Image: Swimming pool in NATO’s new $1.23 billion hq, 2017 via Assar architects.
4/13/19, “I’m Jumping Off the Trump Train: Assange Was the Last Straw,“ James George Jatras
“As I tweeted on April 4, when it appeared that Ecuadorian President Lenín [sic] Moreno was going to cough up Julian Assange:
“If this comes to pass and #JulianAssange is brought to #US in chains like a Gaulish chieftain in a Roman triumph can we definitively declare that any possible #Trump revolution is over and the #DeepState won?”
A quick perusal of social media since Assange’s arrest shows that many others have reached a similar conclusion.
But why? To be sure, there have been other betrayals. The two strikes on Syria on phony chemical warfare accusations come immediately to mind. Or Trump’s failure to build the Mexican wall, coupled with repeated humiliating defeats in Congress with the predictability of Charlie Brown’s getting suckered by Lucy into trying to kick the football.
At the same time there were excuses. On Syria, maybe the President was fed false intelligence. Or maybe Ivanka was upset: Daaaddyyy, you have to dooo something! Or maybe Trump knew the CW accusations against Damascus were fake but felt he had to act (an ominous sign in itself) to deflect charges of being Putin’s puppet, hence what could be deemed deliberately pinprick pro forma strikes. On the wall, well you can’t trust lawyers’ advice, he just doesn’t understand his legal authority well enough, or maybe he…
But the Assange arrest and his upcoming renditi– – oops! – extradition to the United States are different. There’s no nuance. No excuse. No false intel report. No poor legal advice.
It’s plain and simple. The same entities (Deep State, permanent government, the oligarchy, the Borg, whatever term you like) that targeted Trump with the phony Russia collusion narrative want Assange’s scalp nailed to the wall. It’s one thing for favored outlets like the Washington Post and CNN to disseminate classified information that favors the Deep State, quite another to reveal information contrary to its interests. As the premier dispenser of embarrassing secrets that facilitates online dissidence from the established narrative (also under attack by governments and their tech giant accomplices) an example must be made of Assange pour encourager les autres. He can count on being sentenced to rotting for decades in a nasty Office Space federal prison (the US will gladly waive the death penalty to spare the Brits’ prissy Euro-consciences) but may very well die soon enough of natural causes, perhaps like Slobodan Milošević.
An essential role in Assange’s betrayal by Moreno was played by Trump’s Veep Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Former President Rafael Correa says a direct condition of Moreno’s getting a $4.2 billion IMF loan was Assange’s head on a platter.”…
[“Less than two weeks ago, on February 21, Ecuador signed a deal securing the controversial IMF loan for a total of $4.2 billion, in addition to another $6 billion from other U.S.-dominated financial institutions like the World Bank, for a total of $10.2 billion.“…”In the end, the US sway over the IMF meant that Ecuador was required to placate the US to get that money. Ecuador’s recent attempts to stake out a comparatively independent foreign policy, something of which the Assange asylum move was a product, made them a lot of enemies, particularly in the US. As the government now tries to get on the good side of the US, Assange was the main thing the Americans wanted.”]
(continuing): “That’s a lot more plausible than establishment media reports that Assange was ejected for transgressing the Ecuadorians’ fastidious hygiene standards, which (whether based in fact or not) are just cynical defamations to justify his upcoming lynching.
It’s irrelevant whether Trump – who theoretically is the boss of all US agency operatives working with their Brit colleagues to get their mitts on Assange – let the nab go forward because he was unwilling to order his minions to stand down or was powerless to do so. In that regard, it’s similar to pointlessly asking why he has the terrible, horrible, no good, very badnational security team he does. Is it because of “Javanka”?
Is it because he’s beholden to a gaggle of oligarchs? (Supposedly his being a self-financed billionaire made him immune from such influences.) Is it a reflection of a personality disorder?
In the end it doesn’t matter why, all that matters is what is. With Assange’s arrest Trump is now exposed as the wholly owned subsidiary of the Swamp he ran against. He’s now just a wheel fixed to an axle. All he can do now is spin.
In my 2016 endorsement I asked the questions – only questions, not predictions – of what Trump might hopefully accomplish:
‘Can we trust Trump? Will he build his wall and secure our borders? Renovate our deteriorating infrastructure? Restore our manufacturing base? Audit the Federal Reserve and defenestrate the banksters? Restore the GOP’s long-lost reputation (now hardly remembered by anyone) as the “Peace Party” that got us out of wars the Democrats started? Sign a bill to defund Planned Parenthood, as long as they continue to perform abortions (which they will)? Exclude actual or potential Islamic terrorists? Dump our freeloading so-called “allies”? Cease the PC trashing of every tradition in which Americans once took pride? Reunite a nation sundered by Barack Obama and the GOP mandarins, with their divide et impera Punch and Judy show of class and racial discord?
‘Can Trump really “Make America Great Again”? Or at least slow our decline and give our country another chance?
‘I don’t know. But I do know that none of the more mannerly politicians served up by the oligarchy will.
‘“Trust not in princes…” (Ps. 146:3) Neither Trump nor any other politician should be accepted on blind faith. Who really can say if Trump can win or if he does how he would govern. Who can say what’s really in his mind and heart or if, in God’s eyes, he’s a good man or a bad one. But given the dire warning from the likes of Mitt Romney, I like the odds with Trump better than with any of the available alternatives. When the character of his enemies is considered – particularly Warfare State neoconservatives (some of whom at least have the honesty to defect openly to Hillary) – my willingness to gamble on him only increases.’
Even in retrospect it was then a gamble worth taking, indeed the only responsible choice given the horrifying alternative. More, given what Trump promised that departed from the usual nonsense served up by the GOP, the fact that Trump got the nomination instead of the NPCs on the shelf was itself perhaps a sign of that the historic American nation still had a fighting chance.
As for what we hoped he might deliver to “Make America Great Again,” we can see now that the answers to all of the above questions are and will remain an emphatic No. Sure, we got a marginally better tax bill passed, something that any Republican White House and Congress would have done. He may have made minor progress on trade. If we are really lucky, he’ll get another Supreme Court pick and Roe v. Wade will be overturned – marvelous to be sure, but it won’t same this country.
Trump has utterly failed to control the border, much less deal with related issues like remittances, birthright citizenship, and aliens illegally voting. As retired Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor observes: “Surely, Trump should have concluded by now that without an Executive Order that commits the U.S. Army to the defense of the southern border and limits cross-border traffic to legitimate commercial activity, mass illegal immigration will not stop… In a word, Trump refuses to take command and match rhetoric with action, then he will join the pantheon of failed presidents that promised the world only, this time, the American Republic’s existence hangs in the balance.”
Unfortunately, Trump’s appointees – uniformly neoconservatives, Bush-era warmongers, and GOP apparatchiki – have better things for our military to do than defending our own country, to which they are at best indifferent. We can be thankful that Trump hasn’t started any new wars, yet, but his underlings’ dogged commitment to regime change in Venezuela and Iran may change that. His outreach to North Korea hangs by a thread in the face of blatant attempts to sabotage it.
One hopes that at least some animal-level gut instinct will preclude Trump’s crossing that dark river and ruining what’s left of his presidency as George W. Bush did in Iraq. If his lunatics are reckless enough to stumble us into a war with Russia, Trump’s reelection will be the least of anyone’s concerns.
Even without a war his remaining time in office will not be the revival of America that he promised. Let’s keep in mind that for many decades now transformative Democratic presidents have not left this country the same way they found it: FDR, LBJ, Clinton, Obama. By contrast, Republican presidents’ tenures have been at best plateaus along our decline (Eisenhower, Reagan) or positively contributed (Nixon, the two Bushes) to the march of what the Left regards as “Progress” toward their abolition of the historic America and birth of a dystopian Cultural Marxist dictatorship of victims: a borderless, multiethnic, multilingual, multireligious, multisexual, ahistorical, fake country.
Perhaps the saddest thing is that even if he survives in office until the 2020 vote (and he might not) Trump still will almost certainly be the lesser of two evils, in the manner to which we have become accustomed. Despite his no longer representing a threat to the Swamp, the critters will continue to hate him anyway as an avatar of the America they seek to destroy: European ethnicity, Christian (culturally if not spiritually or morally), English-speaking, toxically masculine. He might even win, given the Wall Street and Democratic Socialist Democrats’ ripping each others’ guts out and the solid 35 to 40 percent of the folks who think from Trump’s tweets and stump speeches he’s actually delivering on his promises.
Either way, though, the outcome will be the same. The man who had what is almost certainly to have been the last peaceful, political chance save what’s left of the American republic will thrash around for a few more years, having become little more than a catalyst for our nation’s demise and perhaps its dissolution.
This is not to say that there is no hope. Maybe tomorrow Trump will pardon Assange. Maybe he’ll decide to militarize the Mexican border. Maybe he’ll fire his whole national security team and, for good measure, pull us out of Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq – and NATO. Maybe Barr really will hold the FISA miscreants to account. Maybe…
…maybe there will be an outpouring of miracles that match the one that occurred when Trump improbably was elected in the first place. But as is the case with miracles, the odds are not good.”
……………………………..
Added: The US desperately wanted Assange. Ecuador had to deliver him:
Image, “Christine Lagarde (L), Managing Director and Chairwoman of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), speaks next to White House Presidential Advisor Ivanka Trump at the 55th Munich Security Conference in Munich, southern Germany, on February 16, 2019.” AFP, Getty In 2002’s US attempted coup of Venezuela, IMF immediately announced its support for the new dictator. Unfortunately for IMF, the 2002 coup failed in only 48 hours. Not deterred, in Feb. 2015 the US attempted to assassinate Pres. Maduro–which also failed. Unfortunately for Venezuela and Ecuador, Ivanka loves IMF and World Bank..…Soros has controlled US State Dept. since 1998.
4/11/19, “IMF Deal for Ecuador Paved Way for Assange’s Arrest,” Antiwar.com, Jason Ditz
“Embassy ouster was a long-reported condition for pact”
“WikiLeaks has long reported that the $10 billion IMF bailout for Ecuador was closely related to complying with US demands, in particular on revoking the asylum of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. On Thursday, that appeared to come to pass.”
“Ecuador’s president has invited Venezuela’s self-proclaimed interim president [Guaido] to his country on Thursday to receive a public show of support.”…
3/6/19, “Washington’s IMF leverage,” Mint Press News, Whitney Webb
“For those who would argue that the U.S. could not set such conditions on a loan offered by an “independent” international financial institution, it is worth pointing out that the U.S. is the IMF’s largest shareholder — owning 17.46 percent of the institution – and also ponies up the largest quota for the institution’s maintenance, paying $164 billion in IMF financial commitments annually. In the past, the U.S. has used its privileged position as the institution’s largest funder to control IMF policy by threatening to withhold its IMF funding if the institution does not abide by Washington’s demands.
Furthermore a leaked U.S. Army manual on “Unconventional Warfare” published by WikiLeaks in 2008 noted that the IMF was considered by the U.S. government to be a “financial weapon” to be used in “unconventional warfare” scenarios. As MintPress News recently noted, the manual states that the U.S.’ “persuasive influence” over the IMF can be used by the U.S. military to create “financial incentives or disincentives to persuade adversaries, allies and surrogates to modify their behavior at the theater strategic, operational, and tactical levels,” with such unconventional warfare campaigns highly coordinated with the State Department and the intelligence community.
It is also worth pointing out that Ecuador has been threatened with the financial might of the United States for much more minor issues than Assange’s status, despite its return to Washington’s “good graces” under Moreno’s leadership. For instance, last July, the U.S. threatened Ecuador with “punishing trade measures” if it introduced a measure at the UN that supported breastfeeding over infant formula — a stunning move that showed the international community the U.S.’ willingness to use “economic weapons,” even against allies. Ecuador, of course, immediately acquiesced under the threat of U.S. retribution.
Less than two weeks ago, on February 21, Ecuador signed a deal securing the controversial IMF loan for a total of $4.2 billion, in addition to another $6 billion from other U.S.-dominated financial institutions like the World Bank, for a total of $10.2 billion. If WikiLeaks’ early January warning is to be believed, it can be assumed that deal was secured by Ecuador offering the U.S. assurances that it would soon “hand over” Assange.
Moreno, since he signed on the IMF’s dotted line, has wasted no time in putting into practice the “structural adjustments” and other conditions required by the IMF for Ecuador’s receipt of the loan, including job cuts. In just three days, from February 28 to March 1, Moreno’s government fired nearly 10,000 public officials, according to Ecuadorian media. This is remarkable considering that the deal has not even been granted final approval by the IMF, demonstrating that Moreno is eager to show his willingness to enact the demands of the loan package.
Public ire over the mass firing has grown steadily in recent days, aggravated by the fact that Moreno was implicated in a major corruption scandal just two days before the IMF agreement was signed.
Furthermore, there are indications that Moreno’s government is preparing to drop charges against Chevron — one of the two U.S. government demands made to Ecuador in exchange for the IMF deal, with the other being Assange’s extradition. According to a report published on Wednesday by UPI, Moreno’s government is moving forward with a clean-up of the area that Chevron polluted. As UPI noted:
“After 26 years of legal actions in Ecuador, the United States, Canada and Europe that failed to result in any significant cleanup effort of areas affected by crude oil spills, Ecuadorian authorities will start to clean up polluted areas to try to stop the damage.””
This is notable because, as UPI writes, “previously, authorities could not interfere with the spills because the pollution was used as evidence in lawsuits against Chevron.” Thus, the Moreno-led government’s move to clean up the area that had served as key evidence in past Chevron lawsuits suggests that they are preparing to drop their claims against Chevron.
Ecuador ready to deliver
Moreno’s willingness to quickly enact these requirements of the IMF loan begs the question of how quickly he will seek to enact the alleged U.S. government demands that have also been linked to the loan, namely Assange’s asylum and Ecuadorian citizenship. With both now under review since early January, there is reason to believe that the results of this politically-motivated audit could soon be revealed and are likely to be Washington’s liking.
Further evidence that the U.S. is convinced that Ecuador is set to move to strip Assange of his legal protections granted by his asylum and his status as a citizen of Ecuador has come from the progress made by the sealed U.S. charges against the WikiLeaks founder. The existence of the case, which had long been suspected, was inadvertently yet officially confirmed last November when a “clerical error” revealed that the U.S. has criminal charges waiting for Assange should he be extradited to the United States. A subsequent lawsuit to unseal those charges was unsuccessful.
Chelsea Manning revealed on February 28 to the New York Times that she has been ordered to appear before a grand jury regarding the U.S. case against Assange. The subpoena was first issued on January 22, just a few weeks after Ecuador announced it was “auditing” Assange’s asylum and citizenship.
Manning had originally been ordered to appear on February 5, but for still unknown reasons the date was postponed to March 5. Manning had announced she would fight the subpoena, but it was upheld by the court despite the efforts of Manning and her legal team.
Manning’s subpoena notably revealed that the case against Assange is related to WikiLeaks’ publications and his actions well prior to the 2016 publication of emails from the Democratic National Committee and former Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta by the transparency group. This was confirmed by U.S. officials who spoke to the Washington Post. Many of the documents published by WikiLeaks during this time, including the information given by Manning to the group, exposed horrific war crimes that took place under the Bush administration.
“Washington Post confirms: “U.S. officials
speaking on the condition of anonymity because of grand jury secrecy say
the case is based on [Assange’s] pre-2016 conduct, not the [alleged] election hacks that drew the attention of special counsel Robert S. Mueller” https://t.co/ok8QG2ngD2— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 5, 2019″
Yet another troubling but often overlooked implication of the Manning subpoena is the fact that its issuance shows that the Trump administration is actively moving forward in its pursuit of the case, which was first initiated in 2010 by the Obama administration. Though the Obama administration eventually shelved the case, which seeks to prosecute Assange under the Espionage Act, the Trump administration has revived it — despite Trump’s self-professed “love” for WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign.
According to a report published last November by the Wall Street Journal, the Department of Justice announced that it was “preparing to prosecute” Assange and was “increasingly optimistic it will be able to get him into a U.S. courtroom.” The report also stated that the DOJ planned to indict Assange in such a way that it would trigger his extradition to the United States to stand trial, following sensitive negotiations with foreign governments, namely Ecuador.
With Ecuador now having signed off on the IMF deal — and with it, demonstrated its willingness to submit to the demands underpinning that deal — the U.S.’ optimism seems to have only grown since last year, a sign that does not bode well for Julian Assange or for anyone who values the public’s right to know and press freedom in the United States and beyond.”
(continuing, AntiWar): “Following recent days of Ecuador’s leadership saying Assange’s asylum would not last forever, he was arrested by British police within the London Embassy. Ecuador has tried to present this as related to continuing WikiLeaks operations, and in particular a January leak of Vatican documents.
Ecuador’s economy has been struggling mightily in recent years, and the government has bet much on their ability to secure a bailout. In the end, the US sway over the IMF meant that Ecuador was required to placate the US to get that money.
Ecuador’s recent attempts to stake out a comparatively independent foreign policy, something of which the Assange asylum move was a product, made them a lot of enemies, particularly in the US. As the government now tries to get on the good side of the US, Assange was the main thing the Americans wanted, and Ecuador seems more than willing to try to facilitate that.
While official IMF statements make no specific mentions of Assange, the clear link between the two is likely to continue to loom large, particularly in any US attempts to secure extradition for Assange after having bought his expulsion and ultimate arrest by Britain.”
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