Susan Sarandon: Hillary Clinton ‘more dangerous’ than Trump

By Douglas Ernst - The Washington Times - Friday, June 3, 2016

Hollywood actress and activist Susan Sarandon says former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would be a more dangerous U.S. president than Donald Trump — provided she’s not indicted first.

Ms. Sarandon, a supporter of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, told a liberal news outlets this week that Mrs. Clinton’s track record portends a much worse future than anything Mr. Trump might catalyze as commander in chief.

“I believe in a way she is more dangerous,” the actress told The Young Turks on Thursday. “They’re both talking to Henry Kissinger, apparently. … She did not learn from Iraq, and she is an interventionist, and she has done horrible things — and very callously. I don’t know if she is overcompensating or what her trip is. That scares me. I think we’ll be in Iran in two seconds.”

The former “Thelma and Louise” star said voters are being “fed” a message that Mr. Trump is “so dangerous” when his promises on illegal immigration amount to a wall being built.

“I don’t know what his policy is. I do know what her policies are, I do know who she is taking money from. I do know that she is not transparent, and I do know that nobody calls her on it,” the Oscar-winning actress continued.

The activist also appeared on MSNBC on Thursday and predicted Mrs. Clinton would be indicted by the Department of Justice for the secret email server she operated out of her New York home as President Obama’s top diplomat.

“There’s going to be [an indictment]. I mean, it’s inevitable,” Ms. Sarandon said, Salon reported Friday.

The State Department’s inspector general released a report last week saying the Democrat front-runner violated policies on storing official records and did not cooperate with its investigation.

Mrs. Clinton maintains that she did nothing illegal.

Link here.

The fatal expense of American imperialism

The United States has a long history of using covert and overt means to overthrow governments deemed to be unfriendly to US interests, following the classic imperial strategy of rule through locally imposed friendly regimes. In a powerful study of Latin America between 1898 and 1994, for example, historian John Coatsworth counts 41 cases of “successful” US-led regime change, for an average rate of one government overthrow by the United States every 28 months for a century. And note: Coatsworth’s count does not include the failed attempts, such as the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

This tradition of US-led regime change has been part and parcel of US foreign policy in other parts of the world, including Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. Wars of regime change are costly to the United States, and often devastating to the countries involved. Two major studies have measured the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. One, by my Columbia colleague Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard scholar Linda Bilmes, arrived at the cost of $3 trillion as of 2008. A more recent study, by the Cost of War Project at Brown University, puts the price tag at $4.7 trillion through 2016. Over a 15-year period, the $4.7 trillion amounts to roughly $300 billion per year, and is more than the combined total outlays from 2001 to 2016 for the federal departments of education, energy, labor, interior, and transportation, and the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Link here.

Democrats, Trump, and the Ongoing, Dangerous Refusal to Learn the Lesson of Brexit

The indisputable fact is that prevailing institutions of authority in the West, for decades, have relentlessly and with complete indifference stomped on the economic welfare and social security of hundreds of millions of people. While elite circles gorged themselves on globalism, free trade, Wall Street casino gambling, and endless wars (wars that enriched the perpetrators and sent the poorest and most marginalized to bear all their burdens), they completely ignored the victims of their gluttony, except when those victims piped up a bit too much — when they caused a ruckus — and were then scornfully condemned as troglodytes who were the deserved losers in the glorious, global game of meritocracy.

That message was heard loud and clear. The institutions and elite factions that have spent years mocking, maligning, and pillaging large portions of the population — all while compiling their own long record of failure and corruption and destruction — are now shocked that their dictates and decrees go unheeded. But human beings are not going to follow and obey the exact people they most blame for their suffering. They’re going to do exactly the opposite: purposely defy them and try to impose punishment in retaliation. Their instruments for retaliation are Brexit and Trump. Those are their agents, dispatched on a mission of destruction: aimed at a system and culture they regard — not without reason — as rife with corruption and, above all else, contempt for them and their welfare.

Link here.

The U.S. is no stranger to interfering in the elections of other countries

The CIA has accused Russia of interfering in the 2016 presidential election by hacking into Democratic and Republican computer networks and selectively releasing emails. But critics might point out the U.S. has done similar things.

The U.S. has a long history of attempting to influence presidential elections in other countries – it’s done so as many as 81 times between 1946 and 2000, according to a database amassed by political scientist Dov Levin of Carnegie Mellon University.

That number doesn’t include military coups and regime change efforts following the election of candidates the U.S. didn’t like, notably those in Iran, Guatemala and Chile. Nor does it include general assistance with the electoral process, such as election monitoring.

Link here.

What triggers terrorism? Is it Islam, or rather US Foreign Policy and the west’s double standards?

US Northeastern University Political Science Professor Max Abrahms, a terrorism theorist, told Al-Rai: “The U.S. has inadvertently contributed to international terrorism through the failed policy of regime change (Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan) since the declared “war on terror”. Un-thoughtful change of regime in Iraq created a power vacuum that was filled by al-Qaida in Iraq and ultimately ISIS. Few Americans understand that removing Gaddafi in Libya created a similar power vacuum that has greatly benefited ISIS among other militant groups. Fewer Americans also understand that arming the “opposition” in Syria helped to significantly support ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra and prolonged the so-called civil war. In these ways, the US counterterrorism strategy has backfired.

A unit in the “FBI counterterrorism division” and FBI special agents across the US involved in “home-grown violent extremism” concluded that US foreign policy is the main motive behind terrorist attacks as a retaliation for the hundreds of thousands killed in the Middle East.

Link here and here.