BEHIND CLOSED DOORS on the paid speaking circuit, Hillary Clinton was far more candid than she has been in public about her prominent role as Secretary of State in exporting American-style hydraulic fracturing — the controversial, environmentally damaging technique best known as fracking — to countries all over the world.

“I’ve promoted fracking in other places around the world,” she declared during a 2013 paid talk to Deutsche Bank, adding that she launched a new wing of the State Department devoted to the initiative.

During a paid speech in Canada the following year, Clinton touted her role in “accelerating” natural gas development in Europe, calling attention to Poland’s embrace of fracking as a positive step.

The contrast with the rhetoric Clinton has used on the campaign trail is striking. Clinton has rarely spoken in public of her role selling fracking abroad, and at times positioned herself as a skeptic of the controversial drilling technique. In the lead-up to the New York Democratic primary, Clinton’s campaign released a television advertisement that gave the impression that she has worked to discourage fracking.

The remarks were quoted in an attachment to one of the hacked emails belonging to campaign chairman John Podesta that were posted by WikiLeaks on Friday. Two days after we asked Clinton in Manchester, N.H., in January to release her Goldman Sachs transcripts, Clinton campaign deputy research director Carter Hutchinson reviewed all her paid speech transcripts in an 80-page report highlighting potential political fallout. It was sent to Podesta and other top campaign aides by Tony Carrk, Clinton’s research director. Carrk did not respond to a request for comment.

Clinton’s decision to use fracking as a diplomatic tool has been chronicled by Mother Jones and The Intercept.

Earlier this year, we obtained emails from Clinton aides discussing plans to make Poland a “laboratory for testing whether U.S. success in developing shale gas can be repeated in a different country.” The emails also revealed efforts to partner with energy companies such as Chevron and Marathon Oil.

Starting early in her tenure as Secretary of State, Clinton traveled the globe encouraging foreign countries to adopt fracking technology. Clinton has both publicly and privately explained that she views fracking, under the right circumstances, as the most environmentally sound method of transitioning away from other fossil fuels such as oil and coal. She has also said that fracking can make the U.S. and other nations energy independent, a foreign policy goal that may weaken gas exporting countries such as Russia.

But in private, Clinton also asserted that there is a conspiracy of Russian-funded groups attempting to suppress fracking development. During a speech to a group in Canada called tinePublic, Clinton claimed that there are “phony environmental groups” that are “funded by the Russians to stand against” fracking.

It wasn’t clear which groups Clinton was referring to during those remarks. The Clinton campaign has not responded to a request for comment.

https://theintercept.com/2016/10/10/clinton-fracking-theworld/

Hillary Clinton Privately Pitched Corporations on “Really Low” Tax Rate for Money Stashed Abroad

Jon Schwarz
Oct. 10 2016, 6:17 p.m.

IN PUBLIC, TOP Hillary Clinton surrogate Neera Tanden said at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia that there’s no need to cut the federal corporate tax rate from its current 35 percent.

But in private, Clinton says something quite different to corporations and trade groups.

An 80-page report compiled by Clinton’s own campaign of potentially damaging remarks she made behind closed doors was published by Wikileaks on Friday. It includes extensive comments on tax policy.

During an October 13, 2014, speech to the Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers, Clinton told the audience that “A number of business leaders have been talking to my husband and me about an idea that would allow the repatriation of the couple trillion dollars that are out there. And you would get a lower rate — a really low rate — if you were willing to invest a percentage in an infrastructure bank.”

Clinton has repeatedly called for increased spending on U.S. infrastructure, but has never specified where the needed revenue would come from.

In a speech the previous month to the Cardiovascular Research Foundation, Clinton also said that a lower rate for all corporate profits regardless of where they are earned “certainly could be on the table” as long as that was “part of a broader package.” However, she specified that “if all you do is lower the rates” that “there’s a price to pay” in terms of lower tax revenue.

American multinational corporations are currently stashing a staggering $2.4 trillion in profits — about 14 percent of the size of the entire U.S. economy — overseas. Multinationals are required by U.S. law to pay the statutory 35 percent tax on profits they earn anywhere on earth, but the tax is not assessed until the profits are brought back to the U.S.

This has allowed Corporate America to essentially hold U.S. tax revenue hostage, refusing to pay its taxes until Americans become so desperate that they will cut a deal giving multinationals a special new tax rate.

This strategy has already paid off once, in 2004, when multinationals got Congress to let them bring back $312 billion in profits at a one-time rate of about 5 percent. The legislation required that the cash be used to hire Americans or conduct research and development. Corporations ignored these provisions and instead used the money to enrich their executives and stockholders, while cutting U.S. jobs.

Both Hillary and Bill Clinton clearly envision cutting a similar deal during a Hillary Clinton presidency, although presumably they intend for the corporations to keep their part of the bargain this time.

Just last month, Bill Clinton told the audience at a Clinton Foundation Event that the corporate tax rate “should be lowered” with “X percent of [repatriated profits], whatever percent, [going] into buying investments in the national infrastructure program.” Clinton added, “This is just me now, I’m not speaking for …” and then trailed off.
Hillary Clinton said the same thing during a private August 2014 speech to the software storage company Nexenta: “I would like to find a way to repatriate the overseas earnings and I’ve read a really interesting proposal. … John Chambers and others … basically have said they would be willing to invest a percentage of their repatriated profits in an infrastructure bank … I thought that was a really intriguing idea.”

Chambers was the CEO of Cisco at the time, and a vociferous proponent of corporations refusing to bring their profits home until they receive such a sweetheart deal.

Donald Trump has a similar plan to slash corporate tax rates to 15 percent (with a special rate for repatriated profits of 10 percent) although without requirements for corporations to participate in funding an infrastructure bank.

https://theintercept.com/2016/10/10/hillary-clinton-privately-pitched-corporations-on-really-low-tax-rate-for-money-stashed-abroad/

In Secret Goldman Sachs Speech, Hillary Clinton Admitted No-Fly Zone Would “Kill a Lot of Syrians”

Zaid Jilani
Oct. 10 2016, 4:46 p.m.

HILLARY CLINTON reiterated her unreserved support for both a “no-fly zone” and “safe zones” in Syria during Sunday’s presidential debate — but in a partial transcript of private remarks she made at a Goldman Sachs event in 2013, she acknowledged some of the complications involved.

Her comments were included in an 80-page report prepared by the Clinton campaign listing the most politically damaging quotes from Clinton’s paid speeches, which she has refused to make public. Among the recipients of that report was Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, whose hacked emails were posted by WikiLeaks on Friday.

In her remarks to Goldman Sachs, Clinton pointed to the Syrian government’s air defense systems, and noted that destroying them would take the lives of many Syrian civilians.

“They’re getting more sophisticated thanks to Russian imports. To have a no-fly zone you have to take out all of the air defense, many of which are located in populated areas. So our missiles, even if they are standoff missiles so we’re not putting our pilots at risk—you’re going to kill a lot of Syrians,” she said. “So all of a sudden this intervention that people talk about so glibly becomes an American and NATO involvement where you take a lot of civilians.”

She also addressed how much harder it would be to intervene in Syria, compared to Libya.

“In Libya we didn’t have that problem. It’s a huge place. The air defenses were not that sophisticated and there wasn’t very—in fact, there were very few civilian casualties. That wouldn’t be the case,” she noted. “And then you add on to it a lot of the air defenses are not only in civilian population centers but near some of their chemical stockpiles. You do not want a missile hitting a chemical stockpile.”

While Clinton admitted these complications in establishing a no-fly zone, she also urged other forms of intervention. “And there is still an argument that goes on inside the administration and inside our friends at NATO and the Europeans. How do intervene—my view was you intervene as covertly as is possible for Americans to intervene. We used to be much better at this than we are now,” she said.

She also explained how in her view the civil war could have been avoided by offering concessions to the Syrian people, saying that Syrian leader “[Bashar Al-] Assad very well could have in my view bought them off with some cosmetic changes that would not have resulted in what we have seen over the now two years and the hundred thousand deaths and the destabilization that is going on” in the region.

At the Jewish United Fund Advance & Major Gifts Dinner in October 2013, she blamed Saudi Arabia for complicating efforts to arm ideologically moderate Syrian rebels — pointing to indiscriminate Saudi arming of a wide variety of groups.

“Some of us thought, perhaps, we could, with a more robust, covert action trying to vet, identify, train and arm cadres of rebels that would at least have the firepower to be able to protect themselves against both Assad and the Al-Qaeda-related jihadist groups that have, unfortunately, been attracted to Syria,” she noted. “That’s been complicated by the fact that the Saudis and others are shipping large amounts of weapons—and pretty indiscriminately—not at all targeted toward the people that we think would be the more moderate, least likely, to cause problems in the future, but this is another one of those very tough analytical problems.”

https://theintercept.com/2016/10/10/in-secret-goldman-sachs-speech-hillary-clinton-admitted-no-fly-zone-would-kill-a-lot-of-syrians/

Fidel Castro: Both Trump and Obama Discredited After 1st Debate

http://www.telesurtv.net/__export/1476054192036/sites/telesur/img/news/2016/10/09/fidel-castro.jpg_1718483346.jpg_1718483346.jpg
Revolutionary Cuban leader Fidel Castro. | Photo: AFP

Published 9 October 2016

Cuba's historic leader said the first debate completely discredited Trump as well as current Democratic President Barack Obama.
A few hours ahead of the second debate between U.S. presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the revolutionary leader slammed the quality of U.S. democracy in a column published Sunday by Cuba Debate.

“Let's not forget that this Sunday there will be a debate between the (U.S. presidential) candidates,” said the former Cuban president in a column titled, “The Uncertain Destiny of the Human Species.”

“Two weeks ago, the first debate was a shock. Mr. Trump, allegedly a competent expert, was discredited as much as President Barack Obama's policies. They shall be awarded the medal of mud.”

The U.S., "the most powerful imperialist country that has ever existed” is “deceiving itself by pretending that its foreign policy consists in applying the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," he added.

During the first debate, Trump repeatedly questioned Obama's policies in relation to the Middle East, the economic crisis, and police brutality in the U.S., among others. He blamed Obama and Clinton, during her tenure as secretary of state, for the surging growth of the Islamic State group after the U.S. military “abandoned” Iraq.

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Fidel-Castro-Both-Trump-and-Obama-Discredited-After-1st-Debate-20161009-0014.html