ERIC DRAITSER

Hillary Clinton may be enjoying a comfortable lead in national polls, but she is far from enjoying a comfortable night’s sleep given the ever-widening maelstrom of scandals engulfing her presidential bid.  And while Clinton delights in bloviating about a decades-long “vast, right wing conspiracy” against her, the fact is that it’s the Clinton political machine’s long and storied track record of criminality, duplicity, and corruption that haunts her like Lincoln’s ghost silently skulking through White House bedrooms.

The latest in a string of embarrassing scandals is centered on the powerful Clinton Foundation, and the obvious impropriety of its acceptance of large donations from foreign governments (and wealthy individuals connected to them), especially those governments universally recognized as oppressive dictatorships whose foreign policy orientation places them squarely in the US orbit.

Of particular note are the Gulf monarchies such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar whose massive donations belie the fact that their oppression of women runs contradictory to Clinton’s self-styled ‘feminism’ and belief  “that the rights of women and girls is the unfinished business of the 21^st Century.”  Is collaborating with feudal monarchies whose subjugation of women is the stuff of infamy really Clinton’s idea of feminism?  Or, is it rather that Clinton merely uses issues such as women’s rights as a dog whistle for loyal liberals while groveling before the high councilors of the imperial priesthood?

Hillary Clinton is deeply committed to the Saudi royal family’s foreign policy outlook and tactics, in particular the weaponization of terrorism as a means of achieving strategic objectives.

What the Clinton Foundation hullabaloo really demonstrates is that Clinton’s will to power is single-minded, entirely simpatico with the corruption of the military-industrial-financial-surveillance complex; that she is a handmaiden for, and member of, the ruling establishment; that Clinton represents the marriage of all the worst aspects of the ruling political class.  In short, Clinton is more than just corrupt, she is corruption personified.

Clinton’s Dirty Dealing and Even Dirtier Laundry

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n a hilariously pig-headed, but rather telling, statement, former President Bill Clinton responded to allegations of impropriety with the Clinton Foundation by saying, “We’re trying to do good things…If there’s something wrong with creating jobs and saving lives, I don’t know what it is. The people who gave the money knew exactly what they were doing. I have nothing to say about it except that I’m really proud.”

Bill Clinton: poster boy for American criminality and corruption. Photo by Center for American Progress

Leaving aside the fact that such an arrogant comment demonstrates Bill Clinton’s complete contempt for ethics and the basic standards of proper conduct, the salient point is that the argument from the Clintons is that the foundation is inherently good, that it helps people around the world, and that, as such, it can’t possibly be corrupt and unethical.  Where there’s smoke, there’s fire – except when it comes to the Clintons who stand proudly enveloped in billowing clouds of smoke swearing up and down that not only is there no fire, but anyone who mentions the existence of flames is both a sexist and Trump-loving Putin stooge.

But indeed there is a fire, and it is raging on the American political scene.  And nowhere is the heat more palpable than in the deserts of the Middle East where wealthy benefactors write massive checks for access to America’s 21^st Century Queen of Mean (apologies to Leona Helmsley).

Consider the 2011 sale of $29 billion worth of advanced fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, a gargantuan deal that made the feudal monarchy into an overnight air power.  Were there any doubts as to the uses of the hardware, look no further than the humanitarian nightmare that is Yemen, a country under relentless air war carried out by the Saudis.  And, lo and behold, the Saudis had been major contributors to the Clinton Foundation in the years leading up to the sale. And it should be equally unsurprising that just weeks before the deal was finalized, Boeing, the manufacturer of the F-15 jets that were the centerpiece of the massive arms deal, donated $900,000 to the Foundation.

The F-15 Eagle

Of course, according to Bubba and Hil, it’s all conspiracy theory to suggest that the Clinton Foundation is essentially a pay-for-play scheme in which large sums of money translate into access to the uppermost echelons of state power in the US.  As the International Business Times noted:

The Saudi deal was one of dozens of arms sales approved by Hillary Clinton’s State Department that placed weapons in the hands of governments that had also donated money to the Clinton family philanthropic empire…Under Clinton’s leadership, the State Department approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to 20 nations whose governments have given money to the Clinton Foundation…That figure — derived from the three full fiscal years of Clinton’s term as Secretary of State (from October 2010 to September 2012) — represented nearly double the value of American arms sales made to the those countries and approved by the State Department during the same period of President George W. Bush’s second term.

The Clinton-led State Department also authorized $151 billion of separate Pentagon-brokered deals for 16 of the countries that donated to the Clinton Foundation, resulting in a 143 percent increase in completed sales to those nations over the same time frame during the Bush administration. These extra sales were part of a broad increase in American military exports that accompanied Obama’s arrival in the White House. The 143 percent increase in U.S. arms sales to Clinton Foundation donors compares to an 80 percent increase in such sales to all countries over the same time period.

Additionally, as Glenn Greenwald explained earlier this year,

The Saudi regime by itself has donated between $10 million and $25 million to the Clinton Foundation, with donations coming as late as 2014, as she prepared her presidential run. A group called “Friends of Saudi Arabia,” co-founded “by a Saudi Prince,” gave an additional amount between $1 million and $5 million. The Clinton Foundation says that between $1 million and $5 million was also donated by “the State of Qatar,” the United Arab Emirates, and the government of Brunei. “The State of Kuwait” has donated between $5 million and $10 million.

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he sheer dollar amounts are staggering.  Perhaps then it comes as no surprise just why nearly every single influential figure in the military-industrial-financial-surveillance complex – from General John Allen to death squad coordinator extraordinaire John Negroponte, from neocon tapeworms such as Max Boot, Robert Kagan, and Eliot Cohen to billionaire barbarocrats like the Koch Brothers, George Soros, and Warren Buffett – is backing Hillary Clinton.  Not only is she good for Empire, she’s good for business.  And ultimately, that’s what this is all about, isn’t it?

But of course, Hillary’s devotion to the oil oligarchs of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf goes much deeper than simply an exchange of money for weapons.  In fact, Hillary is deeply committed to the Saudi royal family’s foreign policy outlook and tactics, in particular the weaponization of terrorism as a means of achieving strategic objectives.

Libya provides perhaps the paragon of Clintonian-Saudi strategy: regime change by terrorism.  Using terror groups linked to Al Qaeda and backed by Saudi Arabia, Clinton’s State Department and the Obama Administration managed to topple the government of Muammar Gaddafi, thereby throwing the former “jewel of Africa” into turmoil and political, economic, and social devastation.   To be fair, it was not the Saudis alone involved in fomenting war in Libya, as Hillary’s brothers-from-other-mothers in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates were also directly involved in sowing the seeds of the current chaos in the country.

And of course, this strategic partnership between Clinton and the Gangsters of the Gulf extends far beyond Libya.  In Syria, Clinton’s stated policies of regime change and war are aligned with those of Riyadh, Doha, and Abu Dhabi.  And, of course, it was during Clinton’s tenure at the State Department that US intelligence was involved in funneling weapons and fighters into Syria in hopes of doing to Syria what had already been done to Libya.

Huma Abedin: Clinton’s Woman in Riyadh

[dropcap]J[/dropcap]ust in case all the political and financial ties between Clinton and the Gulf monarchies wasn’t enough to make people stop being #WithHer, perhaps the role of her closest adviser might do the trick.  Huma Abedin, Clinton’s campaign chief of staff, has long-standing ties to Saudi Arabia, the country where Huma spent her childhood from the age of two.  As a Vanity Fair exposé revealed earlier this year:

When Abedin was two years old, the family moved to Jidda, Saudi Arabia, where, with the backing of Abdullah Omar Nasseef, then the president of King Abdulaziz University, her father founded the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, a think tank, and became the first editor of its Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs…After [Abedin’s father] Syed died, in 1993, his wife succeeded him as director of the institute and editor of the Journal, positions she still holds… Abdullah Omar Nasseef, the man who set up the Abedins in Jidda…is a high-ranking insider in the Saudi government and sits on the king’s Shura Council, there are claims that Nasseef once had ties to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda—a charge that he has denied through a spokesman—and that he remains a “major” figure in the Muslim Brotherhood. In his early years as the patron of the Abedins’ journal, Nasseef was the secretary-general of the Muslim World League, which Andrew McCarthy, the former assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the “Blind Sheik,” Omar Abdel Rahman, in the wake of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, claims “has long been the Muslim Brotherhood’s principal vehicle for the international propagation of Islamic supremacist ideology.”

Consider the implications of this information: Clinton’s closest adviser comes from a family connected at the highest levels with the Saudi royal family as well as the Muslim Brotherhood.  While right wing pundits portray the Muslim Brotherhood as some sort of straightforward international terror organization, the reality is much more complex as the Brotherhood is more an international political movement whose tentacles stretch into nearly every corner of the Muslim world. Its vast reserves of cash and political influence, backed by Gulf monarchies such as Qatar, allows the Brotherhood to peddle influence throughout the West, while also being connected to more radical salafist elements.  An obvious two-for-one for Clinton.

Huma Abedin the day of her wedding (in 2010) to the now disgraced politician Anthony Weiner. The couple were married in the garden at Oheka Castle in Huntington, LI. The ceremony was officiated by [former] President William Jefferson Clinton. (!!)

In effect then, Abedin represents a bridge connecting Hillary with both the ruling elites in Riyadh, as well as influential clerics, businesspeople, and political leaders throughout the Middle East. Perhaps then it makes sense why Abedin, in contravention of every standard of ethics, was employed by Teneo Holdings – a pro-Clinton consultancy founded by former Clinton aide Doug Band – while also working for the State Department.  Such ethical violations are as instinctive for Hillary as breathing, or calling children superpredators.

Trump, Assange, Putin, and Clinton’s Sleight of Hand

[dropcap]D[/dropcap]espite being embroiled in multiple scandals, any one of which being enough to sink the campaign of most other candidates, Clinton and her army of fawning corporate media sycophants, have attempted to deflect attention away from her own misdeeds, corruption, and nefarious ties by instead portraying everyone who opposes them as puppets, stooges, and useful idiots.

Let’s begin with Republican nominee and gasbag deluxe, Donald Trump, who Clinton trolls have attempted to portray as a stooge of Russian President Putin.   While it’s indeed quite likely that the Kremlin sees Trump as far less of a threat to Russia’s interests than Clinton – just look at Clinton’s roster of neocon psychopath supporters to see that Putin has a point – the notion that Trump is somehow a creation of Putin, or at the very least is working for him is utterly absurd.

And the “evidence”? Trump’s connections with wealthy Russian oligarchs.  I suppose those who have made their homes under rocks these last 25 years might not know this, but nearly every billionaire investor has gone to Russia in that time, forged ties with influential Russians, and attempted to make money by stripping clean the bones of what was once the Soviet Union.  Sorry Naomi Klein, I guess the Clintonistas expect no one to have read Shock Doctrine which details the sort of disaster capitalism run amok that took place in Russia in the 1990s.

And then, of course, there’s that great confabulator Julian Assange who has also been smeared as a Putin puppet by the #ImWithHer media somnambulists.  I guess the lords of corporate capital didn’t like the fact that Assange and WikiLeaks have managed to expose countless dirty deeds by Clinton’s Tammany Hall of the 21^stCentury.  From using the DNC as a political appendage of the Clinton campaign (as revealed by the WikiLeaks dump of DNC emails) to his recent promise to make public the “most interesting and serious” dirt on Hillary, Assange has become a thorn in the side – or thumb in the eye, as it were – for Hillary.

And what would a rundown of the specters haunting Clinton’s dreams be without mention of the rabid bear of Russia, big bad Vlad?  Clinton recently referred to Putin as the “grand godfather of this global brand of extreme nationalism.”  Leaving aside the asinine phraseology, Clinton’s attacks on Putin reveal the weakness of the Democratic nominee, the hollowness of her arguments, and the unmitigated gall of a hypocrite for whom casting stones in glass houses is second nature.

For, at the very moment that she takes rhetorical swipes at Putin, Clinton herself is implicated in a worldwide network of extremism that promotes terrorism, rains death and destruction on millions of innocent civilians, and moves the world closer to global conflict.  If Putin represents the éminence grise of a “global brand of extreme nationalism,” then Clinton is the fairy godmother of global extremism and terror.  It’s a good thing she has access to the best personal grooming products Goldman Sachs money can buy as it is not easy to wash decades-worth of blood off your hands.

And so, the quadrennial danse macabre that is the US presidential election has turned into an embarrassing sideshow of dull-witted infantilism.  But amid the idiocy there is wanton criminality and corruption to be exposed before the world.  For while Trump is undoubtedly the bearded lady of America’s freak show, Hillary is the carnival barker.

She knows the ring toss and other games are rigged, but she coaxes the feeble-minded to play nonetheless.  She knows the carnies are drunk and reckless, but she urges the children to pay for another ride anyway.  She understands that her job is to sell a rigged game, and to call security when someone challenges her lies. And, unfortunately, whether you want it or not, the Hillary Roadshow is coming to a town, or country, near you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ERIC DRAITSER

Eric Draitser is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City and the founder of StopImperialism.com. He is a regular contributor to RT, Counterpunch, New Eastern Outlook, Press TV, and many other news outlets. Visit StopImperialism.com for all his work.

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Dispatches from
STEPHEN LENDMAN

D   isgracefully calling Obama’s naked aggression against a nonbelligerent nation civil war denigrates millions of long-suffering Syrians – victims of US imperial viciousness. 

Headlining “Syria’s Paradox: Why the War Only Ever Seems to Get Worse,” The Times reinvented one of history’s greatest crimes – besides numerous others on America’s despicable rap sheet. More on its article below.

 

The ISIS plague is a cynical Washington/Ryadh creation, also supported by lesser vassal states in the Gulf and NATO accomplices. The object has always been and remains to convert Syria into another vassal state of US imperialism.

Tim Anderson’s important book, titled “The Dirty War on Syria: Washington, Regime Change and Resistance” is the definitive account of the conflict – must reading to understand it. 

Separately, he explained Obama’s dirty war in basic terms as follows:

“Washington and its allies try another ‘regime change’ in Syria. A fake ‘revolution’ uses Islamic gangs, during an ‘Arab Spring.’ The Western media constantly lie about this covert, dirty war.”

“A political reform movement is driven off the streets by Islamic violence. (The misnamed pro-Western) ‘Free Syrian Army’ slaughters minorities and government workers.”

Diplomats talk endlessly, accomplishing nothing to end war while scores, maybe hundreds more Syrians die daily, numerous others injured, millions displaced, an entire population traumatized – victims of US state terror.

“Saudi and Qatari backed Islamists carry out a series of massacres, falsely blaming them on the Syrian Army and President Assad.”

“Most of Syria’s opposition backs the state and army against terrorism. Washington calls a puppet exile group ‘the Syrian opposition.’ “

“Washington (using Saudis, Qatar, Turkey and Israel) backs all the armed Islamist groups, pretending some are ‘moderate rebels.’ “

“A resistance coalition rallies to Syria. Iran, Hezbollah, Iraq and Russia join the Syrian Army in destroying western backed terrorist groups.”

Anderson’s book explains all of the above and more in detail, why it’s essential reading to understand what’s going on – polar opposite media propaganda, notably from The New York Times, Washington’s leading imperial press agent.

I’ve written scores of articles on the conflict since Obama launched it in March 2011, believing things would go like against Libya – its country raped, its leadership deposed in months. US naked aggression against sovereign Syrian independence rages in its sixth year with no prospect for resolving things in sight.

Diplomats talk endlessly, accomplishing nothing to end war while scores, maybe hundreds more Syrians die daily, numerous others injured, millions displaced, an entire population traumatized – victims of US state terror.

A separate article today explained failure in Geneva – Sergey Lavrov and John Kerry spending hours on Friday achieving nothing toward resolving years of US naked aggression.

It’ll either be won on the battlefield or not at all. Negotiating with rogue state America wastes time, an exercise in futility every time tried.

New York Times coverage of the Syrian conflict includes some of worst rubbish in memory – shameless disinformation and Big Lies, vital truths suppressed.

Instead of explaining why war continues endlessly, its intensity increasing, The Times substituted a reinvented version of what’s ongoing, suppressing hard truths.

Saying “(i)t frustrates any attempt at resolution” fails to discuss how war began, who’s responsible, and how ending it depends on America and its rogue allies ceasing support for terrorists.

Without foreign supplied arms, munitions, funding, training, direction and other material support, terrorist groups in Syria and elsewhere wouldn’t exist.

America created them for use as imperial foot soldiers – its proxy army doing its killing and dying for it, a seemingly endless supply of Islamist extremists willing to wage war for whatever benefits they hope to achieve – for many an early grave.

The Times: “The fact that the underlying battle is multiparty rather than two-sided…works against resolution.”

Fact: War in Syria pits US imperialism against the nation’s sovereign independence. No moderate rebels exist. All anti-government forces are US created and supported terrorists.

Fact: Washington wants Assad ousted, Syria transformed into another US vassal state, isolating Iran, next in line for regime change.

Times reports explain none of the above, instead maintaining the fiction of various anti-government elements vying for control. They’re pawns on America’s chessboard, used to achieve imperial aims.

The Times: “Pro-government forces have conducted by far the most attacks against civilians” – falsely accusing Syria’s military, Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, a disgraceful perversion of truth.

US-supported terrorists along with US-led so-called “coalition” terror-bombing bear full responsibility for massacring hundreds of thousands of Syrians, mostly defenseless civilians. Syria’s only hope for restoring peace and stability is continued commitment from Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and maybe China to defeat the scourge of US imperialism. 

Otherwise endless war is likely, perhaps millions of Syrians perishing before it ends – besides other conflict theaters and new ones ahead killing millions more.

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THE WEST’S GREAT WAR AGAINST RUSSIA
The object is the defeat and destruction of Russia as an independent world power.

BY JAFE ARNOLD

Unless change prevails, Poland is slated to disappear from the map once again. 

Macierewicz

When Polish Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz recently boasted that the NATO Summit in Warsaw would ensure that “The forces of our allies will finally be in place permanently on the eastern flank”, his formal ministerial title once again helped to show its true colors. That any defense minister would refer to his country as a mere “flank”, especially in an operative military context concerning armed forces other than its own, is a sad relinquishment of sovereignty even in the realm of semantics. Even in the Polish People’s Republic, which today’s Polish elites ceaselessly slander as part of their raison d’être, the country’s leaders never approached their country as an object, but as a conscious subject in international relations which could and ought to strive for the most optimal scenarios possible even within the rigid framework of Cold War confrontation and geopolitical deadlock.

Then, socialist Poland earned itself both ire and praise for its relatively aggressive bartering over its security guarantees unlike now, as Poland resembles little more than a willing toy or, at best, attack dog for the Western elites and corporations which have looted and manipulated it since 1989. Then again, Macierewicz’s statements should come as no surprise. What else could be expected from the man who called the brutal genocide against Poles by Ukrainian Nazis in Volyn in 1943 a mere “Russian manipulation” and claimed that Russia is “today’s greatest threat to global security” which has “undermined international order to the extent of  “no country in recent history”?

ABW officers raiding Zmiana’s party office in Warsaw)

But the problem neither begins nor ends with Macierewicz, who is merely another, albeit comparatively more preposterous, representative of the Polish elite. Macierewicz is a symptom, while the disease itself plaguing today’s Poland is the country’s subjugation by the US, NATO, and related Atlanticist structures in the EU who are striving to turn Poland into a frontline conflict-zone in a war with Russia.

Warsaw’s ruling clique is allowing NATO to turn Poland into a “suicide bomber”. 

Amidst the heightening crisis of “European integration”  (read: Atlanticist disintegration) and the re-tabling of the question of national sovereignty, Poland stands out as a unique case. As a point of contrast, the big EU countries like Germany, Italy, or France indeed do suffer from being accomplices to the Atlanticist project and anti-Russian crusade. They are restricted to tailing the declining US Empire in foreign policy, are subjected to the violent consequences of the “War on Terror” and the burdens of mass migration provoked by US wars, and both their working people and what’s left of their national bourgeoisie unduly suffer from the anti-Russian sanctions. Not to mention the endless austerity measures desperately imposed to keep the EU welded together in its present, dysfunctional form for the benefit of US imperialism and finance capital. As we have written elsewhere, Poland by all means pays (or, more precisely, is forced to pay) these costs for being a subject of the Atlanticist project. But Poland has an even deeper hole being dug for it by both its native elites and foreign “patrons”: Poland is being turned into the site of a war zone itself, one of the hot battlefields of geopolitical Endkampf. 

This daunting reality manifests itself in two particularly noteworthy spheres. 

Poland as a suicide bomber 

NATO’s embrace of Poland is a malignant Faustian pact liable to make it the first nuclear battlefield in European history.

From a military standpoint, Poland is being positioned as the sacrificial victim for a pre-emptive or subsequent Russian response to NATO aggression. The dangerous implications of NATO’s ever-increasing deployment of troops to Eastern Europe, principally Poland and the Baltic states, are widely known and often cited. But the “cannon fodder” is, in the end, just that. What about the cannon itself?

The most critical example of this is the deployment of the infamous “US missile defense systems” on Polish soil. Washington’s official justification of such a project is well known: these missile complexes are allegedly, supposedly intended to defend from an Iranian attack! In reality, most experts besides NATO propagandists and their lackeys acknowledge that this system is aimed at none other than the Russian Federation. But even more intriguing is the nature of these “defense” systems: according to top Russian military analysts Igor Korotchenko and Viktor Baranets, the technicalities of these systems and their utilization doctrine are such that they are not even designed to deflect an attack of any sort, a nuance of enormous gravity behind which lurks a frightening truth. In reality, these systems are coordinated to prevent a responsive counter-attack. In other words, they are meant to attract a responsive strike towards themselves and resist such only after a strike has been launched by the US-NATO side against a target expected to defend itself, ostensibly – let’s call things by their names – Russia. As nuclear power engineer and strategic analyst Albert Naryshkin puts it, “We are talking about a simple, understandable, and quite characteristically American scenario” up to the point of “involving the provocation of “nuclear aggression.” The only thing that Poland stands to win with the installation of US-NATO “defense” missiles on its territory is the certainty that Poland will become a key target in armed exchanges the magnitude of which are likely to resemble a Third World War. It’s enough to heed Vladimir Putin’s pragmatic yet ominous warning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqD8lIdIMRo

As if the presence of such systems – which the Russian Federation has repeatedly iterated it interprets as a liable threat and is preparing a potential military response to – was not enough, then the Atlantic Council’s program for, literally, “arming Poland against Russia,” is the nail in the coffin. Not only does the document call for Poland to violate international conventions by attacking civilian structures “which could include the Moscow metro, the St. Petersburg power network, and Russian state-run media outlets such as RT,” but also openly promotes and elaborates on the notion that Poland is none other than NATO’s frontline. According to the program, “even if Moscow has no immediate intent to challenge NATO directly,” Poland must dramatically expand its armed forces, increase the frequency of provocative exercises to “demonstrate readiness,” deploy offensive cyber operations, “declare” the “right” to “make counterattacks deep into Russian territory” and “dispatch Special Operations Forces (SOF) into Russian territory”, “move forces into the Baltics and possibly Romania,” and “move forward expeditiously” with its $34 billion military modernization procurements to which “might be added US $26 billion.”

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n effect, NATO’s proposals for Poland mean further, more ambitious provocations and bellicosity that can only end in turning Poland into the victim of an inconceivably disastrous war in which it has no justifiable

interest. NATO’s assurance that it will defend and support Poland in any case of conflict can only be taken with a grain of salt, seeing as how the North Atlantic Treaty allows for member-states to fulfill their obligations of assistance by a mere diplomatic note wishing “good luck.” Whether one agrees with the political content of the example or not, it must be admitted that Poland has a long history of being abandoned at the crucial moment by Western powers promising it military support, including in the past century’s two world wars.  That Poland could stand alone in any potential conflict, especially with Russia, is such a dubious point that it is sufficient to quote the rhetorical question posed by Marek Glinka: “If Britain recently acknowledged that its military is inferior to the Russian one, then what about Poland?”

To put it bluntly, Poland is being positioned as a sort of suicide bomber, armed to the teeth but slated to explode thanks either to its own pushing of the button or to the defensive shot of another. Thus, it cannot be excluded that Poland’s “arming for deterrence” is nothing other than an “arming for (self-)destruction.” Just like Wahhabi clerics blessing their suicide bomber fodder and promising them eternal rewards, so are the US and NATO promising Poland that it can only be saved by sacrificing itself. 

Polish democracy under attack by…NATO

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]n increasing number of Poles from across the political spectrum have begun to rally against this potentially horrific fate for their country. But, just like in any occupied zone being prepared for war, they have become the victims of political repression and democratic “cutbacks” to “keep the ranks in line.” Just like in the famous lines of Pastor Martin Niemoller, “First they came for the communists,” the first anti-NATO forces to come under attack were activists from the Communist Party of Poland and the Grunwald Patriotic Workers Union. It is worth noting that cases to criminalize and punish left activists have been brought for consideration to Poland’s prosecutor for years, but only in the context surrounding the recent war build-up and NATO Summit in Warsaw did the gavel finally fall. On March 31st, four activists were sentenced without due trial to nine months of restricted freedom, hefty fines, and unpaid labor for the “public promotion of totalitarianism.” 

On May 16th, the leader of the political party Zmiana (“Change”), Mateusz Piskorski, issued a prescient warning on his blog that NATO’s newly deployed Very High Readiness Joint Task Force was going to “pacify” protests and opposition groups according to the North Atlantic Treaty’s Article 4 under the pretext of fighting “Russian hybrid war.” Piskorski warned that NATO’s repressive plans, admitted by Multinational Corps Northeast’s General Krol himself, would ultimately render any forms of protest in the country, whether on the streets or on the internet, subject to suppression on the orders of US-NATO advisors. 

Two days later, on May 18th, armed agents of the Internal Security Agency raided Zmiana’s office and its activists’ homes and arrested and imprisoned Piskorski while a media campaign hurled the ridiculous charges that he was a “Russian, Chinese, and/or Iraqi spy.” In a most telling and foreboding instance, officers even confiscated ordinary Polish flags from Zmiana’s activists, a move which in Polish history usually accompanies war on Polish soil. Without any official charges brought against him, Poland’s leading anti-NATO figure who confidently declared in 2015 that “a Poland without NATO is a Poland without wars”, to this day remains in isolation in prison, from where he has stressed in two urgent letters (1 , 2) that Poland is being converted into a launch pad and target for WWIII. Piskorski’s arrest marked the intense upswing in repression with clear geopolitical consequences. It is no accident that Zmiana, Poland’s leading anti-Atlanticist opposition which stands for Poland leaving NATO and seeking voluntary, mutually beneficial relations with all countries, has come under the bombardment of Poland’s Western corporate media and security services. 

So far, Mateusz Piskorski is the biggest example of what is to come for Poland under NATO’s thumb, under the pretext of “fighting hybrid war,” and under the beating drums of mobilization for a war whose instigators have no need for brave advocates of sovereignty and peace. Will the ordinary middle-aged woman, neither an activist nor associated with Zmiana, who wrote a letter of sympathy to Piskorski also be arrested? So far, the police have called her in for interrogation, just as they’ve urged members of Zmiana’s independent trade union to resign, or else…Apparently, any kind of oppositional sentiment is now considered worthy of swinging the state’s coercive forces into action. On August 11th, metropolitan police travelled 350 km into the countryside just to wake up and arrest 20-year-old Zmiana activist Bartosz Tomassi for “publicly promoting totalitarianism” by posting a profile picture on Facebook featuring a hammer and sickle. 

The wave of political repression that has hit Poland over the past several months is here to stay. Just like the show trials and repression that engulfed Europe in the 1930’s, their contemporary enactment in Poland is linked to the possibility of impending conflict. And the more that Poland’s “elite” and its colonial masters accelerate the drive towards war, the more “temporary security measures” and arrests will become part of the daily political landscape, whose “politics” could soon enough turn into those “politics by another means.” 

As has been the case throughout history, the Polish question today is faced with being decided amidst acute international stakes and tremendous paradigm change. As the unipolar world is violently sliding into the abyss while a nascent multipolar world is slowly but surely emerging, Poland’s current trajectory sets it on the course to tragedy.  This is the unavoidable, pivotal context which must be factored into any analysis of the struggle in and over Poland. If progressive forces like Change (Zmiana) don’t cope with this reality, then Poland’s existence on the map itself is threatened. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Disntinguished Collaborator Jafe Arnold (J. Arnoldski) is an American expat studying European history and culture at the University of Wroclaw, Poland. Formerly an activist on the American left, he is currently a research fellow and Polish liaison for the Center for Syncretic Studies, a translator and editor at Fort Russ, and the founding editor-in-chief of Eurasianist Internet Archive. Besides translating unique analyses from Russian and Polish for English-language audiences, Arnold’s interests and expertise include geopolitical processes and ideological developments in Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet space. 

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Sydney Robinson

August 26, 2016

H. Bresch: Her disease is terminal capitalism. (Video screengrab, TGP)

Mylan CEO Heather Bresch is in major damage control mode, and there doesn’t appear to be an end in sight. Unfortunately, Bresch seems to believe that the majority of America are just idiots and that she can get away with saying whatever she wants to explain why she felt she deserved a multi-million dollar raise while parents nationwide struggled to afford EpiPens which had been inflated a shocking 500 percent.

During an appearance on CNBC, Bresch tried to pretend she was on the same side as those outraged, attempting to pin the blame on the current medical system rather than her company’s gross inflation of the life-saving medication.

“No one’s more frustrated than me,”said Bresch.

How she can say that with a straight face is beyond me. I’m gonna guess that literally every parent who has to buy the insanely inflated EpiPen twice a year is maybe a smidge more frustrated than the multi-millionaire CEO, but maybe she does really care?

Nah.

Watch.

BONUS

Sarah Jessica Parker Quits As Spokesperson For EpiPen After Price Hike

Inside Edition

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Nauseated by the
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FROM VARIOUS SOURCES. DOSSIER EDITED AND PREPARED BY PATRICE GREANVILLE

SUCKER NEWS: Clinton Calls For Lower Price On Allergy Drug Epipen

As usual when it comes to corporate scoundrels, US politicians invoke “voluntary restraint and good behaviour.” Yea, that’s gonna cure what is in truth a deeply systemic problem caused by capitalist ethics—hum, no, make capitalism’s lack of any ethics. Anyone who believes in Clinton’s sanctimonious posturing about this outrage will believe anything. After all, she’s not called Wall Street’s darling for nothing. Meanwhile, the Big Uncle Tom at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., has kept basically mum about this. It’s clear that Mylan, the maker of EpiPen, a virtual monopoly, is a despicable corporation, but so is the rest of the industry, as Big Pharma has long been a key player in that huge ripoff scheme that goes by the name of US national healthcare system. (See our post elsewhere by Robert Weissman on Big Pharma et al’s corruption of the US political process.)

The fault is certainly with the appalling politicians that capitalism puts in power, and naturally the equally prostituted corporate media scarcely help matters by giving this and similar systemic issues spotty coverage. But not even the mainstream media can be fully blamed for this latest scandal, for it would really require a certifiable idiot to live in the US as an ordinary citizen, be continually confronted with a machinery of multi-tiered ripoffs and restricted access to medical services, and not realize there’s something horribly wrong, putrid with the healthcare system. Below we present a sampler of materials on this case.

The first is a Reuters dispatch on Clinton’s worthless pronouncements on the EpiPen outrage, still being defended by industry hacks and the company’s CEO herself, a daughter of West Virginia Senator (D) Jim Manchin. The second is an excerpt from Wikipedia’s page on Epinephrine autoinjectors. We suggest you examine this page in detail, as it is an education. What you will see is not so much a story about a medical solution to a serious condition, but a document that will remind any alert reader to what extent drugs in capitalist society are nothing but commodities to make oodles of money from. Hardly an earth-shattering revelation in the US, a nation soaked in capitalist values, endemic corruption and propaganda, but it still needs to be said that this state of affairs should be an anomaly in any healthy society, yet in America it is regarded as normal. The page is a long recital of sales and purchases by various pharmaceutical combines, all buying and selling the rights to market this drug with no thought whatever to the public interest. The recitation of EpiPen’s tortured journey, from its development to this day, also strongly suggests the nefarious role played by the FDA, not as a friend of the public, but as a politically manipulable player making the entry of competing drugs far more difficult than warranted, and thereby strengthening existing monopolies like EpiPen. Lastly, we also include some video discussion that is self-explanatory. The New York Times, by the way, filed an interesting article on EpiPen’s CEO, H. Bresch, a veritable portrait in the reigning pathology.—PG

FIRST: THE REUTERS REPORT
Thursday, Aug 25, 2016 / By Reuters

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton called on pharmaceutical company Mylan NV to voluntarily drop the price of its severe allergy treatment drug EpiPen, which has increased in price by more than 400 percent in the past decade.

“That’s outrageous – and it’s just the latest troubling example of a company taking advantage of its consumers,” Clinton said in a statement. “It’s wrong when drug companies put profits ahead of patients, raising prices without justifying the value behind them.”

Clinton frequently said during the primary that she would fight pharmaceutical companies – part of an attempt to counter criticism that she was too closely tied to the insurance industry. She has released a proposal that she says will lower drug costs for consumers.

Mylan spokeswoman Nina Devlin did not respond to inquiries about Clinton’s criticism of the company. Mylan acquired the product in 2007, and the price increased from $100 in 2008 to its current cost of $600.

Shares of Mylan closed down more than 5 percent at $43.15 on the Nasdaq.

Weissman: spot on

“The price of EpiPen is outrageous,” said Robert Weissman, president of consumer watchdog group Public Citizen. “Mylan is endangering lives and ripping off the country.”

Weissman said EpiPen’s U.S. price should be rolled back sharply, noting the product is available for as little as $112 in Canada. (That price is also a gross ripoff, as the drug costs a couple of dollars to manufacture.—Eds) Many other drugmakers also routinely raise prices of their prescription drugs by 10 percent or more each year, and U.S. legislation is needed to prevent such “price spikes,” he added.

The White House took a more cautious tone in criticizing rising drug costs, refusing to comment on the decisions of an individual company.

“I will observe, however, that pharmaceutical companies that often try to portray themselves as the inventors of life-saving medication often do real damage to their reputation by being greedy and jacking up prices in a way that victimizes,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said at a news briefing.

Clinton joins a bipartisan group of lawmakers who are calling for investigations into the price increase of EpiPens, which are preloaded injections of epinephrine (adrenaline) that people use if they are having a dangerous allergic reaction that untreated could result in death.

Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote Mylan earlier in the week to ask for an explanation of the price change. Senator Amy Klobuchar, the top Democrat on the committee’s antitrust subcommittee, called for an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission.

On Wednesday, Republican Senator Susan Collins and Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill requested that Mylan provide a briefing for the Senate to explain the price change.

Grassley and Klobuchar, along with Democratic Senators Patrick Leahy and Richard Blumenthal and Republican Senator Ron Johnson, on Wednesday said they had written to the Food and Drug Administration to ask about its approval process for alternatives to the EpiPen.

“Given the importance of this topic, it is imperative to understand the FDA’s role with respect to EpiPens and its approval of generic equivalents that could help to increase competition and lower prices if introduced,” the senators said in a statement.

“We have reached out to every member of Congress who has sent us a letter, and we look forward to meeting with them and responding to their questions as soon as possible,” Devlin said.

Mylan’s CEO Heather Bresch: defiantly defending EpiPen’s ripoff price. Offering token remedies to the scam.

In January, Clinton admonished Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc, which raised the price of a heart drug. In the wake of a Clinton campaign blog post targeting Valeant, the company’s stock fell. In March, she released a campaign ad vowing to target the company specifically.

Clinton also criticized Turing Pharmaceuticals in the fall of 2015 when public ire rose after it decided to raise the price of an antiviral medication commonly used by AIDS patients and pregnant women from $13.50 a tablet to $750 each.

After a single post by Clinton on the social media website Twitter critical of Turing, the company’s stock price tumbled.

At that time, Clinton released a comprehensive drug price plan that she says would reduce costs. Her proposal includes capping monthly out-of-pocket costs, expanding generic drug access and allowing Americans to buy pharmaceuticals abroad.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has said little about lowering drug prices. He has proposed increasing the amount of negotiations permitted by Medicare in order to lower prices for those using the program. Source : reuters.com

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SECOND: THE OFFICIAL RECORD
The meandering corporate (not medical) saga of EpiPen: A typically sordid capitalist story

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Below an excerpt from the Wikipedia page dedicated to this topic.
….

Medical uses

Epinephrine autoinjectors are hand-held devices carried by those who have severe allergies; the epinephrine delivered by the device is an emergency treatment for anaphylactic reaction.^[2]

Units that have exceeded their expiration date can still be used in an emergency if an unexpired unit is unavailable and the solution is neither discoloured nor contains precipitates.^[3]

Design

The devices contain a fixed dose of epinephrine and a spring-loaded needle that exits the tip or edge of the device and penetrates the recipient’s skin, to deliver the medication via intramuscular injection.^[2]

History

The first modern epinephrine autoinjector, the EpiPen, was invented in the mid-1970s at Survival Technology in Bethesda, Maryland by Sheldon Kaplan.^[1][4] In 1996 Survival Technology merged with a company called Brunswick Biomedical and the new company was called Meridian Medical Technologies Inc..^[5] The EpiPen was marketed and distributed for Medical Technologies by Dey LP, a subsidiary of Merck KGaA.^[6]

In 2001 Meridian introduced a two-pack version of the EpiPen; at that time the device had $23.9 million in annual sales and accounted for 75% of the market in the United States.^[7] In 2002 King Pharmaceuticals acquired Meridian for $247.8 million in cash;^[8] the deal was completed in January 2003.^[9] (King was later acquired by Pfizer in 2010 for $3.6 billion in cash.^[10]) Kaplan continued to improve his designs over the years, filing for example US Patent 6,767,336 in 2003.^[11]

In 2003 Hollister-Stier received approval from the FDA to market an epinephrine autoinjector called Twinject that could deliver two shots of epinephrine, which it had spent ten years developing.^[12][13][14] In 2005 it sold the product to Verus Pharmaceuticals,^[12] which launched the product the same year.^[15] In March 2008 Sciele Pharma acquired Twinject from Verus^[16] and later that year, Sciele was acquired by Shionogi.^[17]

In 2007 Mylan acquired the right to market the EpiPen from Merck KGaA as part of a larger transaction.^[18] At that time annual sales were around $200M.^[19]

In 2009 Teva Pharmaceuticals filed an ANDA to market a generic EpiPen in collaboration with Antares Pharma Inc, a maker of injection systems; King sued them for infringing US Patent 7,449,012 that was due to expire in 2025;^[20] Pfizer, Mylan, and Teva settled in April 2012 in a deal that allowed Teva to start selling the device in mid-2015, pending FDA approval.^[21]

In 2010 Sciele/Shionogi faced a recall of Twinject devices^[22] and launched Adrenaclick, a modified version of the Twinject that could only deliver one dose.^[23][24]

In 2010 King sued Novartis‘ Sandoz generic unit after Sandoz submitted an ANDA to sell a generic EpiPen.^[25]

In the 2009 Intelliject, a US startup developing a new epinephrine autoinjector, licensed their product to Sanofi.^[26] In 2011 King sued Intelliject and Sanofi after the companies filed a 505(b)(2)^[27] New Drug Application for the product, then known as “e-cue”;^[28] Pfizer, Mylan and Sanofi settled in 2012 under a deal that allowed the device to enter the market no earlier than November 2012, pending FDA approval.^[29] On August 13, 2012, the FDA approved the autoinjector, called “Auvi-Q” after the FDA required a name change from “e-cue”.^[30] The device is equipped with a sound chip to provide electronic voice instructions to guide the user in the proper use of the device.^[31][32]

In 2010, European regulators approved Twinject,^[33] and also approved a new epinephrine autoinjector made by ALK and sold under the brand name Jext.^[34][35] Jext was launched in the European Union in September 2011.^[36]

And so it goes. Read the rest of this tawdry tale HERE.

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THIRD:  VIDEO MATERIALS

FARRON COUSINS
Dem Senator’s Daughter Responsible For EpiPen Price Hike

Drug Maker Mylan Standing Firm on EpiPen Price Hike

ABC News

Lawmakers blast Mylan’s EpiPen coupons as “PR move”

CBS This Morning

 

Sarah Jessica Parker Quits As Spokesperson For EpiPen After Price Hike

Inside Edition
This video, incidentally, reminds us of how cavalier and objectionable are celebrities who, for fat fees, lend their image to products they hardly know about or care.

 

Even the contemptible right has its uses when it comes to exposing a crook like Hillary Clinton. Here’s Fox’s bulldog Lou Dobbs focusing attention on Hillary’s foundation’s links to EpiPen—I am shocked, shocked!

EpiPen manufacturer’s link to the Clinton Foundation

PAGE 2. Repository below

BUSINESS DAY|  NOTE: This is a repository post, making sure our readers always have access to this story. Just in case the NYTimes decides to delete it from circulation or make it less accessible. 

Painted as EpiPen Villain, Mylan’s Chief Says She’s No Such Thing 

Heather Bresch, chief of Mylan, which has a reputation for bare-knuckled tactics that have angered competitors and investors. Credit Andrew Hetherington/Redux

By KATIE THOMAS, The New York Times
AUG. 26, 2016

America has a new pharmaceutical villain. Her name is Heather Bresch.

As the chief executive of Mylan, the owner of the severe allergy treatment EpiPen, Ms. Bresch is at the center of the latest public outrage over high drug prices, excoriated for overseeing a fourfold price increase on EpiPen while taking a huge pay raise.

From talk shows to Twitter, her name is being mentioned alongside Martin Shkreli, the so-called Pharma Bro who ignited anger last fall over raising the price of the drug Daraprim, and J. Michael Pearson, the onetime McKinsey consultant who took over Valeant Pharmaceuticals International and sharply raised prices on lifesaving drugs.

But Mr. Shkreli and Mr. Pearson were outliers trying to upend the industry. At one point, the pharmaceutical industry’s main lobbying group disavowed them.

Not so with Ms. Bresch. In many ways, she is an ultimate insider. Her father is a United States senator. She runs one of the largest generic drug companies in the world. She also oversees the Generic Pharmaceutical Association — the generic industry’s lobbying group.

Now the question is whether her different position will give her a different result. Both Mr. Shkreli and Mr. Pearson were forced out of their companies.

Already, Ms. Bresch, 47, has moved more quickly than they did to quell public furor over prices. On Thursday, she announced that the company was increasing financial assistance to patients to reduce their out-of-pocket costs. But the company did not say it would lower the list price — which has risen to about $600 for a pack of two EpiPens, from about $100 when Mylan acquired the product in 2007.

In an interview, Ms. Bresch said the price increases on EpiPen weren’t even in the “same hemisphere” as what Mr. Shkreli did when he raised the price of Daraprim by 50 times overnight.

Over the years, her brash leadership style has bruised egos but also, some say, improved access to drugs and raised quality standards. Her company, Mylan, also has a reputation for bare-knuckled tactics that have angered competitors and investors alike.

“I think we mean what we say: You can do good and do well, and I think we strike that balance around the globe,” Ms. Bresch said. Still, she was unapologetic that Mylan’s actions were driven by profit. “I am running a business. I am a for-profit business. I am not hiding from that.”

How the company, and Ms. Bresch, strikes that balance seems to be quickly changing. Generic drug companies once dealt almost exclusively in making cheap copies of pills and railed passionately against the anticompetitive tactics of brand-name competitors. Now, through a series of acquisitions and mergers, the handful of large generic companies that are left are increasingly investing in expensive brand-name drugs and in doing so, are embracing many of the tactics they once scorned.

“It’s like talking out of both sides of your mouth,” said Dinesh Thakur, an advocate for generic drug quality. “To me, I think, it’s opportunistic.”

In the interview, Ms. Bresch said the company’s latest actions would do the most to help patients where it mattered, by reducing their out-of-pocket costs. And she said that the $600 list price was necessary for the company to recoup its investment in the EpiPen, which includes raising awareness for severe allergic reaction and making improvements to the way the product works.

But she also sought to shift blame away from Mylan, saying that patients are feeling the pain in part because insurers have increased the amount that customers must pay in recent years.

“What else do you shop for that when you walk up to the counter, you have no idea what it’s going to cost you?” she said. “Tell me where that happens anywhere else in the system. It’s unconscionable.”

To some, the company’s response seemed to ring hollow. “It’s a real challenge to understand how a management team sits around a board table and makes a decision to raise the price of a lifesaving medication over and over and over, and when the P.R. storm hits, decides to blame someone else for that price increase,” said David Maris, an analyst for Wells Fargo. He had warned investors in June that Mylan’s price increases on EpiPen and other drugs could soon draw unwanted media scrutiny.

The company is not a stranger to controversy. Robert J. Coury, Mylan’s chairman who served as chief executive until 2011, came under scrutiny in 2012 for using the company’s corporate jet to travel to his son’s music concerts. And last year, The Wall Street Journal reported that one of the board members had undisclosed ties to the land where the company built its new Pittsburgh offices.

Ms. Bresch has also weathered her share of controversy, like when it was discovered that West Virginia University awarded her a business degree 10 years after she had attended the school, even though she had completed only about half of the coursework. A report by the university later concluded that officials wrongly awarded her the degree because she was the daughter of the then-governor Joe Manchin, now a Democratic senator representing West Virginia. Mr. Manchin and Ms. Bresch have said they did nothing wrong.

The company also angered shareholders when it switched its headquarters to the Netherlands, and then used a little-known provision in Dutch law to block a takeover by the pharmaceutical giant Teva, which many investors had favored. The move to the Netherlands in 2014, called an inversion, also reduced the company’s tax rate. Mylan is one of a string of pharmaceutical companies that have done inversions in recent years, prompting outcry in Washington and calls to limit the practice.

Ms. Bresch’s rising salary has also fueled anger over the EpiPen price increase. Since 2007, when EpiPen was acquired and she was the company’s chief operating officer, she earned about $2.5 million in total compensation. In 2015, her compensation was nearly $19 million. Mylan’s board has said in company filings that it believes her pay is justified because she has contributed significantly to the company’s growth in recent years.

Ms. Bresch, who has worked at Mylan for 25 years, said her West Virginia upbringing had informed her approach to serving as chief executive. “There is a work ethic and grit about that that allows me to help make a difference,” she said.

Some of the chafing at her style, she said, is because people are resistant to change. Her top accomplishments, she said, include getting a federal law passed that required more inspections of overseas drug manufacturers, and improving access to AIDS drugs for patients overseas. “To make change happen, to make a difference, mediocrity doesn’t get you there.”

Even as they have ruffled feathers within the industry, Ms. Bresch and Mylan have earned measured praise from consumer advocates, who said she wielded her influence in ways that helped consumers.

James Love, director of the consumers group Knowledge Ecology International, said Ms. Bresch opened doors at the Office of the United States Trade Representative when his group and others were working to change provisions in the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership that they said would have limited access to drugs by people overseas. Mylan, as a seller of generic drugs, shared their interest, he said.

“They came in with some very talented people in the negotiations, and they knew what was going on politically,” Mr. Love said.

Still, he said, he opposes their position on the EpiPen and said his group was composing a letter of complaint to the Federal Trade Commission.

“I’m appalled at the price increase,” he said. “I don’t want to sugarcoat that.”

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