John Pilger: Why Hillary Clinton Is More Dangerous Than Donald Trump

[Sophocles]

Unprecedented Crisis, Collapse of the Clinton Apparatus? Hacker Whistleblowers, Trump, and the FBI Converge

By Larry Chin
Global Research
November 01, 2016

It is far from over. Expect October Surprises, November Surprises, and the unprecedented.



With one week left in the most chaotic and dangerous presidential contest in American history, the Hillary Rodham Clinton campaign is damaged and sinking. Even the propaganda protection of the Clinton-controlled mainstream corporate media is starting to buckle.

Hillary Clinton is being bombshelled on a daily basis by hacker whistleblowers led by Wikileaks.

Companion sites such as Most Damning Wikileaks, which sorts the raw data and provides analysis, have also been in overdrive.

Countless Web/social media-based investigators, journalists and activists (Anonymous, DC Leaks, Guccifer 2.0, Michael Trimm, H.A. Goodman, Styxhexenhammer666, and anonymous posters at 4Chan, to name just a few), Project Veritas, Judicial Watch, and surging populist forces behind Donald Trump, are exposing the Clinton machine from every angle. There are still more bombshells to come.

Now the FBI has opened two new investigations into Hillary Clinton’s emails.

The most recent Wikileaks exposures provide clear evidence that Hillary Clinton and her team of aides and operatives knowingly used unencrypted private computers to conduct secret business (including exchanging classified information), knowingly tried to hide and destroy evidence of this activity, and were involved in an active cover-up.

Emails of Clinton associate Cheryl Mills also implicate President Barack Obama. Obama not only knew about Clinton’s private server, he knowingly communicated with Clinton via this private server.

It is believed that the overwhelming amount of significant evidence compelled the FBI to act.

At the center of it all is top Clinton aide Huma Abedin. The FBI has found some 650,000 emails on the computers and devices of Abedin and her estranged husband, former congressman Anthony Weiner. The classified Clinton-related emails were a surprise discovery made in the course of FBI’s investigation into Weiner’s pedophilia case. The Department of Justice has obtained warrant to search multiple Abedin/Weiner computers.



What the new stash contains is being sorted out and catalogued by the FBI. The sheer number of surprise new emails raises questions all by itself.

What exactly were Hillary and her team trying to hide? Was Clinton running secret operations, with Obama’s knowledge and participation, via private devices? If so, what were these secret operations? Was it to hide “shadow government” foreign policy, and “off the books” activities?

Or was it about hiding the criminal activities of the Clinton Foundation, which has already been exposed by Wikileaks as a (very Iran-Contra) front for the covert funding of terrorists (including ISIS, via Saudi Arabia and Qatar), influence peddling, pay-for-play schemes, money laundering, fraud, weapons deals, and other crimes?

Was it to hide personal depravity along the lines of pedophilia and connections to a larger Washington pedophilia ring?

Will the new investigation go beyond the violation of security procedures, to the issue of criminal intent, as well as the evidence of crimes contained in the emails themselves?

Indictments are being prepared.

The FBI decision in context



Both FBI Director James Comey and Attorney General Loretta Lynch (right) are compromised individuals with deep ties to the Clintons. Why did Comey take action at this time? Lynch was pressured or blackmailed by Bill Clinton to stop the initial investigation of Hillary, but did not, or could not, stand in the way of this round.

President Obama has adopted a “neutral” stance. Obama has also stopped campaigning for or with Hillary.

The fact that these Clinton surrogates and Obama (an important Hillary cheerleader), are now “turning against Hillary” speaks volumes:


1. There is so much damning evidence that new probes had to be opened, according to the Hatch Act, which would make it a crime for Comey not to take action. So much that not even Comey/Lynch/Obama can cover for Hillary any longer.

2. Serious internal pressure within the FBI itself caused Comey to do his job, or face a mutiny. Many FBI agents were furious about how Comey let Clinton off the hook the first time. Comey is now “covering his rear end”.

3. Clinton’s campaign is damaged, possibly beyond repair. “Rats are jumping off the sinking ship”. The Democratic establishment may be forced to consider a backup plan to replace Clinton (with Tim Kaine) or cancel the election by some other means.

4. Now that his own security-breaching communications with Clinton via her private server have been exposed by Wikileaks, Obama is distancing himself from Clinton, a major blow to Hillary’s campaign.

5. Some skeptical observers have proposed that the FBI investigation could be a smokescreen diversion, a distraction from more potentially damaging, game-ending material expected to be released by Wikileaks and other sources in the coming week. However, it does appear that the actual “smoking guns” are so numerous and blatant, that the Clintons are in real trouble.

The Democratic Party establishment is in panic mode. They have resorted again to blaming Russia. Comey is being attacked as a Russian agent. Comey (left) has now become as much of a target as Trump, who continues to be accused of being a Russian spy.



The weak and empty response by an already weakened Hillary and the Democratic Party leadership is a sure sign that the election could very well be lost.

All the queen’s women and men

In the Watergate scandal, Nixon’s surrogates took the fall, and Gerald Ford pardoned him. In Iran-Contra, numerous operatives “fell on the sword” to protect the Bushes and the CIA.

What fate awaits Hillary Clinton?

Will Hillary’s operatives (Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills, Neara Tanden, John Podesta, Bob Creamer, etc.) protect her, or turn on her? Who will be left to protect her?

Democratic National Committee chair Donna Brazile, a faithful Clinton surrogate, has been forced to resign, after Wikileaks exposed the fact that she helped Hillary cheat in two debates. (Brazile was abused by Hillary in meltdown mode after she had failed to effectively help Hillary cheat her way through a panel with NBC’s Matt Lauer. She will no longer have to put up with being called a “cow” by Clinton.)

Saudi-born (Muslim Brotherhood-connected) Huma Abedin, perhaps the key figure in the case, has asked for immunity. If Abedin tells the truth, she could destroy the Clintons, and be in danger for the rest of her life. Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s most personal aide, has been missing, not been seen with Hillary or the campaign in days.

On the other hand, it would not be surprising if Abedin resorts to pleading the Fifth, or the favorite technique used by the guilty: repeatedly saying “I don’t recall”. Huma has already suggested she had “no idea” how the emails wound up on her computer.

It seems that some of the incriminating documents are contained in a file titled “Life Insurance”. This suggests that Abedin stashed incriminating material for insurance in the event that the Clintons threatened her life.

Weiner, however, is a different matter. He is not beholden to the Clintons, and could be more inclined to “sing”.

The first of a new kind of information war

The incendiary warfare for this election, and the control of the US government is all happening without the knowledge of the large segment of the ambivalent/ignorant population that relies exclusively on mainstream (Clinton-dominated) corporate media.

The war for information is being fought entirely on the Web and, as exemplified by the Clinton scandals, the battle is over the contents of computer data. Corporate broadcast and print media has not covered much of the action at all. Within the corporate media bubble, Hillary still retains a lead, Trump is still a pervert and a madman, and the FBI is on a puzzling witch hunt. But even this bubble is beginning to burst. Hillary is in so much trouble, that even the corporate media is starting to be forced to report.

There is a strong possibility that this election will be fought and decided without the participation of this left-out segment.

These people will be shocked, surprised and baffled by it all. There is not much time left to get them to begin to understand.

Unprecedented crisis

Hillary Clinton and her campaign have been severely damaged by resistance from all sides. According to conditions on the ground, and according to a growing number of the more accurate national polls, Trump is surging. He may even have a significant lead.

However, the election has already been rigged and stolen for a Clinton victory. They have the means, the technology, and it is already happening. The question now is whether the FBI investigation, and last minute bombshells from Wikileaks, completely changes the landscape in the remaining days.

This conflict will last well beyond the election and its result.

Nixon won the presidential election in 1972 in a landslide, but was forced to leave office because of Watergate.

Even if Clinton gets her way, she will be also be scandalized and investigated a la Nixon. A constitutional crisis is virtually guaranteed. She could be indicted before or after taking office. She could be pardoned by Obama. She could be impeached. In the unlikely event that she survives all of that, resistance to her will be never-ending. She is so corrupt, and has antagonized so many people and nations, that will not be able to govern or conduct diplomacy in any case.

In the short term, the possibility of a major false flag event to distract from, and cancel election, remains the biggest and most terrifying scenario. And/or a martial law crackdown on the US in the event of civil unrest caused by a contested election.

More bombshells, possibly the biggest ones yet, have been promised for the final weeks and days, including more Wikileaks, more from Project Veritas, more from Anonymous.

It is far from over. Expect October Surprises, November Surprises, and the unprecedented.

The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Larry Chin, Global Research, 2016

Source

[Cidersomerset]

WIKILEAKS 26 JUST RELEASED: DOJ Illegally Helps Clinton Campaign. Clinton Takes Prison Lobby Money

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=8P7OFsRN5Uc

Published on 2 Nov 2016

My name is H. A. Goodman and I’m an author, columnist, and journalist www.hagoodman.com
MY NEW DAILY CALLER ARTICLE: http://dailycaller.com/2016/11/01/thi...
WIKILEAKS 26 IS OUT https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/...

[Sophocles]

Assange: Clinton & ISIS funded by same money, Trump won’t be allowed to win (JOHN PILGER EXCLUSIVE)

Rt.com
4 Nov, 2016 05:00

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=k9xbokQO4M0

In the second excerpt from the John Pilger Special, to be exclusively broadcast by RT on Saturday, courtesy of Dartmouth Films, Julian Assange accuses Hillary Clinton of misleading Americans about the true scope of Islamic State’s support from Washington’s Middle East allies.

In a 2014 email made public by Assange’s WikiLeaks last month, Hillary Clinton, who had served as secretary of state until the year before, urges John Podesta, then an advisor to Barack Obama, to “bring pressure” on Qatar and Saudi Arabia, “which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL [Islamic State, IS, ISIS] and other radical Sunni groups.”

“I think this is the most significant email in the whole collection,” Assange, whose whistleblowing site released three tranches of Clinton-related emails over the past year, told Pilger in an exclusive interview, courtesy of Dartmouth Films.

“All serious analysts know, and even the US government has agreed, that some Saudi figures have been supporting ISIS and funding ISIS, but the dodge has always been that it is some “rogue” princes using their oil money to do whatever they like, but actually the government disapproves. But that email says that it is the government of Saudi Arabia, and the government of Qatar that have been funding ISIS.”

Assange and Pilger, who sat down for their 25-minute interview at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where the whistleblower has been a refugee since 2012, then talk about the conflict of interest between Clinton’s official post, which held throughout Obama’s first term, her husband’s nonprofit, and the Middle East officials, whose stated desire to fight terrorism may not have been sincere.

John Pilger: The Saudis, the Qataris, the Moroccans, the Bahrainis, particularly the first two, are giving all this money to the Clinton Foundation, while Hillary Clinton is secretary of state, and the State Department is approving massive arms sales, particularly Saudi Arabia.

Julian Assange: Under Hillary Clinton – and the Clinton emails reveal a significant discussion of it – the biggest-ever arms deal in the world was made with Saudi Arabia: more than $80 billion. During her tenure, the total arms exports from the US doubled in dollar value.

JP: Of course, the consequence of that is that this notorious jihadist group, called ISIL or ISIS, is created largely with money from people who are giving money to the Clinton Foundation?

JA: Yes.

Pilger also questioned Assange over increasingly frequent accusations from the Clinton camp, and Western media, that WikiLeaks is looking to swing next week’s US presidential election in favor of Donald Trump – perhaps at Russia’s behest.

But Assange dismissed the prospect of Trump, who is behind in the polls, winning as unlikely – and not necessarily due to his standing with the electorate.

“My analysis is that Trump would not be permitted to win. Why do I say that? Because he has had every establishment off his side. Trump does not have one establishment, maybe with the exception of the Evangelicals, if you can call them an establishment,” said Assange. “Banks, intelligence, arms companies, foreign money, etc. are all united behind Hillary Clinton. And the media as well. Media owners, and the journalists themselves.”

Source

PS! I posted this before I saw your (Cider`s) posts on other threads regarding the same issue.

[Sophocles]

A Deep State of Mind: America’s Shadow Government and Its Silent Coup

counterpunch.org
October 26, 2016
by John W. Whitehead


Photo by Diego Torres Silvestre | CC BY 2.0

Today the path to total dictatorship in the U.S. can be laid by strictly legal means, unseen and unheard by Congress, the President, or the people. Outwardly we have a Constitutional government. We have operating within our government and political system … a well-organized political-action group in this country, determined to destroy our Constitution and establish a one-party state…. The important point to remember about this group is not its ideology but its organization… It operates secretly, silently, continuously to transform our Government…. This group … is answerable neither to the President, the Congress, nor the courts. It is practically irremovable.”

— Senator William Jenner, 1954 speech

Unaffected by elections. Unaltered by populist movements. Beyond the reach of the law.

Say hello to America’s shadow government.

A corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country, this shadow government represents the hidden face of a government that has no respect for the freedom of its citizenry.

No matter which candidate wins the presidential election, this shadow government is here to stay. Indeed, as recent documents by the FBI reveal, this shadow government—also referred to as “The 7th Floor Group”—may well have played a part in who will win the White House this year.

To be precise, however, the future president will actually inherit not one but two shadow governments.

The first shadow government, referred to as COG or Continuity of Government, is made up of unelected individuals who have been appointed to run the government in the event of a “catastrophe.” COG is a phantom menace waiting for the right circumstances—a terrorist attack, a natural disaster, an economic meltdown—to bring it out of the shadows, where it operates even now. When and if COG takes over, the police state will transition to martial law.

Yet it is the second shadow government—also referred to as the Deep State—that poses the greater threat to freedom right now. Comprised of unelected government bureaucrats, corporations, contractors, paper-pushers, and button-pushers who are actually calling the shots behind the scenes, this government within a government is the real reason “we the people” have no real control over our government.

The Deep State, which “operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power,” makes a mockery of elections and the entire concept of a representative government.

So who or what is the Deep State?

It’s the militarized police, which have joined forces with state and federal law enforcement agencies in order to establish themselves as a standing army. It’s the fusion centers and spy agencies that have created a surveillance state and turned all of us into suspects. It’s the courthouses and prisons that have allowed corporate profits to take precedence over due process and justice. It’s the military empire with its private contractors and defense industry that is bankrupting the nation. It’s the private sector with its 854,000 contract personnel with top-secret clearances, “a number greater than that of top-secret-cleared civilian employees of the government.” It’s what former congressional staffer Mike Lofgren refers to as “a hybrid of national security and law enforcement agencies”: the Department of Defense, the State Department, Homeland Security, the CIA, the Justice Department, the Treasury, the Executive Office of the President via the National Security Council, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a handful of vital federal trial courts, and members of the defense and intelligence committees.

It’s every facet of a government that is no longer friendly to freedom and is working overtime to trample the Constitution underfoot and render the citizenry powerless in the face of the government’s power grabs, corruption and abusive tactics.

These are the key players that drive the shadow government.

This is the hidden face of the American police state that will continue long past Election Day.

Just consider some of the key programs and policies advanced by the shadow government that will continue no matter who occupies the Oval Office.

Domestic surveillance.

No matter who wins the presidential popularity contest, the National Security Agency (NSA), with its $10.8 billion black ops annual budget, will continue to spy on every person in the United States who uses a computer or phone. Thus, on any given day, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency, whether the NSA or some other entity, is listening in and tracking your behavior. Local police have been outfitted with a litany of surveillance gear, from license plate readers and cell phone tracking devices to biometric data recorders. Technology now makes it possible for the police to scan passersby in order to detect the contents of their pockets, purses, briefcases, etc. Full-body scanners, which perform virtual strip-searches of Americans traveling by plane, have gone mobile, with roving police vans that peer into vehicles and buildings alike—including homes. Coupled with the nation’s growing network of real-time surveillance cameras and facial recognition software, soon there really will be nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

Global spying.

The NSA’s massive surveillance network, what the Washington Post refers to as a $500 billion “espionage empire,” will continue to span the globe and target every single person on the planet who uses a phone or a computer. The NSA’s Echelon program intercepts and analyzes virtually every phone call, fax and email message sent anywhere in the world. In addition to carrying out domestic surveillance on peaceful political groups such as Amnesty International, Greenpeace and several religious groups, Echelon has also been a keystone in the government’s attempts at political and corporate espionage.

Roving TSA searches.

The American taxpayer will continue to get ripped off by government agencies in the dubious name of national security. One of the greatest culprits when it comes to swindling taxpayers has been the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), with its questionable deployment of and complete mismanagement of millions of dollars’ worth of airport full-body X-ray scanners, punitive patdowns by TSA agents and thefts of travelers’ valuables. Considered essential to national security, TSA programs will continue in airports and at transportation hubs around the country.

USA Patriot Act, NDAA.

America’s so-called war on terror, which it has relentlessly pursued since 9/11, will continue to chip away at our freedoms, unravel our Constitution and transform our nation into a battlefield, thanks in large part to such subversive legislation as the USA Patriot Act and National Defense Authorization Act. These laws completely circumvent the rule of law and the rights of American citizens. In so doing, they re-orient our legal landscape in such a way as to ensure that martial law, rather than the U.S. Constitution, is the map by which we navigate life in the United States. These laws will continue to be enforced no matter who gets elected.

Militarized police state.

Thanks to federal grant programs allowing the Pentagon to transfer surplus military supplies and weapons to local law enforcement agencies without charge, police forces will continue to be transformed from peace officers into heavily armed extensions of the military, complete with jackboots, helmets, shields, batons, pepper-spray, stun guns, assault rifles, body armor, miniature tanks and weaponized drones. Having been given the green light to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, all with the general blessing of the courts, America’s law enforcement officials, no longer mere servants of the people entrusted with keeping the peace, will continue to keep the masses corralled, controlled, and treated like suspects and enemies rather than citizens.

SWAT team raids.

With more than 80,000 SWAT team raids carried out every year on unsuspecting Americans by local police for relatively routine police matters and federal agencies laying claim to their own law enforcement divisions, the incidence of botched raids and related casualties will continue to rise. Nationwide, SWAT teams will continue to be employed to address an astonishingly trivial array of criminal activity or mere community nuisances including angry dogs, domestic disputes, improper paperwork filed by an orchid farmer, and misdemeanor marijuana possession.

Domestic drones.

The domestic use of drones will continue unabated. As mandated by Congress, there will be 30,000 drones crisscrossing the skies of America by 2020, all part of an industry that could be worth as much as $30 billion per year. These machines, which will be equipped with weapons, will be able to record all activities, using video feeds, heat sensors and radar. An Inspector General report revealed that the Dept. of Justice has already spent nearly $4 million on drones domestically, largely for use by the FBI, with grants for another $1.26 million so police departments and nonprofits can acquire their own drones.

School-to-prison pipeline.

The paradigm of abject compliance to the state will continue to be taught by example in the schools, through school lockdowns where police and drug-sniffing dogs enter the classroom, and zero tolerance policies that punish all offenses equally and result in young people being expelled for childish behavior. School districts will continue to team up with law enforcement to create a “schoolhouse to jailhouse track” by imposing a “double dose” of punishment: suspension or expulsion from school, accompanied by an arrest by the police and a trip to juvenile court.

Overcriminalization.

The government bureaucracy will continue to churn out laws, statutes, codes and regulations that reinforce its powers and value systems and those of the police state and its corporate allies, rendering the rest of us petty criminals. The average American now unknowingly commits three felonies a day, thanks to this overabundance of vague laws that render otherwise innocent activity illegal. Consequently, small farmers who dare to make unpasteurized goat cheese and share it with members of their community will continue to have their farms raided.

Privatized Prisons.

States will continue to outsource prisons to private corporations, resulting in a cash cow whereby mega-corporations imprison Americans in private prisons in order to make a profit. In exchange for corporations buying and managing public prisons across the country at a supposed savings to the states, the states have to agree to maintain a 90% occupancy rate in the privately run prisons for at least 20 years.

Endless wars.

America’s expanding military empire will continue to bleed the country dry at a rate of more than $15 billion a month (or $20 million an hour). The Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety. Yet what most Americans fail to recognize is that these ongoing wars have little to do with keeping the country safe and everything to do with enriching the military industrial complex at taxpayer expense.

Are you getting the message yet?

The next president, much like the current president and his predecessors, will be little more than a figurehead, a puppet to entertain and distract the populace from what’s really going on.

As Lofgren reveals, this state within a state, “concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue,” is a “hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose.”

The Deep State not only holds the nation’s capital in thrall, but it also controls Wall Street (“which supplies the cash that keeps the political machine quiescent and operating as a diversionary marionette theater”) and Silicon Valley.

This is fascism in its most covert form, hiding behind public agencies and private companies to carry out its dirty deeds.

It is a marriage between government bureaucrats and corporate fat cats.

As Lofgren concludes:

[T]he Deep State is so heavily entrenched, so well protected by surveillance, firepower, money and its ability to co-opt resistance that it is almost impervious to change… If there is anything the Deep State requires it is silent, uninterrupted cash flow and the confidence that things will go on as they have in the past. It is even willing to tolerate a degree of gridlock: Partisan mud wrestling over cultural issues may be a useful distraction from its agenda.

In other words, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, as long as government officials—elected and unelected alike—are allowed to operate beyond the reach of the Constitution, the courts and the citizenry, the threat to our freedoms remains undiminished.

So the next time you find yourselves despondent over the 2016 presidential candidates, remember that it’s just a puppet show intended to distract you from the silent coup being carried out by America’s shadow government.

Source

[Sophocles]

Assange: Clinton resisted FBI, and now they’re out for payback (JOHN PILGER EXCLUSIVE)


Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (L) and Julian Assange,
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of WikiLeaks © Reuters / Darthmouth Films

Rt.com
5 Nov, 2016 05:29

Hillary Clinton sparked an FBI backlash, which is now surfacing, when she stonewalled the Feds, who were trying to investigate her private server, Julian Assange said during the John Pilger Special, courtesy of Dartmouth Films, which is now available in full on RT.

“If you go to history of the FBI, it has become effectively America's political police. And the FBI demonstrated with taking down the former head of the CIA [David Petraeus in 2012] over classified information given to his mistress that almost no one was untouchable. The FBI is always trying to demonstrate that. ‘No one can resist us,’” Assange told the Australian journalist during the 25-minute interview.

“But Hillary Clinton very conspicuously resisted the FBI's investigation. So, there is anger within the FBI because it made the FBI look weak.”

FBI director James B. Comey threw a spanner into the presidential race that threatened to become a Clinton procession last week, when he claimed that the agency had potentially obtained new information pertaining to Clinton’s use of a personal email server, set up shortly after she became Secretary of State in 2009, when they obtained the laptop of Anthony Weiner, the ex-husband of close Clinton aide Huma Abedin. Weiner was being investigated for an unrelated sexting offense.

Clinton has categorically denied mishandling classified information by using a vulnerable personal email address for State Department business. Fox News has alleged that the FBI has obtained new evidence from Weiner’s computer that shows that Clinton was “very likely hacked.”

The right-wing network has also claimed that there is a “high priority” FBI investigation into whether favors were exchanged by Clinton for donations to her husband’s foundation, though other media have refuted these claims, saying that an earlier investigation into the Clinton Foundation, which cleared the power couple, remained closed.

Assange, whose WikiLeaks website has over the last ten months released three sizable batches of emails, relating to Clinton herself, the Democratic National Committee, and her campaign manager John Podesta, said the FBI has cause to investigate Clinton.

“There's a thread that runs through all of these emails. There is quite a lot of "pay-to-play," as they call it – taking… giving access in exchange for money for many individual states, individuals and corporations. Combined with the cover-up of Hillary Clinton's emails while she was Secretary of State this has led to an environment where the pressure on the FBI [to investigate] increases,” Assange said.

Regardless of whether Clinton ever faces charges, Assange asserted that Clinton was beholden to corporate and political entities that have been hidden from the electorate during the race to the White House.

“She's this centralizing cog, so that you've got a lot of different gears in operation from the big banks like Goldman Sachs, and major elements of Wall Street, and intelligence, and people in the State Department, and the Saudis, and so on. She's is the, if you like, the centralizer that interconnects all these different cogs. She's smooth central representation of all that, and all that is more or less what is in power now in the United States,” stated Assange, who said that the leaked emails presented a clear picture of this nexus of influences.

Assange also insisted that despite his image, projecting hope and change, President Barack Obama became “very close to banking interests” during his own initial White House campaign in 2008.

“In fact, one of the most significant Podesta emails that we released was about how the Obama cabinet was formed – and half the [first] Obama cabinet was basically nominated by a representative from Citibank. It is quite amazing,” Assange said.

‘Libya was Hillary’s war’

According to Assange, Clinton’s emails reveal a masterplan, hatched months before the West’s intervention in Libya in March 2011, to make it the signature conflict of her tenure as secretary of state, and a podium from which to realize her presidential dreams.

“Libya more that anyone else's war was Hillary Clinton's war. Barack Obama initially opposed it. Who was the person who was championing it? Hillary Clinton. That's documented throughout her emails,” Assange said.

“There's more than 1,700 emails out of the 33,000 of Hillary Clinton's emails we published just about Libya. It's not about that Libya has cheap oil. She perceived the removal of Gaddafi and the overthrow of the Libyan state something that she would use to run in the general election for president. So late 2011, there's an internal document called the "Libya Tick Tock" that is produced for Hillary Clinton, and it's all the... it's a chronological description of how Hillary Clinton was the central figure in the destruction of the Libyan state.”

But the scheme not only failed on a personal level, after Clinton was largely blamed for allowing a jihadist ransacking of a US compound in Benghazi in 2012, but also continues to haunt the country, which remains in a state of civil war, and Europe.

“As a result, there [have been] around 40,000 deaths within Libya. Jihadists moved in, ISIS moved in. That led to the European refugee and migrant crisis, because not only did you have people fleeing Libya, people then fleeing Syria, destabilization of other African countries as a result of arms flows,” said Assange.

Over the course of the interview, Assange also expounded on his views on Donald Trump, the relationship between WikiLeaks and Russia, and his plan to leave the Ecuadorian embassy, where he has lived as a legal fugitive since 2012.

The full transcript of the interview is available here, and previous excerpts here, and here.

RT