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It was a fool’s errand.

On the day Donald Trump was elected his supporters asked him to pardon the founder and frontman of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange. They flooded social media demanding Assange be allowed to leave the Ecuadorian embassy in London without arrest and extradition to the United States.

Stone silence from Trump and his administration.

A few months before the election, WikiLeaks released a searchable archive of over 30,000 emails and attachments taken from Hillary Clinton’s not-so private email server.

Trump held no aversion to exploiting the emails. He called them the Crooked Hillary emails and said they endangered the national security of the United States.

Democrats called foul, said Assange had colluded with Putin and the Russians.

In April, they filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Russian government, the Trump campaign, and WikiLeaks. They argue there was a widespread conspiracy to swing the 2016 election.

They have zero evidence of this. Evidence is no longer required. Accusations alone now serve to take down leaders and destroy careers.

Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are no longer of use to Donald Trump.

He dished out pardons to ex-Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio and neocon leaker Scooter Libby. Trump mulled other pardons, including a posthumous one for Muhammad Ali to wipe out his draft dodging conviction. It was reported in June Trump insiders are pushing to pardon the junk bond king Michael Milken and reverse his conviction on securities fraud. The Milken pardon is being pushed by Goldman Sachs alumnus and current Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Meanwhile, Julian Assange is left to twist in the wind.

Both Trump’s attorney general and his former CIA director, now secretary of state Mike Pompeo want Assange extradited to the United States where he will face trial and possible execution for espionage.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why Russian Gas Is Critical For The UK

May 8, 2018

Why Russian Gas Is Critical For The UK

Although some companies have learned to ride the waves of geopolitics quite efficiently, still in most cases political tensions only complicate the dealings of energy companies. The Skripal poisoning case has driven a massive political wedge between the United Kingdom and Russia (nations whose relations are historically strained already) and is on the verge of blighting their energy ties. The UK Government’s threats to ban Russian gas imports altogether would be a very short-sighted step, the harm of which would take many years to undo. As opposed to the usual rhetoric of ‘‘safeguarding energy security“ and ‘‘countering Russian influence“, both London and Moscow have a lot to win from a good energy relationship.

The Skripal case is slowly turning into a whodunnit where no one will tell you what really happened and you have to reconstruct everything by yourself – why was the allegedly lethal nerve agent not that lethal, who perpetrated the poisoning and how exactly. Usually when analyzing foreign affairs‘ scandals, it is imperative to look at who could benefit from such a deterioration. One thing is for sure – energy companies only stand to lose. Firstly, British companies might see their maneuvering space narrowed down, especially against the background of Brexit jeopardizing Britain’s adherence to the internal energy market (IEM) of Europe. Although the May government wishes to remain in the IEM, so as not to risk the potential $700 million per year expenses it could bear in a worse-case scenario breakup.

Even if a disaster can be averted and the United Kingdom would stay, regardless if in a limited or full-fledged manner, in the IEM, infrastructure funding from EU funds will almost certainly evaporate. This could be one of the Brexit’s most serious energy consequences, since 16 EU projects of common interest are UK-related, without funding from Brussels, many fall into the risk category of not being implemented.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

All Russiagate Roads Lead To London As Evidence Emerges Of Joseph Mifsud’s Links To UK Intelligence

April 6, 2018

Over the last few months, Professor Joseph Mifsud has become a feather in the cap for those pushing the Trump-Russia narrative. He is characterized as a “Russian” intelligence asset in mainstream press, despite his declarations to the contrary. However, evidence has surfaced that suggests Mifsud was anything but a Russian spy, and may have actually worked for British intelligence. This new evidence culminates in the ground-breaking conclusion that the UK and its intelligence apparatus may be responsible for the invention of key pillars of the Trump-Russia scandal. If true, this would essentially turn the entire RussiaGate debacle on its head.

To give an idea of the scope of this report, a few central points showing the UK connections with the central pillars of the Trump-Russia claims are included here, in the order of discussion in this article:

Mifsud allegedly discussed that Russia has ‘dirt’ on Clinton in the form of ‘thousands of emails’ with George Papadopoulos in London in April 2016.
The following month, Papadopoulos spoke with Alexander Downer, Australia’s ambassador to the UK, about the alleged Russian dirt on Clinton while they were drinking at a swanky Kensington bar, according to The Times. In late July 2016, Downer shared his tip with Australian intelligence officials who forwarded it to the FBI.
Robert Goldstone, a key figure in the ‘Trump Tower’ part of the RussiaGate narrative, sent Donald Trump Jr. an email claiming Russia wanted to help the Trump campaign. He is a British music promoter.
Christopher Steele, ex-MI6, who worked as an MI6 agent in Moscow until 1993 and ran the Russia desk at MI6 HQ in London between 2006 and 2009. He produced the totally unsubstantiated ‘Steele Dossier’ of Trump-Russia allegations, with funding from the Clinton campaign and the DNC.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The UK’s Hidden Hand in Julian Assange’s Detention

February 13, 2018

The UK’s Hidden Hand in Julian Assange’s Detention

Photo by Billy Bob Bain | CC BY 2.0

It now emerges that the last four years of Julian Assange’s effective imprisonment in the Ecuadorean embassy in London have been entirely unnecessary. In fact, they depended on a legal charade.

Behind the scenes, Sweden wanted to drop the extradition case against Assange back in 2013. Why was this not made public? Because Britain persuaded Sweden to pretend that they still wished to pursue the case.

In other words, for more than four years Assange has been holed up in a tiny room, policed at great cost to British taxpayers, not because of any allegations in Sweden but because the British authorities wanted him to remain there. On what possible grounds could that be, one has to wonder? Might it have something to do with his work as the head of Wikileaks, publishing information from whistleblowers that has severely embarrassed the United States and the UK.

In fact, Assange should have walked free years ago if this was really about an investigation – a sham one at that – into an alleged sexual assault in Sweden. Instead, as Assange has long warned, there is a very different agenda at work: efforts to extradite him onwards to the US, where he could be locked away for good. That was why UN experts argued two years ago that he was being “arbitrarily detained” – for political crimes – not unlike the situation of dissidents in other parts of the world that win the support of western liberals and leftists.

According to a new, limited release of emails between officials, the Swedish director of public prosecutions, Marianne Ny, wrote to Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service on 18 October 2013, warning that Swedish law would not allow the case for extradition to be continued.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Images Of British Troops Deployed In London

May 24, 2017

Images Of British Troops Deployed In London

As Prime Minister Theresa May promised, troops have been deployed to guard “key locations,” including the Palace of Westminster, several embassies and “other sensitive sites,” in London and other British cities, the Evening Standard reported.

The mass deployment follows Monday’s attack at Manchester Arena, which killed 22 kids attending an Ariana Grande concert, as well as the 23-year old attacker. It was the worst terror attack in the U.K. since 2005.

The Financial Times reports that nearly 4,000 military personnel have been deployed across Britain to help police with counter-terror efforts after May raised the threat level to “critical” on Tuesday as authorities scramble to apprehend any accomplices that may have aided Salman Abedi, the chief suspect in the bombing who was known to police prior to Monday’s attack.

“There are fears an Islamist bombmaker may be on the loose because of the sophistication of the device used in the Manchester attack on Monday,” the Evening Standard noted.

The FT also noted that the attack occurred at a time when police chiefs across Britain have warned about difficulties recruiting the extra 1,500 police the U.K. government promised following the attacks in Paris and Brussels.

Counter-Terrorism forces have arrested Hashem Abedi, the younger brother of the Manchester attacker, in Tripoli, according to media reports.

Parliament has been closed to the public, the changing of the guard at Westminster has been cancelled and the Old Bailey’s public galleries were also shut, the Evening Standard reports.

Soldiers are likely to be on duty at this weekend’s FA Cup Final at Wembley. And Chelsea have cancelled Sunday’s victory parade to celebrate their premier league win, ESPN reported.

Here’s a few photos showing troops arriving outside the Palace of Westminster, Scotland Yard and 10 Downing Street:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Brexit: The System Cannot Hold

June 24, 2016

Brexit: The System Cannot Hold

Stephen Green 18×24 inches. 2016. Acrylic on canvas. MuseumofAwesomeArt.com

Well, they did it. A majority of Britons made clear they’re so fed up with David Cameron and everything he says or does, including promoting the EU, that they voted against that EU. They detest Cameron much more than they like Nigel Farage or Boris Johnson. It seems that everyone has underestimated that.

Cameron just announced he’s stepping down. And that points to a very large hole in the ground somewhere in London town. Because going through a list of potential leaders, you get the strong impression there are none left. Not to run the country, and not to negotiate anything with Brussels. Which has a deep leadership -credibility- hole of itself, even though the incumbents are completely blind to that.

But first Britain. The Leave victory was as much a vote against Chancellor George Osborne as it was against Cameron. So Osborne is out as potential leader of the Conservatives. Boris Johnson? Not nearly enough people like him, and he fumbled his side of the Leave campaign so badly his credibility, though perhaps not being fully shot, is far too much of an uncertainty for the Tories to enter the upcoming inevitable general elections with.

Who else is there? Michael Gove? Absolute suicide. Likeability factor of zero Kelvin. That bus these guys drove around which proclaimed they could get £350 million extra a year for the NHS health care system in case of a Brexit will come back to haunt all of them. Just about the first thing Farage said earlier when the win became clear, was that the £350 million was a mistake.

I guess you could mention Theresa May, who apparently wants the post, but she’s an integral part of the Cameron clique and can’t be presented as the fresh start the party so badly needs.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Brexit: Wrong Discussion, Wrong People, Wrong Arguments

May 29, 2016

Brexit: Wrong Discussion, Wrong People, Wrong Arguments

G.G. Bain Immigrants arriving at Ellis Island, New York 1907There’ve been a bunch of issues and topics on my -temporarily non-writing- mind, and politics, though as I’ve often said it’s not my preferred focus, keeps on slipping in. That’s not because I’ve gotten more interested in ‘the game’, but because the game itself is changing in unrecognizable fashion, and that is intricately linked to subjects I find more appealing.For instance, in the past few days, I’ve read Matt Taibbi’s epos on the demise of America’s Republican Party in R.I.P., GOP: How Trump Is Killing the Republican Party, and Shaun King on a similar demise of the Democrats in Why I’m Leaving the Democratic Party After This Presidential Election and You Should Too, and both make a lot of sense.

But I think both also miss out on the main reason why these ‘demises’ are happening. In my view, it’s not enough, not satisfactory, to talk about disgruntled voters and corrupt politicians and the antics of Donaldo, and leave it at that. There is something bigger, much bigger, going on that drives these events.

But that I will explain in a later article (soon!). Right now, I want to address another piece of the same pie (though it’s perhaps not obvious that it is): the Brexit ‘discussion’ in Europe. A May 11 piece by ex-World Banker Peter Koenig provides as good a starting point as any:

The Collapse of the European Union: Return to National Sovereignty and to Happy Europeans?

Imagine – the EU were to collapse tomorrow – or any day soon for that matter. Europeans would dance in the streets. The EU has become a sheer pothole of fear and terror: Economic sanctions – punishment, mounting militarization, the abolition of civil rights for most Europeans.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

UK’s European Future In Jeopardy: London Mayor Boris Johnson Will Campaign For Brexit

February 21, 2016

UK’s European Future In Jeopardy: London Mayor Boris Johnson Will Campaign For Brexit

Yesterday, when we summarized the statements by UK politicians regarding the June 23 EU referendum, we said the one most important opinion has yet to come: that of London mayor Boris Johnson’s whose “opinion may sway the vote one way or another in four months. As the Telegraph reproted that “David Cameron is mounting a last-ditch effort to woo Boris Johnson to back his campaign to stay in the European Union, by drawing up plans for a new constitutional settlement that puts the sovereignty of British institutions beyond doubt.”

As the Telegraph added, “sources close to Johnson said he remained “genuinely torn” and that he would “chew over” what the prime minister has to say when Cameron appears on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, before issuing some form of statement this evening. He will then spell out the reasons for his decision in his column for the Daily Telegraph on Monday.”

It appears that Cameron’s effort to “woo” Johnson has failed because moments ago BBC reported that “Boris Johnson is to campaign to leave the EU in the UK’s referendum, BBC understands.”

The Guardian has more:

Boris Johnson is to transform the terms of the EU referendum by announcing that he is to throw his weight behind the campaign to take Britain out of the EU, according to the BBC.

In the biggest boost to the Leave campaign so far, the London mayor is to announce that after much soul-searching he now believes the time has come for Britain to sever its EU membership.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Lines Around the Block to Buy Gold in London…Banks Placing “Unusually Large Orders for Physical”

February 11, 2016

Lines Around the Block to Buy Gold in London…Banks Placing “Unusually Large Orders for Physical”

First, let’s look at the improved fundamentals. Gold bugs will exasperatingly proclaim that fundamentals have been great for the past four years yet the price plunged anyway, so who cares about fundamentals? To this I would respond with two observations. First, large institutional investors and sovereign wealth funds have been anticipating a rate hike cycle for a very long time now. They didn’t know when, but they expected it. The fact that the gold bugs never believed this is irrelevant; what matters is that big money believed it, and it was perceived to be very gold negative. In their minds, this anticipated rate hike cycle would confirm that things were getting back to normal, and if things are normal you don’t need to own gold, right?

The problem is that this assumption is quickly being called into question. Sure the Fed hiked rates once, but it is starting to look more and more like a policy error. Meanwhile, other major central banks around the world are going in the opposite direction, toward negative rates. I am a huge believer in market psychology, and the psychology dominating the minds of most institutional investors over the past few years has been that things were slowly getting back to normal. This has weighed on institutional demand for gold in a big way, and been a meaningful factor in the bear market (manipulation aside). If this psychology shifts, the shift back into gold could be very meaningful.

While that backdrop is interesting in its own right, what may make the move into gold that much more explosive is the lack of alternative investments…

– From the February 3, 2016 post: GOLD – It’s Time to Pay Attention

What a difference a couple of weeks can make. The Telegraph is reporting the following:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

It Gets Ugly in the Toniest Parts of London

December 21, 2015

It Gets Ugly in the Toniest Parts of London

Those once “awash with cash don’t have as much to spend.”

It gets ugly for luxury homes in the toniest parts of London.

The combined value of homes that were sold in prime central London, which includes Belgravia and Chelsea, plunged 24.5% in 2015, year-over-year, to just under £3 billion, according to real-estate data provider LonRes. Prices edged down 1.4%, but transaction volume collapsed. It was even worse at the upper end: transactions of homes over £5 million ($7.5 million) plummeted 30.5%!

LonRes had already warned earlier in its third quarter report:

It was a London bubble that was threatening to undermine the UK economy, as identified by the Bank of England last year. The old argument of prevailing market conditions just being the natural forces of supply and demand doesn’t wash when the outlier, that is the massive influx of overseas investment, tips rising house prices into overdrive.

New taxes on homes over £938,000 ($1.4 million), based on changes to the Stamp Duty Land Tax system at the end of 2014, caught some of the blame. But it wasn’t the only reason, LonRes said. Other factors include the dearth of wealthy foreign buyers. Russians had been impacted by the collapse in oil prices, and Chinese had been hit by the turbulence in China. And for them, there were other uncertainties:

A popular topic at the moment is the authenticity and provenance of the money used to buy property in prime central London (PCL). To this end, HMRC [the UK government’s tax collection department] has discovered that it is entirely conceivable that some buyers may not have made their newly discovered fortunes in an entirely honest and legal manner. Only a year ago, The Times reported that London was the money laundering capital of the world, and Alexander Lebedev, owner of the Evening Standard, claimed then that £1 trillion had been stolen from Russia since 2000.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The City’s stranglehold makes Britain look like an oh-so-civilised mafia state

September 9, 2015

The City’s stranglehold makes Britain look like an oh-so-civilised mafia state

Dodgy donations, misselling, trading scandals, tax evasion: wherever you sniff, something stinks

Illustration by Sebastian Thibault on Britain as mafia state

‘The financial sector exploits an astonishing political privilege: the City of London is the only jurisdiction in the UK not fully subject to the authority of parliament.’ Illustration: Sébastian Thibault

Be reasonable in response to the unreasonable: this is what voters in the Labour election are told. Accommodate, moderate, triangulate, for the alternative is to isolate yourself from reality.

You might be inclined to agree. If so, please take a look at the reality to which you must submit. To an extent unknown since before the first world war, economic relations in this country are becoming set in stone. It is not just that the very rich no longer fall while the very poor no longer rise. It’s that the system itself is protected from risk. Through bailouts, quantitative easing and delays in interest-rate rises, speculative investment has been so well cushioned that – as the Guardian economics editor, Larry Elliott, puts it – financial markets are “one of the last bastions of socialism left on Earth”.

Public services, infrastructure, the very fabric of the nation: these too are being converted into risk-free investments. Social cleansing is transforming central London into an exclusive economic zone for property speculation. From a dozen directions, government policy converges on this objective.

The benefits cap and the bedroom tax drive the poor out of their homes. Theforced sale of high-value council houses creates a new asset pool. An uncapped and scarcely regulated private rental market turns these assets into gold. The freeze on council-tax banding since 1991, the lifting of the inheritance tax threshold, and £14bn a year in tax breaks for private landlords all help to guarantee stupendous returns.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

GCHQ and me: My Life Unmasking British Eavesdroppers

August 3, 2015

GCHQ and me: My Life Unmasking British Eavesdroppers

I stepped from the warmth of our source’s London flat. That February night in 1977, the air was damp and cool, the buzz of traffic muted in this leafy North London suburb, in the shadow of the iconic Alexandra Palace. A fellow journalist and I had just spent three hours inside, drinking Chianti and talking about secret surveillance with our source, and now we stood on the doorstep discussing how to get back to the south coast town where I lived.

Events were about to take me on a different journey. Behind me, sharp footfalls broke the stillness. A squad was running, hard, toward the porch of the house we had left. Suited men surrounded us. A burly middle-aged cop held up his police ID. We had broken “Section 2″ of Britain’s secrecy law, he claimed. These were “Special Branch,” then the elite security division of the British police.

For a split second, I thought this was a hustle. I knew that a parliamentary commission had released a report five years earlier that concluded that the secrecy law, first enacted a century ago, should be changed. I pulled out my journalist identification card, ready to ask them to respect the press.

But they already knew that my companion that evening, Time Out reporter Crispin Aubrey, and I were journalists. And they had been outside, watching our entire meeting with former British Army signals intelligence (Sigint) operator John Berry, who at the time was a social worker.

Aubrey and I were arrested on suspicion of possessing unauthorized information. They said we’d be taken to the local police station. But after being forced into cars, we were driven in the wrong direction, toward the center of London. I became uneasy.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Kafka-like Persecution of Julian Assange

August 1, 2015

Kafka-like Persecution of Julian Assange

In an era when powerful institutions demonize decent people – and the mainstream media joins in, piling on the abuse – legal proceedings have become another Kafka-esque weapon of coercion. Few cases are more troubling than the persecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, as John Pilger describes.

The siege of Knightsbridge is both an emblem of gross injustice and a grueling farce. For three years, a police cordon around the Ecuadorean embassy in London has served no purpose other than to flaunt the power of the state. It has cost £12 million (about $18.7 million). The quarry is an Australian charged with no crime, a refugee whose only security is the room given him by a brave South American country. His “crime” is to have initiated a wave of truth-telling in an era of lies, cynicism and war.

The persecution of Julian Assange is about to flare again as it enters a dangerous stage. From Aug. 20, three quarters of the Swedish prosecutor’s case against Assange regarding sexual misconduct in 2010 will disappear as the statute of limitations expires. At the same time Washington’s obsession with Assange and WikiLeaks has intensified. Indeed, it is vindictive American power that offers the greatest threat – as Chelsea Manning and those still held in Guantanamo can attest.

The Americans are pursuing Assange because WikiLeaks exposed their epic crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq: the wholesale killing of tens of thousands of civilians, which they covered up, and their contempt for sovereignty and international law, as demonstrated vividly in their leaked diplomatic cables.

WikiLeaks continues to expose criminal activity by the U.S., having just published top secret U.S. intercepts – U.S. spies’ reports detailing private phone calls of the presidents of France and Germany, and other senior officials, relating to internal European political and economic affairs.

None of this is illegal under the U.S. Constitution. As a presidential candidate in 2008, Barack Obama, a professor of constitutional law, lauded whistleblowers as “part of a healthy democracy [and they] must be protected from reprisal.” In 2012, the campaign to re-elect President Barack Obama boasted on its website that he had prosecuted more whistleblowers in his first term than all other U.S. presidents combined.

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