Clinton

[Digby]

I specifically did not call him a rapist, I called him an alleged rapist. There is a distinction, it's an important one, and if you're reacting to my calling him a rapist then you're mistaken and there was no need for your reaction.

[rowan]

Alleged by who? The women involved never formally accused Assange of any crime and the Swedish prosecutors dropped all their charges years ago. Even the United Nations has declared that he is under arbitrary detention. This has been a clear case of character assassination by the US of a man who exposed their war crimes and other dirty laundry (which as a journalist is actually his job). & you choose to refer to him as that 'alleged rapist' - even after the charges have been dropped and his detention has been ruled unlawful! This would be the equivalent of referring to Nelson Mandela as that 'alleged terrorist,' which only an apologist for the Apartheid system would do. & then you wonder what all the fuss is about??

[jared_7]

I'll allow multi-award-winning journalist John Pilger to answer that one:

The same PIlger as supports the alleged rapist Assange? Doesn't this feel a bit like when you note people didn't want certain actions against Libya, and those were people like Mugabe?

This is clear evidence of the extent to which you have been brainwashed by the media and turned into an unthinking zombie. No woman has accused Assange of rape. The two women involved have repeatedly said that nothing happened and expressed their irritation at being dragged into this obvious attempt at character assassination. But you would readily embrace this blatant propaganda, and dismiss the views of one of the most respected, experienced and courageous journalists in the world, because you are obviously resentful of a man who had the courage to bring to light American war crimes.

Mate, why do you bother? Its like arguing with an official government press release, independent thought doesn't come in to it.

Just give up.

[Sandydragon]

Alleged by who? The women involved never formally accused Assange of any crime and the Swedish prosecutors dropped all their charges years ago. Even the United Nations has declared that he is under arbitrary detention. This has been a clear case of character assassination by the US of a man who exposed their war crimes and other dirty laundry (which as a journalist is actually his job). & you choose to refer to him as that 'alleged rapist' - even after the charges have been dropped and his detention has been ruled unlawful! This would be the equivalent of referring to Nelson Mandela as that 'alleged terrorist,' which only an apologist for the Apartheid system would do. & then you wonder what all the fuss is about??

Makes you wonder why he doesn't just hand himself over to the Swedish authorities then? This talk of being extradited to the US is a nonsense, the EU arrest warrant doesn't work like that.

[Digby]

Alleged by who? The women involved never formally accused Assange of any crime and the Swedish prosecutors dropped all their charges years ago. Even the United Nations has declared that he is under arbitrary detention. This has been a clear case of character assassination by the US of a man who exposed their war crimes and other dirty laundry (which as a journalist is actually his job). & you choose to refer to him as that 'alleged rapist' - even after the charges have been dropped and his detention has been ruled unlawful! This would be the equivalent of referring to Nelson Mandela as that 'alleged terrorist,' which only an apologist for the Apartheid system would do. & then you wonder what all the fuss is about??

Makes you wonder why he doesn't just hand himself over to the Swedish authorities then? This talk of being extradited to the US is a nonsense, the EU arrest warrant doesn't work like that.

If the charges were dropped I'd assume he wouldn't even need to go to Sweden. So if charges were dropped by the authorities that would perhaps mean dropped with new charges entered, which could be for any number of reasons, but to have dropped and entered new charges or something of a similar ilk isn't the same as dropped.

[Sandydragon]

Alleged by who? The women involved never formally accused Assange of any crime and the Swedish prosecutors dropped all their charges years ago. Even the United Nations has declared that he is under arbitrary detention. This has been a clear case of character assassination by the US of a man who exposed their war crimes and other dirty laundry (which as a journalist is actually his job). & you choose to refer to him as that 'alleged rapist' - even after the charges have been dropped and his detention has been ruled unlawful! This would be the equivalent of referring to Nelson Mandela as that 'alleged terrorist,' which only an apologist for the Apartheid system would do. & then you wonder what all the fuss is about??

Makes you wonder why he doesn't just hand himself over to the Swedish authorities then? This talk of being extradited to the US is a nonsense, the EU arrest warrant doesn't work like that.

If the charges were dropped I'd assume he wouldn't even need to go to Sweden. So if charges were dropped by the authorities that would perhaps mean dropped with new charges entered, which could be for any number of reasons, but to have dropped and entered new charges or something of a similar ilk isn't the same as dropped.

My understanding is that the original charges were dropped, but then reviewed and reinstated. The Swedish court of appeal upheld the reinstatement, but downgraded one of the charges to a lesser form of rape.

The Swedish statue of limitations has meant that the lesser crimes can no longer be investigated, but apparently, the rape crime remains open until 2020.

[Digby]

Makes you wonder why he doesn't just hand himself over to the Swedish authorities then? This talk of being extradited to the US is a nonsense, the EU arrest warrant doesn't work like that.

If the charges were dropped I'd assume he wouldn't even need to go to Sweden. So if charges were dropped by the authorities that would perhaps mean dropped with new charges entered, which could be for any number of reasons, but to have dropped and entered new charges or something of a similar ilk isn't the same as dropped.

My understanding is that the original charges were dropped, but then reviewed and reinstated. The Swedish court of appeal upheld the reinstatement, but downgraded one of the charges to a lesser form of rape.

The Swedish statue of limitations has meant that the lesser crimes can no longer be investigated, but apparently, the rape crime remains open until 2020.

It's a bit bonkers the limitation counts down when he's refusing to discuss the case.

[rowan]

There's no case to discuss. The women never accused him of rape. That was a fabrication which has not been dismissed solely due to pressure from Washington. The US also had Mandela on its terrorist watch-list until 2008, when he was 90-years-old. That was to cover their own tracks in supporting the Apartheid regime. But if you had continued to referred to Mandela as an alleged terrorist at that time you would have immediately been identified as an apologist for the Apartheid regime. Similarly, anyone continuing to refer to Assange as an alleged rapist, when no such accusations have ever existed and all other charges had long since been dropped, is without question an apologist for the war crimes he exposed.

[jared_7]

There's no case to discuss. The women never accused him of rape. That was a fabrication which has not been dismissed solely due to pressure from Washington. The US also had Mandela on its terrorist watch-list until 2008, when he was 90-years-old. That was to cover their own tracks in supporting the Apartheid regime. But if you had continued to referred to Mandela as an alleged terrorist at that time you would have immediately been identified as an apologist for the Apartheid regime. Similarly, anyone continuing to refer to Assange as an alleged rapist, when no such accusations have ever existed and all other charges had long since been dropped, is without question an apologist for the war crimes he exposed.

Assange and Wikileaks release official documents, not opinion pieces. His affairs and the "case" against him couldn't be more irrelevant. However, I'm not surprised it was raised as an attempted strawman.

[Digby]

There's no case to discuss. The women never accused him of rape. That was a fabrication which has not been dismissed solely due to pressure from Washington. The US also had Mandela on its terrorist watch-list until 2008, when he was 90-years-old. That was to cover their own tracks in supporting the Apartheid regime. But if you had continued to referred to Mandela as an alleged terrorist at that time you would have immediately been identified as an apologist for the Apartheid regime. Similarly, anyone continuing to refer to Assange as an alleged rapist, when no such accusations have ever existed and all other charges had long since been dropped, is without question an apologist for the war crimes he exposed.

By charges dropped do you mean those charges for which too much time has now passed by dint of his hiding in an embassy and refusing to acknowledge the legal process. And to say the women never accused of him of rape is false, they may not have convinced him of rape as per your definition of the crime, but that's not the same as the Swedish legal systems case law, and it's certainly not the same thing as the experience and views of the woman involved. I'd prefer though not to speculate on the views of the women involved as whatever has been put into the media is almost certainly at best not a full picture, and and worst fabrication

Jared does raise a reasonable point though that the charges don't impinge overly on the leaks. What I found odd, and unpleasantly odd, about the journalist who supported Assange was his support for Assange rather than just the release of documents, when it's not even remotely clear there's no case to answer.

[rowan]

That's because the multi-award winning, highly experienced investigative journalist, war correspondent, author and documentary film-maker you refer to knows Julian Assange's case inside out, whereas you clearly don't, because it is in fact true (contrary to your personal denials) that the women involved in the case did not even accuse Assange of sexual harrassment, let alone rape, and have expressed their irritation publicly at being dragged into an obvious smear campaign. Pilger, by the way, has devoted much of his life to bringing the cause of the victims to light, from the Vietnamese and Cambodians in the sixties, to the East Timorese and Central Americans in the eighties, to the people of the Middle East in the current century, and also, of course, the aboriginal people of his homeland. So it you find him 'unpleasantly odd' that undoubtedly reflects a great deal more upon you than him.

[Digby]

The comments I've seen from the women could be construed as sexual assault, and perhaps even rape, though I acknowledge now I don't have much if any familiarity with UK law in this area and certainly not Swedish. What the truth of the matter is I don't know, declaring any position as 'fact' though wouldn't only seem but is absurd. Hiding in an embassy rather than going and discussing the matter isn't a good look however, mind in saying that Swedish prosecutors refusing to come and talk to him here also wasn't a good look.

[rowan]

Anyway, to get this thing back on track, just read an interesting article about Hillary here:

Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is even more of a war hawk than her Republican counterparts, the U.S. newspaper of record says in a new report.

“How Hillary Clinton Became a Hawk,” a long-form article published this week in the New York Times Magazine, details how Clinton’s hyper-hawkish “foreign-policy instincts are bred in the bone,” based on what one of her aides calls “a textbook view of American exceptionalism.”

Clinton’s extreme belligerence “will likely set her apart from the Republican candidate she meets in the general election,” the Times explains, noting “neither Donald J. Trump nor Senator Ted Cruz of Texas have demonstrated anywhere near the appetite for military engagement abroad that Clinton has.”

In the 2016 presidential campaign, the report concludes, “Hillary Clinton is the last true hawk left in the race.”

The almost 7,000-word piece in the New York Times, which endorsed Clinton, details how, as secretary of state, Clinton pressured President Obama to take more aggressive military action in a variety of conflicts, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, Syria and more.

Early in her career, Clinton cultivated her hawkish reputation on the Senate Armed Services Committee, where she was “looking to hone hard-power credentials,” the Times writes. Eventually, she “become a military wonk.”

One of the biggest influences on Clinton was Jack Keane, a retired four-star general whom the Times describes as “a well-compensated member of the military-industrial complex” and “the resident hawk on Fox News, where he appears regularly to call for the United States to use greater military force in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.”

Keane took an immediate liking to Clinton and took her under his wing. He tutored her on Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and more.

Clinton asked Keane to be a formal policy adviser, yet he refused — not because he opposed her, but rather because he would not endorse any candidate.

Keane was one of the architects of the 2007 Iraq surge, in which President George W. Bush ordered an additional 20,000 soldiers to be deployed to Iraq. At the time, with her forthcoming first presidential campaign, Clinton said she was against the surge. Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates later revealed in his memoirs that Hillary had told him her opposition was a strictly political move, a disingenuous attempt to get more votes from a war-weary public.

Clinton went on to privately admit to Keane in 2008 that she thought the surge was successful and had been a good idea. As secretary of state, she pressured the Obama administration to keep more troops in Iraq.

The Times story explores Clinton’s close relationship with the military. One of the many military officials Clinton befriended was Army Gen. Buster Hagenbeck, who turned out to be even less hawkish than she is. The general warned Clinton that a U.S. invasion of Iraq would be like “kicking over a bee’s nest.” It’s safe to say Clinton did not heed his warning.

She also befriended former general and CIA Director David Petraeus, infamous for his links to torture and death squads. In 2014, Petraeus insisted Clinton would “make a tremendous President.” A year later, he proposed that the U.S. government use “moderate” members of al-Qaeda to fight ISIS.

No longer needing to moderate her views for election, Clinton did not miss the next opportunity to support a troop surge. In 2009, the Obama administration was debating sending more soldiers into Afghanistan. The president and Vice President Biden were wary of an expansion. Clinton sided “with Gates and the generals,” the Times reports.

“She gave political ballast to their proposals and provided a bullish counterpoint to Biden’s skepticism.” In February, less than a month into office, President Obama announced a troop surge in Afghanistan.

The story features numerous other anecdotes that provide a glimpse into just how hawkish Clinton is.

In the Obama administration’s first high-level meeting on Russia in February 2009, Clinton made her bellicosity loud and clear. She firmly rejected any political concessions to Russia and declared “I’m not giving up anything for nothing.”

“Her hardheadedness made an impression on Robert Gates, the defense secretary and George W. Bush holdover,” the Times reports. Gates “decided there and then that she was someone he could do business with.”

Clinton worked closely with the Bush-era defense secretary. “Clinton strongly seconded” some of his hawkish foreign policy ideas, the Times notes, recalling Clinton had belligerently insisted to her aids “We’ve got to run it up the gut!”

Even after 18 months, the Times recalls Clinton’s staff was “still marveled at her pugnacity.”

“I think one of the surprises for Gates and the military was, here they come in expecting a very left-of-center administration, and they discover that they have a secretary of state who’s a little bit right of them on these issues — a little more eager than they are, to a certain extent. Particularly on Afghanistan,” a former intelligence analyst told the Times.

In Afghanistan, the site of the longest conventional U.S. war since Vietnam — a place where today, despite 15 years of U.S. military occupation, violence is escalating at record levels — Clinton pressured the Obama administration to send more soldiers in.

With her hawkishness, Clinton “contributed to the overmilitarizing of the analysis of the problem” in Afghanistan, an adviser to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told the Times.

A foreign policy strategist who advised Clinton on Pakistan and Afghanistan at the State Department told the Times “Hillary is very much a member of the traditional American foreign-policy establishment.” Like Reagan and Kennedy, Clinton fervently believes “in asserting American influence.”

The strategist added: “Her affinity for the armed forces is rooted in a lifelong belief that the calculated use of military power is vital to defending national interests, that American intervention does more good than harm and that the writ of the United States properly reaches, as Bush once put it, into ‘any dark corner of the world.'”

When the civil war in Syria broke out in 2011, Clinton acted on these views. She pressured the Obama administration to take a more militaristic approach, to arm and train even more rebels than it did, the Times reports.

This is consistent with an August 2014 interview in the Atlantic, in which Clinton blithely wrote off diplomacy in the war in Syria, instead calling for backing the “hard men with the guns.”

This is the kind of “hard-edged rhetoric about the world” Clinton uses, as the Times describes it. The report notes that Clinton has long “channeled [the] views” of her father, “a staunch Republican and an anticommunist.”

The article barely acknowledges Clinton’s leadership in the disastrous 2011 NATO war in Libya, mentioning the country just once. Yet, in February, the New York Times Magazine already devoted roughly 13,000 words to covering Hillary’s uniquely hands-on role in the catastrophic regime change operation.

The almost 7,000-word story also mentions Bernie Sanders only one time, and reduces his campaign to a “progressive insurgency.”

There is no question that Clinton is more hawkish than her opponent. The Vermont senator is not a peacenik, having backed the devastating U.S. war in Afghanistan, and the NATO bombing of Serbia before that. Yet Sanders has injected rare anti-war ideas into the mainstream Democratic debate.

Sanders has steadfastly criticized U.S. regime change policies on numerous occasions; called out Clinton for her support for the wars in Iraq and Libya; blasted the former secretary of state for her insistence that that the U.S. further militarily intervene in Syria; and insisted, contrary to Clinton, that the U.S. must not blindly defend Israel, instead taking a “neutral” position that respects the dignity of the Palestinian people.

Furthermore, both of the leading Republican presidential candidates, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, “are more skeptical than Clinton about intervention and more circumspect than she about maintaining the nation’s post-World War II military commitments,” the Times says.

Trump claims he opposed the Iraq War and wants the U.S. to spend less on NATO, the article notes, while Cruz opposed arming and training Syrian rebels in 2014 and has previously supported Pentagon budget cuts.

The gen­eral election might therefore “present voters with an unfamiliar choice,” the Times concludes: “a Democratic hawk versus a Republican reluctant warrior.”



https://www.salon.com/2016/04/27/democr ... ublicanse/

[BBD]

[stud muffin]

http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/709 ... den-bernie

Personally I doubt Clinton would ever give up the nomination voluntarily, but it's another twist in American politics. Personally I think it would be the best result for everybody!

David Shuster, a top US journalist, says that the election has entered “unchartered political territory” after Mrs Clinton’s diagnosis.

He quoted a Democratic party operative as saying: “Expect an emergency Democratic National Convention (DNC) meeting to consider a replacement.”

The source confirmed to Mr Shuster that Mrs Clinton would have to voluntarily give up the party nomination, saying: “We can make contingencies, argue, plead with her, but DNC bylaws are clear her nominee status is now totally up to her.”

Should Mrs Clinton drop out of the race, the DNC would hold a special meeting to vote for a successor. Party rules indicate that a new nominee would be elected by a simple majority vote.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09 ... ection-ra/

No special consideration would be given to Tim Kaine, the current vice-presidential candidate, or Bernie Sanders, Mrs Clinton's closest rival in the race to secure the Democratic nomination. And if someone other than Mr Kaine were selected, he would remain the vice-presidential candidate.

When the unlikely possibility of Mrs Clinton dropping out was raised months ago amid the furore surrounding her emails and whether she would be indicted, Mr Biden was widely considered the likely replacement at the time.

[rowan]

[morepork]

Word is she has something serious.

[rowan]

Or maybe they finally realized she's not fit to be president, and neither is Trump, so they need to replace one of them. Or am I being too hopeful...

[WaspInWales]

Word is she has something serious.

I reckon it's a snuke.

[morepork]

What in the Blue Blazes is a snuke?

[Which Tyler]

What in the Blue Blazes is a snuke?

Something diagnosed by Dr Seuss?

I hear Trump has revealed that Hillary has a bad case of cooties

[WaspInWales]

What in the Blue Blazes is a snuke?

A snuke is a suitcase nuke designed to fit into a woman's snizz.

It's a real threat and was documented in the following current affairs programme:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Snuke

[rowan]

Everything you need to know about the FBI investigation:

[jared_7]

So, according to RealClear Politics poll averages, the gap has closed over the last 5 weeks from Clinton leading by 8 points to now just 1.8.

Trump has also pulled ahead in battleground states Florida, Ohio, Iowa, and Arizona.

Studies are also showing registered Republicans are more likely to vote in this election than registered Democrats (although it is not a guarantee Republicans will vote Trump I would imagine).

I'm also not sure the effect of Hillary's health scare would have seeped into these results yet. There has been a new DNC leak of emails that they have once again tried to blame on Russian hackers and Trump for encouraging it, and Wikileaks has said it will release its biggest dump of files on Clinton during October.

This is going to be close. Wonder how much the debates will affect the outcome, or is it at the point now where basically Trump can do or say or fail at whatever and its basically water off a ducks back, the dislike for Clinton is just so strong?

[Eugene Wrayburn]