Obama's UN speech explained

Matthew Continetti spells out the absurdity of President Obama's UN speech.

"President Obama’s speech at the U.N. was almost a parody of liberal theory. It presented a homogenous world governed by rationally administered universal principles, a vision of affluence and peace, of moral imagination and compassion and hybrid identity. These are noble ideas. They have motivated men for centuries. Yet so detached has the theory become from the everyday reality of the people that it is ossified, hollow. It’s dogma. And it is careening toward a fall."

War drums over Syria: So this is what smarter foreign policy looks like. Brought to you by Hillary, Obama and the Muslim Brotherhood (aka Huma)

US and Europe ramp up pressure on Russia over Syrian conflict

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©Reuters

Men inspect the damage after an airstrike on the al-Qaterji neighbourhood of Aleppo on Sunday

The US accused Russia on Sunday of supporting “barbarism” over the bombing of the Syrian city of Aleppo as the west stepped up diplomatic pressure on Moscow.

Accusing Russia of supporting a Syrian regime offensive that has derailed a ceasefire agreement negotiated between Washington and Moscow, Samantha Power, US ambassador to the UN, said Russian and Syrian forces were “laying waste to what is left of an iconic Middle Eastern city”.

More

ON THIS TOPIC

• West slams Russian actions in Syria
• Kerry’s search for Syria peace tested
• Assad forces unleash new assault on Aleppo
• US admits to impasse over Syria fighting

IN MIDDLE EAST & NORTH AFRICA

• Jordan presses Israel for concessions
• US-Russia deal on Syria hangs in balance
• Syrian rebels repel coalition forces
• Syrian rebels sceptical of truce deal

In a blistering speech to an emergency UN Security Council meeting, Ms Power said: “Instead of pursuing peace, Russia and Assad make war.”

While Moscow was likely to argue that it was pursuing terrorists in Syria, she said that “Russia is espousing fiction”. “What Russia is sponsoring and doing is not counterterrorism; it is barbarism,” she added.

In theory, the US and Russia are still working to see if there is a way to revive the ceasefire plan announced two weeks ago — John Kerry, US secretary of state, has called for military aircraft to be barred from flying over contested areas. However, the fierce exchanges at the UN underlined the collapsing space for diplomacy.

Vitaly Churkin, the Russian ambassador to the UN, said that the US had little influence over the rebel groups that it was backing in Syria. “Bringing a peace is almost an impossible task now,” he said.

The speech by Ms Power came as Europe and the US ramped up diplomatic pressure on Russia, accusing Moscow of supporting the Syrian regime’s offensive on Aleppo .

Sunday’s urgent meeting was held at the request of the UK, the US and France as fighting continued to rage around Aleppo and the rebel-held east of the city suffered a new bombardment, the latest in a spiral of violence that has left the planned ceasefire in tatters. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that at least 26 people had died in the new round of regime airstrikes on the city on Sunday.

Jean-Marc Ayrault, France’s foreign minister, told the meeting that Russia and Iran, which also backs the Syrian regime, would be accomplices to war crimes if they did not press President Bashar al-Assad to stop the violence.

He said the Syrian government “has clearly made the choice of a military escalation”.

“I am calling on Russia and Iran to pull themselves together and show responsibility, by putting a stop to this strategy,” Mr Ayrault said. “If not, Russia and Iran will be accomplices in war crimes committed in Aleppo.”

Foreign ministers from the US, the UK, France, Italy and Germany — along with the EU’s foreign policy chief — have accused Russia of violating a ceasefire intended to halt the fighting. 

Instant Insight

An international Syrian ceasefire is still the best option

The US and Russia share a common interest in the military defeat of Isis, writes Gideon Rachman

Moscow’s support for attacks carried out by Mr Assad’s forces “blatantly contradicts Russia’s claim that it supports a diplomatic resolution”, the US and European ministers said in a joint statement on Sunday. “The burden is on Russia to prove it is willing and able to take extraordinary steps to salvage diplomatic efforts.”

Mr Churkin told the security council that peace in Syria was “almost an impossible task now”.

More than 200 civilians have died in three days of near-constant shelling that has pounded rebel-held districts, according to medical professionals in the area. Aleppo — the biggest strategic and political prize of the conflict — is divided between regime forces on the west and rebels in the east, where a quarter of a million people are trapped under a government siege.

“We have exhausted all the options of civilian protection — we’ve even dug hospitals underground and in caves, as if we are living in the Middle Ages,” said Raed al-Saleh, head of the rescue group in Aleppo known as the “White Helmets”.

Aleppo residents say the latest bombing has even damaged these underground clinics, with what they call “bunker-busting” weapons. 

©AFP

A Syrian boy awaits treatment at a makeshift hospital following air strikes on rebel-held eastern areas of Aleppo

Several hospitals have also been destroyed in strikes that have caused so much destruction that many roads and districts have been blocked by debris as aid workers struggle to reach people trapped under rubble. Medical workers said rescuers have had to walk on foot for several kilometres to reach bomb sites — and back out again with wounded survivors.

The ceasefire was brokered earlier this month by Moscow and Washington, which backs Syria’s opposition. But it collapsed last Monday, just seven days after it began, derailing a multi-step deal meant to allow for the delivery of humanitarian aid, pave the way for political talks and initiate US-Russian military co-operation against jihadi forces in the country.

Russia and Mr Assad now appear determined to break a years-long stalemate and try to take Aleppo. If the regime succeeds, the offensive could be a turning point of the war — the city is the opposition’s last urban stronghold, and without it, they fear their uprising will fade into a rural insurgency ignored by the outside world.

Refugees and those who flee war and strife deserve better

The challenge is manageable but the global system remains devoid of a strategy, writes Paul Collier

Rebel groups said efforts by western powers to pressure Russia to help implement the ceasefire is worthless, arguing that Moscow could no longer be seen as a legitimate international broker of the deal.

“The negotiations process based on the current system is no longer meaningful in the wake of the bombing and killing and destruction that needs to stop completely,” rebel factions from northern Syria said in a joint statement. “We do not accept the Russian side as a party to oversee negotiations given that it is the regime’s partner in its crimes against our people.”

The warring sides were locked in fierce battles on Aleppo’s main supply routes on the northern and southern outskirts of the city at the weekend as regime forces tried to strengthen their blockade. 

Activists and medical workers shared pictures on social media of clinics crammed so full of victims that they had been laid out for treatment along bloodied hallways. One of the most uploaded was a haunting photograph of their rescuers uncovering a woman and her two children buried alive in the rubble. 

However, Damascus appears emboldened despite the international condemnation of the devastation in Aleppo.

“Our belief in victory is even greater now that the Syrian Arab Army is making great strides in its war against terrorism, with the support of the true friends of the Syrian people, notably the Russian Federation, Iran and the Lebanese national resistance,” Walid al-Moualem, the foreign minister, told the UN General Assembly on Saturday.

But even with Moscow’s help, Mr Assad’s forces will struggle to take the city. Rebels have for years dug fortifications and underground tunnels, meaning any ground invasion is likely to be long and costly.

Obama's Colossal Email Lie Final Test for Tarnished MSM. Where's the Left's seriousness of the crime slogan now? A timeline that says it all.

Obama's Colossal Email Lie Final Test for Tarnished MSM

Roger L Simon

That Barack Obama communicated in 2012—under a redacted pseudonym—with Hillary Clinton on the then secretary of State's permeable home-brew email server and then claimed he did not know of that server's existence until it was reported in the press in 2014 is far more than the usual politician's prevarication.

Since the fish rots from the top—and in this case it stinks to high heaven—the surfacing of this particular presidential lie calls to question the entire FBI inquiry into the Clinton server, an investigation whose credibility was paper thin in the first place and has now completely vanished.

It's time to ask that age-old question: "What did the president know and when did he know it?"

That we do know (as of this Friday's dump) that one of Clinton's own IT workers referred to her then just-announced 60-day email retention policy (who does that?) as "Hillary's coverup operation" almost (but not completely) tells the story in those three quoted words. Even though they say it's not the crime, but the coverup, in this case, it's both.

The seriousness of this crime/coverup—involving the national security of our country—makes Watergate seem like a minor kerfuffle at a sewing circle. If the mainstream media does not investigate this thoroughly, they are unquestionably the court eunuchs many of us have accused them of being. Worse, they are the enablers of the decline of Western civilization.  Without a free and honest press -- some of it anyway -- not to mention adherence to the rule of law, such a civilization cannot survive.  And the decline can come remarkably swiftly.  We have plenty of  examples of that from twentieth century Europe.

Does this sound over-heated?  You could say so, but how do you avoid the conclusion, given the MSM's passivity, or is it collaboration, that they do not care a whit about the rule of law as long as their side wins?

But not to be entirely negative, I am going to offer some help to the Fourth Estate, since investigative journalism has not, for some time, been their long suit.  Fortunately, via the Internet (at least for a few weeks until Obama passes us all into the censorious hands of the United Nations) we have the "wisdom of crowds" to draw upon.  Yesterday, the following fascinating comment from one "susanholly" appeared under my column "What Happens When You Can't Trust the FBI and the State Department?" I have no idea who "susan" is or if her conjectures are accurate, but she has given us food for thought. I don't often quote comments at length, but this time it seems worth it:

susanholly:

The timeline tells it all:

Monday, June 27, 2016: Bill Clinton met with Loretta Lynch on the tarmac in Phoenix.

Saturday, July 2, 2016: There’s this shifty FBI interview set-up, with Hillary on a Saturday morning on a HOLIDAY WEEKEND, at the FBI Headquarters in Washington – when LOTS of FBI employees were off (fewer witnesses). The entire interview was jut a charade and Comey is a LIAR – he covered this up. Who was actually present is an interesting question – out of Hillary’s team of lawyers, the FBI redacted ONE name from the notes. It listed David E. Kendall, Cheryl D. Mills, Heather Samuelson, Katherine Turner. The NY Times, back in July, reported that other lawyer as Amy Saharia, but I doubt that is the truth. It makes NO sense to redact her name. The FBI redacted the names of THREE DOJ officials present. Who the heck was present on a Saturday morning, on a long holiday weekend??? It’s a cover-up.

Tuesday , July 5, 2016: In the morning, after this long holiday weekend, FBI Director Comey makes his bizarre announcement that there would be no criminal charges.

On July 2nd, the New York Times reported:

"Accompanying Mrs. Clinton into the meeting were her lawyer David E. Kendall; Cheryl D. Mills and Heather Samuelson, longtime aides who are also lawyers; and two lawyers from Mr. Kendall’s firm, Williams & Connolly, Katherine Turner and Amy Saharia.

Eight officials from the F.B.I. and the Department of Justice conducted the interview, according to a person who was familiar with the substance of the session but declined to be named because the meeting was private. This person characterized the meeting as “civil” and “businesslike.”"

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07...

So, when the FBI released Hillary's interview notes, the first paragraph makes no sense at all, when compared to the NY Times report on Juy 2nd. The Clinton lawyer redaction would be Amy Saharia, which makes no sense. Why would the FBI redact her name? She's a nobody in this invesigation and even Mills who was granted immunity is listed. Then there's the FBI/DOJ officials. The FBI Notes list FBI Section Chief, Peter P. Strzok and David Laufman and there are three blocks of redactions, which would seem to indicate 5 FBI/DOJ officials present, compared to the EIGHT mentioned in the NY Times story. Now, if that one very long block of redacted information is more than one name, we are still left with the FBI gave us 2 names of FBI/DOJ people present and the NY Times reported EIGHT. Who are these 6 FBI/DOJ people and why were their names redacted and why on earth redact Amy Saharia's name?

Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch STAGED this charade; they planned it on June 27th on the tarmac in Phoenix.

Back to me.

I'm not sure susanholly is entirely correct that it had to be planned in detail between Bill and Loretta in the attorney general's plane that day.  Their meeting was too short and, besides, Lynch and Comey (in cahoots with the White House?) were quite capable of doing the planning by themselves.  They already had their marching orders, direct or implicit. Perhaps all Clinton was looking for was assurances his wife wouldn't be carted off and the campaign would go on.  Comey might give her a tongue-lashing for cover, but she would be exonerated.

The Mark of Soros: Charlotte, North Carolina. funding domestic terrorism one group at a time.

The Mark of Soros: Charlotte, North Carolina

Clarice Feldman

Tomorrow night we’ll see the much-awaited matchup one-on-one “debate” between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Her staff is working with the debate commission to erase height and stamina advantages of her opponent. They asked that the debate be by seated opponents which was refused as was their effort to allow her to stand on a hidden stool. Her podium will be lowered though so when the camera sweeps from candidate to candidate viewers might not notice he is considerably taller than she.

Outside of the debate hall in Charlotte, North Carolina, another drama is taking place. Apparently "Black Lives Matters" needs a translation: To most of the rioters it means New Free Nikes Matter. As the first child in the family and the daughter of a small businessman who grew up in a working class community, I’m with John Schindler who tweeted this week, “Like Pier Pasolini, I am always on the side of the police, unless proven otherwise. Class matters. Order matters, Criminal filth does not.”

The media airbrush the mayhem, if not actually inciting it by biased coverage. They did it in the Trayvon Martin case as American Thinker’s Jack Cashill detailed this past Friday.

In Charlotte they have regularly referred to the thugs as “protestors” and failed to fully publicize how awful their behavior has been. Here are some examples you won’t see on your news programs: Rioters attacked an elderly homeless man and beat a helpless man in parking garage and pulled off and stole his pants to further humiliate him. 

Reports are in of stealing and looting on a significantly large scale, hijacking cars and trucks and terrifying their occupants, blocking streets and threatening to spread the mayhem outside the city limits. BLM would in a lawful society be subject to criminal racketeering and conspiracy charges, Instead, Attorney General Loretta Lynch defended the demonstrators as people exercising their constitutional rights to peaceful protest to create change. “We hear your voices and we feel your pain."

It’s unsurprising that the attorney general is not acting as she should. We just learned this week through late released documents of Hillary Clinton’s emails that the president who had asserted he first learned of her illegal use of a private unsecured email server int he newspapers had himself sent her mail on it using a pseudonym. It shows how unserious they all are about national security and the rule of law. We also learned this week that the FBI had granted immunity to five of Hillary’s closest aides. Or, as the Mark Twain of Twitter, Iowahawk, David Burge, said: “Breaking: FBI gives Clinton immunity in Clinton investigation”. Add this to the unprecedented and grossly improper meeting between Lynch and Bill Clinton before FBI head Comey announced his decision, we know the fix was in from the outset.

You have no Department of Justice. You have no FBI.

What of the local police? In Los Angeles cops have been told to run away from armed suspects. In Charlotte, as in the prior cases of race riots in recent years, the DOJ has sent in troops which in the past stirred up the crowds, interfered with standard police operations and did what they could to keep the embers lit, innocent men prosecuted on no basis and moving us closer and closer to federal control of local policing -- by the most lawless of lawmen,

It’s not only the government behind this immiseration of our poorest communities for presumed political advantage, It is the Democratic party’s money bags, billionaire George Soros, who has contributed millions to Hillary and her party, who wants open borders and a recasting of the USA into his insane version  of it.  

…here’s a solitary man at the financial center of the Ferguson protest movement. No, it’s not victim Michael Brown or Officer Darren Wilson. It’s not even the Rev. Al Sharpton, despite his ubiquitous campaign on TV and the streets.
Rather, it’s liberal billionaire George Soros, who has built a business empire that dominates across the ocean in Europe while forging a political machine powered by nonprofit foundations that impacts American politics and policy, not unlike what he did with MoveOn.org.
Mr. Soros spurred the Ferguson protest movement through years of funding and mobilizing groups across the U.S., according to interviews with key players and financial records reviewed by The Washington Times.
In all, Mr. Soros gave at least $33 million in one year to support already-established groups that emboldened the grass-roots, on-the-ground activists in Ferguson, according to the most recent tax filings of his nonprofit Open Society Foundations.
The financial tether from Mr. Soros to the activist groups gave rise to a combustible protest movement that transformed a one-day criminal event in Missouri into a 24-hour-a-day national cause celebre.

Organizers and protestors were bussed in there as they have been in Charlotte -- where police say 70% of the people arrested were from out of state.

It always takes time to sort out conflicting reports about incidents such as the death of Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte but the fact is that he was shot by a black policeman when he refused to drop his gun. He had a gun, not a book in his hand when he was shot, a gun which police reported on Saturday had his fingerprints on it. There was PCP in his car and he had a prior string of arrests -- at least one for shooting at police in 2005. 

This has followed the usual pattern -- the “honor student”, “family man” “hands up don’t shoot”, false witness narratives all evaporated in the light of day. And yet the press keeps showing the video his wife took in which she shouts repeatedly he had no gun and (she was going to sue if he was killed in the fray).

In the meantime, local homes and businesses have been destroyed, one black protestor murdered another in cold blood and Soros and his anointed candidate keep doing well by doing evil.

It’s hard to fight such a well-funded propaganda effort with facts, but let me try with the help of Zero Hedge:

What is most disturbing is that behind the pent up rage and thuggish violence, dressed up in the socially-acceptable package of "black lives matter" is the reality that white violence is the last thing blacks should be "protesting."

Milo Yiannopoulos details even more from the statistical evidence in this short but compelling video:  

The big lies propagated by Soros on whose shoulders Hillary stands continues on. She’s part of what Tom Lipscomb characterizes as a gangster regime doing everything it can to expand its reach.

Do these developments sound familiar to those aware of modern world history? They do to my friend Alex Bensky, who notes that if we criticize Obama we are charged with “evil motives”. We have a government which is suppressing the opposition by every means possible, (including misusing supposedly neutral agencies like the IRS, FBI, and DoJ), makes corporate profits depend on (corrupted by cash) government approval, not market-based competition, and now gives “support for and approval of mob intimidation and violence to advance political ends.”

At any rate, journalists are probably too busy this Sunday to bother with such questions today. They are already drafting their copy of how splendidly -- ”strong” is likely to be their descriptor of choice if she doesn’t collapse at her mini podium -- Hillary performed in the debate taking place tomorrow night. 

Jordan writer in blasphemy case Nahid Hattar killed. A peaceful religion or a death cult?

Jordan writer in blasphemy case Nahid Hattar killed

• 35 minutes ago
 
• From the section Middle East

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Image copyrightPETRA NEWS AGENCY

Image captionMr Hattar was attacked on social media for sharing the cartoon

A Jordanian writer charged with offending Islam after allegedly sharing a satirical cartoon on his Facebook page has been killed.

Nahid Hattar was hit by three bullets outside the court in the capital Amman where he was standing trial.

Police have arrested the suspected shooter, Riad Abdullah. Jordanian media said he was local imam who had been upset by the cartoon.

But security sources told the Jordan Times he was a known extremist.

A witness told the Associate Press news agency that Mr Abdullah had a long beard and was wearing a long robe, common among conservative Muslims. 

Nahid Hattar was detained in August for 15 days on charges of insulting God after he published a cartoon depicting a bearded man lying in bed with two women and smoking, asking God to bring him a drink.

Mr Hattar was born a Christian, but considered himself an atheist. He was attacked on social media for being anti-Islam.

He said he had not meant to cause offence and wanted to expose radical Islamists' view of heaven.

Authorities said he had broken the law by sharing the cartoon.

Mr Hattar's supporters say they hold the government responsible for his death. 

"The prime minister was the first one who incited against Nahid when he ordered his arrest and put him on trial for sharing the cartoon, and that ignited the public against him and led to his killing," the writer's cousin, Saad Hattar said. 

The government has publicly condemned the killing. 

A spokesperson told Petra news agency: "The government will strike with an iron hand all those who exploit this crime to broadcast speeches of hatred to our community."

Image copyrightAFP

Image captionPolice cordoned off the area outside the courthouse where Mr Hattar was killed

More proof the Left has a knack for lying, cheating and self enrichment. These are the people in power now. How many times has he been to the WH?

Zuckerberg downplays Facebook advertising screwup

By James Covert

September 24, 2016 | 2:26am

Modal Trigger

Mark Zuckerberg Photo: AP

Facebook insists it’s no big deal that it inflated numbers on viewership of its video ads — but some advertisers aren’t buying it.

Mark Zuckerberg’s social-networking giant apologized Friday as it admitted that, for the past two years, it has overestimated the amount of time users spent watching video ads by as much as 60 to 80 percent.

Specifically, Facebook said it had only included video views of 3 seconds or longer when calculating the average length of a video views it showed to advertisers, leaving out shorter times that would have brought down the averages.

The “discrepancy,” as Facebook called it, distorted its numbers to its advantage as the company ramped up a fierce battle with Google’s YouTube division for video ads — the most lucrative segment of internet advertising.

Facebook claimed the screwup didn’t affect its “billing” because technically its ad rates are based on the number of clicks a video ad gets rather than how long users linger over it.

Nevertheless, metrics on average viewing time are prominently circulated to advertisers. Don’t be surprised if, in the near term, existing advertisers demand reimbursement, and if prospective advertisers hesitate over launching fresh, high-dollar campaigns, experts said.

“Advertisers will be demanding compensation, and I’ll bet they get it,” said Mitchell Reichgut, chief executive of New York ad firm Jun Group.

FindTheCompany | Graphiq

Facebook initially disclosed the problem on an obscure Web page for advertisers several weeks ago.

“They tried to bury it in a blog,” Reichgut said. “That’s not how you announce something of this magnitude.”

On Thursday, the issue blew up when the Wall Street Journal reported (paywall) that advertisers including Publicis Group were asking questions, forcing Facebook to come clean.

The incident raises fresh concerns about Facebook’s “walled garden” policy with publishers and advertisers, which is notoriously stingy when it comes to data sharing and has spurred calls for greater third-party monitoring.

Moat, a New York firm that specializes in monitoring Web-page views and whose clients include Facebook, said its measurements of Facebook activity were accurate.

“The metric miscalculation reported by Facebook was independent of Moat,” the company said in a statement.

Facebook shares on Friday lost 1.6 percent to close at $127.96. Wall Street analysts with buy ratings on the stock downplayed the news.

“In our view, this looks like a story in search of a controversy,” wrote Cowen & Co. analyst John Blackledge, reiterating an outperform rating on the shares. 

Wells Fargo’s Peter Stabler, who has an outperform rating on Facebook, added, “We haven’t encountered analysis that has dwelled on ‘average view time’ ” in measuring ad campaigns.

Still, some prospective advertisers may get cold feet, said Ryan Urban, CEO of Bounce Exchange, a New York web analytics firm.

ELECTION 2016 AMAZON STEPS IN TO 'FIX' HILLARY BOOK REVIEW. If it's owned by the Left don't trust anything that comes from them.

AMAZON STEPS IN TO 'FIX' HILLARY BOOK REVIEW

But result is 5-star ratings with scathingly negative comments

That’s how it looks for Hillary Clinton’s new 2016 campaign book, “Stronger Together,” co-authored with running mate Tim Kaine.

WND reported just days ago when the book was being savaged on Amazon.com with negative reviews, with 81 percent one-star ratings and an average of only 1.7.

Clinton supporters lashed out at “trolls” they said were criticizing the book only because they oppose the Democrat’s presidential candidacy.

WND previously reported there were more than 1,200 reviews, and the number grew to than 2,000.

But Thursday afternoon, there were only 255, with many of the most critical reviews removed by Amazon, whose CEO, Jeff Bezos, owns the Washington Post, which created an army of 20 reporters and researchers to investigate the life of Donald Trump.

Victory for the Clinton book, however, remains out of grasp, with the negative, one-star responses, outnumbering positive, five-star responses nearly 2-1.

The one-star ratings Thursday were 62 percent, to 35 percent for five-star ratings.

And reviewers many times simply punched the five-star button then made harshly critical condemnations of the book and Hillary Clinton.

From suz702, who posted a five-star ranking: “I didn’t buy this book or read this book, but I have read the reviews, and enjoyed hours of entertaining, fun filled reading, expressing the TRUTH, about a crooked, lying, corrupt, terminally ill Presidential candidate, who stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders, and who is about the steal the Presidency with the use of election fraud. 10 Stars to the authors of these reviews. Proof that not only are Amazon.com shoppers of superior intelligence, but thye call it like they see it…. Amazon shows this as a verified purchase, when I didn’t buy the book … how fun!”

Another five-star reviewer, ian alexander, said “the book confirms the hrc is a racist. every matter in her mind is about racies (sic). but reality is she does not care about the black people. just look at the ever increasing trend of black population that are relying on welfare since the obama rule. the fundermental (sic) cause of this result is the fact that lefties of the country favor the riches by allowing outsourcing jobs to other countries. black people should wake up, stop supporting dnc and hrc, who is effectively a puppet of the elite class. the book is simply a propaganda.”

Amazon said there were 91 positive reviews Thursday, to 166 critical.

Just two days earlier, out of 1,244 reviews, 81 percent were one-star and 16 percent five-star. The book plunged from No. 840 earlier this week to No. 1,538 on Thursday. It was No. 5 in the subcategory “Books-Politics & Social Sciences-Politics & Government-Elections & Political Process-Leadership.”

The new review chart:

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The FBI Investigation of EmailGate Was a Sham. Not just a sham but a coverup.

The FBI Investigation of EmailGate Was a Sham

NSA Analyst: We now have incontrovertible proof the Bureau never had any intention of prosecuting Hillary Clinton

By John R. Schindler • 09/25/16 8:30am

FBI Director James Comey. (Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

From the moment the EmailGate scandal went public more than a year ago, it was obvious that the Federal Bureau of Investigation never had much enthusiasm for prosecuting Hillary Clinton or her friends. Under President Obama, the FBI grew so politicized that it became impossible for the Bureau to do its job – at least where high-ranking Democrats are concerned.

As I observed in early July, when Director James Comey announced that the FBI would not be seeking prosecution of anyone on Team Clinton over EmailGate, the Bureau had turned its back on its own traditions of floating above partisan politics in the pursuit of justice. “Malfeasance by the FBI, its bending to political winds, is a matter that should concern all Americans, regardless of their politics,” I stated, noting that it’s never a healthy turn of events in a democracy when your secret police force gets tarnished by politics.

Just how much Comey and his Bureau punted on EmailGate has become painfully obvious since then. Redacted FBI documents from that investigation, dumped on the Friday afternoon before the long Labor Day weekend, revealed that Hillary Clinton either willfully lied to the Bureau, repeatedly, about her email habits as secretary of state, or she is far too dumb to be our commander-in-chief.

Worse, the FBI completely ignored the appearance of highly classified signals intelligence in Hillary’s email, including information lifted verbatim from above-Top Secret NSA reports back in 2011. This crime, representing the worst compromise of classified information in EmailGate – that the public knows of, at least – was somehow deemed so uninteresting that nobody at the FBI bothered to ask anybody on Team Clinton about it.

This stunning omission appears highly curious to anybody versed in counterintelligence matters, not least since during Obama’s presidency, the FBI has prosecuted Americans for compromising information far less classified than what Clinton and her staff exposed on Hillary “unclassified” email server of bathroom infamy.

This week, however, we learned that there is actually no mystery at all here. The FBI was never able to get enough traction in its investigation of EmailGate to prosecute anybody since the Bureau had already granted immunity to key players in that scandal.

Granting immunity is a standard practice in investigations, and is sometimes unavoidable. Giving a pass to Bryan Pagliano, Hillary’s IT guru who set up her email and server, made some sense since he understands what happened here, technically speaking, and otherwise is a small fish. The wisdom of giving him a pass now seems debatable, though, since Pagliano has twice refused to testify before Congress about his part in EmailGate, blowing off subpoenas. Just this week the House Oversight Committee recommended that Pagliano be cited for contempt of Congress for his repeated no-shows. That vote was on strictly partisan lines, with not a single Democrat on the committee finding Pagliano’s ignoring of Congressional subpoenas to be worthy of censure.

Now it turns out the FBI granted immunity to much bigger fish in the Clinton political tank. Three more people got a pass from the Bureau in exchange for their cooperation: Hillary lawyer Heather Samuelson, State Department IT boss John Bental, and – by far the most consequential – Cheryl Mills, who has been a Clinton flunky-cum-factotum for decades.

Mills served as the State Department’s Chief of Staff and Counselor throughout Hillary’s tenure as our nation’s top diplomat. Granting her immunity in EmailGate, given her deep involvement in that scandal – including the destruction of tens of thousands of emails so they could not be handed over to the FBI – now seems curious, to say the least, particularly because Mills sat in on Hillary’s chat with the Bureau regarding EmailGate.

This was in fact so highly irregular that Jason Chaffetz, chair of the House Oversight Committee, pronounced himself “absolutely stunned” by the FBI’s granting of immunity to Cheryl Mills – which he learned of only on Friday. “No wonder they couldn’t prosecute a case,” Rep. Chaffetz observed of Comey’s Bureau: “They were handing out immunity deals like candy.”

Not to mention that Mills has a longstanding and well-deserved reputation in Washington for helping the Clintons dodge investigation after investigation. When Bill and Hillary need a fixer to help them bury the bodies – as they say inside the Beltway – trusty Cheryl Mills has been on call for the last quarter-century.

She played a key role in the Whitewater scandal of the 1990s – and so did James Comey. Fully two decades ago, when Comey was a Senate investigator, he tried to get Mills, then deputy counsel to Bill Clinton’s White House, to hand over relevant documents. Mills went full dog-ate-my-homework, claiming that a burglar had taken the files, leading Comey to unavoidably conclude that she was obstructing his investigation. Mills’ cover-up, the Senate investigators assessed, encompassed “destruction of documents” and “highly improper” behavior.

Such misconduct is a career-ender for normal people in Washington, but not for Cheryl Mills, who over the last several decades has followed the Clintons everywhere they go. Mills has proven her loyalty to Clinton, Inc. time and again, and that loyalty has been rewarded with a pass on prosecution in EmailGate.

To say nothing of the fact that as chief of staff at Foggy Bottom, Mills was in no way functioning as Hillary’s personal lawyer, as Clinton advocates have contended. Even her other title, State Department Counselor, has nothing to do with legal matters, despite the name. That role is traditionally assigned to an esteemed foreign policy guru who is supposed to offer sage counsel to the secretary of state. Mills’ predecessor as Counselor was Eliot Cohen, one of the country’s preeminent scholars of international relations. Leave it to the Clintons to turn that job over to one of their trusted cabal, translating Counselor in mafia fashion as consigliere.

“The whole thing stinks,” explained a retired FBI senior official who professed dismay about the state of his former employer. “This was impossible in my time, unthinkable,” he rued, expressing shock that the Bureau allowed Mills to remain involved in the investigation, including acting as Hillary’s personal lawyer, despite her own immunity.

How exactly Cheryl Mills got immunity, and what its terms were, is the long-awaited “smoking gun” in EmailGate, the clear indication that, despite countless man-hours expended on the year-long investigation, James Comey and his FBI never had any intention of prosecuting Hillary Clinton – or anyone – for her mishandling of classified information as secretary of state.

Why Comey decided to give Mills a get-out-of-jail-free card is something that needs proper investigation. This is raw, naked politics in all its ugly and cynical glory. Corruption is the tamest word to describe this sort of dirty backroom deal which makes average Americans despise politics and politicians altogether.

How high in this administration EmailGate went is the key question, and it’s been reopened by the latest tranche of redacted documents that the FBI released – on Friday afternoon, as usual. There are lots of tantalizing tidbits here, including the fact that early in Hillary’s term at Foggy Bottom, State Department officials were raising awkward legal questions about her highly irregular email and server arrangements.

Most intriguing, however, is the revelation that Hillary was communicating with President Obama via personal email, and he was using an alias. The alias he used with Hillary, and apparently others, was withheld by the FBI, and let it be said the fact that the president wanted to disguise his identity in unclassified email is not all that odd.

What is odd, however, is the fact that Obama previously told the media that he only learned of Hillary’s irregular email and server arrangements from “news reports.” How the president failed to notice that he was emailing his top diplomat at her personal, clintonmail.com address, not a state.gov account, particularly when they were discussing official business, is something Congress may want to find out – since certainly the FBI won’t.

Indeed, when she was being interviewed by the Bureau, Hillary’s ever-faithful sidekick Huma Abedin, was asked about President Obama’s emailing to Hillary using an alias. “How is this not classified?” inquired the mystified Abedin.

How indeed?

The fact that the FBI redacted the contents of that email indicates that is wasclassified, although it was sent to Hillary’s personal email and transited her personal server.

This, like so many aspects of EmailGate, seems destined to remain a mystery, at least for now. The State Department won’t release the full collection of Clinton’s emails until after our November 8 election. Just this week a Federal judge blastedFoggy Bottom for its slow-rolling: “The State Department needs to start cooperating to the fullest extent possible. They are not perceived to be doing that.” Nevertheless, the public won’t get to see all of Hillary’s emails until after Americans decide who the next president will be.

For Hillary Clinton, winning that election may be a legal necessity to protect her from prosecution. Congress, animated by these latest revelations of illegality and corruption, will now pursue her with vigor, while an FBI in the hands of Donald Trump seems likely to show an interest in EmailGate which the Bureau never possessed under President Obama.

Regardless, this story has emerged yet again to tar Hillary Clinton’s reputation at the worst possible time, when her campaign is lagging in the polls. We can be sure that her Republican opponent will mention EmailGate in Monday’s inaugural presidential debate. The Democratic nominee should have coherent answers about her email and server at the ready if she wants to avoid a debacle before the cameras.

John Schindler is a security expert and former National Security Agency analyst and counterintelligence officer. A specialist in espionage and terrorism, he’s also been a Navy officer and a War College professor. He’s published four books and is on Twitter at @20committee.