wall Street, Abby Martin reveals how the Clinton’s multi-million-dollar political machine operates.
This episode chronicles the Clinton’s rise to power in the 90s on a right-wing agenda, the Clinton Foundation’s revolving door with Gulf state monarchies, corporations and the world’s biggest financial institutions, and the establishment of the hyper-aggressive “Hillary Doctrine” while Secretary of State. Learn the essential facts about the great danger she poses, and why she’s the US Empire’s choice for its next CEO.
The so-called Panama Papers are sold to us as a vast leak chronicling the financial misdeeds of the rich and powerful. But is this really the case? Certainly we are given insight into the secretive world of offshore banking, but is it a complete and balanced story? One interpretation of the Panama Papers is the West targeting its enemies.
CrossTalking with Mitch Feierstein, Alexander Mercouris, and Pepe Escobar.
NATO headquarters in Brussels. (Francois Lenoir/Reuters)
By Danielle Ryan
Birthdays are always a good time to take stock of one’s achievements, make some resolutions and contemplate the road ahead. So, with NATO turning sixty-seven today, perhaps it’s time for the military alliance to engage in some honest self-reflection.
The problem is, sometimes it’s just hard to let go. No one wants to admit their glory days are behind them. Everyone wants to feel they have a purpose, some grand vision yet to fulfill. When the time comes to hang up your hat, some bow out gracefully. Others need to be dragged kicking and screaming.
If Supreme Allied Commander General Philip Breedlove’s latest comments are anything to go by, the alliance won’t be performing a graceful exit any time soon. Instead, the 28-member bloc is simply recalibrating its efforts in an attempt to justify its existence and remain relevant.
Intending to provide collective security against the Soviet Union, the military alliance was founded on April 4, 1949 by 12 countries, led by the United States. The bloc would aim to prevent the spread of communism and promote American economic interests across the European continent. Once the Soviet Union collapsed and ceased to exist in December 1991, NATO was at a bit of a loose end. Instead of disbanding, the organization continued to usher in new members in bouts of expansion that were sure to provoke modern Russia.
As I have written before, there were those even at the time of the organization’s founding that foresaw such a situation emerging. US Senator Robert A. Taft — the son of President William Howard Taft — was one of them. Taft was outspoken in his misgivings about the appropriateness of such an alliance. He believed that a military bloc built on arming nations against the USSR could leave Moscow feeling “ringed” in and could lay the groundwork for another world war — even going so far as to say it is “not a peace program, it is a war program.” In a speech explaining his vote against the formation of the alliance, he asked: “How would we feel if Russia undertook to arm a country on our border; Mexico, for instance?”
For as long as it has existed, NATO has been geared primarily towards serving Washington’s geostrategic interests. It was then, as it is now, far more about creating vassal states in Europe that would do America’s bidding than it was about keeping them safe. The goal was to unite as many nations as possible under a pro-Washington umbrella which would rarely, if ever, question US foreign policy.
Full article at: RT Op-Edge
Russia’s envoy to NATO has vowed a “totally asymmetrical” response if the alliance stands by a plan to deploy new armored units to Eastern Europe. Citing Russian “aggression” as a pretext, the US has announced “continuous troop rotations” starting 2017.
“We are not passive observers, we consistently take all the military measures we consider necessary in order to counterbalance this reinforced presence that is not justified by anything,” Moscow’s permanent representative at the alliance, Aleksandr Grushko, said in an interview with TV channel Russia-24 on Wednesday. “Certainly, we’ll respond totally asymmetrically.”
Grushko did not elaborate on his statement, but said Russia’s actions would correspond to its “understanding of the extent of the military threat, would not be extremely expensive, but also highly effective.”
“As of today, assessing as a whole what that the US and NATO are doing, the point at issue is a substantial change for the worse in the security situation,” he said.
The comments from Russia’s NATO envoy came shortly after the Pentagon announced a plan to increase its troop presence in “the European theater” of up to three fully-manned Army brigades by the end of 2017, one armored, one airborne and one Stryker brigade.
“This Army implementation plan continues to demonstrate our strong and balanced approach to reassuring our NATO allies and partners in the wake of an aggressive Russia in Eastern Europe and elsewhere,” Air Force Gen. Philip M. Breedlove of the US European Command said. “This means our allies and partners will see more capability – they will see a more frequent presence of an armored brigade with more modernized equipment in their countries.”
The first such rotational armored brigade combat team would arrive in Europe in February next year. Each of the brigades will be on nine-month rotations and bring their own equipment to use for exercises across Europe. NATO also wants to enhance Europe’s current equipment and replace it with “the most modern the Army has to offer.” At the same time, the older gear would become the core of the previously unveiled “Army pre-positioned stocks,” which NATO would keep in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.
Full story at RT News
U-2 Spy Plane Downed by the Soviets in 1960
NATO’s supreme allied commander General Philip Breedlove, known in some circles as “that crazy guy who keeps mumbling about protecting his precious bodily fluids”, has concocted a truly brilliant scheme to create “additional intelligence collection platforms” in the fight against a “resurgent” Soviet Union/Russia/whatever:
The U-2 spy plane, one of the most emblematic aircraft of the Cold War, should return to Europe to conduct surveillance on a resurgent and aggressive Russia, a top [and profoundly mentally unsound — Ed.] American general has warned.
The suggested return to European skies of the slender espionage plane, which first flew six decades ago and has survived several attempts to force its retirement, could also risk provoking Russian ire by resurrecting memories of the U-2’s role in the most incendiary moments of the Cold War.
In 1960, a U-2 on a spy mission over Russia was downed by a surface-to-air missile and its CIA pilot, Gary Powers, held captive for two years.
Source: Russia Insider
This time it was Brussels. Europe has become a battlefield in which terrorists can roam free and undetected. Of course we mourn the victims. But it is way past the time to talk honestly – Europe’s experiment with limited sovereignty is negligent and endangers citizens. And NATO’s conflicts of choice in the Middle East generate war refugees, migrants, but also terrorists of all kinds. It is time for action.
CrossTalking with Pepe Escobar, Gilbert Doctorow, and John Laughland.
Soldiers patrol in the streets of Brussels as the Belgian capital remains on the highest possible alert level. (Photo: Emmanuel Dunand / AFP)
By Alexander Mercouris
These terrorist attack now happen in Europe with the regularity of clockwork. In 2015 Paris witnessed two. Now it is the turn of Brussels.
The pattern of response to each of these terrorist attacks is always the same. Western governments express shock and outrage. Security is tightened. The weeks pass and everything goes back to what it was before.
Never is any discussion allowed of Western policies that might have played a role in creating conditions for the terrorist attacks.
The policies are those the Western powers have followed in the Middle East for decades.
The first is the failure to promote a viable solution to the long running Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The second is the disastrous policy of regime change Western governments have pursued in the Middle East since 2000.
The third is the West’s habit of manipulating local jihadi terrorists in order to achieve its geopolitical goals.
The key Western country is the US and though its key allies — Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, Germany and Turkey — have all played their part it is to the US that one must look for a rethink.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is indeed difficult. However the reason it has festered for so long — poisoning the whole Middle East in the process — is because the US has never really sought a solution to it.
Instead of being genuinely even-handed it has tilted towards Israel, in the process strengthening the hardliners within Israel whilst undermining those many Israelis who support a compromise.
The regime change policy meanwhile involves overthrowing those very Middle Eastern governments that have been the major force of stability in the region. This despite the fact that most of them were or wanted to be the US’s friends.
President Putin set out the consequences in his recent speech to the UN General Assembly:
“Instead of bringing about reforms, aggressive intervention rashly destroyed government institutions and the local way of life. Instead of democracy and progress, there is now violence, poverty, social disasters and total disregard for human rights, including even the right to life.”
The chaos has in turn created a power vacuum the jihadis have filled.
Whereas in 2000 the jihadis were an isolated fringe, today they control territories the size of countries and have a presence in every state of the Middle East and beyond.
Worse still despite all the evidence of their anti-Western violence the Western powers seem incapable of dropping their habit of trying to manipulate them.
We are now seeing this most starkly in Syria and Yemen where the Western powers have effectively allied themselves with Al-Qaeda affiliates in their battle to overthrow local secular governments as part of the regime change policy.
This is a pattern which goes back all the way to the catastrophic policy of supporting violent jihadis to overthrow the secular Soviet backed government of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
As President Putin also put it in his speech to the UN General Assembly:
“It is hypocritical and irresponsible to make declarations about the threat of terrorism and at the same time turn a blind eye to the channels used to finance and support terrorists, including revenues from drug trafficking, the illegal oil trade and the arms trade.”
It is equally irresponsible to manipulate extremist groups and use them to achieve your political goals, hoping that later you’ll find a way to get rid of them or somehow eliminate them.
I’d like to tell those who engage in this: Gentlemen, the people you are dealing with are cruel but they are not dumb. They are as smart as you are. So, it’s a big question: who’s playing who here?
This is the sort of clear-headed thinking that is needed if the very real threat jihadi terrorists pose is to be overcome.
It is a bitter truth that in the West it is nowhere to be found. Until it is the risk jihadi terrorists pose will not go away and all the protestations of shock and outrage we will shortly hear from Western governments following the latest terrorist attacks in Brussels will amount to nothing.
Source: Sputnik International
The Afghan tradition of recruiting young boys for sex.
In Afghanistan’s male-dominated society women face many restrictions. Among the many prohibitions, they are not allowed to go to parties or dance. That female social vacuum has led to an old tradition of “bachas” – dancing boys who dance in women’s clothes at men-only parties but the boy’s job description involves more than dancing. After the party, the men choose their favourite boy for sex. Premarital sex is forbidden for women so many men seek the company of rent boys. Here, sex with a boy considered less of a sin than having sex with an unmarried woman, and male child prostitution is seen as a lesser evil than women selling their bodies.
Often, boys who need to feed their families become bachas from as young as 12. Some continue for years, while for others, it’s a temporary occupation. The practice is illegal in modern Afghanistan, officially, but the men who keep and recruit bachas, known as “playboys”, are well connected and rich, essentially placing them beyond the law. Besides, it’s a long-standing tradition that is unlikely to go away any time soon. In fact, it appears to be undergoing a revival.
In poverty-stricken Afghanistan, where women are forbidden to work, making men the only breadwinners, boys often have to provide for their families from a very young age. Many are tempted by the money that being a bacha can give them while their families are often too busy trying to survive, to object, or even notice where the money comes from.
RT Doc goes to Afghanistan to ask how the bachas became rent boys and goes to a private party where the boys dance and meet their customers. Boys, handlers and punters all speak openly about this outlawed, yet widely practiced, sexual tradition.
Source: RT Documentary Channel Films
The third and last documentary film in the Zeitgeist series.
While the majority of the world today have slowly come to see some basic flaws in the economic system we share, as large scale debt defaults, inflation, industrial pollution, resource depletion, rising cancer rates and other signposts emerge to bring the concern into the realm of “public health” overall, very few however consider the economic paradigm as a whole as the source. The tendency is to demand reform in one area or another, avoiding the possibility that perhaps the entire system is intrinsically flawed at the foundational level. Zeitgeist: Moving Forward presents the case that it is, indeed, the very foundational mechanics of this system that generates the patterns of behavior and unsustainable methods of conduct that are leading to the vast spectrum of detrimental consequences both personal, social, and environmental and the longer they go on, the worse things will become.
Against the Grain 