Former US president Barack Obama has taken aim at "strongman politics" in his highest-profile speech since leaving office, urging people around the world to respect human rights and other values now under threat in an impassioned address marking the 100th anniversary of anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela's birth.

• A crowd of about 14,000 people attended the memorial speech
• Mr Obama said in these "strange and uncertain" times, there is a "politics of fear, resentment, retrenchment"
• He added, "I am not being alarmist, I am simply stating the facts. Look around"

While not mentioning his successor, President Donald Trump, by name, Mr Obama's speech in South Africa countered many of Mr Trump's policies, rallying people to keep alive the ideas that Mandela worked for including democracy, diversity and tolerance.

Mr Obama opened by calling today's times "strange and uncertain," adding that "each day's news cycle is bringing more head-spinning and disturbing headlines".

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-18/obama-gives-trump-sharp-rebuke-in-...

Please read also (I hate to repeat myself): 

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/34412

Who would benefit from sinking Hillary Clinton's chances of getting the Presidency? President Putin, because when having her in moscow would cost him another bunch of flowers for not much return? Or the anti-global warming lobby (coal/nuclear/oil)? 

And would a Guccifer organism be enough to sink Hillary? Were the Hillary-DNC connection against Bernie "not public enough" that the emails (which few people have read) had to be dangling over her head? Was Bernie too comfy with the "socialists" for American minds to bear? Was Hillary too close to the establishment, a problem with voters of the Democrats party? Was Hillary's position on global warming a major worry for the "Deep State"?

Was Guccifer PLUS Murdoch support for Donald PLUS the evangelicals conservatism enough to sway enough people in some US States? Was Guccifer a deep secret Murdoch/coal/nuclear/oil/evangelicals organism to sink Hillary? Rather than be a "Russian" outfit? Which makes more sense? Am I too much of a conspiracy theorist?

Read: The story of Fancy Bear

Study the toon at top carefully... See also:

why trump is facing resistance: skull and bones, the elite of the empire...

President Donald Trump has said he does not believe Russia is still targeting the United States, contradicting US intelligence assessments that Moscow was continuing its attempts to meddle in American elections.

Mr Trump yesterday tried to walk back comments that he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin over American intelligence chiefs on Russian interference in the 2016 election, saying that he had misspoken a day earlier after a summit meeting with Mr Putin in Helsinki.

Asked by reporters on Wednesday if Russia was still targeting the United States, Mr Trump shook his head and said, "No."

But the White House later denied Mr Trump said Russia was no longer targeting the US, saying his answer "No" was not about potential interference in US elections.

"The President … was saying 'No' to answering questions," White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said at a news briefing.

"The President and his administration are working very hard to make sure that Russia is unable to meddle in our elections as they have done in the past."

Mr Trump returned to Twitter, praising his meeting with Mr Putin and saying some people "would rather go to war" than see the two presidents getting along.

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-19/donald-trump-says-russia-is-no-lon...

Quite funny. Should Trump admit that the Ruskies have "interfered" with the US Presidential elections, HIS TENURE would be illegitimate... Playing with fire... But HE KNOWS there is no proof of interference...

It is interesting to see how attacks on US President Donald Trump over Russia correspond with previous remarks by his predecessor, Barack Obama, and even his rival Hillary Clinton.

Trump has tweeted a video excerpt from a 2010 interview then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave to Russian TV host Vladimir Pozner. The funny part is, while Trump is now under a hailstorm of criticism over his handling of the recent Helsinki summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Clinton back in the day praised a "strong, prosperous Russia."

"We want very much to have a strong Russia, because a strong, confident, prosperous, stable Russia is, we think, in the interests of the world," Clinton says in the tweeted clip. 

To give some context to the quote, Clinton was answering a question about "US's place in the modern world" put by Pozner: "Is it a force aimed at supporting the world's equilibrium? Or is it a force aimed at changing the status quo?"

"It's both in this way, Vladimir. It is a force to sustain an equilibrium that permits countries and individuals to progress, to become more self-realizing," Clinton replied. "I mean, we want very much to have a strong Russia because a strong, competent, prosperous, stable Russia is, we think, in the interests of the world."

"But at the same time, there are countries and places where the status quo is just not acceptable," she went on. "Last summer, I went to the Democratic Republic of Congo. I went to Eastern Congo where 5.4 million people had been killed in the last 15 years, the greatest death toll since the Second World War. We don't want that status quo to be sustained."

The tweet has already drawn buzz on social media, with some pro-Trump celebrities such as actor James Woods sharing it, according to the Hill.

The clip is accompanied with a #HillaryLovesRussia hashtag, which is entirely dedicated to tying the former secretary of state to Russia, including everything from nice comments she made about Russia at different times to Putin's remarks about William Browder allegedly making a donation of $400 million earned in Russia to Clinton's presidential campaign.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/us/201807201066524445-trump-hillary-russia-love/

Read also:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/35131#comment-41763

a bunch of presidential candidates chosen by uncle rupe...

By Finian Cunningham

So the US news media are in uproar over President Trump’s latest admission that a meeting between his son and a Russian lawyer more than two years ago was about “getting dirt” on Hillary Clinton.

With self-righteous probity, Trump's political and media enemies are declaring him a felon for accepting foreign interference in the US presidential election.

Admittedly, President Trump appears to have been telling lies about the past meeting, which took place at Trump Tower in New York City in the summer of 2016. Or maybe it's just this American president shooting himself in the foot — again — with his inimical gibberish-style.

READ MORE: Trump Tweet Says Don Jr. Met Russian Lawyer to Get ‘Info on Opponent’… Again

However, the burning issue of "foreign interference" is being stoked out of all proportion by Trump's enemies who want him ousted from the White House.

US constitutional law forbids candidates from receiving help from foreign governments or foreign nationals.

Thus, by appearing to accept a meeting with a Russian lawyer in June 2016 — during the presidential campaign — the Trump election team are accused of breaking US law.

The alleged transgression fits in with the wider narrative of "Russiagate" which posits that Republican candidate Donald Trump colluded with the Kremlin to win the race to the White House against Democrat rival Hillary Clinton.

READ MORE: Russiagate Degenerates Into a War Against Dissent and Free Speech

Russia has always denied any involvement in the US elections, saying the allegations are preposterous. Moscow also points out that in spite of indictments leveled by American prosecutors, there is no evidence to support claims that Russian hackers meddled in the presidential campaign, or that the Kremlin somehow assisted Trump.

The Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, who met with the Trump campaign team in early June 2016 is described in US media as "Kremlin-linked". But that seems to be just more innuendo in place of facts. She denies any such connection. The Kremlin also says it had no relation with the attorney on her business of approaching Team Trump.

In any case, what is being totally missed in the latest brouhaha is the staggering hypocrisy in the US media circus over Trump. Let's take Trump at his word — not a reliable source admittedly — that his campaign team were trying to "get dirt" on Clinton. That would appear to be a violation of US law.

If Trump is going to be nailed for improper conduct with regard to alleged foreign assistance, then where does that leave Hillary Clinton and US intelligence agencies?

During the presidential campaign, Clinton's team contracted a British spy, Christopher Steele, to dig up dirt on Trump in the form of the so-called "Russian dossier". That was the pile of absurd claims alleging that the Kremlin had blackmailing leverage over Donald Trump. It was Steele's fantasies that largely turned into the whole Russiagate affair which has dominated US media and politics for the past two years.

Not only that, but now it transpires that the Federal Bureau of Investigation also paid the same British spy to act as a source for the FBI's wiretapping of Trump's associates, according to declassified documents obtained by Judicial Watch, a US citizens' rights group.

In other words, the foreign interference that the FBI engaged in under the Barack Obama administration, as well as by Hillary Clinton's campaign team, is on a far greater and more scandalous scale that Trump seems to have clumsily endeavored to do with a Russian lawyer.

The real, shocking interference in US democracy was not by Russia or Trump, but by American secret services working in collusion with the Clinton Democrats to distort the presidential elections. This scandal which Princeton Professor Stephen Cohen has labeled "Intelgate" is far more grievous than the Watergate crisis which resulted in President Richard Nixon's ignominious resignation back in the mid-1970s.

The Obama administration's intelligence agencies and the Democrats attempted to sabotage the 2016 presidential election in order to keep Trump out of the White House. They failed. And they have never gotten over that defeat to their illegal scheming.

The Russiagate claims are just a sideshow. As American writer Paul Craig Roberts, among others, has commented, the media-driven "witch hunt" against Trump and Russia is blown out of all proportion in order to distract from the real scandal which is Intelgate — and how millions of American voters were potentially disenfranchised by the US intelligence apparatus for a political power grab.

READ MORE: Mainstream Media Continue to Swallow Any ‘Absurd Claims’ Levied Against Russia

Another staggering hypocrisy in the US media kerfuffle over Trump and alleged Russian interference is that all the fastidious hyperbole completely ignores actual foreign interference in American democracy  — foreign interference that is on an absolutely colossal scale.

As American critical thinker Noam Chomsky points out, "Israeli intervention in US elections overwhelms anything Russia may have done".

Israel's interference includes the multi-million-dollar lobbying by such groups as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its financial sponsorship of hundreds of lawmakers in both houses of Congress. Many critics maintain that the entire Congress is in effect "bought" by AIPAC.

Chomsky referred specifically to the occasion in 2015 when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu snubbed then President Obama by addressing the US Congress with a speech openly calling for lawmakers to reject the internationally-backed nuclear deal with Iran.

During his election campaign, Donald Trump reportedly received a $20 million donation from the American-Israeli casino mogul Sheldon Adelson. Adelson has Israeli citizenship. Is that not foreign help, according to definition of US laws?

Trump has since shown himself to do Adelson's and Israel's bidding by walking away from the Iran deal and in pushing stridently pro-Israeli interests in the conflict with Palestinians.

Another foreign benefactor in US politics is the so-called Saudi lobby and other oil-rich Gulf Arab states. Millions of dollars are funneled into Congress by these dubious regimes to shape US government foreign policy in the Middle East. For several decades, Saudi oil money is also documented to be a major contributor to the CIA and its off-the-books covert operations around the world.

Foreign interference in US politics — in which often nefarious foreign interests are promoted over those of ordinary American citizens — is conducted on a gargantuan and systematic scale. But this massively illegal interference in flagrant violation of US laws is stupendously ignored by the American media.

Trump is being assailed over an alleged scandal regarding Russia which is, by any objective measure, negligible.

The whole Russiagate narrative is sheer hysteria driven by anti-Trump forces who do not want to accept the result of the 2016 election. It is, in effect, a coup attempt by unelected political forces.

Russiagate is a cover to conceal the really disturbing scandal which was, and continues to be, the attempt to subvert American democracy by US intelligence agencies working in cahoots with the Obama administration and Clinton's election campaign. To cover up those crimes, Russia is being maligned for "attacking American democracy".

Such lies are an odious distortion of the truth by America's real enemies who are its own domestic political and media operators trying to cover up their anti-constitutional crimes. What's even more despicable is that these people are willing to inflame US-Russia relations to the point of starting a war between two nuclear powers.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/columnists/201808061067000181-russiagate-trump-c...

The email scandal continues to haunt Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state and ex-Democratic presidential nominee, as Judicial Watch, a non-profit conservative organization, has unearthed two new batches of Clinton's emails and called for a new investigation into her mishandling of classified government data.

It seems that Hillary Clinton's email saga is far from being over: Judicial Watch, a government watchdog, has uncovered five more confidential emails circulated among the ex-secretary of state's team through her private and unsecure email server.

The watchdog pointed out that the new documents "include material classified 'confidential' on negotiations between Northern Ireland and UK, as well as negotiations with Israel, Palestine, and France." They also include a reference to Clinton's meeting with American billionaire and founder of Open Society Foundations George Soros and a memo from Sid Blumenthal, Hillary Clinton's longtime confidant, related to the change of government in Kyrgyzstan.

Judicial Watch has published two batches of new emails comprising 184 and 45 pages, respectively. The documents were obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits against the State Department that were filed almost three years ago, on May 6, 2015.

The Clinton email scandal erupted in March 2015, when The New York Times broke that the former secretary of state had used a personal account to conduct government business from 2009 to 2013, in violation of State Department rules.

The news came just a month before the announcement of the Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign. It was reported that in December 2014 Clinton's lawyers handed tens of thousands of files over to the government, however, she reportedly withheld about 30,000 emails under the pretext that they were of a personal nature.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/us/201808181067302178-clinton-email-scandal/

------------------------------

Meanwhile, "their job was pure fiction, while killing real people..."

Social media users aren't exactly thrilled to hear that former secretaries of state Hillary Clinton, Colin Powell and Madeleine Albright are set to make a guest star appearance on the hit CBS political drama Madam Secretary.

The series, which is entering its fifth season on October 7, will kick off with appearances by the Obama, Bush and Clinton-era secretaries of state, who will help Tea Leoni, who plays fictional secretary of state Elizabeth McCord, respond to a "delicate situation."

The hit CBS drama's twitter page blew up over the news, with Clinton supporters rushing to show their excitement and promising not to miss the season premiere.

Read more: 

https://sputniknews.com/viral/201807251066675787-clinton-powell-albright...

They all have blood on their hands... Shame on them. Read from top.

The news that Hillary Clinton intends to make another run for the White House in 2020 will have sent a chill sliding down the spine of every student of William Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth.’  

"By the pricking of my thumbs,

Something wicked this way comes."

Wickedness and Hillary Clinton walk hand in hand. Indeed wickedness is her particular field of expertise, dressed up in the clothes of liberalism. That said, perhaps where she’s concerned it is liberalism dressed up as wickedness, what with it becoming ever harder to distinguish between the two.

A creed that sanctifies sanctimony and hypocrisy while vilifying truth and justice, liberalism to paraphrase Einstein is the measles of mankind. And in this Hillary Clinton is merely the most egregious example. She is a woman for whom the world and everything in it is tantamount to a buffet that is useful only to the extent it feeds and nourishes US hegemony.

In 2016, her campaign for the White House fell apart at the seams, shorn of credibility as the sheep is shorn of wool, in her case by the shepherd of truth that is WikiLeaks. Corruption, double-dealing, lies and mendacity – you name it she and the Clinton Foundation she runs with her husband were exposed as the acme of it.  

Laid out in pristine Technicolor in the now infamous Podesta emails was revealed irrefutable evidence of her and her husband’s tawdry record of avarice, compounded by an obsession with status and power in the face of which even the Borgias would recoil. Even reading the revelations contained in the emails now, two years on, the stench remains strong.

The Democratic Party primary was stitched up to ensure that no matter the fact her opponent Bernie Sanders – running on a platform of wealth redistribution and social justice - was much the more credible and viable candidate to run against Trump, he never stood a chance. The Democratic Party machine made sure of it - made sure that the machine woman with the machine heart, that is Hillary Rodham Clinton, got ‘selected’ come what may.

In the subsequent campaign, she ran for president with a sense of entitlement the size of the Pacific which went a long way to allowing a man to enter the White House, as the nation’s 45th president, who is more suited to occupying a psychiatrist’s office than the Oval Office.

The wrath she unleashed in the wake of her humiliating defeat was directed not at the person responsible – herself – but instead at Russia, Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, alleging collusion and conspiracy.

The result of this preposterous exercise in deflection was an investigation, headed by former FBI honcho Robert Mueller, into Russia’s non-existent interference in the 2016 election. Known colloquially as Russiagate, Mueller’s investigation has at time of writing turned up zero – nothing, nada – not so much as a sausage of credible evidence of Russian state collusion in Trump’s victory.  And this is regardless of the deployment of considerable resources, taxpayers’ money and effort with the objective of proving such.

In an interview conducted earlier this year to promote his acclaimed book on the Trump White House - ‘Fear’ – author and award-winning US investigative Bob Woodward revealed that, despite the fact he “looked for it hard” over the two years he spent researching the book, he could find no evidence of Russian collusion in the 2016 US presidential election.

So here we have a candidate, Hillary Clinton, shown to be as corrupt and grasping as a huckster peddling fake watches, initiating with the support of an equally corrupt liberal establishment, an investigation that has plunged relations between Washington and Moscow to an all time dangerous low.

Even the English language in all its wondrous capaciousness is unable to furnish a word capable of describing such wilful mendacity.

What should not be forgotten is that Hillary Clinton’s Olympian propensity for speaking untruth to the masses was exposed well before 2016. In a 2008 article for Slate magazine in the US – ‘The Case Against Hillary Clinton’ – Christopher Hitchens eviscerates the woman, lifting the rock of her character to reveal the insects beneath.

Writes:                                                                           

“What do you have to forget or overlook in order to desire that this dysfunctional clan once more occupies the White House and is again in a position to rent the Lincoln Bedroom to campaign donors and to employ the Oval Office as a massage parlor?”

Please do tell:

“On a first-lady goodwill tour of Asia in April 1995 - the kind of banal trip that she now claims as part of her foreign-policy “experience”- Mrs. Clinton had been in Nepal and been briefly introduced to the late Sir Edmund Hillary, conqueror of Mount Everest. Ever ready to milk the moment, she announced that her mother had actually named her for this famous and intrepid explorer. The claim “worked” well enough to be repeated at other stops and even showed up in Bill Clinton’s memoirs almost a decade later, as one more instance of the gutsy tradition that undergirds the junior senator from New York.”

Here now the clincher:

“Sen. Clinton was born in 1947, and Sir Edmund Hillary and his partner Tenzing Norgay did not ascend Mount Everest until 1953, so the story was self-evidently untrue and eventually yielded to fact-checking.”

The Clintons, Obama and their liberal works were the midwife of Trump and his neoliberal chaos begot right-wing populist rage, and if this right-wing populist rage is allowed to beget more neoliberal chaos in 2020 then the American experiment in the cult of the individual will surely give way to a second civil war.

For the masses of the poor across America, as well as a world aching to break free of the Empire’s tentacles, the differences between the Republican and Democratic Party wings of this simulacrum of a democracy are close to none at all.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/443942-clinton-hillary-president-2020/