Democratic Party Leader Obama's 1990's Joyce Foundation Connection

"Non-profit" foundations that fail to pay a fair share of local, state and federal taxes, like the Chicago-based Joyce and MacArthur foundations, are supposed to be just politically non-partisan "charitable" organizations. Yet during the 1990's, both Joyce Foundation and MacArthur Foundation executives apparently helped launch Democratic Party leader and future Democratic President (and possible 2020 Democratic Party vice-presidential nominee/candidate?) Barack Obama's politically partisan office-seeking career; by arranging to have Obama sit on the Joyce Foundation's board of directors in 1994. As David Garrow noted in his 2017 Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama book:

"...Barack...talked [in 1994]...with Sokoni Karanja about a prospective leadership training and development project...Eighteen months earlier Sokoni had been awarded a $320,000 MacArthur Foundation `genius grant' and the Woods Fund already had committed a further $72,000 toward his effort...

"...Barack's range of acquaintances was growing too, and one of the most significant new onews was Deborah Leff...producer at ABC News before being recruited as president of the Joyce Foundation in 1992. Thanks to a family timber fortune, Joyce for a quarter century had been a significant grant maker...

"...Leff recommended Barack...as a...new board member...Barack's election to Joyce's board was announced just after Thanksgiving 1994."

The same book also recalled:

"Equally significant was Debbie Leff's recommendation of Barack to a pair of fellow presidents of prominent Chicago foundations, Adele Smith Simmons at MacArthur and Patricia A. Graham at Spencer. One year earlier publishing billionaire Walter Annenberg had pledged $500 million...Wieboldt Foundation executive director Anne Hallett had left that post to create a new national network...Professor Bill Ayers...immediately queried Hallett and new Joyce Foundation education program officer Warren Chapman about Annenberg's potential...They submitted a final proposal...requesting $49.2 million...Hallett and Ayers reached out to Patricia Graham at Spencer...

"A Chicago entity would be needed to administer the Annenberg grant...and Graham in turn asked her fellow foundation presidents Adele Simmons and Debbie Leff to join her. The three women met for breakfast in mid-December [1994], and then held several more meetings with Hallett and Ayers in early January [1995]...A local board for the new organization would have to be chosen, and Debbie strongly recommended Barack...Pat Graham agreed to ask Barack, and invited him to meet her for a mid-February [1995] dinner at a well-known Italina restaurant...

"At dinner that night with Barack, Pat Graham...popped the question, explaining how she, Debbie, and Adele all wanted him to chair the new Chicago Annenberg Challenge board...At another breakfast meeting, Pat, Debbie, and Anne introduced Barack and Bill Ayers to each other...Ayers was well known in Chicago...His father Thomas G. Ayers...had...been...the longtime head of Commonwealth Edison...

"...By mid-March [1995] a board...was in place, and at its first meeting, Pat Graham's motion to elect Barack as their chair was unanimously adopted...The Chicago Annenberg Challenge reached the midpoint of its five years in mid-1997, jsut as the board mad its largest allocation of dollars to date. Notable was a grant of $750,000 to Bill Ayers's {project]..."

Revisiting Democratic Obama-Biden-Clinton Administration's 2011 War for Regime Change in Libya: Conclusion

Nelson Mandela with Libyan government leader against whom Hawk Democrats launched 2011 war. 

The Democratic Obama-Biden-Clinton administration ended its Operation Odyssey Dawn overt military attack on Libya on March 31, 2011. But, along with other NATO government administrations, it continued to wage its overt war for regime change in Libya under the code name “Operation Unified Protector,” after Apr. 1, 2011.

So Libyan government leader Qaddafi then sent a letter on Apr. 6, 2011 to Democratic President Obama requesting that the Democratic Party leader put an end to NATO intervention in Libya.

But instead of agreeing to end U.S. military intervention in Libya, on Apr. 7, 2011 the Obama-Biden-Clinton administration again demanded that Qaddafi abdicate power and live in exile; and it continued to wage its war for regime change in Libya until Qaddafi was finally murdered on Oct. 20, 2011, in violation of international law.

According to the 2015 RAND Project Air Force Precision and Purpose study, during the Operation Unified Protector phase that began in early April 2011, “U.S. forces flew more than 7,100 total sorties…which represented nearly 27 percent of the total sorties during the” NATO “operation.” But, according to the Sowing Chaos: Libya In The Wake of Humanitarian Intervention book, “more than 2,000 residents” of the Libyan “city of Sirte,” were “killed in NATO air strikes;” and, by waging its war for regime change in Libya in 2011, “NATO handed over part of Libya’s territory to Al Qaida.”

In his 2016 Sowing Chaos: Libya In The Wake of Humanitarian Intervention book, Paolo Sensini noted that “the jury is still out as to whether the war on Libya was fought” by the Democratic Obama-Biden-Clinton administration “on behalf of fossil fuel interests or on behalf of banking interests.” But Sensini also observed that “by means of Obama’s Executive Order 13566,” Libyan financial assets  belonging to “the Central Bank of Libya (CBS), the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA), the Libya Foreign Bank, and the Libyan National Oil Company (LNOC)” were “frozen,” prior to the start of its Operation Odyssey Dawn military attack; and “in August 2011, President Obama confiscated $30 billion from Libya’s Central Bank, which Qaddafi had earmarked for the establishment of the African IMF and African Central Bank.”

What has been determined, though, is that the Libyan “rebels” who, with the military support of Democratic Party leaders (like Obama, Biden and Hillary Clinton), were finally able to overthrow the Qaddafi-led government by the fall of 2011, were apparently illegally armed and trained by government of Qatar. As the 2015 RAND Project Air Force Precision and Purpose study revealed:

“…The U.N…raised concerns about…Qatar making arms transfers in violation of the arms embargo…The U.N….was `clearly informed that several countries, including Qatar, were supporting the [Libyan] opposition through the deliveries of arms and ammunition.’…Between the beginning of the [Libyan] uprising and July 2011, `approximately 20 flights had delivered military material from Qatar to…[the opposition] in Libya, including French anti-tank weapon launchers (MILANs)…

“…Qatar had personnel on the ground in Benghazi training the opposition. Rebel forces openly remarked…how Qatar had been with them from the beginning.

“Operating in the range of 50 to 150 personnel on the ground at any one time, Qatar’s Special Forces (SF) were used to train the opposition in a variety of small arms and tactics…The SF provided…the means for rebel forces to successfully engage pro-Qaddafi forces. On the ground direct assistance…was conducted with the main rebel brigades. These advisory teams…provided the main link between rebel ground units and NATO’s air power…This was used to supplement NATO targeting…

“The first official admission of Qatar’s involvement in training the opposition forces came in late October [2011]…Qatari Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces Major-General Hamad bin Ali Al-Attiya remarked, `We were among them [the Libyan opposition forces] and the number of Qataris on the ground were hundreds in every region.’ He also noted that Qataris had been `running the training and communication operations’ and that `Qatar had supervised the rebels’ plans…`We acted as the link between the rebel and NATO forces.’…A team of 60 Qataris assisted the opposition in setting up command centers in Benghazi, Zintan, and Tripoli…Opposition forces were also flown back to Qatar for training…”

The pretext for launching the Democratic Obama-Biden-Clinton administration/NATO and Qatari governments’ 2011 “humanitarian military intervention” in Libya, despite the African Union’s March 11, 2011 call for no external foreign intervention in Libya, was that this war for regime change in Libya was needed to save the lives of Libyan civilians. Yet, as Seumas Milne observed in an op-ed column, titled “If The Libyan War Was About Saving Lives It Was A Catastrophic Failure,” that appeared in the Oct. 26, 2011 issue of the London Guardian, prior to the launching of the U.S./NATO’s “Operation Odyssey Dawn” on March 19, 2011 and “operation Unified Protector” after Apr. 1, 2011, “the death toll in Libya” was “perhaps around 1,000-2,000 (judging by U.N. estimates).” But, according to the same column, during the 8 months that followed the Democratic Obama-Biden-Clinton administration/NATO’s overt “humanitarian” military intervention in Libya, “as NATO leaders vetoed ceasefires and negotiations,” estimates of the numbers of new dead “range from 10,000 up to 50,000;” and “of these, uncounted thousands will be civilians, including those killed by NATO bombings and NATO-backed forces on the ground.”

In addition, in his Oct. 26, 2011 London Guardian column, Seumas Milne also, for example, noted:

“On Tuesday, Human Rights Watch reported the discovery of 53 bodies, military and civilian, in Qaddafi’s last stronghold of Sirte, apparently executed—with their hands tied—by former rebel militia.

“Its investigator in Libya, Peter Bouckaert, told me yesterday that more bodies are continuing to be discovered in Sirte, where evidence suggests about 500 people, civilians and fighters have been killed in the last 10 days alone by shooting, shelling and NATO bombing…

“That has followed a 2-month-long siege and indiscriminate bombing of a city of 100,000 which has been reduced to a Grozny-like state of destruction by newly triumphant rebel troops with NATO air and Special Forces support…

“…African migrants and black Libyans have been subject to a relentless racist campaign of mass detention, lynchings and atrocities on the usually unfounded basis that they have been loyalist mercenaries. Such attacks continue, says Bouckaert, who witnessed militias from Misrata this week burning homes in Tawerga so that the town’s predominately black population—accused of backing Qaddafi—will be unable to return…”

Nearly 5 years after Democratic Party leaders like Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton launched their war for regime change in Libya, Chris Stephens noted in a Feb. 16, 2016 London Guardian article, titled “Five Years After Qaddafi, Libya’s Torn By Civil War And Battles With ISIS,” that “civil war” in Libya “has raged since the summer of 2014;” and “it is a war that has left 5,000 dead, the economy in ruins” and “half a million homeless.” So, not surprisingly, a Libyan medical student then told the London Guardian reporter that in Libya “some people say they want to go back to the time of Qaddafi.”

And as recently as July 9, 2019, even Al Jazeera now reported that “the battle between rival groups for the Libyan capital has killed more than 1,000 people since” April 2019, “the United Nations said;” and “the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a brief statement on Tuesday that 1,048 people, including 106 civilians, have been killed” in Libya since April 2019 and an additional 5,558 have been “wounded, including 289 civilians.” The same July 9, 2019 Al Jazeera article also noted that:

“Fighting has emptied entire neighborhoods of civilians. Thousands of African migrants captured by Libyan forces funded and trained by the European Union are trapped in detention centers near the front lines. An air raid on one facility last week killed more than 50 people mainly migrants held in a hangar that collapsed on top of them. Libya slid into chaos after the 2011 NATO-backed uprisings…”

2020 Democratic Party presidential primary candidate Sanders and 2016 Democratic Party presidential Nominee Clinton at 2016 Democratic National Convention

(end of article)

Revisiting Democratic Obama-Biden-Clinton Administration's 2011 War for Regime Change in Libya: Part 2

In his 2016 book, Sowing Chaos: Libya In The Wake of Humanitarian Intervention, Paolo Sensini noted that as early as Feb. 28 [2011], “Hillary Clinton made her first reference to the prospect of exile for Qaddafi.” The same book also indicated how the media was apparently used by the Democratic Obama-Biden-Clinton administration to apparently fabricate a “humanitarian” justification for its late March 2011 Operation Odyssey Dawn military attack in support of regime change in Libya:

“On Feb. 23 [2011]…the [anti-regime Libyan] rebels killed a number of loyalist civilians and military personnel. The video images of the bodies were falsely presented by the Western media as evidence of the massacre of 10,000 unarmed civilians, carried out by Qaddafi’s black mercenaries. More lies would soon be disseminated. Another video showed `mass graves’ on Tripoli’s beach. These alleged shocking images, it was discovered, recorded a routine task—the shifting of remains at the Sidi Hamed cemetery. These two stories were clearly propaganda stunts. This didn’t prevent Obama from thundering against intolerable levels of violence on Qaddafi’s part…

“…The satellite TV station, Al Arabiya, spread the news of 10,000 dead and at least 50,000 wounded or maimed in Libya…Reports appeared about Libyan airstrikes against Tripoli and Benghazi. There was talk also of `mass graves.’…Have we seen any photographs or video footage of the February [2011] massacre of thousands of people in Tripoli? None. Images of the Libyan air force bombing three districts of Tripoli? Not one witness was produced…The Russian armed forces monitoring the skies of Libya reported that they had no evidence of any Libyan airstrikes against civilians…

“What about the seaside mass graves story? What we saw was a cemetery, Sidi Hamed, with individual (!) graves. The contents of the graves had been moved well before the crisis erupted. It was a routine operation…The remains are shifted to make room for new graves. Such operations take place every one or two decades…What of the massacres that Qaddafi is said to have ordered in eastern Libya in February [2011]? No evidence of these either. Not one image of these alleged massacres (not even a shaky, blurred shot) has been produced…When the revolt broke out, the police resisted the attack on their buildings…Some of the `rebel’ groups…used heavy arms to attack police stations…

“We owe the military action to a media campaign on a grand scale…The lies had to be repeated incessantly…Ghassan Bin Jiddo—director of Al Jazeera’s office in Beirut--…was disgusted at the conduct of his colleagues. He submitted his resignation on Apr. 23, 2011, accusing Al Jazeera of conducting a massive campaign of falsification of the facts…Bin Jiddo’s complaints above all addressed the manner in which the reports coming out of Libya were distorted and manipulated…Following Bin Jiddo’s lead, other colleagues quit their jobs…The Western press failed to relay this story…

“…The story of the 10,000 protesters slaughtered by Qaddafi went mainstream globally. The impression for most people was that the story was true, despite the absence of video footage, photographs or other tangible proof.

“Despite the lack of convincing evidence…the European Union and the United States immediately…called for military intervention to halt the slaughter.

“They had not even a second’s worth of footage to back them up. The reports were pure propaganda…”

Yet on March 3, 2011, the Christian Science Monitor reported that Democratic President Obama issued a statement which asserted that “Colonel Qaddafi needs to step down from power and leave.”

But even after the Democratic Obama-Biden-Clinton administration ended the “Operation Odyssey Dawn” phase of its 2011 war for regime change in Libya on March 31, 2011, the Libyan “rebels” that it was illegally supporting were still unable to overthrow the Libyan government that Qaddafi still led.So, not surprisingly, according to Paolo Sensini’s Sowing Chaos: Libya In The Wake of Humanitarian Intervention book, “American government officials told the Washington Post (March 30, 2011) on condition of anonymity that, `President Obama has issued a secret finding that would authorize the CIA to carry out a clandestine effort to provide arms and other support to Libyan opposition groups.'”

Yet the same book also observed that “a FOIA document reveals” then-U.S. Secretary of State and later 2016 Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary “Clinton was aware in March 2011 that, on a routine basis, the rebel militias in Libya summarily executed captured fighters as pro-government mercenaries,” in violation of international law.

Nelson Mandela and Libyan leader whose regime Democratic Party leaders helped overthrow 

(end of part 2)

How Corporate Democratic Obama-Biden Administration Failed to Create Jobs For U.S. Workers

In 2019 some Democratic Party politicians have been claiming that their Billionaire-donor-funded political party serves the economic class interests of U.S. workers when a Corporate Democratic President occupies the White House oval office. Yet according to Jack Rasmus's 2012 Pluto Press book, Obama's Recovery: Recovery For The Few, during the first term of the 2009-2017 Corporate Democratic Obama-Biden Administration in Washington, D.C.:

"...More than a million additional jobs were...lost between December 2008 and June 2010 after Obama's $787 billion stimulus was introduced. Construction jobs declined from 6.83 million in December [2008] to 5.78 million by June 2010, a loss of 1.05 million jobs. Similarly, manufacturing jobs over the same 18-month period fell from 12.98 million to 11.60 million, a decline of 1.38 million...There was essentially no actual jobs creation program in Obama's initial economic recovery proposals of January 2009, or in the final version that was eventually passed by Congress in February 2009...For the entire year [of 2009], the first of Obama's term in office, total foreclosed properties were a record, 3,240,867, almost a million more than in 2008..."

The same book also indicated how the Corporate Democratic Obama-Biden Administration apparently served the special economic interests of Wall Street investment banks when a Corporate Democratic President occupied the White House oval office between 2009 and 2017:

"At the top of Obama's economic recovery priority list was the bank bailout--not job creation, not housing...It was no accident that the banking and finance industry was the single largest campaign contributor to Obama's 2008 election.

"...In 2008...the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP...was $700 billion in funds provided by Congress to the U.S. Treasury to buy banks' bad assets...

"The TARP approach to bank bailouts proved ineffective and politically risky...The $700 billion...raised taxpayer ire. TARP was too visible and thus was dangerous politically for administration and Congress alike. Using the Federal Reserve to bail out the banks was far less visible and preferable politically.

"...It wasn't until July 2010 that...it became public the Fed had spent $9 trillion on the bank bailouts up to that date...The Fed was insulated from electoral--and therefore Congressional--pressure to a large extent...The Federal Reserve could simply print money in the worst situation, if necessary, to bail out the financial sector...The U.S. government undertook...bank stress tests...in March [2009]...to...artificially boost bank stock prices...

"With more capital on hand from the stock appreciation and offerings, the banks loaned out the additional funds...to speculators like hedge funds, private equity firms and the like. The latter were busy speculating in Chinese property, foreign currencies, derivatives, swaps and similar investments. The banks that loaned them the funds in turn made nice profits, which further boosted their stock prices. Banks thus turned once again to the speculative investing that got them into trouble in the first place. The government turned a blind eye to the practice...The Fed charged the banks a mere 0.25 percent for banks to borrow funds from it. The banks then lent the money to speculators globally and received returns of 6 to 10 percent on average. Free money from the Fed for above-average market returns...

"So the method by which the banks and other financial institutions were effectively `rescued' or bailed out was...via...the Fed, through means of near zero cost loans, with interest paid to the banks on those loans, and via measures that artificially boasted bank stocks...such as phony stress tests and suspension of reasonable accounting rules..."

Joan Coxsedge's `Some Facts About Libya' Prologue

Former South African government head Nelson Mandela with Libya's Qaddafi 

In the Prologue to her 2018 book, Some Facts About Libya: How the West destroyed this once prosperous nation,  long-time Australian antiwar and Latin American solidarity activist Joan Coxsedge--who is also a former member of the Victoria state parliament--indicates why and how the Democratic Obama-Clinton administration launched its war for regime change in Libya in 2011: 

In March 1992 the UN imposed an arms and air embargo on Libya after Qaddafi refused to hand over the two Libyans accused of the Lockerbie bombing, sanctions that were tightened in 1993. But back then Libya had the highest standard of living in Africa that reduced their harsh impact. Libyans were provided with free education, healthcare, housing, electricity, subsidized food and interest-free loans, women wore Western clothes, went to work and attended university. If they wanted to farm, they were given a farmhouse, land, livestock and seeds, free of charge, and their state bank provided loans at 0% interest, as set out in law. And there were no terrorists. More than 60 countries had embassies in Tripoli, along with dozens of multinationals.

One of Qaddafi’s closest friends was Nelson Mandela. While the West was actively supporting the oppressive white regime, Mandela never forgot Libya’s support during the bitter anti-apartheid struggle, a friendship barely acknowledged in the West. Mandela became South Africa’s first black president in 1994 and rejected intense pressure from Western leaders to sever all ties with Qaddafi. He was accused of ‘supporting terrorism’ after refusing to cancel an official state visit to Libya. ‘A saint visiting a mad dog’, screamed the media. Mandela’s response: ‘No country can claim to be the policemen of the world and no state can dictate to another what it should do … those that yesterday were friends of our enemies have the gall to tell me not to visit my brother Qaddafi …’

And in March 1998, while visiting South Africa, President Bill Clinton was told at a news conference: ‘I have also invited Brother Leader Qaddafi to this country. I do so because our moral authority dictates that we should not abandon those who helped us in our darkest hour … and those who berated me for being loyal to our friends can literally go and jump in a pool.’ Clinton is said to have remained smiling throughout the event.

Today, Libya is a ‘failed state’, not because of Qaddafi but because of the treachery, greed and deceit of a number of Western countries and their allies in the Gulf. He was targeted for refusing to become a puppet after the 1969 coup, for closing down foreign military bases, and for swiftly nationalizing Libya’s vast oil industry that had largely benefited Western companies. He also hoped to free the entire African continent from Western financial dominance by introducing the ‘gold dinar’, a goldbacked African currency that threatened US dollar hegemony and the West’s central banking system. It probably sealed his fate, although in 2007, former NATO Supreme Military Commander General Wesley Clark  admitted that a ‘high ranking’ Pentagon official told him that Washington had been planning for some time ‘to take out seven countries in five years’, with Libya on its hit list.

After a decade of US sanctions, Qaddafi paid $1.5 billion to the Lockerbie families and abandoned his missile and nuclear program. Western leaders like Tony Blair and Condoleezza Rice paid him a visit and it was reported that he gave Sarkozy 50 million euros for his election campaign. Qaddafi probably thought that his rehabilitation was complete, but he was wrong. The West was only waiting for the right opportunity. It came in early 2011 when Cameron in Britain, Sarkozy in France and Obama in the US, with his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ‘leading from behind’, decided that Qaddafi had to go.

Secret agencies worked with Islamist groups to foment unrest around Benghazi using NATO for their criminal intervention. When Qaddafi sent his security forces to quell the unrest, it was claimed a civilian massacre was about to happen. It wasn’t, but a UN Security Council resolution forced a no fly zone over Libya without any evidence whatsoever. Germany, Russia, China and India declined to take part.

In March 2011, within 48 hours of the adoption of the resolution, Obama and Clinton ordered the US-NATO coalition to bomb Libya while the African Union was still desperately trying to find a solution to the impasse. More than 30,000 Libyans were killed, 50,000 injured, and the civilian infrastructure was severely damaged, including hospitals and schools – war crimes described as ‘humanitarian’ and a ‘historic success’ by the Pentagon. In October 2011, Qaddafi was hunted down by a mob and brutally murdered, with NATO warplanes playing a major role. His body was desecrated and put on public display before being buried in an unmarked grave in the Libyan Desert. Immediately after his death, NATO ended its bombing. Hillary Clinton, one of the main architects of the disgraceful operation, gloated on television: ‘We came, we saw, he died.’

Today, several terrorist groups, including ISIS and al-Qaida, have established a strong presence in the country and Libya is now a haven for human trafficking. Large quantities of weapons from Qaddafi’s arsenal have found their way to Mali, Niger and the Central African Republic, creating instability and mayhem, and Libyan arms and fighters have also found their way into Syria via Turkey.

Seven years after Qaddafi’s murder, this once-thriving country is fragmented and in a state of chaos. Despite its vast natural resources, its citizens face hunger, poverty and despair. So far no one has been held responsible for these crimes against humanity. It is highly unlikely they ever will be. 

Did Nobel Peace Prize Winner Barack Obama Wage Drone War Illegally As U.S. President?

In 2009, the Norwegian Nobel Committed awarded a "Nobel Peace Prize" worth over $900,000 to a  Democratic Party politician named Barack Obama. Yet during the 8 years that Obama occupied the U.S. power elite's White House oval office in Washington, D.C. he apparently ordered or sanctioned drone war attacks on people in foreign countries that sometimes killed civilians. As a New York Times national security correspondent named Mark Mazzetti recalled in his 2013 book The Way Of The Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth:

"...America has pursued its enemies using killer robots and special-operation troops...The foundations of the secret wars were laid by a conservative Republican president and embraced by a liberal Democratic one who became enamored of what he had inherited. President Barack Obama came to see it as an alternative to the messy, costly wars...It has...turned the American president into the final arbiter of whether specific people in far-off lands live or die...It is now easier for the United States to carry out killing operations at the ends of the earth than at any other time in its history...

"...Obama's desire to manage aspects of the targeted-killing program directly from the White House gave [former CIA official John] Brennan a role unique in the history of American government: one part executioner, one part chief confessor to the president, one part public spokesman sent out to justify the Obama doctrine of killing off...enemies in remote parts of the world...Obama, Brennan, and other senior members of the new administration would come to rely on targeted killing...No prominent member of President Obama's own party had criticized drone strikes...The meetings over two days at Langley were the first sign that President Obama planned to rely on the CIA and Joint Special Operations Command in ways that not even George W. Bush and Dick Cheney had...

"...During his first year in office, President Obama ordered a review of the roughly one dozen cover-action programs that CIA was carrying out at the time, from the drone strikes to a campaign to sabotage Iran's nuclear work...The summer 2009 meetings effectively rubber-stamped all of the CIA's secret ventures...By the time a `principals committee' meeting was scheduled for the fall, when President Obama's top national security advisers would make final decisions on the covert-action programs, not one of them was under consideration for cancellation...The Obama administration approved every one of the covert-action programs that had been handed down by President Bush...

"Even as the Obama administration discussed the future of the CIA's covert-action programs, there was no thought about ending the targeted-killing efforts. In the early months of the administration, National Security Adviser James Jones led a project to compile a centralized `kill list'...The American strikes in Yemen would claim more civilian casualties than...operatives affiliated with al Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula.

"The first American strike came on December 17, 2009...Obama approved the operation. The next day...several Tomahawk cruise missiles slammed into the desert camp in Abyan...Wideos taken by locals at the camp revealed missile fragments with American markings and also proved that the Tomahawk missiles had been topped with cluster bombs...Most of the dead were civilians, and bloody images of dead women and children went viral on YouTube...

"The CIA had approval from the White House to carry out missile strikes in Pakistan even when CIA targeters weren't certain about exactly who it was they were killing...In an area of known militant activity, all military-aged males were considered to be enemy fighters. Therefore, anyone who was killed in a drone strike there was categorized as a `combatant.'...On March 17, 2011...CIA drones attacked a tribal council meeting in the village of Datta Khey, in North Waziristan, killing dozens of men...Just as lawyers for President Bush had redefined torture to permit extreme interrogations by the CIA and the military, so had lawyers for President Obama given...secret agencies latitude to carry out extensive killing operations...

"Throughout the...presidential election season of 2012, President Obama frequently alluded to targeted killings as a sign of his toughness...Targeted killings have made the CIA the indispensable agency for the Obama administration..."

Time To Revisit 2012 Presidential Candidate Obama's Penny Pritzker Family Connection?

Stanford University Trustee Penny Pritzker--the white ultra-rich political "godmother" of 2012 Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama--has a long history of providing money to help bankroll the recent political campaigns of Obama and other Democratic Pary political officeseekers. As Bloomberg News observed in an April 15, 2011 article:

"President Barack Obama began his re-election fundraising drive yesterday in Chicago among some of his earliest political investors and near his 2012 campaign headquarters...Among longtime donors at the events were Penny Pritzker, who led the fundraising effort for his 2008 campaign and John Rogers, chairman of Chicago-based Ariel Investments LLC..."

And, according to the Center for Responsive Politics website, Stanford University Trustee Pritzker has personally made over $631,000 in political campaign contributions since the 1990s, including, for example, a campaign contribution of $25,840 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee on June 18, 2009 and two campaign contributions, totalling $56,400, to the DNC Services Corp. between July 20, 2008 and July 22, 2009.

Coincidentally, former Frontline tv show Producer Gus Russo's 2006 book, Supermob: How Sidney Korshak and His Criminal Associates Became America's Hidden Power Brokers, included the following interesting historical references to how the ultra-rich Pritzker family of Obama's 2008 campaign finance chairperson allegedly obtained some of its wealth, that apparently don't seem to get examined much on the Big Media television screen these days:

1. "What is most relevant to the Pritzker role in the Supermob is the large number of Pritzker transactions that involved known crime figures..." (page 68)

2. 'From LAPD Hamilton's Feb. 2, 1954 internal memo: `Abe Pritzker, a Chicago attorney with offices at 134 N. LaSalle Street, which is the same address as that of Sidney Korshak's office, has been closely connected with members of the Capone syndicate...and other underworld characters. It is believed by the undersigned that Pritzker may be active locally, as a front for eastern hoodlum money to be invested in the Los Angeles area...'" (page 136)

3."...The Pritzkers also became one of the country's largest hospital operators, acquiring 6 of their own and operating 15 more under lease and contract management..." (page 138)

4. "Profits...were not the only constants in the Pritzker saga. Rumors flew that, as with their questionable real estate partnerships in the forties, the Pritzkers'...Hyatt endeavor was similarly tainted. One IRS informant who was quoted as saying that `the Pritzkers family of Chicago through their Hyatt Corp. initially received their backing from organized crime' was later identified as F. Eugene Poe, the late president of a bank in Perrine, Florida, and vice president of the offshore tax haven where the Pritzkers hid their wealth known as Castle Bank..." (page 138)

5."...By the midseventies, the Pritzker empire was awash in profit, the most recent success coming from Nevada casino investments. Between 1959 and 1975, the Pritzkers had obtained $54.4 million in Teamster loans for their hotels...Thus, in 1972, under their Elsinore banner, the Pritzkers joined the Vegas party when they bought the Four Queens in `Glitter Gulch' and King's Castle with Teamsters Pension Fund loans (obtained at 4 percent discount, saving Hyatt $8 million). In return, the Teamsters bought $30 million in Hyatt stock..." (page 438)

6. "It was around this time, the early seventies, that IRS agents like Andy Furfaro noticed that the Prizkers' billion-dollar Hyatt chain was paying no taxes. It turned out the Pritzkers were the largest depositors in one of the most notorious offshore tax havens ever devised, The Castle Bank of the Bahamas, which was nothing less than an intersection of the Supermob, known gangsters, pop stars, a U.S. president, and the covert branch of the CIA--all of whom had good reason to hide their money from Uncle Sam...

"Castle...was the brainchild of longtime CIA `front organization' mastermind Paul Helliwell...

"In 1964, Helliwell joined forces with...Pritzker Chicago tax attorney (and Hyatt board member] Burton Kanter and Pritzker law firm partner [and Teamsters Pension Fund trustee] Stanford Clinton to establish the Castle Bank, where foreigners could set up trust accounts that were the key to both personal and commercial tax avoidance: since the trusts were, for U.S. tax purposes, foreign citizens, they owed no taxes to the U.S. government. The added beauty of the Castle setup was that the actual deposits never had to be delivered to the bank, which was a fake depository for money that the client could use anywhere in the world." (page 439)

7. "In the midseventies...the IRS mounted Operation Tradewinds (later Project Haven), an all-out investigation of Castle, referring to the probe as potentially the largest single-biggest tax-evasion case in U.S. history...IRS agent Richard Jaffee and detective Sybil Kennedy obtained a list of the bank's depositors, which included the Pritzkers...

"Given all the Pritzker associates involved in the management of Castle, it came as no surprise when Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Knut Royce determined in 1982 that the Pritzkers were in fact the bank's largest depositors. A September 1972 IRS statement noted, `An informant [F.Eugene Poe, a former VP and director of Castle Bank] with access to the records of Castle Trust has stated that the Pritzker family of Chicago, through their Hyatt Corporation, received their initial backing from organized crime.'..." (page 440)

8. "...The CIA's general counsel John J. Greaney intervened and demanded that the Department of Justice and IRS end the probe--it seemed that the CIA had also used Castle Bank to launder money in furtherance of its clandestine operations, and it feared that an investigation would jeopardize national security, not to mention its own congressional free ride..." (page 443)

9. "Using seed money from Chicago investors including the Pritzkers.., Kanter next became the legal advisor to...Cablevision Systems, which went on to become the largest privately held cable television company in the United States..." (page 443)

10. "Castle Bank was not the only shady partnership entered into by Kanter and the Pritzkers. In the 1970s, Kanter and Pritzker were also involved in a massive kickback scheme with two executives from the real estate wing of Prudential Insurance Company...In a complex setup that took prosecutors over 20 years to unravel, Kanter and the Pritzkers devised a scheme wherein contractors paid them and the Prudential executives under the table in exchange for lucrative Prudential business..." (page 440)

11. "...Burt Kanter, the man who had devised so many tax dodges for the Pritzkers and other cadre associates, died of cancer on October 31, 2001, while awaiting sentencing on a finding that he had defrauded the IRS.

"In 1994, after spending years unraveling the Kanter-Pritzker-Prudential insurance kickback scheme, the IRS had finally brought the case to trial...Judge Couvillion concluded that Kanter and associate had devised a scheme of kickbacks to avoid paying taxes to the federal government..." (page 571)

12. "As for the Pritzkers, over the last quarter century the family business had partnered with the infamous Bank of Credit and Commerce International [BCCI] in developing Hyatt hotels in Saudi Arabia..." (page 521)

13. "Like so many of the Supermob who increased their wealth with offshore tax dodges, the Pritzkers attempted to balance their reputation with philanthropy, the clique's way of saying that they'd rather choose where their money goes than allowing the IRS to do it..." (page 68)

A People's History of Syria--Part 28--section 2: January to December 2012 Period

A few weeks after armed Syrian rebel groups gained control of Aleppo, Syria on July 18, 2012, a Reuters article by Mark Hosenball, titled “Exclusive: Obama authorizes secret U.S. support for Syrian rebels”, revealed on Aug. 1, 2012 some more details about the U.S. government’s covert and overt support for the armed insurgency in Syria:

“President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing U.S. support for rebels seeking to depose Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government, U.S. sources familiar with the matter said.

“Obama's order, approved earlier this year and known as an intelligence `finding,’ broadly permits the CIA and other U.S. agencies to provide support that could help the rebels oust Assad…Precisely when Obama signed the secret intelligence authorization, an action not previously reported, could not be determined…A U.S. government source acknowledged that under provisions of the presidential finding, the United States was collaborating with a secret command center operated by Turkey and its allies.

“Last week, Reuters reported that, along with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Turkey had established a secret base near the Syrian border to help direct vital military and communications support to Assad's opponents.

“This `nerve center’ is in Adana, a city in southern Turkey about 60 miles from the Syrian border, which is also home to Incirlik, a U.S. air base where U.S. military and intelligence agencies maintain a substantial presence….Turkish authorities are said by current and former U.S. government officials to be increasingly involved in providing Syrian rebels with training and possibly equipment.

“European government sources said wealthy families in Saudi Arabia and Qatar were providing significant financing to the rebels…Current and former U.S. and European officials previously said that weapons supplies, which were being organized and financed by Qatar and Saudi Arabia, were largely limited to guns and a limited number of anti-tank weapons, such as bazookas….Separately from the president's secret order, the Obama administration has stated publicly that it is providing some backing for Assad's opponents….Recent news reports from the region have suggested that the influence and numbers of Islamist militants, some of them connected to al Qaeda or its affiliates, have been growing among Assad's opponents…”

According to a 2013 Amnesty International human rights group report, in Syria during 2012, “government forces…carried out indiscriminate attacks on residential areas using aircraft, artillery shells, mortars, incendiary weapons and cluster bombs” and “together with their support militias, they arrested thousands of people.” In addition, “at least 550 were reported to have died in custody, many after torture,” others were extrajudicially executed” and “security forces’ snipers continued to shoot peaceful anti-government demonstrators and people attending public funerals.”

But the same 2013 Amnesty International report also noted that in Syria during 2012, the “armed groups fighting against the government also committed gross abuses, including war crimes,” “tortured and/or summarily killed government soldiers and militia members after taking them prisoner and carried out indiscriminate bombings that killed or injured civilians.”

The 2013 Amnesty International report described how the lives of many people in Syria were impacted by the continued foreign government-backed armed revolt against Assad’s Baath regime in 2012:

“…Hundreds of thousands of people were forced to flee their homes; the UN estimated that over 2 million people were internally displaced and living under conditions of extreme hardship within Syria, and that since the beginning of the conflict almost 600,000 had fled as refugees to neighboring countries, where conditions were often harsh….A bomb attack in the capital Damascus on 18 July, for which the Free Syrian Army [FSA] claimed responsibility, killed the Defense Minister and his deputy, the Assistant Vice-President and the Head of the National Security Bureau. Two days later, armed opposition groups launched an offensive that spread the armed conflict to Aleppo, Damascus and elsewhere….

“Armed groups fighting against the government, including some linked to the FSA, …carried out suicide and other bomb attacks, and at times fired imprecise weapons such as artillery and mortars in densely populated neighborhoods, used inherently indiscriminate weapons such as anti-personnel landmines, and prepared or stored munitions and explosives in residential buildings, endangering civilian occupants…By the end of the year, armed opposition groups were reported to be increasingly threatening and attacking minority communities perceived to be pro-government…

“Government forces and militias routinely used lethal and other excessive force to quell peaceful protests calling for the `fall of the regime’. Hundreds of people, including children and bystanders, who posed no threat to the security forces or others, were killed or wounded by government snipers during protests and public funerals of “martyrs”. ..At least 550 people, including children, were reported to have died in custody, most apparently as a result of torture or other ill-treatment. Many of those who died were suspected government opponents…

“Government forces launched frequent, indiscriminate air strikes against opposition-controlled areas, prompting almost all residents of these areas to flee. Others, particularly those from minority groups, also fled their homes fearing attacks from armed opposition groups. Many camped in the countryside or sought refuge in caves; others went to live with relatives or left the country. Refugees from elsewhere resident in Syria, including Palestinian refugees, faced particular difficulties in accessing safety…By the end of the year, thousands of people were living in camps beside the border with Turkey in dire conditions…”

But the 2013 Amnesty International Report also noted that in 2012, “in February, the government held a referendum on a new Constitution that ended the Baath party’s long monopoly on power, but fell short of opposition demands for sweeping political reforms,” “parliamentary elections were held 90 days later,” and Assad’s Baath regime “announced general amnesties in January and October” of 2012.

(end of section 2 of part 28)

A People's History of Syria--Part 28--section 1: January to December 2012 Period

According to a Mar.9, 2012 article, titled “The Bloody Road to Damascus: The Triple Alliance’s War on a Sovereign State,” by The Arab Revolt and the Imperialist Counterattack author and Binghamton University Sociology Professor James Petras, there was “clear and overwhelming evidence” by 2012 in Syria “that the uprising to overthrow President Assad of Syria” was “a violent, power grab led by foreign-supported fighters who have killed and wounded thousands of Syrian soldiers, police and civilians, partisans of the government and its peaceful opposition;" and that “the outrage expressed by politicians in the West and Gulf State and in the mass media, about the ‘killing of peaceful Syrian citizens protesting injustice’” was “cynically designed to cover up the documented reports of violent seizure of neighborhoods, villages and towns by armed bands, brandishing machine guns and planting road-side bombs.” In Professor Petras’s view:

“The assault on Syria is backed by foreign funds, arms and training….An objective analysis of the political and social composition of the principle armed combatants in Syria refutes any claim that the uprising is in pursuit of democracy for the people of that country. Authoritarian fundamentalist fighters form the backbone of the uprising. The Gulf States financing these brutal thugs are themselves absolutist monarchies…The armed groups infiltrate towns and use population centers as shields from which they launch their attacks on government forces. In the process they force thousands of citizens from their homes, stores and offices which they use as military outposts. The destruction of the neighborhood of Baba Amr in Homs is a classic case of armed gangs using civilians as shields and as propaganda fodder in demonizing the government.

"These armed mercenaries have no national credibility with the mass of Syrian people… The kings and emirs of the Gulf States bankroll these fighters. Turkey provides military bases and controls the cross-border flow of arms and the movement of the leaders of the so-called `Free Syrian Army’. The US, France and England provide the arms, training and diplomatic cover. Foreign jihadist-fundamentalists, including Al Qaeda fighters from Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan, have entered the conflict…This is an international conflict pitting an unholy triple alliance of NATO imperialists, Gulf State despots and Muslim fundamentalists against an independent secular nationalist regime. The foreign origin of the weapons, propaganda machinery and mercenary fighters reveals the sinister imperial, `multi-national’ character of the conflict….

“…The Western backed militias have seized neighborhoods by force of arms, destroyed oil pipelines, sabotaged transportation and bombed government buildings. In the course of their attacks they have disrupted basic services critical to the Syrian people including education, access to medical care, security, water, electricity and transportation. As such, they bear most of the responsibility for this `humanitarian disaster’…A majority of Syrians prefer a peaceful, negotiated settlement and reject mercenary violence. The Western-backed Syrian National Council and the Turkish and Gulf States-armed `Free Syrian Army’ flatly rejected Russian and Chinese calls for an open dialogue and negotiations which the Assad regime…accepted. NATO and Gulf State dictatorships are pushing their proxies to pursue violent `regime change’, a policy which already has caused the death of thousands of Syrians. US and European economic sanctions are designed to wreck the Syrian economy, in the expectation that acute deprivation will drive an impoverished population into the arms of their violent proxies…”

According to Thomas Plofchen’s May 14, 2014 timeline on The Cairo Review of Global Affairs website, on Jan. 23, 2012 the Al-Nussra Front (Jabbat Al-Nursa)—a Syrian opposition armed rebel group affiliate of the Al-Qaeda group—announced its formation. And in an article by Eric Schmitt, titled “C.I.A. Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition,” the New York Times reported the following on June 21, 2012:

“A small number of C.I.A. officers are operating secretly in southern Turkey, helping allies decide which Syrian opposition fighters across the border will receive arms to fight the Syrian government, according to American officials and Arab intelligence officers.

The weapons, including automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and some antitank weapons, are being funneled mostly across the Turkish border by way of a shadowy network of intermediaries including Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood and paid for by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the officials said.

“The C.I.A. officers have been in southern Turkey for several weeks…The Obama administration has said it is not providing arms to the rebels, but it has also acknowledged that Syria’s neighbors would do so.

“The clandestine intelligence-gathering effort is the most detailed known instance of the limited American support for the military campaign against the Syrian government. It is also part of Washington’s attempt to increase the pressure on President Bashar al-Assad of Syria…The United States and its allies have…turned to…aiding allied efforts to arm the rebels to force Mr. Assad from power.

“…`C.I.A. officers are there and they are trying to make new sources and recruit people,’ said one Arab intelligence official who is briefed regularly by American counterparts…The struggle inside Syria has the potential to intensify significantly in coming months as powerful new weapons are flowing to both the Syrian government and opposition fighters…Spokesmen for the White House, State Department and C.I.A. would not comment on any intelligence operations supporting the Syrian rebels, some details of which were reported last week by The Wall Street Journal…

“The State Department has authorized $15 million in nonlethal aid, like…communications equipment, to civilian opposition groups in Syria…What has changed since March is an influx of weapons and ammunition to the rebels. The increasingly fierce air and artillery assaults by the government are intended to counter improved coordination, tactics and weaponry among the opposition forces, according to members of the Syrian National Council and other activists.

“Last month, these activists said, Turkish Army vehicles delivered antitank weaponry to the border, where it was then smuggled into Syria….The United States, these activists said, was consulted about these weapons transfers….The Syrian National Council, the main opposition group in exile, has recently begun trying to organize the scattered, localized units that all fight under the name of the Free Syrian Army into a more cohesive force…”

(end of part 28--section 1)

Bill de Blasio and New York City's Clintongate Scandal: A Tale of Three Phonies--Conclusioin

(A shorter version of this article originally appeared in the Winter 2013 issue of the Lower East Side underground/alternative newspaper, “The Shadow”)

Democratic Party professional politicians like the Clintons have apparently been eager to cash in big when they finally vacate their government offices. Yet most publicly-funded New York City government officials still are paid more annually than what the average individual worker in the Big Apple is allowed to take home each year. As long ago as 2007, for example—despite the alleged budgetary problems of New York City’s government—the following annual salaries were being paid to local city government elected and appointed officials:

1. CUNY Chancellor: $350,000;
2. NYC Dept. of Education Chancellor: $250,000;
3. NYC Mayor: $225,000;
4. NYC Deputy Mayor for Operations: $204,866;
5. Queens College President: $196,000;
6. CUNY Medical School President: $192,000;
7. NYC District Attorneys/Prosecutors: $190,000;
8. CUNY School of Law Dean: $189,740;
9. NYC Comptroller: $185,000;
10. College of Staten Island President: $183,113;
11. NYC Deputy Mayor for Policy: $177,236;
12. NYC Deputy Mayor for Economic Development: $177,236;
13. NYC Deputy Mayor for Administration: $177,236;
14. NYC Deputy Mayor for Legal Affairs: $177,236;
15. NYC Housing Authority Chair: $177,038;
16. Queensborough Community College President: $176,580;
17. Hunter College President: $175,000;
18. NYC Mayor’s Chief of Staff: $171,038;
19. NYC Mayor’s Press Secretary: $171,038;
20. NYC Dept. of Citywide Administration Services Commissioner: $172,038;
21. NYC Office of Emergency Management Commissioner: $171,038;
22. NYC Dept. of Environmental Protection Commissioner: $171,038;
23. NYC Financial Information Services Agency Executive Director: $171,038;
24. NYC Health and Mental Hygiene Commissioner: $171,038;
25. NYC Dept. of Social Services Commissioner: $171,038;
26. NYC Office of Labor Relations Commissioner: $171,038;
27. NYC Corporation Counsel: $171,038;
28. NYC Office of Management and Budget Director: $171,038;
29. NYC Dept. of Parks and Recreation Commissioner: $171,038;
30. NYC Office of Payroll Administration Executive Director: $171,038;
31. NYC Police Commissioner: $171,038;
32. NYC Probation Commissioner: $171,038;
33. NYC Department of Transportation Commissioner: $171,038;
34. NYC Off-Track Betting Corporation President: $171,017;
35. NYC Public Advocate: $165,000;
36. NYC Mayor’s Director of Research: $147,000;
37. NYC Mayor’s Special Advisor for Government: $126,072;
38. NYC Mayor’s Senior Advisor: $125,246; and
39. NYC City Council Members: $112,500.

Yet despite their inflated salaries, New York City government officials have still apparently not been able to reduce the official unemployment rate in the Big Apple to below 4 percent in 2013 or provide many union wage jobs for New Yorkers who still have jobs. In August 2013, for example, the official jobless rate in New York City was 8.6 percent, while wages for most workers in the Big Apple have dropped by about 7 percent after adjusting for inflation, since 2002.

In addition, the median rent in New York City has increased by almost 9 percent since 2007 and the number of rental units affordable to low-income families in the Big Apple has dropped from 40 percent to 25 percent since 2002. So, not surprisingly, the number of homeless families economically compelled to live in city housing shelters has increased by 73 percent since 2002, although “more than one out of four families in shelters, 28 percent, include at least one employed adult…and 16 percent of single adults in shelters hold jobs.,” according to the Sept. 17, 2013 issue of the New York Times.

So substituting an apparent phony from Cambridge, Massachusets (who is a Democratic Party politician backed by special business and real estate economic interests) for a Republican Party plutocrat from Medford, Massachusetts (who was also backed by special Wall Street upper-class economic interests) in City Hall ain’t likely to bring much economic equality, political freedom, apartment rent rollbacks or adequately-paid 30-hour workweek jobs to most New Yorkers and New York City tenants in 2014.

And substituting one phony female Clinton for one phony male Clinton in the White House in 2017 ain’t likely to finally create a radically democratic multi-racial society in either the Big Apple or the United States in 2017.

Neither another Republican administration headed by former Mayor Giuliani’s Deputy Mayor—former Paine Webber and Cablevision Executive Joe Lhota—nor a Democratic de-Blasio-Clintongate administration headed by a Clinton “wanna-be/Clinton clone Democrat" will likely liberate the multi-racial working-class “Slaves of New York” in 2014, given the undemocratic political, economic and mass media manipulation/media censorship System that still exists in the United States in the 21^st-century.

All Mass Media and Wall Street Economic Power To The People!

(end of article)

Bill de Blasio and New York City's Clintongate Scandal: A Tale of Three Phonies--Part 13

(A shorter version of this article originally appeared in the Winter 2013 issue of the Lower East Side underground/alternative newspaper, “The Shadow”)

Bill de Blasio’s Clintongate Scandal Connection

In an Aug. 13, 2013 Politico website article, titled “Hillary Clinton’s Next Act: The family foundation,” Maggie Haberman also indicated how Hillary Clinton will apparently also become more directly involved in the New York City-based philanthropies empire of the Clintons (at the same time her 2000 U.S. Senate campaign manager de Blasio will likely be occupying the mayor’s office in New York City):

“Hillary Clinton’s next phase of life — the co-leader of a family foundation — has officially begun.

“She’s coming in to her husband’s signature foundation, which has been renamed for all three Clintons — their daughter has an increased presence…. Hillary Clinton’s new office at the foundation’s Manhattan headquarters is slowly taking shape as the chiefs of staff to all three Clintons hold a standing meeting every Monday to arrange schedules and events — three offices staffed with people who have worked together for years….Clinton is joining the foundation launched by her husband and a coterie of former White House aides and advisers...And the foundation is also the structure that has provided sustenance for the extended Clintonland for over a decade…Hillary Clinton’s staff at the foundation is just under 10 people — seven in her current Washington-based transition office and two recent hires…Teneo and some of its clients are also still involved in supporting the foundation’s work, one official said.”

Not much of the money that Bill Clinton has been collecting since 2001 for his tax-exempt “philanthropic” activities (from the ultra-rich folks and special corporate interests who profited most during the 1990s from his administration’s economic policies) has apparently been redistributed to either the families of the children who died in Iraq as a result of his administration’s economic sanctions policy or of the civilians in Serbia who were killed after he ordered that country bombed.

Yet according to a May 23, 2013 Celebrity Worth website article by Brian Warner, since 2001 the presidential candidate whose 1996 re-election campaign in New York was directed by Bill de Blasio has earned over $106 million in speaking fees—despite the Great Recession of the post-2008 years which the Clinton administration’s late 1990s repeal of FDR’s Glass-Steagall Act (that mandated the separation of commercial banking and investment banking) helped create. As Brian Warner observes in his Celebrity Worth article:

“…As a private citizen, Bill was finally able free to cash in… One of the first big windfalls came when the Knopf Publishing Group paid him $15 million for the rights to his memoir My Life. That $15 million is still the largest book advance of all time…. In the 12 years since Bill Clinton has left office, he has given 544 paid speeches all over the world. His fee has ranged from $28,000 to $750,000. The average fee for a single speaking engagement has been $195,000. In 2012, Bill earned $17 million and in 2011 he earned $13.4 million. In total he has made $106 million off speaking engagements since 2001… Out of all of his earnings, $57 million came from outside the US…. “

The same article also indicated how the U.S. senatorial candidate whose campaign Bill de Blasio managed in 2000 has also apparently cashed-in since the Clintons first vacated the White House in early 2001:


“Before Bill Clinton entered the White House…His wife Hillary was the real breadwinner of family at the time, bringing home a salary of $188,547 as an attorney at the…Rose Law Firm in Little Rock…Hillary Clinton earned $8 million for her 2003 biography Living History…Earlier this year Hillary Clinton re-entered private life after stepping down as Secretary of State. Hillary quickly earned a cool $14 million advance for future book with publishing company Simon & Schuster. She is also starting to hit the privates speech circuit and earning six figures for her time…If Hillary and Bill continue to cash in…it's likely that their combined net worth will pass the $200 million mark in the next 3-5 years….”
(end of part 13)

Bill de Blasio and New York City's Clintongate Scandal: A Tale of Three Phonies--Part 12

(A shorter version of this article originally appeared in the Winter 2013 issue of the Lower East Side underground/alternative newspaper, “The Shadow”)

Bill de Blasio’s Clintongate Scandal Connection

In an Aug. 28, 2013 article, titled “The Press Scrutinizes the New Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation”, that was posted on the Philanthropy website, Rick Cohen noted that “the intersection of the Clintons’ foundation and Hillary Clinton’s presidential run has generated a spate of articles suggesting that the renamed and expanded foundation is really now a `pre-campaign organization’ for the campaign and is becoming `the command post for all things Hillary. The same article also observes: 

“If you were someone who wanted to get in good with someone with a decent shot of becoming the next president, you might show up at one of the upcoming fundraisers associated with Hillary or Chelsea, such as the scheduled November 9th `Millennium Network’ event, with top-tier $15,000 donors getting themselves photographed with Hillary herself…The association with a possible future president’s name probably makes the foundation nearly irresistible to donors….The ex-president has attracted some raised eyebrows due to the character of occasional donors (notably Canadian mining magnate Frank Giustra, who received some personal benefits from his association with the former president) and questions about some of his foundation’s initiatives…

“The new foundation with Hillary on the nameplate has garnered new scrutiny, including an in-depth article in the New York Times co-authored by Nick Confessore and Amy Chozick. The NYT reporters wrote about the ever-increasing size of the foundation (now with 350 employees), a constantly changing board of various Clinton intimates, $50 million in travel expenditures since 2003…and hints of conflicts of interest concerning [Doug] Band, who has left the foundation to start a private consulting business—not to mention Hillary Clinton’s expanding `nerve center’ of staff, which occupies two floors of the foundation’s Midtown Manhattan offices…

“There are plenty who are plying the foundation for access to the Clintons and their associates..The business and political overlaps show up with Band’s company, Teneo, which seems to have employed Huma Abedin while she was a `special government employee’ at the State Department while Hillary Clinton was secretary…

"The investigative journalism story...is the news that it is now officially being co-managed by the former president and the former Secretary of State. `I think having a place such as this for a platform gives her a great launching pad into 2016,’ former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told Politico. `It gives her, quite frankly, a great place with which to create or begin to create the message she would use should she decide to run….”

Yet as the New York City Public Advocate since 2010-whose public office website claims to be holding both corporations and tax-exempt “non-profit” organizations like the Clinton Foundation/Clinton Global Initiative accountable to the public--Bill de Blasio has apparently failed to adequately monitor or investigate the apparently self-serving and unethical way the Clintons have been operating their New York City-based Clinton Foundation/Clinton Global Initiative.

But around the same time that the Clintons’ former 1996 New York campaign director, Clinton-appointed HUD official and 2000 U.S. Senate campaign manager began his term as the New York City Public Advocate, the Washington Post observed in a Jan. 2, 2010 article:

“Foreign governments, longtime Democratic fund-raisers...gave money to President Clinton’s…foundation in 2009, according to a list of donors the foundation released yesterday under an agreement with President Obama to prevent the appearance of conflicts with Hillary Rodham Clinton’s role as secretary of state.

“Some foreign governments…had been multimillion-dollar donors in the past, including Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Kuwait, and Qatar…, Other governments continued their giving, including Norway, which has given $10 million to $25 million over the past several years, and Oman, whose donations have totaled $1 million to $5 million.

“Also among the 19,047 donors from last year are Slim-Fast founder and billionaire Democratic donor S. Daniel Abraham, who has given the Clinton Foundation $5 million to $10 million; Canadian mining tycoon Frank Giustra, who has given more than $25 million; and Scottish financier Sir Tom Hunter, whose foundation has donated $10 million to $25 million. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation also gave money in 2009 and ranks among the top donors, having given more than $25 million...Some…Clinton Foundation supporters did not give money last year, including Hollywood magnate Stephen Bing and upstate New York businessman Tom Golisano, each of whose past donations total $10 million to $25 million. Citigroup, the banking firm that has received federal bailout money, is a past supporter…Richard Scaife, a conservative media baron… has given the Clinton Foundation $100,001 to $250,000…

“The foundation…financed the construction of Clinton’s presidential library in Little Rock…. Clinton resisted revealing his foundation’s donors during his wife’s presidential campaign, but he agreed to do so in late 2008 when Hillary Clinton was negotiating with Obama’s transition team to join the Cabinet….”

In a Sept. 22, 2013 article in The New Republic, titled “Scandal at Clinton Inc.,”  Alec MacGillis also wrote the following in reference to the tax-exempt Clinton Foundation and Clinton Global Initiative “philanthropies” and their apparent connection to the for-profit Teneo consulting firm of Clinton Global Initiative Advisory Board member Doug Band:

“Bill Clinton now leads a sprawling philanthropic empire like no other…It has formed partnerships with multinationals and wealthy individuals… In July 2001, the former president had established the William J. Clinton Foundation....In 2005, the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) was born.

“CGI is not a traditional charity…It is a series of collaborations with corporations or individuals…CGI was the perfect vehicle for Clinton…. It placed him at the center of a matrix of the ultra-wealthy and the ultra-powerful, the kinds of people Clinton has always taken a special pleasure in surrounding himself with…


“Teneo has its headquarters on the forty-fifth floor of the former Citigroup Center tower in Midtown and employs more than 200 people in 13 cities…It describes its raison d’être as `integrated counsel for a borderless world,’ offering investment banking, restructuring advice, and `business intelligence’” on dealing with `global disruptors.’… From the beginning, Teneo resembled an outpost of Clintonland more than an independent entity. Clinton and Blair came on as paid advisers…. Nancy Hernreich Bowen, director of Oval Office operations under Clinton, works in the Hong Kong office…. A number of key Teneo clients were also closely involved with Clinton’s charitable work. One month before the Rockefeller Foundation presented Clinton with an award for philanthropy, it gave Teneo a $3.4 million contract…Other Teneo clients include the big hospital chain Tenet (which is a lead partner in the new Clinton Health Matters Initiative) and UBS Americas (which launched a Small Business Advisory Program with the foundation). (According to The New York Times, Teneo’s monthly fees can be as high as $250,000.)… In February 2012, Bill Clinton’s office announced that he would no longer take payment from the firm. The page listing an `advisory board’ headed by Clinton and Blair vanished from its website….”
(end of part 12)