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sábado, 29 de febrero de 2020


My frenzied global search for a protective mask
By Wendy Min Source: Global Times Published: 2020/2/28
According to the WHO, the worldwide demand for protective masks due to the coronavirus is 100 times higher than normal, and it will take four to six months to refill the supply chain. 

It hasn't been easy trying to find masks in China and there have been cases of price gouging by some retailers, while others attempt to pawn off fake masks at genuine. The government has rightfully come down hard on these unscrupulous dealers. 

Yet, I can't shake off this feeling of dread knowing that mask supplies and disinfectants are increasingly hard to come by. My grandparents in Nanjing, my family in Shanghai and Beijing and all my friends in China are in dire need of these now must-have things. 

Instead of just complaining about the situation and to raise my own awareness, I've done some research on the "mask topic" and have had some up-close personal experience. 

I asked about purchasing masks in a number of Chinese cities, and the most common replies were: long wait and sold out. My friend on the island of Taiwan even offered to help but told me she could only get her hands on two masks after a week of searching. 

In the absence of the real thing, I've seen silly online photos of people using fruit peels to cover their nose and mouth, while others have cut the tops of large jugs of water, then turn the bottom upside down and put it over their head. Ridiculously amusing maybe, but this is no laughing matter. Masks are scarce for all - regardless of social-economic status, but I worry most for the poor and those who have to put themselves in harm's way of the virus. 

The mask-shortage problem isn't isolated to China. To my surprise, I discovered shortages of masks and disinfectants during business trips around Europe, the Middle East, and Oceania. 

I was in 
Davos when news of the outbreak first made headlines, I tried to buy some masks at three local pharmacies but they were all sold out. In Zurich, I was lucky enough to purchase a box of 50 surgical masks and one bottle of 500ml hand disinfectant. A pharmacy at Munich Airport was sold out. The first pharmacy I went to in Malta was sold out, but another sold me its last 40 masks for around 10 euros and a bottle of hand disinfectant for around 4 euros. Masks and hand disinfectants were sold out at a Dubai Airport pharmacy, while I managed to buy 50 masks and 100 alcohol wipes in Riyadh. Australia is also short of supplies with only a few pharmacies selling masks at around $8 (AUD) each.

My research has also found that making a common protective mask is more complicated than it looks. It requires three layers of non-woven fabric, which is mainly made in the provinces of Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, and Hubei. The Hubei city of Xiantao produces 60 percent of the fabric needed to produce masks in China. But Xiantao is only a 2.5-hour drive from the coronavirus epicenter in Wuhan, causing production in Xiantao to take a hit. 

Each protective mask has three layers that are each made of this special fabric. The inner layer is an ordinary non-woven fabric. The outer layer is waterproof and the middle layer is a filter made from a polypropylene substance. Once all three layers are stitched together, the mask is sterilized with ethylene oxide and let to stand for seven days before being packed and shipped to merchants and customers. 

When it comes stitching the three layers together to make a mask, an automated machine called the HD-0430 and costing 185,000 yuan ($26,296), can make 100 masks a minute or 144,000 masks a day. In 2018, 4.54 billion masks were produced in China, showing it is capable of producing some 12 million masks per day. The target now is to double this number to ensure citizens have access to such supplies.  

China and the rest of the world are facing a shortage of masks, even as the demand grows. Reports have shown that the incubation period of the coronavirus can last as long as 24 days and infected people who are asymptomatic can spread the virus, especially if they don't wear a mask. New cases are popping up in faraway places, including Italy, Iran, and Israel. This means those countries will surely also experience a shortage of masks and hand disinfectant.

Like everyone, I am hoping this health crisis will soon be over, but I'm worried people will soon forget how devastating this outbreak has been. Already, there are reports of a large number of people traveling in China. As we loosen our focus on defeating COVID-19 and return to our previous ways, perhaps another virus will mutate and strike with renewed lethal force. The question is: Will we be prepared next time?

The author is a freelance writer. She was born in China, raised in Australia, educated in China, Australia and France. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn


jueves, 27 de febrero de 2020


T-MEC: riqueza pública a privados
John Saxe-Fernández
La 4T no transcurre en un vacío ético y mucho menos en ausencia de memoria histórica sobre la geopolítica y la geoeconomía de la imperialización de EU sobre las naciones de América del Norte. Además, es en el contexto de la dinámica global de clase en el centro y en la periferia capitalista, un proceso que ocurre en medio de un acelerado deterioro climático y de biodiversidad, totalmente ausente en el T-MEC trumpiano, en que resulta necesaria la auscultación crítica de los mecanismos financieros de extracción de riqueza de lo público a los privados de dentro y fuera de México, cuya lamentable formalización en el T-MEC, hace que amerite su derogación, como bien perciben líderes de EU en la avanzada electoral 2020.
Se trata de un fenómeno de larga data inscrito en una cambiante constelación histórica: una transición hegemónica compleja por tratarse no solo de fenómenos multipolarizantes y multidimensionales sino también existenciales, por el orden de probabilidad de guerra nuclear, como por el deterioro climático vinculado a los gases de efecto invernadero (GEI): el dióxido de carbono y el metano, entre otros. Ver el Doomsday Clock del Boletín de los Científicos Atómicos (https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/) No sorprende que en el T-MEC no haya nada sobre el clima. La presidencia imperial de EU niega el cambio climático a pesar de que es la nación con mayor acumulación de GEI en la atmósfera desde el siglo XVIII. A tal falla hay que agregar los deplorables mandatos contra intereses vitales a la independencia y soberanía nacional. Su negociación fue un acopio de capitulaciones. Los gobiernos no consultaron a todas las partes. En el cuarto de al lado del peñanietismo sólo empresarios. Nada de sindicatos, gobiernos locales, campesinos, agricultores o miembros de la sociedad civil.
A esas ausencias se agrega una amnesia histórica acompañada de notable desinterés por la territorialización en curso de la inversión extranjera directa, con leyes abundantes en favor de los grandes consorcios y en detrimento de la población más vulnerable. Peor aún, analistas críticos del TLCAN y el T-MEC simplemente no tomaron en cuenta acontecimientos históricos fundamentales que nos ayudan a darle su justo peso a la larga historia vinculada a grandes episodios de masacres y saqueo que conllevó la imperialización de las naciones indígenas de la América del Norte, o la sombra de guerras como la desatada por EU contra México o los contratos para disimular el expansionismo vía abundantes adquisiciones territoriales.
Desde esas compras o guerras irregulares tipo “guerra al narco”, se percibe la hermandad entre el Tratado de Guadalupe de 1848 con el TLCAN y años después con el T-MEC. En momentos en que el Congreso de EU discutía el TLCAN (noviembre de 1993) el vicepresidente Al Gore en debate presidencial con Ross Perot desde la CNN reclamó a éste su oposición el tratado, comparando al Nafta (TLCAN), con la Compra de Luisiana (1803) y la de Alaska (1867) dejando claro el vínculo de esos instrumentos con el expansionismo territorial de EU.
En esta dimensión el T-MEC es peor, aunque ambos tratados están en línea de la Mexico Purchase. Así lo escribo porque en el T-MEC la Casa Blanca impuso tres regímenes distintos en materia de arbitraje inversor/Estado, tratándose de una bilateralidad entre tres, que acentúa las asimetrías frente a México y Canadá aunque entre EU y Canada desaparece el arbitraje de inversionista-Estado privilegiándose los tribunales nacionales o locales, o bien los instrumentos Estado a Estado. En contrate, advierte Manuel Pérez Rocha Loyo, entre EU y México persisten las disputas de inversores contra Estados en especial para contratos gubernamentales cubiertos relacionados con los amplios sectores de petróleo y gas, generación de energía, telecomunicaciones, transporte e infraestructura, los cuales siguen estando sujetos a todas las protecciones originales del capítulo 11 del TLCAN, es claro que, con la puntería del T-MEC puesta en todo rescate o revitalización de Pemex y la CFE.
Es bajo estas lesivas estipulaciones para el interés público nacional de México, nación que por décadas logró el autoabastecimiento en gasolinas y diésel, que se perpetró la destrucción sistemática de su petroquímica, que es necesario, ahora, revisar las la naturaleza, implicaciones y consecuencias de los mecanismos financieros de extracción de riqueza pública en favor de monopolios privados. Los instrumentos financieros en el marco del T-MEC profundizan la inequidad, inherente a la explotación capitalista y al despliegue de la desigualdad y la opacidad. Eso se realiza desde las Asociaciones Público-Privadas (APP) fomentadas por el FMI y el Banco Mundial (BM)-BID. Máxime que en el T-MEC se diluye, en favor de EU, la capacidad de sus vecinos de incidir en un encuadre macroeconómico y monetario propio.


martes, 25 de febrero de 2020


FEBRUARY 25, 2020
The events of the past week—beginning with the TV debates of the candidates on February 19 and culminating in the Nevada Democrat Party caucus in Nevada on February 22 this past Saturday—show a growing desperation in the ranks of the Democratic Party’s corporate-driven leadership as the Sanders campaign has assumed a clear lead in the race for the Democratic Party nomination.
Having ascended in the late 1980s to a controlling role of the party through the Democrat Leadership Conference (DLC) faction, the Democratic party’s leadership now sees itself at a critical juncture.  If it has not yet crossed the political ‘Rubicon’, it at least has arrived at its opposite shore and is preparing to do so.
The choice the leadership faces is whether to transform itself into a Trump-like party, openly run by oligarchs and billionaires; or to return to a pre-1990 Democrat party—before the DLC faction takeover—and allow Bernie Sanders to become its presidential candidate.
The party leadership’s current actions clearly show it now leans heavily toward the former. Its plan is to unite itself around Bloomberg, rather than return to former, more democratic roots with Sanders.
In the worst-case scenario, some of the wealthiest of the Democrat Party’s backers—like former Goldman Sachs CEO, Lloyd Blankfein ( a big financial backer of Hillary and Obama campaigns)—are even suggesting a third way.  They have begun to say privately, and even publicly, they would vote for Trump instead of Sanders in November.  They’ve done that before: When progressive grassroots forces coalesced around the party’s nominee, George McGovern, in 1972 and the leadership turned to support Richard Nixon.  And before that in 1956 to some extent, when Adlai Stevenson was the nominee.
In other words, there’s a long-standing history in the Democratic Party of the corporate wing sabotaging its candidate in a presidential election by supporting the Republican party’s candidate, either indirectly or directly.
Democrat Party As an Indicator of Political Crisis
Just as the traditional Republican party imploded in 2016 and thereafter became the Party of Trump—so too is a similar fundamental transformation now underway in the Democrat party.
It was a grassroots social movement that enabled the Republican party’s transformation. It’s no less a grassroots movement in the Democrat party today driving the transformation, the final outcome yet to be determined.  And in both cases, Democrat party leaders were (and are) unable to understand movement dynamics: in 2016 they couldn’t understand (or predict) why Trump won. And today, in 2020, they can’t understand how and why Sanders is gaining growing support within their party’s ranks.
Just take a look at the Democratic Party at present: Neither of the leading candidates to date is really ‘Democrats’: there’s Bernie Sanders, the independent running under the banner of the Democrat Party; and there’s Mike Bloomberg, a Republican billionaire running in the primaries after having ‘bought his way into’ the debates and primaries by contributing tens of millions of dollars to the Democrat National Committee (DNC).  The DNC was more than glad to change the rules to allow Bloomberg to jump into the middle of the pack in exchange for Bloomberg’s millions in last-minute party contributions
Like Joe Biden, the prior ‘chose one’ has faded, and continues to fade, the DNC-corporate moneybag wing of the party has clearly opted for Mike Bloomberg. And, at the same time, are intensifying their attacks on Sanders.
The Sanders vs. Bloomberg contest represents the fundamental contest in the primaries. The rest is an overlay. That primary two-candidate contest will become even clearer after Super Tuesday primaries are concluded in early March. And by the end of March, the lesser candidates will have been effectively cleared from the field.
What all this represents is a collapse of the traditional Democratic party center, in favor of the two ‘outliers’ (Sanders & Bloomberg).  The ‘outlier effect’ in turn reflects the fact that voters have little confidence in the leaderships’ various centrist choices to date—i.e. Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, etc. The voters have lost confidence in the leadership’s political proposals and programs—i.e. the policies that have been pushed and promoted by the corporate wing for the past three decades since the late 1980s, when the corporate wing rallied around the faction called the Democratic Leadership Caucus (DLC) and took over the party and its policies.
Those policies pushed free trade treaties, allowed Reagan-George W. Bush multi-trillion-dollar corporate-investor tax cuts to continue, bailed out bankers but not Main St. after 2009, refused to restore Union rights in organizing and bargaining, offered token minimalist market solutions to the healthcare crisis, allowed the government to rip off students by imposing interest rates on student loans even higher than private lenders, allowed pensions and retirement security to collapse, provided a tepid response to police brutality, failed to stop widespread Republican gerrymandering and voter suppression at the states level that’s given Trump and the radical right a near ‘lock-hold’ on the so-called red states in national elections. That’s just a shortlist.
Voters sense that these neoliberal policies of the mainstream Democrat party leaders have not, and cannot, reverse or resolve the growing economic—and now political—crises now deepening within the core of America.
The ‘Get Sanders’ Party Leadership Response
As the party leaders’ former favorite, Joe Biden, fades at the polls and in the primaries, party campaign operatives—both former and current—are now being unleashed by party leaders to go after Sanders with gusto.
Meanwhile, across the country, more local party officials (mayors, party brokers, state legislators, governors, i.e. those folks comprising the majority of the so-called Special Delegates to the Democrat Party Convention) is busy increasingly endorsing publicly Bloomberg.
The ‘Get Sanders’ crowd includes some of the big names of the corporate wing of the party:
There’s Obama, who is already allowing his image and statements to be used by Bloomberg in his political ads (now totaling more than $450 million as of mid-February 2020). Expect Obama to come out more directly against Sanders soon, likely right after Super Tuesday or even before. There’s the Clintonites, from Hillary to hack hatched man, James Carville, former key campaign advisor to Bill, whose anti-Sanders slander is also rising.  (Watch Bill stumble along in Hillary’s wake as well, once Obama comes out publicly directly opposing Sanders in the next few weeks).
Then there’s the analog to Fox News on the Trump-Republican right—the TV news channel MSNBC (sometimes called MSDNC)—that has been escalating its anti-Sanders commentary. Its star talk show host, Chris Mathews, recently declared Sanders’ win in the Nevada Caucus is similar to the Nazi conquest of France in 1940.  The Mathews remark has released a flood of criticism from not only the Sanders organization but the middle ranks of the party and independents as well, who points out that Sanders’ family members were actually murdered in the Nazi holocaust.
On the print news side, not to be forgotten, is the New York Times’ editorial page that is filled almost daily now with anti-Sanders’ screeds by writers Douthout, Leonhardt, Krugman and others.
Mathews, Hillary, Carville, the NY Times’ mouthpieces, and a growing crescendo of other Sanders slanderers together represent the forward scouting parties being sent undercover across the ‘political Rubicon’ early, in order to lay the land mines designed to implode rational public opinion and discussion of Sanders’ programs and proposals. They’re there, behind the lines, to prepare the main assault by the Democratic Party moneybags and leaders, as they deliberate when and where to best cross the river in force.
A new anti-Sanders theme launched this past week was the statement by the US intelligence bureaucracy that the Russian's new prime target is to support Sanders. Russian interference in the 2020 elections thus will focus on Sanders. Somehow, the media spin goes, that’s supposed to help Trump get elected.  The argument being that Sanders will be the easiest candidate for Trump to defeat. But it’s an argument that fails to acknowledge that in various national polls, Sanders leads Trump by 49% to 45%, while all other Democrat candidates are either tied with Trump or losing to Trump!
Most important here, the ‘Russia favors Sanders’ slander is backed by no evidence whatsoever from US intelligence sources.  It’s just a leaked opinion by some bureaucrat, picked up by the party’s big media friends and thrown out there for the electorate to chew on.  When asked what’s the proof, the advocates simply hide behind the cover of ‘can’t tell you, it’s classified information’.
In the week(s) ahead, a flood of further fear-mongering ‘Sanders slanders’ are certainly to appear from the party’s Clinton-Obama hacks and their ‘in-house’ media sources like MSNBC. We’ll hear ad nauseam themes like “Sanders can’t defeat Trump”. “Sanders will result in losses ‘down ballot’” (i.e. Congress Reps & Senators). “Sanders has always been a friend of Russia and Putin”.  “Sanders is not really a Democrat”. “Sanders can’t attract the needed moderate Republicans and Independents in swing states”. And let’s not forget the even more direct charge, voiced by Bloomberg in the last debate, that “He’s a Commie”.  Fox News will no doubt stretch that one to the limit and beyond.
The Pre-Nevada TV Debate
Last week’s TV debates showed clearly the limits of Bloomberg as a candidate. Warren and Biden know well that Bloomberg is there to steal their support. Warren’s scathing critique of Bloomberg in the pre-Nevada caucus TV debate exposed him as a Trump retread. Like Trump, Bloomberg carries similar baggage of non-disclosure agreements involving abused women, refusal to release his tax returns, his stop & frisk unconstitutional policing in New York while mayor and Bloomberg’s public statement and belief that the end of ‘red-lining’ in housing was the cause of the 2008-09 housing crash (yes, he said that!).
Bloomberg’s only message in the debate was only he could defeat Trump. Really? Polls show he performs worst against Trump than almost all the other candidates.  Meanwhile, as Warren went after Bloomberg in the debate, Buttigieg and Klobuchar engaged in an on-stage ‘food fight’ over who failed more to deliver results for their constituents. Not to be outdone, Biden on occasion awoke briefly from his deep political sleep, only to fall into a political coma onstage again.
The Meaning of the Nevada Caucus Results 
According to the latest count, Sanders won 47% or more of the popular vote. Biden only 21%. Thus sleepy Joe’s much-heralded ‘wall’ of union and Latino support in Nevada was breached and shattered by Sanders.  Despite Sanders’ overwhelming win, however, it is reported that he will receive only 9 of the potential 36 Nevada caucus delegates—i.e. another indicator of how the caucus and primary rules have been rigged against him. While winning the popular vote in all three of the contests thus far in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada—a feat never before accomplished by any candidate in a Democratic Party primary season—Sanders still has accumulated only 30 votes (+ the 9?), while Buttigieg reportedly has been awarded 27.
The Nevada caucus shows the under 35 youth vote—both union and minority—are moving to Sanders.   Biden’s campaign is now on life support. If he doesn’t win big by a wide margin in the next primary in South Carolina next weekend, he is campaign toast.  If the same dynamic occurs as did in Nevada, with the youth minority vote going to Sanders, then Biden’s ‘wall of black support’ will crash just as his union-Latino wall did in Nevada.
The South Carolina Primary
The Democrat voter base is 60% black in South Carolina.  Polls show Biden with only 27% black support to Sanders’ 23%. Biden can’t afford to win that narrowly. If he does, his money support—already dwindling—will collapse just as the Super Tuesday primaries begin. He must win big over Sanders in South Carolina or else his days in the primaries are numbered. But if Bernie has 23% support now and momentum, it’s clear he’s going to peel off much of the under-35 black vote in the South Carolina primary next weekend.
A second place by Sanders in North Carolina will be viewed as another big victory for him; a weak first place by Biden will be viewed as the last nail in his primary campaign coffin.
What the Democrat party leadership and their candidates don’t understand is the dynamics of movement politics.  Sanders has a movement behind him, focused around the youth, and increasingly minority, voter surge toward Sanders. Sanders’ support remains solid in the 35% or more range, steadily growing.  Bloomberg is siphoning off the support of the other candidates, not Sanders’. Warren and others know this. Thus her, and their, targeting Bloomberg in the last debate. What irks Elizabeth and the other candidates most, however, is that Bloomberg is buying his way into their base.
In some ways, the Sanders movement is beginning to show signs, not unlike the Obama surge in 2008. There are also elements of similarity to Trump’s 2016 movement and campaign. But  Democrat Party leaders don’t understand the movement dynamic going on today in their own party—any more than they understood the movement dynamic that brought Trump to the top of the Republican ticket in 2016. They failed to predict Trump’s win; they’re failing to predict Sanders’.
The Super Tuesday (March 3) Primaries
The 15 state primaries to be held next week will reveal the fundamental contest behind the cacophony of the multiple candidates’ campaigns. That contest is between the money interests and leadership of the Democrat Party vs. the bottom-up surge demanding change and the re-direction of the party away from the neoliberal policies and those money interests dominating the party that has been the case at least since the early 1990s.
No less than 37% of all the party’s Milwaukee convention’s 1,991 delegates will be determined by Super Tuesday, a week from now. By the end of March, it will be 60%. That’s not counting, of course, the more than 500 Special Delegates the party leadership is holding in its back pocket. They will be released on the second ballot at the convention by the party leadership, in order to ensure their choice nominee gets the party’s presidential nod at the convention. And their choice is Bloomberg, not Sanders.
The party leadership’s prime strategic goal now is to stop Sanders. Their boy Biden can’t do it. So they’ve brought Bloomberg in from the wings (after reportedly taking a $50 million contribution from him to their general campaign fund). The other candidates are being kept in the race in order to split the votes in the primaries, to prevent Sanders from getting a clear majority on the first ballot at the convention. After that, the leadership will release the ‘Kraken’ of the 500 Special Delegates to vote for their own billionaire in the presidential race, Bloomberg.
The Consequences of the Democrat Leadership’s Current Strategy
The leadership-corporate wing clearly believes they can win the November election even if they scuttle Sanders once again and prevent him from getting the nomination. One can almost hear them talking in the backrooms and cloakrooms at the primary city hotels: “We only lost in 2016 by 70 electoral votes in 3 swing states. We can take those states (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin) in 2020 even without Bernie. The minorities have nowhere else to go. The Union top leaders are with us. Middle-class white women hate Trump, especially in the swing state suburbs and exurbs. We’ll put a woman or a minority on the ticket as VP. That’ll keep the youth and progressives in tow. We’ll adopt Sanders’ programs in our campaign speeches, then drop them after the election. We can win without Sanders on the ticket!”.
But they are wrong. Sanders’ voters will largely abstain. Being prevented from the nomination twice, in 2016 and now 2020, they will mostly not vote. Trump will eat Bloomberg alive in the presidential debates. And the Democrats will lose in November with Bloomberg…once again. They will prove they are strategically inept and tactically incapable once again.
What the party’s leadership will accomplish should they scuttle Sanders in 2020, however, is to set in motion a process leading to the creation of a bonafide third party. This time rising from a real grassroots movement base, not via some top-down declaration by left intellectuals or some ambitious politician. This time the real thing.
Should it lose in November, the Democrat Party leadership will be painted as having re-elected Trump by having maneuvered in Bloomberg and pushed out Sanders. Even if they win with Bloomberg in November, given the deep economic crisis that will erupt immediately after the election (if not sooner), they will once again propose Obama-like neoliberal policies that won’t resolve that crisis any better for Main St. in 2021 than had Obama in 2009. And unlike Obama in 2012, they won’t be given a second chance.
Should that joint political-economic crisis scenario emerge post-November 2020, what remains of the Democrat party will implode.  US politics in 2024 will thereafter be on a totally new plane.
Jack Rasmus is author of the recently published book, ‘Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes: Monetary Policy and the Coming Depression’, Clarity Press, August 2017. He blogs at jackrasmus.com and his twitter handle is @drjackrasmus. His website is http://kyklosproductions.com.



Trump’s Betrayal of Julian Assange
by Ron Paul Posted on February 25, 2020
One thing we’ve learned from the Trump, Presidency is that the “deep state” is not just some crazy conspiracy theory. For the past three years, we’ve seen that deep state launch plot after plot to overturn the election.
It all started with former CIA director John Brennan’s phony “Intelligence Assessment” of Russian involvement in the 2016 election. It was claimed that all 17 US intelligence agencies agreed that Putin put Trump in office, but we found out later that the report was cooked up by a handful of Brennan’s hand-picked agents.
Donald Trump upset the Washington apple cart as a presidential candidate and in so doing he set elements of the deep state in motion against him.
One of the things candidate Donald Trump did to paint a deep state target on his back was his repeated praise of WikiLeaks, the pro-transparency media organization headed up by Australian journalist Julian Assange. More than 100 times candidate Trump said “I love WikiLeaks” on the campaign trail.
Trump loved it when WikiLeaks exposed the criminality of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party, as it cheated to deprive Bernie Sanders of the Democratic Party nomination. WikiLeaks’ release of the DNC emails exposed the deep corruption at the heart of US politics, and as a candidate Trump loved the transparency.
Then Trump got elected.
The real tragedy of the Trump's presidency is nowhere better demonstrated than in Trump’s 180 degrees turn away from WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange. “I know nothing about WikiLeaks,” he said as president. “It’s really not my thing.”
US pressure and bribes to the Ecuadorian government ended Assange’s asylum and his seven years in a room at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. After his dramatic arrest by London’s Metropolitan Police last April, he has been effectively tortured in British jails at the behest of the US deep state.
Today, Monday the 24th of February, Assange faces an extradition hearing in a UK courthouse. The Trump Administration – led by a man who praised Assange’s work – seeks a show trial of Assange worthy of the worst of the Soviet era. The US is seeking a 175-year prison sentence.
The Trump Administration argues that the Australian Assange should be tried and convicted of espionage against a country of which he is not a citizen. At the same time the Trump Administration argues that the First Amendment does not apply to Assange because he is not an American citizen! So Assange is subject to US law when it comes to publishing information embarrassing to the US deep state but he is not subject to the law of the land – the US Constitution – which protects all journalists and is the backbone of our system of government.
It is ironic that a President Trump who has been a victim of so much deep state meddling has done the deep state’s bidding when it comes to Assange and WikiLeaks. President Trump should preempt the inevitable US show trial of Assange by granting the journalist blanket pardon under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
The deep state Trump is serving by persecuting Assange is the same deep state that continues to plot Trump’s own ouster. Free Assange!

lunes, 24 de febrero de 2020


DEA agent accused of conspiring with cartel
JOSHUA GOODMAN and JIM MUSTIAN
,
Associated PressFebruary 21, 2020

MIAMI (AP) — A once-standout U.S. federal narcotics agent known for spending lavishly on luxury cars and Tiffany jewelry has been arrested on charges of conspiring to launder money with the same Colombian drug cartel he was supposed to be fighting.
Jose Irizarry and his wife were arrested Friday at their home near San Juan, Puerto Rico, as part of a 19-count federal indictment that accused the 46-year-old Irizarry of “secretly using his position and his special access to information” to divert millions in drug proceeds from the control of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
“It’s a black eye for the DEA to have one of its own engaged in such a high level of corruption," said Mike Vigil, the DEA's former Chief of International Operations. "He jeopardized investigations. He jeopardized other agents and he jeopardized informants."
Federal prosecutors in Tampa, Florida, allege the conspiracy not only enriched Irizarry but benefited two unindicted co-conspirators, neither of whom is named in the indictment. One was employed as a Colombian public official while the other was described as the head of a drug trafficking and money laundering organization who became the godfather to the Irizarry couple's children in 2015, when the DEA agent was posted to the Colombian resort city of Cartagena at the time.
When The Associated Press revealed the scale of Irizarry’s alleged wrongdoing last year, it sent shockwaves through the DEA, where his ostentatious habits and tales of raucous yacht parties with bikini-clad prostitutes were legendary among agents
But prior to being exposed, Irizarry had been a model agent, winning awards and praise from his supervisors. After joining the DEA in Miami 2009, he was entrusted with an undercover money laundering operation using front companies, shell bank accounts, and couriers. Irizarry resigned in January 2018 after being reassigned to Washington when his boss in Colombia became suspicious.
The case has raised concerns within the DEA that the conspiracy may have compromised undercover operations and upend criminal cases.
“His fingerprints are all over dozens of arrests and indictments,” said David S. Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor in Miami. “It could have a ripple effect and cause courts to re-examine any case he was involved in.”
Irizarry and his wife posted $10,000 bond each and was released later Friday. Nathalia Gómez-Irizarry declined to comment to AP and closed the door at the house she shares with her husband, saying he wasn’t home. Messages to Irizarry’s attorney were not immediately returned. The DEA referred comment to the Justice Department.
A lawyer for the star witness in the case, a former DEA informant who was handled by Irizarry, celebrated the charges. Gustavo Yabrudi was given a 46-month sentence last year for his role in a multimillion-dollar money-laundering conspiracy.
“Mr. Yabrudi has been waiting for almost two years for this day,” said Leonardo Concepcion. “It's time that the puppet masters who pulled his strings and abused their authority over him are made to answer for their actions.”
Starting around 2011, Irizarry allegedly used the cover of his badge to file false reports and mislead his superiors, all while directing DEA personnel to wire funds reserved for undercover stings to accounts in Spain, the Netherlands and elsewhere that he controlled or were tied to his wife and his co-conspirators.
He’s also accused of sharing sensitive law enforcement information with his co-conspirators.
The DEA has declined to comment on its employment of Irizarry and potential red flags that came up during his screening process. Irizarry was hired by the DEA despite indications he showed signs of deception in a polygraph exam and had declared bankruptcy with debts of almost $500,000. Still, he was permitted to handle financial transactions after being hired by the DEA.
In total, Irizarry, and informants under his direction handled at least $3.8 million that should've been carefully tracked by the DEA as part of undercover money laundering investigations.
Not all of that amount was pocketed by the co-conspirators, but the indictment details at least $900,000 that was paid out from a single criminal account opened by Irizarry and an informant using the name, passport and social security number of a third person who was unaware their identity was being stolen.
Proceeds from the alleged scheme funded a veritable spending spree. It included the purchase of a $30,000 Tiffany diamond ring, a BMW, three Land Rovers and a $767,000 home in Cartagena as well as homes in south Florida and Puerto Rico, where the couple has been living. To hide his tracks, Irizarry allegedly opened a bank account in someone else's name and used the victim's forged signature and Social Security number.
It also funded the purchase in Miami of a 2017 Lamborghini Huracan Spyder on behalf of a family member of co-conspirator 2.
A red Lamborghini with the same vehicle ID named in the indictment belongs to Jenny Ambuila, who was arrested last year in Colombia along with her father, Omar Ambuila, a customs agent in the port of Buenaventura, a major transit point for cocaine and contraband goods used to conceal the proceeds of narcotics sales. Before her arrest, Ambuila shared photos and videos of herself on Facebook posing next to the red sports car, which is valued at more than $300,000.
The indictment was handed up a week after another former DEA agent was sentenced to four years in federal prison for his role in a decade long drug conspiracy that involved the smuggling of thousands of kilograms of cocaine from Puerto Rico to New York.