Trump, Assange, Bannon, Farage… bound together in an unholy alliance
by Carole Cadwalladr
The WikiLeaks founder’s astonishing admission should prompt MPs finally to start asking question
Last Wednesday, 11 months into Donald Trump’s new world order, in the first year of normalisation, a sudden unblurring of lines took place. A shift. A door of perception swung open.
Because that was the day that the dramatis personae of two separate Trump-Russia scandals smashed headlong into one another. A high-speed news car crash between Cambridge Analytica and WikiLeaks, the two organisations that arguably had the most impact on 2016, coming together last week in one head-spinning scoop.
That day, we learned that Alexander Nix, the CEO of Cambridge Analytica, the controversial data firm that helped Trump to power, had contacted Julian Assange to ask him if he wanted “help” with WikiLeaks’s stash of stolen emails.
That’s the stash of stolen emails that had such a devastating impact on Hillary Clinton in the last months of the campaign. And this story brought WikiLeaks, which the head of the CIA describes as a “hostile intelligence service”, directly together with the Trump campaign for which Cambridge Analytica worked. This is an amazing plot twist for the company owned by US billionaire Robert Mercer, which is already the subject of investigations by the House intelligence committee, the Senate intelligence committee, the FBI and, it was announced late on Friday night, the Senate judiciary committee.
So far, so American. These are US scandals involving US politics and the news made the headlines in US bulletins across US networks.
But it’s also Cambridge Analytica, the data analytics company that has its headquarters in central London and which, following a series of articles about its role in Brexit in the Guardian and the Observer, is also being investigated, by the Electoral Commission and the Information Commissioner’s Office. The company that was spun out of a British military contractor, is headed by an old Etonian and that responded to our stories earlier this year by threatening to sue us. It’s our Cambridge it’s named after, not the American one, and it was here that it processed the voter files of 240 million US citizens.
It’s also here that this “hostile intelligence service” – WikiLeaks – is based. The Ecuadorian embassy is just a few miles, as the crow flies, from Cambridge Analytica’s head office. Because this is not just about America. It’s about Britain, too. This is transatlantic. It’s not possible to separate Britain and the US in this whole sorry mess – and I say this as someone who has spent months trying. Where we see this most clearly is in that other weird WikiLeaks connection: Nigel Farage. Because that moment in March when Farage was caught tripping down the steps of the Ecuadorian embassy was the last moment the lines suddenly became visible. That the ideological overlaps between WikiLeaks and Trump and Brexit were revealed to be not just lines, but a channel of communication.
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4 Comments. Leave new
Dear Frank Schaeffer:
This is curious. I censure you for saying naught about Assange, and under four minutes later, you post this.
But you’re still not helping yourself!
Why not point out that Assange’ only crime is to reveal official crimes of the US and other nations to the world?
Why not point out that the attack on Assange is directed against the democratic rights of the working class?
Why not tell the truth that the attack on Assange aims to create a precedent for the suppression of mass opposition to war, austerity and dictatorship?
Why not point out that only yesterday, WikiLeaks exposed an extensive spying operation against Assange in Ecuador’s London Embassy?
Why not point out that upon his extradition to the US, Assange will have no fair trial, but will in all likelihood be tried in secret on trumped up charges?
Why not say that the US is at the center of a vast international conspiracy to sillance Assange and Wikileaks?
Why not point out that the enormous resources Washington expended to lay hands on one individual is a warning that it is not only hell-bent on exacting revengs, but it is utterly determined to suppress ruthlessly any independent voice even as it prepares new crimes?
Why not demand that the Australian regime end its collaboration with the Trump reichadistration before Assange is railroaded in a US court?
Assange is in grave danger. Yet how many of these issues do you raise?
Neither you nor the Democrat Party defend the rights of the working class. How can you when you consent to the very crimes and wars that Assange and WikiLeaks exposed years ago?
Even as you address Assange’ situation, the utter timidity shows a complete lack of all convictions. You would use the hero, Julian Assange, as fodder for political advancement.
Could a more corrupt arrangement be made?
A blessed Lenten walk with Jesus
Dear Frank Schaeffer:
Come on, Frank! Political asylum is either inviolable or it doesn’t exist at all.
We are witnessing a criminal US rendition operation. That was confirmed within hours of the illegal seizure of Assange. He was dragged before a British kangaroo court, convicted on the main ‘charges,’ and was denounced as a narcissist by the presiding judge.
The US and Britain are moving as quickly as possible because they know that in Britain, the US and around the world, there is mass hostility to the illegal attack on Assange.
Assange committed no crime. He is persecuted for exposing war crimes and criminal diplomatic intrigue by the US and its allies around the world. HE exposed US war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq by publishing war logs, and diplomatic cables.
We can always rely on the Democrat Party and its mouthpieces to say too little, too late, and then not to issues but only talking points. In contrast, the World Socialist Web Site published today:
‘Independent American journalist Chris Hedges wrote that the publisher’s arrest “eviscerates all pretense of the rule of law and the rights of a free press.” Australian journalist and documentarian John Pilger declared that Assange’s forced expulsion from the embassy and the Ecuadorian government’s complicity were “crimes against the most basic natural justice,” and marked a warning to all journalists.’
See the difference? So don’t be telling us next year about your glorious defense of Assange. You haven’t defended Assange. You haven’t defended the rule of law. You haven’t defended the working class from arbitrary punishment or anything else.
A blessed Lenten walk with Jesus
Dear Frank Schaeffer:
CIA describes as a “hostile intelligence service”
Would this be the same CIA that has participated in countless international crimes over decades? Isn’t this a bit like General Amin pointing a finger and calling people bad guys?
You run a reactionary, warmongering figure, a darling of the MIC – CIA who is also a symbol of corrupt Washington Insiderism. When your candidate goes down, you concoct hysterical stories crafted by deeply criminal agencies about Assange, a man who has spent the past 7 years in virtual captivity for exposing criminal intrigues of the US its allies in Iraq and Afghanistan.
You offer no principled defense against Assange’ extraordinary rendition. He is effectively denied status as a political prisoner, and will undoubtedly face a secret trial in which his lawyers have no access to the case brought against him because matters of ‘national security’ are alleged to be involved. You don’t defend Assange. Sanders doesn’t defend Assange. AOC doesn’t defend Assange.
Yet you’re going to parade next year as a defender of people’s democratic rights?
HORSEFEATHERS! The GOP and Democrat Parties are two sides of the same, corrupt currency. It’s just that one party peddles ‘identity issues’ to try and put a ‘progressive face’ on fascistic policies.
A Blessed Holy Week!
principled defense of Julian Assange.
That hostile agency abides in Isreal and by deception wages war.
Wake up please!
Nine