An event that took place in May of this year again suggests Hillary's prejudice. She was campaigning in New Orleans, where a member of the host committee was longtime Clinton family friend and retired Air Force general Harry Lee, Sheriff of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana. As sheriff, Lee prevented black Katrina victims escaping New Orleans from crossing the Crescent City Connection, the bridge to neighboring (and whiter) Jefferson Parish. Lee defended his actions by saying, "We had to protect ourselves," making him even more unpopular with the African-American community than he already had been.
As sheriff, Lee has vowed to "target blacks" because they "commit the crimes." When the NAACP complained about his plan to send armored vehicles into the black community, he responded, "Shut up and let me do my job." This is the caliber of people raising money for Hillary. More to the point, the long term Clinton-Lee friendship, one between a demonstrably corrupt political family and an all-but-admitted racist, indicates a not-so-secret bigotry. If Lee's reputation rubs off on Hillary, that tepid and tenuous ethnic support may desert her for other, more careful candidates.
One last incident, this suggesting that Hillary may have paid for at least some of her African-American support. State Senator Darrell Jackson of South Carolina is considered "one of the most prominent and politically influential black men in the state" government. He originally endorsed former Senator John Edwards (North Carolina). Suddenly he switched and declared his support for Hillary. This occurred at the same time that his political consulting company received a $10,000 contract from Hillary's campaign. That's $10,000 per month. Curioser and curioser, the money may have been laundered through a biotechnology subsidiary of Merck, the world's fourth-largest pharmaceutical company (this and other rankings as of 2003).
O what a tangled web Hillary and friends weave. Let's stop a minute and examine this. Hillary may be in bed with pharmaceutical giant Merck. Roche Holding AG, the world's ninth-largest pharmaceutical company, is another big contributor to her campaign. Roche owns over half of biotechnology firm Genentech, the world's twentieth-largest pharmaceutical company. Roche itself is one-third owned by Novartis, the world's third-largest pharmaceutical company. Hillary's health plan is to establish insurance companies as the ultimate arbiters of health care. What is her definition of this health care, do you suppose, organic food and yoga or pills from Big Pharma? This is not the first time, and undoubtedly won't be the last, that Hillary practiced to deceive.
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect during Bill's presidency. It was essentially the creation of Mickey Kantor and Thomas McLarty. Kantor is a Monsanto Company board member who was U.S. Trade Representative at the time (1994). Two years later, he was promoted to U.S. Secretary of Commerce. McLarty, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations who was President Bill's Chief of Staff, founded a business-consulting firm with Henry Kissinger. McLarty also ties the Clintons to George W. Bush, with whom Hillary claims to differ. McLarty is currently on the board of directors of the Carlyle Group. He is also a Carlyle senior advisor, focused on "buyout investment opportunities in Mexico." The Carlyle Group is of course the alleged money conduit between the Bush and Bin Laden families.
NAFTA has been an economic horror for the people of Mexico and the people of this country as well. Indeed, it has been "disastrous for working people in both Mexico and the U.S.," as noted by a California-based writer and journalist. A research assistant at the Institute for Policy Studies has commented that "multinational corporations [get] unfettered access to economies all over the world" through NAFTA and similar agencies. Corporations have prospered as they slashed wages and eliminated benefits, safety concerns, and job security throughout North America. Neither Hillary nor any other presidential candidate favoring NAFTA deserves the support of intelligent and compassionate voters. Let us call for the elimination of NAFTA and all similar trade agreements. Dismantle Bill Clinton's NAFTA, and stop the worldwide war on working people!
Yugoslavia – the Union of (Southern) Slavic Nations – was an experiment in carrying out the Rodney King principle of everyone "just getting along." Yugoslavia combined bickering provinces as republics within a federal government structure. Josip Tito, the leader of Yugoslavia, defied Stalinist Russia (the "Soviet Union") and built a country that operated under the principle (beginning in 1950) of "workers' self-management," a system described by a Serbian historian and writer as authoritarian, enlightened "direct democracy, although these terms might sound very contradictory...everything was very contradictory."
Under workers' self-management, the people as a whole participated in direct democracy by meeting in councils to make decisions on issues like housing and wages. Ironically, this is similar to the original soviet-style economic system proposed for Russia after the overthrow of the Czar. Tito led Yugoslavia from the end of World War II until his death in 1980.
President Bill had General Wesley Clark, the NATO Supreme Allied Commander, bomb the non-aggressive nation of Yugoslavia from March to June of 1999. A week into the carnage, even the carefully conservative Wall Street Journal felt moved to comment that NATO effectively had become the air force of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The KLA was an insurgent group that wanted the province of Kosovo to break away from Yugoslavia and become an independent country. Rumors abounded that the Albanian government had armed and funded the KLA. One reason for the climate of ongoing tension was (is) that Albania and Kosovo are Muslim and Serbia is Christian. At the time, the KLA was on the U.S. Government's list of drug-smuggling organizations. Bill did not attack and destroy Yugoslavia out of concern for human rights, as is often claimed. In the scramble to beat Russia to control of Caspian and Black Sea oil pipeline terminals, human rights was not a consideration. Additionally, the U.S. wanted to build military bases in Yugoslavia (which had not allowed any foreign nations to do so) to protect those pipelines and terminals. At the time, there were allegations that these bases also protected Asian, particularly Chinese, opium converted into heroin for distribution by the KLA.
Bill pulverized Yugoslavia into warring communities to secure the world's dwindling oil supplies, to establish military bases to protect these areas, and perhaps to secure heroin-smuggling routes from China to Kosovo. Bill's Secretary of State offered the opinion that the bloody campaign was worth the lives of estimated thousands of Yugoslavs. In October of 2000 Hillary again reaffirmed her support for her husband's bombing and destruction of Yugoslavia.
What sort of senator has Hillary been? Like her erstwhile business partner George W. Bush, she supports nuclear weapons development, opposes banning land mines, and criticizes the International Court of Justice. She additionally calls for increases in Bush's military budget and has lashed out at Amnesty International for condemning U.S. torture policies. In an effort to maintain some credibility, at one point she criticized China's human rights record. Less than a year later, she voted to give China most-favored-nation trade status. In those ten months, China did not leave Tibet or free Tibetans held in Chinese slave labor camps. Burning Buddhist temples, murdering monks and raping nuns continued all the while. The situation on the ground didn't change, but the political winds did. Having exploited this issue to her advantage by pretending interest, Hillary easily abandoned it when it was no longer useful to her.
After researching her record, a San Francisco political science professor called her the second-most hawkish Democrat in the race (after Biden, for those interested). Hillary repeatedly has voted to authorize the illegal war against Iraq and refuses to recant, responding instead with Clintonesque babble. In 2006 she voted against a bill to bring the troops home in a year. They would have been here by now, instead of still in Iraq, needlessly killing and being killed in Hillary's take-no-prisoners quest for the White House. She has had many opportunities to demonstrate the sincerity of her statement, "The first thing I will do upon taking office is to end the war in Iraq." At each opportunity she has done the opposite.
Hillary consistently reveals that she is not to be trusted. A telling example is one excuse she gave for her pro-war vote in 2002: It was not a vote for war; rather it was a vote to pressure Saddam to allow weapons inspectors into Iraq. At the time, weapons inspectors were and had been in Iraq. What with all the pressures of being a United States Senator, one understands that the presence of weapons inspectors is not information to which she would have access.
Another of her excuses was, "The president [sic] took my vote, and others' votes, and basically misused the authority we gave him" to wage war. How sleazy is it to say you voted for war because you thought the White House Resident would not act on the authority your vote gave him? On this occasion she further reiterated her refusal to stop funding the war. She fully supported this war until she ran for president. Now she claims to be against the war, with nothing at all to back up that claim. Babble on, Hillary.
This calls to mind another New York Senator accused of being a carpetbagger, who went on to run for president. Senator Robert Kennedy (originally from Massachusetts), was adamant in his support of then-president Johnson and the Vietnam War. Until, that is, Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy won the New Hampshire primary on an antiwar platform. Kennedy denounced (not repudiated) Johnson and declared his candidacy – on an antiwar platform – within days.
Hillary's pro-war disguised as pro-peace position confirms the opinion that, like Bill, there is no depth of hypocrisy to which she will not sink. American service members and Iraqi citizens continue to die as long as she continues to vote to fund their deaths. This is the reality. Sadly, these are not noble deaths. They are deaths for an illegal war by a fraudulent president. They are deaths for Halliburton profits and the military bases to protect them. More than three-thousand Americans, more than 800,000 Iraqis have died to preserve, protect and defend the demands of empire. This war must end now. Hillary can end it, simply by voting against funding it.
