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Eric Zuesse
America is becoming exceptionally exceptional. In some votes at the U.N. General Assembly — the Assembly of nations — only Israel, or one or two other U.S. allies, vote along with it, and all others either vote against it, or else abstain in order to prevent U.S. retaliation against their own nation. No other nation is anything like that. In fact, on many occasions, the U.S. arm-twists other delegations in order to get them to abstain from voting so as to make less stark, and less embarrassing, America’s international isolation. But America is also extraordinarily exceptional in other ways, which have nothing to do with the U.N.
America is thus truly an exceptional nation. As the Republican Party magazine National Reviewcommented, on September 15th, “Last week, the United States and Israel were the only countries to vote against a General Assembly resolution on the global coronavirus response. Some have seized upon that vote to paint the United States as a bad faith actor that stands alone in the world.” However, this vote wasn’t about only “the global coronavirus response.” It was — perhaps even more importantly — about U.S. sanctions against Iran, Venezuela, Syria, Russia, China, and other countries that the U.S. regime considers to be its enemies. (None of these countries ever invaded or even threatened to invade America; all of those sanctions are 100% U.S. aggression. These are target-countries that America’s aristocracy wants to take over. The world’s U.S.-sanctioned countries are marked in red on this map of the world.) Israel strongly supports sanctions against both Syria and Venezuela, and it routinely invades and bombs Syria, just for good measure. So, it joined America’s position on that U.N. vote — not because of the coronavirus provisions of the Resolution.
That U.N. General Assembly vote was held on September 11th. America’s Associated Press bannered the following day, "UN assembly approves pandemic resolution; US, Israel object”, and reported that, “The 193-member world body adopted the resolution by a vote of 169-2, with Ukraine and Hungary abstaining. It was a strong show of unity by the U.N.’s most representative body, though many countries had hoped for adoption by consensus.” The AP further stated:
It calls on governments and international financial institutions “to provide more liquidity in the financial system, especially in all developing countries.” It supports recovery plans that “drive transformative change towards more inclusive and just societies including by empowering and engaging all women and girls.”
And it urges U.N. member nations “to adopt a climate- and environment-responsive approach to COVID-19 recovery efforts” including by aligning investments and domestic policies with the U.N. goals and the 2015 Paris agreement to combat climate change. ...
By a vote of 132-3, the assembly amended the resolution to urge all countries “to refrain from promulgating and applying any unilateral economic, financial or trade measures not in accordance with international law and the Charter of the United Nations that impedes the full achievement of economic and social development, particularly in developing countries.”
The United States was then overwhelmingly defeated in attempts to remove two paragraphs from the resolution, one referring to women’s rights to “sexual and reproductive health” and the other to “promoting global sustainable transport.”
In addition to arguing against the language on sanctions, the United States opposed all references to the World Health Organization, which the Trump administration stopped funding, accusing the U.N. agency of failing to do enough to stop the virus from spreading when it first surfaced in China.
Nowhere in the AP’s article was any mention made that in the “vote of 169-2,” the two nations which had voted against the Resolution were the U.S. and Israel, but only that there had been “objections from the United States and Israel,” regarding attachment, to the Resolution, of the Amendment that added the anti-sanctions provision to it. This omission was not an error. It is a type of omission that is common in propaganda. America was more isolated than that ‘news’-report made clear, and the omission of the crucial fact that only America and Israel had voted against the Resolution on the pandemic wasn’t a mistake. In fact, the ‘news’-report said nothing about why either America or Israel had voted against it. To have said anything about why they voted aainst the Resolution on the pandemic would have required mentioning that they (and only they) had voted against the Resolution on the pandemic. A dictatorial regime doesn’t want its public to know such things. And America is a dictatorship. Censorship is essential to a dictatorship.
This vote was about only a “Resolution,” a statement of the various nations’ values, to work toward, not about any nation’s policy, but the U.S. and Israel don’t share those goals — not even rhetorically. This opposition to that Resolution’s goals was truly exceptional.
In particular, nothing is more abhorrent to the U.S. regime than to stop or impede its sanctions. These sanctions include, for example, punishments against any company or government that will, in any way, assist in Russia’s 96% completed NordStream 2 natural gas pipeline to Germany, for the EU to buy Russia’s pipelined natural gas instead of America’s fracked canned shipped natural gas. The U.S. regime insists that EU nations buy the far costlier trans-Atlantic-shipped fracked U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG). That insistence upon the EU’s wasting money, in order to prop-up America’s fracking industry, is, indeed, exceptional, because European nations haven’t customarily been treated as being mere colonies of other powers. America is treating purchasers from, or cooperators with, that competitor (Russia), as being its enemies. The way the U.S. Representative stated this (after a lengthy diatribe which blamed China for Covid-19 and said that the U.S. had quit the World Health Organization because WHO lacked “independence from the Chinese Communist Party”) was: “Economic sanctions are a legitimate means to achieve foreign policy, security, and other national and international objectives, and the United States is not alone in that view or in that practice.” (That exact same sentence had earlier been stated by the U.S. regarding a different matter, on 18 November 2019.) Actually, the U.S. regime is very “alone” on it. Furthermore, the other part was also a lie: the U.S. regime asserts that coercing corporations and countries to not buy from the lowest-cost supplier is within its sovereign right to do. However, as Professor Alfred de Zayas, who until recently was the U.N.’s top expert on this topic, explained in depth on 27 June 2019, that assertion is blatantly false, on many clear grounds concerning international law. It is a blatant lie, no matter how many times the U.S. regime asserts it (and asserts that the U.S. regime isn’t “alone” in asserting it).
Even back when Barack Obama (the man who repeatedly claimed that “The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation”) was America’s President, the U.S. was exceptional at the United Nations. For example, on 24 November 2014, I headlined “U.S. Among Only 3 Countries Officially Backing Nazism & Holocaust-Denial”, and reported that, “In a U.N. vote, on November 21st, only three countries — the United States, Ukraine, and Canada — voted against a resolution to condemn racist fascism, or nazism, and to condemn denial of Germany’s World War II Holocaust against primarily Jews. This measure passed the General Assembly, on a vote of 115 in favor, 3 against, and 55 abstentions (the abstentions were in order not to offend U.S. President Obama, who was opposed to the resolution).” Then, on 21 June 2015, I headlined “America’s U.N. Ambassador Continues Standing Up for Nazis” and noted that, again, Obama’s U.N. Ambassador, Samantha Power, had stood up for nazism; she had just delivered an address in Ukraine rallying that country’s supporters of nazism to war against Russia. Then, on 21 November 2017, I headlined “Trump Continues Obama’s Support of Nazism”, and reported that:
On November 16th, U.S. President Donald Trump, acting through an agent of his agent U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, voted at the U.N. against a resolution that condemns bigotry, and especially condemns nazism and all forms of racism. He thus, yet again, continues in the tradition from his predecessors, Presidents Obama and Bush, each year placing this nation in the company of only one or two U.S. allies throughout the world who join with the U.S. in refusing to commit to opposing and doing everything to reduce not just political Nazism (which, of course, is past), but ideological nazism, racist fascism — institutionalized bigotry (which, sadly, is not past).
There are two main reasons why the U.S. regime is able to coerce other nations to not violate its will. One is that though publicly available reports allege that it spends approximately 37% of the entire world’s military expenditures, the U.S. regime actually spends around 50% of the entire world’s military costs, and therefore it possesses extraordinary physical capacity to impose its will, if and when merely economically blockading an ‘enemy’ country (via sanctions) fails to do the job of getting it to comply. And the other main reason is that, since the U.S. government is at least as corrupt as the average “third-world” country is, but is instead one of the world’s richest countries, arranging pay-offs to other world leaders, in order to obtain their cooperation, is easily affordable. (These payoffs are being paid by all U.S. taxpayers, not by only America’s billionaires, who reap all of the profits from the empire that is imposed.)
American exceptionalism is real. It’s not the type of exceptionalism that the regime’s propaganda claims to be the case, but nonetheless it is real.
VOICES OF THE TRUE LEFT Dispatch dateline 8 Oct 2020
Navalny resisting arrest in 2017. Many such acts are essentially photo-ops for the benefit of Western propaganda. NED graduates and color revolt assets quickly learn how to work the media.
Alexey Navalny is now grand-standing against the Russian government, as he often does, announcing he plans to sue Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin Spokesman for suggesting he worked with US intelligence. Navalny proclaimed: “You know, I very rarely take propagandists to court, even though they lie about me all day long. I simply don’t want to waste time. However, this is a direct statement from a government official. Therefore, firstly, I’m filing a lawsuit against Peskov… I demand the publication of evidence and facts that point to ‘work with CIA specialists.’ Show it on television directly, during prime time. I’m giving you permission.”
There’s a reason Navalny has decided to theatrically throw up his arms. To those who are unfamiliar with the late cold war, and how geopolitical games are played by superpowers, Navalny seems correct. He clearly is not James Bond 007. He’s not wearing fake mustaches, engaging in assassinations and saving beautiful blonde supermodels.
However, outside of Hollywood, the kind or work that Navalny has engaged in as western capitalism’s favorite Russian dissident, is vitally important to intelligence agencies. Navalny has stated that he has no real intention of working within Russia’s established legal and constitutional mechanisms to bring about reform. Instead he is engaging in what he calls “street and network activism” and “direct action.” He’s also received quite a hefty sum of anonymous and crypto-currency contributions in order to do it.
His behavior comes straight out of the Zbiegnew Brzezinski, George Soros “late cold war” playbook. If one is curious as to why the CIA might be backing Navalny’s disruptions of Russian society, they should read Frank Kitson’s classic book “Gangs and Counter-Gangs” about how the British operated in Kenya, or perhaps the more recent writings of William S. Lind on the concept of “Fourth Generation Warfare” published by the US Marine Corps.
S I D E B A R By the Editors
NAVALNY'S TIES TO THE CIA THROUGH ITS FRONT THE NED ARE WELL KNOWN AND DOCUMENTED
Navalny's connection with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), run by free market zealot Carl Gersham since 1984, a regime change tool created by the CIA to conduct deep infiltration and destabilisation work practically in the open as a harmless NGO, was even mentioned in Navalny's Wikipedia page until recently, but now it is curiously missing. In the Orwellian world of US intelligence and media, the fact the NED is constantly at work to promote savage capitalism and not political freedom or true democracy, and that it officially regards the establishment of neonazi regimes such as the one currently disgracing Ukraine or Bolivia as "accomplishments" says volumes about its real nature. Below a couple of quotes illuminating Navalny's political complexion. Few PC western liberals would approve of Navalny if they only knew the man is an unrepentant racist and proud reactionary. Such details are of course routinely expunged from the Western media accolades.
Navalny and Neoliberalism:
Navalny is a right-wing populist. No doubt. But I would submit he’s more of an American variety than a European facsimile. His xenophobia comes with an anti-elitist élan tinged with a libertarian distrust of big government. If Navalny ran in a US election, he’d find common cause with the Tea Party. He’d make an excellent Fox News pundit if he added flamboyancy to his abrasiveness.
The political front that will take to Russia’s streets has already long been identified. It includes the same brand of extreme “nationalists” and ultra-right groups seen overrunning Ukraine’s political order. This includes literal Neo-Nazis. One of the prevailing figures among Russia’s ultra-right is US-backed Alexey Navalny – billed by the West as an “anti-corruption activist,” who is in all reality a neo-fascist operating openly in the service of Wall Street.
Alexey Navalny was a Yale World Fellow, and in his profile it states: Navalny spearheads legal challenges on behalf of minority shareholders in large Russian companies, including Gazprom, Bank VTB, Sberbank, Rosneft, Transneft, and Surgutneftegaz, through the Union of Minority Shareholders… Navalny is also co-founder of the Democratic Alternativemovement…
The Democratic Alternative, also written DA!, is a US State Department National Endowment for Democracy (NED) fund recipient, implicating Alexey Navalny as an agent of US-funded sedition. The US State Department itself reveals this as they list DA! among many of the “youth movements” they support operating in Russia…
That this funding is nowhere on NED’s official website indicates that full disclosures are not being made and that NED is engaged in clandestine funding.
The use of “non-state actors,” i.e. “activists,” fanatics, religious cults, and political cadre organizations has been key in destabilizing countries and securing Washington’s economic and political domination of the planet. George Soros funneled money to all sorts of dissidents across the Eastern Bloc. Often these confused dissidents, with funding and publicity from western media mysteriously enabling their efforts, called themselves “democratic socialists” or advocates of “socialism with a human face.” However, in reality, they functioned as “useful idiots” for western capitalism, marching for “human rights” in order to pave the way for the economic wrecking ball of the IMF and World Bank to destroy the lives of their countryfolk.
Russia has many dissidents, of both leftist and right-wing persuasions. The Communist Party holds seats in the Duma and has long criticized Putin’s leadership. The Liberal Democratic Party is equally critical, and also holds elected office.
However, Navalny’s slick “dissent” seems to follow an odd pattern of serving Wall Street’s short-term needs. For example, the latest unproven but widespread claim that Navalny has been intentionally poisoned by the Russian government, comes just on the brink of the final stages of the Nordstream 2 pipeline project. Just as Germany is on the brink of buying loads of natural gas from Russia, and more closely solidifying its economic relationship with Russia, Navalny is in the headlines again.
The White House is very open about its drive for “energy dominance.” Washington wants Germans to import their natural gas from US fracking and energy corporations, not from their Russian neighbors.
The fact that Navalny’s “activism” so clearly follows the twists and turns of US foreign policy talking points, has caused the Ministry of Justice to declare Navalny’s “Fight Against Corruption” non-profit to be “acting as a foreign agent.” Of course, Navalny is crying foul. Declaring himself the “victim” of a “dictatorship” is a big part of the propaganda surrounding his image.
However, simply looking at the facts seems to indicate that saying the CIA and other western intelligence agencies are utilizing his efforts is not a stretch of the imagination by any means.
Caleb Maupin is a journalist and political analyst who resides in New York City. Originally from Ohio, he studied political science at Baldwin-Wallace College. In addition to his journalism, analysis, and commentary, he has engaged in political activism. He was a youth organizer for the International Action Center and was involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement from its planning stages in August of 2011. He has worked against police brutality, mass incarceration, and imperialist war. He works to promote revolutionary ideology, and to support all who fight against the global system of monopoly capitalist imperialism.
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Freedom of the press on trial: Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton speak about the dystopian show trial going on against political prisoner Julian Assange with journalist Kevin Gosztola
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Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.
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Editor's Note: We particularly favor the work of The Grayzone and their associates because not only are they one of the most important groups of young, independent, anti-imperialist journalists working in the anglophone sphere, unerringly going after topics of maximum urgency, but also because their underlying analysis of the current situation is spot on and systemically profound. Max Blumenthal, Ben Norton, Anya Parampil deserve our deepest gratitude for their exemplary work. They illustrate, despite their puny resources when compared to the mainstream press, how genuine journalism is done. They remain vital to freedom, such as it is in this decomposing empire.—PG
Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton speak about the dystopian show trial going on against political prisoner Julian Assange with journalist Kevin Gosztola
Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton speak about the dystopian show trial going on against political prisoner Julian Assange with journalist Kevin Gosztola, who is covering the UK court hearings to potentially extradite the WikiLeaks publisher to the US. We discuss the major threat this case poses to the freedom of the press -- yet how it is being criminally under-reported and whitewashed in the corporate media. Read Kevin's reporting at https://shadowproof.com Follow Kevin on Twitter at https://twitter.com/kgosztola Max's report "'The American friends': New court files expose Sheldon Adelson’s security team in US spy operation against Julian Assange": https://thegrayzone.com/2020/05/14/am... Max's report "Exclusive images from inside British court expose Assange’s un-democratic treatment, physical deterioration": https://thegrayzone.com/2020/05/29/br... (Episode recorded on September 11, 2020)
The American friends’: New court files expose Sheldon Adelson’s security team in US spy operation against Julian Assange
An exclusive investigation by The Grayzone reveals new details on the critical role Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands played in an apparent CIA spying operation targeting Julian Assange, and exposes the Sands security staff who helped coordinate the malicious campaign.
“I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole.”
–Mike Pompeo, College Station, Texas, April 15, 2019
[dropcap]A[/dropcap]s the co-founder of a small security consulting firm called UC Global, David Morales spent years slogging through the minor leagues of the private mercenary world. A former Spanish special forces officer, Morales yearned to be the next Erik Prince, the Blackwater founder who leveraged his army-for-hire into high-level political connections across the globe. But by 2016, he had secured just one significant contract, to guard the children of Ecuador’s then-President Rafael Correa and his country’s embassy in the UK.
The London embassy contract proved especially valuable to Morales, however. Inside the diplomatic compound, his men guarded Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, a top target of the US government who had been living in the building since Correa granted him asylum in 2012. It was not long before Morales realized he had a big league opportunity on his hands.
In 2016, Morales rushed off alone to a security fair in Las Vegas, hoping to rustle up lucrative new gigs by touting his role as the guardian of Assange. Days later, he returned to his company’s headquarters in Jerez de Frontera, Spain with exciting news.
“From now on, we’re going to be playing in the first division,” Morales announced to his employees. When a co-owner of UC Global asked what Morales meant, he responded that he had turned to the “dark side” – an apparent reference to US intelligence services. “The Americans will find us contracts around the world,” Morales assured his business partner.
Morales had just signed on to guard Queen Miri, the $70 million yacht belonging to one of the most high profile casino tycoons in Vegas: ultra-Zionist billionaire and Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson. Given that Adelson already had a substantial security team assigned to guard him and his family at all times, the contract between UC Global and Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands was clearly the cover for a devious espionage campaign apparently overseen by the CIA.
Unfortunately for Morales, the Spanish security consultant charged with leading the spying operation, what happened in Vegas did not stay there.
Following Assange’s imprisonment, several disgruntled former employees eventually approached Assange’s legal team to inform them about the misconduct and arguably illegal activity they participated in at UC Global. One former business partner said they came forward after realizing that “David Morales decided to sell all the information to the enemy, the US.” A criminal complaint was submitted in a Spanish court and a secret operation that resulted in the arrest of Morales was set into motion by the judge.
Morales was charged by a Spanish High Court in October 2019 with violating the privacy of Assange and abusing the publisher’s attorney-client privileges, as well as money laundering and bribery. The documents revealed in court, which were primarily backups from company computers, exposed the disturbing reality of his activities on “the dark side.”
Obtained by media outlets including The Grayzone, the UC Global files detail an elaborate and apparently illegal US surveillance operation in which the security firm spied on Assange, his legal team, his American friends, US journalists, and an American member of Congress who had been allegedly dispatched to the Ecuadorian embassy by President Donald Trump. Even the Ecuadorian diplomats whom UC Global was hired to protect were targeted by the spy ring.
The ongoing investigation detailed black operations ranging from snooping on the Wikileaks founder’s private conversations to fishing a diaper from an embassy trash can in order to determine if the feces inside it belonged to his son.
According to witness statements obtained by The Grayzone, weeks after Morales proposed breaking into the office of Assange’s lead counsel, the office was burglarized. The witnesses also detailed a proposal to kidnap or poison Assange. A police raid at the home of Morales netted two handgunswith their serial numbers filed off, along with stacks of cash.
One source close to the investigation told The Grayzone that an Ecuadorian official was robbed at gunpoint while carrying private information pertaining to a plan to secure diplomatic immunity for Assange.
Throughout the black operations campaign, US intelligence appears to have worked through Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands, a company that had previously served as an alleged front for a CIA blackmail operation several years earlier. The operations formally began once Adelson’s hand-picked presidential candidate, Donald Trump, entered the White House in January 2017.
In its coverage of the alleged relationship between the CIA, UC Global, and Adelson’s Sands, the New York Times claimed it was “unclear whether it was the Americans who were behind bugging the embassy.” Though he outlined work for an “American client” in company emails, Morales insisted before a Spanish judge that the spying he conducted in the embassy was performed entirely on behalf of Ecuador’s SENAIN security services. He has even claimed to CNN Español that he was merely seeking to motivate his employees when he boasted about “playing in the first division” after returning from his fateful trip to Las Vegas.
This investigation will further establish the US government’s role in guiding UC Global’s espionage campaign, shedding new light on the apparent relationship between the CIA and Adelson’s Sands, and expose how UC Global deceived the Ecuadorian government on behalf of the client Morales referred to as the “American friends.”
Thanks to new court disclosures, The Grayzone is also able to reveal the identity of Sands security staff who presumably liaised between Morales, Adelson’s company, and US intelligence.
According to court documents and testimony by a former business associate and employees of Morales, it was Adelson’s top bodyguard, an Israeli-American named Zohar Lahav, who personally recruited Morales, then managed the relationship between the Spanish security contractor and Sands on a routine basis. After their first meeting in Vegas, the two security professionals became close friends, visiting each other overseas and speaking frequently.
During the spying operation, Lahav worked directly under Brian Nagel, the director of global security for Las Vegas Sands. A former associate director of the US Secret Service and cyber-security expert, Nagel was officially commended by the CIA following successful collaborations with federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies. At Sands, he seemed to be an ideal middleman between the company and the US national security state, as well as a potential guide for the complex surveillance tasks assigned to Morales.
When Adelson’s favored candidate, Donald Trump, moved into the Oval Office, the CIA came under the control of Mike Pompeo, another Adelson ally who seemed to relish the opportunity to carry out illegal acts, including spying on American citizens, in the name of national security.
Pompeo outlines the attack on Assange
Pompeo: Rarely has a blatant thug and self-confessed liar like this reached such heights of power—a mirror to the degeneracy of the American imperial system.
Pompeo’s first public speech as CIA Director, hosted at the Washington DC-based Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank on April 13, 2017, was one of the most paranoid and resentful addresses ever delivered by an agency chief.
The former Republican congressman from Kansas opened his speech with an extended tirade against the “Philip Agees in the world,” referring to the CIA whistleblower who handed over thousands of classified documents to leftist publishers that revealed shocking details of illegal US regime change and assassination plots around the world.
Alluding to Agee’s contemporary “soulmates,” Pompeo declared, “The one thing they don’t share with Agee is the need for a publisher. All they require now is a smart phone and internet access. In today’s digital environment, they can disseminate stolen US secrets instantly around the globe to terrorists, dictators, hackers, and anyone else seeking to do us harm.”
The CIA director made no secret about the identity of his target. “It is time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is – a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia,” he rumbled from the podium.
For the next several minutes, Pompeo ranted against Assange, branding him as a “narcissist,” “a fraud,” “a coward.” The right-wing Republican even quoted criticism of the Wikileaks publisher by The Intercept’s Sam Biddle.
Next, Pompeo pledged a “long term” campaign of counter-measures against Wikileaks. “We have to recognize that we can no longer allow Assange and his colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us. To give them the space to crush us with misappropriated secrets is a perversion of what our great Constitution stands for. It ends now,” he vowed.
Though Pompeo said he recognized that “the CIA is legally prohibited from spying on people through electronic surveillance in the United States,” he seemed to have already put into motion an aggressive program to spy not only Assange, but on his American friends, lawyers, and virtually everyone in his immediate vicinity. Carried out by UC Global, the campaign entailed recording private conversations of US targets, opening their phones, photographing their personal information, and even stealing their email passwords.
The CIA’s apparent attack on Assange had been activated weeks earlier, when Wikileaks announced the publication of the CIA’s Vault 7 files. It would not be long before Adelson’s security team began preparing space for Morales in Las Vegas.
Journey to “the dark side”
On February 26, 2017, Wikileaks announced the forthcoming release of a major tranche of CIA files revealing details of the agency’s hacking and electronic surveillance tools. One such spying application called “Marble” allowed agency spies to implant code that obfuscated their identity on computers they had hacked. Other files contained evidence of programs that allowed hackers to break into encrypted messaging applications like Signal and Telegram, and to turn Samsung smart TVs into listening devices.
Two days after Wikileaks’ initial announcement, on February 28, Morales was junketed from Spain to a hotel in Alexandria, Virginia – just a stone’s throw from CIA headquarters in Langley. Though UC Global had no publicly known contracts with any company in Virginia, court documents obtained by The Grayzone establish that Morales sent encrypted emails from an Alexandria IP address and paid bills from a local hotel for the next eight days.
From that point on, he traveled back and forth almost each month between Spain, the DC area, New York City, Chicago, or the Las Vegas base of Adelson’s operations.
When in DC, Morales sent emails from a static IP address at the Grand Hyatt Hotel just four blocks from the White House.
The Instagram posts of Morales’ wife and travel partner, Noelia Páez, highlighted the frequency of his trips:
Instagram posts by Morales’ wife, Noelia Páez, posted while in Las Vegas on January 20, 2017
Fellow UC Global executives began to grow suspicious of Morales and his secretive dealings in the US. According to their testimonies, he spoke constantly about his working relationship with the Americans. Yet UC Global had been contracted by Ecuador’s intelligence agency, SENAIN, to provide security to the country’s embassy in London – not to spy on its occupants. It was increasingly clear to them that Morales was deceiving one client in Quito to serve a more powerful force in Washington.
“I remember that David Morales asked a person from the company to prepare a safe phone, with safe applications, just like an encrypted computer to communicate with ‘the American friends,’ to take his relationship with the US out of the company’s range,” a former UC Global employee recalled.
A former business partner at UC Global stated in their testimony, “Sometimes, when I insistently asked him who his ‘American friends’ were, on some occasions David Morales answered that they were ‘the US intelligence.’ However, when I asked him for a particular person from intelligence he was meeting with to give them information, Mr. Morales cut the conversation and pointed out that the subject was exclusively managed by him aside from the company.”
The ex-partner suspected that Morales was receiving payments from US intelligence through a bank account managed by his wife, Páez. “On one occasion,” they testified, “I heard a conversation related to payments to that account from which Mr. Morales didn’t want to inform the rest of the company members about.”
Suspicion turned to rage when the former UC Global partner recognized the full extent of Morales’ subterfuge. “I started [lashing out] at him openly in violent discussions in which I reiterated to him that a company like ours is based on ‘creating trust’ and that he can’t ‘give out information to the opposing side,’” the ex-associate recalled. At the end of several such arguments, he said Morales tore open his shirt, puffed out his chest and exclaimed, “I am a wholehearted mercenary!”
One camera feed for Ecuador, another for “the American client”
Two former UC Global workers and the ex-business partner said Morales began implementing a sophisticated spying operation at the embassy in London in June 2017. His testimony was corroborated by emails Morales sent to employees who oversaw the surveillance.
Before that point, the cameras in and around Ecuador’s embassy in London were standard CCTV units. Their sole function was to detect intruders. Most importantly, they did not record sound.
To transform the cameras from security instruments into weapons of intrusion, Morales emailed a friend, “Carlos C.D. (spy),” who owned a surveillance equipment company called Espiamos, or, “We Spy.” He informed Carlos that “our client” demanded new cameras be placed in the embassy that were equipped with undetectable microphones.
On the 27th of the same month, Morales wrote to the same employee: “the client wants to have streaming control of the cameras, this control will have to be possessed from two different locations.” He requested a separate storage server that could be operated “from out of the enclosure where the recorder is located.”
By altering the cameras so they could be controlled from the outside, and outfitting them with hidden microphones, Morales put in place the mechanism to snoop on Assange’s intimate conversations with friends and lawyers. He also took steps to feed the footage to a separate, exterior storage server, thus keeping the operation hidden from Ecuador’s SENAIN. His marching orders came from an organization he described simply as “the American client.”
Every 15 days or so, Morales sent one of the workers to the embassy to collect DVR recordings of the surveillance footage and bring it to company headquarters in Jerez, Spain. Some important clips were uploaded to a server named “Operation Hotel,” which was later changed to a website-based system. In cases when the DVR size was too large to upload, Morales personally delivered it to his “client” in the US.
In December 2017, Morales was summoned to Las Vegas Sands for a special session with “the American friends.” On the 10th of that month, he sent a series of emails from a static IP address at Adelson’s Venetian Hotel to his spy team. The messages contained a new set of instructions.
“Nobody can know about my trips, mainly my trips to the USA,” Morales emailed his employees, “because SENAIN is onto us.”
To further limit the Ecuadorian government’s access to the surveillance system installed in the embassy, he instructed his workers, “We can’t give them access to some of the program’s services, so they don’t realize who has more log-ins or who is online inside the system… [but] everything must look like they have access to it.”
Morales sent his team a powerpoint presentation containing instructions for the new system. The aim of the instructions was to create two separate users: an administrator for the Ecuadorian client with no access to the log-in so they would not be able to notice the second user; and a separate security log-in for the Americans, who would be in full control of the system’s surveillance features.
Obtained by The Grayzone, the slides were composed in perfect English by a native speaker who was clearly not Morales.
From the powerpoint surveillance instructions provided to Morales by the “American client” while he stayed at Adelson’s Venetian hotel in December 2017. “David Morales obviously didn’t have the technical knowledge,” a former UC Global IT specialist who received the instructions, “so the document must have been sent by another person. Because it was in English, I suspect that it could’ve been [created by] US intelligence.”
Whoever authored the powerpoint instructions was clearly an expert in cyber-security with experience in electronic surveillance and hacking. That person demonstrated their tradecraft by erasing all of the document’s metadata except for the username, “PlayerOne.” The powerpoint was handed down in the apparent physical presence of Morales, who proceeded to tell his employees, “these people have given me the following instructions, drafted in English.”
Nagel
In Adelson’s orbit, there was at least one cyber-security expert with a long record of collaboration with US law enforcement and intelligence: senior vice president and global head of security at Las Vegas Sands, Brian Nagel.
From top US cyber-crime investigator to Adelson’s security chief
During his lengthy career in the US Secret Service, Nagel worked at the nexus of federal law enforcement and US intelligence. In the 1990s, Nagel not only served on the personal protection detail of Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton; he was assigned to “work with two foreign protective services after the assassination and attempted assassination of their respective heads of state,” he said in sworn testimony in a US District Court in 2011. Nagel also stated that he later protected the director and deputy director of a federal agency that he neglected to name.
During the same testimony, Nagel said he received the CIA’s Intelligence Community Seal Medallion, an award given to non-CIA personnel “who have made significant contributions to the Agency’s intelligence efforts.”
As the deputy director of the Secret Service, he appeared alongside then-US Attorney General John Ashcroft at a November 2003 press conference on combating cybercrime, and testified before the House Homeland Security Subcommittee in March 2007. Besides those two public events, Nagel has not appeared on camera.
One of just a few publicly available photos of Las Vegas Sands Director of Global Security Brian Nagel, from his congressional testimony in 2007
While the public tends to associate the US Secret Service with burly men in dark suits and aviator shades who whisper into their sleeves while shadowing presidents, the agency also functions as the country’s leading computer crime investigative body.
In November 2002, the LA Times reported on Nagel’s role in creating the Los Angeles Electronic Crimes Task Force, a massive federal operation that occupied an entire floor of a downtown LA skyscraper. Dedicated to fighting electronic crime and cyber terrorism, the task force included the FBI, local law enforcement, private security contractors, and the US Secret Service. The initiative, said Nagel, “was all about enhancing our current partnerships and building new ones.”
In October 2004, Nagel was credited with taking down a major international cybercrime outfit called shadowcrew.com (no relation to the Shadow Brokers hacker outfit that leaked NSA secrets). According to TechNewsWorld, under Nagel’s watch, “The Secret Service used wiretaps, an undercover informant and their own hackers to gain access to the private portions of the [shadowcrew] site.”
These tactics seemed remarkably similar to those deployed 13 years later to spy on Assange.
Before leaving public life in 2008, Nagel helped the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) create the National Computer Forensic Institute. Then-DHS Director Michael Chertoff vowed the institute would “turn the tables on criminal groups” by empowering law enforcement to use “the same technologies” hackers and cyber-criminals typically employed.
Two years later, when Wikileaks first appeared, the special federal cyber-security units Nagel helped create were likely on the frontlines of the US fight to combat Assange’s online information clearinghouse.
When Nagel joined Las Vegas Sands as its global security director, he was placed in charge of securing an international financial and political empire that spanned from the US to Israel to Macau in the People’s Republic of China. Sands chairman Sheldon Adelson possessed a fortune valued at around $30 billion that placed him consistently in the top 10 of Forbes’ list of the wealthiest Americans.
Adelson’s political activities were guided by two factors: his desire to expand his gambling operations around the globe, and his fanatical Zionism. He is so committed to the self-proclaimed Jewish state, he once lamented having served in the US Army as a young man rather than in Israel’s military.
As a personal friend and financial benefactor of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Adelson plowed his money into a failed attempt to prevent President Barack Obama’s re-election and halt the signing of the Iran nuclear deal. In 2016, he became a top donor to Trump’s presidential campaign, helping to cultivate the most pro-Likud administration in US history.
To ensure his personal protection, Adelson assembled a collection of former Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers as bodyguards. At the head of his security detail was Zohar Lahav, an Israeli citizen who served as the vice president for executive protection at Las Vegas Sands.
Adelson with a top bodyguard
Naturalized in the US, Lahav worked for a period in the 1990s as an administrator at the Israeli consulate in Miami. He was the subject of minor controversy in 1996 when the Miami New Times reported that the city of Miami had hired him as sergeant-in-arms, entrusting him with protecting the mayor along with an array of undefined roles, including personal aide.
Lahav found himself in the news again in 2011 when nine members of Adelson’s executive team sued his employer at Las Vegas Sands for refusing to pay them overtime. Three of the staffers amended the lawsuit to allege that they were denied promotions because they were African American.
“The [executive protection team], for all of its 14 years of existence, has been managed and controlled by an executive management team which has been comprised exclusively of former Israeli citizens who are white males,” their lawyer complained. (Besides Lahav, the legal complaint named Adi Barshishat as an Israeli who helped direct Adelson’s security team. On his LinkedIn profile, Barshishat lists extensive training surveillance by an unnamed “Israeli Government Agency.”)
In their complaint against Sands, the plaintiffs alleged that Lahav routinely told racially charged jokes. One of them accused Lahav of forcing team members to “transport firearms in violation of state law” and making them operate an unregistered x-ray machine that placed their health in danger. Two of the security guards subsequently sued Adelson for causing them to “suffer injuries, including sterilization,” by forcing them to x-ray every piece of the billionaire’s mail. Lahav was also accused of ordering security staff not to communicate with Brian Nagel under any circumstance.
Sands retaliated swiftly against the disgruntled security guards, reassigning them to humiliating mall cop-style roles. Next, Adelson’s attorney accused the opposing counsel of anti-Semitism, claiming he had harassed Lahav with “insulting questions about race, his religion,” and Adelson’s family. Finally, Nagel pushed to prevent the legal proceedings from being filmed, insisting before a district judge that televised coverage would “create material for viral use on the internet by extremist hate groups and terrorists” that could result in harm to Adelson’s personal safety.
It was an ironic claim by a security operative whose company appeared to have participated in a highly intrusive and possibly illegal spying operation against Assange and numerous lawyers, journalists, politicians, US citizens, and Ecuadorian diplomats.
A CIA front in Chinese territory?
By the time of the lawsuit, Adelson’s company appeared to have been working closely with the CIA. A confidential 2010 report by a private investigator contracted by the gambling industry pinpointed Adelson’s casino in Macau as a front for Agency operations against China.
“A reliable source has reported that central Chinese government officials firmly believe that Sands has permitted CIA/FBI agents to operate from within its facilities. These agents apparently ‘monitor mainland government officials’ who gamble in the casinos,” it stated.
Previously detailed by the Guardian in 2015 and viewed by The Grayzone this May, the confidential report cited evidence from Chinese official sources of “‘US agents’ operating from Sands, ‘luring’ and entrapping mainland government officials, involved in gaming, to force them to cooperate with US government interests.”
A spokesman for Adelson’s Sands issued a non-denial denial of the report, dismissing it as “an idea for a movie script.” Not long after, another collaboration between Adelson and Langley seemed to be in the works, and it too contained all the elements of a blockbuster spy thriller.
“I sense that this person offered him to collaborate with American intelligence authorities”
A 2016 security industry fair in Las Vegas at the Sands Expo provided the occasion for Adelson’s company – and presumably the CIA – to enlist David Morales. His personal recruiter, according to witness testimony, was Lahav.
When Morales returned from Vegas to his home base in Spain, he divulged details of the deal to his then-business partner.
“I deduced from the conversations with David Morales, where he confessed in detail his agreements achieved at his US trip,” the ex-partner later testified in Spanish court, “the head of security of Las Vegas Sands, a Jewish guy named Zohar Lahav, made contact with Mr. Morales, getting to become good friends with him at the security fair in Las Vegas. I sense that this person offered him to collaborate with American intelligence authorities to send information about Mr. Assange.”
Morales confirmed his and Lahav’s close friendship during an interview in Spanish court conducted this February by Aitor Martinez, a Spanish lawyer representing Assange in the case. In an earlier court appearance, the Spanish prosecutor asked Morales directly about the connection between Lahav and US intelligence services; Morales claimed he had no idea.
A former business partner of Morales recalled an incident “when Zohar [Lahav] came to Spain and stayed at [Morales’] usual house for a week.”
Further evidence of the relationship between Lahav and Morales can be found in an undated recommendation letter Lahav wrote for his pal. Authored on Sands letterhead, Lahav stated that he had “worked with Mr. David Morales CEO in UC Global S.L. for 3 years,” praising him for his “loyalty and consistency.”
By the end of 2017, the alleged collaboration between Morales and Sands had fully matured, with the CIA apparently providing a guiding hand. Together, these entities ratcheted up their surveillance of Assange’s associates and foiled his plan to leave the embassy under the protection of diplomatic inviolability.
Spying, stealing diapers, and burglary plans
Stefania Maurizi, an Italian journalist who visited Assange regularly at the embassy in London, remembered relaxed encounters with minimal security and friendly interactions with embassy staff for the first five years of the Wikileaks founder’s stay. It was in December 2017 that everything changed.
During a visit to interview Assange that month, the Spanish security guards from UC Global demanded Maurizi hand over her backpack and all belongings inside for the first time. She protested the new and seemingly arbitrary procedure, but to no avail.
UC Global photo of journalist Stefania Maurizi’s mobile phone
“They seized everything,” Maurizi told The Grayzone. “They took my two telephones, one which was encrypted; my iPod, and many USB sticks. There was no way to get my backpack back. The guard told me, ‘Don’t worry, everything will be fine, no one will access your materials or open your backpack.’ I was very suspicious. I wasn’t even allowed to bring a pen inside to take notes.”
It turned out that UC Global employees photographed the unique International Mobile Equipment Identity number and the SIM card number inside the phone of Maurizi and many other visitors. In one photograph obtained by The Grayzone, the security contractors removed the SIM to get a clear image of the codes. It seemed this was the information they needed to hack the phones.
Maurizi knew nothing at the time about the relationship currently under investigation between the CIA and the security team at the embassy. She was only aware that Correa, the leftist president of Ecuador who advocated for Assange, had been succeeded months earlier, in May 2017, by Lenin Moreno, his former vice president whom he branded as a Trojan horse for US interests.
The new administration took a sudden pro-US turn that mandated hostility towards Assange and his organization. As the IMF dangled a massive loan before his cash-strapped government, Moreno denigrated Assange as a “hacker” and cut off his internet access as well as visits from the outside for a prolonged period.
Assange, for his part, had become convinced that the embassy security was spying on him. By late 2017, he was using a white noise machine in the main conference room to keep his conversations with lawyers secure, and held the most sensitive meetings with his attorneys in the women’s bathroom, opening the faucets to drown out the sound of their conversations. UC Global countered by planting a magnetic microphone on the bottom of a fire extinguisher, enabling them to snoop through the white noise. A second microphone was installed in the women’s bathroom.
Other plans exposed in UC Global company emails called for planting a mic capable of listening through walls, and placing it secretly inside the office of the ambassador, who was referred to in emails as “Director of the Hotel.”
Morales also proposed installing listening devices in Assange’s bedroom, and even put a program in place to swap out all fire extinguishers and replace them with new ones with hidden mics. The mic in the main conference room recorded the bulk of conversations, and is currently in the possession of the Spanish judge overseeing the case.
“Julian was extremely worried. He said the guards were working for intelligence,” his lawyer, Martinez, recalled. “I told him they were just working-class guys from southern Spain, where I’m from. But now I realize he was totally right.”
On December 12, two days after receiving the powerpoint instructions at Las Vegas Sands on creating separate surveillance camera feeds, Morales sent an email to his embassy spy team identifying specific individual targets. According to a former UC Global worker, the list was created by “the Americans.”
Among the first he ordered them to focus on was “Fix,” a German cyber-security expert; and “MULLER,” a reference to Andrew Müller-Maguhn, a German hacker and internet rights activist who was close friends with Assange. On a visit to the embassy, UC Global security photographed the contents of Müller-Maguhn’s backpack and the contact numbers in his mobile phone.
Morales also demanded the surveillance of Ola Bini, a Swedish software developer who visited Assange, and Felicity Ruby, a colleague of Bini at the company ThoughtWorks, which Morales described as “a team of hackers.”
In a September 2017 bulletin, Morales issued a list of 10 individual targets for investigation, demanding updated profiles on Assange lawyers such as Renata Avila, Jennifer Robinson, and Carlos Poveda, as well as Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon.
Morales urged “special attention” to Stella Morris, a member of the legal team who recently revealed she began a relationship with Assange and had two children with him during his time in the embassy. After proposing “a person thoroughly dedicated to the activity” of spying on Morris, Morales eventually instructed an employee to steal a diaper from one of Morris’ infant sons in order to extract DNA which could prove she was the mother of Assange’s children. “At the time,” the employee testified, “Morales deliberately indicated that ‘the Americans’ insisted in confirming [the DNA results].”
Upset by the bizarre assignment, the UC Global staffer eventually intercepted Morris outside the embassy to inform her about the planned diaper theft and to warn her against taking the child inside.
“They were obsessed with American visitors, all of them, from lawyers to journalists to friends. They focused a lot on Glenn Greenwald, even opening his passport, taking pics of his visa to Russia and sending it to their headquarters,” Martinez said, referring to the Brazil-based, American journalist who had visited Assange. (The Grayzone has viewed UC Global’s photo of the entry visa in Greenwald’s passport.)
The December 12 email from Morales also called for attention to any “Russian citizens” visiting Assange. The directive seemed to reflect the growing American obsession with connecting Wikileaks to Russian intelligence and the alleged hacking of the Democratic National Committee email servers in 2016.
UC Global spy footage of comedian and activist Randy Credico visiting Julian Assange in November 2017
As a result of the ramped-up surveillance, Garzon, the Spanish judge who led Assange’s legal team, was followed by UC Global spies when he picked up former Ecuadorian President Correa at Barajas Airport in Madrid, Spain. The two were photographed while at Garzon’s home. Morales subsequently emailed a report and photographs of the meeting.
A former UC Global employee testified that in November 2017, Morales proposed breaking into the Garzon’s Madrid office in order “to obtain relevant information about Mr. Assange and giving it to [the Americans].” The ex-staffer noted that two weeks later, Garzon’s office was burglarized and no money or valuables were taken. The Spanish daily El Pais reported that three hooded men dressed in black broke into Garzon’s office on December 18, 2017, took no money, but “shuffled through documents.”
All surveillance, tracking, and communications requests on Baltasar Garzón, according to what David Morales said, “came from the Americans,” the former employee testified.
Morales also sent reports about a meeting Correa held in Brussels, with details of the serial numbers of his devices, intimate information on the people he met, and the content of those conversations. Strangely, the report was drafted by Morales in English and sent to his team in order to be shared on the special server created for the “American client.” He claimed implausibly that the report was for Ecuador’s SENAIN.
Yet when he was asked by the prosecutor and by Martinez, the lawyer for Assange, why he composed an email to Spanish-speaking Ecuadorian officials in English, Morales struggled for an excuse. “Sometimes I like to write in English,” he claimed.
Maurizi, for her part, found that calls, emails, and texts from her editors, then at the Italian daily La Repubblica, were failing to go through. “No one could explain this disruption,” Maurizi said. “I wonder if it had anything to do with these espionage activities. To this day I cannot say.”
Meanwhile, Pamela Anderson, the American actress who became a friend of Assange, had her email and mobile phone passwords stolen by UC Global during a visit. The theft occurred when Anderson wrote her passwords on a notepad so Assange could verify the security of her accounts. With the camera system they installed, UC Global spies managed to photograph the pad, allowing them access to her accounts.
The spying dragnet ensnared virtually everyone who entered the embassy, even then-US Representative Dana Rohrabacher. Assange’s lawyer Jennifer Robinson attended the August 2017 meeting with Rohrabacher and claimed he announced himself as an official emissary of Trump. She said the congressman offered a presidential pardon on the condition that the Wikileaks publisher could provide concrete evidence the Russian government did not hack the DNC’s email server.
Rohrabacher later admitted that he dangled the possibility of a pardon, but maintained his visit was a personal “fact-finding mission” unrelated to any Trump initiative.
A former UC Global worker testified that “the Americans were very nervous about the visit” by Rohrabacher, and “personally asked Morales to control and monitor absolutely everything related to that visit.” During the meeting, Rohrabacher was required to leave his phone with UC Global spies.
Sabotaging Assange’s exit strategy, robbery and assassination plots
Throughout December 2017, Assange and his lawyers were formulating a plan to exit the embassy under the protections granted to diplomats under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. One proposal called for appointing Assange as a diplomat for a friendly government like Bolivia or Serbia, thus guaranteeing him diplomatic immunity. The final component of the plan relied on cooperation from the head of Ecuador’s SENAIN, Rommy Vallejo, who was technically the boss of Morales. Vallejo arrived at the embassy on December 20, 2017 – just five days before Assange planned to leave the embassy.
“It was the last step,” said Martinez of the visit by the SENAIN chief. “[Vallejo] was going to speak with Julian [Assange] about final details to leave the embassy and arrange a diplomatic vehicle. Now, after checking all the records and emails, we found that when he visited Julian, Morales told [his spy team] to record everything, open all the cameras, and take all data of all telephone mobiles.”
Indeed, as soon as the meeting was finished, Morales asked his employees to send the full surveillance records to him by Dropbox. The UC Global team proceeded to open Vallejo’s phones and take his mobile codes.
On December 21, the day after Assange’s meeting with the SENAIN chief, US prosecutors secretly filed charges against Assange in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia.
According to a source involved in the plan to grant Assange diplomatic immunity, the US ambassador to Ecuador, Todd Chapman, informed Ecuadorian authorities that he had learned of the initiative, and warned them against executing it.
The source also told The Grayzone that when one of the Ecuadorian officials involved in conceiving the strategy to free Assange from the embassy returned to Quito, his official government vehicle was stopped on a road by masked gunmen on a motorcycle who robbed him of his laptop. The computer contained detailed information about the plan to legally allow Assange to leave the embassy.
Guillaume Long, the foreign minister of Ecuador under Correa, told The Grayzone that the US-coordinated spying operation targeting Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy was “a major breach of sovereignty, of international law and the rules by which international diplomacy is regulated. And it’s completely illegal and, I would argue, really undermines the US case for the extradition of Julian Assange.”
The alleged robbery of an Ecuadorian official in Quito was consistent with another violent plan divulged by a former UC Global employee in the Spanish court.
The ex-staffer recalled Morales mentioning that “the Americans were desperate” to end Assange’s presence in the embassy. Thus they were “proposing to activate more extreme measures against him,” including “the possibility of leaving one diplomatic mission door open, arguing that it was an accidental mistake, to allow the entrance and kidnapping of the asylum seeker; or even the possibility of poisoning Mr. Assange.”
The staffers were shocked when they learned of the proposal and protested to Morales that the direction he was taking “was starting to get dangerous.”
After a campaign of espionage, an Espionage Act prosecution
On April 11, 2019, British police raided the Ecuadorian embassy in London and dragged Assange into a waiting van. It was the first time in history a government had allowed a foreign law enforcement agency to enter its sovereign territory to arrest one of its citizens.
That same day, Ola Bini – the Swedish computer programmer branded as a “hacker” by Morales and placed under apparent US surveillance – was arrested in Ecuador and detained for months without charges. Accused of collaborating with Assange and various cyber-crimes, Bini has been held in Ecuador’s El Inca prison, where US authorities have reportedly requested to interrogate him. Amnesty International has labeled Bini a “digital defender” and condemned “undue government interference” as well as the intimidation of his legal defense team.
Assange, an Australian citizen, was subsequently jailed in Belmarsh Prison, where he now awaits possible extradition to the US and trial for 18 charges, 17 of which relate to violating the Espionage Act. The charges carry a maximum penalty of 175 years in prison.
During the first extradition hearing this February 24, Assange was confined to a glass box that prevented him from directly conferring with his lawyers. Observers including former British diplomat Craig Murray said they noticed US agents conferring outside the courtroom with UK prosecutors.
One witness to the extradition hearing provided The Grayzone with photographs of several attendees they claimed were US Department of Justice officials who sat directly behind British prosecutors throughout the proceedings. The photos, seen below, show the alleged officials outside the courtroom.
After the hearing began, according to Assange’s lawyer, Martinez, a female British barrister arrived and demanded permission to observe. She was representing Las Vegas Sands, a clear indication that Adelson was deeply concerned about the outcome of the proceedings.
Having been promoted from CIA director to secretary of state, Mike Pompeo has reportedly laid the groundwork to run for US senate in Kansas. The first step in Pompeo’s fledgling campaign, according to a raft of articles, was outreach to Sheldon Adelson to “gauge interest” in financing the Senate bid.
By the end of 2019, following the exposure of Sands’ relationship with UC Global, former employees of Morales revealed a rumor that Adelson’s bodyguard, Zohar Lahav, had been fired by Las Vegas Sands. When Morales was asked during an appearance before the Spanish court this February if the rumor was true, he confirmed it, stating that Lahav was terminated because of the “mess” that he helped create.
Reached by phone by The Grayzone on May 12, Lahav immediately hung up when told he was speaking with a reporter.
ADDENDUM
Former UC Global staff confirm Embassy surveillance operation against Julian Assange below. Click on orange button below.
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Former UC Global staff confirm Embassy surveillance operation against Julian Assange
Spanish court investigates claims that security company illegally recorded meetings between Julian Assange, politicians, lawyers and celebrities at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London
The Spanish National Court, Audiencia Nacional, this week heard testimony from four former employees of a company that provided security services to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London when it offered sanctuary to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
The court in Madrid is investigating whether Undercover Global SL and its owner, David Morales Guillén, secretly recorded meetings between Assange and his visitors during the seven years he spent in the Ecuadorian Embassy.
One of the victims of the operation is the former president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa. Court documents show that UC Global staff secretly photographed Correa at a meeting at Spain’s Adolfo Suárez-Barajas Airport. Correa claims the mobile phones of his family were hacked.
Also at issue is whether UC Global breached the privacy rights of journalists, politicians, diplomats, doctors and celebrities who visited Assange during his stay at the Embassy.
Aitor Martínez Jiménez, a member of Assange’s Spanish legal team, said the four UC Global staff had confirmed email evidence already presented to the court that detailed the surveillance operation.
“They have confirmed what we had said, that the cameras recorded audios, that they kept the hard drives with the recordings, that when there were sensitive visits, they were asked for the recordings,” said Martínez Jiménez. “And they took the documentation of the people who visited Assange.”
UC Global’s spying operation came to light in April 2019 when the Spanish newspaper El Paísrevealed that the security company that monitored Assange until 2017 had installed surveillance cameras equipped with microphones and compiled reports on hundreds of people who visited Assange during his exile.
UC Global, registered as Undercover Global SL, was set up in 2008 and offered unregulated training courses in private security, private security services, first aid and rescue. The company was 100% owned by Morales until it was dissolved in June this year.
According to court documents, the company won a contract from the Ecuadorian intelligence service, Senain, to provide security services to the Ecuadorian Embassy in Knightsbridge, London.
Assange and his lawyers filed a criminal complaint against Morales to the Spanish court on 29 July 2019 based on witness statements supplied by former employees of UC Global. The witnesses gave anonymous evidence before a notary, arguing that they could be placed in danger should their names be revealed.
Police subsequently raided the home of UC Global’s founder and owner, Morales, in Jerez de la Frontera in south-west Spain on 19 September last year. They seized firearms, cash and mobile phones. They also seized copies of paperwork, laptops, hard drives, memory sticks, Post-it notes containing passwords, and mobile phones from UC Global’s offices in the same town.
Judge José de la Mata, head of court number 5 of the Spanish National Court, took a statement from the man accused of espionage, a former member of the Spanish military, Morales, and all the victims and witnesses located in Spain in February 2012.
Morales claimed the recordings of Assange had been made at the request of the former Ecuadorian ambassador in London, Carlos Abad, now deceased, who was removed from his post in November 2018 by Ecuadorian president Lenin Moreno, according to a report in El Pais.
He said he had been hired by Senain, Ecuador’s secret service, during the Correa government. As evidence, he presented an email from the former ambassador, dated 27 January 2018, in which he asked him to install a microphone in the Embassy meeting room.
Assange’s conversations with lawyer recorded
On Monday 27 July, Assange’s lawyer, Baltasar Garzón, Assange’s partner, Stella Morris, and the ex-consul of Ecuador, Fidel Narváez, testified before the National Court.
After the hearing, Garzón said his conversations with Assange at the Embassy had been secretly recorded.
“I have been shown some images from the recording video surveillance listening devices in which we, the lawyers, appear talking to Julian – something scandalous that could only be said to actually happen in spy movies,” he said.
“But this is not a spy movie because the life of a person who is a journalist is at stake. All that has been done is in persecution of a journalist, editor of WikiLeaks, for revealing very serious facts of crimes against humanity, of corruption.”
UC Global security staff replaced CCTC cameras in the embassy with cameras capable of recording conversations
Ex-Ecuadorian consul Narváez said that at no time had the Ecuadorian Embassy given permission to UC Global to install cameras with audio capability to record all the meetings held by Assange. “They never informed us to record with audio,” said the diplomat.
Morris, who had two children with Assange while he was in the Embassy, affirmed that one of the technicians of the company alerted her that he had been ordered to steal the diaper of a baby that Stephen Hoo, actor and a friend of the cyber activist, regularly brought to the Embassy. UC Global intended to analyse the baby’s faeces to discover whether he was Assange’s son.
Correa’s family phones hacked
A report by UC Global, seen by Computer Weekly, reveals that UC Global photographed Correa and Garzon in the company of a security guard in the arrivals area of Adolfo Suárez-Barajas Airport on 24 September 2017.
The UC Global agents followed Correa and Garzon as they took a car to Garzon’s home in the wealthy Pozuelo de Alarcón area of Madrid.
Correa took a shower, before talking privately with Garzon, while the security guard talked to Garzon’s wife.
The report presents a photograph of Garzon shaking hands with Correa in 2011 as evidence that the two men were friendly before Assange.
David Morales later emailed a copy of the report to UC Global staff asking them to file it and mark it as confidential.
Another report, dated 17 November 2016, includes records and photographs of meetings held by Correa in Brussels.
It includes technical details of Correa’s Asus ZenBook laptop and iPad, including its serial number and IMEI number, a unique number associated with mobile devices.
A complaint filed in the Spanish court alleges that UC Global supplied his daughters with mobile phones containing spy software.
This allowed the company to access their chats, emails, telephone conversations and images, the complaint alleges, including intimate family photographs.
Fausto Jarrin, Correa’s legal adviser, said the judge of the Spanish National Court proposed separating the events related to Assange and Correa in separate investigations, given the seriousness of the allegations.
Jarrin said that his own his emails were posted on a hacking website in mid-May. He said he had not been able to report the matter to the Ecuadorian Prosecutor until this week, because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Ten further witnesses to give evidence
The judge has also agreed to take a statement from 10 more people as witnesses or victims through the criminal assistance system with third countries.
The new statements, which could begin in August, include attorneys Jennifer Robinson, Gareth Peirce and Renata Ávila, and Assange’s friend Pamela Anderson. “They even took the password from her phone,” says Martínez Jiménez.
The Greek economist and politician Yanis Varoufakis will also be called to testify as a victim of surveillance.
But the most anticipated statements of those agreed by the judge are those of Zohar Lahav, chief of security for Las Vegas Sands Corp, and former US Congressman Dana Rohrabacher.
UC Global signed a contract with Las Vegas Sands, the casino and leisure company owned by Sheldon Adelson, to provide security for Adelson’s ship the Queen Miri in 2015.
Former employees of UC Global alleged that Morales may have use Las Vegas Sands as a conduit to the CIA to deliver material on Assange. The court is investigating the claims and has yet to reach a conclusion.
“The workers have affirmed in court that the material was sent to the intelligence [services] of the United States,” said Martínez Jiménez.
“In the case there are multiple emails where objectives were indicated, training was requested, access to the FTP server that the company had was requested.”
“These emails were sent from the IP [address] of the main Las Vegas Sands hotel. Instructions were also sent from that hotel in perfect English that had been provided to David Morales to open a second user of the cameras, expressly requesting that the user from Ecuador be unaware.”
“There are emails from David Morales openly talking about the provision of the material to the Americano, American client ’or‘ friends of the USA ’among many other evidences that are still in the investigation phase and which have not yet been accessed,” he said.
The Spanish lawyer said that the judge agreed to take a statement from Lahav, after reviewing email evidence that showed Morales had sent instructions in English from the US which were traced to an IP address at one of Las Vegas Sands’ hotels. The emails explained how to access camera feeds without the knowledge of Ecuador.
Assange’s legal team has asked the court to seek a statement from Brian Nagel, a former high-ranking officer of the US secret service who became head of Las Vegas Sands Corp’s global security.
“We understand that he may be the liaison with the [US] intelligence services, but the judge has said, for now, no,” said Martínez Jiménez. The judge has also declined to order a statement from Adelson.
Presidential pardon
Rohrabacher visited Assange in the Embassy in 2017, claiming to offer him a presidential pardon on behalf of Donald Trump.
The quid pro quo was that Assange would publicly say that the source of the published emails from Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee was not Russia, according to Martínez Jiménez.
He said that at the time of Rohrabacher’s visit, the US had not yet filed formal charges against Assange.
“After Assange refused, he was charged with 18 charges under the Espionage Law – it can be understood as extortion,” said the lawyer.
Jennifer Robinson, one of Assange’s lawyers who was present at the meeting recounted the incident in a witness statement.
When it became public during one of Assange’s extradition court hearings in the UK, the Whitehouse dismissed the incident as a ‘complete fabrication’
Rohrabacher said in a statement that he was acting in his own capacity. “At no time did I talk to President Trump about Julian Assange. Likewise, I was not directed by Trump or anyone else connected with him to meet with Julian Assange.”
“However, when speaking with Julian Assange, I told him that if he could provide me information and evidence about who actually gave him the DNC emails, I would then call on President Trump to pardon him.”
Assange: ‘I was a victim of surveillance’
Assange testified before judge De la Mata by video conference, following protracted negotiations with the UK, in December 2019.
“It was finally found and confirmed that he was a victim, that he had no idea that there were hidden microphones, that the cameras were recording audio, that there are hours of recording of Julian’s meetings,” said Martínez Jiménez.
The court also heard evidence that UC Global staff had photographed visitors’ phones to record their International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) codes.
UC Global staff photographed mobile phones and laptops of visitors to Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, noting their serial numbers, makes and SIM card details
“Assange was always suspicious of the company and always stated that he had his misgivings and even openly told me on occasions that these people were spying on him,” added Martínez Jiménez.
“In the most sensitive moments, I asked to have the meetings in the ladies’ room at the back and turned on the water. I told him that it was exaggerated, but as witnesses have stated, they had also placed a microphone in that ladies’ room.”
German journalists who had paid visits to Assange at the Embassy have also filed a complaint as victims of the espionage carried out by Morales’ company, the lawyer said.
Assange’s legal team believe that other victims of the surveillance campaign will file new complaints that will gradually be incorporated into the court’s investigation.
Spanish investigation will affect Assange’s extradition
Garzón said the investigation by the Spanish National Court would have a direct impact on the US extradition proceedings against Assange in London.
Assange, who was arrested on 11 April 2019, is being held at Belmarsh high security prison in south London, awaiting the British legal hearing, scheduled for September, on the US request to extradite him.
Garzón said taking Assange to the US represented an attack on freedom of expression and freedom of access to information, and would be a violation of defence processes.
The WikiLeaks founder faces 17 charges under the 1917 Espionage Act after WikiLeaks published a series of leaks from Chelsea Manning, a former US Army soldier turned whistleblower, in 2010-11.
“Maddow and Duvernay speak and act in defense of their class interests.”
f Ava Duvernay really believes Trump is a white supremacist, why wish him well?
Everyone reveals their true self in a time of turmoil. A crisis forces exposure which can no longer be kept hidden. The revelation that Donald Trump was diagnosed with COVID-19 certainly proves this point. The phony resistance immediately showed that their opposition to Trump is no indicator of solidarity with the people. Their allegiance to the ruling classes always comes out whenever it is time for people to speak forcefully.
MSNBC host Rachel Maddow (left) has made a career out of pushing the sketchy Russiagate narrative but she was suddenly overcome with concern for Trump . “God bless the president and the First Lady. If you pray, please pray for their speedy and complete recovery — and for everyone infected, everywhere. This virus is horrific and merciless — no one would wish its wrath on anyone.”
Maddow’s reaction is not surprising. She is a propagandist after all, and not the journalist she pretends to be. Her objections to Trump in no way show support for popular needs. Like the Democratic Party she represents, she may scorn Trump by ginning up the false Russiagate narrative, but she doesn’t object to Democrats approving the establishment of a Space Force or giving him military budgets larger than the amount he requests. They are of one mind in waging hybrid wars against China, Venezuela or Iran. They support sanctions that create human misery all over the world.
“Maddow is a propagandist and not the journalist she pretends to be.”.
What does one do when the target of phony outrage gets sick? For Maddow it means asking for prayers and even comparing him to a smoker friend who develops lung cancer . We don’t criticize the smoker, we do everything to support that person, says the object of liberal adoration. Interesting that Maddow sees Trump as a friend at all. Then again, she described the late Roger Ailes as her friend and mentor. His Fox News creation is anathema to the millions of Democrats who are obsessed with her program and see her as their spokesperson. Now they ought to know she doesn’t really care that much.
Maddow was not alone. Film director Ava Duvernay also felt compelled to send Trump a rhetorical get well card. But she showed her hand after the presidential debate when she condemned Trump but also managed to throw in some Obamaesque scolding of black people for good measure. “For those who hadn’t been listening for the past 4 years, Trump just told you that he ain't leaving and that he is a white supremacist. If that doesn't get every American who is not white into overdrive to toss his ass -- we may actually deserve what happens next.” It seems that in her world view, if Trump and his fascist hordes do rise up to attack black people, the victims will somehow be at fault.
“Ava Duvernay also felt compelled to send Trump a rhetorical get well card.”
Editor's Note: WE KNEW THE PHONY IDENTITY POLITICS CROWD IN WHICH AVA DUVERNAY TRAVELS WOULD GO WILD WITH THIS MOMENT IN THE "DEBATE" BETWEEN HARRIS AND PENCE. As usual it is all empty symbol, and says absolutely nothing about who Kamala Harris is, her true politics, or what she portends for the country. In fact, the Pence-Harris debate had two lying neocons trading barbs, and outlining a future for the United States and the world that, if anything, is even more despicable and possibly dangerous than Trump's tenure.
Behold the power, the unyielding power, compassion, empathy, vision and ownership of that who is WOMAN and who is BLACK. "I am a WILD WOMAN. It would take a warrior to tame my spirit". -Anonymous We have to move forward together or not at all.#WhenWeAllVote#BidenHarris2020pic.twitter.com/OejWHNx6Gi
Even after getting push back for her first dubious statement, Duvernay again tried to have it both ways as she commented upon his COVID diagnosis. “I truly hope you get well as you’re infected with a life-threatening virus and are physically ill. Also, you are a disgrace and a liar. You’ve cost hundreds of thousands their lives. And you’re a white supremacist. Get well. Sincerely. And after that, we’re going to vote you out.” If she really believes Trump is a white supremacist why wish him well? This is the same Ava Duvernay who announced that questions about Kamala Harris are off limits and are in her view an insult to our ancestors. The black misleadership class is made up of a larger group than politicians. Entertainers and other prominent people like Duvernay always try to limit the scope of black action and even of our thoughts.
Maddow, Duvernay and other well wishers have done us all a huge service. The real resistance, those who oppose neoliberalism, its racist structures, and its empire, are consistent. If they say anything about Trump and COVID they point out that he dismissed the severity of a disease that has killed 200,000 people in this country. The duopoly works together on giving meager help to millions of people suffering because of COVID’s economic impact. They lack the “socialized medicine” that Trump now enjoys. That is what needs to be said.
“The black misleadership class is made up of a larger group than politicians.”
These virtue signallers have signaled to us that they believe the little people should never complain too much. Only so much opinion is to be expressed and then we must fall into line and not disturb our rulers, even those they allegedly dislike.
Anyone unwilling to show sympathy to Trump for any reason is showing righteous indignation and is to be applauded. The well wishers are phonies, either deliberately gas lighting to protect their own interests, or their anti-Trump politics are all for show. Both statements are true for the likes of wealthy opinion makers like Maddow and Duvernay. They speak and act in defense of their class interests. The rest of us must do likewise.
Black Agenda report's Senior Editor and Columnist Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly at the Black Agenda Report. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley (at) BlackAgendaReport.com. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com.
NOTE : ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHORS
Trump’s tax returns and the parasitism of the financial oligarchy
Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.
Splendid analysis by Patrick Martin, which we endorse 100%.
Few con artists have attained the degree of power and influence that Trump has achieved, despite his almost transparent fraudulence and ineptitude. Yet Trump is a product of the system, in demonstrable ways the unwitting creation of the utterly corrupt Democrats, who now pose as his ideological enemies.
Dateline: 29 September 2020
The detailed analysis of the tax returns of President Donald Trump, spread across the front page of Monday’s New York Times, is more than an exposure of the corrupt gangster who lives in the White House. It is an indictment of the American ruling class as a whole, of the super-rich families who monopolize the country’s wealth, exploit the working people and dominate its politics, including the Democratic and the Republican parties.
The Times gained access to 20 years of personal and business tax returns that provide exhaustive details about the financial manipulations conducted by the Trump Organization. The family holding company used hundreds of subsidiaries and shell companies to evade the payment of taxes, incur paper losses that were used to offset real income, and ensure the never-ending enrichment of Trump and his children despite the fact that their empire of real estate, casinos and golf clubs was largely unprofitable.
As the report declared, “ultimately, Mr. Trump has been more successful playing a business mogul than being one in real life.” His long-running NBC reality program, The Apprentice, was far more profitable than his actual business activities. His bankruptcies and reverses have long been known, but the Times account gives a picture, in granular detail, of how the tax system—set up and run by both Democratic and Republican administrations—allowed him to amass and maintain great wealth despite his generally disastrous forays in business.
The Times account does add another dimension to the explanation of the response of the Trump administration to the coronavirus crisis. Given his vast holdings in real estate, hotels and golf clubs, Trump had a direct and immediate financial interest in demanding the reopening of the economy and the resumption of travel, business meetings and sporting events, regardless of the cost in human lives. In this he was not alone, but rather spoke for the interests of his class.
The details in the newspaper account—that Trump paid zero income taxes in 10 of the 15 years before he ran for president; paid $750 in income taxes in 2016 and 2017, about the same amount as a waitress working at the minimum wage; wrote off $75,000 in haircuts as a business expense; and steered hundreds of thousands in “consulting fees” into the pockets of his adult children—are damning. But it is hardly surprising to see it proven in black and white that Donald Trump is a phony and a fraud. Millions of working people have long recognized him as an unscrupulous swindler in both business and politics.
Two years ago, the Times published an equally detailed examination of how Trump’s father manipulated the tax system to pass on the bulk of his wealth to his son Donald while paying an effective tax rate of only 10 percent, even though the official estate tax was then 55 percent. The WSWS commented at the time, “With its detailed exposure of the Trump fortune, the Times has unwittingly confirmed the insistence of socialists that the continued existence of a parasitic oligarchy is incompatible with the most basic social and democratic rights of the vast majority of the population.”
Corruption and tax evasion, perhaps less crude but in some cases on an even larger scale, are commonplace throughout the American ruling elite. According to IRS figures, the effective tax rate on the transfer of inherited wealth is less than 4 percent, compared to the average tax rate for working people of 18–19 percent. Decades ago, before her conviction for tax evasion, Manhattan hotel heiress Leona Helmsley sneered, “Only the little people pay taxes.” That serves today as the motto of the entire financial aristocracy.
Everyone knows that the IRS makes it a point to prey upon workers. Woe unto the teacher or auto worker who is accused of underpaying the IRS, even as the agency regularly turns a blind eye to massive tax-avoidance schemes like those run by the Trump family. Economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman have described how, for decades, the US government continuously slashed taxes for the wealthy and destroyed enforcement mechanisms, with the deliberate outcome of expanding social inequality.
"A central aspect of Trump’s financial flim-flam over many decades is that he has taken advantage of tax laws enacted by both Democrats and Republicans for the deliberate purpose of enabling such chicanery and minimizing the tax burden on the financial elite..."
A central aspect of Trump’s financial flim-flam over many decades is that he has taken advantage of tax laws enacted by both Democrats and Republicans for the deliberate purpose of enabling such chicanery and minimizing the tax burden on the financial elite. It was under the Obama administration in 2010 that the IRS authorized a payment of $72.9 million to Trump, supposedly as a refund of “overpayments.”
At least until he launched his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 2015, Trump bribed Democrats and Republicans alike with “campaign contributions” and was rewarded with loopholes such as the favored treatment of real estate losses in the Obama administration bailout of Wall Street in 2009.
Among the politicians benefiting from Trump’s largesse over the years were Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, his current opponents. He gave campaign contributions on 17 occasions to the two New York Democratic senators, Charles Schumer, now the Senate Democratic leader, and Hillary Clinton, Trump’s opponent in the 2016 presidential contest. None of this politically inconvenient history appears in the Times account of Trump’s tax evasion.
Apologists for the Democratic Party, particularly in the camp of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), may see the Times article as a brilliantly timed masterstroke. They no doubt hope that the conclusive exposure of Trump as a corrupt fraud—unlike the release of the sex scandal transcripts in 2016—will succeed in sinking his campaign.
It is possible that the exposure of Trump’s blatant tax evasion will cost him some votes. But this exposure does not change the reactionary character of the Biden campaign.
A central feature of this campaign is the suggestion that Trump is an agent or patsy of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and that his administration has undermined US “national security” interests in the Middle East, Central Asia, and more generally, in relation to both Russia and China. Many media commentators immediately seized on the fact that Trump paid far more taxes to foreign governments, including India, the Philippines, Turkey and Panama, than he did to the US government.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, one of the most vociferous advocates of the anti-Russia campaign, was quick to sound this theme again in response to the publication of the details of Trump’s taxes and personal finances. Noting the Times’ conclusion that Trump had accumulated $400 million in losses since taking office, including $300 million in loans that would come due during a second term in the White House if he should be reelected, she declared that Trump’s taxes revealed a “national security issue.”
Even though the Times admitted that the tax returns showed no business income from Russia, Pelosi connected Trump to Moscow: “The question is what does Putin have on the president politically, personally, financially in every way that the president would try to undermine our commitment to NATO, give away the store to Russia and Syria … he says he likes Putin and Putin likes him. Well, what’s the connection? We’ll see.”
Such grotesque McCarthy-style attacks on Trump’s alleged master in Moscow contribute to a political atmosphere justifying an explosion of American militarism. It moreover simply ignores the equal role of American banks in financing Trump’s swindles.
Moreover, the use of a scandal to unseat Trump—assuming that this is the outcome—does nothing to change the political climate in the United States. With or without Trump, the intensification of the social crisis—for which the Democrats have no answer—will provide fuel for the development of fascist and authoritarian movements.
It is impossible to defend democratic rights and defeat Trump’s drive towards authoritarian rule through the Democratic Party, which defends the capitalist system of which Trump is a product.
Trump’s tax returns paint a portrait of a ruling class totally enmeshed in corruption and criminality. The oligarchs generate their wealth through shuffling around money, based on the provision of endless amounts of cash by the central banks. Trump’s gaudy and tasteless palaces, with the look of bordellos, are the product of a whole period of American capitalism dominated by swindling, speculation and fraud, creating nothing of value besides ever-greater heaps of debt.
Trump is not the exception; he is the rule. The entire ruling class owes its social existence to various forms of criminal activity, whose victims are inevitably workers. The expropriation of this financial oligarchy is an urgent social necessity.
Patrick Martin is a senior editorial analyst with wsws.org, a Marxian publication.
