1

Madeleine Albright: Former Secretary of State, 1997–2001

In 1993, Bill Clinton nominated Madeleine Albright to be the US ambassador to the United Nations. She used her role as the US ambassador to push for draconian sanctions against Iraq. Normally, sanctions list specific items that are banned for import. These Iraqi sanctions, on the other hand, required the permission of the UN Security Council to allow importing any goods including food and medicine on a case-by-case basis. The results were catastrophic.

In 1999, former Congressman David Bonior, a Democrat from Michigan, described the sanctions as “infanticide masquerading as policy.”

In 1996, Leslie Stahl confronted Albright on 60 Minutes: “We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?”

Albright responded, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it.”

After being confirmed as secretary of state in 1997, Albright was a major force in pushing the 1999 war against Serbia.

She met with the extremist terrorist group Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which had ties to both Al-Qaeda and the international drug smuggling rings. In fact, Al-Qaeda fighters were flown to Kosovo to fight alongside the KLA. Based on coerced testimony and some well-placed lies from the KLA, Albright advocated a bombing campaign. For the next seventy-nine days, NATO rained fire and fury on Serbia. A TV station was hit, killing sixteen and injuring as many more. The Chinese embassy in Belgrade was also destroyed, killing three and injuring twenty-seven. Amnesty International called it “a war crime.” When Albright was questioned about this event by journalists at a 2012 book signing, she immediately evicted them from the room, audibly referring to them as “disgusting Serbs.”

But Hillary Clinton seems to think very highly of Madeleine Albright and has claimed that she emulated her as secretary of state, even touting her as a member of her “brain trust” for her 2016 campaign. In her book, Hard Choices, Hillary Clinton said:

Madeleine Albright was my longtime friend and partner in promoting rights and opportunities for women and agreed to chair a new public-private partnership to foster entrepreneurship and innovation in the Middle East.

2

Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud: Former King of Saudi Arabia, 2005–2015

Arguably, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has the worst human rights record in the world. Women are consigned to adult lives as, essentially, perpetual children and must live at the mercy of their male guardians. The state sanctions only the most draconian interpretation of Islam: Wahhabism. Everyone else is a second-class citizen.

Migrant workers have no rights. They are subject to a state of quasi-slavery, where they are routinely abused, starved, raped, and beaten.

Dissidents fare even worse. During his reign, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud jailed Raif Badawi for blogging and jailed his lawyer Waleed Abu al-Khair for defending him in court. During the Arab Spring, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud was responsible for the brutal crackdown on peaceful protesters, which included teenagers like Ali al-Nimr. Under his watch, Sheikh al-Nimr was sentenced to death. He also sent Saudi troops to crush the popular uprising in Bahrain where they launched a brutal massacre against Bahrain’s Shia population.

Of course, this doesn’t include their support for worldwide terrorism and the spread of Salafism — not to mention arming “moderate rebels” in Syria and Libya.

According to a 2010 New York Times article, “The king of Saudi Arabia had Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton over for a friendly lunch Monday here at his desert camp, northeast of Riyadh.” She seemed to enjoy the company. In 2012, King Abdullah lavished Hillary Clinton with $500,000 worth of jewelry, which she accepted because “non-acceptance would cause embarrassment to donor and US government.”

Upon the death of King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud in 2015, Bill and Hillary Clinton issued a joint statement:

We are grateful for his support of efforts for peace in the Middle East; our close economic cooperation; the Kingdom’s humanitarian efforts around the world.

Later on, they elaborated:

[We] are also grateful for his personal friendship and kindness toward our family and we join the Saudi people in mourning his loss and send our heartfelt condolences to the Royal Family.

3

Tony Blair: Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1997–2007

Tony Blair was the first “New Labour” prime minister, radically remaking the party into a handmaiden of neoliberalism, austerity, and mass privatization. In a 2001 speech to the European Research Institute, he infamously declared that national sovereignty was out-of-date. Fittingly, he signed on for George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq two years later. During the fearmongering campaign leading up to it, this coalition managed to insert lies from science fiction novels and fantasies about human shredders in Baghdad in order to sell the war to the public.

Since stepping down as prime minister, Blair has been traveling around the world lobbying for various despots in the Gulf. During her time as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton personally enlisted Tony Blair to help her with negotiations in the Middle East while he was simultaneously getting paid by the Gulf monarchies. Like Clinton, Blair is seemingly immune to the charms of Bernie Sanders, comparing his left-wing populism to Trump’s right-wing demagoguery.

4

Jeff Bezos: CEO of Amazon

Jeff Bezos is a Bond villain without the charisma.

Under Bezos, Amazon warehouses have given new meaning to the phrase “worked to death.” In October, Amazon employee Billy Foister suffered a heart attack and died on the job. While his dead body was on the floor, other workers went about with their preassigned tasks for twenty minutes, apparently fearing retaliation for leaving their stations. Other workers have reported that they had to urinate in plastic bottles, having been refused bathroom breaks. During Christmas season, ambulances are routinely dispatched to Amazon warehouses due to the sheer number of workers collapsing from exhaustion.

This hasn’t put a damper on Bezos’s relationship with Clinton, however. In her last year as secretary of state, Amazon was awarded a $16.5 million contract with the State Department.

In 2013, Jeff Bezos acquired the Washington Post. While Bezos claims he exercises no editorial control over the paper, the sheer amount of pro-Amazon PR masquerading as journalism brings this issue into question. And while Bezos might be one of the people who “likes” Clinton, it is doubtful that he likes Bernie Sanders. Prior to the 2016 Michigan primary, the Washington Post ran sixteen negative articles on the Vermont senator in sixteen hours.

“I think Jeff Bezos saved the Washington Post,” Clinton said in 2017, perhaps thinking of his assistance in her time of need. “It drives news online, it drives news on TV.”

5

George W. Bush: Former President of the United States, 2001–9

Perhaps in response to President Trump’s vulgarity and impetuousness, liberals have recently been busying themselves with the rehabilitation of George W. Bush. However, one cannot understate the catastrophic damage of his presidency.

And yet it’s not enough to sour the affections between him and Hillary Clinton. George W. Bush fondly calls Hillary his “sister-in-law” (he refers to Bill as his “brother from another mother”). At Nancy Reagan’s funeral, they made their genuine affection for each other apparent for the world to see.

In her book, What Happened, Hillary Clinton shared stories of their relationship: “On the platform, we sat next to the Bushes. The four of us had caught up inside a few minutes earlier, trading updates about our daughters and grandchildren. We chatted like it was any other day.”

That friendly meeting stuck with Bush. A few months later after Clinton’s embarrassing defeat at the hands of Trump, George W. Bush called her to console her on her loss:

George actually called just minutes after I finished my concession speech, and graciously waited on the line while I hugged my team and supporters one last time. When we talked, he suggested we find time to get burgers together. I think that’s Texan for “I feel your pain.”

6

Islam Karimov: Former President of Uzbekistan, 1989–2016

After the fall of the USSR, Islam Karimov came to power in Uzbekistan. He was the West’s perfect darling, dutifully privatizing the telecommunications, mining, and oil and gas industries as well as the country’s airports. This mass privatization led to a spike in poverty and the lowering of life expectancy. He declared himself president for life and enriched himself and his family in the process.

After 9/11, he was a willing partner in the “War on Terror,” opening his country up to the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” program and the makeshift facilities they set up in order to torture detainees from around the world. It was a win-win for Karimov — he’d been torturing his own dissidents for years. Some of them were raped with broken bottles. Others were boiled alive. Now, by hosting a CIA “black site,” he could safely count on Washington’s silence.

But he also knew who in the West had to be paid off in order to ensure his regime’s survival. In 2012 his daughter Gulnara Karimova hosted a fundraiser for the Clinton Foundation in Monaco. It was a smart move for Karimov. As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton ignored the overwhelming evidence of human rights abuses, saying, “The US is a friend and partner of Uzbekistan in its pursuit of democracy.”

7

Henry Kissinger: Former Secretary of State, 1973–77

In a just world, Henry Kissinger would be in a jail cell at the Hague.

In the Middle East, he started a mini-war between the Kurds and Saddam Hussein in order to curry favor with the Shah of Iran. After the Shah and Saddam Hussein abandoned their hostilities for a peace deal, Kissinger abandoned the Iraqi Kurds to be slaughtered by Hussein.

In South America, Kissinger helped orchestrate a coup to overthrow democratically elected President Salvador Allende, a leftist. Military dictator Augusto Pinochet was installed in his place. Dissidents were tortured, shot, or thrown from helicopters. Many of these “disappeared” bodies continue to be unearthed in mass graves. Pinochet and Kissinger met with other right-wing tyrants in Latin America to facilitate plans for a worldwide hunt of leftists in what was dubbed Operation Condor. This operation spanned across continents and even the United States wasn’t spared with Pinochet’s security team assassinating Allende’s former ambassador to the United States, Orlando Letelier, via a car bomb in Washington, DC killing both Letelier and his twenty-five-year-old American assistant Ronni Moffitt.

In 1968, Kissinger sabotaged President Johnson’s negotiations to end the war in Vietnam in order to help Nixon win the White House, prolonging the brutal conflict for another seven years.  After he became Nixon’s secretary of state, Kissinger oversaw the massive bombing of Cambodia, dropping more than 2.7 million tons of explosives on the small Southeast Asian country. In 1973, he ramped up the bombing after Hanoi, Saigon, and Washington signed the Paris Peace Accords. Worse, he supported the genocidal regime of Pol Pot, whose killing fields were responsible for the deaths of millions. If it’s even possible to put a number on all the deaths Henry Kissinger is responsible for, the number is certainly staggering.

To quote Anthony Bourdain, “Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands.”

Hillary Clinton apparently disagrees. Kissinger and the Clintons seem to share a bond of true friendship. They even go on an annual beachfront vacation together. And she’s not hiding it — Hillary Clinton repeatedly touts Kissinger as a friend and a mentor: “Kissinger is a friend, and I relied on his counsel when I served as secretary of state.” In her book, Hard Choices, she said, “Henry Kissinger checked in with me regularly, sharing astute observations about foreign leaders and sending me written reports on his travels.”

Henry Kissinger does indeed like Hillary Clinton.

8

Hosni Mubarak: Former President of Egypt, 1981–2011

After the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981, Hosni Mubarak, with the help of “allies,” cemented his position as president. He perpetually created a “state of emergency” to imprison dissidents, ban political parties, and jail members of the opposition. During the Bush years, he was an active participant in the CIA rendition program, allowing American intelligence officers to set up “black sites” in his country for the torture of detainees. Because of this, Mubarak was thoroughly rewarded with military aid to further use against his own population. He used his control over the Egyptian economy to personally enrich himself while the poverty rate in Egypt kept on going up. While he might be unpopular with some today, he can count Hillary Clinton as a friend.

We look forward to President Mubarak coming as soon as his schedule would permit. I had a wonderful time with him this morning. I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family. So I hope to see him often here in Egypt and in the United States.

And she wasn’t just being nice. During the Arab Spring protests, Clinton’s National Security Council senior director Dennis Ross was shocked by her loyalty to the Mubaraks. “Her feeling was that Mubarak has been a friend for thirty years,” Ross said, “and if you walk away from your friends, every other ally in the region is going to doubt your word.”

9

Benjamin Netanyahu: Prime Minister of Israel, 1996–99 and 2009–Present

Benjamin Netanyahu’s hatred for Palestinians is so deep that it’s led him to embrace Holocaust revisionism. Most recently, Netanyahu praised killing three hundred protesters in Gaza, saying of the massacre, “We have used force wisely and powerfully.”

During his long rule as the prime minister of Israel, he forced a blockade on Gaza. Human Rights Observers call it an “open-air prison.”

He filled his cabinet with genocidal demagogues like Ayelet Shaked, who served as his minister of justice from 2015–19. She wrote a Facebook post in 2014 which advocated killing innocent children and mothers: “What’s so horrifying about understanding that the entire Palestinian people is the enemy?”

Despite Netanyahu annexing Palestinian territories and moving more and more settlers into the West Bank, Hillary Clinton repeatedly praised Netanyahu as a voice for peace: “What [Mr Netanyahu] has offered in specifics, of restraint on the policy of settlements, of no new starts, for example, is unprecedented.”

In her book, Hard Choices, she said, “I learned that Bibi would fight if he felt he was being cornered, but if you connected with him as a friend, there was a chance you could get something done together.”

At the 2016 AIPAC convention, Hillary Clinton made that friendship absolutely clear: “One of the first things I’ll do in office is invite Israeli prime minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] to visit the White House.”

10

Harvey Weinstein: Former Hollywood Producer

Harvey Weinstein and the Clintons have been very good friends for a long time. Weinstein was not only a prolific fundraiser for the Clintons, but he was also a campaign surrogate. In 2016, he sent messages to campaign manager Robby Mook encouraging him to silence Bernie Sanders’s message on #BlackLivesMatter by pivoting to Sanders’s supposedly weak history on gun control. Perhaps the most ridiculous moment from 2016 is when Harvey Weinstein, as a Clinton surrogate, went on to MSNBC to smear Bernie Sanders as sexist. And while to this day we still hear quite a bit from the media about the dreaded Bernie Bros, it’s an altogether very different Harvey Weinstein who still haunts the airwaves.

Hillary Clinton is clearly a loyal friend, but with Weinstein perhaps we’ve finally seen the limits of that loyalty.