Good People,
I dont think Hillary did any good to Foreign Diplomacy more specifically to Africa. During Bill Clinton and Bush Administration, there was seen the worse growing situation of Pirating, mushrooming of Militia Groups, Foreign Currency Laundering and trafficking, Drug and child prostitution trafficking, Serious irregular Proliferation of Arm, Forced evictions for Land Grabbing, massacres, atrocities and genocide in Africa.........and the same was seen evidently gaining momentum during Hilary Clinton's time in office.
Show-Cases are seen in the Liberia-Taylor's genocide massacre and the Video of "Butt-Naked" explains it all the pain of human destruction .........the same with M23 and Al-Shabaab networking rooting in East Africa and doing the unthinkables with Kagame and Museveni who are friends of family and home of Clinton's Foundations.
It is sad that the Clintons have said and done nothing to-date about M23 and Congo massacre.
Since John Kerry took over, atleast, the Milita groups of Somalia M23 is close to be decimated and wiped out completely, and Al-Shabaab are on their heels. Results of John Kerry's work with that of Hillary Clinton in comparisons sees that, atleast the work of John Kerry is bearing fruits. It is also sad that, the Clintons did not make any effort to recognize or honor the struggle of Mama Winnie Mandela to bring change and have her husband Nelson Mandela to be released from Jail and save South Africa from Apartheid rule.
This woman, Winnie Mandela is the face and pride of struggle to free Africans from oppression and extinct. If other people who have done the unthinkable have been left scott free like Kagame and Museveni genocide with atrocities of their people with pains and sufferings of Congo People, why marginalize and segregate Winnie Mandela who fought and struggled to free Nelson Mandela and the freedom which the whole of South Africa Africans now enjoy? What is so discriminative about the gains of her struggle for Africa’s justice………???
I dont understand why Hillary is now on heat and is in a hurry to take position back in Obama Administration to replace Joe Biden.
In my wildest dreams, President Obama is better off with less troubles having Joe Biden than with Hillary Clinton and it is because, I don’t think Hillary likes Obama. Her running away from Obama was noticeable way back, long before she was still in the office and it is the reason why, since leaving the White House, she has been tied to the lingering controversy over Benghazi which she was not able to provide satisfying report. She should let Obama finish his term at peace with dignity to save the disadvantaged of America people and put America on the pillar to save the world from destroying each other.
Quote:
Less than a year removed from her old job, Hillary Clinton's popularity has fallen from its once-lofty heights, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll out this week. In that recent poll, 46 percent of adults expressed a favorable opinion of Clinton, while 33 percent viewed her unfavorably. All told, that means Clinton's net favorability had fallen an astounding 18 points since the start of the year.
America is the pinnacle power of the world where Africa is the central value for wealth supply resource which the world urgently need for its Technology transfer and innovation and which is the reason for the scramble for Land in the Emerging World Markets……..but organization to regulate the same resource supply is essentially fundamental; where security, peace and unity for common good of all is guaranteed so all people have opportunity to survive and provide for their livelihood in a shared dignified manner.
We all want good life and it is essential and basic to appreciate each other in existence and to be fair sharing in love the gifts of God and in the exchange of our engagement in diversity…..”Give and Take” under mutual respect and honor……..This is because, Unity in Harmony shall be guaranteed for all our happiness ………
It Can Be Done…..!!!
Judy Miriga
Diaspora Spokesperson
Executive Director
Confederation Council Foundation for Africa Inc.,
USA
http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com
Diaspora Spokesperson
Executive Director
Confederation Council Foundation for Africa Inc.,
USA
http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com
The Cannibal Warlords of Liberia (Full Length Documentary)
Published on Jun 13, 2012
VICE travels to West Africa to rummage through the messy remains of a country ravaged by 14 years of civil war. Despite the United Nation's eventual intervention, most of Liberia's young people continue to live in abject poverty, surrounded by filth, drug addiction, and teenage prostitution. The former child soldiers who were forced into war have been left to fend for themselves, the murderous warlords who once led them in cannibalistic rampages have taken up as so-called community leaders, and new militias are lying in wait for the opportunity to reclaim their country from a government they rightly mistrust.
Replace Biden with Hillary Clinton? No way, White House says
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden (L) stands with President Barack Obama as he announces Jeh Johnson to be …
Did President Barack Obama’s top re-election campaign officials consider replacing Vice President Joe Biden with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton? Not seriously, the White House insisted on Friday.
“What I can tell you without a doubt is that the president never considered that, and had anyone brought that idea to him he would have laughed it out of the room,” press secretary Jay Carney told reporters.
The Clinton-for-Biden swap talk is one of the more eye-popping claims in the campaign-centered “Double Down: Game Change 2012.” The book contends that senior strategists for the president's re-election campaign conducted extensive focus-group tests and polling on the matter in late 2011 when it seemed the president risked losing his bid for a second term.
“Campaigns, and pollsters as part of campaigns, test a lot of things,” Carney insisted. “I mean, they poll and focus-group on what you have for breakfast.”
Carney, a former spokesman for the vice president, said Biden “has been an asset to this president in two campaigns and throughout five years of this administration.”
“Whether it was handling the implementation of the Recovery Act, handling the very sensitive and important portfolio of Iraq in the first term or his key role in working with Congress on some very important negotiations, Joe Biden has been an excellent partner, in the president's view," Carney said.
The Obama team also leaned on Biden as a key political surrogate. During both the 2008 and 2012 campaigns, Biden was often deployed to swing states to speak to white working-class voters who were less receptive to Obama himself.
“And then as a candidate, I think if you look at the role he played in 2012 and you look at the job he did in his debate, I think there is little doubt that he was an enormous asset to the entire cause and enterprise,” Carney added. “If you look back at 2012 and you look at that moment in the campaign when the vice president had his debate, it was a key moment. And Joe Biden delivered of the ticket. I think there's no question about that.”
And then, perhaps because the White House doesn’t want to be seen as playing favorites ahead of the 2016 presidential race, Carney lavishly praised Clinton.
“You all know that he believes that Hillary Clinton did a magnificent job as secretary of state. He believes he made the right choice in running mate. He made the right choice in secretary of state,” the spokesman said.
So did Biden know about the focus groups and the polling?
“I’m not aware that he was aware of it,” Carney said.
================================
Hillary running....away from Obama
By: Ben White | POLITICO's Chief Economic Correspondent and CNBC Contributor
Adam Jeffery | CNBC
Hillary Clinton speaks at the 2013 Clinton Global Initiative in New York.
President Barack Obama's approval rating hit a new low this week as fallout from the disastrous health care rollout mounted.
The plummeting job rating could limit the president's ability to get much done the last three years of his term. But it has even bigger ramifications for the most prominent Democrat who hopes to succeed him in 2016: Hillary Clinton.
Clinton is clearly aware of this problem and taking early steps to run not as Obama's successor but as his antidote, a pragmatic, business friendly moderate who will ease the constant partisan strife in Washington and focus all her energy on creating jobs and growing the economy.
The signs of her early efforts to move away from Obama are subtle but unmistakable. As Philip Rucker noted in The Washington Post this week, Clinton's recent speeches, along with those of her husband, former President Bill Clinton, tend to roast everyone in Washington for creating a climate corrosive to economic expansion.
Both Clintons train most of their rhetorical fire on Republicans. But their message extends to the entirety of the Washington power structure, which tacitly includes Obama.
(Read more: It's crisis time for Obamacare)
"We are careening from crisis to crisis instead of having a plan, bringing people to that plan, focusing on common-sense solutions and being relentless in driving toward them," Hillary Clinton said at the Center for American Progress last week in a speech that could easily have come from a corporate CEO.
The movement away from Obama is also clear in Clinton's relationship with financial industry leaders in New York.
Obama still turns up in Manhattan for fundraising events he detests. But Wall Street long ago gave up on the idea of having any real relationship with or influence on the president, who spent a good bit of time ripping financial executives as "fat cats" standing in the way of reform. Obama has also shown more interest in what elite opinion columnists have to say than he has in listening to corporate executives.
Day 1 of Obamacare: Only 6 enrollments
CNBC's Eamon Javers reports the low Obamacare enrollment numbers due to CMS failures.
Clinton, for her part, gave not one but two speeches at Goldman Sachs events in the last two weeks. She was well-paid for her time but showing up at all suggests she will not run away from the financial sector, or corporate America more broadly, in 2016.
(Read more: Wall Street de Blasio fears 'overblown')
Talk to anyone on Wall Street—even Republicans who strongly supported Mitt Romney—and there is a palpable hunger for the kind of message Clinton is now delivering.
And she obviously drew lessons from her own disastrous attempts at health-care reform in 1993 and 1994 and has jettisoned her more progressive instincts for a cooler pragmatic approach.
There is certainly a chance that Obama is only suffering a temporary decline following weeks of bad headlines on Syria, NSA leaks and now the health care problems, which include the incontrovertible fact that the president said people could keep their plans and now millions cannot.
The president has the benefit that Republicans are currently held in even lower regard than he is following the government shutdown and debt ceiling crisis. And there is a long time between now and when the Democratic primary process begins in late 2015.
But the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed an intense public disregard for everyone in Washington, and there is little to suggest things will improve much in the next couple years assuming divided government continues after the 2014 midterm elections.
So Hillary Clinton may wind up moving away from Obama in 2016 and doing what Al Gore refused to do in 2000: run for Bill Clinton's third term.
—By Ben White, POLITICO's chief economic correspondent and a CNBC contributor. White also authors the daily tip sheet POLITICO Morning Money [politico.com/morningmoney] Follow him onTwitter
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Hillary hired alleged fly-by-night firm for Benghazi consulate security
November 2, 2013
The U.S. Department of State's former Secretary Hillary Clinton hired an inexperienced and virtually unknown foreign company to protect the U.S. mission in Benghazi with a force of nearly 50,000 guards, according to documents obtained by an "Inside the Beltway" public interest organization and released on Friday.
According to Judicial Watch, a group that investigates and exposes government corruption, the cost for the security firm's services cost U.S. taxpayers only $794,264.
Several U.S. media outlets have reported an estimated amount of between $783,000 and $783,284 based on “miscellaneous” federal contract data, but the exact figure had not been disclosed until Judicial Watch revealed the true cost.
In fact, the Benghazi security deal was not listed as part of the large master State Department contract that covers protection for overseas embassies, according to Reuters.
"What surprises me is the fact that the contract was out-sourced to a foreign company without a peep from the media, but then again it's not that surprising since the news business is so corrupt when it comes to aiding and abetting Obama's cover-ups," said former police lieutenant Anthony Borellino, who is now an operations director for a security firm in the U.S.
Judicial Watch obtained these latest files as part of an ongoing investigation into the Benghazi terrorist attack and subsequent cover-up by the Obama administration. On September 11, 2012 Islamic jihadists raided the U.S. Special Mission in Benghazi, Libya. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, the first diplomat to be killed overseas in decades, and three other Americans were murdered in the violent incident.
According to an Examiner news story, during the long-anticipated testimony by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee regarding the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Banghazi, Libya, Senate Democrats repeatedly referred to a report that blames the FBI, CIA and other intelligence agencies -- but not the White House -- for the misinformation allegedly contained in talking points that explained the details of the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate diplomatic in Benghazi, Libya.
"The Obama administration has worked hard to keep details of the attack—and the negligence that led to it—from the American public, but JW has gone to court and filed a number of public records requests to expose the truth. JW has also published two in-depth special reports on Benghazi, the last one on the first anniversary of the terrorist attack," said Judicial Watch analysts in their report.
These latest documents obtained by Judicial Watch includes the actual security services contract between the Obama State Department and the untested, but cut-rate, British firm, Blue Mountain Group. The deal was for only one year and the contract called for specific requirements such as security officers performing foot patrols, package inspections, contingency and mobilization planning.
The total consulate security force consisted of 45,880, with an additional 1,376 guards for “emergency services,” according to the contract. The contract also included payment for one security vehicle and 12 radio networks.
The security officers were responsible for protecting U.S. government personnel, facilities and equipment from damage or loss, the contract states.
“The local guard force shall prevent unauthorized access; protect life; maintain order; deter criminal attacks against employees; dependents and property terrorist acts against all U.S. assets and prevent damage to government property,” stated the U.S.-Blue Mountain agreement.
"Clearly the firm failed miserably to fulfill its contractual obligation," stated Judicial Watch staff.
Why would the Obama administration hire this obscure and unproven British firm to protect American interests in a dangerous North African country long known to be infested with terrorists? British government sources cited in a national news story revealed that even they were unfamiliar with Blue Mountain and in fact the British government uses a different—certainly more competent—security company to provide protection at their own diplomatic mission in Libya.
It’s not like the State Department wasn’t aware of the eminent dangers in Benghazi. In fact, a scathing report recently issued by an independent panel of security and intelligence experts discloses that the State Department has long known that weak security at American embassies and consulates worldwide could result in a tragedy like Benghazi yet senior officials did nothing to correct security deficiencies.
"Benghazi was simply the latest in a long string of security failures that date back more than a decade," according to Judicial Watch.
"What I find hard to believe is the news media's love affair with this female 'empty suit.' What has Hillary Clinton done in her career that warrants serious consideration for the presidency? Can someone please give the American people just one real achievement -- not long-winded speeches -- something substantial that Mrs. Clinton did during her years as a senator and secretary of state?" asks political consultant Michael Baker.
Hillary Clinton Excited To Call Clinton Foundation 'My Home'
06:10 AM on 06/15/2013 Great news. Hillary has now joined Bill full time at the shady The Clinton Foundation (for Self Promotion, Political Influence and Profit aka Clinton, Inc.). They should soon move from mere mega millionaires to billionaires peddling their influence around the world to top bidders, to benefit themselves and their billionaire cronies, often at the expense of their nation.
The Clinton Foundation is the front for major business and political deals under the guise of philanthropy. It allows the Clintons and their cronies to write-off expenses for staffing, office space, travel and ENTERTAINMENT as part a non-profit, tax-exempt organization. The Clinton Foundation is now home for Hillary 2016 and will launder political donations to circumvent campaign finance regulations.
If the Clintons were not politically powerful, the IRS would have stripped the Clinton Foundation of its tax-exempt status years ago? Has the Clinton Foundation ever been audited by the IRS?
Know-some-secrets
As exposed in the NYT, Bill helped persuade Kazakhstan to give a multi-billion dollar uranium deal to Canadian billionaire speculator Frank Giustra.. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/us/politics/31donor.html?pagewanted=all
As the article documents, as part of the deal, Mr. Clinton publicly endorsed the bid of Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, president of Kazakhstan, to the head the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. This would result in conferring of legitimacy on Mr. Nazarbayev’s government, which was sharply criticized internationally for human rights abuses. The endorsement was in direct contradiction to U.S. foreign policy.
Within weeks the Clinton Foundation received a windfall gift of $31.3 million from Mr. Giustra, though it was kept secret for several years. The Foundation then received an additional $100 million when Guistra sold his company for $7.05 per share. It had traded for 10 cents per share before the Clinton-brokered uranium deal. Quid pro quo.
Arab Sheik Gave About $500 Millions to Clinton's foundation. Can Hillary Remain Objective as Sec. of State?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYcYZuUX5Sw
Uploaded on Dec 20, 2008
Comments:
wait i thought we liked the saudi's, bush senior and junior as well as clinton all call them personal friends...
and kuwait is an enemy of ours? they (actually) liked us because sadam invaded their countery in 1991. kuwait and saudi arabia like us and we like them.
Foreigners gave millions to Clinton foundation
After negotiations with Obama's transition team, Clinton promised to reveal the contributors, submit future foundation activities and paid speeches to an ethics review, step away from the day-to-day operation of his annual charitable conference and inform the State Department about new sources of income and speeches.
Representatives of the foundation, including CEO Bruce Lindsay and attorney Cheryl Mills, and aides to Hillary Clinton met privately Wednesday with staff of incoming Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry of Massachusetts and ranking Republican Dick Lugar of Indiana to discuss the foundation's activities and review a memorandum of understanding drawn up by the Clinton and Obama teams.
Video: Vetting the Clintons The Foreign Relations Committee will hold hearings and vote on Hillary Clinton's nomination before sending it to the full Senate. Shortly after Obama tapped Clinton, Lugar said he would support her, though he said there would still be "legitimate questions" raised about the former president's extensive international involvement.
"I don't know how, given all of our ethics standards now, anyone quite measures up to this — who has such cosmic ties," Lugar said.
Some of the donors have extensive ties to Indian interests that could prove troubling to Pakistan. Tensions between the two nuclear nations are high since last month's deadly terrorist attacks in Mumbai.
Amar Singh, a donor in the $1 million to $5 million category, is an Indian politician who played host to Bill Clinton on a visit to India in 2005 and met Hillary Clinton in New York in September to discuss an India-U.S. civil nuclear agreement.
Also in that giving category was Suzlon Energy Ltd. of Amsterdam, a leading supplier of wind turbines. Its chairman is Tulsi R. Tanti, one of India's wealthiest executives. Tanti announced plans at Clinton's Global Initiative meeting earlier this year for a $5 billion project to develop environmentally friendly power generation in India and China.
Two other Indian interests gave between $500,000 and $1 million each:
They are the Children's Investment Fund Foundation, a London-based philanthropic organization founded by hedge fund manager Chris Hohn and his wife Jamie Cooper-Hohn and dedicated to helping children, primarily in Africa and India; and UNITAID, an international drug purchase organization formed by Brazil, France, Chile, Norway and Britain to help provide care for HIV-AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis patients in countries with high disease rates.
The foundation's donor list is heavy with overseas business interests.
This is the true story of how Jesse Jackson unleashed a sadistic warlord on the suffering people of Sierra Leone.
Part One: The Long Slide Into HellOur former president Jimmy Carter tells us that Liberia’s former “President William Tolbert enjoyed worldwide acceptance as an enlightened Christian layman, having been the elected leader of the Baptist World Alliance, representing almost all organizations of this major Protestant faith.” (New York Times 7/13/03) On April 12th, 1980 a Liberian army sergeant assigned to a beach patrol near the Liberian president’s home directed his platoon to the presidential palace and surprised President Tolbert in his bed, where the president was promptly disemboweled. Master Sergeant Samuel K. Doe personally cut out President Tolbert’s liver and heart and ritually mutilated the organs; he left his teeth marks in the flesh; he would later nail Tolbert’s liver to a wall of the John F. Kennedy Medical Center in Monrovia. Within hours of his murder, thirteen of President Tolbert’s cabinet ministers were bound to telephone poles on a Monrovia beach and shot to death by drunken soldiers loyal to the illiterate Sergeant Doe. Thus began Liberia’s descent into ruin and depravity. As the new self-appointed ruler of Liberia, Samuel Doe briefly indulged in a flirtation with Libya and then astutely aligned Liberia with the United States. Despite mounting evidence of increasing atrocities, Washington increased military aid to Liberia. Few questions were asked. In 1985, Samuel Doe staged an election to legitimize his regime and then rigged the outcome. The United States assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Chester A. Crocker, announced that Liberia had enjoyed “the beginning, however imperfect, of a democratic experience.” It was all a fraud. Washington’s solid support for Samuel K. Doe sent a clear message to all Liberians that any moderate opposition to the barbaric President Doe was futile. After the coup of April 1980, a Liberian citizen named Charles Taylor, who was then living in the United States, returned to Liberia and insinuated himself into Samuel Doe’s inner circle. Charles Taylor had entered the United States on a student visa in 1972. He had attended Chamberlayne Junior College in Newton, Mass and later attended Bentley College in Waltham, Mass. He had graduated in 1977 with a degree in economics. In 1983 Doe’s government accused Taylor of embezzling nearly a million dollars. Embezzlement was Doe’s chosen word for Taylor’s failure to make kickbacks. Taylor fled back to the United States. Responding to a complaint from the Liberian government, American authorities arrested Taylor in Boston in 1984 and held him for extradition. Taylor was represented by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who would later join Saddam Hussein’s defense team. After cooling his heels in the slammer for more than a year, Taylor teamed up with four petty criminals and together they escaped from the Plymouth House of Correction by cutting his cell bars with a hacksaw blade and climbing down a bunch of knotted bed sheets. Later he would claim that God “opened the prison doors for me.” After his jailbreak, Taylor found his way to Ghana where he hooked up with Liberian dissidents. Taylor befriended revolutionaries from Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast and Libya. In Libya the government intelligence apparatus put the willing Mr. Taylor through al-Mathabh al-Thauriya al-Alamiya – in English: World Revolutionary Headquarters. It was a school for leftist “revolutionary” guerrillas from every part of Africa. It was at Colonel Qaddafi’s school for thugs that Charles Taylor befriended a former Sierra Leone army corporal named Foday Sankoh.
The InvasionFortified with money and weapons supplied by Colonel Qaddafi and with the financial and political support of Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast, Charles Taylor made his move on Samuel Doe’s Liberia. On Christmas Eve of 1989, Charles Taylor led a band of 100 guerrillas into Liberia’s northern Nimba County from neighboring Ivory Coast and sparked a civil war that would continue for fourteen years. By the time he was forced from power in 2003 the conflicts he had ignited had swept away the lives of more than 300,000 Africans and uprooted millions of others who scattered into half a dozen West African nations. Taylor carried about a map that he called the map of Greater Liberia which included parts of Guinea and the diamond fields of Sierra Leone. He was a man with a grandiose plan. Among Charles Taylor’s “revolutionary” innovations was the formation of his notorious Small Boys Units, contingents of intensely loyal child soldiers, some as young as five years old. These boy soldiers revered Charles Taylor as “our father;” he fed them a steady diet of marijuana and crack cocaine. As many as 10,000 child soldiers fought in Liberia’s last three years of civil war – the final swell of carnage in fourteen years of conflict. Battlefield commanders prized these little fighters for their unquestioning obedience and their lack of comprehension of the suffering of others. Taylor’s officers would demand that boys kill their parents and family members, thereby breaking the ultimate African taboo. Taylor’s commanders would recruit heavily from the vast pool of younger males who were frustrated by the authority of their elders and who lacked the “bride wealth” to get on with their lives. Rather than waiting years to inherit dowry wealth from their fathers and uncles, Taylor espoused a smash-and-grab take-it-now philosophy. Young recruits were plied with methamphetamines, marijuana and crack cocaine to blunt all qualms and to sharpen a killer mentality. The little soldiers were given license to rape and plunder. All the while he was eroding the traditional African respect for elders, Charles Taylor was substituting himself as an enthralling all-powerful elder authority over the young troopers who maimed and slaughtered in his name. Taylor’s “boys” ran amok, indulging in ritual mutilations, impromptu amputations and cannibalism. Women and children were not spared. Taylor’s boys slaughtered five American nuns. According to the New York Times (4/2/06),
“Mr. Taylor also co-opted the secret societies that dominate life in many West African countries, like the Poro hunting society in Liberia. This gave him access to a world of unseen power and allowed him to project an aura of mystery and invincibility. Rumors that he practiced cannibalism, human sacrifice and blood atonement rituals merely added to his mystique.”In September 1990 President Doe was captured, tortured and dismembered. By 1991 Taylor’s forces held sway over ninety percent of Liberia and were applying pressure to its weakened government. Taylor deployed his militias to seize control of the Liberian economy, of its natural abundance of timber and raw materials. He controlled hundreds of millions of dollars worth of trade as well as booty from smuggling and drug trafficking. Making Matters WorseIn March of 1991, Charles Taylor began encouraging his fellow gangster, Foday Sankoh, to ignite a war in neighboring Sierra Leone – a nation Taylor coveted as part of his imaginary Greater Liberia. With Taylor’s support, Sankoh’s troopers went straight for Sierra Leone’s diamond mines. They called their greedy gang the Revolutionary United Front (RUF); they referred to Sierra Leone as their Kuwait because of the wealth it would provide them. In every meaningful sense, the monstrous Foday Sankoh was a creature of Charles Taylor. Without Taylor there would not have been a Revolutionary United Front. Horrific mayhem laid both countries to waste during Bill Clinton’s budding presidency. Two hundred thousand of Liberia’s three million citizens were slaughtered. Taylor agreed to 13 peace treaties, but only did so when he needed time to rearm. He trashed all thirteen agreements: It was a methodology he had learned from Colonel Qaddafi. When Taylor felt his grip on Liberia was firm, he pushed for a “free and open” election for the presidency of Liberia. But every citizen understood that if Taylor lost the election he would unleash his AK-47-toting, machete-wielding Small Boys Units on the population. In short, the 1997 election was conducted “in an atmosphere of intimidation,” to quote the U.S. State Department. With armed children running amok in the streets chanting “He killed my pa. He killed my ma. I’ll vote for him,” Charles Taylor garnered seventy-five percent of the vote. As Charles Taylor tightened his grip on Liberia, Foday Sankoh’s Revolutionary United Front was suffering setbacks in Sierra Leone. The government had contracted the services of a private South African security firm named Executive Outcomes which arrived in May of 1995 and began inflicting grief on the RUF. By early 1996 Sankoh’s guerrillas had been evicted from the diamond fields that had bankrolled his homicidal ventures. The RUF had been severely weakened by Executive Outcomes. In February of 1996 the United Nations sent election monitors to Sierra Leone and allowed a veteran UN official named Ahmad Tejan Kabbah to step outside his UN role and run for president of Sierra Leone. Mr. Kabbah won the election with far more votes than voters. President Kabbah then asked the well-armed Nigerians to become his protectors. The Nigerians were only too happy to oblige and promptly established a heroin trafficking hub at the Freetown airport. By the end of 1996 the Revolutionary United Front appeared to be a hollow shell. It was then that President Kabbah did something nearly fatal: he made “peace” with Foday Sankoh and agreed to terminate his government’s contract with Executive Outcomes. Soon thereafter, in May of 1997, disaffected government troops stormed the Freetown prison, released hundreds of condemned criminals and RUF officers, and then seized the reins of government. President Kabbah ran off to neighboring Guinea. Then the coup bossmen invited Foday Sankoh and the RUF to join their junta. Altogether they tore up the constitution; they festooned the hills surrounding Freetown with artillery pieces and then they threatened to bombard the city if anyone complained. They massacred and mutilated civilians; they abducted girls as sex slaves; they forced villagers to toil in the diamond mines. Order would not be restored until Britain, Sierra Leone’s former colonial ruler, sent in troops in 2000. In short order the RUF took control of the junta and established goon rule: the political opposition was punished with rape, amputations or death. Judicial due process was suspended; civic leaders were locked away. Sankoh’s troops pounced on the diamond fields of Kono and Tongo. Soon rough uncut diamonds were being ferried away to Liberia in Charles Taylor’s military helicopters. Thereafter, Liberia became a big-time exporter of diamonds even though Liberia itself produced few diamonds. Just when it seemed that the lives of the citizens of Liberia and Sierra Leone couldn’t get any more grim, Bill Clinton took an interest in these unhappy nations. Part Two: Clinton’s Disastrous Special Envoy Bill Clinton was determined to avoid any African entanglements. He had ignored Rwanda as it slid into savage chaos in 1994, when the intervention of a single American battalion would have averted that humanitarian disaster; Clinton was not about to rescue Sierra Leone in 1998. Clinton punted African affairs to his secretary of state Madeline Albright who then fobbed African policy off onto the Congressional Black Caucus – a Democrat power block in Congress. Clinton never offered an opinion about anything African without first consulting Congressman Donald Payne (D., N.J.) of the Black Caucus or Clinton’s soul mate, Jesse Jackson. Every gesture of Clinton’s administration toward Liberia was crafted to legitimize the warlord Charles Taylor. President Taylor had achieved so much personal control of the Liberian economy that folks had taken to referring to Liberia as Charles Taylor, Inc. The tight circle of friends around Bill Clinton saw in Charles Taylor a man they could deal with. To inaugurate their relationship, a private meeting was arranged between President Taylor and Jesse Jackson whom Bill Clinton had personally designated as his “special envoy” to Liberia. In February of 1998 Jesse Jackson touched down at the Monrovia airport. Waiting to greet him was a Liberian named Romeo Horton. Mr. Horton had gone to college in the United States and he had traveled between the two countries for two decades. In the early 1980s Horton was in one of Master Sergeant Samuel Doe’s jail cells when Jackson and others appealed for his release. Jackson later met Horton in Chicago. Romeo Horton’s presence at Jackson’s arrival in Monrovia was stagecrafted by the warlord Charles Taylor. Taylor had summoned Horton back to Liberia to brief him about Jesse Jackson. The last thing Taylor wanted was a sermon on human rights from Clinton’s “special envoy.” His worries were baseless. Because of the helpful Mr. Horton, Jackson’s audience with the Liberian gangster on February 12th, 1998 was all smiles. These two hustlers were ready to do business. It was in the Clinton Administration’s interest to mainstream Charles Taylor. Clinton was keen to avoid any African entanglements; he saw Charles Taylor as someone with whom he could deal. Soon after this meeting, Nigerian troops liberated Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. Foday Sankoh’s troops retreated across the border into Liberia where they were welcomed by Sankoh’s mentor and partner in mass murder, Charles Taylor. In early March of 1998 Sierra Leone’s exiled president, Ahmad Kabbah, returned to his homeland. A mere two weeks later, Bill Clinton and an enormous entourage of “friends of Bill” entered Liberian airspace on a fun-filled taxpayer-funded African safari. (Transportation costs alone were $42.8 million.) It was then that Bill Clinton emboldened Charles Taylor with thirty minutes of encouragement during a telephone downlink from Air Force One. The airborne entourage included Jackson and lots of his business pals who were in Africa to make a financial killing. Just before Bill Clinton’s big African adventure, Nigeria’s dictator Sani Abacha had announced his intention to run as the one-and-only unopposed candidate for president of Nigeria. People with a preference for democratic civilian rule had scoffed at the mockery of democracy that a single military candidate represented, but Bill Clinton was quick to assert that it was enough for Abacha to run for office “as a civilian.” Jesse Jackson chimed in that “No body should dictate to the Nigerian people who their leaders are,” by which he meant no one except the unopposed military-dictator-candidate-for-president Sani Abacha. Just as the multi-million-dollar Bill-and-Jesse screw-the-taxpayer African party junket was winding down, Liberia’s homicidal bossman Charles Taylor ordered Foday Sankoh’s machete-wielding Revolutionary United Front back into long-suffering Sierra Leone where they began a slaughterfest called “Operation No Living Thing.” To hear our State Department describe it, this premeditated attack on Sierra Leone was an orgy of “brutal killings, severe mutilations, and deliberate dismemberments, in a widespread campaign of terror.” So Taylor was an acknowledged terrorist as was his sidekick, Foday Sankoh. Amnesty International enumerated thousands of murders and mutilations. All the while, Jesse Jackson was doing feel-good public relations for the terrorist Charles Taylor. Showcasing a TerroristBack in Chicago, Mister Jackson hosted an extravagant media presentation designed to showcase the terrorist Charles Taylor as the savior of Liberia. Though Mr. Jackson fraudulently billed his Taylor love-fest as a “reconciliation” conference and falsely claimed that it was an opportunity for opposition Liberians to have a dialog with Charles Taylor, opposition leaders remember that evening differently. According to Harry Greaves, who co-founded the Liberian Action Party, “This was just a PR exercise by Charles Taylor.” Taylor’s wife Jewel Howard Taylor led the Liberian government delegation and the warlord himself filled the enormous video screen of Jesse’s Chicago PUSH auditorium and rambled on at length. S.J.K. Nyanseor, chairman of Liberian Democratic Future, would later protest to the Congressional Black Caucus that Jackson’s shindig was “nothing more than a scheme designed to promote Taylor and his repressive government.” He was offended that Jackson had not invited a single opposition leader to his so-called “reconciliation conference.” Indeed, the invitations that Jackson sent out did not mention any Liberian speaker or guest other than the warlord Charles Taylor. In fact, Mister Jackson’s aide, Yuri Tadesse, crudely informed opposition leaders that they would not be given any opportunity to say anything. Mr. Bodioh Wisseh Siapoe, chairmen of the Coalition of Progressive Liberians, was repulsed by the participation of Jackson’s close associate Romeo Horton, whom he asserted “helped finance the carnage of our people.” Jesse Jackson spent the evening shamelessly shilling for the barbaric Charles Taylor. Jackson demanded that Liberians stop posting details of Taylor’s atrocities on the Internet. Mr. Jackson indignantly proclaimed that “The international community frequents the Internet and takes note of whatever information is disseminated on the Information Superhighway. So, please stay off the Net,” according to people in attendance. Mister Jackson introduced no fewer than ten of Charles Taylor’s officials who spoke for hours about the paradise Charles Taylor was creating in Liberia. When some opposition folks appealed for a tribunal to try Liberian war criminals, PUSH operatives declared that time was short and drove the dissidents from the stage. According to Harry Greaves, “The general perception in the Liberian community was that Jackson was a paid lobbyist for Charles Taylor.” Liberians fingered Jackson’s pal Romeo Horton as Taylor’s bagman to Jackson. Harry Greaves knew for a fact that Jackson was a money grubber: Liberian human rights advocates had appealed to Jackson to support their cause by attending a prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral in 1990. Jackson had agreed. Invitations were sent announcing Jackson’s coming appearance. Then, at the last minute, Jackson demanded an up-front payment of $50,000 to appear. The human rights group could not meet Jackson’s demand for cash, so Jackson ditched the event. Clearly, Jesse Jackson had both feet firmly planted in Charles Taylor’s camp. Jesse’s Evil DeedsAfrican journalist Tom Kamara has written that “Reverend Jackson is considered a civil rights leader in America, but in Africa he is a killers’ rights leader.” Why would he say such a thing? Here’s why . . . On July 25th, 1998, the Nigerian government sent the warlord Foday Sankoh home in chains. President Kabbah announced that Sankoh would stand trial for treason against Sierra Leone. Days later, a handcuffed Sankoh appeared on television telling his gang of thugs not to shoot at government soldiers or their Nigerian army allies. At that moment it seemed that peace was at hand: a sadistic mass murderer was in chains and his boy-soldier murder machine was about to become a leaderless rabble. These were positive developments. Any genuine follower of Jesus Christ would have welcomed this moment. Sadly, Jesse Jackson was secretly using all of his influence to spring the homicidal Foday Sankoh from captivity. After all, Sankoh was a partner-in-genocide with Jackson’s associate Charles Taylor, and what was good for Taylor promised rewards for Jesse Jackson . . . so to hell with the people of Liberia. Jackson immediately set to work pressuring Sierra Leone’s President Ahmad Kabbah to release Foday Sankoh. On September 18, hundreds of Taylor’s Special Security Service officers and members of his police Special Task Force, teamed up with rag-tag contingents of Taylor’s armed factions and indiscriminately used automatic weapons, rocket-propelled grenades and light artillery against Liberia’s ethnic Krahns. Hundreds of Liberians, many women and children, were slaughtered in seventeen hours of mayhem. People were shot on the spot during house-to-house searches. Taylor was hunting for rival warlord Roosevelt Johnson, an ethnic Krahn. The following day, Roosevelt Johnson sought refuge in the American embassy. As he and his associates were entering the United States Embassy, Taylor’s goons opened fire, killing two of Johnson’s friends and wounding two United States Marine Corps embassy guards. Taylor’s thugs had trashed the Geneva Convention governing diplomatic relations. So, how did Bill Clinton’s administration respond? Jesse Jackson called his pal Charles Taylor and urged him to call off his dogs. After that, Bill Clinton’s State Department threw a blanket of secrecy over the embassy murders, referring to the location of the Geneva violations in official reports as “a Western embassy.” With the Clinton State Department and Jesse Jackson hard at work concealing his violations of international law, Charles Taylor was emboldened to commit even more outrageous acts of indecency. Taylor and the Revolutionary United Front began a push to recapture the diamond fields of Sierra Leone. Meanwhile, Jesse Jackson set off on another African junket as Clinton’s “special envoy.” While in Guinea, Jackson cajoled Charles Taylor and Ahmad Kabbah into signing the Mano River non-aggression pact, which included the stipulation that neither country would allow its territory to be used as a staging area for attacks on the other. It was all for show: even as he was signing the Mano River pact Taylor was subverting its intent by rearming Sankoh’s Revolutionary United Front for guerrilla operations in Sierra Leone. As Jesse Jackson recalls it, “Kabbah had just executed some of Sankoh’s guys and was about to execute Sankoh. So we appealed to Kabbah not to kill Sankoh.” Why would Jackson do that? Sankoh was a monster who employed drug-addled children to kill and mutilate countless Africans; Sankoh was an agent of mayhem, chaos and suffering. Why was Jesse Jackson so keen to win the release of this satanic monstrosity? Jackson flew to Freetown and appealed to President Kabbah on Sankoh’s behalf. Jackson repeated his appeal during a stopover in Ghana. A smiling Jackson proclaimed, “We live in the morning of a new day.” In January 1999, Sankoh’s guerrillas launched an epic attack on the capital city of Sierra Leone, driving before them a human shield of women and children. Along the way they torched homes, chopped off arms and legs, raped children and shot bystanders on a whim. Within three weeks the RUF had slaughtered six thousand citizens, most of them non-combatants. When a Nigerian army counter offensive drove the RUF from Freetown, Sankoh’s thugs torched entire city blocks and abducted thousands of children to exploit as boy soldiers or sex slaves. Just as Sierra Leone’s President Kabbah had persuaded the Nigerian peacekeepers to strike a crushing blow against the barbaric RUF, Jesse Jackson interceded to stop this winning counter offensive. Clinton’s State Department had invited a RUF spokesman to Washington where the RUF spokesman chatted with Donald Payne who, in turn, urged President Kabbah to release Foday Sankoh and to negotiate with Sankoh’s RUF “without precondition.” Under pressure, with the Nigerian counter offensive stymied by Jesse Jackson & Company, President Kabbah reluctantly acquiesced to U.S. State Department meddling. Foday Sankoh was released on April 19th and Sankoh flew away to Lome, the capital city of Togo. Because of Jesse Jackson and his meddlesome friends a monster was once again unleashed on the African civilian population; a golden opportunity to decapitate Sankoh’s rogue murder machine had been snatched away. After that, Jesse Jackson would personally guarantee the ruination of Sierra Leone by physically removing President Kabbah from an African summit meeting in Ghana and spiriting him away to an unannounced confrontation with the insurgent bossman Foday Sankoh in Lome, Togo. The abduction of President Kabbah happened this way: At an African summit meeting in Accra, Ghana, Jesse Jackson urged President Kabbah to meet with Foday Sankoh. Jackson arranged to have a helicopter waiting at the Accra airport. Jackson arrived at the airport surrounded by his ample staff and by people friendly with Charles Taylor. When President Kabbah attempted to board the helicopter with his information and finance ministers, Jackson suddenly declared that there was no room for Kabbah’s aides, both of whom were known to be opposed to making concessions to the warlord Foday Sankoh. Jackson refused to make room for Kabbah’s aides by leaving any of his attendents in Accra. So, Jackson spirited President Kabbah away to Togo without a single supportive aide. It was a one-hundred-mile hop down to Accra, where Jackson refused to exit the helicopter until his image could be captured by a late-arriving CNN film crew. The president of Togo was kept waiting in the hot African sun for most of an hour because of Jackson’s swollen vanity. The isolation of the remote meeting place and Jesse Jackson’s pressure tactics paid off for Jesse and his homicidal allies: Against his better judgment, President Kabbah agreed to a ceasefire with Sankoh’s Revolutionary United Front. This would allow the Qaddafi-trained Foday Sankoh an opportunity to replenish his weapons supply. Kabbah was also pressured to enter into power-sharing negotiations with Sankoh. Jesse Jackson then convinced the U.S. State Department to supply Sankoh’s guerrillas with updated communications equipment so that Sankoh could better coordinate his field operations in the bush. As a direct consequence of the Jackson-brokered Lome Accord, former death row prisoner Foday Sankoh was elevated to the office of vice president of Sierra Leone. Even worse, Foday Sankoh was granted the chairmanship of Sierra Leone’s Management of Strategic Mineral Resources – translation: the diamond mines.This was what the Charles Taylor/Foday Sankoh partnership had been seeking all along and Jesse Jackson handed it to them on a silver platter! Within days Sankoh was negotiating with the diamond gnomes of Antwerp. When the Belgian diamond merchant Michel Desaedeleer handed Foday Sankoh a bank check the warlord was nonplussed. The diamond merchant recalled, “He just looked at it and asked me, ‘What’s this?’ It was the first bank check he had ever seen.” Foday Sankoh exploited Sierra Leone’s diamond sales to buy allies and arms. Belgian air force planes brought in weapons for the Revolutionary United Front insurgents in crates disguised as farm produce. Rebel diamonds purchased sixty-eight tons of weapons for the RUF from Ukrainian arms dealer Leonid Minim. Diamonds bought the silence of United Nations watchdogs in Freetown. Raw uncut diamonds purchased political influence in the United States. Looking back on the mayhem that Jesse Jackson worked so hard to unleash on the people of Sierra Leone, Jackson allows that “putting Sankoh over the diamonds, that was a bit too generous.” Jackson pretends that he was not a driving force behind the ruinous Lome Accord, but what is perfectly clear is the fact that at the historical moment when the leader of a sadistic boy-soldier insurrectionist army was about to meet the hangman, it was Jesse Jackson who intruded into the internal affairs of Sierra Leone, won the release of the genocidal Foday Sankoh, and then pressured the president of Sierra Leone to negotiate with the rebel leader. The hideous development of Foday Sankoh being elevated to the vice presidency of Sierra Leone and given control of the diamond mines so that he could finance further slaughter in Sierra Leone and Liberia is a direct consequence of meddling by Jesse Jackson acting as Bill Clinton’s “special envoy.” Jackson was “special” indeed; he had a gift for making life unbearable for the people of Sierra Leone and Liberia. Without Jackson’s enthusiastic intrusion into Sierra Leone’s internal affairs the trade in blood diamonds would have stopped. Jackson has the blood of countless slaughtered Africans on his hands. The Jackson-brokered ceasefire fell apart in less than six months; it was just an opportunity for Sankoh’s sadistic gang to rearm and redeploy. Jackson’s legitimization of Sankoh and Taylor set the stage for the slaughter of tens of thousands of African children. Was Jackson surpassingly stupid or just his usual self-serving self when he unleashed Foday Sankoh on a suffering Sierra Leone? Did Jackson get a clue when Sankoh’s machete-wielding savages began murdering UN peacekeepers and then took 500 peacekeepers hostage in May of 2000? By mid-May Jackson was warned to stay out of Freetown because he had been labeled a “killers’ rights leader” by Africans. Jackson blundered into Monrovia at the height of the hostage crisis and then attempted, with no success, to cajole Charles Taylor into intervening. Jackson had unleashed the dogs of war and Taylor saw no profit in reining in his buddy Foday Sankoh. On June 5th, 2000, U.S. State Department spokesman Philip Reeker disavowed any support for Jackson’s bumbling attempts at diplomacy. The Clinton folks gave their “special envoy” the boot.
CHICAGO — As she considers another White House bid, Hillary Rodham Clinton intends to work in the nonprofit world on issues like improving early childhood education, promoting the rights of women and girls, and finding ways to improve the economy – a set of priorities that could inform a 2016 presidential campaign.
The former secretary of state offered her most extensive description of her post-Obama administration agenda on Thursday since leaving her role as the nation's top diplomat, basking in loud applause from admirers at a Clinton Global Initiative meeting in Chicago. The former first lady, a longtime advocate for women and children, said the foundation would serve as "my home" on a set of public policy initiatives close to her heart.
"What I think we have to be about is working together, overcoming the lines that divide us, this partisan, cultural, geographic (divide). Building on what we know works, we can take on any challenge we confront," Clinton said. Reflecting the entire family's involvement, the foundation has been renamed the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.
Clinton's speech at the start of a two-day annual conference touched on themes that could be part of a future Democratic presidential campaign, with the former New York senator stressing the need for private and public partnerships to tackle issues like economic and educational inequality. She said climate change, "financial contagion" and nuclear proliferation were "too complex and cross-cutting" for any one government to solve alone.
"This can't just be a conversation about Washington. We all need to do our part," she said.
As secretary of state, Clinton avoided delving too deeply into domestic policy but signaled a desire to become re-engaged in pocketbook issues important to Americans. Pointing to efforts by a teachers' union and others to improve conditions in rural West Virginia, she said economic inequality was "not limited to one county in West Virginia. There are too many places in our own country where community institutions are crumbling, social and public health indicators are cratering and jobs are coming apart and communities face the consequences."
Clinton has emphasized similar issues in the past. In her 1996 book "It Takes a Village," she discussed the importance of collaboration between families and community groups to help children thrive. As a presidential candidate, she was popular with many blue-collar workers whose wages had remained stagnant even as the economy flourished for many Americans.
As secretary of state under President Barack Obama, she promoted a number of initiatives to improve the standing of women and girls in developing nations. She said that work would continue at the foundation, both here and abroad.
Clinton capped off the day by offering criticism of the so-called sequester, telling supporters of a nonprofit organization that funds epilepsy research that the forced spending cuts would lead to $1.7 billion in reductions to the National Institutes of Health budget, meaning fewer researcher grants and jobs for scientists. She urged "citizen action" to raise awareness about the effects of the cuts but did not direct the criticism at Obama or congressional Republicans.
Democrats said Clinton had supported many of these social and political issues in the past and cautioned not to read too much into her priorities. "I'd imagine she'll work on them till the day she retires, if she ever does retire. Whether she'll try to do this work from 1600 Pennsylvania, who knows?" said Jill Alper, a Michigan-based Democratic strategist.
Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, a longtime friend of the Clintons, said at the conference that he was sure she would "figure out what she wants to do in the future and we all look forward to hearing about it."
Clinton noted that as secretary of state she visited 112 nations – "I'm still jet-lagged," she joked – and had learned several lessons during her travels. Regardless of someone's circumstances or homeland, "what people wanted was a good job," she said. Her time abroad taught her that the United States' greatest advantage was its "freedom, equality and opportunity," and said she learned that the U.S. could overcome any challenges and divisions.
She did not address recent criticism from Republicans over her handling of the deadly attack on Americans in Benghazi, Libya, last September. She did not address a recent report that said misconduct complaints against American diplomats were improperly halted by senior State Department officials while she was at the State Department. The State Department's internal watchdog has asked outside law enforcement experts to review the cases.
Her husband, former President Bill Clinton, said he was glad that she was joining him at the foundation. He credited her for teaching him about the work of nongovernmental organizations, pointing to the early years of her career at the Children's Defense Fund.
The conference included sessions led by the former president; the couple's daughter, Chelsea; Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew and actress Eva Longoria. New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie, a potential 2016 White House contender, was joining the former president on stage Friday for a session titled "Cooperation and Collaboration: A Conversation on Leadership," a nod to Christie's embrace of a bipartisan mantle as he seeks re-election in his Democratic-leaning home state this year.
For the former first lady, who grew up in suburban Chicago, the speech served as one of her most public forays since departing the administration. She has delivered a number of private speeches around the country and is writing a book about her time at the State Department but offered little indication on whether she'll run for president again. She remains the heavy favorite within the party to succeed Obama, and Republicans have begun dissecting her record.
It also brought supporters of both the Clintons and the Obama teams together in the president's hometown, including Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, longtime Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett and Lew, who served as Obama's chief of staff and also served in the Clinton White House.
Mrs. Clinton was honored Thursday night at a dinner on Chicago's Navy Pier sponsored by a nonprofit organization founded by former Obama senior adviser David Axelrod and his wife, Susan, and other parents to promote research into epilepsy.
As first lady, Clinton helped organize a White House conference on epilepsy in 1999. She urged the audience, which included many of Obama's top donors, to continue to push hard to find a cure to the disease.
The former secretary of state offered her most extensive description of her post-Obama administration agenda on Thursday since leaving her role as the nation's top diplomat, basking in loud applause from admirers at a Clinton Global Initiative meeting in Chicago. The former first lady, a longtime advocate for women and children, said the foundation would serve as "my home" on a set of public policy initiatives close to her heart.
"What I think we have to be about is working together, overcoming the lines that divide us, this partisan, cultural, geographic (divide). Building on what we know works, we can take on any challenge we confront," Clinton said. Reflecting the entire family's involvement, the foundation has been renamed the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.
Clinton's speech at the start of a two-day annual conference touched on themes that could be part of a future Democratic presidential campaign, with the former New York senator stressing the need for private and public partnerships to tackle issues like economic and educational inequality. She said climate change, "financial contagion" and nuclear proliferation were "too complex and cross-cutting" for any one government to solve alone.
"This can't just be a conversation about Washington. We all need to do our part," she said.
As secretary of state, Clinton avoided delving too deeply into domestic policy but signaled a desire to become re-engaged in pocketbook issues important to Americans. Pointing to efforts by a teachers' union and others to improve conditions in rural West Virginia, she said economic inequality was "not limited to one county in West Virginia. There are too many places in our own country where community institutions are crumbling, social and public health indicators are cratering and jobs are coming apart and communities face the consequences."
Clinton has emphasized similar issues in the past. In her 1996 book "It Takes a Village," she discussed the importance of collaboration between families and community groups to help children thrive. As a presidential candidate, she was popular with many blue-collar workers whose wages had remained stagnant even as the economy flourished for many Americans.
As secretary of state under President Barack Obama, she promoted a number of initiatives to improve the standing of women and girls in developing nations. She said that work would continue at the foundation, both here and abroad.
Clinton capped off the day by offering criticism of the so-called sequester, telling supporters of a nonprofit organization that funds epilepsy research that the forced spending cuts would lead to $1.7 billion in reductions to the National Institutes of Health budget, meaning fewer researcher grants and jobs for scientists. She urged "citizen action" to raise awareness about the effects of the cuts but did not direct the criticism at Obama or congressional Republicans.
Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, a longtime friend of the Clintons, said at the conference that he was sure she would "figure out what she wants to do in the future and we all look forward to hearing about it."
Clinton noted that as secretary of state she visited 112 nations – "I'm still jet-lagged," she joked – and had learned several lessons during her travels. Regardless of someone's circumstances or homeland, "what people wanted was a good job," she said. Her time abroad taught her that the United States' greatest advantage was its "freedom, equality and opportunity," and said she learned that the U.S. could overcome any challenges and divisions.
She did not address recent criticism from Republicans over her handling of the deadly attack on Americans in Benghazi, Libya, last September. She did not address a recent report that said misconduct complaints against American diplomats were improperly halted by senior State Department officials while she was at the State Department. The State Department's internal watchdog has asked outside law enforcement experts to review the cases.
Her husband, former President Bill Clinton, said he was glad that she was joining him at the foundation. He credited her for teaching him about the work of nongovernmental organizations, pointing to the early years of her career at the Children's Defense Fund.
The conference included sessions led by the former president; the couple's daughter, Chelsea; Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew and actress Eva Longoria. New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie, a potential 2016 White House contender, was joining the former president on stage Friday for a session titled "Cooperation and Collaboration: A Conversation on Leadership," a nod to Christie's embrace of a bipartisan mantle as he seeks re-election in his Democratic-leaning home state this year.
For the former first lady, who grew up in suburban Chicago, the speech served as one of her most public forays since departing the administration. She has delivered a number of private speeches around the country and is writing a book about her time at the State Department but offered little indication on whether she'll run for president again. She remains the heavy favorite within the party to succeed Obama, and Republicans have begun dissecting her record.
It also brought supporters of both the Clintons and the Obama teams together in the president's hometown, including Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, longtime Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett and Lew, who served as Obama's chief of staff and also served in the Clinton White House.
Mrs. Clinton was honored Thursday night at a dinner on Chicago's Navy Pier sponsored by a nonprofit organization founded by former Obama senior adviser David Axelrod and his wife, Susan, and other parents to promote research into epilepsy.
As first lady, Clinton helped organize a White House conference on epilepsy in 1999. She urged the audience, which included many of Obama's top donors, to continue to push hard to find a cure to the disease.
06:10 AM on 06/15/2013 Great news. Hillary has now joined Bill full time at the shady The Clinton Foundation (for Self Promotion, Political Influence and Profit aka Clinton, Inc.). They should soon move from mere mega millionaires to billionaires peddling their influence around the world to top bidders, to benefit themselves and their billionaire cronies, often at the expense of their nation.
The Clinton Foundation is the front for major business and political deals under the guise of philanthropy. It allows the Clintons and their cronies to write-off expenses for staffing, office space, travel and ENTERTAINMENT as part a non-profit, tax-exempt organization. The Clinton Foundation is now home for Hillary 2016 and will launder political donations to circumvent campaign finance regulations.
If the Clintons were not politically powerful, the IRS would have stripped the Clinton Foundation of its tax-exempt status years ago? Has the Clinton Foundation ever been audited by the IRS?
Know-some-secrets
06:38 AM on 06/15/2013
Bill Clinton has brazenly used the Clinton Foundation as a front to sell his influence as a former president in brokering lucrative business deals for his cronies. As exposed in the NYT, Bill helped persuade Kazakhstan to give a multi-billion dollar uranium deal to Canadian billionaire speculator Frank Giustra.. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/us/politics/31donor.html?pagewanted=all
As the article documents, as part of the deal, Mr. Clinton publicly endorsed the bid of Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, president of Kazakhstan, to the head the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. This would result in conferring of legitimacy on Mr. Nazarbayev’s government, which was sharply criticized internationally for human rights abuses. The endorsement was in direct contradiction to U.S. foreign policy.
Within weeks the Clinton Foundation received a windfall gift of $31.3 million from Mr. Giustra, though it was kept secret for several years. The Foundation then received an additional $100 million when Guistra sold his company for $7.05 per share. It had traded for 10 cents per share before the Clinton-brokered uranium deal. Quid pro quo.
Arab Sheik Gave About $500 Millions to Clinton's foundation. Can Hillary Remain Objective as Sec. of State?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYcYZuUX5Sw
Uploaded on Dec 20, 2008
Bill & Hillary were made rich by their fame & associations with wealthy individuals. As Secretary of State, can Hillary remain objective?
Comments:
wait i thought we liked the saudi's, bush senior and junior as well as clinton all call them personal friends...
and kuwait is an enemy of ours? they (actually) liked us because sadam invaded their countery in 1991. kuwait and saudi arabia like us and we like them.
Harrah's Gives $1 Million to Clinton Foundation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Edk4qgS93xE
Uploaded on Feb 23, 2010
The Harrah's Foundation presented former President Bill Clinton with a $1 million donation to the William J. Clinton Foundation Monday at Caesars Palace. Clinton then gave a speech to Harrah's employees and others about his work in Haiti, why individual charity and volunteering can make a difference, and his belief that Nevada will make it out of the economic downturn even stronger than before.
President Clinton accepts ADARC's Irene Diamond Award
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwIGuU0e4Eo
Uploaded on Jan 8, 2010
President Bill Clinton is the honoree at the ADARC's inaugural Irene Diamond Award Gala. He describes his Foundation's work in the developing world, talks about the role of science against the epidemic, and encourages support of HIV/AIDS research
Foreigners gave millions to Clinton foundation
Donor list heavy with international business leaders and billionaires
updated 12/18/2008 3:44:09 PM ET2008-12-18T20:44:09
WASHINGTON — Former President Bill Clinton's foundation has raised at least $46 million from Saudi Arabia and other foreign governments that his wife Hillary Rodham Clinton may end up negotiating with as the next secretary of state.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia gave $10 million to $25 million to the William J. Clinton Foundation, a nonprofit created by the former president to finance his library in Little Rock, Ark., and charitable efforts to reduce poverty and treat AIDS. Other foreign government givers include Norway, Kuwait, Qatar, Brunei, Oman, Italy and Jamaica. The Dutch national lottery gave $5 million to $10 million.
The Blackwater Training Center donated $10,001 to $25,000. The State Department — to be led by Hillary Clinton if she is confirmed — will have to decide next year whether to renew Blackwater Worldwide's contract to protect U.S. diplomats in Iraq. Five Blackwater guards have been indicted by a U.S. grand jury on manslaughter and weapons charges stemming from a September 2007 firefight in Baghdad's Nisoor Square in which 17 Iraqis died.
The foundation disclosed the names of its 205,000 donors on a Web site Thursday, ending a decade of resistance to identifying the sources of its money. While the list is heavy with international business leaders and billionaires, some 12,000 donors gave $10 or less.
Clinton agreed to release the information after concerns emerged that his extensive international fundraising and business deals could conflict with America's interests if his wife became Obama's top diplomat. The foundation has insisted for years that it was under no legal obligation to identify its contributors, contending that many expected confidentiality when they donated.
The list also underscores ties between the Clintons and India, a connection that could complicate diplomatic perceptions of whether Hillary Clinton can be a neutral broker between India and neighbor Pakistan in a region where President-elect Barack Obama will face an early test of his foreign policy leadership.
Video: Vetting Bill Clinton The former president did not release specific totals for each donor, providing only ranges of giving. Nor did he identify individual contributors' occupations or countries of residence.
The Blackwater Training Center donated $10,001 to $25,000. The State Department — to be led by Hillary Clinton if she is confirmed — will have to decide next year whether to renew Blackwater Worldwide's contract to protect U.S. diplomats in Iraq. Five Blackwater guards have been indicted by a U.S. grand jury on manslaughter and weapons charges stemming from a September 2007 firefight in Baghdad's Nisoor Square in which 17 Iraqis died.
The foundation disclosed the names of its 205,000 donors on a Web site Thursday, ending a decade of resistance to identifying the sources of its money. While the list is heavy with international business leaders and billionaires, some 12,000 donors gave $10 or less.
Clinton agreed to release the information after concerns emerged that his extensive international fundraising and business deals could conflict with America's interests if his wife became Obama's top diplomat. The foundation has insisted for years that it was under no legal obligation to identify its contributors, contending that many expected confidentiality when they donated.
The list also underscores ties between the Clintons and India, a connection that could complicate diplomatic perceptions of whether Hillary Clinton can be a neutral broker between India and neighbor Pakistan in a region where President-elect Barack Obama will face an early test of his foreign policy leadership.
Video: Vetting Bill Clinton The former president did not release specific totals for each donor, providing only ranges of giving. Nor did he identify individual contributors' occupations or countries of residence.
Donors gave Clinton's foundation at least $492 million from its inception in 1997 through last year, according to the most recent figures available.
After negotiations with Obama's transition team, Clinton promised to reveal the contributors, submit future foundation activities and paid speeches to an ethics review, step away from the day-to-day operation of his annual charitable conference and inform the State Department about new sources of income and speeches.
Representatives of the foundation, including CEO Bruce Lindsay and attorney Cheryl Mills, and aides to Hillary Clinton met privately Wednesday with staff of incoming Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry of Massachusetts and ranking Republican Dick Lugar of Indiana to discuss the foundation's activities and review a memorandum of understanding drawn up by the Clinton and Obama teams.
Video: Vetting the Clintons The Foreign Relations Committee will hold hearings and vote on Hillary Clinton's nomination before sending it to the full Senate. Shortly after Obama tapped Clinton, Lugar said he would support her, though he said there would still be "legitimate questions" raised about the former president's extensive international involvement.
- Other political news of note
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Updated 12 minutes ago 8/14/2013 9:35:58 PM +00:00 Newt Gingrich has a message for Republicans: Stop being so negative, and start talking about ideas – including alternatives to President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.
Some of the donors have extensive ties to Indian interests that could prove troubling to Pakistan. Tensions between the two nuclear nations are high since last month's deadly terrorist attacks in Mumbai.
Amar Singh, a donor in the $1 million to $5 million category, is an Indian politician who played host to Bill Clinton on a visit to India in 2005 and met Hillary Clinton in New York in September to discuss an India-U.S. civil nuclear agreement.
Also in that giving category was Suzlon Energy Ltd. of Amsterdam, a leading supplier of wind turbines. Its chairman is Tulsi R. Tanti, one of India's wealthiest executives. Tanti announced plans at Clinton's Global Initiative meeting earlier this year for a $5 billion project to develop environmentally friendly power generation in India and China.
Two other Indian interests gave between $500,000 and $1 million each:
- The Confederation of Indian Industry, an industrial trade association.
- Dave Katragadda, an Indian capital manager with holdings in media and entertainment, technology, health care and financial services.
- AUSAID, the Australian government's overseas aid program, and COPRESIDA-Secretariado Tecnico, a Dominican Republic government agency formed to fight AIDS, each gave $10 million to $25 million.
- Norway gave $5 million to $10 million.
- Kuwait, Qatar, Brunei and Oman gave $1 million to $5 million each.
- The government of Jamaica and Italy's Ministry for Environment and Territory gave $50,000 to $100,000 each.
They are the Children's Investment Fund Foundation, a London-based philanthropic organization founded by hedge fund manager Chris Hohn and his wife Jamie Cooper-Hohn and dedicated to helping children, primarily in Africa and India; and UNITAID, an international drug purchase organization formed by Brazil, France, Chile, Norway and Britain to help provide care for HIV-AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis patients in countries with high disease rates.
The foundation's donor list is heavy with overseas business interests.
- Audi businessman Nasser Al-Rashid gave $1 million to $5 million.
- Friends of Saudi Arabia and the Dubai Foundation each gave $1 million to $5 million, as did the Taiwan Economic and Cultural Office.
- The Swedish Postcode Lottery gave $500,000 to $1 million.
- China Overseas Real Estate Development and the U.S. Islamic World Conference gave $250,000 to $500,000 apiece.
- The No. 4 person on the Forbes billionaire list, Lakshmi Mittal, the chief executive of international steel company ArcelorMittal, gave $1 million to $5 million. Mittal is a member of the Foreign Investment Council in Kazakhstan, Goldman Sachs' board of directors and the World Economic Forum's International Business Council, according to the biography on his corporate Web site.
- Video: What about Bill? Harold Snyder, director for Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, the largest drug company in Israel. His son, Jay T. Snyder, serves on the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, which oversees State Department activities, and served as a senior U.S. adviser to the United Nations, where he worked on international trade and poverty. Jay Snyder donated between $100,000 and $250,000 to the foundation.
- No. 97 on the Forbes billionaire list, Ethiopian-Saudi business tycoon Sheikh Mohammed H. Al-Amoudi.
- Issam Fares, a former deputy prime minister of Lebanon.
- Mala Gaonkar Haarman, a partner and managing director at the private investment partnership Lone Pine Capital.
- Lukas Lundin, chairman of oil, gas and mining businesses including Tanganyika Oil Company Ltd., an international oil and gas exploration and production company with interests in Syria, and Vostok Nafta Investment Ltd., an investment company that focuses on Russia and other former Soviet republics.
- Victor Pinchuk, son-in-law of the former president of Ukraine. Clinton spoke in 2007 at an annual meeting of Yalta European Strategy, a group Pinchuk founded to promote Ukraine joining the European Union.
Video: Bill Clinton bounces back The top ranks of Clinton's donor list are heavy with longtime Democratic givers, including some who are notable for their staunch support of Israel.
According to the memorandum negotiated by the foundation and top Obama advisers, Bill Clinton agreed to publish the names of all past and future contributors to his foundation during Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state.
Video: Clintons smooth way to Obama Cabinet The former president also agreed to step away from direct involvement in the Clinton Global Initiative, an annual charitable conference where businesses and many foreign governments pledge donations to help ameliorate AIDS, poverty and other social ills. He will continue serving as CGI's founding chairman but will not solicit money or sponsorships. The CGI will cease accepting foreign contributions and will not host events outside the United States.
Clinton started raising money for his library before leaving the White House. Over the years, the Clintons repeatedly refused to identify all the foundation donors, and continued to do so during Hillary Clinton's 2007-08 presidential campaign.
Names surfaced nonetheless. Several news organizations unearthed foreign-government donors, and in 2001, Bill Clinton turned over a list of 150 top foundation donors to a House committee investigating his pardon of fugitive businessman Marc Rich, whose ex-wife, Denise Rich, gave the library foundation at least $450,000.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
- TV producer Haim Saban and his family foundation, who donated between $5 million and $10 million, splits his time between homes in Israel and California. "I'm a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel," he told The New York Times in 2004.
- Slim-Fast diet foods tycoon S. Daniel Abraham, a donor of between $1 million and $5 million, has been a board member of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which promotes Israel's interests before the U.S. government.
- The American Jewish Committee and the United Nations Foundation donated $100,000 to $250,000.
According to the memorandum negotiated by the foundation and top Obama advisers, Bill Clinton agreed to publish the names of all past and future contributors to his foundation during Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state.
Video: Clintons smooth way to Obama Cabinet The former president also agreed to step away from direct involvement in the Clinton Global Initiative, an annual charitable conference where businesses and many foreign governments pledge donations to help ameliorate AIDS, poverty and other social ills. He will continue serving as CGI's founding chairman but will not solicit money or sponsorships. The CGI will cease accepting foreign contributions and will not host events outside the United States.
Clinton started raising money for his library before leaving the White House. Over the years, the Clintons repeatedly refused to identify all the foundation donors, and continued to do so during Hillary Clinton's 2007-08 presidential campaign.
Names surfaced nonetheless. Several news organizations unearthed foreign-government donors, and in 2001, Bill Clinton turned over a list of 150 top foundation donors to a House committee investigating his pardon of fugitive businessman Marc Rich, whose ex-wife, Denise Rich, gave the library foundation at least $450,000.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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JH-307896replied
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Oh, I think they gave between 10 and 25 million, can't quite give an exact amount.
Would that work if I was talking to the IRS?
The Clinton's and the rest of all politicians who behave like this should be investigated by the IRS.
Would that work if I was talking to the IRS?
The Clinton's and the rest of all politicians who behave like this should be investigated by the IRS.
Randy-283493commented
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Well the facts are out there. Now I want to know who killed Mr. Foster. Ah, there won't be a list forthcoming will there? Or the real details about "Travel Gate". Or "Who hired Craig Livingstone"? The Clinton list of who did what when goes on and on. A lot of readers of this column won't remember the dozens of scandals that plagued the Clintons during his 8 years. There are many reasons why I did not want Hillary as Sec of State. Did you see how much money Saudi Arabia gave? Where do we get most of our oil? Now ask yourself why we don't have a national energy policy to curb the import of foreign oil.
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The Blood on Jesse Jackson’s Hands
This is the true story of how Jesse Jackson unleashed a sadistic warlord on the suffering people of Sierra Leone. Part One: The Long Slide Into HellOur former president Jimmy Carter tells us that Liberia’s former “President William Tolbert enjoyed worldwide acceptance as an enlightened Christian layman, having been the elected leader of the Baptist World Alliance, representing almost all organizations of this major Protestant faith.” (New York Times 7/13/03) On April 12th, 1980 a Liberian army sergeant assigned to a beach patrol near the Liberian president’s home directed his platoon to the presidential palace and surprised President Tolbert in his bed, where the president was promptly disemboweled. Master Sergeant Samuel K. Doe personally cut out President Tolbert’s liver and heart and ritually mutilated the organs; he left his teeth marks in the flesh; he would later nail Tolbert’s liver to a wall of the John F. Kennedy Medical Center in Monrovia. Within hours of his murder, thirteen of President Tolbert’s cabinet ministers were bound to telephone poles on a Monrovia beach and shot to death by drunken soldiers loyal to the illiterate Sergeant Doe. Thus began Liberia’s descent into ruin and depravity. As the new self-appointed ruler of Liberia, Samuel Doe briefly indulged in a flirtation with Libya and then astutely aligned Liberia with the United States. Despite mounting evidence of increasing atrocities, Washington increased military aid to Liberia. Few questions were asked. In 1985, Samuel Doe staged an election to legitimize his regime and then rigged the outcome. The United States assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Chester A. Crocker, announced that Liberia had enjoyed “the beginning, however imperfect, of a democratic experience.” It was all a fraud. Washington’s solid support for Samuel K. Doe sent a clear message to all Liberians that any moderate opposition to the barbaric President Doe was futile. After the coup of April 1980, a Liberian citizen named Charles Taylor, who was then living in the United States, returned to Liberia and insinuated himself into Samuel Doe’s inner circle. Charles Taylor had entered the United States on a student visa in 1972. He had attended Chamberlayne Junior College in Newton, Mass and later attended Bentley College in Waltham, Mass. He had graduated in 1977 with a degree in economics. In 1983 Doe’s government accused Taylor of embezzling nearly a million dollars. Embezzlement was Doe’s chosen word for Taylor’s failure to make kickbacks. Taylor fled back to the United States. Responding to a complaint from the Liberian government, American authorities arrested Taylor in Boston in 1984 and held him for extradition. Taylor was represented by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who would later join Saddam Hussein’s defense team. After cooling his heels in the slammer for more than a year, Taylor teamed up with four petty criminals and together they escaped from the Plymouth House of Correction by cutting his cell bars with a hacksaw blade and climbing down a bunch of knotted bed sheets. Later he would claim that God “opened the prison doors for me.” After his jailbreak, Taylor found his way to Ghana where he hooked up with Liberian dissidents. Taylor befriended revolutionaries from Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast and Libya. In Libya the government intelligence apparatus put the willing Mr. Taylor through al-Mathabh al-Thauriya al-Alamiya – in English: World Revolutionary Headquarters. It was a school for leftist “revolutionary” guerrillas from every part of Africa. It was at Colonel Qaddafi’s school for thugs that Charles Taylor befriended a former Sierra Leone army corporal named Foday Sankoh.
The InvasionFortified with money and weapons supplied by Colonel Qaddafi and with the financial and political support of Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast, Charles Taylor made his move on Samuel Doe’s Liberia. On Christmas Eve of 1989, Charles Taylor led a band of 100 guerrillas into Liberia’s northern Nimba County from neighboring Ivory Coast and sparked a civil war that would continue for fourteen years. By the time he was forced from power in 2003 the conflicts he had ignited had swept away the lives of more than 300,000 Africans and uprooted millions of others who scattered into half a dozen West African nations. Taylor carried about a map that he called the map of Greater Liberia which included parts of Guinea and the diamond fields of Sierra Leone. He was a man with a grandiose plan. Among Charles Taylor’s “revolutionary” innovations was the formation of his notorious Small Boys Units, contingents of intensely loyal child soldiers, some as young as five years old. These boy soldiers revered Charles Taylor as “our father;” he fed them a steady diet of marijuana and crack cocaine. As many as 10,000 child soldiers fought in Liberia’s last three years of civil war – the final swell of carnage in fourteen years of conflict. Battlefield commanders prized these little fighters for their unquestioning obedience and their lack of comprehension of the suffering of others. Taylor’s officers would demand that boys kill their parents and family members, thereby breaking the ultimate African taboo. Taylor’s commanders would recruit heavily from the vast pool of younger males who were frustrated by the authority of their elders and who lacked the “bride wealth” to get on with their lives. Rather than waiting years to inherit dowry wealth from their fathers and uncles, Taylor espoused a smash-and-grab take-it-now philosophy. Young recruits were plied with methamphetamines, marijuana and crack cocaine to blunt all qualms and to sharpen a killer mentality. The little soldiers were given license to rape and plunder. All the while he was eroding the traditional African respect for elders, Charles Taylor was substituting himself as an enthralling all-powerful elder authority over the young troopers who maimed and slaughtered in his name. Taylor’s “boys” ran amok, indulging in ritual mutilations, impromptu amputations and cannibalism. Women and children were not spared. Taylor’s boys slaughtered five American nuns. According to the New York Times (4/2/06),
“Mr. Taylor also co-opted the secret societies that dominate life in many West African countries, like the Poro hunting society in Liberia. This gave him access to a world of unseen power and allowed him to project an aura of mystery and invincibility. Rumors that he practiced cannibalism, human sacrifice and blood atonement rituals merely added to his mystique.”In September 1990 President Doe was captured, tortured and dismembered. By 1991 Taylor’s forces held sway over ninety percent of Liberia and were applying pressure to its weakened government. Taylor deployed his militias to seize control of the Liberian economy, of its natural abundance of timber and raw materials. He controlled hundreds of millions of dollars worth of trade as well as booty from smuggling and drug trafficking. Making Matters WorseIn March of 1991, Charles Taylor began encouraging his fellow gangster, Foday Sankoh, to ignite a war in neighboring Sierra Leone – a nation Taylor coveted as part of his imaginary Greater Liberia. With Taylor’s support, Sankoh’s troopers went straight for Sierra Leone’s diamond mines. They called their greedy gang the Revolutionary United Front (RUF); they referred to Sierra Leone as their Kuwait because of the wealth it would provide them. In every meaningful sense, the monstrous Foday Sankoh was a creature of Charles Taylor. Without Taylor there would not have been a Revolutionary United Front. Horrific mayhem laid both countries to waste during Bill Clinton’s budding presidency. Two hundred thousand of Liberia’s three million citizens were slaughtered. Taylor agreed to 13 peace treaties, but only did so when he needed time to rearm. He trashed all thirteen agreements: It was a methodology he had learned from Colonel Qaddafi. When Taylor felt his grip on Liberia was firm, he pushed for a “free and open” election for the presidency of Liberia. But every citizen understood that if Taylor lost the election he would unleash his AK-47-toting, machete-wielding Small Boys Units on the population. In short, the 1997 election was conducted “in an atmosphere of intimidation,” to quote the U.S. State Department. With armed children running amok in the streets chanting “He killed my pa. He killed my ma. I’ll vote for him,” Charles Taylor garnered seventy-five percent of the vote. As Charles Taylor tightened his grip on Liberia, Foday Sankoh’s Revolutionary United Front was suffering setbacks in Sierra Leone. The government had contracted the services of a private South African security firm named Executive Outcomes which arrived in May of 1995 and began inflicting grief on the RUF. By early 1996 Sankoh’s guerrillas had been evicted from the diamond fields that had bankrolled his homicidal ventures. The RUF had been severely weakened by Executive Outcomes. In February of 1996 the United Nations sent election monitors to Sierra Leone and allowed a veteran UN official named Ahmad Tejan Kabbah to step outside his UN role and run for president of Sierra Leone. Mr. Kabbah won the election with far more votes than voters. President Kabbah then asked the well-armed Nigerians to become his protectors. The Nigerians were only too happy to oblige and promptly established a heroin trafficking hub at the Freetown airport. By the end of 1996 the Revolutionary United Front appeared to be a hollow shell. It was then that President Kabbah did something nearly fatal: he made “peace” with Foday Sankoh and agreed to terminate his government’s contract with Executive Outcomes. Soon thereafter, in May of 1997, disaffected government troops stormed the Freetown prison, released hundreds of condemned criminals and RUF officers, and then seized the reins of government. President Kabbah ran off to neighboring Guinea. Then the coup bossmen invited Foday Sankoh and the RUF to join their junta. Altogether they tore up the constitution; they festooned the hills surrounding Freetown with artillery pieces and then they threatened to bombard the city if anyone complained. They massacred and mutilated civilians; they abducted girls as sex slaves; they forced villagers to toil in the diamond mines. Order would not be restored until Britain, Sierra Leone’s former colonial ruler, sent in troops in 2000. In short order the RUF took control of the junta and established goon rule: the political opposition was punished with rape, amputations or death. Judicial due process was suspended; civic leaders were locked away. Sankoh’s troops pounced on the diamond fields of Kono and Tongo. Soon rough uncut diamonds were being ferried away to Liberia in Charles Taylor’s military helicopters. Thereafter, Liberia became a big-time exporter of diamonds even though Liberia itself produced few diamonds. Just when it seemed that the lives of the citizens of Liberia and Sierra Leone couldn’t get any more grim, Bill Clinton took an interest in these unhappy nations. Part Two: Clinton’s Disastrous Special Envoy Bill Clinton was determined to avoid any African entanglements. He had ignored Rwanda as it slid into savage chaos in 1994, when the intervention of a single American battalion would have averted that humanitarian disaster; Clinton was not about to rescue Sierra Leone in 1998. Clinton punted African affairs to his secretary of state Madeline Albright who then fobbed African policy off onto the Congressional Black Caucus – a Democrat power block in Congress. Clinton never offered an opinion about anything African without first consulting Congressman Donald Payne (D., N.J.) of the Black Caucus or Clinton’s soul mate, Jesse Jackson. Every gesture of Clinton’s administration toward Liberia was crafted to legitimize the warlord Charles Taylor. President Taylor had achieved so much personal control of the Liberian economy that folks had taken to referring to Liberia as Charles Taylor, Inc. The tight circle of friends around Bill Clinton saw in Charles Taylor a man they could deal with. To inaugurate their relationship, a private meeting was arranged between President Taylor and Jesse Jackson whom Bill Clinton had personally designated as his “special envoy” to Liberia. In February of 1998 Jesse Jackson touched down at the Monrovia airport. Waiting to greet him was a Liberian named Romeo Horton. Mr. Horton had gone to college in the United States and he had traveled between the two countries for two decades. In the early 1980s Horton was in one of Master Sergeant Samuel Doe’s jail cells when Jackson and others appealed for his release. Jackson later met Horton in Chicago. Romeo Horton’s presence at Jackson’s arrival in Monrovia was stagecrafted by the warlord Charles Taylor. Taylor had summoned Horton back to Liberia to brief him about Jesse Jackson. The last thing Taylor wanted was a sermon on human rights from Clinton’s “special envoy.” His worries were baseless. Because of the helpful Mr. Horton, Jackson’s audience with the Liberian gangster on February 12th, 1998 was all smiles. These two hustlers were ready to do business. It was in the Clinton Administration’s interest to mainstream Charles Taylor. Clinton was keen to avoid any African entanglements; he saw Charles Taylor as someone with whom he could deal. Soon after this meeting, Nigerian troops liberated Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. Foday Sankoh’s troops retreated across the border into Liberia where they were welcomed by Sankoh’s mentor and partner in mass murder, Charles Taylor. In early March of 1998 Sierra Leone’s exiled president, Ahmad Kabbah, returned to his homeland. A mere two weeks later, Bill Clinton and an enormous entourage of “friends of Bill” entered Liberian airspace on a fun-filled taxpayer-funded African safari. (Transportation costs alone were $42.8 million.) It was then that Bill Clinton emboldened Charles Taylor with thirty minutes of encouragement during a telephone downlink from Air Force One. The airborne entourage included Jackson and lots of his business pals who were in Africa to make a financial killing. Just before Bill Clinton’s big African adventure, Nigeria’s dictator Sani Abacha had announced his intention to run as the one-and-only unopposed candidate for president of Nigeria. People with a preference for democratic civilian rule had scoffed at the mockery of democracy that a single military candidate represented, but Bill Clinton was quick to assert that it was enough for Abacha to run for office “as a civilian.” Jesse Jackson chimed in that “No body should dictate to the Nigerian people who their leaders are,” by which he meant no one except the unopposed military-dictator-candidate-for-president Sani Abacha. Just as the multi-million-dollar Bill-and-Jesse screw-the-taxpayer African party junket was winding down, Liberia’s homicidal bossman Charles Taylor ordered Foday Sankoh’s machete-wielding Revolutionary United Front back into long-suffering Sierra Leone where they began a slaughterfest called “Operation No Living Thing.” To hear our State Department describe it, this premeditated attack on Sierra Leone was an orgy of “brutal killings, severe mutilations, and deliberate dismemberments, in a widespread campaign of terror.” So Taylor was an acknowledged terrorist as was his sidekick, Foday Sankoh. Amnesty International enumerated thousands of murders and mutilations. All the while, Jesse Jackson was doing feel-good public relations for the terrorist Charles Taylor. Showcasing a TerroristBack in Chicago, Mister Jackson hosted an extravagant media presentation designed to showcase the terrorist Charles Taylor as the savior of Liberia. Though Mr. Jackson fraudulently billed his Taylor love-fest as a “reconciliation” conference and falsely claimed that it was an opportunity for opposition Liberians to have a dialog with Charles Taylor, opposition leaders remember that evening differently. According to Harry Greaves, who co-founded the Liberian Action Party, “This was just a PR exercise by Charles Taylor.” Taylor’s wife Jewel Howard Taylor led the Liberian government delegation and the warlord himself filled the enormous video screen of Jesse’s Chicago PUSH auditorium and rambled on at length. S.J.K. Nyanseor, chairman of Liberian Democratic Future, would later protest to the Congressional Black Caucus that Jackson’s shindig was “nothing more than a scheme designed to promote Taylor and his repressive government.” He was offended that Jackson had not invited a single opposition leader to his so-called “reconciliation conference.” Indeed, the invitations that Jackson sent out did not mention any Liberian speaker or guest other than the warlord Charles Taylor. In fact, Mister Jackson’s aide, Yuri Tadesse, crudely informed opposition leaders that they would not be given any opportunity to say anything. Mr. Bodioh Wisseh Siapoe, chairmen of the Coalition of Progressive Liberians, was repulsed by the participation of Jackson’s close associate Romeo Horton, whom he asserted “helped finance the carnage of our people.” Jesse Jackson spent the evening shamelessly shilling for the barbaric Charles Taylor. Jackson demanded that Liberians stop posting details of Taylor’s atrocities on the Internet. Mr. Jackson indignantly proclaimed that “The international community frequents the Internet and takes note of whatever information is disseminated on the Information Superhighway. So, please stay off the Net,” according to people in attendance. Mister Jackson introduced no fewer than ten of Charles Taylor’s officials who spoke for hours about the paradise Charles Taylor was creating in Liberia. When some opposition folks appealed for a tribunal to try Liberian war criminals, PUSH operatives declared that time was short and drove the dissidents from the stage. According to Harry Greaves, “The general perception in the Liberian community was that Jackson was a paid lobbyist for Charles Taylor.” Liberians fingered Jackson’s pal Romeo Horton as Taylor’s bagman to Jackson. Harry Greaves knew for a fact that Jackson was a money grubber: Liberian human rights advocates had appealed to Jackson to support their cause by attending a prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral in 1990. Jackson had agreed. Invitations were sent announcing Jackson’s coming appearance. Then, at the last minute, Jackson demanded an up-front payment of $50,000 to appear. The human rights group could not meet Jackson’s demand for cash, so Jackson ditched the event. Clearly, Jesse Jackson had both feet firmly planted in Charles Taylor’s camp. Jesse’s Evil DeedsAfrican journalist Tom Kamara has written that “Reverend Jackson is considered a civil rights leader in America, but in Africa he is a killers’ rights leader.” Why would he say such a thing? Here’s why . . . On July 25th, 1998, the Nigerian government sent the warlord Foday Sankoh home in chains. President Kabbah announced that Sankoh would stand trial for treason against Sierra Leone. Days later, a handcuffed Sankoh appeared on television telling his gang of thugs not to shoot at government soldiers or their Nigerian army allies. At that moment it seemed that peace was at hand: a sadistic mass murderer was in chains and his boy-soldier murder machine was about to become a leaderless rabble. These were positive developments. Any genuine follower of Jesus Christ would have welcomed this moment. Sadly, Jesse Jackson was secretly using all of his influence to spring the homicidal Foday Sankoh from captivity. After all, Sankoh was a partner-in-genocide with Jackson’s associate Charles Taylor, and what was good for Taylor promised rewards for Jesse Jackson . . . so to hell with the people of Liberia. Jackson immediately set to work pressuring Sierra Leone’s President Ahmad Kabbah to release Foday Sankoh. On September 18, hundreds of Taylor’s Special Security Service officers and members of his police Special Task Force, teamed up with rag-tag contingents of Taylor’s armed factions and indiscriminately used automatic weapons, rocket-propelled grenades and light artillery against Liberia’s ethnic Krahns. Hundreds of Liberians, many women and children, were slaughtered in seventeen hours of mayhem. People were shot on the spot during house-to-house searches. Taylor was hunting for rival warlord Roosevelt Johnson, an ethnic Krahn. The following day, Roosevelt Johnson sought refuge in the American embassy. As he and his associates were entering the United States Embassy, Taylor’s goons opened fire, killing two of Johnson’s friends and wounding two United States Marine Corps embassy guards. Taylor’s thugs had trashed the Geneva Convention governing diplomatic relations. So, how did Bill Clinton’s administration respond? Jesse Jackson called his pal Charles Taylor and urged him to call off his dogs. After that, Bill Clinton’s State Department threw a blanket of secrecy over the embassy murders, referring to the location of the Geneva violations in official reports as “a Western embassy.” With the Clinton State Department and Jesse Jackson hard at work concealing his violations of international law, Charles Taylor was emboldened to commit even more outrageous acts of indecency. Taylor and the Revolutionary United Front began a push to recapture the diamond fields of Sierra Leone. Meanwhile, Jesse Jackson set off on another African junket as Clinton’s “special envoy.” While in Guinea, Jackson cajoled Charles Taylor and Ahmad Kabbah into signing the Mano River non-aggression pact, which included the stipulation that neither country would allow its territory to be used as a staging area for attacks on the other. It was all for show: even as he was signing the Mano River pact Taylor was subverting its intent by rearming Sankoh’s Revolutionary United Front for guerrilla operations in Sierra Leone. As Jesse Jackson recalls it, “Kabbah had just executed some of Sankoh’s guys and was about to execute Sankoh. So we appealed to Kabbah not to kill Sankoh.” Why would Jackson do that? Sankoh was a monster who employed drug-addled children to kill and mutilate countless Africans; Sankoh was an agent of mayhem, chaos and suffering. Why was Jesse Jackson so keen to win the release of this satanic monstrosity? Jackson flew to Freetown and appealed to President Kabbah on Sankoh’s behalf. Jackson repeated his appeal during a stopover in Ghana. A smiling Jackson proclaimed, “We live in the morning of a new day.” In January 1999, Sankoh’s guerrillas launched an epic attack on the capital city of Sierra Leone, driving before them a human shield of women and children. Along the way they torched homes, chopped off arms and legs, raped children and shot bystanders on a whim. Within three weeks the RUF had slaughtered six thousand citizens, most of them non-combatants. When a Nigerian army counter offensive drove the RUF from Freetown, Sankoh’s thugs torched entire city blocks and abducted thousands of children to exploit as boy soldiers or sex slaves. Just as Sierra Leone’s President Kabbah had persuaded the Nigerian peacekeepers to strike a crushing blow against the barbaric RUF, Jesse Jackson interceded to stop this winning counter offensive. Clinton’s State Department had invited a RUF spokesman to Washington where the RUF spokesman chatted with Donald Payne who, in turn, urged President Kabbah to release Foday Sankoh and to negotiate with Sankoh’s RUF “without precondition.” Under pressure, with the Nigerian counter offensive stymied by Jesse Jackson & Company, President Kabbah reluctantly acquiesced to U.S. State Department meddling. Foday Sankoh was released on April 19th and Sankoh flew away to Lome, the capital city of Togo. Because of Jesse Jackson and his meddlesome friends a monster was once again unleashed on the African civilian population; a golden opportunity to decapitate Sankoh’s rogue murder machine had been snatched away. After that, Jesse Jackson would personally guarantee the ruination of Sierra Leone by physically removing President Kabbah from an African summit meeting in Ghana and spiriting him away to an unannounced confrontation with the insurgent bossman Foday Sankoh in Lome, Togo. The abduction of President Kabbah happened this way: At an African summit meeting in Accra, Ghana, Jesse Jackson urged President Kabbah to meet with Foday Sankoh. Jackson arranged to have a helicopter waiting at the Accra airport. Jackson arrived at the airport surrounded by his ample staff and by people friendly with Charles Taylor. When President Kabbah attempted to board the helicopter with his information and finance ministers, Jackson suddenly declared that there was no room for Kabbah’s aides, both of whom were known to be opposed to making concessions to the warlord Foday Sankoh. Jackson refused to make room for Kabbah’s aides by leaving any of his attendents in Accra. So, Jackson spirited President Kabbah away to Togo without a single supportive aide. It was a one-hundred-mile hop down to Accra, where Jackson refused to exit the helicopter until his image could be captured by a late-arriving CNN film crew. The president of Togo was kept waiting in the hot African sun for most of an hour because of Jackson’s swollen vanity. The isolation of the remote meeting place and Jesse Jackson’s pressure tactics paid off for Jesse and his homicidal allies: Against his better judgment, President Kabbah agreed to a ceasefire with Sankoh’s Revolutionary United Front. This would allow the Qaddafi-trained Foday Sankoh an opportunity to replenish his weapons supply. Kabbah was also pressured to enter into power-sharing negotiations with Sankoh. Jesse Jackson then convinced the U.S. State Department to supply Sankoh’s guerrillas with updated communications equipment so that Sankoh could better coordinate his field operations in the bush. As a direct consequence of the Jackson-brokered Lome Accord, former death row prisoner Foday Sankoh was elevated to the office of vice president of Sierra Leone. Even worse, Foday Sankoh was granted the chairmanship of Sierra Leone’s Management of Strategic Mineral Resources – translation: the diamond mines.This was what the Charles Taylor/Foday Sankoh partnership had been seeking all along and Jesse Jackson handed it to them on a silver platter! Within days Sankoh was negotiating with the diamond gnomes of Antwerp. When the Belgian diamond merchant Michel Desaedeleer handed Foday Sankoh a bank check the warlord was nonplussed. The diamond merchant recalled, “He just looked at it and asked me, ‘What’s this?’ It was the first bank check he had ever seen.” Foday Sankoh exploited Sierra Leone’s diamond sales to buy allies and arms. Belgian air force planes brought in weapons for the Revolutionary United Front insurgents in crates disguised as farm produce. Rebel diamonds purchased sixty-eight tons of weapons for the RUF from Ukrainian arms dealer Leonid Minim. Diamonds bought the silence of United Nations watchdogs in Freetown. Raw uncut diamonds purchased political influence in the United States. Looking back on the mayhem that Jesse Jackson worked so hard to unleash on the people of Sierra Leone, Jackson allows that “putting Sankoh over the diamonds, that was a bit too generous.” Jackson pretends that he was not a driving force behind the ruinous Lome Accord, but what is perfectly clear is the fact that at the historical moment when the leader of a sadistic boy-soldier insurrectionist army was about to meet the hangman, it was Jesse Jackson who intruded into the internal affairs of Sierra Leone, won the release of the genocidal Foday Sankoh, and then pressured the president of Sierra Leone to negotiate with the rebel leader. The hideous development of Foday Sankoh being elevated to the vice presidency of Sierra Leone and given control of the diamond mines so that he could finance further slaughter in Sierra Leone and Liberia is a direct consequence of meddling by Jesse Jackson acting as Bill Clinton’s “special envoy.” Jackson was “special” indeed; he had a gift for making life unbearable for the people of Sierra Leone and Liberia. Without Jackson’s enthusiastic intrusion into Sierra Leone’s internal affairs the trade in blood diamonds would have stopped. Jackson has the blood of countless slaughtered Africans on his hands. The Jackson-brokered ceasefire fell apart in less than six months; it was just an opportunity for Sankoh’s sadistic gang to rearm and redeploy. Jackson’s legitimization of Sankoh and Taylor set the stage for the slaughter of tens of thousands of African children. Was Jackson surpassingly stupid or just his usual self-serving self when he unleashed Foday Sankoh on a suffering Sierra Leone? Did Jackson get a clue when Sankoh’s machete-wielding savages began murdering UN peacekeepers and then took 500 peacekeepers hostage in May of 2000? By mid-May Jackson was warned to stay out of Freetown because he had been labeled a “killers’ rights leader” by Africans. Jackson blundered into Monrovia at the height of the hostage crisis and then attempted, with no success, to cajole Charles Taylor into intervening. Jackson had unleashed the dogs of war and Taylor saw no profit in reining in his buddy Foday Sankoh. On June 5th, 2000, U.S. State Department spokesman Philip Reeker disavowed any support for Jackson’s bumbling attempts at diplomacy. The Clinton folks gave their “special envoy” the boot.
In a revealing article in the New York Post titled “The War That Jesse Built” (7/10/03), author Kenneth R. Timmerman suggests that
“Among the first questions prosecutors should ask Taylor is whom he paid off using Foday Sankoh’s diamonds. U.S. intelligence officers reported these payoffs at the very moment that Jackson was negotiating a favorable role for Taylor and for Sankoh in Lome, former CIA officers and other sources have told me over the past two years. As a result of the payoffs, Taylor continued to enjoy support among the Congressional Black Caucus and with the Clinton State Department.”
http://www.weirdrepublic.com/episode79.htm“Among the first questions prosecutors should ask Taylor is whom he paid off using Foday Sankoh’s diamonds. U.S. intelligence officers reported these payoffs at the very moment that Jackson was negotiating a favorable role for Taylor and for Sankoh in Lome, former CIA officers and other sources have told me over the past two years. As a result of the payoffs, Taylor continued to enjoy support among the Congressional Black Caucus and with the Clinton State Department.”
The ever hustling Mr. Jackson, who has been cutting corners and cutting deals ever since he dropped out of the Chicago Theological Seminary after a scant six months and began calling himself “the Reverend Jackson,” definitely has the blood of slaughtered African innocents on his hands. Because he was acting as America’s “special envoy” to Africa, it’s high time Mr. Jesse answered a few tough questions about the horror he wrought in Africa. It’s time to follow the trail of the African blood diamonds.
Thomas Clough
Copyright 2007
April 16, 2007
Copyright 2007
April 16, 2007
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