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Scare 2016: As Green Party Power Grows, Jill Stein Accused Of Ties To
Putin
During his speech to the
Green Party National Convention, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
warned that attacks against Jill Stein ‘are going to go through the
roof.’
By Kit O'Connell
10 August, 2016
AUSTIN,
Texas — As the popularity of the Green Party continues to
rise during this divisive election, attacks and smear campaigns
against the Greens, and their presidential nominee, Jill Stein, are
ramping up.
The
latest rumor suggests Stein is under the control of Russian President
Vladimir Putin, and it’s based on a deliberately misleading tweet
about a video she recorded during a trip to Russia over the winter.
On
Saturday, economist Andrew Weiss tweeted a link to a video of Stein
posted on Dec. 20. The video, “Anti-War
Message in Moscow: Jill Stein, 2016 US-Presidential Candidate (Green
Party),”
was assembled from various sources — notably, a
video posted on
Stein’s Facebook page — by German anti-war site AntiKrieg
Andrew S. Weiss
Creepy @DrJillStein video from Moscow gushing over Russian support for human rights, dinner w Putin, RT anniv party
Weiss
describes the video as “creepy,” and claims that it features
Stein “gushing over Russian support for human rights.”
Journalist
Glenn Greenwald refuted Weiss’ statement a day later in a tweet of
his own, calling Weiss’ claims about the Stein video “100%
false.”
Glenn Greenwald
Was only a matter of time before Jill Stein was smeared as a disloyal Kremlin-sympathizer (tweet is 100% false)
In
the video, Stein briefly thanks the donors and supporters who helped
make her travel possible, then praises the other attendees of the RT
Anniversary Conference,
the event which prompted her visit to Russia.
Those
attendees included foreign dignitaries like British Labour Party
leader Jeremy
Corbyn and
Cyril Svoboda, former deputy prime minister, minister of foreign
affairs, and interior minister of the Czech Republic, as well as
Patricia Villegas, president of pan-Latin American news network
teleSUR, and Lt. Gen. Michael
Flynn,
former head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.
As
the title of the video suggests, the video’s message is primarily
anti-war and a criticism of heightened
tensions between Russia and the West,
which many have compared to a new
Cold War.
Describing discussions at the conference, Stein says:
“It’s
been so inspiring to see, rising up at this very critical and
perilous moment that we’re in — a moment of grave militarism,
potential nuclear confrontation, climate meltdown, and expanding war.
It’s been so wonderful to see people come together from across all
borders and from the across the political spectrum, really, come
together around basic human values, around human rights, around the
need for international law, including the need to reign in U.S.
exceptionalism and totally reform and revise our foreign policy so
that it is based on international law, human rights, and diplomacy.”
Following
her brief comments, the remainder of the video by AntiKrieg consists
of photos and press clippings from Stein’s appearance at the
conference, emphasizing her anti-war message. At no point does she
praise the human rights records of Russia or Putin.
Assange:
Attacks on Stein are ‘going to go through the roof’
During
an appearance at the Green Party National Convention on Saturday,
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange warned Stein to anticipate more
attacks of this nature as her political power rises. He appeared by
video conference from the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he
has lived on asylum for the past four years,
fearing extradition to the United States.
Watch
WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange: Attacks Against Jill Stein Are “Going
to Go Through the Roof”:
Assange
said:
“[L]et
me tell you that I’ve just seen that the attacks have started to
ramp up on Jill Stein. They are going to go through the roof. I’ve
had attacks from what is effectively the Clinton threat machine.
They’re now post-convention. You guys are going to be
post-convention. Those attacks are going to be ferocious.”
Assange,
too, has been forced to defend himself against accusations that he
has ties to Russia in the wake of WikiLeaks’ publication of 20,000
leaked internal Democratic National Committee emails that
has forced the resignation of Debbie
Wasserman Schultz,
the party’s chair, and other
key DNC staff.
The Clinton campaign suggested the emails were leaked by Russian
hackers to boost Donald Trump’s prospects in the election, but
those claims arebased
on suspect evidence provided by “experts” with known ties to the
NSA.
“Ultimately,
there’s no conclusive proof that the hackers in either instance
[including another hacking incident in June] were Russian or even
tied to the Russian government,” wrote Mnar Muhawesh, MintPress’
founder and editor-in-chief, on July 25. “The entire case is built
upon circumstantial evidence.
And
it’s not a far-fetched notion to suggest that Weiss, the major
source of the smear campaign targeting Stein as pro-Putin, could have
a pro-Clinton agenda or even a vested interest in her anti-Russian
platform.
Weiss
is a senior advisor to the Albright Stonebridge Group,
a global business strategy firm chaired by Madeleine Albright, who
served as secretary of state under President Bill Clinton. Weiss has
also worked
with the Clinton Global Initiative to provide clean water in Haiti.
Stein
responds to the smear campaign with a call for peace
Speaking
to Kwame
Rose,
a reporter for The Real News Network, Stein responded directly to the
smear campaign after she received her party’s nomination on
Saturday.
Stein
reiterated that her main message during her visit to Russia was to
speak out against war:
“My
contribution to that panel was to tell Putin and everybody else that
it was time for a peace initiative in the Middle East and we needed
to stop the war in Syria. We needed to stop the bombing, we need a
weapons embargo, and to freeze the funding of those countries that
continued to fund terrorism.”
She
said Putin seemed to respond favorably to her message of peace,
adding:
“And
interestingly, Putin watched our conference and our panel, and his
remarks that night at that dinner was that he had heard the foreign
politicians and he was shocked to find that he agreed with us on the
need to create a peaceful path forward on Syria.”
During
the interview, Stein reiterated her core anti-war message:
“The
problem is that U.S. foreign policy is too often representing the war
properties and the weapons industry. They’’re the only ones who
are making out like bandits in this policy in the Middle East. We
need a peace offensive. We need to stop having a foreign policy that
is essentially a public relations campaign for the weapons industry.
These problems are not so difficult to solve if we sit down as human
beings.”
She
also called on Hillary Clinton and the U.S. government to stop
provoking Russia through a military
buildup in Eastern Europe.
“Unfortunately,
Hillary Clinton has been very busy just provoking Russia and not
moving forward to a dialogue and solutions that serve us all,” she
lamented.
Watch
“Jill
Stein Defends Her Decision to Meet with Putin”
from
The Real News Network:
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