Fernando Villavicencio, who with the Guardian’s Luke Harding and Dan Collyns fabricated the notorious Guardian front page lie that Paul Manafort and Julian Assange held pro-Trump meetings in the Ecuadorean Embassy, has been shot dead in Ecuador.
The appalling lie, which the Guardian’s $700,000 a year editor has refused to retract or remove, despite criticism even from the Washington Post which named Villavicencio as the fabricator, was aimed to give support to Clinton’s flagging “Russiagate” invention, which was crumbling fast.
Here is a photo of CIA assets Collyns, Harding and Villavicencio together in Quito.
Villavicencio’s claim to be an anti-corruption campaigner was highly selective and aimed only at making accusations against left wing figures, including a long history of fabricating documents.
Having been elected to the National Assembly in 2021, he devoted all his energy to obstructing the impeachment for corruption of Ecuador’s current President, fellow CIA asset and banker Guillermo Lasso. That seems rather strange for an anti-corruption campaigner.
Astonishingly, Villavicencio’s Wikipedia page presents him as an anti-corruption hero. It does not refer to the Manafort fabrication at all.
The Wikipedia page states that in 2015 Villavicencio informed Wikileaks of surveillance against Assange in the Ecuadorean Embassy, as well as providing other documents to Wikileaks.
What it does not say is that Wikileaks did not publish Villavicencio’s material because their checks revealed at least some of it to be forged.
I must state here, for legal reasons, that the episode of surveillance on Assange in the Embassy mentioned in Villavicencio’s Wikipedia page, occurred before and was entirely unconnected to the UC Global affair, in which court case I am a witness and victim.
The result of Villavicencio’s information on surveillance of Assange in the Embassy led in fact directly to an attempt to blackmail over intimate moment images. Villavicencio’s role in that is, to say the least, murky. He was not present at the attempted shakedown.
None of which justifies Villavicencio’s awful death. But it does explain why you should not believe anything you are reading about it in the mainstream media.
CIA assets who forge documents, or distribute CIA forged documents, and spread corruption allegations against left wing figures, are most useful working in the shadows. If they become over-ambitious, draw attention to themselves, and run for President as Villavicencio did, when the CIA already has its approved puppet in the race, it is very easy to move from CIA asset to CIA liability.
Which is very bad for your health.
My sincere condolences to Mr Villavicencio’s family and those who loved him.
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Are you suggesting that he was going to run for President?
Yes, he was running for President. I will amend to make that clear.
Oh no, just imagine Luke Harding’s poor brain now, spinning in overdrive with all type of conspiracy theories about this murder. He will find a clue to the Kremlins’ no doubt.
No, it was either Trump or COVID
or climate change
Thanks for that obituary Craig.
As for quoting the Guardian here, the rag which once benefited from Julian’s release of US and UK war crimes, only to then stab him in the back by publishing the password to redacted material Julian wanted to keep safe, clearly marked the Guardian out as an extension of the propaganda intelligence asset of the MI’s.
So, please don’t take the pish; there’s enough of it as is.
I would be happier if Luke Harding could reflect on the theft of security files from PSNI…………..it seems very peculiar for anyone to have access to MI5 operatives details in N Ireland when even regular police do not.
The failure to blame N Korea or Russia or China or Iran means blame falls on to the famed “junior employee” who always seems to have the key to the Holy of Holies……….and suggests a spy within PSNI compromising data security………or a Biden NSA operation to collapse Northern Ireland……..
With UK politics being dead in the water and Rishi Sunk [sic] being at Taylor Swift concerts and no Assembly in N Ireland it would be just the time for Biden Special Ops to destabilise UK by dismantling the Police Force in N Ireland………..
A world on fire seems to be the objective from the Arsonists in Washington………and Ireland has been US leverage over UK for over 100 years
He is one of the few candidates to allege links between organised crime and government officials in Ecuador.
A criminal gang called Los Lobos (The Wolves) has claimed responsibility.
Los Lobos is the second-largest gang in Ecuador with some 8,000 members, many of whom are behind bars.
The gang has been involved in a number of recent deadly prison fights, in which scores of inmates have been brutally killed.
We can read the rubbish in the mainstream media ourselves. You don’t need to repeat it here.
Sometimes what you see is what you get and there’s no need for conspiracy theories involving the CIA. Murder of politicians by organised crime is nothing new, particularly in South America and Ecuador is suffering a surge in crime and violence. Fernando Villavicencio is the fourth Ecuadorian politician to die just this year, mayoral candidates Julio César Farachio and Omar Menéndez were gunned down in January/February and the Mayor of Manta, Agustin Intriago on the 24th of last month.
But what you see is not what you get.
None of the above facts about him – none – are included in the mainstream media coverage which carefully curates his false identity as a white knight anti-corruption crusader.
Organised crime syndicates are often used as “assets”. The CIA has form for this in general, and in Latin America in particular
That is an established, unambiguous, undeniable, historical conspiracy *fact*. One officially acknowledged by the US polity itself (albeit that was a tip of iceberg deal).
P.S Mr Murray, left out an important character detail about Luke Harding. He’s also a plagarist, he/his paper got sued over it and lost.
Apparently his nickname before he climbed the greasy pole to editorship was “the hack burglar”.
Los Lobos have now disclaimed responsibility!
The idea that Assange didn’t know the surveillance equipment was there is ludicrous/insane. Don’t forget that The Guardian published all of Wikileaks major material and Assange made two babies with his lawyer in the embassy (allegedly).
“Ecuador bankrolled a multimillion-dollar spy operation to protect and support Julian Assange in its central London embassy, employing an international security company .
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/15/revealed-ecuador-spent-millions-julian-assange-spy-operation-embassy-london
Used by the CIA to spy on Assange’s guests like Jeremy Corbyn.
Re: ‘Assange made two babies with his lawyer in the embassy (allegedly).’
Your insinuations about Ms Moris’s virtue and/or Mr Assange’s potency notwithstanding, pish, surely people don’t need to resort to any Jeremy Kyle-style DNA tests to be left in any reasonable doubt as to who the father of her eldest child Gabriel is?
I wasn’t questioning anything about sex, but the location of the tryst.
Thanks for your reply, pish. I’d put a fair bit of folding money on Assange never having left the embassy until he was dragged out by the bizzies. Toilets are a thing, and even if the CIA was surveilling those, when two people are in love and want to make babies, they might not mind too much also providing US government employees with free **** material.* However, should they mind, there’s ways around that. It is the will to life – Arthur Schopenhauer.
Probably should have included photographic evidence of little Gabriel in my last comment, for those that don’t know what he looks like. Here you go:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/oct/16/stella-moris-julian-assange-secret-family
* For a guide to the modern mores of the young people, I recommend listening to Jon Ronson’s ‘Last Days of August’ podcast. August Ames died tragically young, essentially of shame, but not the shame of being repeatedly filmed servicing lots of well-endowed men for money: a more modern type of shame.
That Assange had children in a de facto prison with someone he fell in love with—and later married—has absolutely no relevance. Grow up.
The parentage of Stella Moris’s children certainly seems to have been of some concern to the CIA, RockTrot, at least according to the opening paragraph of this article in La Repubblica:
https://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2019/11/18/news/a_massive_scandal_how_assange_his_doctors_lawyers_and_visitors_were_all_spied_on_for_the_u_s_-241314527/
(Note: Article is in English)
Still, I suppose stealing children’s nappies is a few steps down from providing a free heli-taxi service so that the Khost Protection Force could massacre scores, if not hundreds, of children in madrassa domitories in the dead of night all over eastern Afghanistan, which was occurring around the same time.
Not sure about cameras, but it appears that they did install microphones in the embassy’s women’s toilets, amongst several other places.
Nobody likes a smartarse (should that be hyphenated?)
—
[ Mod: Actually the mods do.
The hyphen is optional; it would be considered customary in a formal context. ]
You disapprove of proofreading (which I don’t think is hyphenated)? Sorry if I’m missing a joke.
The Wiki page you refer to was created on 10th August 2023, looks like a hurried first draft, so if anyone wants to update it, go right ahead. If we wait for the Grauniad to apologise for its error we may have a long wait, they are free to be as irresponsible as the rest of the press… we have no recourse.
No, it was created on 18 May 2023, NOT 10th August 2023.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fernando_Villavicencio&action=info
It is now being very heavily and rapidly edited, as always happens when someone prominent dies. I am a Wikipedia editor, but I never touch pages that are being rapidly edited.
In general I think that is wise, Neil, but I think some early reference to the true facts of the case will be helpful, even though I am sure it will be immediately expunged and eventually have to be resolved in the dispute mechanism.
Of course Wikipedia’s rule that it’s not true unless the mainstream media say it, will help the CIA narrative prevail here as usual.
Wikipedia is not Twitter (or whatever it calls itself nowadays), nor should it be. In Wikipedia, the most effective tactic is patience and hard, painstaking work. For example, as you probably know by now, Philip Cross has now been permanently blocked (coincidentally, by a very smart, Zionist and transgender admin). A small number of us have been working on many articles connected to Israel and the Palestinians, and the improvement over the last 15 years has been immense. You can see a very small sample of these articles on my contributions list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions/NSH001&target=NSH001&offset=&limit=150
The main credit for these articles belongs to other editors, not me, though I am pleased to have helped.
The other reasons come down to my personal abilities, or lack of them. I’m not good at “thinking on my feet”, and I hate getting sucked into long arguments. My style is slower and contemplative. It would be very stupid to try and insert anything without good sourcing.
On top of that I’m still trying to get my head around Villavicencio. I never saw the print version of that mendacious Guardian article, nor can I recollect seeing his name mentioned before. So I would need to do research, most of it probably in Spanish-language sources. I would enjoy doing that, but it would also take time.
Hi Neil, I’ve been studying Wikipedia’s mechanisms and efficacy — wrote a couple columns on it at russbaker.substack.com . Would love to chat if you can contact me. thanks.
Neil – Fernando Villavicencio
German news site Telepolis:
“Did Trump’s campaign manager Manafort visit Assange?
January 14, 2019
https://www.telepolis.de/features/Hat-Trumps-Wahlkampfmanager-Manafort-Assange-besucht-4273114.html
“(…)
As is known, Assange has been stuck in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for several years. It is in this embassy that Assange allegedly received Donald Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort in 2013, 2015, and 2016. This is the central allegation of the article published by Luke Harding, Dan Collyns and Fernando Villavicencio. Villavicencio has since ceased to appear as an author, just as the story in general has since undergone multiple mutations. These mutations have to do with the growing doubts about the veracity of the story.
(…)”.
It is quoting the same Washington Post as Craig does:
“(…)
WikiLeaks on Monday identified the alleged fabricator as Fernando Villavicencio, an Ecuadoran journalist and activist. A government ministry under Ecuador’s previous government accused Villavicencio of fabricating documents; Villavicencio’s supporters call him a crusading journalist who exposed corruption under former president Rafael Correa.
(…)”
Glenn Greenwald same topic
January 3, 2019
https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/five-weeks-after-the-guardians-assange-manafort-scoop/
German site Amerika21 with Latin American news:
“Correa accuses CIDH of persecuting progressive governments”
13.05.2014
https://amerika21.de/2014/05/100771/correa-cidh
“(…)
Recently, conflict erupted between the Ecuadorian government and the CIDH after the commission dictated protective measures for three men convicted of defamatory insults against the president. The three opposition supporters, Cléver Jiménez, Carlos Figueroa and Fernando Villavicencio, had falsely accused Correa of giving a shoot-to-kill order and committing “crimes against humanity” in connection with the 2010 coup d’état directed against the president. After being exonerated by a court decision, Correa in turn filed criminal charges of defamation against the former accusers.
(…)”
“President of Ecuador faces further difficulties because of Pandora Papers”
10.11.2021
https://amerika21.de/2021/11/255401/ecuador-lasso-pandora-papers-bedraengnis
“(…)
Next Monday, Lasso will be questioned by the politician, journalist and president of the investigative commission, Fernando Villavicencio. Among other things, Lasso’s connection to the Colombian-Venezuelan businessman Alex Saab, who was arrested a few weeks ago in Cape Verde for money laundering and extradited to the U.S., is to be discussed. Saab is considered a close ally of the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro.
(…)”.
“Rafael Correa criticizes continuation of “lawfare” against him in Ecuador”
05.01.2022
https://amerika21.de/2022/01/256240/correa-lawfare-ecuador-aktuell
“(…)
The former president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, has announced that he has been informed by the Ecuadorian Public Prosecutor’s Office of new investigations against him. With its decision, the authority follows a request by MP Fernando Villavicencio. A proven opponent of Correa, Villavicencio chairs the parliamentary Audit Commission. The background is Correa’s alleged involvement in the Sucre-Foglocons case.
(…)”
AG – thanks for those links. I will take a look at them.
Russ Baker – I spent a while looking at your wiki page, its talk page and history and your two substack postings. I have far too much on my plate to take it any further now, but you might like to click on the link from my username, which links to sources on Assange and contains some comments on the criteria wiki uses for determining what is a reliable source. Also my user talk page, particularly my response to an academic researcher on Wikipedia here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:NSH001#Wikipedia_Wars_and_the_Israel-Palestine_conflict…please_fill_out_my_survey?
Oops, the final part of that URL didn’t come out right, but it should still be possible for you to copy-paste it into your browser’s address bar.
So am I but I don’t waste my time editing anything to do with the American empire and its lackey states.
Rather excitingly the Spanish Wikipedia entry for Fernando Villavicencio, which I was looking at a couple of days ago and which has an older history than the English language version, has now disappeared from view, replaced by what looks like a temporary version. It seems that history is being rewritten right before our eyes, it is all very exciting and I wonder what the final version will read like.
Craig.
“an attempt to blackmail over intimate moment images”
An attempt to blackmail whom?
Regards.
Assange and Wikileaks.
Hello, Villavicencio was almost certainly hoodwinked by Harding etc. According to an Ecuadorian friend of mine for 40 years, who is a highly respected independent journalist, Villavicencio was absolutely an anti-corruption crusader, exposing Odebrecht and oil corruption generally. He faced the usual slandering and lies trumped up against him, being regarded as a real threat by the establishment, and was very likely to make it to the second round, beyond which he had a real chance of winning. I should add that alas Ecuador has never really “got” the size of the true Assange story – it was all just happening too far away (unless you were president and wanted an IMF loan)
I should add I have shared your post
This would concure with the articles on US left site ZNet from more then a decade ago.
They mention Villavicencio as union leader and supporter of some indigenous groups in Ecuador.
These items usually pit them against Correa.
But then whom can I trust as a reader?
I know fom Bolivia and Venezuela that one must be extremely careful with any information reaching Western Europe if it concerns Latin America especially when led by left politicians.
The contrast between what even decent serious papers here would report and some oddball (but eventually more truthful) left source was often astonishing.
So I don´t know what to think of Villavicencio.
(We know from Poland that the CIA was involved with their anti-Communist dock worker heroes. The legends surrounding them have turned out extremely persistent. In other cases there was never any CIA involvement but urban legends say so.)
Yes – Villavicencio was an ardent opponent of Correa because of his corruption. So he would have been easily hoodwinked and was close to a very corrupt fixer of Correa’s vp and successor / opponent, Lenin Moreno, named Santiago Cuesta, involved in the Manafort case. Importantly, Correa was no friend of press freedom. Look up the case of Martin Pallares. Correa’s “protection” of Assange was a cynical ploy to appear otherwise on the international stage – and to piss off the West.
And the reason Villavicencio did not move against Lasso was that Lasso promised to clean up the oil corruption – a promise he did not deliver on
What a load of nonsense. Villavicencio knowingly colluded in the Assange/Manafort lie which was designed to influence US politics and had nothing whatsoever to do with corruption in Venezuela.
Your witterings are obviously started from a “if Villavicencio were a good man, how could his actions be explained” premise.
Sorry but the only emotion I can muster with these types of people is ‘good riddance’. One less state-funded liar.
No shortage of firearms in Quito. In the “old” Town each shop – and they are not big by any means – has an armed Guard at the Door.
Or they did when I was there in 1999.
So Trump is a target of the CIA, which makes him left wing.
You’re deluded on this one.
he doesnt have to be left wing to be a target of the CIA. he just has to oppose the CIA.
Thank you for this helpful and useful report. There are no less than three articles about the murder in TeleSur today, none of which provides any context at all. So yours is much appreciated.
El Pais is reporting that six Colombians are now being held in custody in Ecuador in connection with the assassination.
tiny footnote:
Caitlin Johnstone on CN in her valuable
“15 Reasons Why Media Don’t Do Journalism”
on June 5th wrote:
“(…)Some notorious recent examples of this are The New York Times‘ completely discredited report that Russia was paying Taliban-linked fighters to kill U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, and The Guardian‘s completely discredited report that Paul Manafort paid visits to Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy.
Both were simply falsehoods that the mass media were fed by intelligence operatives who were trying to seed a narrative in the public consciousness, which they then repeated as fact without ever disclosing the names of those who fed them the false story.(…)”
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/06/05/caitlin-johnstone-15-reasons-why-media-dont-do-journalism/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
GO RUSSIA!
BOMB UKRAINE!
DEATH, BLOODSHED – WE IGNORE IT!
WE’RE THE SO-CALLED INDEPENDENT MEDIA: CRAIG MURRAY, JULIAN ASSANGE, CN, CHRIS HEDGES, JOHN PILGER.
WE HATE WAR UNLESS IT’S OUR OWN SIDE DOING IT.
WE HATE PROPAGANDA UNLESS IT’S OUR SIDE PRODUCING IT.
WE HATE UNFAIRNESS UNLESS IT’S US BEING UNFAIR.
WE HATE RICH PEOPLE UNLESS IT’S US MAKING MILLIONS, AS JULIAN ASSANGE HAS.
GO RUSSIA! SAVE THE WORLD FROM THE GREAT SATAN!
Dude, hit the ‘CAPS LOCK’ button to turn them off, it makes it much easier to read (it might well be illuminated – it’s not supposed to be on all the time). Put the crack pipe down before posting next time too, that might well help your comments actually make sense.
Marilyn,
I believe I get the gist of what you are saying.
Should I make bold and say that innocent human beings suffer in all wars regardless, of the geographical confines or politically imposed flag they find themselves within and/or under.
Recall the My Lai massacre – what justified unarmed Vietnamese villagers being slaughtered, raped, dehumanised?
Note too the unsuspecting American soldiers who discharged Agent Orange against the North Vietnamese – only to return home and realise that the chemical had also inflicted its debilitating consequences on them, the American soldiers. Not, of course, to forget the direct impact on the North Vietnamese civilian population to this day.
The politics of the day defined the allegiances – and – to this day – who really gives a damn about the human costs inflicted?
My point? Don’t we see the whole sad cycle replaying itself in the Russian/Ukraine war?
To illustrate. Here are two families – one on the Ukrainian side of the border ( as it stands today) and the other on the Russian side near the border. In each instance, a father, a mother and children – living in their house, village, apartment – you name it. Neither family particularly politically motivated. Father has a regular job and mother raises the children in a very traditional family structure. A bomb drops, from the other side and explodes. All hell breaks loose, with death, maiming and either partial or total loss of life in each family. Your point about propaganda now comes directly into play for the news report from this side or that – and the news report(s) highlight the wicked actions of ‘the other’ against innocent civilians of this or the other’s family.
I think – where your light shines brightest – is that this is a political blog with primarily group and strategic focus. So, the individual tragedies become defined and/or subsumed by and under the strategic locations of the ‘innocents’ when the bomb(s) explode. And – lives are/were indeed lost on both sides.
From today’s Guardian
‘The US government was reported to be sending FBI agents to help Ecuadorian authorities with their investigation. When asked to comment, the state department said: “We stand ready to support local authorities to bring the perpetrators of this heinous act to justice, which is a brazen attack on democracy and the rule of law.”’
Note: The Guardian has still not reported the Intercept’s revelation that the state department couped the democratically elected leader of Pakistan.
U Watt
“The Guardian has still not reported the Intercept’s revelation”
I haven´t checked The Guardian today.
German major daily Berliner Zeitung has reported the matter a few hours ago for the first time:
They themselves write, The Intercept report came out Aug. 9th. (So almost 10 days ago)
Revealing is this passage:
“The authors of The Intercept’s article, Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussain, have attempted to verify the document obtained from a whistleblower in the Pakistani military. However, due to the current chaotic situation in Pakistan, this was not possible, the authors write. A request to the Pakistani embassy in Washington D.C. had remained unanswered.”
https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/politik-gesellschaft/pakistan-neues-dokument-soll-rolle-der-usa-bei-imran-khans-absetzung-enthuellen-li.380149
were this one of the countless alleged leaks about RU conspiring against us, you would look in vain for such a cautious formulation.
No German reporter ever wrote or would write: “The editors reached out to the Kremlin for comment.”
Credibility of those leaks a foregone conclusion.
The big reveal was when 50 intelligence service officials all came together to deny all the things we now know are true about Hunter Biden and his laptop and his deeply crooked daddy. The Clintons and the Bush families are ‘CIA’ but really the CIA is not the real power here. It is the pentagon. That is the ultimate source of all of it, military intelligence.
The democrat party in the US is the political arm of the military industrial complex and the republicans are almost as bad, it is a near dead heat.
The one guy they did not control was Trump and that is why his election drove them insane. They cheated 2020 be sure of that. It took a while figure out what happened with Trump but now it is obvious. Everything happening now under Biden was originally planned for when Hillary was elected. Trump delayed it all.
And what amazes me is how they hook right into the ‘left’ and ‘right’ in the UK political scene seamlessly along with their propaganda outlets like the Guardian. Making sure folk like Corbyn, Salmond etc never get a fair voice while slimeball scumbags like Hunter Biden get the ‘Jimmy Saville pass’ from them.
I have been saying it for a while. The mainstream media press are not our guardians, of free speech, of anything. They are the total opposite. Actively spreading lies to keep the bad guys in power. They are a huge part of the problem, far bigger than any politician or party.
“The mainstream media press are not our guardians, of free speech, of anything. They are the total opposite. Actively spreading lies to keep the bad guys in power. They are a huge part of the problem, far bigger than any politician or party”
The purpose of any business, including media ones, is to make money. They are not there to tell the truth or, as you point out, to be the guardians of anything. One of their greatest achievements is to persuade people that they are, but that was always a lie, too.
I watched his final campaign speech yesterday as well as the moment right before his assassination. There was certainly a wild look in his eyes, but whether it was fear or megalomania, I couldn’t say.
Thank you for providing this key background on him.
And of course who is it that adores and grovels to Hillary Clinton… Sturgeon. So similar in many, many ways.
Intelligence agencies see everyone and everything as a liability.
Indeed, it’s those Five Eyes.
He who owns the intelligence and the means to manipulate it rules the world. We seem to have arrived in the dystopia that is a fusion of Huxley’s Brave New World & Orwell’s 1984.
People forget – He who sups with the devil should have a long spoon.
naked capitalism on the subject, today:
“Ecuador Descends Deeper Into Chaos Following Assassination of Presidential Candidate Fernando Villavicencio – Ecuador was already in a major crisis; now it is in an even bigger one.”
by Nick Corbishley
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/08/ecuador-descends-deeper-into-chaos-following-assassination-of-presidential-candidate-fernando-villavicencio.html
“(…)
Before his assassination, 59-year old Villavicencio was placing fourth or fifth in most polls. He took a particularly hard line on the drug cartels that have made life insufferable for everyday Ecuadorians over the last two years.
(…)
Before entering politics, he was a muckraking journalist who made a name for himself exposing the corruption of the government of former leftist President Rafael Correa, currently in exile in Belgium. On the campaign trail Villavicencio portrayed himself as an anti-corruption crusader and campaigned under the slogan, “It’s time for the brave.”
But as notes former British diplomat Craig Murray on his blog, Villavicencio’s anti-corruption campaigning was “selective and aimed only at making accusations against left wing figures.” By contrast, he bitterly opposed the judicial process against President Lasso on corruption charges, calling it “a legal atrocity” that leaves the constitution “in rags”.
(…)
What is almost beyond doubt is that one or more drug cartels are involved, though other players, including political rivals, businesses and intelligence agencies, may well have played a part. Those agencies include, of course, the CIA, which has a long, storied history of using and collaborating with drug traffickers.
(…)
In the weeks leading up to his death Villanvicencio reported receiving death threats from Fito, who had apparently taken umbrage to Villanvicencio’s open discussion of Fito’s criminal activities on the campaign trail.
(…)”
and.so.on.
Considering the strange past of this man, this all looks shady.
When did his change of mind occure? After he lost his job with the union and opened a “Pizzeria” with his bro 20 years ago???
You don´t denounce Assange with an honest CV like this one: “he was a muckraking journalist who made a name for himself exposing the corruption of the government.”
As CM says: “Which is very bad for your health.”
That reminds me of Billy Wilders joke in “Some Like It Hot” when the gangster boss Bonaparte mocks the violent death of a traitor:
“There was something in that cake that didn’t agree with them.”
perhaps Harding and Collyns should keep an eye out that they too do not become expendable, perhaps they already ‘know too much’ Plenty of journalists meet sticky ends and then have their deaths blamed on ‘Kremlin stooges’ or ‘oligarch enforcer gangs’
“Plenty of journalists meet sticky ends and then have their deaths blamed on ‘Kremlin stooges’ or ‘oligarch enforcer gangs’”
A few examples perhaps?
Well we have no real evidence that any of the journalists supposedly bumped off by Putin, which certain commenters are fond of mentioning, were not CIA assets past their “best before” date.
Conversely we don’t have any evidence that they were; not that that seems to be much of a problem in some quarters.
https://cpj.org/data/killed/europe/russia/?status=Killed&motiveConfirmed%5B%5D=Confirmed&motiveUnconfirmed%5B%5D=Unconfirmed&type%5B%5D=Journalist&type%5B%5D=Media%20Worker&cc_fips%5B%5D=RS&start_year=1992&end_year=2023&group_by=location
what are they doing for Assange? are they protecting him? and how are they “confirming” that journalists were murdered by Putin.
I suppose which you think is more likely, that Putin is so thin-skinned that a journalist only has to criticise him to be murdered by his goons, or whether said dead journalists got caught up in the murky world of espionage and paid the ultimate price.
Well seeing as so many have been critical of Putin and his administration.
https://www.businessinsider.com/list-of-people-putin-is-suspected-of-assassinating-2016-3?r=US&IR=T
“Conversely we don’t have any evidence that they were; not that that seems to be much of a problem in some quarters.”
I wonder which is most likely.
“Well seeing as so many have been critical of Putin and his administration.”
I am not sure why you think being critical of Putin disqualifies them from being assets of one or other of the secret services.
The Michael Hastings Car Crash: No Skids Marks, A Flying Engine And “Boston Brakes”
More often than not…….noone is blamed………lest the pointing finger spin round
Why is Private Eye so crap these days?
Who do Hislop and crew work for?
For Hislop and crews reputation for regurgitating faux jokes.
Every regime needs an official clown/jester. Hislop and Private Eye fill that role. Really not funny unless you are part of the establishment.
Lord Haw Haw, Comical Ali, Hislop.
Just imagine, for a moment, that you are a domestic intelligence service.
What better way could there possibly be to gain information on corrupt activities within local govt, industry of various kinds, the media, civil and other public services, etc, than to set up a muckraking, “satirical magazine”, and invite whistleblowing readers to voluntarily and enthusiastically submit all manner of information, whispered allegations and gossip – with or without hard evidence – of double-standards, criminal activity, wrongdoing or scandal, within those spheres?
What is published is probably just the tip of the iceberg – and usually very vanilla since the deaths of some of the very best and genuine campaigners like Paul Foot, The rest can be safely filed away, for potential use in honey traps or blackmail, should the need ever arise.
Staff it with media-friendly cheeky and irreverent public schoolboy Oxbridge graduates, who are nevertheless reliably loyal to the establishment when push comes to shove, and you’re good to go!
Hislop is not Paul Foot
In the past journalists with a story embargoed by editor could meet in pub and insinuate………..now WFH makes it sterile electronic data transfer with meta-tags
The Guardian despite all its establishment gatekeeping continues to be held up by conservative politicians and media as some sort of semi-communist threat to all that is good in Britain. Interesting then that they never mention that Manafort-Assange confection. A demonstrably false headline story that the Guardian still carries on its website and has never apologised for. If conservatives really did want to destroy public trust in the Guardian they would trumpet that story day and night to ensure the Guardian became a byword for brazen lying.
They don’t.
Likewise they do not trumpet the brazen lies of Sir Keir Starmer or the Epstein friendship of his consigliere Lord Mandelson. In fact Tory politicians and their media went purple with indignation when Boris Johnson dared to mention that Starmer had let Jimmy Saville off the hook.
When Corbyn briefly threatened an alternative we saw writ large that there is actually no meaningful difference between the conservative and liberal wings of the British political-media class. Over the course of a few days the conservative wing could destroy the reputations of the Guardian, Starmer and Mandelson, but they very deliberately do not.
Ask yourself why.
I must admit that the moment I heard this I wondered if it had anything to do with Western interference, especially since the FBI has been brought in. The trouble with being an anti-corruption crusader is that you usually have a political agenda (that is, corruption is bad for thee but not for me), as exemplified ad nauseam in South Africa, Brazil, etc. I don’t think one has to assume that Villa-Vicencio was CIA, although I defer to Mr Murray’s experience, but it seems evident that there is something enormously fishy about his murder and, as usual in Latin American tyrannies, it won’t come out in the open.
By the way, why is it that Ecuador has become so much more of a drug haven since the overthrow of the leftist government? Is this perception, coincidence, or is it that foreign drug operators with CIA connections are able to use the place more freely, as happened in Afghanistan after the invasion?
The CIA and the drug trade have a very long intertwined history. Contacts, power, money laundering all essential to the CIA. Why do you think the West has never been able to win the ‘war on drugs’ ? The taliban stopped the drug trade in less than 12 months in Afghanistan, something the USA didn’t achieve in 20 years with all their money and might.
Drug traffickers don’t need any help from the CIA to get their wares from A to B or to launder their cash, Stevie Boy, and the West has never been able to win the ‘war on drugs’ because demand will always be met by supply: communist countries had substantial black markets – including East Germany, probably the most surveilled state in modern history after North Korea.
The Taliban haven’t stopped the drug trade in Afghanistan – they’ve just reduced opium poppy cultivation by 80-90% for one year. Whether that situation will continue depends on the co-operation of the Southern talibs. For now, they’ve been more than happy to go along with the ban because it’s meant that prices for their opium stockpiles have risen from around $50/kilo to over $200/kilo – but obviously stocks run out, and tensions will only increase as unemployed farm labourers etc become more restive. The smarter Southern talibs are also aware that two or three seasons without poppy means European addicts switching to fentanyl etc, as in the US – and that means that they will have killed the golden egg-laying goose, because after a period on fentanyl, heroin won’t touch the sides.
As ever, for all the latest info, David Mansfield is your man:
https://twitter.com/mansfieldintinc
“and the West has never been able to win the ‘war on drugs’ because demand will always be met by supply: communist countries had substantial black markets ”
What evidence can you put forward that the West ever made the slightest effort to win the “War on Drugs”? AFAICS, it was just another excuse for a war. “We need a war, now who shall we fight?”
Thanks for your reply Bayard. As evidence I posit the fact that the West has spent trillions of dollars in today’s money on fighting the War on Drugs, more than on any other war since it began in 1971. It’s only in recent years in certain parts of the West (e.g. the west coast of North America) that the war is beginning to be wound down. However, even in ultra-liberal British Columbia, where since January this year possession of under 2 grams of most Schedule I substances, including fentanyl and even carfentanil*, has essentially become legal, there are still far more restrictions on drugs than there were on alcohol in the US in the 1920’s, where it was only manufacture, transportation and sale that were illegal.
If, however, the West wants another war – one that should be fairly easy to win and result in huge spoils for the victors – all it has to do is invade Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, where most of the oil fields are, on the pretext of protecting Saudi’s Shia population (who are mostly located in the EP) from an increasingly erratic leader who inter alia has mildly critical journalists chopped up in foreign consulates.
* Two grams of that is enough to kill around 100,000 (opioid-naive) people.
neocons are mad at the collapse of US influence over Saudi Arabia and the kingdom’s new alliances with China and Iran. they regard it with horror, an unmitigated disaster after all the trillions spent projecting US military power in the region.
no surprise the wilder fringes are fantasizing about yet another regime change war in the Middle East.
Rather than fantasizing about another war in the Middle East, zoot, I was merely illustrating to Bayard that there are more winnable*, as well as lucrative, wars to fight than the War on Drugs – and a US invasion of Saudi would have been much easier in the early 70’s.
* as well as far less costly in terms of loss of life: circa 70,000 people a year are now being killed by illicit fentanyl in the US.
“As evidence I posit the fact that the West has spent trillions of dollars in today’s money on fighting the War on Drugs, more than on any other war since it began in 1971.”
Spending money is the purpose of a war. That is not making an effort. Making an effort is actually doing something other than just spending money.
Thanks for your reply Bayard. In general, winning is the purpose of war. Wars like that in Afghanistan, which in its latter stages was largely a vehicle to transfer hundreds of billions of dollars from the US taxpayer to certain US corporations, are the exception rather than the rule. Most of the money spent on the War on Drugs has been spent on wages, mostly of people who, in various states of delusion as people often are, were genuinely trying to do their jobs, believing that it would make a difference.
Any sources for the claim regarding the Eastern Bloc and illegal markets? Organised crime was heavily suppressed under communist rule.
As for the CIA, well maybe you try doing some homework. The Irancontra scandal revealed the CIA was facilitating the shipment of cocaine into US cities on a colossal scale. Gary Webb wrote a book called “Dark Alliance” which details the story and revealed what sort of traitors and psychos work at that hellish institution.
Take a look at the work of Alfred McCoy, Douglas Valentine, Peter Dale Scott amongst others. The CIA work as the regulator of the global drug trade, giving chosen crime groups the licence to ship and deal drugs. You seem woefully uninformed for a person making broad generalisations about a very important subject
Of course, this activity predates the CIA. General Joe Stillwell (known to history as “Vinegar Joe”) US representative to Chang Kai Shek’s Nationalist government, observed similar behaviour in regards to Clair Chennault’s Flying Tigers and the Nationalist government. Vinegar Joe didn’t like it but when the brass say “Ignore the drugs” what can a good soldier do? I would , like Stilwell, call them “human scum” but I won’t – don’t want to give human scum a bad reputation by associating them with the CIA
Thanks for your reply Will. Most of the articles about black markets in formerly communist countries are behind paywalls. Here’s one that isn’t:
https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/1993-900-03-Treml.pdf
You’re very welcome. It’s generally estimated the size of the black market in the Soviet Union was over 10% of its official GDP. In Eastern European countries it would have been higher due to communism having been in force for a shorter length of time and the local populations being less enamoured with it. In comparison, the size of the illegal drug market in the UK is around 0.5% of GDP.
Once again, before accusing me of being ‘woefully uninformed’ – as well as telling me to do my homework like Natasha does whenever I tell her she’s completely wrong about thermodynamics – I do wish people would actually read what I write. In response to Stevie’s comment that the failure of the War on Drugs was down to the CIA, I wrote that drug traffickers didn’t need any help from that organisation to traffic their drugs – which is true because they don’t. I didn’t write that the CIA had *never* been involved at all in the trafficking of illegal drugs. I’m aware that it was involved to a certain extent in the cocaine trade in the 70’s & 80’s, as well as in smuggling heroin out of Laos during the Vietnam War. However, that was a long time ago.
I also have some difficulty believing that ‘as the regulator of the global drug trade’ the CIA was handing out unofficial licences to transport cocaine into the US to illiterate poor farmers from the Sinaloa boondocks, as El Chapo and his pals were in the early 80’s, rather than, say, multi-millionaires from Mexico City. So if, like Stevie, you’re suggesting that were the CIA to be shut down and its leading lights thrown in prison, then the entire illegal drug trade would somehow disappear overnight, I respectfully disagree.
Finally, even if the CIA were responsible for every milligram of illegal drug consumed the world over then, provided it wasn’t putting guns to people’s heads forcing them to partake, in my opinion, that would still be far better than it providing a heli-taxi service for the KPF (as detailed in one of my above comments).
I used “homework” rather “research” because I don’t want to to be put on a “terror watchlist”, shipped off to a torture megastore in Thailand and then rectally fed whilst having my fingernails pulled out, in between pointless and protracted bouts of waterboarding, apologies if it seemed like a slight. My sources at GCHQ tell me a recent internal security circular warns that when a commentator uses the phrase “do some research” this is the tell tale sign of a “radicalised bad actor”. As of yet, apparently, using the phrase “do some homework” does not entail being marked by the state as a dissident with the same degree of prosecution otherwise teachers would getting whisked of to Guantanamo all over the place.
I think you are incorrect about East Germany, the Stasi and surveillance: Five Eyes countries are the most surveilled in all of history, making totalitarian high achievers like the Soviet Union and the GDR of the last century quaint wannabe also-rans in the panopticon stakes. Admiral John Poindexter ran the TIA program (Total Information Awareness) twenty years ago, which was designed to “know everything about everyone” and as I am sure you are aware, twenty years is a long time in showbusiness and even longer in the information technology business.
I read the article you offered; did you? The data points are mainly from the 1980s. Any exceptions are from opaque Soviet statistics, and as the article stresses, these are to be treated with caution. It also points out that the authorities had a vested interest in blaming organised crime to spare their incompetence from the gaze of the people. Yet apart from the 1980s, there is little to suggest that organised crime played any part in the communist interregnum. Anecdotally, I spent a month in Moscow in the eighties and remember trying to score some cannabis, with no success. The best I got was advice to go to the southern Caucasus. I was offered vodka and Levi jeans, the jeans priced at roughly 150 dollars in rubies equivalent. Only the children of the nomenclature could afford such baubles.
If you have difficulty believing “the Company “ controls the global drug market, see Douglas Valentine’s “The CIA as organised crime”. The current iteration of the CIA was forged in the crucible of Watergate and Director William Colby’s appearances before The Church Committee, the last time the agency had to account for its activities in public. Valentine met and interviewed Colby in the mid seventies and Colby then introduced the young, working class author to many other high ranking officers within this clandestine organisation. Valentine’s interviews and transcripts are some of the most revealing and far reaching concerning the CIA’s mission statement and modus operandi and are the most damning documents I have read concerning the doings of American Empire, both at home and abroad.
If someone does harm to me or lies to me, unless they repent of their behaviour, I am wary of them. Bad behaviour needs addressing by the perpetrator, otherwise they will keep doing it. You admit they dealt drugs “a long time ago” yet they have made no attempts to make good. Afghani heroin has been flooding western ghettos for a long time, yet the US has been in control of the country for close to two decades. Give me a break. Where there is prohibition there will always be illegal markets, their depth being a function of the state’s competence and the authenticity of the efforts to suppress.
Regarding violence, it is not so simple with drugs, the profits and their illegality brings massive violence to our world. The key word is control.
Thanks for your reply Will. I haven’t read all of the article I linked to, no – got things to do. As I mentioned though, the consensus is that the black market constituted over 10% of the Soviet Union’s GDP – and Gregory Grossman thought it was as much as a third.* In the 80’s, it was quite difficult to get your hands on weed in most parts of the UK as well, even though Britain’s cash-in-hand economy was substantial.
It’s estimated that as many as 1 in 10 East Germans were Stasi informants. In contrast, if you got drunk at a party in Glasgow and let slip the names of most of the Alphabetties, you’d be unlikely to be getting a knock on the door from the bizzies the following day. All you generally have to do to avoid Five Eyes is to either stay off the internet and traceable phones (perhaps communicating via the lost art of letter-writing, as Desi Collings put it in ‘Gone Girl’), or take precautions: burner phones, using people’s unprotected wi-fi etc.
Most senior US security personnel didn’t give a shit about Afghan heroin during the occupation, not least because by that time hardly any of it was getting to the US (theirs was mainly the Mexican mud). Dubya Bush wanted to spray the poppy fields with glyphosate. Fortunately, he was overruled by President Karzai (for various reasons), and that’s why fentanyl isn’t rife in Europe like it is on the other side of the pond. In fact, drug deaths have actually fallen in Scotland, according to figures released today.
Finally, if I genuinely thought that I could find myself being rendered to some CIA black-site as a ‘radicalised bad actor’ for writing the phrase ‘do some research’ on a blog, I wouldn’t be drawing people’s attention to books that were highly critical of that organisation – even if most of their protagonists are long dead. I think your friends at GCHQ might be trying to wind you up.
* Did you know that the illicit drug trade along with prostitution (99% of earnings from which won’t be declared for tax purposes) are now included in the UK’s official GDP figures? Well now you do.
Drugs equals money, money equals control, that’s it.
A long dead friend was a committed heroin addict back in the seventies and eighties. They used to wax lyrical about the white high grade heroin that was available back then. Once inferior Afghani brown started flooding the UK they moaned and they moaned. The arrival of Afghani brown coincided with UK/US supporting the Mujahideen insurgency in the Afghan Civil War. As a well informed cynic, it is obvious to me, that the sale of Afghan drugs was a great way to fund the rebels at the expense of ordinary people at home. I would lay the blame at the door of MI6 and the CIA and their figureheads Thatcher and Reagan. The idea that Anglo-Yankee spooks give a shit about the lower classes in their home countries is laughable: they are amoral psychokilllers for capitalism.
So you did not read the article you offered to me to read. So there is no factual basis for your claims regarding the innocence of the CIA as the “Big Boss” of the drug trade nor that the communist bloc had a major drugs issue.
If I genuinely thought that you genuinely thought that I genuinely thought… The point was directed towards surveillance. I’m sure that the Stasi would have loved to “know everything about everyone” but they couldn’t and didn’t – unlike five eyes, which can and does know everything about everyone – total information awareness.
In the early nineties a Swiss journalist sued the Swiss government for his military records. He had served his conscription in a remote, quiet spot with three others who had become his lifelong friends. He won his case and got access to the records. Examining them he found one of these friends had been providing reports on his opinions to the state, in great detail. Upon doing further digging he found this person had been grassing him to the state for the entire length of their relationship, over forty years, in great detail. Upon further digging and legal action he found that his position was not unusual: 1 in 4 Swiss citizens were government informers.
No one cares about the Stasi or commies, apart from CIA and MI5/6 propagandists, such as yourself. You mention that the CIA people Valentine got access to are long since dead. Well guess what? So is the Stasi. As losers they are nothing, footnotes maybe. As winners the CIA are everything, “the story itself”, and thus Valentine’s research is the story of “the story itself”. His work is stored at the NSA archive, curated by Jon Prados, for anyone interested. Take a look.
History will be kind to me – I know because I will write it.
Winston Churchill
If you find yourself on a bus at the age of 25 you’re a failure.
Margaret Thatcher
Care? Don’t make me laugh, my stitches will come out.
Thanks for your reply Will. The production of opium in Afghanistan to fund the Mujahideen insurgency goes back long before the CIA got involved in any major way in the war effort, e.g. Mohammad Nasim Akhundzada revoked the fatwa on its cultivation in northern Helmand Province as early as 1981. The CIA just turned a blind eye to Hezb-i-Islami Gulbuddin etc producing it around the Af-Pak border. Turning a blind eye to something does not equate to controlling it.
I didn’t state that I’d never read the article, just that I hadn’t read *all* of it. I also didn’t state that the communist bloc had major drugs issue (in fact Russia didn’t until the post-communist 90’s). What I said was that it had a substantial black market for all sorts of goods and services that people wanted to buy, as did the West. Again I wish people would read what I write before commenting – it would save me some time.
Switzerland isn’t in Five Eyes, and it also isn’t in NATO – and it wasn’t even the UN until the Year of our Lord 2002. I strongly doubt that 1 in 4 Swiss citizens were/are federal government informants though. If I’m a CIA propagandist, then why have been repeatedly mentioning what certain elements of it were getting up to in Afghanistan quite recently with the KPF – or the ‘Butchers of Khost’ to give them their proper title?
Finally, rather than the quote generally attributed to him, Churchill actually said this in the House of Commons in 1948:
“For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.”
There’s also no record of Thatcher ever saying the famous quote about young men and buses. It seems that it was popularised by Loelia, Duchess of Westminster after she was forced by circumstance to have to travel by public transport:
https://fullfact.org/news/margaret-thatcher-bus/
Every day’s a school-day, as Jim McColl used to say on The Beechgrove Garden.
CIA arrived six months before Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
You ask me to believe people who “lie, cheat and steal”, who face no democratic accountability, who are perverted torturers, etc, etc ad nauseum, really wouldn’t use every and any device to achieve their aims, Lapsed Agnostic? Some old duffer once said,a very long time ago “The sinews of war are infinite money” As true today in Ukraine, as it was millennia ago.
The trick is how to channel annually upto a couple of thousand tonnes of Afghani brown into western ghettoes, for that you need access to the mainline, politically speaking but if it can be done, endless wars can be maintained and the intelligence agents can fly to their foreign postings on Lear jets and upon arrival be ministered to by armies of desperate locals masquerading as domestic servants, prostitutes and interpreters whilst staying in luxurious villas – a true warrior elite. You admitted SE Asia, rinse and repeat; the Church committee and the seventies reorganisation then move into Afghanistan with the future president Bush as the blue-blooded war chief. Those times were known as the Cold War, with the emphasis on war. I respect your implacable credulity, well done and rest easy, for verily you have accomplished something.
I read one of your articles, would you care to read one I offer and use your analytical skills and comment on it? Let me know I could do with a second opinion – a sincere response would be valued even if 180 degrees opposite to my rendering and could be a door to a future dialog.
just a new update piece on Assange & Australia
Caroline Kennedy Says US Open to Assange Plea Deal
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/08/14/caroline-kennedy-says-us-open-to-assange-plea-deal/
no idea if this has any realism to it.
My gut says no but may be those people in charge have still some decency left.
Of course its odd to trade “war with China” for Assange.
But one has to start somewhere.
It would be a win-win for all sides in a way…or am I missing something
With regard to Mr Assange’s plight, Peter Hitchens deserves respect for having devoted much of his blog this Sunday to an appeal to protest his extradition, which he candidly labels as political. He also draws attention to the failure of fellow journalists to stand by Mr Assange. Most of the time, I am baffled and dismayed by Mr Hitchens’ political attitudes, but on occasion he impresses me with a display of bone-deep professional integrity. (The same blog also takes on high-cost status-proclaiming cars and the ridiculous claim that Russia was behind that voters’ database hack.)
thx
For those who have no time to read, here the finale of Hitchens´ call:
“The UK Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, can – if she chooses – refuse to hand him over. There is a precedent for this. One of her forerunners, Theresa May, did so in the case of Gary McKinnon, who had hacked into US defence computers, saying ‘Mr McKinnon’s extradition would give rise to such a high risk of him ending his life that a decision to extradite would be incompatible with Mr McKinnon’s human rights.’ Britain faced no adverse consequences as a result. I think Lady May deserves great credit for this action.
I think Ms Braverman, likewise, would deserve much credit for courage and compassion – and justice – if she halted the extradition and finally allowed Mr Assange to go home to his wife and two small children.
If you agree with me, please write, politely and briefly, and soon, to
The Rt Hon Suella Braverman MP, Home Secretary, the Home Office, 2 Marsham St, London SW1P 4DF.”
Presumably one could also email her at:
[email protected]
Steve Bell has a brilliant cartoon about the “plea bargain” (for a man who has committed no crime) in the Guardian. It was published at 8pm last night. Comments seem to have been open for no more than an hour or so. I wonder why.
“My gut says no but may be those people in charge have still some decency left.”
Actually putting him on trial might be more embarrassing to the powers that be than the present situation.
This is all a horrible conundrum.
But what´s the bottom-line?
An individual´s life.
Where the rule of law is meaningless a trial would be as much.
Chris Hedges foretold: Assange would be greeted in a CIA, A400 transport plane I assume (which the RAF btw loathes as I just read), with all the sedatives and handcuffs in place and treated like a super-terrorist in “da movies”.
And from then on nothing would be democratic or civic or humane in any way.
Just hell.
There is no heroic walk-out with giving D.C. the finger.
Or embarrassing the US government.
This will be Guantanamo with cleaner cells.
Until he has died.
That´s what Julian Assange is facing.
So if there is a deal that would give him free, that must be considered.
Or to quote Noam Chomsky (on another topic): We are no angels.
Meaning we are simple human beings without any super powers.
p.s. look a Mumia Abu-Jamal.
And the MIC hates him LESS than Assange.
Democracy Now navigating the assassination in an interview with a former Correa man Andrés Arauz, without mentioning Assange
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/8/14/ecuador_elections_emergency_fernando_villavicencio
One way to do it:
They are providing a link to DN!s old interviews with Correa and then zero in on the corruption of Lasso and talk not much about Villavicencio.
not to be mixed up with TED LASSO!!!
sry if the joke seems inappropriate
But after Bolton is calling for nuclear escalation in Ukraine in the WSJ and after Nuland is calling for escalation in Niger at some point one must make a joke or go insane.
John Bolton is a festering gasbag of stale flatulence, if you want to understand his *true* eagerness to fight countries that can actually fight back look to his military record.
Niger is definitely more his speed. One can only hope its supportive neighbours stand firm and the Nigerian military in particular displays its usual level of competence & integrity. Oppressing and overthrowing Nigeria is more *their* speed.
Unless ‘policy’ has changed?
“By the time you got to the first Bush administration, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, they came out with a national defense policy and strategic policy. What they basically said is that we’re going to have wars against what they called much weaker enemies and these have to be carried out quickly and decisively or else there will be embarrassment—a way of saying that popular reaction is going to set in. And that’s the way it’s been. It’s not pretty, but it’s some kind of constraint.” ?
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/03/noam-chomsky-populist-groundswell-u-s-elections-future-humanity.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29
thx for that link
and the assassinations/murders in Ecuador are going on:
On the occasion a German text by left daily “Junge Welt” from tomorrow´s issue:
“Bloodbath before the election – Already eight murders of politicians in Ecuador. Representative of left-wing party is latest victim”
“Six days before the parliamentary and presidential elections, another politician was murdered in Ecuador on Monday (local time). Pedro Briones, the local organizer and representative of the left-wing party “Revolución Ciudadana” founded by former President Rafael Correa in the province of Esmeraldas, was shot dead near his home.”
https://www.jungewelt.de/artikel/456965.lateinamerika-blutbad-vor-der-wahl.html
ending:
“(…)Ecuador, which was one of the most peaceful countries in Latin America during Correa’s reign (2007-2017), sank deeper and deeper into a quagmire of corruption, violence and terror under his right-wing successors Lenín Moreno (2017-2021) and Guillermo Lasso (since 2021). Six years after the shift to the right, the country is experiencing its worst security crisis yet. “The country’s police counted 3,568 violent deaths in the first six months of this year, far more than the 2,042 reported in the same period of 2022. Last year ended with 4,600 violent deaths, the highest in the country’s history and twice as many as in 2021,” AP reported Monday.(…)”
I bet you haven’t discovered the paginator in the Forum section, either, AG 🙂
thx!
yeah I have long lost oversight due to the dozens of sources I am skimming and now with another war possibly looming.
sigh.
p.s. for German residents:
A list of Assange solidarity meetings/actions in Germany:
https://www.freeassange.eu/#events
frankly I don´t know where else to post it for you, so it won´t get lost since our Forum routine is not yet established 😉
you mentioned the Kagans a few times in recent weeks:
Know this piece from April 2022 by Chris Hedges?
It was part of my “learning curve”.
“Hedges: The Pimps of War”
April 11, 2022
The Pimps of War
The coterie of neocons and liberal interventionists who orchestrated two decades of military fiascos in the Middle East and who have never been held to account are now stoking a suicidal war with Russia.
https://scheerpost.com/2022/04/11/hedges-the-pimps-of-war/
Mr. Murray – does he even exist?
I remember once he said that they have cats in the house. However, no one has ever seen the photo. Can you imagine a human who never posted a photo of their cats?
Aha! I caught you, AI, who replaced Mr. Murray while he was in custody!
I have seen his cat, a slender sleek black cat, when visiting him in July, Tatyana, and his family.
We shared food and wine and talked of his malaise with the roof, which needs fixing asap and more.
Somehow it is unfathomable that there is an AI version of him, his thoughts, dreams and feelings could not be taken over by a bot talking software program.
Impossible imho.
Thanks for your original posts, giving us a feeling and understanding of your life. have a great weekend.
ok, nevermind, you convinced me. Almost 🙂
I hope you had the opportunity to shake his hand and make sure that this is a normal human hand that does not belong to an android. Because androids, they can (highly likely) dream of electric
sheepcats 🙂Also, “slender sleek black cat” you say… hmmm… Are you sure it wasn’t a Deja Vu Cat from The Matrix?
oh no, my favourite reality exemplar of normal Russian life, electric sheep are not my fortitude, but I can Imagine them.
The cat was lovely, lots of kids adore them, adults seem to elevate them to a different creature they can file/pile sorrow, hope and self appreciation onto.
Btw, we always hug, good for your soul.
On the subject of Intelligence assets infiltrating political parties could Mr Campbell Martin be referring to Nicola Sturgeon as such? She certainly had the sort of success in putting down the Scottish independence movement the British state would have desired.
Time to have a laugh, Mr. Murray:
“Futility Cartoon” – YouTube, 0m 48s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bglX_mlZgEU&t=48s
haha, funny 🙂
You know, Baron, one joke has been tickling in my head for a long time, I really wanted to translate it for the community of this site, but two things confused me: the joke is not very decent (however, like most really funny jokes); and, there was no reason to post it.
But now it correctly echoes the theme of the cartoon. May I please?
—
An American, a German and a Russian accidentally find themselves at the same table in a pub and introduce themselves:
– Hi, I’m John from Texas and I can make sex 5 times a night.
– Hallo, I’m Hans from Munich and I can do it 7 times.
– Hi, I’m Ivan from Moscow and I usually do it 9 times.
After they had drunk enough beer and were more disposed to relaxed confidential conversation, the American said:
– Guys, I must admit that I lied. In fact, I can only 1 time.
The guy from Munich:
– I also exaggerated, I can at most 2 times.
Ivan enters into this exchange of frankness:
– I see you are great guys and I don’t want to lie to you anymore either. In fact, I’m not from Moscow, but from St. Petersburg.