{"id":234465,"date":"2016-03-28T13:14:52","date_gmt":"2016-03-28T13:14:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=234465"},"modified":"2016-03-28T13:14:52","modified_gmt":"2016-03-28T13:14:52","slug":"u-s-leaders-hucksters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/u-s-leaders-hucksters\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Leaders Are Hucksters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Here<\/a><\/span>\u00a0is Bill Clinton, the U.S. President who served Wall Street by removing all regulations on derivatives-trading and by ending FDR\u2019s Glass-Steagall Act separation of investment-banking from consumer-banking, now telling an audience, that his successor George W. Bush had done this, and that Bush\u2019s successor Barack Obama has unfortunately continued it. He said this on March 21st when explaining why everyone should vote for his wife to undo the \u201dawful\u201d and \u201ctrickle-down\u201d legacy of George W. Bush and Barack Obama:<\/span><\/p>\n

“If you believe we can all rise together, if you believe we\u2019ve finally come to the point where we can put the awful legacy of the last eight years\u00a0behind us and the seven years before that when we were practicing trickle-down economics and no regulation in Washington, which is what\u00a0caused the crash, then you should vote for her because she\u2019s the only person who basically had good ideas, will tell you how she\u2019s going to pay\u00a0for them, can be commander in chief, and is a proven change maker with Republicans and Democrats and independents alike.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

(Clarification: Where he said \u201cseven years\u201d he meant eight years, and where he said \u201ceight years” he meant seven years, because Bush had 8 years and Obama has thus far had 7.)<\/span><\/p>\n

The truth is that just before Bill Clinton ended his Presidency he gave Wall Street exactly what it wanted: the ability to gamble with FDIC-insured money, so that Wall Street would be bailed out by taxpayers if their gamblers stopped gambling (\u2018investing\u2019) and the financial system consequently froze up \u2014 which happened in 2008. George W. Bush didn\u2019t make that change, Clinton did. Rotten as Bush was, Clinton was arguably even worse, but he\u2019s now alleging that his wife will undo his own \u201ctrickle-down\u201d legacy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here<\/a><\/span>\u00a0is Donald Trump, pandering to the far-right, ethnocentric-Jewish, AIPAC<\/span><\/a> (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), who hate Palestinians and Iran, telling these racist ethnocentric Jews why they should support Trump for President \u2014 and opening by telling his suckers that he\u2019s not going to \u201cpander to\u201d them:<\/span><\/p>\n

“I didn’t come here tonight to pander to you about Israel. That’s what politicians do: all talk, no action. \u2026\u00a0My number one priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran. \u2026\u00a0We have rewarded the world’s leading state sponsor of terror with $150 billion and we received absolutely nothing in return. \u2026\u00a0Iran is a problem in Iraq, a problem in Syria, a problem in Lebanon, a problem in Yemen, and will be a very major problem for Saudi Arabia.\u00a0Literally every day, Iran provides more and better weapons to their puppet states. \u2026 We will totally dismantle Iran\u2019s global terror network. Iran has seeded terror groups all over the world. During the last five years, Iran has\u00a0perpetrated terror attacks in 25 different countries on five continents. They\u2019ve got terror cells everywhere, including in the western hemisphere\u00a0very close to home. Iran is the biggest sponsor of terrorism around the world and we will work to dismantle that reach.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Third, at the very least, we must hold Iran accountable by restructuring the terms of the previous deal. \u2026\u00a0The United Nations is not a friend of democracy. It’s not a friend to freedom. It’s not a friend even to the United States of America, where as all\u00a0know, it has its home. And it surely isn\u2019t a friend to Israel. \u2026\u00a0When I become President, the days of treating Israel like a second-class citizen will end on Day One. I will meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu\u00a0immediately. I have known him for many years and we will be able to work closely together to help bring stability and peace to Israel and to the\u00a0entire region.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

On February 17th, Trump told the\u00a0truth<\/span><\/a>: “Who blew up the World Trade Center? It wasn’t the Iraqis, it was Saudi.\u201d Not Iran, but Israel\u2019s ally the Saud family, who are the chief financial backers of the overthrow-Assad operation (which Israel\u2019s government likewise supports) and of the entire war against Iran and all Shia everywhere \u2014 including even Shia in Saudi Arabia itself \u2014 and who were\u00a0the chief funders of Al Qaeda at least until 9\/11<\/span><\/a>, and (according to Bill Clinton\u2019s wife Hillary Clinton, in private) even as late as 2009, were still\u00a0\u201cthe most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0As regards Shiite \u2018terrorist\u2019 groups, there\u2019s only one, Hezbollah, and its exclusive focus is against Israel, not against the West. In fact, the title of that State Department cable from her was about\u00a0\u201dTerrorist Finance: Action Request for Senior Level Engagement on Terrorism Finance,\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0not about \u201cSunni<\/i> Terrorist Finance,\u201d because, she knows, all<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>Islamic terrorism, except what\u2019s directed against Israel, is Sunni, none of it is Shiite. So: that cable of hers was sent only to U.S. Embassies in Sunni-run countries, not to\u00a0the U.S. Embassy in the only Shiite-run country where the U.S. has an Embassy, which is Syria<\/span><\/a>. The U.S. government is quite aware that terrorism (except against Israel) is strictly<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>Sunni-fundamentalist-Islamic, and that Syria\u2019s ideologically secular, non-sectarian, government, has (like Russia\u2019s secular non-sectarian government) always tried to crush it, never<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>supported it. The U.S. is allied with\u00a0the terrorist-financing countries, against Shiite-run countries<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0because Shiite-run countries (specifically Syria and Iran) are allied with Russia, which the U.S. government\u00a0aims to isolate and ultimately conquer.<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

So: even when the hucksters who make it to the top of American politics tell the truth, it\u2019s by accident. Truthfulness isn\u2019t ever their goal; winning and keeping power is.<\/span><\/p>\n

Americans are taught that things are like that in African countries, and in former Soviet-bloc countries, but not that this is the way America itself is; to say a thing like this here is verboten<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>in the \u2018respectable\u2019 \u2018news\u2019 media. It\u2019s not publishable. It\u2019s American samizdat<\/i>. Any major news-medium that would publish it would be subject to severe sanctions; people would be fired<\/span><\/a>. They might even be treated worse \u2014 like Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange \u2014 isolated, smeared, and possibly imprisoned. It destroys careers of the few authentic journalists. They\u2019re supposed to be propagandists, instead. Even to call oneself a \u2018journalist\u2019 here is supposed to be<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>a lie. There\u2019s virtually no remaining market for real journalism in the United States. The major advertisers won\u2019t patronize it, and the government-funded \u2018news\u2019 media also don\u2019t allow it. So: certain types of truth are simply not publishable here.<\/span><\/p>\n

Huckster-politicians and their friends just thrive in such an environment. Like U.S. President Obama himself says<\/span><\/a>, \u201cThe United States is and remains the one indispensable nation.\u201d All other<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>nations are \u2018dispensable.\u2019 That\u2019s something which Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, and Hillary Clinton, might equally say. But, of course, none of them would be \u201cpandering.\u201d They don\u2019t do that \u2014 just ask them, and they\u2019ll tell you they don\u2019t (like Trump just did).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of<\/span> \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org Here\u00a0is Bill Clinton, the U.S. President who served Wall Street by removing all regulations on derivatives-trading and by ending FDR\u2019s Glass-Steagall Act separation of investment-banking from consumer-banking, now telling an audience, that his successor George W. Bush had done this, and that Bush\u2019s successor Barack Obama has unfortunately continued […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":234466,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[951,954,6257],"class_list":{"0":"post-234465","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"tag-clinton","9":"tag-hillary","10":"tag-trump"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}