"B.C. Supreme Court judge delivers major blow to Meng Wanzhou, ruling that extradition proceedings against the Huawei executive should proceed. Judge rules the offence Meng is accused of by American prosecutors would be considered a crime if it occurred in Canada."and:
"The BC ruling says the essence of Meng’s alleged crime is fraud. Meng, the 48-year-old chief financial officer of the telecommunications giant, is charged with fraud in the United States for allegedly deceiving banks into a possible violation of economic sanctions against Iran."and:
"The BC court ruling on Meng Wanzhou means the proceedings and the extradition bid will proceed, but it does not mean that she will be extradited. Meng's legal team had argued that Canada doesn't have the same sanctions against Iran, so no crime had been committed."The 'fraud' bit is one of the most crooked bits of judicial pettifoggery I've seen.
"Sound truck at a minor protest in São Paulo today flew the flag of Ukrainian Neonazis “Right Sector”. Members of the Brazilian extreme-right have been trained in Ukraine, as reported by the @FT in January 2017. https://ft.com/content/f9ee01ca-ce49-11e6-864f-20dcb35cede2""A Netflix Documentary On Jeffrey Epstein Is Providing Us With More Gross Stories About Prince Andrew" (Allison). (((They)))'ve decided to put it all on Randy Andy.
"Another racist police murder in the USA, all captured on camera. Meanwhile, over atClarified enough for you?: "Facebook appoints Israeli censor to oversight board" (Nassar).
@KenRoth's Human Rights Watch, five tweets attacking Venezuela have been published in the past 24 hours. And strangely nothing has been said about this homemade human rights crime."
"More than 100 residents and one staff have died at the agencies owned or managed by people Doug Ford appointed to his advisory committee to look into LTC staffing, appointed last February.""Trudeau says China ‘doesn’t seem to understand’ Canada’s judicial independence" (Connolly). China knows what a sniveling, groveling lackey looks like.
"Huge: The ex US ambassador to China admitted Chinese President Xi Jinping didn't want to militarize the South China Sea and offered a peace agreement, but the Obama admin rejected his olive branch and continued militarizing the region
USA is the aggressor""Left Gatekeepers Through the New Left: Monitored Rebellion (Part 2)" (Lerro). More content here than anything else today, probably more content than anything else so far this year.
"Solomon is in line with the U.S. Republican Party establishment which (grudgingly or otherwise) accept Trump. For these folks, debunking the belief of a Trump-Russia collusion is a paramount interest, unlike clearing Russia of wrongdoing. This mindset rightfully ridicules Adam Schiff for saying that he has proof of a Trump-Russia collusion against Hillary Clinton, while accepting the assertion of Russian government U.S. election meddling, without any conclusive proof given.""The Harm of the Anti-Vaccination Movement" (Miller).
"When asked why mainstream scientists are still clinging to the theory that the virus originated in a Wuhan wet market, he said that scientists "try not to be political" but that that scientists who support the lab escape theory risk negatively impacting their industry with tighter laboratory controls.
"For instance, if it was to turn out that this virus may have come about because of an accidental lab release that would have implications for how we do viral research in laboratories all around the world which could make doing research much harder," he said, adding "So I think the inclination of virus researchers would be to presume that it came from an animal until proven otherwise because that would have less ramifications for how we are able to do research in the future. The alternative obviously has quite major implications for science and science on viruses, not just obviously political ramifications which we’re all well aware of."""Disgraced Anti-Vaxx Child Abuser Andrew Wakefield Tortures History" (VT Editors).
"The bill was passed by the committee under two unusual circumstances and with almost no public awareness.
First, Senate Committee Chairman Jim Risch (R-Idaho) refused to allow a live stream of the meeting, despite the fact that the Senate Rules panel had recommended that extra efforts be taken to ensure public transparency while the Capitol is closed to the public and the presence of reporters is severely limited. The Senate’s Press Gallery Standing Committee of Correspondents had objected strongly to Risch’s decision.
Second, the bill was passed without being named, debated, or even discussed, even though it would set into law the largest such aid package in U.S. history. There has been no mention of the bill by most media in the United States.
The massive package is particularly noteworthy in light of the current devastation to the American taxpayers who will be footing the bill – over $10 million per day. In recent months approximately 30 million Americans have lost jobs, 100,000 small businesses have already closed forever, and over seven million are at risk of doing so.
The bill was voted on as part of a package of 15 bills that were voted on “en bloc” (all together).
After Senator Kaine said he didn’t know what the list contained, Risch responded: “I’m not trying to pull anything here… this was circulated among the staff.”
Risch then rapidly listed the numbers but did not give the titles. There was then a voice vote and the motion passed unanimously.""Coronagrifting: A Design Phenomenon" (Wagner).
"Simone has now been appointed deputy assistant secretary of defense (DASD) for the Middle East, which is the principal position for shaping Pentagon policy for that region. Post 9/11, Ledeen’s leading neocon father Michael was the source of the expressions “creative destruction” and “total war” as relating to the Muslim Middle East, where “civilian lives cannot be the total war’s first priority … The purpose of total war is to permanently force your will onto another people.” He is also a noted Iranophobe, blaming numerous terrorist acts on that country even when such claims were ridiculous. He might also have been involved in the generation in Italy of the fabricated Iraq Niger uranium documents that contributed greatly to the march to war with Saddam."The COVID-19 Pandemic, Canada’s National Emergency Strategic Stockpile, Expired N95 Masks and Missing Masks" (Brett). To be fair, they always need money to cover tax cuts for the 1% or to pay for the incomprehensibly high cost of Wars For The Jews, and every nickel spent on medical equipment is taken right out of the grasp of some starving billionaire or at the expense of an unstolen square inch of land.
Apparently Simone’s gene pool makes her qualified to lead the Pentagon into the Middle East, where she no doubt has views that make her compatible with the Trump/Pompeo current spin on the Iranian threat. The neocon Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) gushed “Simone Ledeen has worked at the Pentagon & Treasury and at a major bank. Exactly what we should want for such a position.” Of course, FDD, the leading advocate of war with Iran, also wants someone who will green light destroying the Persians.
Ledeen, a Brandeis graduate with an MBA from an Italian university, worked in and out of government in various advisory capacities before joining Standard Chartered Bank. One of her more interesting roles was as an advisor to General Michael Flynn in Afghanistan at a time when Flynn was collaborating with her father on a book that eventually came out in 2016 entitled The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and its Allies. The book asserts that there is a global war going on in which “We face a working coalition that extends from North Korea and China to Russia, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela and Nicaragua.” The book predictably claims that Iran is at the center of what is an anti-American alliance.
The extent to which Simone has absorbed her father’s views and agrees with them can, of course, be questioned, but her appointment is yet another indication, together with the jobs previously given to John Bolton, Mike Pompeo and Elliot Abrams, that the Trump Administration is intent on pursuing a hardline aggressive policy in the Middle East and elsewhere. It is also an unfortunate indication that the neoconservatives, pronounced dead after the election of Trump, are back and resuming their drive to obtain the positions of power that will permit endless war, starting with Iran."
"One thing shining through that Canadians will remember forever - is that when times were #COVID19 tough Canada's Conservative Reform Party was only a hindrance to us getting through it, and absolutely no help at all. No solutions, no vision, only pettiness and whining #cdnpoli"There is no possible way to justify the conduct of Sheer and his party throughout the pandemic. I don't like Conservatives, but the level to which they have sunk is simply unbelievable, even to me.
"The Daily Beast reported that suspicions are swirling over whether the leak was an inside job in Ukraine or the result of so-called "Russian hacking", but that's just an attempt to distract from the calls, just like the unproven claims that Russia was responsible for hacking the DNC's emails four years ago. The real Ukrainegate scandal therefore wasn't over the now-debunked allegations that Trump engaged in a quid pro quo with current Ukrainian President Zelensky in an attempt to reopen this investigation for supposedly political reasons, but over Biden's attempts to cover up his son's corruption in Ukraine in order to not hurt the Vice President's future campaign prospects. This is similar in essence to how the real Russiagate scandal wasn't about Russia allegedly helping Trump, but about Hillary trading the US' strategic uranium deposits for Clinton Foundation kickbacks."Tiny example of the huge 'scientific' astroturfing going on, the kind of thing that real conspiracy theorists should be all over, if they weren't themselves corrupted: "JetBlue’s Founder Helped Fund A Stanford Study That Said The Coronavirus Wasn’t That Deadly" (Lee). Whenever you see one of the 'maverick' but unheard of 'scientists' made up to be the most important researcher of all time I can guarantee there is astroturf money behind it.
"When the FBI became intelligence-driven, it didn’t have to stop being fact-driven. Exhibit A is Christopher Steele, who was never a collector of facts — he was a former foreign intelligence officer, and there’s a huge difference: A spy’s singular mission is to break the laws of the countries to which they are assigned and get citizens to commit espionage. Facts don’t matter — only results. The FBI agents who handled or listened to Steele should not have treated him as the confidential human source he never was but as a conduit for the transmission of unverified information.
When intelligence started coming into headquarters from Steele and other confidential sources, it was treated as part of a labyrinth of possibilities. Unlike a criminal investigation, where facts matter, none of what the bureau got was verifiable. Yet no one involved at HQ appears to have cared if the intelligence on Trump campaign allies Carter Page, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone was factually true. (The latter two later were prosecuted for crimes that occurred before and after the campaign.)
To the headquarters executives and lawyers running the Trump-Russia investigation, this was the best of both worlds: a criminal investigation into Russian collusion masquerading as a counterintelligence case, where information was not evidence and therefore fungible.
Former FBI Director James Comey, in testimony to Congress on national television, announced that a counterintelligence case had been opened on the Trump campaign. Think about that: The very announcement that a counterintelligence case exists is, de facto, the end of such an investigation; the “enemy” knows the jig is up. Did Comey really know that little about counterintelligence?
Even after President Trump took office, the FBI was running a criminal investigation under the rubric of a counterintelligence investigation. How do we know? Because it was perhaps the most important case in the history of the bureau and they didn’t tell the boss. If it really was a counterintelligence case — that’s what the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is used for, after all — why hide it from the chief consumer of counterintelligence, the president?
On Jan. 13, 2017, the FBI interviewed Steele’s only sub-source and determined his dossier on which the entire Russia collusion case was built was bogus. Not only were the four subjects of confidential information not suspects in the crime, but the FBI now knew there was no crime. What law enforcement agency keeps investigating a crime it finds out didn’t happen? Answer: one that has parallel counterintelligence authorities.
So, agents pressed on with three additional FISA warrants, a legally dubious approach to getting then-national security adviser Michael Flynn to lie about a conversation with the Russian ambassador, for which the FBI already had a transcript, in order to prosecute him for the lie or get him fired. And they opened a criminal investigation on the president of the United States for lawfully firing Comey. These tactics might have been laudable had the FBI been a foreign intelligence agency directing agents against a foreign target, not against American citizens and a presidential administration."
"They will just pass his military budget""The Liberal Right Blew Coronavirus" ('Hunter Wallace') (my emphasis in red):
"There is take making the rounds that nationalists have squandered the opportunity of a lifetime. The coronavirus was almost tailor made for a “national populist” president to push through his stalled agenda. It was a foreign threat could only enter the country and kill the old and the weak through uncontrolled travel and immigration. The Left was hesitant to close our borders even to a deadly virus that disproportionately kills non-Whites because of “racism” and “xenophobia.” The nation had been left nearly defenseless by globalists who had outsourced the medical supply chain. The crisis vindicated Trump on the core issues that got him elected: uncontrolled immigration, trade and foreign policy.
There is an election in November and this would have been the perfect opportunity for Trump to win over swing voters, consolidate and expand his base against a sputtering and senile Joe Biden. It is times like this when the public demands strong and competent leadership, not a nanny state “mommy,” but a “father of the nation” figure, to navigate the nation through a major crisis. He could have acted swiftly to impose real travel bans on China and Europe, not an optics ban that allowed American citizens to come and go as they please, and to regulate international flights like every other country that has successfully fought the virus. He could have followed Dr. Bright’s advice and mobilized domestic industry to produce masks. If he had listened to his own intelligence agencies, it is easy to imagine Trump devoting the 2020 State of the Union address to preparing the country for the looming threat of a deadly pandemic.
None of this happened like it did in Hungary and Australia because Donald Trump already had a plan for winning the 2020 election. The plan was that he would be reelected on the basis of the conservative policies – the tax cuts and deregulation – that had created the greatest economy in the world. The stock market was surging to Dow 30,000 in February. He didn’t want to take any bold and controversial actions that would have screwed that up. As a result, Trump downplayed and minimized the virus and wrote it off as “just the flu.” He consulted with his donors and made the call to “ride it out.” In doing so, he ignored the WHO, his own public health team and his own intelligence agencies.
Look at where we are now because of the choice that Donald Trump made at the fork in the road of his destiny: 94,143 dead and 14.7% unemployment in two months. The worst aspects of the liberal Right have been put on public display: the selfishness, materialism and extreme individualism at the heart of their philosophy, a callous disregard for the lives of the weak, the elderly and the poor, the rejection of science and medicine, the embrace of conspiracy theories, obsequious deference to wealthy donors at the expense of the common good, attacking doctors and nurses putting their own lives at risk for doing their jobs in a national crisis, the descent into polarization at the worst possible moment and the scapegoating of foreigners for our inept management of a global crisis."This is the best explanation I've read on the FBI and Flynn: "Ghost of J. Edgar Haunts Flynn Investigation" (Rowley). "Time To Break Up The FBI?" (Smith). Probably the biggest non-news - and it may not be true at all, but yuge if it is, and an appropriate punishment for Russiagate/Obamagate - you won't read is that Trump has quietly removed intelligence from the FBI's purview: "The Only Thing Morbidly Obese In D.C. Is The Government" (Luongo).
"Husseini first pulls off this canard by arguing that there is no meaningful difference between biowarfare and biodefense. This is hardly true. Although there is always some overlap between basic science, medicine, preventive research, and warfare, there are also serious differences in emphasis, approach, practice, and funding that he glosses over. Husseini has to assert this tenuous proposition in order to implicate the Wuhan lab in suspected biowarfare malfeasance (or error), and to claim that there is a global biowarfare arms race between China and the US (rather than by the US against its opponents). That linguistic sleight of hand, in particular, the equivalence of biowarfare and biodefense is factually not true, and is certainly not true in one very obvious way regarding the Wuhan lab: if there were a biowarfare arms race happening around the world, the countries putatively at war with each other–the US and China–would not share or allow access to their labs to a competitor state, collaborate, or exchange their research and researchers. But the fact is the US was given wide access to the Wuhan Labs–not just scientists but also US State Department functionaries–as were French scientists. The Wuhan lab solicited US aid and funding. (Husseini seems to believe that biowarfare labs openly solicit funding from other countries). Scientists in the US and China collaborated and worked together collegially, trained each other, shared information, published papers, and still maintain some relations.
As a point of contrast, no one, not a single Chinese national has ever set foot in Fort Dietrick, the key US biowarfare research lab. No Chinese university has ever collaborated with them. No Chinese funding has been directed to it. No one knows exactly what they are researching. This is not the case with Wuhan—there is knowledge which viruses they had, and published papers on what they were researching, how they were being researched, as well as what safety protocols were in place. If we take into consideration the fact that Chinese researchers are no longer welcome to do even basic research in the US at this point in time, it’s inconceivable that the US would have been assisting the Chinese with weaponizing viruses that could potentially be used against them, or funding such work when even basic scientific research–and now graduate study in the sciences–is being obstructed in the US for the Chinese."There is more than a little irony in the fact that the Assholians were using the Wuhan lab to do contract research for them, some of which they were afraid to do at home as they couldn't be certain in the safety procedures of their own labs (and some of which they contracted out because of the fact the Chinese are better scientists).
"There’s one big MK ULTRA topic that I’ve left out of that list: Subproject 102, the ‘gang rioting’ subproject. I’ve left it out because it’s wrapped up in the most interesting Playboy ‘political causes’ of all: Black Nationalism and Racial Integration.
In 1958, and continuing for a few years, the CIA funded the work of sociologist Muzafer Sherif, who documented the political hot-buttons of “inner city youths”, youths who his henchman found roaming urban streets. Sherif, a native of Turkey, wanted to know what these boys’ aspirations were; what they considered being ‘rich'; how they related to the “dominant features of American life”; and what they’d do to gang members who “squealed”. Sherif was known for his work on how to ‘tailor messages to’ (read ‘manipulate’) different groups of people. Of course, it was inner city youth rioting which destroyed swaths of urban America in the 1960s; undermined Black communities economically; and made ‘White Flight’ a matter of personal safety. This rioting was the ugly side of the Civil Rights Movement.
In 1960s America, when you talk about ‘inner city youth’ and gangs, you’re talking about Black youth and gangs for the most part. The CIA wanted to know how to manipulate young Black people. This is where Hugh Hefner comes in with his naked (mostly White) ladies; his stance on ‘racial integration'; and his militant Black Nationalist political pundits."or:
"According to John Broven in Record Makers and Breakers, Cash Box was the brainchild of Bill Gersh, a coin-operated jutebox marketing expert who would later spearhead coverage of the coin-operated video game industry. Readers interested in Bill Colby’s connection to Activision will be glad to know that Gersh’s Cash Box and a separate publication started by Gersh, The Marketplace, were premier publications covering coin-operated video games such as ‘Pong’ made by Atari, the firm from which Activision poached their initial stable of programmers. These programmers were managed by an old GRT/Chess Records hand, Jim Levy. Cash Box was instrumental in starting the video game industry.
Cash Box is among the best sources for information on the early video game industry. 1972 ‘Pong’ ad, thank you http://allincolorforaquarter.blogspot.com.
The important thing to remember about Gersh is that if you wanted to know how to reach regular people (especially men) through low-brow, coin-operated entertainment during WWII and beyond, he was the expert to go to. Gersh was a premiere source for ‘competitive intelligence’, or industrial espionage. (Readers interested in the propaganda value of pornography may like my post Ron Jeremy: OSS Brat.)"or:
"The uncomfortable fact is that during the period 1947-1968, Kenneth Anger was everywhere the CIA was. In the early fifties, Anger courted the CIA-funded Jean Cocteau in Paris while Cocteau frontlined for the CIA’s ‘Congress for Cultural Freedom’. In the mid Fifties, Anger investigated/promoted Crowley’s Cefalù sex cult with Alfred Kinsey, just as the CIA was reviving Crowley’s ‘system of control’ research through MK ULTRA. In the mid-to-late 1960s, Anger pushed LSD use and exploited San Fransisco’s demimonde just like MK ULTRA’s George White had for his spy research.
It’s not hard to notice the overlap between Anger’s work and the CIA’s; I leave it to readers to surmise why Landis failed to do so. MK ULTRA and the ‘Congress for Cultural Freedom’ are both well-document CIA programs: the ‘Congress for Cultural Freedom’ was known to be a CIA front since at least 1978 when CIA head William Colby outed the congress along with Gloria Steinem in his autobiography. The MK ULTRA/LSD connection in San Fransisco has been widely recognized since 1979, when John Marks published his iconic book, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate.
In this post, I’m going to add the historical context to Anger’s early career in Europe, New York City and San Fransisco; the context that Bill Landis should have included in his– otherwise– reasonably good book on Anger. This context covers two aspects to Anger’s career: 1) his ‘rise’ to the European film scene in the early 1950s and 2) Anger’s association with Kinsey and how both Kinsey and Anger’s work paralleled George White’s LSD/prostitution work for the CIA."The website no longer exists. You can see why it might be important to archive it. About 5 years ago he posted:
"Howdy, a.nolen readers!
I’ve decided to take a break from blogging to condense my posts into book form. I don’t know when I’ll be finished with the manuscript, so if you’re interested in being notified on its completion, please comment ‘notify me’ to this post, and I’ll contact you via whatever confidential contact info you leave. (Emails, etc will not be viewable by the public.)
It’s been a lot of fun and I appreciate your readership!
A.Nolen"
"There’s a reason the NYTs went after Ronan Farrow yesterday. Without sharing anything that is off record, let’s just say it was most certainly a preemptive strike."Farrow must be about to #metoo Biden.
"Interestingly, Xi also made a dramatic announcement that “COVID-19 vaccine development and deployment in China, when available, will be made a global public good. This will be China’s contribution to ensuring vaccine accessibility and affordability in developing countries.” This also puts Trump in a fix. Trump’s estimation is that tons of money can be made by marketing abroad any US-made vaccine at exorbitant price, as western Pharma companies routinely do."The astroturf: "The Lockdown Protestors Are Not Working Class" (Smith).
"The ambassador's death comes just two days after he condemned comments by visiting US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who denounced Chinese investments in Israel and accused China of hiding information about the coronavirus pandemic."There's another factor with Pompeo - both McConnell and Trump want him to run for the Senate seat in Kansas. The Republican alternative is Kris Kobach, so obviously a nut that the Republicans fear he might actually lose (when you're too nutty for Kansas . . .), thus possibly putting the control of the Senate in play (and Trump knows he's in deep trouble if Shifty takes another run at him, this time with a Democrat-controlled Senate). Thus having a murder follow Pompeo around, and crating a scandal over the firing of someone investigating the Fat Fuck's misuse of the Secret Service - who spent years training how to dodge bullets only to have to spend their time driving truckloads of take-out Chinese to fill his gaping maw - and even the odd failure of the hopeless attack on Venezuela, all might just be a campaign to force the Fat Fuck back to Kansas. I can't see the Israelis killing the Chinese ambassador, but I can clearly see them stepping aside to let the Assholes do it.
"If Britain had one single mainstream media journalist willing to think, rather than just regurgitate government propaganda, they might have realised that there is a massive story here if you look at it the other way round. The quote from the Guardian deliberately attempted to give the impression that Russia, China and Iran were trying to disable, destroy or hamper coronavirus research: “Any attack against efforts to combat the coronavirus”. But if you read carefully through those articles, you find that the allegation is merely that they are attempting hack in to gain access to the research."The face of post-COVID geopolitics" (Madsen). So much for the globalist experiment.
Because the UK and the US are attempting to hide their vaccine and treatment research results from the rest of the world to make money out of them.
Much has been written about the possibility for a new and better kind of world to emerge after coronavirus. Yet our governments cannot conceive of any model for fighting this threat to the whole world, other than the capitalist, money-making model. The much-touted “race to develop a vaccine” is not a race to save lives. It is a race to make billions.
The United States and the United Kingdom are working in all international fora to head off efforts to pool global research and to make any vaccine or medicine a good for the world. Governments can reward those working on the vaccine, and the companies for providing the facilities, using economic models other than the patent and the potential for massive profit."
"The United Fresh Produce Association, which represents about 1,500 companies, sent an open letter to the Agriculture Department division that awards contracts, saying some of its members have concerns about the contracting process.
In the letter, association president and CEO Tom Stenzel said some his members pointed out that "companies who were awarded bids without their own warehouse, staff and distribution ability are now soliciting companies that have those facilities and were denied bids for no apparent reason."
The letter also claimed "we understand companies may have been awarded a contract larger than their annual revenues," and that "companies may have been awarded a contract despite the fact that they have no trucks nor delivery systems."""NEO: Pandemic Exposes US as Only Bioweapons Superpower" (Duff). Problems but no antidotes.
"in honor of the world's first trillionaire, a cartoon from 2014""America’s Chilling Experiment in Human Sacrifice" (Parramore/Spear). Illth.
"OMFG ... this is the greatest exchange you'll read on Twitter this year."Nord Stream 2 Pipe-Laying Ship Approaches Russia's Kaliningrad - Report".
P.S. Yeah, Aaron, you're a liar. You're just too stupid to realize it."
"As the co-founder of a small security consulting firm called UC Global, David Morales spent years slogging through the minor leagues of the private mercenary world. A former Spanish special forces officer, Morales yearned to be the next Erik Prince, the Blackwater founder who leveraged his army-for-hire into high-level political connections across the globe. But by 2016, he had secured just one significant contract, to guard the children of Ecuador’s then-President Rafael Correa and his country’s embassy in the UK.
The London embassy contract proved especially valuable to Morales, however. Inside the diplomatic compound, his men guarded Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, a top target of the US government who had been living in the building since Correa granted him asylum in 2012. It was not long before Morales realized he had a big league opportunity on his hands.
In 2016, Morales rushed off alone to a security fair in Las Vegas, hoping to rustle up lucrative new gigs by touting his role as the guardian of Assange. Days later, he returned to his company’s headquarters in Jerez de Frontera, Spain with exciting news.
“From now on, we’re going to be playing in the first division,” Morales announced to his employees. When a co-owner of UC Global asked what Morales meant, he responded that he had turned to the “dark side” – an apparent reference to US intelligence services. “The Americans will find us contracts around the world,” Morales assured his business partner.
Morales had just signed on to guard Queen Miri, the $70 million yacht belonging to one of the most high profile casino tycoons in Vegas: ultra-Zionist billionaire and Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson. Given that Adelson already had a substantial security team assigned to guard him and his family at all times, the contract between UC Global and Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands was clearly the cover for a devious espionage campaign apparently overseen by the CIA."and:
"Throughout the black operations campaign, US intelligence appears to have worked through Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands, a company that had previously served as an alleged front for a CIA blackmail operation several years earlier. The operations formally began once Adelson’s hand-picked presidential candidate, Donald Trump, entered the White House in January 2017.
In its coverage of the alleged relationship between the CIA, UC Global, and Adelson’s Sands, the New York Times claimed it was “unclear whether it was the Americans who were behind bugging the embassy.” Though he outlined work for an “American client” in company emails, Morales insisted before a Spanish judge that the spying he conducted in the embassy was performed entirely on behalf of Ecuador’s SENAIN security services. He has even claimed to CNN Español that he was merely seeking to motivate his employees when he boasted about “playing in the first division” after returning from his fateful trip to Las Vegas.
This investigation will further establish the US government’s role in guiding UC Global’s espionage campaign, shedding new light on the apparent relationship between the CIA and Adelson’s Sands, and expose how UC Global deceived the Ecuadorian government on behalf of the client Morales referred to as the “American friends.” Thanks to new court disclosures, The Grayzone is also able to reveal the identity of Sands security staff who presumably liaised between Morales, Adelson’s company and US intelligence.
According to court documents and testimony by a former business associate and employees of Morales, it was Adelson’s top bodyguard, an Israeli-American named Zohar Lahav, who personally recruited Morales, then managed the relationship between the Spanish security contractor and Sands on a routine basis. After their first meeting in Vegas, the two security professionals became close friends, visiting each other overseas and speaking frequently.
During the spying operation, Lahav worked directly under Brian Nagel, the Director of Global Security for Las Vegas Sands. A former associate director of the US Secret Service and cyber-security expert, Nagel was officially commended by the CIA following successful collaborations with federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies. At Sands, he seemed to be an ideal middleman between the company and the US national security state, as well as a potential guide for the complex surveillance tasks assigned to Morales.
When Adelson’s favored candidate, Donald Trump, moved into the Oval Office, the CIA came under the control of Mike Pompeo, another Adelson ally who seemed to relish the opportunity to carry out illegal acts, including spying on American citizens, in the name of national security."and:
"On February 26, 2017, Wikileaks announced the forthcoming release of a major tranche of CIA files revealing details of the agency’s hacking and electronic surveillance tools. One such spying application called “Marble” allowed agency spies to implant code that obfuscated their identity on computers they had hacked. Other files contained evidence of programs that allowed hackers to break into encrypted messaging applications like Signal and Telegram, and to turn Samsung smart TV’s into listening devices.
Two days after Wikileaks’ initial announcement, on February 28, Morales was junketed from Spain to a hotel in Alexandria, Virginia – just a stone’s throw from CIA headquarters in Langley. Though UC Global had no publicly known contracts with any company in Virginia, court documents obtained by The Grayzone establish that Morales sent encrypted emails from an Alexandria IP address and paid bills from a local hotel for the next eight days.
From that point on, he traveled back and forth almost each month between Spain, the DC area, New York City, Chicago, or the Las Vegas base of Adelson’s operations.
When in DC, Morales sent emails from a static IP address at the Grand Hyatt Hotel just four blocks from the White House.
The Instagram posts of Morales’ wife and travel partner, Noelia Páez, highlighted the frequency of his trips:Instagram posts by Morales’ wife, Noelia Páez, posted while in Las Vegas on January 20, 2017
Fellow UC Global executives began to grow suspicious of Morales and his secretive dealings in the US. According to their testimonies, he spoke constantly about his working relationship with the Americans. Yet UC Global had been contracted by Ecuador’s intelligence agency, SENAIN, to provide security to the country’s embassy in London – not to spy on its occupants.
It was increasingly clear to them that Morales was deceiving one client in Quito to serve a more powerful force in Washington.
“I remember that David Morales asked a person from the company to prepare a safe phone, with safe applications, just like an encrypted computer to communicate with ‘the American friends,’ to take his relationship with the US out of the company’s range,” a former UC Global employee recalled.
A former business partner at UC Global stated in their testimony, “Sometimes, when I insistently asked him who his ‘American friends’ were, on some occasions David Morales answered that they were ‘the US intelligence.’ However, when I asked him for a particular person from intelligence he was meeting with to give them information, Mr. Morales cut the conversation and pointed out that the subject was exclusively managed by him aside from the company.”
The ex-partner suspected that Morales was receiving payments from US intelligence through a bank account managed by his wife, Páez. “On one occasion,” they testified, “I heard a conversation related to payments to that account from which Mr. Morales didn’t want to inform the rest of the company members about.”
Suspicion turned to rage when the former UC Global partner recognized the full extent of Morales’ subterfuge. “I started [lashing out] at him openly in violent discussions in which I reiterated to him that a company like ours is based on ‘creating trust’ and that he can’t ‘give out information to the opposing side,’” the ex-associate recalled. At the end of several such arguments, he said Morales tore open his shirt, puffed out his chest and exclaimed, “I am a wholehearted mercenary!”"and:
"A 2016 security industry fair in Las Vegas at the Sands Expo provided the occasion for Adelson’s company – and presumably the CIA – to enlist David Morales. His personal recruiter, according to witness testimony, was Lahav.
When Morales returned from Vegas to his home base in Spain, he divulged details of the deal to his then-business partner.
“I deduced from the conversations with David Morales, where he confessed in detail his agreements achieved at his US trip,” the ex-partner later testified in Spanish court, “the head of security of Las Vegas Sands, a Jewish guy named Zohar Lahav, made contact with Mr. Morales, getting to become good friends with him at the security fair in Las Vegas. I sense that this person offered him to collaborate with American intelligence authorities to send information about Mr. Assange.”
Morales confirmed his and Lahav’s close friendship during an interview in Spanish court conducted this February by Aitor Martinez, a Spanish lawyer representing Assange in the case. In an earlier court appearance, the Spanish prosecutor asked Morales directly about the connection between Lahav and US intelligence services; Morales claimed he had no idea.
A former business partner of Morales recalled an incident “when Zohar [Lahav] came to Spain and stayed at [Morales’] usual house for a week.”
Further evidence of the relationship between Lahav and Morales can be found in an undated recommendation letter Lahav wrote for his pal. Authored on Sands letterhead, Lahav stated that he had “worked with Mr. David Morales CEO in UC Global S.L. for 3 years,” praising him for his “loyalty and consistency.”
By the end of 2017, the alleged collaboration between Morales and Sands had fully matured, with the CIA apparently providing a guiding hand. Together, these entities ratcheted up their surveillance of Assange’s associates and foiled his plan to leave the embassy under the protection of diplomatic inviolability."and:
"Guillaume Long, the Foreign Minister of Ecuador under Correa, told The Grayzone the US-coordinated spying operation targeting Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy was “a major breach of sovereignty, of international law and the rules by which international diplomacy is regulated. And it’s completely illegal and I would argue, really undermines the US case for the extradition of Julian Assange.”
The alleged robbery of an Ecuadorian official in Quito was consistent with another violent plan divulged by a former UC Global employee in the Spanish court.
The ex-staffer recalled Morales mentioning that “the Americans were desperate” to end Assange’s presence in the embassy. Thus they were “proposing to activate more extreme measures against him,” including “the possibility of leaving one diplomatic mission door open, arguing that it was an accidental mistake, to allow the entrance and kidnapping of the asylum seeker; or even the possibility of poisoning Mr. Assange.”and:
The staffers were shocked when they learned of the proposal and protested to Morales that the direction he was taking “was starting to get dangerous.”"
"During the first extradition hearing this February 24, Assange was confined to a glass box that prevented him from directly conferring with his lawyers. Observers including former British diplomat Craig Murray said they noticed US agents conferring outside the courtroom with UK prosecutors.
One witness to the extradition hearing provided The Grayzone with photographs of several attendees they claimed were US Department of Justice officials who sat directly behind British prosecutors throughout the proceedings. The photos, seen below, show the alleged officials outside the courtroom.
After the hearing began, according to Assange’s lawyer, Martinez, a female British barrister arrived and demanded permission to observe. She was representing Las Vegas Sands, a clear indication that Adelson was deeply concerned about the outcome of the proceedings."There's obviously a lot of input from angry employees of Morales, but this is so good and documented that I have to wonder if it contains input from a national intelligence agency.
"Newly released testimony given to the House Intelligence Committee (HIC) confirms that these intelligence officials and Democratic Party operatives were deliberately spreading a lie. The source of the claim that Russian agents had hacked the DNC server was cyber security company CrowdStrike, hired by the Democratic Party to investigate its data breach. But, when interviewed by the HIC in December 2017, CrowdStrike President Shawn Henry admitted they had no good evidence that data was even hacked from the DNC’s server, let alone that Russian hackers had done so.
His testimony has been covered up for more than two years. According to journalist Aaron Maté, in September 2018 the HIC voted unanimously to release the transcripts of witness interviews (including Henry’s). But in March 2019, Democratic Representative Adam Schiff—who was one of those conducting the interview with Henry—ordered the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to withhold the documents from White House lawyers intending to review them for executive privilege. Schiff refused to release the transcripts until a few days ago, after Trump ally and acting ODNI Director Richard Grenell threatened to release them himself.
Henry’s statements to the Intelligence Committee make repeated reference to “indicators” and “circumstantial evidence” of a hack, but these cannot disguise the fact that no hard proof could be produced. He makes this admission in several of his answers to Committee members’ questions:
“We did not have concrete evidence that the data was exfiltrated [moved electronically] from the DNC, but we have indicators that it was exfiltrated.”
“There are times when we can see data exfiltrated, and we can say conclusively. But in this case it appears it was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don’t have the evidence that says it actually left.”
“There’s not evidence that they were actually exfiltrated. There’s circumstantial evidence but no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated.”
“There is circumstantial evidence that that data was exfiltrated off the network… We didn’t have a sensor in place that saw data leave. We said that the data left based on the circumstantial evidence. That was the conclusion that we made.”
As for the allegation that agents of the Russian state were responsible for this Schrödinger’s hack, Henry simply told the Intelligence Committee what he “believed” to be the case.
“There are other nation-states that collect this type of intelligence for sure,” he said, “but the—what we would call the tactics and techniques were consistent with what we’d seen associated with the Russian state.”
CrowdStrike’s internal investigation “saw activity that we believed was consistent with activity we’d seen previously and had associated with the Russian Government.”
CrowdStrike has multiple ties to pro-Democratic Party sections of the US elite, hellbent on an aggressive confrontation with Russia.
Before joining the company, Henry himself was an executive assistant director at the FBI while Mueller was director. CrowdStrike’s co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a leading think-tank for American imperialism. And, as Maté reports, the declassified testimony confirms that the company was hired to investigate the DNC data breach by Michael Sussman, a lawyer at Perkins Coie. The same law firm, with ties to the Democratic Party, hired intelligence company Fusion GPS to produce the infamous Steele dossier—a collection of uncorroborated gossip alleging Trump’s connections with Russian President Vladimir Putin."
Posts
All Comments
