Last October, during the first Democratic primary debate, when the issue of Wall Street money came up, Senator Sanders asked, “Well, why do they make millions of dollars in campaign contributions? They expect to get something, everybody knows that.”
Clinton’s response, even by her supporters’ standards, was noteworthy for its embarrassing cringe-factor when she invoked 911, as well as her many women donors.
”Oh, wait a minute, senator. You know, not only do I have hundreds of thousands of donors, most of them small, and I'm very proud that for the first time a majority of my donors are women, 60%. [Cheers and applause.] So I— I represented New York, and I represented New York on 9/11 when we were attacked. Where were we attacked? We were attacked in downtown Manhattan where Wall Street is. I did spend a whole lot of time and effort helping them rebuild. That was good for New York. It was good for the economy, and it was a way to rebuke the terrorists who had attacked our country.”
www.slate.com/...
The Washington Post followed up on Clinton’s Giulianism in the article Hillary Clinton invoked 9/11 to defend her ties to Wall Street. What? www.washingtonpost.com/…
Nearly 3,000 people lost their lives on 9/11, on American soil. The country's sense of safety was forever changed. New and still-relevant questions about how to balance security and liberty remain. And just the day before Saturday's debate, millions of Americans watched in horror as France, this country's first ally, endured its own large-scale terrorist attack. Especially in this context, it was not -- and on this there really is little room for debate -- appropriate to summon the memories of 9/11 or the fallout from a terrorist attack to explain her connections to Wall Street and its campaign cash.
In the days following 9/11, after attending a memorial service with Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, nephew of King Abdullah, offered New York City a relief check in the amount of $10M dollars to help the families of the victims, which Giuliani initially accepted. But then the Prince made a public statement suggesting that the United States brought the attacks on itself vis-à-vis it’s stance on Palestinians:
But in a written statement handed out by his publicist, the prince said: "At times like this one, we must address some of the issues that led to such a criminal attack. I believe the government of the United States of America should re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stance toward the Palestinian cause." www.cbsnews.com/...
Naturally, such an idea was immediately denounced, and Giuliani publicly spurned the $10M check from Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.
It should be noted that by invoking the Palestinian cause as a possible reason for the 911 terror attacks, Prince Talal basically placed them at the forefront of the American consciousness as being equal with radical Islamic terror.
The events of September 11, 2001 were a great shock to the American people, it was beyond the comprehension of so many. People were justifiably and rightfully terrified.
While Americans were sorting out what had just happened to them, a great propaganda campaign was taking place vilifying Islam, Muslims, Arabs, Pakistanis but most of all, Palestinians. As American and Israeli flags flew in tandem in cities all across America, an endless loop of the now debunked “dancing Palestinians” was played non-stop on FOX News in between reruns of the planes crashing into the buildings and pictures of Osama bin Laden.
The loudest bullhorn in the right wing noise machine indisputably belongs to FOX News, which incidentally, first aired in 1996 during the Clinton Administration.
I don’t think anyone on DailyKos could deny that FOX News is propaganda. Which makes it especially interesting that Clinton foundation donor, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the same Saudi prince whose millions were eschewed by New York City, owned 5% of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, the parent company of FOX news. While 5% is not a lot, he was nevertheless the second largest stakeholder in Murdoch’s News Corporation. (The Prince’s stake in News Corporation later rose slightly to about 7%, before it was dissolved.)
The Prince, who by all accounts at least sounds like he is sympathetic to the cause of Palestinians, not to mention the Clintons, allowed FOX News to endless air criticisms of the Clintons and dancing Palestinians. It’s interesting that FOX News first aired during the Clinton administration, giving rise to the “new” right wing noise machine, once the purview of religious leaders and the 700 Club. The 90s also saw the beginnings of CNN, now owned by another Clinton donor, Turner.
The Clintons have a long history with the Saudi royals going all the way back to Bill Clinton’s college days, where he attended Georgetown University with Prince Turki bin Feisal, a cousin of Alwaleed bin Talal who, until 2001, was the director general of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence agency, Al Mukhabarat Al A’amah. en.wikipedia.org/...
As far back as 1989, Bill Clinton was attempting to get the Saudis to donate more than a million dollars to fund a Middle Eastern studies program at the University of Arkansas. Negotiations included a meeting with Prince Bandar bin Sultan in 1991, who is also a close friend of the Bush family, who affectionately referred to him as “Bandar Bush.”
As the Gulf War intervened, no money for the project was to be forthcoming until 1992, when the first donation of $3.5 million was received. A second donation of $20 million came a few weeks after Bill Clinton’s inauguration.
When Hillary was running for President in 2008, under scrutiny for their Saudi ties by the press, the Clinton foundation officially stopped accepting donations from Saudis, however other foreign interests were still able to donate. www.washingtonpost.com/...
“For instance, the organization is not currently accepting new donations from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which has donated between $10 million and $25 million to the foundation in the past. However, a charitable foundation started by Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal donated this year.”
In April of 2015, McClatchy DC reported that:
“Four oil-rich Arab nations, all with histories of philanthropy to the United Nations and Middle Eastern causes, have donated vastly more money to the Clinton Foundation than they have to most other large private charities involved in the kinds of global work championed b the Clinton family.” www.mcclatchydc.com/...
In the 13 year period from 2001 to 2014, the Clinton Foundation received between $18 and $50 million from middle eastern countries, between $10 and $25 million of that amount coming from the Saudis.
There is nothing untoward or illegal about these donations, but it is still odd when one considers that several other well-known charities, such as the Red Cross, doing similar work as the Clinton Foundation, received only a fraction of the amount of donations made by Arab countries to the Clinton Foundation.
In light of that disparity, the McClatchy articles goes on to note that:
“[T]he level of Arab support for the Clinton Foundation, which occurred during the time Hillary Clinton was a U.S. senator, was seeking the Democratic nomination for president against Barack Obama, and was serving as secretary of state, fuels questions about the reasons for the donations. Were they solely to support the foundation’s causes or were they designed to curry favor with the ex-president and with a potential future president?”
In February of last year, CNN reported on a story in relation to a lawsuit regarding 911, in which Zacarious Moussaoui, described as “the 20th hijacker,” implicated several Saudi royals in funding the Al Qaeda 911 terror attacks, including Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and Prince Turki bin Feisal. Of course Moussaoui’s credibility should be called into question, but CNN’s article noted that the 911 Commission Report concluded:
"It does not appear that any government other than the Taliban financially supported al Qaeda before 9/11, although some governments may have contained al Qaeda sympathizers who turned a blind eye to al Qaeda's fund-raising activities," the report said. "Saudi Arabia has long been considered the primary source of al Qaeda funding, but we have found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization."
Still, the report noted in parentheses, "This conclusion does not exclude the likelihood that charities with significant Saudi government sponsorship diverted funds to al Qaeda." (Emphasis mine.)
Last May, Mother Jones reported:
In 2011, the State Department cleared an enormous arms deal: Led by Boeing, a consortium of American defense contractors would deliver $29 billion worth of advanced fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, despite concerns over the kingdom's troublesome human rights record. In the years before Hillary Clinton became secretary of state, Saudi Arabia had contributed $10 million to the Clinton Foundation, and just two months before the jet deal was finalized, Boeing donated $900,000 to the Clinton Foundation, according to an International Business Timesinvestigation released Tuesday.
The Saudi transaction is just one example of nations and companies that had donated to the Clinton Foundation seeing an increase in arms deals while Hillary Clinton oversaw the State Department. IBT found that between October 2010 and September 2012, State approved $165 billion in commercial arms sales to 20 nations that had donated to the foundation, plus another $151 billion worth of Pentagon-brokered arms deals to 16 of those countries—a 143 percent increase over the same time frame under the Bush Administration. The sales boosted the military power of authoritarian regimes such as Qatar, Algeria, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman, which, like Saudi Arabia, had been criticized by the department for human rights abuses. www.motherjones.com/...
Hillary Clinton often proclaims to care so much about women, touting them as comprising 60% of her donors. I don’t see how invoking them justifies her predilection for Wall Street largesse any more than invoking 911 does. At the same time, the Clintons maintain their deep connection to the Saudi monarchy (long-suspected but never proven to have funded 911), who have robbed the women of their country of their agency. Women in Saudi Arabia are publicly beaten and humiliated for daring to show their face, or an ankle under their long, dark dehumanizing shrouds of modesty. They cannot even drive cars.
If I asked a friend to help me, would I believe her promises to do so if she accepted millions of dollars from my oppressors?
I question why her foundation has received money from a source so odious, that even Rudy Giuliani, King of 911 invocation propaganda, found too repugnant.
Craig Unger, author of House of Bush, House of Saud :
[S]aid he thinks the gifts to Mr. Clinton's library pale in comparison to business deals that Mr. Bush's family has done with the Saudis. The author said the gifts to ex-presidents are designed to encourage a pro-Saudi attitude on the part of present or future occupants of the White House. "It would be surprising if they didn't give," Mr. Unger said."The Saudis have given to every presidential library for the last 30 years, Republican and Democrat." www.nysun.com/...
This is the rank hypocrisy of Clinton invoking 911 to defend her Wall Street ties lain bare.
Consider: the House of Clinton’s relationship to the House of Saud are even more dubious, and more lucrative, than it was for the House of Bush.
When the very right wing noise machine that’s been hounding her for years is partly owned by a generous donor to her foundation, I wonder just how much of that noise is orchestrated to keep us little people, as she recently described us to her Wall Street backers, distracted.
The power of propaganda is fierce, my friends, and if you are still supporting former secretary of state Clinton even after revelation upon revelation of lying, pandering, dubious financial relationships and outright corruption, I suggest that you are under it’s dominance.