Visits from high-profile public figures are somewhat of a rarity at Hamilton College in upstate New York, so it wasn’t a surprise many students snatched up tickets to see Hillary Clinton last October. And after a talk which may have cost the school up to $300,000 (at her “discounted” student rate), the presidential endorsements quickly echoed across campus.
Her speech at Hamilton was just one of many stops on her lucrative nationwide speaking tour, a relentless self-promoting campaign aimed at earning her a head start in the 2016 presidential race. Across small towns and college campuses, with an acquiescent media fawning over her new book, Clinton hailed the United States as “the greatest force for peace and progress the world has ever known”.
Inserting herself in the collegiate demographic conveniently allows Clinton to rewrite history, absolving her role in some of the nation’s most criminal foreign policy initiatives – from the invasion of Iraq to the overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya. In fact, Clinton is widely known to be even more of a war-hawk than Sen. John McCain within Obama’s national security circles.
Her war mongering has paid off with heavy backing of the military industrial complex, exemplified by her relationship with Boeing, the world’s second largest defense contractor. In one instance, she set aside ethics guidelines in order to secure a multi-billion dollar deal with the company.
A few of the venues on her tour are particularly revealing. Aside from the usual events open to the public, she’s been paid hefty sums of money to give private speeches to investors at Goldman Sachs and the Carlyle Group – the former of which has since been revealed as her second largest political donor. Modern-day presidential campaigns can’t be run on a shoestring – the 2012 race exceeded $1 billion in campaign spending and in 2008, Goldman Sachs exceeded every other corporation in spending for Obama.
Hillary Clinton’s list of donor buddies stretches far beyond the 1200 yards of Wall Street, and considering how banks and war are leading the pack, the damage wrought by them does too. If she wins the 2016 election, America is guaranteed four more disastrous years of neoliberalism and war.
Ming Chun Tang
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Abby Martin talks about Clinton’s horrible track record on foreign policy and war mongering on Breaking the Set.
Hillary Clinton 2016: Recipe for Endless War
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Follow @AbbyMartin
Photo by FLICKR user Rona Proudfoot
We have 2 right wing parties in the US. The democratic party is leftist only when compared to the Republicans.
Both parties compete w/ each other to reap the windfalls of political office. Their constituents are just a widget they use to get elected. Their loyalty is to money, power and ego. Same shit different day.
The problem is the electorate. They might complain but the reality is that we love the status quo. We support change as long as the “other people” have to do it. No one wants to know the truth or pay the price living in it. At least for most of us… this is a fact.
Not to mention visiting wartorn congo and remaining completely SILENT about the u.s. funded rape holocaust that has happened there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLV9szEu9Ag