The announcement last week by the United
States of the largest military aid
package in its history – to Israel – was
a win for both sides.
Israeli prime
minister Benjamin Netanyahu could boast
that his lobbying had boosted aid from
$3.1 billion a year to $3.8bn – a 22 per
cent increase – for a decade starting in
2019.
Mr Netanyahu has presented this as a
rebuff to those who accuse him of
jeopardising Israeli security interests
with his government’s repeated affronts
to the White House.
In the past weeks alone, defence
minister Avigdor Lieberman has compared
last year’s nuclear deal between
Washington and Iran with the 1938 Munich
pact, which bolstered Hitler; and Mr
Netanyahu has implied that US opposition
to settlement expansion is the same as
support for the “ethnic cleansing” of
Jews.
American president Barack Obama,
meanwhile, hopes to stifle his own
critics who insinuate that he is
anti-Israel. The deal should serve as a
fillip too for Hillary Clinton, the
Democratic party’s candidate to succeed
Mr Obama in November’s election.
In reality, however, the Obama
administration has quietly punished Mr
Netanyahu for his misbehaviour. Israeli
expectations of a $4.5bn-a-year deal
were whittled down after Mr Netanyahu
stalled negotiations last year as he
sought to recruit Congress to his battle
against the Iran deal.
In fact, Israel already receives
roughly $3.8bn – if Congress’s
assistance on developing missile defence
programmes is factored in. Notably,
Israel has been forced to promise not to
approach Congress for extra funds.
The deal takes into account neither
inflation nor the dollar’s depreciation
against the shekel.
A bigger blow still is the White
House’s demand to phase out a special
exemption that allowed Israel to spend
nearly 40 per cent of aid locally on
weapon and fuel purchases. Israel will
soon have to buy all its armaments from
the US, ending what amounted to a
subsidy to its own arms industry.
Nonetheless, Washington’s renewed
military largesse – in the face of
almost continual insults – inevitably
fuels claims that the Israeli tail is
wagging the US dog. Even The New York
Times has described the aid package as
“too big”.
Since the 1973 war, Israel has
received at least $100bn in military
aid, with more assistance hidden from
view. Back in the 1970s, Washington paid
half of Israel’s military budget. Today
it still foots a fifth of the bill,
despite Israel’s economic success.
But the US expects a return on its
massive investment. As the late Israeli
politician-general Ariel Sharon once
observed, Israel has been a US
“aircraft carrier” in the Middle East,
acting as the regional bully and
carrying out operations that benefit
Washington.
Almost no one blames the US for
Israeli attacks that wiped out Iraq’s
and Syria’s nuclear programmes. A
nuclear-armed Iraq or Syria would have
deterred later US-backed moves at regime
overthrow, as well as countering the
strategic advantage Israel derives from
its own nuclear arsenal.
In addition, Israel’s US-sponsored
military prowess is a triple boon to the
US weapons industry, the country’s most
powerful lobby. Public funds are
siphoned off to let Israel buy goodies
from American arms makers. That, in
turn, serves as a shop window for other
customers and spurs an endless and
lucrative game of catch-up in the rest
of the Middle East.
The first F-35 fighter jets to arrive
in Israel in December – their various
components produced in 46 US states –
will increase the clamour for the
cutting-edge warplane.
Israel is also a “front-line
laboratory”, as former Israeli army
negotiator Eival Gilady admitted at the
weekend, that develops and field-tests
new technology Washington can later use
itself.
The US is planning to buy back the
missile interception system Iron Dome –
which neutralises battlefield threats of
retaliation – it largely paid for.
Israel works closely too with the US in
developing cyberwarfare, such as the
Stuxnet worm that damaged Iran’s
civilian nuclear programme.
But the clearest message from
Israel’s new aid package is one
delivered to the Palestinians:
Washington sees no pressing strategic
interest in ending the occupation. It
stood up to Mr Netanyahu over the Iran
deal but will not risk a damaging clash
over Palestinian statehood.
Some believe that Mr Obama signed the
aid package to win the credibility
necessary to overcome his domestic
Israel lobby and pull a rabbit from the
hat: an initiative, unveiled shortly
before he leaves office, that corners Mr
Netanyahu into making peace.
Hopes have been raised by an expected
meeting at the United Nations in New
York on Wednesday. But their first talks
in 10 months are planned only to
demonstrate unity to confound critics of
the aid deal.
If Mr Obama really wanted to pressure
Mr Netanyahu, he would have used the aid
agreement as leverage. Now Mr Netanyahu
need not fear US financial retaliation,
even as he intensifies effective
annexation of the West Bank.
Mr Netanyahu has drawn the right
lesson from the aid deal – he can act
against the Palestinians with continuing
US impunity.
- See more at: http://www.jonathan-cook.net/2016-09-19/palestinians-lose-in-us-military-aid-deal-with-israel/#sthash.fL4Eq28N.dpuf
Excerpts of Hillary Clinton’s Paid
Speeches to Goldman Sachs Finally
Leaked
By Lee Fang, Zaid Jilani, Alex
Emmons, Naomi LaChance
October 09, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
-
"The
Intercept"
-
Excerpts of Hillary Clinton’s
remarks during paid speeches to
Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Morgan
Stanley, and other groups were
leaked online Friday afternoon
by WikiLeaks. Clinton, who was paid
upwards of $225,000 per speech,
earned more than
$22 million on the paid speaking
circuit after resigning as secretary
of state.
The excerpts are
revealed in an email from Tony
Carrk, the research director of the
Clinton campaign, to John Podesta,
the campaign chairman, and other top
campaign officials. Carrk, who did
not respond to a request for
comment, highlighted in the memo the
most politically damaging quotes
from each paid speech, under
headers including “CLINTON ADMITS
SHE IS OUT OF TOUCH,” “CLINTON SAYS
YOU NEED TO HAVE A PRIVATE AND
PUBLIC POSITION ON POLICY,” and
“CLINTON REMARKS ARE PRO KEYSTONE
AND PRO TRADE.”
The wealth Clinton accumulated was a
topic at the paid events.
Discussing middle class economic
anxieties, Clinton told a crowd at a
Goldman Sachs-sponsored speech that
she is now “kind of far removed
because the life I’ve lived and the
economic, you know, fortunes that my
husband and I now enjoy, but I
haven’t forgotten it.”
But the discussions were also an
opportunity for Clinton to speak
candidly about policy, politics, and
her approach to governing.
Touching on her view of developing
financial regulations, Clinton
declared to a crowd of Goldman Sachs
bankers that in order to “figure out
what works,” the “people that know
the industry better than anybody are
the people who work in the
industry.”
At the Goldman Sachs Builders and
Innovators Summit, Clinton responded
to a question from chief executive
Lloyd Blankfein, who quipped that
you “go to Washington” to “make a
small fortune.” Clinton agreed with
the comment and complained about
ethics rules that require officials
to divest from certain assets before
entering government. “There is such
a bias against people who have led
successful and/or complicated
lives,” Clinton said.
At a speech for Morgan Stanley on
April 18, 2013, Clinton praised the
Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction
plan — which would reduce corporate
tax rates while raising the Social
Security age. “But Simpson-Bowles —
and I know you heard from Erskine
earlier today — put forth the right
framework. Namely, we have to
restrain spending, we have to have
adequate revenues, and we have to
incentivize growth. It’s a
three-part formula,” she said.
Clinton also told a housing trade
group in 2013 that on certain
issues, she has “a public and a
private position.” “If everybody’s
watching, you know, all of the back
room discussions and the deals, you
know, then people get a little
nervous, to say the least,” said
Clinton. “So, you need both a public
and a private position.”
The Intercept was the first media
outlet to ask Clinton directly if
she would release the transcripts of
her paid speeches to Goldman Sachs.
When approached at an event in
Manchester, New Hampshire, Clinton
laughed off the question.
The issue was
raised again during the
Democratic primary debates and in
other media events. In February of
this year, the New York Times
editorial board
called for Clinton to release
her speech transcripts, declaring
that voters “have every right to
know what Mrs. Clinton told these
groups.”
According to reports, the campaign
reviewed the speech transcripts but
decided against releasing them out
of fear that she would appear too
friendly to banks and other donor
interest groups.
But there are signs in the emails
released by WikiLeaks that she also
took a fairly progressive stance on
certain topics, including health
care reform.
During a talk in Grand Rapids,
Michigan, in 2013, Clinton praised
the single-payer model for health
care reform. “If you look at the
single-payer systems, like
Scandinavia, Canada, and elsewhere,
they can get costs down because, you
know, although their care, according
to statistics, overall is as good or
better on primary care,” she said,
adding that there were some
drawbacks. “They do impose things
like waiting times, you know.”
But during the campaign this year,
she dismissed the idea,
declaring that single payer will
“never, ever” happen in the U.S.
Audio obtained by The Intercept last
week
showed Clinton dismissing the
concept of free health care during
another private event with donors.
Podesta emails show excerpts of Clinton
speeches to Goldman
By Julianna Goldman
October 08, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
-
"CBS"
- Potentially
problematic excerpts from Hillary Clinton’s
paid Wall Street speeches were flagged for
her campaign in an email that was sent to
chairman John Podesta and other senior staff
this past January.
The
email was released Friday by Wikileaks,
part of a batch of what it says were 2,060
emails hacked from an account belonging
to Podesta. The Clinton campaign has not
confirmed the authenticity of the emails.
“Team, attached are the flags from HRC’s
paid speeches we have from HWA. I put some
highlights below. There is a lot of policy
positions that we should give an extra scrub
with policy,” a staffer wrote on January 25,
2016.
Harry Walker Agency is the speaker’s bureau
that arranged Clinton’s lucrative speech
circuit after she left the State Department,
which included $3 million dollars from
speeches to banks and financial firms --
$675,000 came from three speeches from
Goldman Sachs. The 25 flagged excerpts
likely point to why Clinton and her campaign
have refused to release the transcripts,
despite coming under fire from Senator
Bernie Sanders during the primary.
Less than two weeks after the email was
sent, on February 4, Clinton was asked
during a debate whether she’d release the
transcripts of all her paid speeches and she
said, “I will look into it. I don’t know the
status, but I will certainly look into it.”
When asked again during an April 4
debate, Clinton said she would
release them if Sanders and Donald
Trump released their tax returns.
“You know, let’s set the same
standard for everybody,” Clinton
said. “When everybody does it, OK, I
will do it, but let’s set and expect
the same standard on tax returns.”
The first flagged email is headed
“Clinton Admits She Is Out of
Touch.” In a February 4, 2014 speech
to what was referred to as
“Goldman-Black Rock”, Clinton said
“And I am not taking a position on
any policy, but I do think there is
a growing sense of anxiety and even
anger in the country over the
feeling that the game is rigged…We
had our little, you know, one-family
house that, you know, he saved up
his money, didn’t believe in
mortgages. So I lived that. And now,
obviously, I’m kind of far removed
because the life I’ve lived and the
economic, you know, fortunes that my
husband and I now enjoy, but I
haven’t forgotten it.”
Another flag came from a speech to
the National Multi-Housing Council
on April 24, 2013: “Clinton Says You
Need to Have a Private and Public
Position on Policy.”
“I mean, politics is like sausage
being made,” she said in the speech
according to the excerpt. “It is
unsavory, and it always has been
that way, but we usually end up
where we need to be. But if
everybody’s watching, you know, all
of the back room discussions and the
deals, you know, then people get a
little nervous, to say the least.
So, you need both a public and a
private position.”
In an October 23, 2013 speech to the
Goldman Sachs AIMS Alternative
Investments Symposium, “Clinton
Talks About Holding Wall Street
Accountable Only for Political
Reasons.”
Clinton said she started traveling
in February of 2009 “so people
could, you know, literally yell at
me for the United States and our
banking system causing this
everywhere. Now, that’s an
oversimplification we know, but it
was the conventional wisdom. And I
think that there’s a lot that could
have been avoided in terms of both
misunderstanding and really
politicizing what happened with
greater transparency, with greater
openness on all sides, you know,
what happened, how did it happen,
how do we prevent it from
happening?”
Other excerpts from the internal
email are flagged as “CLINTON
SUGGESTS WALL STREET INSIDERS ARE
WHAT IS NEEDED TO FIX WALL STREET,
*CLINTON ADMITS NEEDING WALL STREET
FUNDING”, “CLINTON TOUTS HER
RELATIONSHIP TO WALL STREET AS A
SENATOR”, “CLINTON TALKS ABOUT THE
CHALLENGES RUNNING FOR OFFICE”,
“CLINTON IS AWARE OF SECURITY
CONCERNS AROUND BLACKBERRIES”,
“CLINTON REMARKS ARE PRO KEYSTONE
AND PRO TRADE”, “CLINTON IS MORE
FAVORABLE TO CANADIAN HEALTH CARE
AND SINGLE PAYER”
A Clinton campaign official did not
immediately respond to a request for
comment.
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