RSN: Trump's Bait and Switch: How to Swamp Washington and Double-Cross Your Supporters Big Time

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Nomi Prins | Trump's Bait and Switch: How to Swamp Washington and Double-Cross Your Supporters Big Time 
 
Nomi Prins, TomDispatch 
Prins writes: "Given his cabinet picks so far, it's reasonable to assume that The Donald finds hanging out with anyone who isn't a billionaire (or at least a multimillionaire) a drag." 
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Rebecca Solnit With Jill Stein: US Election Recount Is Vital to Reform Our Broken Voting System 
Rebecca Solnit, Guardian UK 
Solnit writes: "If the recount reveals he didn't - well, the biggest upset in American political history could be around the corner. People assert it's unlikely, but things we call unlikely happen routinely, which we forget, because after the Berlin Wall falls or some planes crash into a couple of skyscrapers, it all looks perfectly likely in hindsight." 
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Trump's Labor Department Appointment Sends a Blow to Minimum Wage Fight 
Amanda Becker and Robert Iafolla, Reuters 
Excerpt: "President-elect Donald Trump will name fast-food executive Andy Puzder to head the U.S. Department of Labor, according to a source familiar with the matter, in an appointment likely to antagonize organized labor." 
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"America Belongs to White Men," Alt-Right Founder Says 
Robert Mackey, The Intercept 
Mackey writes: "There were no Nazi salutes this time, at least. But Richard Spencer, the white supremacist Trump supporter trying to make racism cool by rebranding it 'alt-right,' gave another rabble-rousing speech on Tuesday night, this time at Texas A&M University." 
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'Arrest Kissinger': War Criminal to Talk at Nobel Peace Forum 
teleSUR 
Excerpt: "A petition asks why Norway is still punishing Edward Snowden for leaking revealing security documents while letting a war criminal scot free." 
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Snowden Docs Show UK Intelligence Called Israel 'True Threat' to Middle East 
Haaretz and JTA 
Excerpt: "A 2008 document, leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden, says the British were concerned about Israel's stance on Iran. GCHQ also spied on Israeli diplomats, and defense firms." 
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Leonardo DiCaprio Meets With Donald Trump to Talk Green Jobs 
Lorraine Chow, EcoWatch 
Chow writes: "Leonardo DiCaprio and Terry Tamminen, the CEO of the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation (LDF), met with Donald Trump and his advisors including daughter Ivanka Trump on Wednesday at Trump Tower in New York to discuss how green jobs can revitalize the economy." 
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RSN: Kissinger's Corpses: A Look at Pinochet's FBI File

Americans pay little attention to the War Crimes committed in their names or to the killings and torture of nations War Criminals such as Henry Kissinger have endorsed. 

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FOCUS: Ken Klippenstein | Kissinger's Corpses: A Look at Pinochet's FBI File 

Ken Klippenstein, Reader Supported News 
Klippenstein writes: "With Henry Kissinger's name back in the news, so are the facts of his ghoulish tenure as national security advisor and secretary of state under the Nixon and Ford administrations. Among the most infamous was the role Kissinger played in supporting the brutal military dictator of Chile, General Augusto Pinochet, whom Kissinger once told: 'We are sympathetic with what you are trying to do here.'" 
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ith Henry Kissinger’s name back in the news, so are the facts of his ghoulish tenure as national security advisor and secretary of state under the Nixon and Ford administrations. Among the most infamous was the role Kissinger played in supporting the brutal military dictator of Chile, General Augusto Pinochet, whom Kissinger once told: “We are sympathetic with what you are trying to do here.”

What Pinochet’s regime did was overthrow Chile’s democratically elected leader, kill at least 10,000 Chileans, torture 29,000, and drive into exile over 200,000. However, Pinochet’s crimes were not confined to Chile. In September of 1976, a car bomb went off in Washington DC’s Embassy Row, killing passengers Orlando Letelier, a former top official to the Chilean government, and Ronni Moffitt, his American assistant.

The deaths were gruesome, neither one instantaneous. (Letelier’s legs were blown off and Moffitt drowned in her own blood.) Pinochet personally ordered the murders, a fact that the CIA had known but would not declassify until just last year, in 2015. Letelier was a prominent official in the Chilean Socialist Party, which Pinochet overthrew in a military coup in 1973. Letelier had been speaking out against Pinochet’s regime and lobbying governments against doing business with it, which is why Pinochet sought to have him murdered.

I recently obtained Pinochet’s FBI file as a result of a Freedom of Information request I filed. The majority of records deemed responsive to my request were deleted in their entirety, many on “national security” grounds. The remaining pages – those actually provided to me – were heavily redacted.

Many FBI files pertaining to government officials contain little more than tedious procedural minutiae (e.g. background checks, security reports about locations for public appearances, and the like). In stark contrast, just a few pages into Pinochet’s file, there is a document covered in tape labeled “EVIDENCE.” It refers to photographs of Chilean officials travelling with Pinochet to the US. Though it is impossible to be certain, this suggests that the FBI regarded the Pinochet regime as a culprit very early on (considering when the document is dated).

The date on this document (above), 9/5/77, is significant: the car bomb that killed Letelier took place less than a year prior. Astonishingly, not only had the US permitted entry to Pinochet just months after a car bomb on US soil that was widely attributed to his regime, President Jimmy Carter met with him personally at the White House.

Another record in Pinochet’s file (above) mentions “DINA,” the abbreviation for Pinochet’s secret police. DINA agents were later found to have carried out Letelier’s assassination on behalf of Pinochet.

Pinochet’s file contains a number of photographs of other Chilean officials – presumably including DINA – accompanying him, though all are redacted.

So what does this all have to do with Kissinger? Before Letelier’s murder, the State Department received CIA intelligence suggesting that the Pinochet regime was considering international assassinations of his political opponents. As a result, the State Department drafted a forceful warning against such an operation to be sent to the Pinochet government. However, the warning never made it to Chile: just five days before Letelier’s assassination, Kissinger intervened and ordered the State Department to cancel its intended warning.

Then Letelier was, of course, murdered.

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Ken Klippenstein is an American journalist who can be reached on twitter @kenklippenstein or via email: kenneth.klippenstein@gmail.com

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/39027-focus-kissingers-corpses-a-look-at-pinochets-fbi-file

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RSN: Hillary Clinton Courts [WAR CRIMINAL] Henry Kissinger's Endorsement Even After Meeting His Victims

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FOCUS: Hillary Clinton Courts Henry Kissinger's Endorsement Even After Meeting His Victims 
 
Zaid Jilani, The Intercept 
Jilani writes: "Hillary Clinton's campaign has been seeking the endorsement of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and their efforts may pay off, as there are reports that he is expected soon, alongside former Secretary of State George Schultz, to issue a joint endorsement of Clinton." 
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RSN: Monsanto Just Made a Massive Mistake, Trump Companies Have $650M in Debt: Report,

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Does Henry Kissinger Have a Conscience? 
 
Jon Lee Anderson, The New Yorker 
Anderson writes: "The latest revelations compound a portrait of Kissinger as the ruthless cheerleader, if not the active co-conspirator, of Latin American military regimes engaged in war crimes. In evidence that emerged from previous declassifications of documents during the Clinton Administration, Kissinger was shown not only to have been aware of what the military was doing but to have actively encouraged it." 
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Trump Companies Have $650M in Debt: Report 
Rebecca Savransky, The Hill 
Savransky writes: "Companies owned by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump reportedly have at least $650 million in debt, according to a New York Times investigation. The number is more than twice the amount that was shown from public filings the candidate made as part of his presidential bid." 
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Virginia's McAuliffe Again Moves to Restore Voting Rights to Felons 
Laura Vozzella, The Washington Post 
Vozzella writes: "Gov. Terry McAuliffe will announce Monday that he has restored voting rights to 13,000 felons on a case-by-case basis after Republicans and state Supreme Court justices last month stopped his more sweeping clemency effort." 
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Roger Ailes Biographer: 'The Impact Could Be Greater Than Phone Hacking' 
Sam Thielman, Guardian UK 
Thielman writes: "Now Ailes has lost his perch in television - Sherman says he understands that the former executive's non-compete clause bars him from re-entering the media world until he's 80 years old. He is helping Donald Trump with his presidential campaign, the consequences of his absence from TV will be major, Sherman predicts." 
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Surveillance Stills From Border Patrol Facilities Show Crowded, Trash-Filled Cells 
Camila Domonoske, NPR 
Domonoske writes: "As part of a lawsuit against U.S. Customs and Border Protection, new images from surveillance video have been released to the public that show detained immigrants crowded into cramped concrete holding cells in Arizona." 
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Turkey Suicide Bomber Who Killed 50 'a Child Aged 12-14' 
Middle East Eye 
Excerpt: "At least 50 people were killed and 94 wounded when a suicide bomber targeted a wedding celebration in Gaziantep on Saturday." 
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Monsanto Just Made a Massive Mistake 
Tom Philpott, Mother Jones 
Tom Philpott writes: "A couple of weeks ago, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it had gotten an 'unusually high number of reports of crop damage that appear related to misuse of herbicides containing the active ingredient dicamba.' Complaints of drooping and often dead crops appeared in no fewer than 10 states." 
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Published on

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

 by

Common Dreams

George Will Confirms Nixon's Vietnam Treason

by

Bob Fitrakis, Harvey Wasserman

President Nixon, with edited transcripts of Nixon White House Tape 

conversations during broadcast of his address to the Nation, 

on April 29, 1974.

Richard Nixon was a traitor.

The new release of extended versions of Nixon's papers now confirms this long-standing belief, usually dismissed as a "conspiracy theory" by Republican conservatives. Now it has been substantiated by none other than right-wing columnist George Will.

Nixon's newly revealed records show for certain that in 1968, as a presidential candidate, he ordered Anna Chennault, his liaison to the South Vietnam government, to persuade them to refuse a cease-fire being brokered by President Lyndon Johnson.

Nixon's interference with these negotiations violated President John Adams's 1797 Logan Act, banning private citizens from intruding into official government negotiations with a foreign nation.

Published as the 40th Anniversary of Nixon's resignation approaches, Will's column confirms that Nixon feared public disclosure of his role in sabotaging the 1968 Vietnam peace talks. Will says Nixon established a "plumbers unit" to stop potential leaks of information that might damage him, including documentation that he believed was held by the Brookings Institute, a liberal think tank. The Plumbers' later break-in at the Democratic National Committee led to the Watergate scandal that brought Nixon down.

Nixon's sabotage of the Vietnam peace talks was confirmed by transcripts of FBI wiretaps. On November 2, 1968, LBJ received an FBI report saying Chernnault told the South Vietnamese ambassador that "she had received a message from her boss: saying the Vietnamese should "hold on, we are gonna win."

As Will confirms, Vietnamese did "hold on," the war proceeded and Nixon did win, changing forever the face of American politics—with the shadow of treason permanently embedded in its DNA.

The treason came in 1968 as the Vietnam War reached a critical turning point. President Lyndon Johnson was desperate for a truce between North and South Vietnam. 

LBJ had an ulterior motive: his Vice President, Hubert Humphrey, was in a tight presidential race against Richard Nixon. With demonstrators in the streets, Humphrey desperately needed a cease-fire to get him into the White House. 

Johnson had it all but wrapped it. With a combination of gentle and iron-fisted persuasion, he forced the leaders of South Vietnam into an all-but-final agreement with the North. A cease-fire was imminent, and Humphrey’s election seemed assured.

But at the last minute, the South Vietnamese pulled out. LBJ suspected Nixon had intervened to stop them from signing a peace treaty. 

In the Price of Power (1983), Seymour Hersh revealed Henry Kissinger—then Johnson’s adviser on Vietnam peace talks—secretly alerted Nixon’s staff that a truce was imminent. 

According to Hersh, Nixon “was able to get a series of messages to the Thieu government [of South Vietnam] making it clear that a Nixon presidency would have different views on peace negotiations.”

Johnson was livid. He even called the Republican Senate Minority Leader, Everett Dirksen, to complain that “they oughtn’t be doing this. This is treason.”

“I know,” was Dirksen’s feeble reply.

Johnson blasted Nixon about this on November 3rd, just prior to the election. As Robert Parry of Consortiumnews.com has written: “when Johnson confronted Nixon with evidence of the peace-talk sabotage, Nixon insisted on his innocence but acknowledged that he knew what was at stake.” 

Said Nixon: “My, I would never do anything to encourage….Saigon not to come to the table….Good God, we’ve got to get them to Paris or you can’t have peace.”

But South Vietnamese President General Theiu—a notorious drug and gun runner—did boycott Johnson’s Paris peace talks. With the war still raging, Nixon claimed a narrow victory over Humphrey. He then made Kissinger his own national security adviser. 

In the four years between the sabotage and what Kissinger termed “peace at hand” just prior to the 1972 election, more than 20,000 US troops died in Vietnam. More than 100,000 were wounded. More than a million Vietnamese were killed. 

But in 1973, Kissinger was given the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the same settlement he helped sabotage in 1968.

According to Parry, LBJ wanted to go public with Nixon’s treason. But Clark Clifford, an architect of the CIA and a pillar of the Washington establishment, talked Johnson out of it. LBJ’s close confidant warned that the revelation would shake the foundations of the nation. 

In particular, Clifford told Johnson (in a taped conversation) that “some elements of the story are so shocking in their nature that I’m wondering whether it would be good for the country to disclose the story and then possibly have [Nixon] elected. It could cast his whole administration under such doubt that I think it would be inimical to our country’s best interests.”

In other words, Clifford told LBJ that the country couldn’t handle the reality that its president was a certifiable traitor, eligible for legal execution. 

Fittingly, Clark Clifford’s upper-crust career ended in the disgrace of his entanglement with the crooked Bank of Credit and Commerce (BCCI), which financed the terrorist group Al Qaeda and whose scandalous downfall tainted the Agency he helped found.

Johnson lived four years after he left office, tormented by the disastrous war that destroyed his presidency and his retirement. Nixon won re-election in 1972, again with a host of dirty dealings, then became the first American president to resign in disgrace.

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/08/12/george-will-confirms-nixons-vietnam-treason?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork

RSN: If Hillary Clinton Seeks (or Accepts) an Endorsement From Henry Kissinger, She's Lost My Vote

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Charles Pierce | If Hillary Clinton Seeks (or Accepts) an Endorsement From Henry Kissinger, She's Lost My Vote 
 
Charles Pierce, Esquire 
Pierce writes: "Kissinger is a bridge too far. He is responsible for more unnecessary deaths than any official of a putative Western democracy since the days when Lord John Russell was starving the Irish, if not the days when President Andy Jackson was inaugurating the genocide of the Cherokee. He should be coughing his life away as an inmate at The Hague." 
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Donald Trump Appears to Encourage Gun Rights Advocates to Shoot Hillary Clinton 
Adam Edelman, New York Daily News 
Edelman writes: "Donald Trump appeared to encourage Second Amendment supporters to shoot Hillary Clinton - prompting lawmakers and gun-control advocates on Tuesday to call for the unhinged GOP nominee's exit from the presidential race." 
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Car Hits Protester, Gunfire Briefly Erupts at Ferguson Protest 
Associated Press 
Excerpt: "Gunfire broke out during a demonstration in Ferguson, Missouri, on the second anniversary of Michael Brown's death, disrupting what had been a peaceful gathering Tuesday night but apparently wounding no one." 
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Justice Department Report: Baltimore Police Routinely Violated Civil Rights 
Del Quentin Wilber and Kevin Rector, The Baltimore Sun 
Excerpt: "Police practices overwhelmingly affected the city's black residents in low-income neighborhoods, according to the 163-page report. In often scathing language, the report identified systemic problems and cited detailed examples." 
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Over 1,500 Civilians Killed by US Coalition in Iraq and Syria 
teleSUR 
Excerpt: "Monitoring group Airwars said the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State group has killed more than 1,500 people as the operation turns two." 
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Brazil's Olympic Calamity 
Jules Boykoff, Jacobin 
Boykoff writes: "It might not be captured on primetime Olympic coverage, but Brazilians are welcoming the Games with mass protest." 
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Deadly Bacteria Spread Across Oceans as Water Temperatures Rise 
Umair Irfan, Scientific American 
Irfan writes: "Deadly bacteria are spreading through the oceans as waters warm up, and are increasing infection risks, according to a new study." 
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