Seeking Truth in a World of Propaganda. Links do not necessarily indicate agreement with stories or perspectives.
“Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.” - Plato
Shortly after Khaleed al Masri arrived at a CIA prison in Afghanistan, officials figured out they had the wrong man. In fact, al Masri, a German citizen who had been kidnapped for the CIA by Macedonian police, didn't appear to have any connections to terrorism. But agents continued to hold him and continued to question him for months. A recently released report said the CIA refused to release him because it couldn't figure out a way to do so without admitting its mistake.
CNN on Wednesday reported the death of 37-year-old Alton Sterling by using an old mugshot instead of current Facebook photos.
After cell phone video surfaced showing a Baton Rouge officer killing Sterling during an alleged struggle, CNN’s Polo Sandoval reported on Wednesday that protesters had taken to the streets to demonstrate against the shooting.
And although photos of Sterling were readily available from Facebook and his family, CNN selected a mugshot provided by WAFB as the only photograph of Sterling to air for the report.
RELATED: Cops ‘stole’ surveillance footage of Alton Sterling shooting: report
Later in the morning, CNN’s Alisyn Camerota seemed preoccupied with Sterling’s criminal history while talking with Sterling’s aunt, Sandra Sterling.
“Does he have a history of violence?” Camerota asked.
“He was like a gentle giant,” Sandra Sterling replied.
“Can you tell us what his previous incident with the law was?” the CNN host pressed.
The aunt insisted that the charge “was something so minor that it’s not even worth saying.”
According to The Advocate, a warrant had been issued for Sterling’s arrest in 2015 after he failed to register as a sex offender for charges dating back to 2000. He also spent five years in prison beginning in 2009 for drug-related crimes.
Media outlets — including CNN — have been called out repeatedly for using mugshots of victims of officer-involved shootings, while using less ominous photos of the killers in uniform.
Watch the video below from CNN, broadcast July 6, 2016.
Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
At this point I’d like to remind everyone that crime in the U.S. has been dropping since the 1990’s. So why has domestic police force militarization been growing exponentially since then? Ostensibly, it is for the “war on terror” and to keep us safe. In reality, we know this is bullshit. Just like the NSA’s unconstitutional spying hasn’t stopped a single terrorist attack, turning local cops into a domestic army hasn’t done a single thing to make us safe. To the contrary, it is creating an environment where the general public harbors increased resentment and skepticism toward police, and the police view the citizenry as the “enemy.” This takes the societal tinderbox that already exists and makes it downright explosive. Ferguson is just the latest example of the tension bubbling to the surface, but there will likely be many more in the future.
– From the 2014 post: “A Good Time Was Had By All” – The Obamas Dance the Night Away as Ferguson, Missouri Burns
Last spring, I highlighted the egregious and barbaric shooting of Walter L. Scott as he fled from a South Charleston, South Carolina police officer. In light of recent events, it’s crucial to recall the sordid details of this case. As such, here’s a excerpt from the post, South Carolina Cop to Be Charged with Murder for Shooting Man 8 Times in the Back as He Ran Away:
The video at the end of this story is really hard to watch. Not just because we see a police officer gunning down a man as he ran away, but because he repeatedly yells at a dead body to “put his hands behind his back,” and then seemingly plants his taser by the corpse to cover up the crime.
Just like with banker theft, unless people are held accountable with serious jail time, the criminality will not only continue, it will get worse. The rule of law must be restored and applied equally to the rich and powerful, or we are truly doomed as a society.
Although I haven’t been as focused on police brutality and murder this year, that doesn’t mean the problem’s gone away. Just yesterday, a very disturbing incident occurred in Baton Rouge, Louisiana that once again looks a lot like straight up police murder. As is often the case, the victim was a marginalized black man merely trying to make a buck in an incredibly corrupt and rigged economy.
Here’s the tragic case of Alton Sterling, as reported by the New York Times:
Scores of protesters gathered in Baton Rouge, La., on Tuesday night after a black man was fatally shot in an encounter with police officers earlier in the day, an incident that was captured in a graphic cellphone video that began circulating on social media.
The victim, Alton Sterling, 37, was killed in a shooting at about 12:35 a.m. on Tuesday, the Baton Rouge police said in a statement. The police had received a call from someone who reported having been threatened by an armed man wearing a red shirt who was selling CDs outside a store in the eastern part of the city, the statement said.
A police spokeswoman reached early Wednesday said that she could not comment beyond the statement, which provided no details of what it called an “altercation” between Mr. Sterling and the two officers who responded.
William Clark, the coroner of East Baton Rouge Parish who is known as Beau, said that Mr. Sterling had died at the scene from multiple gunshot wounds to the chest and back.
A cellphone video shot by a bystander, which was released later in the day, showed Mr. Sterling being tackled by a police officer. He is then held to the ground by two officers, and one of the officers appears to hold a gun above Mr. Sterling’s chest.
In a Twitter post early Wednesday, the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson called the shooting a “legal lynching.”
Before you accuse Mr. Jackson of exaggeration, watch the video below and make up your own mind.
I think it’s quite fitting that the shameless police murder above occurred on the exact same day that Hillary Clinton was set free by the top cops in the nation thanks solely to her position of power and influence. Benjamin Dixon said it perfectly last month in the following tweet:
May need to say this every day for next 4 years, but real white privilege is being under FBI investigation & still free to run for President
— Benjamin Dixon (@TheBpDShow) June 10, 2016
None of this will be lost upon a citizenry which is already seething with rage and very close to a tipping point. Increasingly, the general public is coming to the very unpleasant realization that they live in a corporate oligarchy in which they are subjects rather than citizens. The more they are pushed into a corner, the sooner they will lash out in all sorts of ways.
The generational level revolts I anticipate have been a long time coming and will emanate from both rural, largely white America, as well from inner city communities populated mostly by minorities. The key thing we must all bear in mind going into the turbulent times ahead is that we are all in this together.
The status quo doesn’t care whether you are black, white, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, male, female, straight, gay or transgender. To the status quo we are all expendable peasants — cannon fodder. The establishment loves to play up the differences between us in order to divide us, but they don’t care about any of us. They will allocate all their energy and efforts into dividing and conquering the public in the period of civil unrest to come. If we fall for this trap we will have only ourselves to blame for the failure to turn grassroots protests into genuine, systemic change.
The other key variable as to whether the forthcoming rebellions result in any positive change will revolve around what form they take. When I say civil unrest, I am well aware that this likely means some degree of violence and looting; however, such expressions of frustration will do far more harm than good. We must recognize that as it stands the status quo has no actual legitimacy, and therefore can only succeed if it’s able to portray the abused public as the bad guys, and sell us on the idea that the U.S. government is the only thing standing between us and violent mobs.
If you want to win this battle, you need to be smart. Winning the hearts and minds of the general public is absolutely critical, and shouldn’t be difficult in an environment in which the establishment discredits itself on a daily basis.
To summarize, I think the activist community across American needs to do two things:
1. Stick together. Black, white, rural, urban, we are all in this together. Don’t allow yourselves to become divided — we have the same opponent. Never forget that.
2. Keep things non-violent. If violence happens, always make sure the government fires the first shots. If the general public perceives you to be out there looking for a fight as opposed to reacting to state aggression, you will lose. Think outside the box, be creative and employ non-violent civil disobedience whenever possible.
A perfect example of what not to do was seen earlier this year in Oregon. See: A Stupid Standoff but a Just Cause – My Thoughts on the Hammond Situation.
John Lennon had it absolutely right. If we’re going to achieve real paradigm-level positive change we must always remember his words:
(ANTIMEDIA) United States — Apparently inviolable Hillary Clinton might have been let off the hook by the FBI in its bewildering but unsurprising refusal to recommend the Department of Justice prosecute any number of violations relating to her private email server and account, but that by no means indicates she isn’t guilty.
To the contrary, FBI Director James Comey’s scathing description of Clinton’s “careless” use of a non-secure platform — through which eight email chains contained information considered “Top Secret” and 36 considered “Secret” at the time it was transmitted — provided direct evidence the former secretary of state committed any number of crimes.
And perjury in testimony to Congress tops the list. Testifying before the House Select Committee on Benghazi, Clinton lied under oath — no less than three times — and her mendacious statements in no way constituted fumbling forgetfulness, ambiguity, or misinterpretation.
First, Hillary’s claim she ‘turned over’ all emails relating to State Department business just isn’t factual. Asked by committee chair, Rep. Trey Gowdy, whether her previous insistence she ‘turned over everything’ was true, Clinton responded [all emphasis has been added], “All my work-related emails, yes.”
“How do you know that?” Gowdy pressed. Clinton responded, “I know that because there was an exhaustive search done under the supervision of my attorneys, and that is exactly the outcome. We turned over every work-related email […]”
Comey’s statement tells quite a different tale:
“The FBI discovered several thousand work-related e-mails that were not in the group of 30,000 that were returned by Secretary Clinton to the State in 2014.”
Not only that, but in a separate segment of testimony in response to Rep. Jim Jordan, the lies continued.
Clinton, claiming her attorneys had “conducted a rigorous review” of all 62,000 or more emails to determine which were or were not business-related, was asked by Jordan to elaborate on the term “rigorous” — to which she replied:
“It means they were asked to provide anything that could possibly be construed as work related.”
Jordan again insisted she clarify, responding, “But I’m asking how — I’m asking how it was done. Was — did someone physically look at the 62,000 e-mails, or did you use search terms, date parameters? I want to know the specifics.”
“They did all of that,” Clinton asserted, “and I did not look over their shoulders, because I thought it would be appropriate for them to conduct that search, and they did.”
Asked to provide those search terms, she flippantly over-generalized:
“The search terms were everything you could imagine that might be related to anything, but they also went through every single e-mail.”
But, as Comey noted:
“The lawyers doing the sorting for Secretary Clinton in 2014 did not individually read the content of all of her e-mails, as we did for those available to us; instead, they relied on header information and used search terms to try to find all work-related e-mails among the reportedly more than 60,000 total e-mails remaining on Secretary Clinton’s personal system in 2014.”
Further, as her testimony continued — addressing the hotly-debated issue of classified information transmitted over her unclassified server, Clinton boldly declared:
“There was nothing marked classified on my e-mails, either sent or received.”
Again, a blatant untruth.
“In addition to this highly sensitive information,” Comey continued, discussing the aforementioned Top Secret and Secret matters, as well as additional e-mails considered Sensitive, “we also found information that was properly classified as Secret by the U.S. Intelligence Community at the time it was discussed on e-mail (that is, excluding the later ‘up-classified’ e-mails).”
Perjury isn’t the only potentially criminal act the FBI handily revealed Clinton having committed, but it might be the most blatant.
Despite the difficulty in charging someone with the “technical statute” of perjury for lying under oath in congressional testimony, most hiccups appear to lie in the believability of the person in question’s explanation of their perception at the time the perjurious statement was made.
“It is especially difficult, if not impossible to prosecute statements that may be misleading or evasive but subject to an arguably truthful interpretation,” explained attorney Mark Hopson, managing partner with Sidney Austin LLP’s Washington office, to TIME in 2014.
Clinton’s statements, of course, didn’t leave much room for interpretation.
Possible penalties for perjury include a fine of up to $100,000 — mere chump change for Clinton, who makes more than double that with those notorious speeches for the Big Banking crowd — or up to five years in prison.
At least, theoretically that would be the case.
Comey, for failing to recommend the DOJ prosecute the former secretary of state, has now been called to testify in front of the U.S. House Oversight Committee on Thursday after explosive criticism erupted following the FBI’s announcement.
But will Hillary Clinton ever see the world through prison bars — the same prison bars countless nonviolent criminals subject to penalties from the contentiously overbearing crime bill she championed during her husband’s tenure in the White House?
Judging by the enormity of the deceitful mishandling of the private email server and countless other highly questionable, if not outright criminal acts she is known or alleged to have committed, the answer would almost certainly be never.
Hillary Clinton and James Comey just proved the Clinton dynasty’s sacrosanct status to the establishment — an impunity so impenetrable, it would seem the family truly might be above the law.
This article (Oops: When Clearing Clinton, FBI Accidentally Proved She Committed Perjury) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
There is no avenue left for advocacy, grievances or redress in a system dominated by global corporations.
In the original version of feudalism, peasants armed with pitchforks knew where to go for redress or regime change: the feudal lord's castle on the hill. Though you won't find this in conventional narratives of the Middle Ages, peasant revolts were a common occurrence; serfs weren't always delighted to toil for their noble masters.
In the present era of corporate dominance, where can serfs go to demand redress and financial freedom from the neofeudal system? Nowhere. The global corporations that own the land and the productive assets have no castle that can be stormed; they exist in an abstract financial world of stock shares, buybacks, bonds, lobbyists and political influence.
When the agribusiness corporation fouls the local water supply with animal waste, where do the local peasantry go to demand restoration of their water quality? The corporation? What if the headquarters are thousands of miles away?
What impact will 100 serfs gathered outside the modern-day castle have on water quality in a distant land? Zero, because the corporation has rendered it illegal (via lobbying the local political flunkies desperate for "jobs" and campaign contributions) to even take photos of their vast animal-waste output or their inadequate disposal.
Where do oppressed serfs go to advocate for transparency in America's private Gulag prison system? If you go to the prison to protest, you'll be arrested and will soon be looking at the world from inside the privately operated gulag.
Once again--where is the castle on the hill? It's not there. The corporate operators of the private Gulag are far away, and security will disperse any troublesome serfs who travel hundreds of miles to air grievances.
Documenting abuses in the privately owned and operated Gulag is illegal. Corporate lobbying and campaign contributions have ensured that any attempt to document neofeudal exploitation by corporations is illegal.
And of course if documentation is impossible to obtain, then the exploitation doesn't exist. The mainstream media's default setting is to dismiss first-hand accounts as "he said, she said": the imprisoned serf says this, and the private prison spokesperson says that, and without any proof that can stand up in court, the grievance vanishes into thin air.
Try telling the African peasant who is unhappy with the Chinese owners of the land he tills to take his grievances to the owners of the land--a corporation in distant China that is owned by the Chinese army.
The reality is there is no avenue left for advocacy, grievances or redress in a system dominated by global corporations. The castle on the hill doesn't exist; it is diffused all over the planet, and well protected by state minions controlled by neofeudal corporate interests.
Do you really think it's mere coincidence that small business growth has imploded in the era of corporate dominance? As I explained yesterday in Governments Change, the Corporatocracy Endures, central banks dropping interest rates to near-zero for financiers and corporations sealed corporate dominance of finance and governance. There are few opportunities for small businesses when the financial and political structures serve neofeudal corporate interests.
Corporate power destroys democracy. That is the heart of neofeudalism.
by Matt Agorist
Last week, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John O. Brennan addressed instability and transnational threats to global security at a meeting with the Council on Foreign Relations. During his long-winded talk of threats to US interests and how the largely CIA-created ISIL threat is impacting the world, Brennan brought up the topic of geoengineering.
Another example is the array of technologies—often referred to collectively as geoengineering—that potentially could help reverse the warming effects of global climate change. One that has gained my personal attention is stratospheric aerosol injection, or SAI, a method of seeding the stratosphere with particles that can help reflect the sun’s heat, in much the same way that volcanic eruptions do.
Brennan went on to echo the calls from some scientists who have called for aerial spraying.
An SAI program could limit global temperature increases, reducing some risks associated with higher temperatures and providing the world economy additional time to transition from fossil fuels. The process is also relatively inexpensive—the National Research Council estimates that a fully deployed SAI program would cost about $10 billion yearly.
The extent at which Brennan talked about stratospheric aerosol injection shows that he and the CIA have likely been considering this for some time.
As promising as it may be, moving forward on SAI would raise a number of challenges for our government and for the international community. On the technical side, greenhouse gas emission reductions would still have to accompany SAI to address other climate change effects, such as ocean acidification, because SAI alone would not remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
On the geopolitical side, the technology’s potential to alter weather patterns and benefit certain regions at the expense of others could trigger sharp opposition by some nations. Others might seize on SAI’s benefits and back away from their commitment to carbon dioxide reductions. And, as with other breakthrough technologies, global norms and standards are lacking to guide the deployment and implementation of SAI.
“Chemtrails” have long been the talk of conspiracy theories with massive amounts of disinformation being posted all over the internet including fake studies and photos. However, several real studies show that some ‘seeding’ or geoengineering may be taking place.
A study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is suggesting that geoengineering has already begun, and the substance being used is a toxic by-product of coal burning call coal-fly ash.
“The widespread, intentional and increasingly frequent chemical emplacement in the troposphere has gone unidentified and unremarked in the scientific literature for years. The author presents evidence that toxic coal combustion fly ash is the most likely aerosolized particulate sprayed by tanker-jets for geoengineering, weather-modification and climate-modification purposes and describes some of the multifold consequences on public health.
Also, it has been proposed that unintentional geoengineering may already be taking place as well. As Derrick Broze points out, researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are suggesting contrails from airplanes may be inadvertently geoengineering the skies.
Chuck Long is a researcher with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory at the University of Colorado in Boulder. At the recent American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, Long and his team released their paper, “Evidence of Clear-Sky Daylight Whitening: Are we already conducting geoengineering?” The analysis found that vapor from airplanes may be altering the climate through accidental geoengineering.
It may be a very long time before we know what, if anything, is actually going on in our skies. However, when the CIA, who is responsible for so much turmoil on a global scale, begins talking about geoengineering, we should listen.
Please share this story with your friends and family who think it’s only conspiracy nuts who talk about spraying things into the sky.
The part of the speech where Brennan talks about geoengineering begins at the 12:05 marker:
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The future is what they filter.
Silicon Valley has taken over, though ultimate control remains in the hands of bankers.
We have reached the point where Facebook is so powerful, experts admit it could rig an election just by geofiltering where voting reminders appear. Google search results can have a similar diminishing effect on democracy. These new elite have control of the information that our society is made up of.
You will vote for those whom they have selected, and you will read views which have been promoted. As the London Telegraph reports:
[Facebook shrugged off] controversy after being accused of deliberately suppressing conservative views in its trending topics section. “At the end of the day, there’s nothing restraining Zuck’s vision. One of the jokes we had was that Facebook could throw an election by showing reminders to go vote in certain districts but not others. That’s the level of control it has. It’s scary.”
And if those results aren’t credible, or popular, there could quickly be riots spreading across the country – for instance, both if Donald Trump wins the election, or if he has been cheated out of winning. Regardless of the politics involved, Facebook or Google could swing an election by perhaps 20 points.
That’s a tremendous amount of power that has scarcely been considered, and hardly accounted for. Their is little reason to trust the electoral process, as well as many other institutional processes, when corporate money and social programmers are involved.
The innocent image of quaint kids in hoodies making big money distracts from the underlying quest for power.
Beneath the Frat House-esque atmosphere, the company’s elite are painted as sociopaths in hoodies, with an internal security division called ‘The Sec’ monitoring staff members’ movements. Forget the dog-eat-dog capitalism of Wall Street – these guys make Gordon Gekko look like Ghandi.
“Wall Street is the open ruthlessness of gladiatorial combat,” says Martínez. “You’re tossed in there, a lot of blood flows and one man triumphs. In Silicon Valley, it’s more like this mafioso drama with a lot of aggressive behaviour and back-room dealing.
Their data collection and network pooling is worth a great deal to those engaged in spying, cyber warfare and intelligence work.
With the foreboding control that a handful of companies have over the Internet, many of Silicon Valley’s wealthy entrepreneurs are strategically building up off grid compounds to escape from the chaotic hoards that are being stirred up, and take refuge in privacy and retreat.
Publicly, flashing cash is against the Facebook ethos – Zuckerberg famously wears a grey t-shirt to work every day, claiming, “I feel like I’m not doing my job if I spend any of my energy on things that are silly or frivolous”. Newly minted tech-millennials, therefore, are forced to set up private groups (on Facebook, of course), where they can discuss the pressing needs of the super rich, such as where to buy private aviation, the best five-star resorts in Maui and “how to buy a bunch of land then put it in a trust so people don’t realise you’re amassing a compound and you can maintain your privacy”.
As SHTF has previously reported, the elite are concerned about growing inequality and the conditions of social unrest. Though banksters have deliberately stirred things up, the individuals working for that system certainly don’t want to be caught up in that chaos.
They want to survive – in style and comfort.
That is precisely where they are using private jets to escape to private bunkers and hideaway farms:
“I know hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway,” he said.
He added that the global economic situation may soon become intolerable for many, including people in the richest nations, because inequality appears steadily on the rise.
Wallis said, “Getaway cars the airstrips in New Zealand and all that sort of thing, so basically a way to get off. If they can get off, onto another planet, some of them would.”
Hopefully you’ve got a place to hideaway, too. Because at this rate, chaos and unrest can’t be far behind.
Read more:
What Hell Is Coming? Even Obama Is Warning Americans ‘To Prepare For Disaster’
Authored by Eric Zuesse,
When the Obama Administration, on July 5th, ruled that in regard to Hillary Clinton’s privatized email system while she was Secretary of State, "Our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case” to a grand jury, because “We cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges,” they ignored the following six U.S. criminal laws, each of which undeniably describes very well what she did:
18 U.S. Code § 2232 — Destruction or removal of property to prevent seizure
(a) Destruction or Removal of Property To Prevent Seizure
Whoever, before, during, or after any search for or seizure of property by any person authorized to make such search or seizure, knowingly destroys, damages, wastes, disposes of, transfers, or otherwise takes any action, or knowingly attempts to destroy, damage, waste, dispose of, transfer, or otherwise take any action, for the purpose of preventing or impairing the Government’s lawful authority to take such property into its custody or control or to continue holding such property under its lawful custody and control, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.
(b) Impairment of In Rem Jurisdiction
Whoever, knowing that property is subject to the in rem jurisdiction of a United States court for purposes of civil forfeiture under Federal law, knowingly and without authority from that court, destroys, damages, wastes, disposes of, transfers, or otherwise takes any action, or knowingly attempts to destroy, damage, waste, dispose of, transfer, or otherwise take any action, for the purpose of impairing or defeating the court’s continuing in rem jurisdiction over the property, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.
18 U.S. Code § 1512 — Tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant
(c) Whoever corruptly
(1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; or
(2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so,
shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
18 U.S. Code § 1519 — Destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations and bankruptcy
Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
18 U.S. Code § 2071 — Concealment, removal, or mutilation generally
(a) Whoever willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys, or attempts to do so, or, with intent to do so takes and carries away any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
(b) Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States. As used in this subsection, the term “office” does not include the office held by any person as a retired officer of the Armed Forces of the United States.
18 U.S. Code § 641 — Public money, property or records
Whoever embezzles, steals, purloins, or knowingly converts to his use, or the use of another, or without authority, sells, conveys or disposes of any record, voucher, money, or thing of value of the United States or of any department or agency thereof, or any property made or being made under contract for the United States or any department or agency thereof, …
Shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than ten years or both. …
18 U.S. Code § 793 — Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information …
(f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer —
Shall be fined not more than $10, 000 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both. (g) If two or more persons conspire to violate any of the foregoing provisions of this section, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each of the parties to such conspiracy, shall be subject to the punishment provided for the offense which is the object of such conspiracy.
Those laws are consequently null and void, by Executive action. When Congress (which is supposed to be the Legislative branch of the government) passed those laws, what were they describing, if not this? Of course, they did describe there what Clinton has, in fact, done.
If we are a nation “of laws, not of men” (as that old basic description of democracy phrased it), then Ms. Clinton will be prosecuted, at least through the grand jury stage, on (at least) those grounds. The decision regarding her innocence or guilt will be made by jurors (first by the grand jurors, of course, and if they find there to be a case, then by a trial jury), not by the broader public - and also not by the nation’s Executive: the President and his appointed Administration. That is what it means for a government to be a functioning democracy. Any government which violates this principle - that it is “of laws, not of men [including women]” - is not functioning as a democracy: it’s something else.
In addition to these criminal laws, there are also federal regulations against these matters, but violations merely of federal regulations (such as these) are far less serious than are actions that violate alsofederal criminal laws (such as the six laws that are listed above).
She isn’t even being sanctioned for the violations the the State Department’s own regulations (or “rules”).
This is not a partisan issue. I was until recently an active Democrat, and I joined with millions of other Democrats who expressed condemnation when George W. Bush was allowed to get away with many severe crimes (such as this) while he was in office; and one of the reasons why I was trying to find someone to contest against President Obama in Democratic primaries for the 2012 Democratic Presidential nomination was that Obama had refused to prosecute his predecessor’s crimes against this nation. But now this same Obama is nullifying at least these six laws in order to win as his successor Hillary Clinton, who surely will not prosecute Obama for his many crimes (such as this and this) while he has been leading this nation and destroying our democracy.
I parted company from the Democratic Party when I gave up on both Parties in 2012 as they and the government they operate have been since at least 1980 — not at all democratic, but instead aristocratic: holding some persons to be above the law (that researcher there called the U.S. an “oligarchy,” which is simply another word for the same thing — rule by the top wealth-holders, not by the public: not a “democracy").
There can be no excuse for Obama’s depriving the public, via a grand jury decision, of the right to determine whether a full court case should be pursued in order to determine in a jury trial whether Hillary Clinton’s email system constituted a crime (or several crimes) under U.S. laws. The Obama Administration’s ‘finding’ that “clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information” would need to have been proven, in order for her to have been prosecuted under any U.S. criminal law, is a flagrant lie: none of the above six U.S. criminal laws requires that, but the only way to determine whether even that description (“clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information”) also applies to Clinton would be to go through a grand jury (presenting the above-cited six laws) and then to a jury case (to try her on those plus possibly also the charge that there was “clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information”). But now, those six laws are effectively gone: anyone who in the future would be charged with violating any one of those six laws could reasonably cite the precedent that Ms. Clinton was not even charged, much less prosecuted, for actions which clearly fit the description provided in each one of those U.S. criminal laws. Anyone in the future who would be charged under any one of these six laws could prove discriminatory enforcement against himself or herself. (In the particular case discussed there, discriminatory enforcement was ruled not to have existed because the enforcement of the criminal law involved was judged to have been random enforcement, but this condition would certainly not apply in Clinton’s case, it was clearly “purposeful discrimination” in her favor, and therefore enforcement of the law against anyone else, where in Clinton’s case she wasn’t even charged — much less prosecuted — for that offense, would certainly constitute discriminatory enforcement.) So: that’s the end of these six criminal laws. The U.S. President effectively nullified those laws, which were duly passed by Congress and signed into law by prior Presidents
And that’s the end, the clear termination, of a governemnt “of laws, not of men”.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
The following is a news commentary and analysis
It’s a felony to mishandle classified information either intentionally or in a grossly negligent way.
It’s a misdemeanor to knowingly remove classified information from appropriate systems or storage facilities.
On these points, there’s unanimity.
There’s not so much unanimity when it comes to how one interprets “intention,” “knowingly” and “gross negligence.”
The Definitive Hillary Clinton Email Timeline
Here’s a breakdown of FBI Director James Comey’s findings in explaining why Hillary Clinton won’t be prosecuted in the infamous email case.
Was Clinton’s email information, including classified material, likely accessed by hostile forces? Yes, because the FBI found, Clinton “extensively” used her personal, unsecure email systems “in the territory of sophisticated adversaries.” Additionally, the FBI found, “hostile actors gained access to the private commercial e-mail accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account.”
There were further important public issues not addressed by the FBI today. They involve public records laws and the cost borne by the public, due to Clinton’s failures.
Did Clinton allegedly violate public records laws? Yes, through use of the private servers and devices, failure to maintain required public records, temporary and permanent deletion of many records, and failure to fully disclose the records when asked.
Did Clinton turn over all her public work records to the State Department in 2014 when her public servers were discovered? No.
Did Clinton make all of the public’s records available when requested under Freedom of Information (FOI) law (as far back as 2012 or even earlier)? No.
Have all those records now been provided to FOI requesters? No.
Due to Clinton’s actions, the FBI said that recovering documents and piecing together facts was “a painstaking undertaking, requiring thousands of hours of effort.” And your tax dollars paid for it.
In some respects, the implications of the FBI’s findings aren’t about Hillary– they’re about the rest of us. As a layman, here’s my interpretation:
Any federal employee is now free, despite what the law may say, to make personal arrangements to communicate the public’s business using private servers, administrators, accounts and devices. They may send and receive classified material using these servers, even in hostile territory subject to hacking by sophisticated adversaries. They may routinely destroy the public-owned records they create–some of them permanently–and, if their actions are discovered, they may provide false public statements about their content. They are free to violate public records law and fail to turn over public records upon request (making Freedom of Information law meaningless and toothless). And prosecutors will view questionable acts in the most innocent light and one that’s the most favorable to the subject of the investigation. Unless they can find what they term “clear evidence” of “intent to violate laws,” you’re off the hook!
Read FBI Director Comey’s statement: https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/statement-by-fbi-director-james-b.-comey-on-the-investigation-of-secretary-hillary-clintons-use-of-a-personal-e-mail-system
Of course, maybe that isn’t the takeaway. Maybe things would turn out differently if the circumstances were the same, but the subject of the investigation were different.
Last year, a Naval Reservist who mishandled classified information was prosecuted, fined and his security clearance permanently revoked, though “The investigation did not reveal evidence that [he] intended to distribute classified information to unauthorized personnel.”
Read the FBI case against Nishimura: https://www.fbi.gov/sacramento/press-releases/2015/folsom-naval-reservist-is-sentenced-after-pleading-guilty-to-unauthorized-removal-and-retention-of-classified-materials
In fact, it doesn’t surprise me at all that Hillary Clinton was allowed to skate. I expected this all along. If you search the thousands of articles that I have posted on The Economic Collapse Blog and End Of The American Dream, you will find many articles where I say that Hillary Clinton should be in prison, but not a single one where I ever said that I thought she would be going to prison.
This is how politics in America works today. People like Bill and Hillary Clinton could openly sacrifice children to Satan on the White House lawn and still probably not get into trouble. Despite scandal after scandal going all the way back to Arkansas in the 1980s, nothing ever sticks to them, and nothing probably ever will.
In this case, FBI director James Comey essentially had to rewrite federal law in order to clear Clinton. This is something that Andrew McCarthy explained very well in his article entitled “FBI Rewrites Federal Law to Let Hillary Off the Hook”…
There is no way of getting around this: According to Director James Comey (disclosure: a former colleague and longtime friend of mine), Hillary Clinton checked every box required for a felony violation of Section 793(f) of the federal penal code (Title 18): With lawful access to highly classified information she acted with gross negligence in removing and causing it to be removed it from its proper place of custody, and she transmitted it and caused it to be transmitted to others not authorized to have it, in patent violation of her trust. Director Comey even conceded that former Secretary Clinton was “extremely careless” and strongly suggested that her recklessness very likely led to communications (her own and those she corresponded with) being intercepted by foreign intelligence services.
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In essence, in order to give Mrs. Clinton a pass, the FBI rewrote the statute, inserting an intent element that Congress did not require. The added intent element, moreover, makes no sense: The point of having a statute that criminalizes gross negligence is to underscore that government officials have a special obligation to safeguard national defense secrets; when they fail to carry out that obligation due to gross negligence, they are guilty of serious wrongdoing. The lack of intent to harm our country is irrelevant. People never intend the bad things that happen due to gross negligence.
The amazing thing is that the FBI handled a highly similar case very, very differently less than a year ago. Just check out what happened to Naval reservist Bryan Nishimura…
U.S. Magistrate Judge Kendall J. Newman immediately sentenced Nishimura to two years of probation, a $7,500 fine, and forfeiture of personal media containing classified materials. Nishimura was further ordered to surrender any currently held security clearance and to never again seek such a clearance.
According to court documents, Nishimura was a Naval reservist deployed in Afghanistan in 2007 and 2008. In his role as a Regional Engineer for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, Nishimura had access to classified briefings and digital records that could only be retained and viewed on authorized government computers. Nishimura, however, caused the materials to be downloaded and stored on his personal, unclassified electronic devices and storage media. He carried such classified materials on his unauthorized media when he traveled off-base in Afghanistan and, ultimately, carried those materials back to the United States at the end of his deployment. In the United States, Nishimura continued to maintain the information on unclassified systems in unauthorized locations, and copied the materials onto at least one additional unauthorized and unclassified system.
Nishimura’s actions came to light in early 2012, when he admitted to Naval personnel that he had handled classified materials inappropriately. Nishimura later admitted that, following his statement to Naval personnel, he destroyed a large quantity of classified materials he had maintained in his home. Despite that, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation searched Nishimura’s home in May 2012, agents recovered numerous classified materials in digital and hard copy forms. The investigation did not reveal evidence that Nishimura intended to distribute classified information to unauthorized personnel.
So what is the difference between Nishimura and Clinton?
Neither of them ever intended to do anything wrong.
So why were they treated so differently?
Needless to say, social media is exploding with outrage over this decision to let Clinton go free. Many Americans are openly asking why they should continue to play by the rules if politicians like Hillary Clinton are not required to do so.
Unfortunately, this is what America has become. Our politicians are a reflection of who we are as a society, and as I have stated before Hillary Clinton is going to be the overwhelming favorite if there is an election in November. At this moment, she has solid leads in all of the “swing states”, and she only really needs to win one of them…
Perhaps you enjoy talk of battleground states. Well, there’s a scenario for you, too. First, pick the six “closest” swing states (VA, NH, IA, OH, FL, NC). Got it? Now understand that New Hampshire excepted, Clinton only has to win one of them in order to reach the requisite 270 electoral votes to win. (Optional third step for Republicans only: start shotgunning Pabst Blue Ribbon and don’t stop until November.)
Lest any Trump supporters seek solace in poll numbers, recent polls have Trump sliding further behind in all the relevant swing states. According to a Ballotpedia battleground poll released last week, Trump trails by 14% in Florida, 4% in Iowa, 10% in North Carolina, 9% in Ohio, and 7% in Virginia.
Hillary Clinton is a horrible, evil, miserable human being, and right now she is the odds-on favorite to become the next president of the United States.
But ultimately it is the American people that are to blame for blindly supporting corrupt politicians such as Clinton, and if they willingly pick her to be our next president then we will certainly deserve whatever consequences follow.
