Italian ‘League’ Leader Matteo Salvini Is Ready For His Political Comeback
When Matteo Salvini and his League Party were banished to the Italian opposition late last summer after a failed coup attempt, he swore that he would have his revenge on his former coalition partners, the Five Star Movement, who formed a new coalition with the centrist-establishment PD and booted the League out of the government.
In the months that have followed, Salvini has been an incredibly effective leader for Italy’s opposition. And polls reflect his success: Most public opinion polls suggest the League is the most popular party in Italy.
Matteo Salvini’s League party continues to dominate Italy’s polls.
The latest poll has Salvini and the League at 34%, only half a percentage point behind the combined support for the Five Star Movement and the Democratic Party, which form the current ruling coalition government. pic.twitter.com/MgNiBsYtQQ
Via his Twitter account, Salvini engages with voters while expounding on the problems facing Italy: drugs, crime a general sense of economic stagnation and malaise. With his folksy appeal, he has managed to win over areas in the Italian north that were once thought to be staunchly left-wing turf.
In its latest ‘Big Read’, the Financial Times explores how Salvini and his party have won over areas of Italy that were strongholds of the Italian Communist Party for decades. Even into the new millennium. Of course, the Italian Communist Party morphed into a left-wing social democrat party after the fall of the Soviet Union, like most other Communist Parties across Europe and Asia.
The FT story begins with Alan Fabbri, the mayor of the city of Ferrara, in northern Italy’s Emilia Romagna region. His parents were staunch communists, and his grandparents were partisans who fought against Mussolini. Yet, he registered as a member of the League when he was 19, and eventually rose to be mayor of Ferrara, despite it’s tradition of electing leftists.
But as a teenager, he joined the Northern League, which was then a right-wing separatist party. But under Salvini’s leadership over the past six years, the re-branded “League” has become a national right-wing party known for its anti-migrant stance. And according to most polls, it holds a plurality, even in regions with a history of a strong leftist tradition.
Why?
As the FT explains, because many former communists believe that the League is now the party that protects workers. It mirrors the shift in the US, as many unions backed President Trump and his position as a champion of workers.
Fabbri said his grandfather always had a copy of a Marxist newspaper on his kitchen table even though he was illiterate.
But for the new generation, things are changing. Nobody remembers WWII and the heroic efforts of the partisans fighting the fascists.
“Many here used to believe people could never vote for a right-wing party because of their family traditions, but that has changed. Many ex-communists now vote League as we defend workers. The left has taken this region for granted, they thought they had already won and they were shocked.”
All of this is important for one critical reason: Later this month, Italians in Emilia Romagna will head to the polls for regional elections that could help throw the balance of power in Italy’s parliament back in Salvini’s favor.
Incidentally despite it’s leftist tradition, the region is also one of Italy’s wealthiest.
Polls show the right-wing candidate, League stalwart Lucia Borgonzoni, is polling neck-and-neck with her left-wing rival.
Her victory would “trigger a crisis in the ruling coalition, threatening to bring down Italy’s government for the second time in six months.
Opinion polls are showing the rightwing coalition candidate, the 43-year-old League senator Lucia Borgonzoni, may be able to smash through Italy’s red wall. She is neck and neck with the incumbent centre-left Democratic party (PD) president of the region, Stefano Bonaccini.
Mr Salvini is bullish. “Let it be clear, we are going to win here,” he said on the campaign trail last week in Modena. “From the 27th of January the world is going to change…Everyone here tells me that they used to vote communist but now they don’t any more because they are no longer communists, they are something else now.”
Should Ms Borgonzoni triumph, not only would it deal a hammer blow to the PD, it would also probably trigger a crisis in the ruling coalition with the Five Star Movement, which could threaten to bring down the government. With Mr Salvini’s party far ahead of its rivals in national polls, new elections could then see the League leader sweep to power as Italy’s prime minister.
“If the PD lose in Emilia-Romagna, it 100 per cent has the potential to bring down the national government and set Salvini on course to become prime minister,” says Daniele Albertazzi, an academic at the University of Birmingham and expert on the history of the League. “It really is too close to call.”
If that happens, Salvini could finally realize his dream of becoming prime minister…and the new European Commission just might face its first crisis of confidence if Salvini pushes for ‘Italeave’ or even dropping the euro.
And for all of his critics who have branded Salvini a dangerous fascist, remember: he has supporters for a reason.
Matteo #Salvini represents the real people, captures the Italian spirit and desire for change: this is democracy, freedom, choice; and calling all this fascism or extremism is wrong and disrespectful – #italyhttps://t.co/HOl9cHeAEI
Israel, Greece and Cyprus have signed an agreement for a pipeline project to ship natural gas from the Eastern Mediterranean region to Europe. The deal comes amid increasing tensions with Turkey as Ankara seeks to expand its claims over gas-rich areas of the Mediterranean Sea.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his Greek counterpart Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades, along with their energy ministers, signed the so-called EastMed pipeline deal in Athens on January 2.
The 6-billion-euro ($6.6 billion) project envisages the construction of a 1,900-kilometer (1,180-mile) undersea pipeline that would carry up to 20 billion cubic meters of gas a year from Israeli and Cypriot waters to Crete and then on to the Greek mainland. From there, the gas would be transported to Italy and other countries in southeastern Europe.
Israel, Greece and Cyprus hope to reach a final investment decision by 2022 and have the pipeline completed by 2025. The EastMed project, which would bypass Turkey, could eventually supply up to 10% of Europe’s natural gas needs.
The signing of the EastMed pipeline project came a month after Turkey and Libya reached a bilateral agreement on maritime boundaries in the southeastern Mediterranean Sea. The deal, signed on November 27 by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the UN-backed leader of Libya, Fayez al Sarraj, attempts to redraw existing sea boundaries so that Libya ostensibly can claim exclusive rights over 39,000 square meters of maritime waters that belong to Greece.
The bilateral agreement — which establishes a new Turkey-Libya economic zone that the EastMed pipeline would now have to cross — appears aimed at giving Turkey more leverage over the project. Referring to the Turkey-Libya deal, Erdoğan said:
“Other international actors cannot conduct exploration activities in the areas marked in the Turkish-Libyan memorandum. Greek Cypriots, Egypt, Greece and Israel cannot establish a natural gas transmission line without Turkey’s consent.”
In mid-December, the Turkish Foreign Ministry reportedly summoned Israel’s top diplomat in Ankara to inform him that Israel’s plan to lay down a natural gas pipeline to Europe would require Turkey’s approval.
Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Hami Aksoy said there was no need to build the EastMed pipeline because the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline already exists. “The most economical and secure route to utilize the natural resources in the eastern Mediterranean and deliver them to consumption markets in Europe, including our country, is Turkey,” he said in a statement.
The European Union dismissed the Turkey-Libya deal was inconsistent with international law. In a statement issued on January 8, the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, said:
“The recent Turkey-Libya Memorandum of Understanding on the delimitation of maritime jurisdictions in the Mediterranean Sea infringes upon the sovereign rights of third States and does not comply with the Law of the Sea and cannot produce any legal consequences for third States.”
Egypt condemned the Turkey-Libya deal as “illegal and not binding or affecting the interests and the rights of any third parties.”
“Any maritime accord between Libya and Turkey ignores something that is blatantly obvious, which is that between those two countries there is the large geographical land mass of Crete. Consequently, such an attempt borders on the absurd.”
On December 11, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Çavuşoğlu hinted that Ankara could use its military to prevent gas drilling in waters off Cyprus that it claims as its own. “No one can do this kind of work without our permission,” he said in an interview with the newspaper Habertürk. “We will, of course, prevent any unauthorized work.”
Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkey invaded and occupied the northern third of the island. Turkey, which does not have diplomatic relations with the southern Republic of Cyprus, an EU member, claims that more than 40% Cyprus’s offshore maritime zone, known as the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), is located on Turkey’s continental shelf and therefore belongs to Ankara or to Turkish Cypriots.
Cyprus is perched on the maritime edge of several large gas finds in the Levant Basin, including Leviathan off Israel and Zohr off Egypt. In the past, Turkey has used military force to obstruct progress on drilling activities waters it claims as its own.
In December 2019, for instance, the Turkish navy intercepted an Israeli ship in Cypriot waters and forced it to move out of the area. The ship, Bat Galim, of the Israeli Oceanographic and Limnological Research Institution, was conducting research in Cyprus’s territorial waters in coordination with Cypriot officials, according to Israel’s Ministry of National Infrastructure, Energy and Water.
In February 2018, two weeks after the Italian energy giant Eni announced that it had found “a promising gas discovery” in Cyprus’s EEZ, Turkish military ships stopped a ship hired by Eni to drill for gas off the Cyprus coast.
In October 2018, the Turkish navy interdicted a Greek frigate that was monitoring the Turkish seismic vessel “Barbaros Hayreddin Pasa,” which Greek authorities said was operating in waters claimed by Cyprus. A few days later, Turkish Energy Minister Fatih Dönmez announced that the drilling ship “Fatih” would begin drilling for oil and gas off the coast of Cyprus.
In May 2019, Turkey announced that it would begin drilling for gas in waters claimed by Cyprus. “The legitimate rights of Turkey and the Northern Cypriot Turks over energy resources in the eastern Mediterranean are not open for argument,” Erdoğan said. “Our country is determined to defend its rights and those of Cypriot Turks,” he added.
The United States subsequently warned Turkey against offshore drilling operations in waters claimed by the Republic of Cyprus. “This step is highly provocative and risks raising tensions in the region,” said State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus. “We urge Turkish authorities to halt these operations and encourage all parties to act with restraint.”
In July 2019, EU foreign ministers formally linked progress on Turkish-EU accession talks to Cyprus. A measure adopted by the European Council on July 15 stated:
“The Council deplores that, despite the European Union’s repeated calls to cease its illegal activities in the Eastern Mediterranean, Turkey continued its drilling operations west of Cyprus and launched a second drilling operation northeast of Cyprus within Cypriot territorial waters. The Council reiterates the serious immediate negative impact that such illegal actions have across the range of EU-Turkey relations. The Council calls again on Turkey to refrain from such actions, act in a spirit of good neighborliness and respect the sovereignty and sovereign rights of Cyprus in accordance with international law….
“In light of Turkey’s continued and new illegal drilling activities, the Council decides to suspend … further meetings of the EU-Turkey high-level dialogues for the time being. The Council endorses the Commission’s proposal to reduce the pre-accession assistance to Turkey for 2020.”
In October 2019, Turkey defied the European Union by sending another drilling ship, the Yavuz, to operate inside waters claimed by Cyprus. Cyprus accused Turkey of a “severe escalation” of violations of its sovereign rights. Eni CEO Claudio Descalzi subsequently said that his company will not drill wells off the coast of Cyprus if Turkey sends warships to the area: “If someone shows up with warships I won’t drill wells. I certainly don’t want to provoke a war over drilling wells.”
On November 11, European Union foreign ministers agreed to a package of economic sanctions over Turkey’s drilling off the coast of Cyprus. In a statement, the Council of the EU said:
“The framework will make it possible to sanction individuals or entities responsible for or involved in unauthorized drilling activities of hydrocarbons in the Eastern Mediterranean.
“The sanctions will consist of a travel ban to the EU and an asset freeze for persons, and an asset freeze for entities. In addition, EU persons and entities will be forbidden from making funds available to those listed.”
On November 15, Turkish authorities again defied the EU by announcing that the Turkish oil-and-gas drilling ship Fatih had started operating off the coast of northeastern Cyprus.
Despite the tensions with Turkey, supporters of the EastMed pipeline project remain upbeat. At the project’s signing ceremony in Athens, Prime Minister Netanyahu said:
“This is a historic day for Israel, because Israel is rapidly becoming an energy superpower, a country that exports energy.
“This is a tremendous change. Israel was always a ‘fringe’ country, a country that did not have any connections, literally and figuratively. Now, in addition to our foreign relations, which are flourishing beyond all imagination and everything we have known, we have a specific alliance towards these important goals in the Eastern Mediterranean.
“This is a true alliance in the Eastern Mediterranean that is economic and political, and it adds to the security and stability of the region. Again, not against anyone, but rather for the values and to the benefit of our citizens.”
Greek Prime Minister Mitsotakis said that the pipeline was of “geostrategic importance” and would contribute to regional peace. Greek Energy Minister Kostis Hatzidakis called it “a project of peace and cooperation” despite “Turkish threats.” Cypriot President Anastasiades said that his aim was “cooperation and not rivalry in the Middle East.”
Meanwhile, Israel’s $3.6 billion offshore Leviathan field, the largest natural gas field in the Eastern Mediterranean, commenced production on December 31, 2019, paving the way for multi-billion-dollar gas export deals with Egypt and Jordan.
Natural gas from the Leviathan field began flowing to Jordan on January 2, 2020, in accordance with a $10 billion deal signed in 2016. Egypt will begin importing Israeli gas by the middle of January.
The amount of gas extracted from Leviathan, located 130 kilometers west of the port city of Haifa, is expected to reach 105 billion cubic meters (bcm) over 15 years, while the nearby Tamar field will export nearly 30 bcm in the same period. The value of the exports is estimated at $19.5 billion, with $14 billion coming from Leviathan and $5.5 billion from Tamar.
“For the first time since its establishment, Israel is now an energy powerhouse, able to supply all its energy needs and gaining energy independence,”said Yossi Abu, the CEO of Israel’s Delek Drilling, one of the partners in the Leviathan project. “At the same time, we will be exporting natural gas to Israel’s neighbors, thus strengthening Israel’s position in the region.”
The President of the Texas-based Noble Energy, Brent Smolik, summed it up this way: “We think it’s a huge day for Israel and the region.”
So, 2020 is off to an exciting start. It’s barely the middle of January, and we’ve already made it through World War III, which was slightly less apocalyptic than expected. Forensic teams are still sifting through the ashes, but preliminary reports suggest that the global capitalist empire has emerged from the carnage largely intact.
It started in the Middle East, of course, when Donald Trump (a “Russian-asset”) ordered the murder of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani outside the Baghdad Airport, presumably after clearing it with Putin, which, given Iran and Russia’s relationship, doesn’t really make much sense.
But whatever. According to the U.S. government and the corporate media, Soleimani was a “terrorist,” who had been working with Assad (another “terrorist”) to destroy ISIS (who are also “terrorists”) and elements of Al-Qaeda (who used to be “terrorists”) with the support of the Russians (who are kind of “terrorists”) and doing all sorts of other unspecified but allegedly imminent “terrorist” things.
Apparently, Soleimani had flown to Baghdad on a secret commercial “terrorist” flight and was on his way to some kind of covert “terrorist” diplomatic meeting to respond to a de-escalation proposal from Saudi Arabia (who are definitely not “terrorists”) when the U.S. military preventatively murdered him with a General Atomics Aeronautical Systems MQ-9B Reaper drone.
Iran (officially a “terrorist” country since January 1979, when they overthrew the brutal Western puppet that the CIA and MI6 had installed as their “Shah” in 1953, after they regime-changed the Iranian prime minister, after he nationalized the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, later to be known as British Petroleum) reacted to the preventative murder of their “terrorist” general like a bunch of “terrorists.”
The Ayatollah Khamenei (you guessed it, a “terrorist”) issued a series of “terrorist” threats against the 50,000 U.S. military personnel more or less completely surrounding his country on bases all across the Middle East. Millions of Iranians (currently “terrorists,” except for members of MeK), who, according to the U.S. officials, hated Soleimani, took to the streets of Tehran and other cities to mourn his death, burn American flags, and chant “death to America” and other “terrorist” slogans.
The empire went to DEFCON 1.
The 82nd Airborne was activated. The State Department advised Americans vacationing in Iraq to get the hell out of there. #worldwar3 started trending on Twitter.
Freedom-loving countries throughout the region stood by to be annihilated. Saudi Arabia postponed its previously scheduled weekend edition of public head-chopping. Israel dialed up its non-existent nukes. The Kuwaitis posted armed guards on their incubators. The Qataris, Bahrainians, United Arab Emiratis, and other loyal empire outposts did whatever those folks do when they’re facing nuclear Armageddon.
In the U.S.A., it was mass hysteria. The corporate media starting pumping out stories about Soleimani having “blood on his hands,” and being “the number one terrorist in the world,” and having ruthlessly genocided hundreds of American soldiers, who, back in 2003, had preventatively invaded and destroyed Iraq and were preventatively slaughtering and torturing its people to keep them from attacking America with their non-existent WMDs.
Americans (most of whom had never even heard of Soleimani until their government murdered him, and many of whom can’t find Iran on a map) took to Twitter to call for the immediate nuking of Iran from orbit. Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered a division of heavily-armed anti-“terror” forces to stand around in New York City with their rifles in the classic “sling-ready” position to prevent the Iranians from swimming the Atlantic (along with their communist killer dolphins), crawling up onto East Hampton Beach, taking the LIRR into town, and committing some devastating “terrorist” atrocity that would be commemorated throughout eternity on key rings, T-shirts, and jumbo coffee mugs.
Trump, disciplined Russian agent that he is, held his nerve and maintained his cover, performing his “total moron” act as only a seasoned Russian operative can. While Iran was still mourning, he started publicly jabbering about Soleimani’s dismembered corpse, bombing Iranian cultural sites, and otherwise bombastically taunting Iranlike an emotionally-challenged street-corner drunk. His strategy was clearly to convince the Iranians (and the rest of the world) that he is a dangerous imbecile who will murder the officials of any foreign government that Mike Pompeo tells him to, and then incinerate their museums and mosques, and presumably the rest of their “shithole” countries, if they even think about retaliating.
Nevertheless, retaliate the Iranians did. In a sadistic display of cold-hearted “terrorism,” they launched a firestorm of ballistic “terror” missiles at two U.S. military bases in Iraq, killing no one and injuring no one, but damaging the hell out of some empty buildings, a helicopter, and a couple of tents. First, though, in order to maximize the “terror,” they called the Swiss embassy in Tehran and asked them to warn the U.S. military that they would be launching missiles at their bases shortly. As the Moon of Alabama website reported:
“The Swiss embassy in Tehran, which represents the U.S., was warned at least one hour before the attack happened. Around 0:00 UTC the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration issued a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) which prohibited civil U.S. flights over Iraq, Iran, the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.”
In the wake of the Iranians’ devastating counter-strike, and the mass-non-casualties resulting therefrom, anyone with an Internet connection or access to a television descended into their anti-terror bunkers and held their breath in anticipation of the nuclear hell Trump was sure to unleash. I confess, even I tuned into his speech, which was one of the most disturbing public spectacles I have ever witnessed.
Trump burst through the doors of the White House Grand Foyer, dramatically backlit, freshly “tanned,” scowling like a WWF wrestler, and announced that, as long as he is president, “Iran will never be allowed to have nuclear weapons” … as if any of the events of the preceding week had had anything to do with nuclear weapons (which the Iranians don’t need and do not want, except in some neoconservative fantasy wherein Iran intends to commit national suicide by nuking Israel off the face of the Earth).
I didn’t make it through his entire address, which he delivered in a breathless, robotic staccato (possibly because Putin, or Mike Pompeo, was dictating it word-for-word into his earpiece), but it was clear from the start that all-out, toe-to-toe nuclear combat with the Axis of Resistance, or the Axis of Terror, or the Axis of Evil, or the Axis of Whatever, had been averted.
But, seriously, all mass hysteria aside, despite whatever atrocities are still to come, World War III is not going to happen. Why, you ask, is it not going to happen? OK, I’ll tell you, but you’re not going to like it.
World War III is not going to happen because World War III already happened … and the global capitalist empire won. Take a look at these NATO maps (make sure to explore all the various missions). Then take a look at this Smithsonian map of where the U.S. military is “combating terrorism.” And there are plenty of other maps you can google. What you will be looking at is the global capitalist empire. Not the American empire, the global capitalist empire.
If that sounds like a distinction without a difference … well, it kind of is, and it kind of isn’t. What I mean by that is that it isn’t America (i.e., America the nation-state, which most Americans still believe they live in) that is militarily occupying much of the planet, making a mockery of international law, bombing and invading other countries, and assassinating heads of state and military officers with complete impunity. Or, rather, sure, it is America … but America is not America.
America is a simulation. It is the mask the global capitalist empire wears to conceal the fact that there is no America … that there is only the global capitalist empire.
The whole idea of “World War III,” of powerful nation-states conquering other powerful nation-states, is pure nostalgia. “America” does not want to conquer Iran. The empire wants to restructure Iran, and then absorb Iran into the empire. It doesn’t give a rat’s ass about democracy, or whether Iranian women are allowed to wear mini-skirts, or any other “human rights.” If it did, it would be restructuring Saudi Arabia and applying “maximum pressure” to Israel.
Likewise, the notion that “America” has been making a series of unfortunate “strategic mistakes” in the Middle East is a convenient illusion. Granted, its foreign policy makes no sense from the perspective of a nation-state, but it makes perfect sense from the perspective of the empire. While “America” appears to be mindlessly thrashing around like a bull in a china shop, the empire knows exactly what it’s doing, what it has been doing since the end of the Cold War, opening up formerly inaccessible markets, eliminating internal resistance, aggressively restructuring any and all territories that are not playing ball with global capitalism.
I know it’s gratifying to wave the flag, or burn it, depending on your political persuasion, whenever things flare up militarily, but at some point we (i.e., we Americans, Brits, Western Europeans, et al.) are going to need to face the fact that we are living in a global empire, which is actively pursuing its global interests, and not in sovereign nation-states pursuing the interests of nation-states. (The fact that the nation-state is defunct is why we’ve been experiencing a resurgence of “nationalism.” It isn’t a return to the 1930s. It is the death throes of the nation-state, nationalism, and national sovereignty … the supernova of a dying star.)
World War III was an ideological battle, between two aspiring hegemonic systems. It is over. It’s a global capitalist world. As Mr. Jensen put it in the movie Network:
“You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars.
Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today.”
That system of systems, that multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars, has us all by the short hairs, folks. All of us. And it won’t be satisfied until the world is transformed into one big, valueless, neo-feudal, privatized market… so maybe we should forget about World War III, and start focusing on World War IV.
You know the war I’m talking about, don’t you? It’s the global capitalist empire versus the “terrorists.”
* * *
C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing and Broadway Play Publishing, Inc. His dystopian novel, Zone 23, is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. Volume I of his Consent Factory Essays is published by Consent Factory Publishing, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amalgamated Content, Inc. He can be reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org.
‘Lonely’ Japanese Billionaire Seeks Space Ho For SpaceX Voyage Around Moon
An attention-seeking Japanese billionaire has put out a casting call for single females to join him on a voyage around the moon on a SpaceX rocket in 2023.
44-year-old Yusaku Maezawa, who sold his online fashion retailer Zozo Inc. to SoftBank, is looking for single females over the age of 20 to join him on the adventure, which will be streamed as part of a documentary on AbemaTV.
“As feelings of loneliness and emptiness slowly begin to surge upon me, there’s one thing that I think about: continuing to love one woman,” wrote Maezawa, adding “I want to find a ‘life partner’. With that future partner of mine, I want to shout our love and world peace from outer space.”
Translation: Prepare to get boned by a billionaire in zero-gravity.
What’s more, Maezawa has recently split up from his 27-year-old actress girlfriend Ayame Goriki, and says he plans to bring artists on the flight to inspire works based on the journey – which he has dubbed Dear Moon.
The documentary, titled “Full Moon Lovers”, will stream on AbemaTV, which is backed by online ad agency CyberAgent and broadcaster TV Asahi and targets a younger audience that is turning away from traditional TV.
Applicants must “be interested in going into space and able to participate in the preparation for it” and “be someone who wishes for world peace”, the website states. –Reuters
Applications for space ho’s will close on January 17, and Maezawa will select the lucky winner by the end of March.
A few days before Christmas, Julian Assange testified to a Spanish court that a Spanish security company, UC Global S.L., acting in coordination with the CIA, illegally recorded all his actions and conversations, including with his lawyers, and streamed them back in real time to the CIA.
He will, at the end of February, make a similar complaint to a British extradition court about the CIA’s alleged misbehavior.
Will such misbehavior, if proven, set Assange free?
The Daniel Ellsberg case may be instructive. You may recall that after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the “Pentagon Papers” case, Ellsberg was indicted under the Espionage Act for leaking Pentagon documents to The New York Times and The Washington Post.
After the trial commenced in San Francisco, it was brought to the judge’s attention that the “White House plumbers” broke into the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist. Based on that information and other complaints of government misbehavior, including the FBI’s interception of Ellsberg’s telephone conversations with a government official, Judge William Matthew Byrne decided that the case should be dismissed with prejudice because the government acted outrageously.
For similar reasons, the case against Assange should be dismissed, if it reaches the U.S. courts.
The “plumbers” were a covert group formed by the Nixon White House to stop leaks of information from the government, such as the Pentagon Papers. They are notorious for their burglary at the Watergate complex, which led to former President Nixon’s downfall. Approximately nine months before the Watergate break-in, the plumbers, led by former CIA agent E. Howard Hunt, burglarized a psychiatrist’s office to find information that could discredit Ellsberg.
The CIA also was involved with the break-in. It prepared a psychiatric profile of Ellsberg as well as an ID kit for the plumbers, including drivers’ licenses, Social Security cards, and disguises consisting of red wigs, glasses and speech alteration devices.
Additionally, the CIA allowed Hunt and his sidekick, G. Gordon Liddy, to use two CIA safe houses in the D.C. area for meetings and storage purposes. Clearly, the CIA knew the plumbers were up to no good. It is unclear whether the CIA knew Ellsberg was the target, but it would not have taken much to figure it out.
The Spanish newspaper El Pais broke the story that UC Global invaded Assange’s privacy at the Ecuadorian embassy and shared its surveillance with the CIA. It demonstrated step-by-step, document-by-document, UC Global’s actions and its contacts with the CIA. UC Global reportedly installed cameras throughout Assange’s space in the embassy — including his bathroom — and captured Assange’s every word and apparently livestreamed it, giving the CIA a free TV show of Assange’s daily life.
After reading El Pais’s series, you would have to be a dunce not to believe the CIA didn’t monitor Assange’s every move at the Ecuadorian embassy, including trips to the bathroom.
Ecuador granted Assange asylum in their embassy for seven years, after he jumped bail in London to avoid extradition to Sweden for allegedly raping two Swedish women. (Those charges are now dismissed.) If you can believe it, Ecuador had hired UC Global to protect the Ecuadorian embassy and Assange. Not surprisingly, the CIA later made UC Global its spy to surveil Assange.
When there was a change of administration in Ecuador, Assange’s asylum was withdrawn, and he was immediately arrested by British police at the request of U.S. officials. The United States subsequently indicted him for violating the Espionage Act, for publishing the very same information published roughly contemporaneously by The New York Times, The Guardian, El Pais, Le Monde and Der Spiegel. (Assange already was subject to a sealed indictment in the United States for computer hacking.)
The behavior of UC Global and the CIA seems indistinguishable from the government’s behavior in the Ellsberg case, which a federal judge found to have “offended a sense of justice” and “incurably infected the prosecution” of the case. Accordingly, he concluded that the only remedy to ensure due process and the fair administration of justice was to dismiss Ellsberg’s case “with prejudice,” meaning that Ellsberg could not be retried.
Can anything be more offensive to a “sense of justice” than an unlimited surveillance, particularly of lawyer-client conversations, livestreamed to the opposing party in a criminal case? The alleged streaming unmasked the strategy of Assange’s lawyers, giving the government an advantage that is impossible to remove. Short of dismissing Assange’s indictment with prejudice, the government will always have an advantage that can never be matched by the defense.
The usual remedy for warrantless surveillance is to exclude any illegally obtained information from the trial, but that remedy is inapplicable here. The government’s advantage in surveilling Assange is not the acquisition of tangible evidence but, rather, intangible insights into Assange’s legal strategy. There is no way, therefore, to give Assange a fair trial, since his opponents will know every move he will make.
When Assange begins his extradition hearing, this will be part of his argument — that the CIA’s misbehavior violates his human rights by depriving him of his right to a fair trial.
The CIA will no doubt attempt to trump this argument by defending the surveillance on grounds of national security. This may be easier said than done, however: It is one thing to say the CIA can engage in surveillance abroad for its own intelligence-gathering purposes, and another to say it can listen to the private lawyer-client communications of a person against whom the U.S. government has an open criminal investigation.
More to the point, it does not seem immediately clear why eavesdropping on conversations of legal strategy protects U.S. national security. In my experience in national security cases (I led The New York Times lawyers in the “Pentagon Papers” case), every time the government is backed into a corner in such cases, it will simply serve up a defense of “national security” because it is difficult to defend against such an assertion and the government, consequently, has the ability to trump every competing argument.
Violation of Assange’s fair-trial rights is only one of many arguments he can make to defeat extradition. For example, he can argue that his health is so poor that he cannot survive extradition. His father has said Assange will die in prison, and the United Nations Special Rapporteur overseeing his case, Nils Melzer, believes Assange’s mental acuity has been damaged irreparably through “psychological torture.”
Most importantly, Assange can assert that the action of the U.S. government is for its own political benefit. It is standard law that extradition be refused when a country seeks it in order to prosecute a political offense. In this case, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said the U.S. government would seek to shut down Assange for using “free speech values against us” and characterized Assange’s organization, WikiLeaks, as “a non-state hostile intelligence service.”
That statement does not sound like the government wishes to convict Assange for violating U.S. national security laws as much as to get rid of Assange himself for disclosing embarrassing information that is detrimental to American diplomatic and political interests. Whether the actions the U.S. government takes against Assange constitute a “political” offense will be hotly contested.
Former State Department and National Security Council legal adviser John Bellinger recently predicted on NPR a “battle royal because Assange and his lawyers will argue very forcefully that … the Trump administration is coming after him for political reasons.”
No doubt there also will be a “battle royal” regarding whether the CIA can, with impunity, surveil Assange’s actions and conversations — including those with his lawyers — and then livestream those to its offices without being heavily penalized for its behavior. It would seem the only appropriate remedy for such outrageous conduct would be to set Assange free.
Army Selects QinetiQ & Textron To Build Robot Tank With Chain Gun
Earlier this month, as threats of World War 3 surged between the U.S. and Iran, President Trump boasted about his $2 trillion military spending spree. He said, “If Iran attacks an American Base, or any American, we will be sending some of that brand-new beautiful equipment their way…and without hesitation!”
Threats of war have receded this week but are still elevated. There’s a new report from Defense Blog that details how the U.S. Army is continuing rapid modernization efforts to prepare for the next conflict.
The U.S. Army CCDC Ground Vehicle Systems Center and the U.S. Army Next Generation Combat Vehicles Cross-Functional Team awarded QinetiQ North America and Textron last Friday with a contract to build four light (RCV Light) and four medium (RCV Medium) sized robotic tanks.
“The progress that our engineers, scientists, project managers, and leaders around Team Warren and the Army Modernization Enterprise have made in moving the RCV closer to reality is truly a heartening success story for Army modernization,” said Jeffrey Langhout, Director, Ground Vehicle Systems Center.
“That we can get this far already is a testament to the dedication and passion of the Army to giving our Soldiers the best capabilities possible. This is a great day for our Army, as we make another important step in learning how we can employ robotic vehicles into our future formations,” Langhout said.
The light and medium-sized RCVs will be part of the Army’s Robotic Campaign of Learning that will test the robots with ground troops. Testing is expected to conclude by the end of 2021 and could enter service by 2023.
“Robots have the potential to revolutionize the way we conduct ground combat operations,” said Brig. Gen. Ross Coffman, Director of the Next Generation Combat Vehicles Cross-Functional Team.
“Whether that’s giving increased firepower to a dismounted patrol, breaching an enemy fighting position, or providing CBRNE reconnaissance, we envision these vehicles providing commanders more time and space for decisions and reducing risk to Soldiers,” Coffman said.
The RCVs are the next generation of combat vehicles that will be offered in three variants: the light version will be transportable by rotary wing, and the two medium variants will be transported in C-130 or C-17 aircraft.
Defense Blog notes that RCVs will have artificial intelligence with 25 mm chain gun swiveling on top with sensors that will be used to track and kill enemy forces. The robot will be able to support fire teams and or keep pace with armored convoys.
The Democratic leaders may soon learn the wisdom of Oscar Wilde’s warning that “when the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has so far delayed the submission of the impeachment of President Trump to the Senate to force a trial with witnesses. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has declared any trial of Trump without witnesses to be nothing less than the “most unfair impeachment trial in modern history.” Leaders of both parties know that impeachment often boils down to one unpredictable element: witnesses.
For those who have the votes, witnesses are an unnecessary risk. For those who don’t, they are an absolute necessity.
On Friday, Schumer insisted that “there is only one precedent that matters here: that never, never in the history of our country, has there been an impeachment trial of the president where the Senate was denied the ability to hear from witnesses.”
Put another way, Schumer does not have the votes and thus needs the witnesses. Schumer now wants to hear from the witnesses who never testified before the House, which rushed through an impeachment without seeking to compel testimony from key officials. One of those, former national security adviser John Bolton, said Monday he would testify before the Senate if subpoenaed.
In the Clinton impeachment trial 21 years ago, Schumer and the Democrats opposed hearing from witnesses. In that impeachment chapter, the Democrats had the votes. Lacking the votes this time, the unpredictability of witnesses now appeals to Schumer and his party. But only up to a point. Schumer has opposed the suggested Republican witnesses as a mere “distraction.”
One witness in particular could prove not just a distraction but a disaster: Hunter Biden.
In a conventional trial, Biden would be a relevant defense witness. Biden’s testimony would have bearing on a key question in an abuse-of-power trial. Trump insists that he raised the issue of Hunter Biden’s relationship with a Ukrainian energy firm to the Ukrainian president as part of an overall concern he had about ongoing corruption in that country. If that contract with the son of a former vice president could be shown to be a corrupt scheme to advance the interests of a foreign company or country, it might be Trump’s best defense.
Under Federal Rule of Evidence 401, courts will often review possible testimony under the standard of whether “it has a tendency to make a fact more or less probable than it would be without the evidence.” Even before the adoption of the Bill of Rights, Congress enacted a statute reaffirming the right of the “defense to make any proof that he can produce by lawful witnesses” in cases of treason and capitol cases. This right to present a defense has been repeatedly reaffirmed by the Supreme Court including in the 1967 opinion in Washington v. Texas, where the Court ruled that “the right to offer the testimony of witnesses and to compel their attendance, if necessary, is in plain terms the right to present the defense, the right to present the defendant’s version of the facts . . . Just as an accused has the right to confront the prosecution’s witnesses for the purpose of challenging their testimony, he has the right to present his own witnesses to establish a defense.”
Trump’s position is that he did not arbitrarily ask a country to investigate a possible political rival. Had Trump called for an investigation into Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) husband, for example, without a scintilla of proof of corruption, it would be entirely indefensible. However, the Biden contract was so openly corrupt it would have made Jack Abramoff blush. Even in the United States, lobbyists and companies will often give family members undeserved lucrative jobs and contracts to curry favor with powerful politicians. Overseas, it is standard operating procedure. Oleksandr Onyshchenko, a businessman and former member of the Ukrainian parliament, said Biden was made a director “to protect (the company)” from investigation by U.S. and Ukrainian officials. Even Hunter Biden admitted that the position was given to him because of his father. Hunter Biden was paid at least $50,000 a month and possibly more.
Biden stepped down from the Burisma board only when his father announced his candidacy in April 2019. Ukraine assured Trump that it was cracking down on corruption when, just a few months earlier, Biden had been receiving monthly retainers from Burisma.
If the Biden contract was an ongoing corrupt effort to secure influence and money from the United States, Trump’s reference to it in a discussion of corruption has a possible public purpose. While one can certainly conclude that self-dealing by the president is a plausible explanation, there is no question that the testimony of Biden would be relevant.
Schumer knows that neither Biden nor his contract will show well under the glare of a public impeachment trial. In addition to his glaring lack of relevant experience, the younger Biden has a checkered history – from drug addiction to being thrown out of the Naval Reserve – that would have led most companies to avoid him. The trial might also force the public to consider Joe Biden’s failure to ask about his son’s dubious foreign dealings. Joe Biden himself seems delusional in claiming, “No one has said my son did anything wrong.”
For the Democrats, witnesses are a dangerous game. The worse that Hunter Biden looks, the better Trump looks in raising the contract. That is the problem with asking for witnesses in a Senate trial. They can take you to places you might prefer not to go.
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Jonathan Turley is the chair of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and served as the last lead counsel in an impeachment trial before the Senate in defense of Judge G. Thomas Porteous Jr.
Global Automakers Remain Cautious, Pessimistic As China Forecasts 2% Sales Drop For 2020
The mood in the Chinese auto market is one of pessimism.
And the global auto recession, being led by the world’s largest market in China, doesn’t look as though it’ll be turning around anytime soon. That’s because China is forecasting a 2% sales decline for 2020, as we first noted just hours ago when we pointed out the country’s nasty 7.5% sales decline for December.
Sales dropped 8.2% in 2019 due to a slowing economy, but also U.S. import tariffs and new emissions standards, according to Reuters.
The CAAM’s pessimistic outlook for 2020 is starting the entire global industry off on a cautious note. A decline in 2020 would mark the third year that sales have fallen, as they also declined 2.8% in 2018. This followed continual growth that had begun all the way back in the 1990s.
Industry analysts are banking on a sales recovery in small towns and easing trade war tensions to act as tailwinds in China this year. Shi Jianhua, a senior official at CAAM, said: “We have moved away from the high-speed development stage. We have to accept the reality of low-speed development. We had high-speed growth for a consecutive 28 years, which was really not bad, so I hope everyone can calmly look at the market.”
NEV sales were down 27.4% in December, which helped fuel an overall annual decline to 1.24 million units in 2019.
To make matters worse, Beijing slashed subsidies on EVs and NEVs this year – as we noted in the beginning of December – causing a huge dent in sales of plug-in vehicles. NEV sales also plunged 42% in November.
CAAM’s assistant secretary general, Xu Haidong said it was “not possible” for the country to sell the 2 million NEVs it targeted for 2020 back in 2017.
Since cutting production and shuttering factories last year, many auto manufacturers are cautious heading into 2020. Geely and Ford, for instance, have both said they expect fiercer competition to weed out weaker companies.
Ford said its China auto sales were down more than 25% for 2019, marking a third year of declines. Along with GM, who reported a 15% drop in 2019 China sales, it remained cautious on 2020.
Matt Tsien, president of GM China said: “We expect the market downturn to continue in 2020, and anticipate ongoing headwinds in our China business.”
The hypocrisy is unbelievable. In order to comply with United States sanctions on Iran, Facebook’s thought police have taken to censorship on behalf of the government. At the same time, President Donald Trump warns Iran not to use censorship.
It’s become painfully obvious that the ruling class wants to get us into another war, where the young and poor are shipped off to die while the politicians and government defense contractors get rich. And the hypocrisy is becoming noticeable. Backed by the ruling class, Big Tech’s censorship is nothing new, however, this time, it’s an excuse to propagate a war:
These massive Big Tech corporations are Thought Police for the US government:
Facebook and Instagram are removing posts expressing support for Iran’s top general Soleimani
They say it’s to comply with US sanctions, but how do posts violate sanctions? https://t.co/BthPuxgOBC
The International Federation of Journalists condemned the censorship effort as “unprecedented in the history of social networks and in conflict with the very innate actuality of media.” In its letter to Instagram, AoIJ Tehran noted that numerous Iranian state media accounts had been removed and 15 journalists had been censored recently, which goes against and freedom of speech principles.
“These massive Big Tech corporations are Thought Police for the US government: Facebook and Instagram are removing posts expressing support for Iran’s top general Soleimani,” journalist Ben Norton tweeted. “They say it’s to comply with US sanctions, but how do posts violate sanctions? –RT
The answer is: they don’t. The problem is that the war sentiment and the idea that slaughtering people for our freedoms in other countries is gone. The elitists that need a war to profit off of it can’t convince the public to fight and die for them unless they control the narrative.
That’s why speech is being censored.
Big tech is just another arm of the U.S. government.
Any support for Soleimani will be taken down by Facebook and Instagram to comply with the USA sanctions but Trump can tweet that Iran should not close down the internet because the world is watching. He wouldn’t understand the irony of his tweet. Free speech, censorship anyone?
Hypocritically, while Facebook was acting as “thought police” on behalf of the US government (the rulers who think they own everyone), Washington has been championing free speech and warning Tehran against restricting the Iranian people’s internet access. U.S. President Donald Trump personally addressed the anti-government protesters – in Farsi, mind you – reassuring them of his unwavering support, according to a report by RT.
Biden Campaign Woos Wall Street In Private Huddle With Bigwigs
Joe Biden’s campaign chairman Steve Ricchetti has been privately meeting with top donors from Wall Street over the last week in a bid to drum up support for the 77-year-old former Vice President’s run at the Democratic nomination, according to CNBC.
Ricchetti huddled with around 90 financiers on Wednesday at New York-based investment banking firm Evercore, in a pitch which reportedly swayed several big-money donors who apparently haven’t heard Biden try to string together more than a few sentences.
Attendees included Evercore founder Roger Altman, longtime investor Blair Effron, Blackstone Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Gray, Citigroup executive Ray McGuire, Centerbridge Partners co-founder Mark Gallogly, and former U.S. ambassador to France Jane Hartley, said the people, who declined to be named since the meeting was deemed private.
Ricchetti told the donors that he believes now is the time for them and their donor networks to get behind Biden as the first contests of the 2020 primary season are set to kick off in three weeks, according to people familiar with the matter. –CNBC
Biden, while still the Democratic frontrunner, is in an extremely tight race with Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren – the former of whom has begun beating Biden in several polls. South Bend Mayor Bete Buttigieg is also a serious contender at this stage.
The meeting did not just include staunch supporters of Biden, such as Effron, who, along with businessman Marc Lasry, has decided to back Biden after first backing Sen. Kamala Harris. The group was described by one attendee as donors who were either “Biden-warm or Biden-not-so-warm.” McGuire, for instance, was another Harris backer and a member of her national finance committee. Gallogly, as CNBC first reported, had supported former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke but has since decided to support Biden. Harris and O’Rourke dropped out of the race last year.
After the meeting, many of the donors appeared ready to join Biden’s cause, the people said. –CNBC
Meanwhile, Biden’s campaign will hold a series of fundraising events which could bring in millions of much-needed dollars at this critical juncture in his bid for the White House.
Expect Warren and Sanders – who have raised money primarily through small contributions – to knock Biden for pandering to Wall Street. Buttigieg, meanwhile, is happy to take money from across the board.
Biden, Sanders, Warren and Buttigieg raised a combined $100 million in the fourth quarter. Trump and the RNC, meanwhile, have nearly $200 million on hand.
