DARK or NOT HR/WJ (Bill) Clintons’ long slog of Self-Interest Pandering to Private Interests Domestic and Foreign — 1970s – 2017

Collected and edited from sources

By Carolyn Bennett

● WHITEWATER—Before the Washington years (1970s and 1980s), Bill and Hillary Clinton with associates Jim McDougal and Susan McDougal implicated in wrongdoing connected with an Arkansas land deal in the Whitewater Development Corporation. Investigations of Hillary and Bill which proceeded through the 1990s “found insufficient evidence linking them with the criminal conduct of others related to the land deal.” Susan McDougal was later pardoned by U.S. President William (Bill) Clinton. 

●DEATH of VINCE FOSTER—Rose Law firm partner to Hillary Clinton Vincent Walker “Vince” Foster Jr. dies in Washington in 1993 while connected with Bill Clinton administration. An Arkansas physician prescribes over the phone an “anti-depressant” drug, trazodone, and Foster is found dead a day later in Fort Marcy Park, a federal park in Virginia. In his briefcase was “a draft resignation letter” containing “a list of grievances” among them that “‘WSJ (Wall Street Journal) editors lie without consequence.’”  According to reports, Foster had added in the torn up letter that in Washington “‘ruining people is considered sport.’” Investigations determined the death a suicide but questions surrounding his death continued for years. ●[A series of investigative press reports called the Arkansas Project funded primarily by conservative businessman Richard Mellon Scaife in 1993 re-opened allegations that then-Governor Bill Clinton had sexually harassed an Arkansas state employee and reexaminations of the death of White House aide Vincent Foster, and the Clinton’s 1970s’ Whitewater real estate investment.]

●“FILEGATE”: Bill and Hillary in the Whitehouse come under “allegations” of improper access to and use of files. Senior White House figures—including First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton—“may have requested and read the files for political purposes and that the First Lady had authorized the hiring of the under-qualified (Craig) Livingstone (as) …, director of the White House’s Office of Personnel Security” who had “improperly requested, and received from the FBI, background reports concerning several hundred individuals without asking permission.” In 1998 an independent counsel exonerated the First Lady but lawsuits continued into the 2000s until on March 9, 2010, Federal Judge Royce C. Lamberth dismissed the final “filegate” lawsuit. 

●CLINTON FOUNDATION (founded in 1997 as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization) and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton—during her tenure “a number of individuals, organizations, and countries allegedly contributed to the Clinton Foundation either prior to, or while, pursuing interests through ordinary channels with the U.S. State Department.” The Foundation “accepted several million dollars in donations from seven foreign governments including a donation from one government—that of Algeria (2010 $500,000 from Algeria) —in violation of Clinton’s agreement with the administration.  

● CF and Russian BUSINESS: 2009 - 2013, the Russian atomic energy agency (Rosatom) acquires Uranium One, a Canadian company with global uranium mining stakes including 20 percent of the uranium production capacity in the United States; and since uranium is considered a strategic asset with national security implications, the acquisition was analyzed by a committee of nine government agencies, including the State Department, which was then headed by (Hillary) Clinton. April 2015 (source NYT) “the family foundation of Uranium One’s chairman” donates to the Clinton Foundation (undisclosed by the Clintons) amounts totaling “$2.35 million.”

●CF-SECRETARY of STATE CLINTON-SWISS BANK dealings: “the Internal Revenue Service was suing Switzerland’s largest bank, UBS AG, to obtain information on Americans with secret accounts at the bank.…” The Wall Street Journal reports “‘an unusual intervention by the top U.S. diplomat’,” Clinton announces “a tentative settlement between UBS and the IRS.” After the 2009 “settlement,” the Clinton Foundation accepts increased donations from USB—from a cumulative total of “$60,000” through 2008 growing to “$600,000” by 2014 and a payment to Bill Clinton of “$1.5 million for a series of question-and-answer sessions with its (the bank’s) CEO.” The payment became Bill Clinton’s “top source of corporate speech income … between 2001 and 2014.” 

●CF/HR CLINTON Secretary of State/PRIVATE INTEREST—conflict of “‘extraordinary proportion indicating her (Secretary of State Clinton’s) possible ethics challenges if elected president’” (source 2016 Associated Press). Of the 154 people with “private interests” whom “Clinton met or had phone conversations with while Secretary of State,” reportedly a total of “85 donors contributed as much as $156 million to the

(Clinton) Foundation.”

●CLINTON FOUNDATION circa 2009-2012 (source PolitiFact) accepted “millions of dollars from Australia, Dominican Republic, Kuwait, Norway, Qatar and Oman, and tripled donations from the United Kingdom.”  ● “Four field offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation—in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, and Little Rock, Arkansas” (source October 2016 Wall Street Journal report)—“had been collecting information about the Clinton Foundation to determine whether ‘there was evidence of financial crimes or influence-peddling.’” 

●DEATH of another COLLEAGUE—District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department (MPDC) posts $25,000 reward for information about the death; WikiLeaks offers a $20,000 reward for information leading to a conviction; and lobbyist Jack Burkman offers $105,000. Seth Conrad Rich (January 3, 1989 – July 10, 2016) was a 27-year old Democratic Party National Committee employee who reportedly was shot in the back in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, D.C., and died from his wounds. [Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-native Jack Burkman, president of Burkman Associates, LLC., in June 2016 “held an event called ‘Lobbyist for Trump’ and invited major lobbyists of Washington, D.C., to help raise money for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign”; and in July 2016 “helped fundraising for ‘Free the Delegates,’ an anti-Trump effort to change delegate rules for the 2016 Republican National Convention.”]

 Sources: Wikipedia English: Whitewater controversy, Vince Foster, Arkansas Project, White House FBI Files controversy, Clinton Foundation-State Department controversy, Murder of Seth Rich

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitewater_controversy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vince_Foster

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas_Project

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_FBI_files_controversy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_Foundation%E2%80%93State_Department_controversy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Burkman

_____________________________________________________

A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora

21st century CIVILIAN Nürnberg needed

One of the Tribunal's Chief Prosecutors
Soviet Union Lieutenant-General
Roman Andreyevich Rudenko 

Thoughts by Carolyn LaDelle Bennett

In a world, in a nation under laws, ignorance, inexperience, stupidity do not excuse and may not credibly be used to excuse violence, violent aggression against sovereign states, their people, their cultures, institutions, infrastructures, indeed (the young) their futures. Those who commit such crimes against humanity and against the peace must be arrested and brought to stand before a court of justice. No exceptions. 

The endless cycle of violence manufactured and sustained in a vicious pattern of making/naming/defining “terrorists” (var. convenient names) - fighting “terrorists” - making/naming/defining “terrorists” - fighting “terrorists” — this deadly harm and impunity perpetrated by U.S. leaders and Western (NATO) leaders in the post-World War II (post-Nuremberg) era must be stopped and there is no other way except through law.

One of the Tribunal's Chief Prosecutors
United States Supreme Court Justice
Robert H. Jackson

On November 19, 1945, at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg (Germany) was convened the International Military Tribunal its first session presided over by Soviet Union Supreme Court Judge/Major-General Iona Timofeevich Nikitchenko. The prosecution (represented by chief prosecutors United Kingdom Attorney General Hartley Shawcross, United States Supreme Court

Justice Robert H. Jackson, Soviet Union Lieutenant-General Roman Andreyevich Rudenko, and French politician and professor of law François de Menthon later French politician and jurist Auguste Champetier de Ribes, France) brought indictments for “Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of a crime against peace”; “Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace”; “War crimes”; “Crimes against humanity.”

_____________________________________________

A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S., government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett.
Latest book: : http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-001052174/Pondering-Alphabetic-SOLUTIONS.aspx

Books also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora

Erase Which “Indian” Name to What End?

With all due respect …

Compiled and edited by Carolyn LaDelle Bennett

N

ame giving, taking or changing is not about “Justice” nor can name-tinkering secure justice, ensure redress or respect, change history or mend relations. Only people with people can accomplish and ensure substantive change. Anything other than this is transitory, merely show. Moreover the varieties of “Indian” are almost too many to count.

“Indian”: (adjective/noun) inhabit of India or South Asia; pertaining to India (c. 1300); from Late Latin indianus, from India; Applied to the aboriginal native inhabitants of the Americas from at least 1553 as a noun (1610s as an adjective), reflecting Spanish and Portuguese use, on the mistaken notion that America was the eastern end of Asia (it was also used occasionally 18c.-19c. of inhabitants of the Philippines and indigenous peoples of Australia and New Zealand. The Old English adjective was Indisc, and Indish (adj.) was common in 16c. ● Red Indian: used to distinguish the native Americans from inhabitants of India; first attested 1831 in British English (Carlyle) but was not commonly used in North America. ● 

More than 500 modern phrases include Indian, most of them U.S. and most impugning honesty or 

intelligence, such as Indian gift: An Indian gift: a proverbial expression signifying a present for which an equivalent return is expected. [Thomas Hutchinson’s ‘History of Massachusetts Bay’, 1765]; Indian giver ‘one who gives a gift and then asks for it back’ (1848). Indian elephant (c. 1600); Indian corn (from 1620s); to walk Indian file (from 1758); Indian club (from 1824), a weapon (clubs noted in Lewis & Clark as characteristic weapons of native warriors in the American West), (1825) exercise equipment; Indian-head (from 1862,adjective): referring to U.S. copper pennies with a portrait of an Indian in profile. Injun: (1812, from 1683 ‘Ingin’), a spelling representing the early American English colloquial pronunciation of Indian; Honest Injun: (first recorded 1868) as an asseveration of truthfulness; noun phrase honest Indian (attested from 1676, Massachusetts). (Etymology Online]

Merriam Webster: Indian [n. (14c)]: 1) a native or inhabitant of India or of the East Indies; a person of Indian descent; 2) American Indian: one of the native languages of American Indians— Indian, adjective; Indianness, noun

Wikipedia: of India: Something or someone of or from the nation of India: Indian people, people of Indian nationality, or people who are citizens or residents of India; non-resident Indian and person of Indian origin, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country.

I

n the Americas: Indigenous peoples of the Americas, the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North

and South America and their descendants; Native Americans in the United States, the indigenous people in the United States; Plains Indians, the common name for the Native Americans who lived on the Great Plains of the United States; First Nations, the various Aboriginal peoples in Canada who are neither Inuit nor Métis; Indigenous peoples in South America, peoples living in South America in the pre-Colombian era and their descendants; Native Mexicans, indigenous people of Mexico; West Indians, people from the Caribbean region and the Lucayan Archipelago; Mardi Gras Indians, African-American Carnival revelers in New Orleans, Louisiana, whose suits are influenced by Native American ceremonial apparel.

Of Australia: Aboriginal Australians, called ‘Indians’ until the 19th century; Languages: Indigenous languages of the Americas, spoken by indigenous peoples from Alaska and Greenland to the southern tip of South America; Languages of India, including Indo-Aryan languages and Dravidian languages.

In the Arts/Music/Film/other Entertainment:  Indian (1996 film), a Tamil film; Indian (2001 film), a Hindi film; Indians (musician): moniker of Danish singer Søren Løkke Juul accompanied by some musicians also collectively known as Indians; ‘Indian’ (song), by Sturm und Drang; Indian (soundtrack), an album from the 1996 film; Indians (song), by Anthrax; Indian (card game), a simple card game that involves strategy; Indian soap opera/soap operas written, produced, and filmed in India; Indians (play), a 1968 play by Arthur Kopit

B

usiness and Sport: Indian (airline), now defunct state-owned airline of India; Indian Motorcycle Manufacturing Company, an American company later called Indian Manufacturing Company, that produced the brand ‘Indian motorcycles’ from 1901 to 1953 ● Cleveland Indians, a professional baseball team based in Cleveland, Ohio; Frölunda HC or Frölunda Indians, a Swedish professional ice hockey club based in Gothenburg; Indianapolis Indians, a minor league baseball team based in Indianapolis, Indiana; Indios de Mayagüez, a baseball team in the Puerto Rican Professional Baseball League; Mumbai Indians, a franchise cricket team representing the city of Mumbai in the Indian Premier League; Springfield Indians, a minor professional ice hockey franchise, originally based in West Springfield, Massachusetts.

P

laces: Indian, West Virginia, an unincorporated community in Kanawha County; Indian Creek; 

Indian Island; Indian Ocean; Indian River, several rivers and communities; Indian Run, streams in the U.S. states of Pennsylvania and West Virginia; Indian subcontinent; The Indians, British Virgin Islands islets group (Wikipedia) ● Indiana: (1765 in English): name given to the region north of the Ohio River (mid-18c. by French explorers or settlers); Indian + Latin-derived place-name suffix –ana); Indianian (1784) (source: Etymology online) ● West Indies/West Indian: Caribbean islands explored by Columbus, 1550s, reflecting the belief (or hope) that they were western outliers of the Indies of Asia; West Indian (from 1580s in reference to the native inhabitants, 1650s in reference to European settlers there, and 1928 in reference to people of West Indian ancestry) ● Indonesia: ‘East Indies’ (1850); formerly called Indian Archipelago or East Indies Islands (source: Etymology online)

Other: Indian cuisine, a wide variety of regional cuisines native to India; Indian Head cent, a coin produced by the United States Mint from 1859 to 1909; Indus, a constellation in the southern sky (Wikipedia) ●

I

ndian Summer (n., 1774): weather: occurring anywhere from mid-September to nearly December, varying by location, a “spell of warm, dry, hazy weather after the first frost” (origin disputed) (Etymology online)

Sources:

Merriam Webster, Etymology Online, Wikipedia

References

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Indian

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=indian+summer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian

News pegs: October 17, 2016: LA Times sports reporting Toronto, Ontario, Judge dismisses attempt to prohibit Cleveland Indians’ use of their name and logo during the American League Championship Series; and CHCH TV Online reporting “Cleveland ‘Indians’ controversy”

http://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-cleveland-indians-name-controversy-20161017-snap-story.html

http://www.chch.com/cleveland-indians-controversy/

_______________________________________

A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora

Another View: Contrived Hysteria, Feigned Outrage, What is, What Should Addressed

Drivel drives out Substance
By Carolyn LaDelle Bennett

P

owerful people, public figures, people placed high have the power over life and death. They allow some to speak. They silence multitudes—multitudes never seen, their voices never heard. Because of this, we—the people of the United of America and indeed the peoples of the world—now and for a long time have been handed “leaders” and prospective “leaders” (high placed people) who have been fielded and supported and who rise to public office, high office, for which they are unspeakably, entirely unfit.

This is the situation Americans again face in this election season. Those permitted access and speech—those sided with by the masses—are thoroughly unfit for purpose. Instead of Americans seeing and cutting through the charade and show, instead of demanding inclusiveness of people and ideas and substantive speech focusing on policy past, present and consequence, real needs, issues and answers domestic and international—they are giving in (succumbing) to the inordinate power of manipulation and flinging back and forth, up and down, wherever blows the wind of distraction.

“Sex sells” but it does not question qualification and character for leading what could be a great nation. I don’t really want to comment on another embarrassing speech by the US First Lady; read the transcript provided by NPR (I did) or watch some portal or tube of Web Viral. 

B

ut as to substance and the measure of qualification and character, I have a few words. While words, a leer, furtive touch can hurt—the truly vulnerable have neither voice nor choice. Human beings blown up by US bombs (ordered, approved or sold by US leaders) have no recourse, no resurrection, no rise from death.  

I am alarmed and concerned about a country that holds most of the world’s nuclear weapons and unmanned/remote (drone) missiles; harbors most of the world’s arms dealers and sellers; and  whose inordinately powerful leaders (many still in office and or aspiring to high office) have pretty near destroyed the world and relations among peoples and cultures of the world. I am deeply concerned that these corrupt, incompetent, immoral “leaders” have engaged endlessly in war, belligerence, violent aggression, and directly or indirectly caused the exacerbation of tribal and regional suffering and conflict and the death, displacement, homelessness and statelessness of hundreds of millions of people (then further punished, disparaged, rejected and or denied them asylum or refuge). I am concerned that these “leaders” have assassinated or caused to be assassinated, removed or conspired to remove other heads of state; that these mainly  (though not only) US leaders have abducted and interned (without charge or trial) and tortured other nationals (some US citizens); that they have ripped to shreds vital US (and international) documents and institutions; and concomitantly with world violence they have neglected their (our) homeland, its common defense and general welfare, the health, education and welfare of our people and lands. Until these concerns are addressed, there is nothing out of the mouths of the monopoly and their minions that is worth listening to.

L

et’s face it. The current crop of kin and kind—Nobel laureates notwithstanding or carelessly mendacious graduates of Yale or Harvard, Columbia or Stanford, Chicago, Princeton or Duke, Wellesley or Radcliff—they are unfit for the purpose, unfit to assume either US public office or world leadership.

____________

Pegs: 

Press TV October 14, 2016.Michelle Obama rebukes Trump's 'sexually predatory behavior' October 14, 2016 “US First Lady Michelle Obama has launched a scintillating attack against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s ‘sexually predatory behavior.’ http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2016/10/14/488968/Michelle-Obama-powerful-rebuke-Trump; 

NPR (National Public Radio, USA) Transcript: “Michelle Obama’s Speech On Donald Trump's Alleged Treatment Of Women, October 13, 2016 http://www.npr.org/2016/10/13/497846667/transcript-michelle-obamas-speech-on-donald-trumps-alleged-treatment-of-women; 

Washington Post Blog: The Fix “Michelle Obama’s speech on Donald Trump was remarkable” By Chris Cillizza October 13, 2016 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/10/13/michelle-obama-just-put-a-huge-and-emotional-exclamation-point-on-trumps-hot-mic-tape/]

________________________________________

A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora

Complex global societal tragedy of wealth and want—symptom trafficked-refugee death on a road

Complex tragedies of wealth and want presage latest tragedy but latest not cause of crisis

Editing and Commentary by Carolyn LaDelle Bennett

The current Deutsche Welle documentary of human trafficking and refugee death (“Asphyxiated on the Highway: The End of a 

Deutsche Welle Documentary
“Asphyxiated on the Highway:
The End of a Desperate Journey”

Desperate Journey”) is horrific. But the blame and indeed the solutions neither begin nor end solely with trafficking, traffickers and deaths of refugees. Arrests, trials and imprisonment, though required by law (except for the well-heeled), fail to solve underlying structural problems. War and unrest and want create refugees and asylum seekers, and also create those who exploit and profit from forced migration and the misery of displaced peoples across the world. The DW documentary reports that on a highway in Austria on August 27, 2015, police found “71 corpses [suffocated refugees] in a small truck, some already in a state of advanced decomposition.” The refugees were finally identified as having come from the countries where Western wars are being waged and have been for years—“Afghanistan, Syria, Iran and Iraq.” Investigative journalists researched the network of human traffickers, interviewed lawyers and investigators for a film that reconstructs the flight of the refugees.

 

T

his tragedy of human trafficking and death, happening again and again beyond and occasionally in the news, such as this compelling Deutsche Welle documentary, rests with leaders of world powers, West and East, nuclear powers' leaders’ wars and their domestic and international priorities and policies; it rests with plunderers, robbers, the super rich, and countries’ leadership, officials whose corruption lets stand the oppressive status quo.

Almost half of the world’s wealth is now owned by just one percent of the world’s population. $110 trillion—65 times the total wealth of the bottom half of the world’s population—constitutes the wealth of the one percent richest people in the world. The richest 85 people in the world hold all of what equals to the wealth-holding of all people in the bottom half of the world’s population. Seven out of ten people live in countries where economic inequality increased in 30 years preceding a 2013 Credit Suisse Research Global Wealth Report. Since 2009, the United States’ wealthiest one percent captured 95 percent of post-financial crisis growth while the bottom 90 percent became poorer. 

W

e can feign outrage or actually be outraged by the current state of affairs but real or pretended outrage doesn’t amount to a hill of beans when common sense tells us that poverty need not “always be with us”—that was peddled propaganda and otherwise expedient, flawed reasoning. Anyone with common sense knows that when ordinate power, their interminable wars, dominance and plunder, their criminal impunity create and sustain poverty—when this critical causation is pervasive and persistent—the consequence is inevitable, interminable poverty. And from conditions of interminable want, poverty, conflict, destabilization, victimization—looking up from scrubbing the floors and toilets of inordinate wealth—rise desperate acts (piracy, smuggling in people, animals, and in inanimate objects of all kinds) to get out from under the arm of oppression, to gain some measure of self-respect and not opulence but the basics of a decent livelihood and living.  

 

In the United States and across the world, Oxfam warns, “When wealth captures government policy making, the rules bend to favor the rich, often to the detriment of everyone else.  The consequences include the erosion of democratic governance, the pulling apart of social cohesion, and the vanishing of equal opportunities for all. 

 “Unless bold political solutions are instituted to curb the influence of wealth on politics, governments will work for the interests of the rich, while economic and political inequalities continue to rise.”

Sources and notes

DW documentary “Asphyxiated on the Highway - The End of a Desperate Journey” August 25, 2016, broadcast dates August 26-27; September 8-9, 2016 and archived.  http://www.dw.com/en/documentaries-asphyxiated-on-the-highway-2016-08-25/e-19457567-9798

OXFAM Briefing Paper 178 Working for the Few: Political capture and economic inequality, a paper written by Ricardo Fuentes-Nieva and Nick Galasso, production assistance by Natalia Alonso, Ana Arendar, Teresa Cavero, Anna Coryndon, Kimberly Pfeifer and Max Lawson; part of a series of papers written to inform public debate on development and humanitarian policy issues. Oxfam International January 2014 copyrighted publication “but the text may be used free of charge for the purposes of advocacy, campaigning, education, and research, provided that the source is acknowledged in full.” policyandpractice@oxfam.org.uk information correct at the time publication goes to press; published by Oxfam GB for Oxfam International under ISBN 978-1-78077-540-1 in January 2014. Oxfam GB, Oxfam House, John Smith Drive, Cowley, Oxford, OX4 2JY, UK, www.oxfam.org

Research Institute: Thought leadership from Credit Suisse Research and the world’s foremost experts October 2013 Global Wealth Global Wealth Report: 

“…Global household wealth equates to USD 51,600 per adult, a new all-time high for average net worth [but] this average global value masks considerable variation across countries and regions. The richest nations, with wealth per adult over USD 100,000, are found in North America, Western Europe, and among the rich Asia-Pacific and Middle Eastern countries.… Wealth varies greatly across individuals” but this reports estimates that “the lower half of the global population possesses barely 1 percent of global wealth… The richest 10 percent of adults own 86 percent of all wealth….The top 1 percent account for 46 percent of the total wealth.”

Wealthy nations [though within these nations there is dire want]: USA, Japan, China, India, France, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia, Australia, South Africa, Chile, Brazil, and Canada

https://publications.credit-suisse.com/tasks/render/file/?fileID=BCDB1364-A105-0560-1332EC9100FF5C83

Blog Author

A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora

Complex global societal tragedy of wealth and want—symptom trafficked-refugee death on a road

Complex tragedies of wealth and want presage latest tragedy but latest not cause of crisis

Editing and Commentary by Carolyn LaDelle Bennett

The current Deutsche Welle documentary of human trafficking and refugee death (“Asphyxiated on the Highway: The End of a 

Deutsche Welle Documentary
“Asphyxiated on the Highway:
The End of a Desperate Journey”

Desperate Journey”) is horrific. But the blame and indeed the solutions neither begin nor end solely with trafficking, traffickers and deaths of refugees. Arrests, trials and imprisonment, though required by law (except for the well-heeled), fail to solve underlying structural problems. War and unrest and want create refugees and asylum seekers, and also create those who exploit and profit from forced migration and the misery of displaced peoples across the world. The DW documentary reports that on a highway in Austria on August 27, 2015, police found “71 corpses [suffocated refugees] in a small truck, some already in a state of advanced decomposition.” The refugees were finally identified as having come from the countries where Western wars are being waged and have been for years—“Afghanistan, Syria, Iran and Iraq.” Investigative journalists researched the network of human traffickers, interviewed lawyers and investigators for a film that reconstructs the flight of the refugees.

 

T

his tragedy of human trafficking and death, happening again and again beyond and occasionally in the news, such as this compelling Deutsche Welle documentary, rests with leaders of world powers, West and East, nuclear powers' leaders’ wars and their domestic and international priorities and policies; it rests with plunderers, robbers, the super rich, and countries’ leadership, officials whose corruption lets stand the oppressive status quo.

Almost half of the world’s wealth is now owned by just one percent of the world’s population. $110 trillion—65 times the total wealth of the bottom half of the world’s population—constitutes the wealth of the one percent richest people in the world. The richest 85 people in the world hold all of what equals to the wealth-holding of all people in the bottom half of the world’s population. Seven out of ten people live in countries where economic inequality increased in 30 years preceding a 2013 Credit Suisse Research Global Wealth Report. Since 2009, the United States’ wealthiest one percent captured 95 percent of post-financial crisis growth while the bottom 90 percent became poorer. 

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e can feign outrage or actually be outraged by the current state of affairs but real or pretended outrage doesn’t amount to a hill of beans when common sense tells us that poverty need not “always be with us”—that was peddled propaganda and otherwise expedient, flawed reasoning. Anyone with common sense knows that when ordinate power, their interminable wars, dominance and plunder, their criminal impunity create and sustain poverty—when this critical causation is pervasive and persistent—the consequence is inevitable, interminable poverty. And from conditions of interminable want, poverty, conflict, destabilization, victimization—looking up from scrubbing the floors and toilets of inordinate wealth—rise desperate acts (piracy, smuggling in people, animals, and in inanimate objects of all kinds) to get out from under the arm of oppression, to gain some measure of self-respect and not opulence but the basics of a decent livelihood and living.  

 

In the United States and across the world, Oxfam warns, “When wealth captures government policy making, the rules bend to favor the rich, often to the detriment of everyone else.  The consequences include the erosion of democratic governance, the pulling apart of social cohesion, and the vanishing of equal opportunities for all. 

 “Unless bold political solutions are instituted to curb the influence of wealth on politics, governments will work for the interests of the rich, while economic and political inequalities continue to rise.”

Sources and notes

DW documentary “Asphyxiated on the Highway - The End of a Desperate Journey” August 25, 2016, broadcast dates August 26-27; September 8-9, 2016 and archived.  http://www.dw.com/en/documentaries-asphyxiated-on-the-highway-2016-08-25/e-19457567-9798

OXFAM Briefing Paper 178 Working for the Few: Political capture and economic inequality, a paper written by Ricardo Fuentes-Nieva and Nick Galasso, production assistance by Natalia Alonso, Ana Arendar, Teresa Cavero, Anna Coryndon, Kimberly Pfeifer and Max Lawson; part of a series of papers written to inform public debate on development and humanitarian policy issues. Oxfam International January 2014 copyrighted publication “but the text may be used free of charge for the purposes of advocacy, campaigning, education, and research, provided that the source is acknowledged in full.” policyandpractice@oxfam.org.uk information correct at the time publication goes to press; published by Oxfam GB for Oxfam International under ISBN 978-1-78077-540-1 in January 2014. Oxfam GB, Oxfam House, John Smith Drive, Cowley, Oxford, OX4 2JY, UK, www.oxfam.org

Research Institute: Thought leadership from Credit Suisse Research and the world’s foremost experts October 2013 Global Wealth Global Wealth Report: 

“…Global household wealth equates to USD 51,600 per adult, a new all-time high for average net worth [but] this average global value masks considerable variation across countries and regions. The richest nations, with wealth per adult over USD 100,000, are found in North America, Western Europe, and among the rich Asia-Pacific and Middle Eastern countries.… Wealth varies greatly across individuals” but this reports estimates that “the lower half of the global population possesses barely 1 percent of global wealth… The richest 10 percent of adults own 86 percent of all wealth….The top 1 percent account for 46 percent of the total wealth.”

Wealthy nations [though within these nations there is dire want]: USA, Japan, China, India, France, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia, Australia, South Africa, Chile, Brazil, and Canada

https://publications.credit-suisse.com/tasks/render/file/?fileID=BCDB1364-A105-0560-1332EC9100FF5C83

Blog Author

A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora

Wrong Women Placed High: dark side of US foreign policy

Faces of Fake Feminism
Madeleine Albright
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Gloria Steinem

Down and Dirty anti-Diplomatists, Violent Aggressors in dresses "derail reasonable discussion, prevent diplomacy from finding solutions to avoid war." 

Carolyn LaDelle Bennett excerpts from Diana Johnstone’s Queen of Chaos: The Misadventures of Hillary

“T

Nuland

Rice

he presence of women in high levels in the [US Department of State] could be seen merely as the result of women’s well-deserved success in significant careers. But the roles played by these women express hostile aspects of US policy more eloquently than men could even manage in the same positions.

Power

“Each in her own way uses her personality to sharpen the aggressive edge of US foreign policy and to make reaching any diplomatic understanding with others more difficult. There was a time when feminists claimed that women in powerful positions would make a tremendous contribution toward world peace. America’s tough women are squandering expectations, dating back to Aristophanes’ ‘Lysistrata’, that women could be mobilized against war. [In Greek playwright (b. circa 450 BC, d. circa 388 BC) Aristophanes’ 411 BCE comedy ‘Lysistrata’, women of Sparta, prompted by ‘Lysistrata’, declare a ban on sexual contact until their partners end” the decades-long “Peloponnesian War”, and persist “until their … partners arrange for peace…” (Britannica note inserted)]

HRC and Nuland

“T

he snarls of Madeleine Albright, the gloating lectures of Hillary [Rodham] Clinton, the insults of Susan Rice, the tough talk of Victoria Nuland, the eloquent  temper tantrums of Samantha Power and even the arrogant ignorance  of State Department press spokeswomen tell a different story.

White House Spokeswoman
Jen Psaki
2015

“T

hese harpies all work for Democratic administrations claiming great devotion to the cause of human rights, but they have made it clear that this devotion, far from stemming from kindness and gentleness, functions primarily as a motive for punishing alleged offenders. The [Barack] Obama administration intensified the use of women to whip the rest of the world into line in a US-produced and directed production of ‘The Taming By the Shrew’ on the world stage.

“Washington’s foreign policy women specialize in haranguing foreign leaders or diplomats as if they are badly behaved children. Their bullying behavior displays an assurance that, because they are women [emphasis added], they can get away with rudeness that most men in their position would feel obliged to avoid.

“A

Susan Rice

s US Ambassador to the United Nations, before she became President Obama’s National Security Adviser, Susan Rice showed no concern for the niceties of diplomatic usage. She advocated rejoining the UN Human Rights Council largely as a way to fight against [in Rice’s dirty language] ‘the anti-Israel crap’ coming from defenders of the Palestinians.  

Hillary Rodham Clinton

“Protégée as well as successor to Madeleine Albright, Rice often sounds the same tone. Just as Madeleine sponsored creation of the breakaway failed State of Kosovo, Susan is credited with a large role in creating another breakaway failed State, South Sudan. Susan Rice acknowledges that she is seen as ‘brusque, aggressive and abrasive’, but doesn’t care. ‘Of course people don’t say that to my face,’ Susan Rice joked at a UN Correspondents Association ball, ‘because they know I’d kick their butts.’

“While acting as ‘unfeminine’ as possible, Ms. Rice was implicitly taking advantage of a feminine privilege—women’s certainty that the men they insult are still too civilized to ‘kick their butts’ in return.

“S

Samantha Power

usan Rice was succeeded as Ambassador to the United Nations in Obama’s second term by Samantha Power, whose style is totally different, although their policy positions are usually same.

“During the 2008 presidential election campaign, Power was obliged to resign from the Obama support team for publicly calling Hillary Clinton a ‘monster’…. However, all was apparently forgiven. As a member of Obama’s National Security Council, Samantha Power joined Hillary and Susan Rice in urging Obama to bomb Libya….Looks also count…

“S

amantha Power’s long mane of red hair makes her a dramatic figure in the UN Security Council when she leaves her seat to go over and upbraid the startled Russian delegation. However, it did not take long before her histrionics had reduced her to a laughing stock in their eyes.

“Whether just plain rude, like Susan Rice, or melodramatic, like Samantha Power, self-righteous tirades serve only to derail reasonable discussion and prevent diplomacy from finding solutions to avoid war.”

Sources

Queen of Chaos: The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton by Diana Johnstone, published by CounterPunch Books, an imprint of the Institute for the Advancement of Journalistic Clarity, Petrolia, California [excerpt from] pp. 65-66, 68

Additional Paragraph breaks, italic emphases, bracketed material added

Queen of Chaos: The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton

Diana Johnstone (Author)

$17.95  Publisher: CounterPunch Format: Book Binding: paperback Pages: 175 Released:  November 5, 2015 ● ISBN-13: 9780989763769

URL source retrieved: https://www.akpress.org/queen-of-chaos.html

AK Press 370 Ryan Ave. #100 Chico, CA  95973 USA - info@akpress.org

Blog Author

A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora