Leid Stories

Leid Stories—U.N. Admits Blame (Sort of) for Deadly Cholera Epidemic in Haiti; Will Cholera Victims Get Justice in the Courts? —08.22.16

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who for six years stonewalled Haitians’ claims that poor sanitation practices of U.N.-supervised troops stationed in Haiti after the devastating 2010 earthquake caused a cholera epidemic that has left 10,000 dead and 800,000 infected, now admits responsibility. But not total responsibility—as an official statement released Aug. 19 suggests.

Veteran journalist and documentarian Kim Ives, editor of Haïti Liberté and Leid Stories correspondent on Haiti, discusses Ban Ki-moon’s stonewalling on this critical matter and the impact it continues to have on Haiti and the Haitian diaspora.

The U.N.’s six-year negation of responsibility did not go unchallenged. Brian Concannon and the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, which he directs, are among a small but formidable coalition pushing hard for legal redress for Haiti’s cholera victims under international law. He discusses that ongoing effort and what happens now, with the U.N.’s admission of responsibility.

Leid Stories—Whistleblower Answers Listeners’ Questions About the Clinton Foundation—08.19.16

Charles Ortel wraps up his exclusive, weeklong special reports on The Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation with a Q&A session.

Ortel (charlesortel.com), a former Wall Street banker and investor, gained international attention when he independently proved that General Electric and, later, insurance giant AIG were engaging in fraud.

Ortel since February last year has been doing his own investigation of the Clinton foundation. He told Leid Stories he has found overwhelming evidence of “massive” charities fraud.

Leid Stories—Twisted Philanthropy: How the Clintons and the Clinton Foundation Made Billions Mining the World’s Misery Index—08.18.16

Whistleblower Charles Ortel’s investigations into the operations of The Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation and its global network of affiliated “philanthropic” organizations have led him to a startling conclusion: The foundation has engaged in, and continues to engage in, massive fraud and illegal conduct.

Since May, Ortel has been spelling out in great detail how a project chartered initially to build a presidential library and research facility in Arkansas, President Clinton’s home state, illegally was morphed into a global pseudo-philanthropic conglomerate that raked in billions of dollars, ostensibly to support the foundation’s “charity” work. But Ortel says the evidence clearly shows the foundation was operating almost all of its projects illegally, and many major “donations” it received were from foreign governments and well-placed corporations seeking political favors from the Clintons.

The “developing world” has been, and still is, a billion-dollar bonanza for the Clintons’ coffers, says Ortel. Often besieged by humanitarian crises, the international community responds generously to countries in dire need. The Clintons, who keep watchful eyes on countries’ misery index, find ingenious ways to corral sizable portions of available humanitarian cash.

Leid Stories—The Clinton Foundation’s Billion-Dollar HIV/AIDS Boondoggle—08.17.16

Charles Ortel, a former Wall Street banker and investor who exposed General Electric’s massive fraud in 2007-2008 by proving that it had overvalued its stock by hundreds of billions of dollars, for several months has been deconstructing the highly irregular inner workings of the Clinton Foundation and related entities operating “charitable” programs all over the world.

But the foundation and its projects are in flagrant violation of U.S. and international law, Ortel says. While their stated purposes are philanthropic, he says, the foundation and its various offshoots appear to be an elaborate, multibillion-dollar slush fund for the Clintons, who have been able to run a renegade operation without tight oversight.

Continuing Leid Stories’ close look at the foundation and its various “charities,” Ortel today focuses on The Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative, which it launched in 2009 in partnership with leading drug manufacturers “to improve treatment access for people with drug-resistant HIV in developing nations.”

Leid Stories—Republicans Zero In On Hillary, Bill and the Clinton Foundation; Haiti Was/Is Foundation’s Prized ‘Possession’—08.16.16

Following yesterday’s discussion, Charles Ortel returns with more on the Clinton Foundation:

House and Senate Republicans, convinced that the Obama administration is blocking their efforts to probe and expose serious ethical and criminal violations allegedly committed by Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state, have intensified their campaign. The Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation and several of its affiliated organizations once again are at the center of the legislators’ focus as they look into how the Clintons funneled through them hundreds of millions of dollars in “charitable donations” that appear to be linked to political favors for the donors.

And new—and very troubling—evidence showing the Clintons’ stranglehold on Haiti, their foundation’s prized “possession.”

Ortel since May has been filing regular investigative reports on Leid Stories about the Clintons and their various global “charities.” A former Wall Street banker and investor, his digging into the financials of General Electric in 2007-2008 proved that the conglomerate had fraudulently overvalued its stock by hundreds of billions of dollars.

Leid Stories—Clinton’s Tax Records Release Hardly ‘Transparent’—08.15.16

With great media fanfare, the Hillary Clinton-Tim Kaine Democratic presidential ticket released its tax returns Friday, with Clinton taunting Republican nominee Donald Trump to do the same in the interest of “transparency.”

Clinton’s tax records were for 2015; Kaine’s, for the last 10 years. But Clinton’s tax records appeared to have been prepared in such a way as to minimize income derived from the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation and several subsidiaries related to the mega enterprise, which our guest, former Wall Street banker and investor Charles Ortel, says has been engaging in massive fraud under the guise of philanthropy.

Ortel, who since May has been filing regular investigative reports on Leid Stories about the Clintons and their various global “charities,” reveals in today’s report that several governments have opened up far-reaching investigations into the Clinton Foundation and several of its “initiatives” in their countries  about which they have serious questions. Several U.S. states also have initiated probes, and members of Congress are pushing for federal investigations.

Leid Stories—It’s “Free Your Mind Friday,” and Everyone Sets the Record Straight!—08.12.16

If you’ve been waiting to get your two cents in on issues and events we’ve been discussing on Leid Stories—or on other subjects that matter—here’s your chance to make your point and be heard.

It’s “Free Your Mind Friday,” the best open forum in Radioland, and we trade in information, opinions and ideas. Let’s hear what you have to say. Call 888-874-4888.

Leid Stories—Dr. Gerald Horne’s Radically Different View of Election 2016 (Part 2)—08.11.16

On yesterday’s program, our guest, historian Gerald Horne, offered a comprehensive analysis of Election 2016 and the many reasons it is a watershed moment in U.S. social and political history.

He returns today to answer listeners’ questions.

Dr. Horne is the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston. He is the author of more than 30 books and 100 scholarly papers on struggles against imperialism, colonialism, fascism and racism.

Call 888-874-4888 to engage with Dr. Horne.

Leid Stories—Dr. Gerald Horne’s Radically Different View of Election 2016—08.10.16

This year’s presidential election, we’re constantly told, is, and ever will be, “historic.” Thinking minds immediately should erect their best defenses, for U.S. history has a very peculiar history; it almost never tells the whole story, and its chief purpose is to secure and undergird the interests of the power elite.

The historicity of the political moment would suffer a similar fate, were it not for scholars—such as today’s guest, Dr. Gerald Horne—who boldly have been waging their own struggles against longstanding proscriptions against telling the whole story, lest America’s true nature be accurately documented and widely known.

Horne, the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston and prolific author of more than 30 books and 100 scholarly papers on struggles against imperialism, colonialism, fascism and racism, regularly decodes complex social, political and economic issues on Leid Stories. On today’s program he offers a radically different view of Election 2016.

Leid Stories—Does the Green Party Have the Capacity to Deliver on Its Ambitious Platform?—08.09.16

All week this week, Leid Stories’ listeners are our political scientists deconstructing for us the Green Party and its impact (actual and/or possible) on the presidential election and on independent politics in particular.

On yesterday’s program, Dr. Jill Stein, officially nominated over the weekend at the party’s national convention in Houston, Texas, as the party’s standard-bearer in the general election, presented a laundry list of domestic and foreign policies comprising the Greens’ 2016 platform, many of those planks echoing the fighting points of Bernie Sanders’ self-thwarted “revolution” that are now part of Hillary Clinton’s arsenal.

Today’s question for consideration and debate: Is the Green Party being realistic about its capacity to deliver on its ambitious platform, or is it employing the old political trick of telling people what they want to hear in hopes of getting more votes (than the 0.36 percent share of the total it got in 2012) to truly launch itself in the realm of big-league politics?