‘IF it looks like a duck & it walks like a duck and it sounds like a duck, it most probably is a duck …’
Corruption is remarcably hard to prove as the corrupt are the most effective witnesses – often the only witnesses – one is well advised to consider the context, study the motivation and follow the money … Then and only then ‘IF it looks like corruption etc. …’
Trump, Assange, Bannon, Farage… bound together in an unholy alliance
The Wikileaks founder’s astonishing admission should prompt MPs finally to start asking questions
Julian Assange was asked by Cambridge Analytica if he wanted ‘help’ with Hillary Clinton’s stolen emails. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA
Last Wednesday, 11 months into Donald Trump’s new world order, in the first year of normalisation, a sudden unblurring of lines took place. A shift. A door of perception swung open.
Because that was the day that the dramatis personae of two separate Trump-Russia scandals smashed headlong into one another. A high-speed news car crash between Cambridge Analytica and Wikileaks, the two organisations that arguably had the most impact on 2016, coming together last week in one head-spinning scoop.
That day, we learned that Alexander Nix, the CEO of Cambridge Analytica, the controversial data firm that helped Trump to power, had contacted Julian Assange to ask him if he wanted “help” with Wikileaks’s stash of stolen emails.
That’s the stash of stolen emails that had such a devastating impact on Hillary Clinton in the last months of the campaign. And this story brought Wikileaks, which the head of the CIA describes as a “hostile intelligence service”, directly together with the Trump campaign for which Cambridge Analytica worked. This is an amazing plot twist for the company, owned by US billionaire Robert Mercer, which is already the subject of investigations by the House intelligence committee, the Senate intelligence committee, the FBI and, it was announced late on Friday night, the Senate judiciary committee.
So far, so American. These are US scandals involving US politics and the news made the headlines in US bulletins across US networks.
But it’s also Cambridge Analytica, the data analytics company, which has its headquarters in central London and that, following a series of articles about its role in Brexit in the Guardian and the Observer, is also being investigated, by the Electoral Commission and the Information Commissioner’s Office. The company that was spun out of a British military contractor, is headed by an old Etonian and that responded to our stories earlier this year by threatening to sue us. It’s our Cambridge it’s named after, not the American one, and it was here that it processed the voter files of 240 million US citizens.
It’s also here that this “hostile intelligence service” – Wikileaks – is based. The Ecuadorian embassy is just a few miles, as the crow flies, from Cambridge Analytica’s head office. Because this is not just about America. It’s about Britain, too. This is transatlantic. It’s not possible to separate Britain and the US in this whole sorry mess – and I say this as someone who has spent months trying. Where we see this most clearly is in that other weird Wikileaks connection: Nigel Farage. Because that moment in March when Farage was caught tripping down the steps of the Ecuadorian embassy was the last moment the lines suddenly became visible. That the ideological overlaps between Wikileaks and Trump and Brexit were revealed to be not just lines, but a channel of communication.
‘Nigel Farage, who visited Donald Trump and then Julian Assange.’ Photograph: Ken McKay/ITV/REX/Shutterstock
Because if there’s one person who’s in the middle of all of this, but who has escaped any proper scrutiny, it’s Nigel Farage. That’s Nigel Farage, who led the Leave.EU campaign, which is being investigated by the Electoral Commission alongside Cambridge Analytica, about whether the latter made an “impermissible donation” of services to the Leave campaign. Nigel Farage who visited Donald Trump and then Julian Assange. Who is friends with Steve Bannon and Robert Mercer. Who headed an organisation – Ukip – which has multiple, public, visible but almost entirely unreported Russian connections. Who is paid by the Russian state via the broadcaster RT, which was banned last week from Twitter. And who appears like clockwork on British television without any word of this.
This is a power network that involves Wikileaks and Farage, and Cambridge Analytica and Farage, and Robert Mercer and Farage. Steve Bannon, former vice president of Cambridge Analytica, and Farage. It’s Nigel Farage and Brexit and Trump and Cambridge Analytica and Wikileaks… and, if the Senate intelligence committee and the House intelligence committee and the FBI are on to anything at all, somewhere in the middle of all that, Russia.
Try to follow this on a daily basis and it’s one long headspin: a spider’s web of relationships and networks of power and patronage and alliances that spans the Atlantic and embraces data firms, thinktanks and media outlets. It is about complicated corporate structures in obscure jurisdictions, involving offshore funds funnelled through the black-box algorithms of the platform tech monopolists. That it’s eye-wateringly complicated and geographically diffuse is not a coincidence. Confusion is the charlatan’s friend, noise its accessory. The babble on Twitter is a convenient cloak of darkness.
Yet it’s also quite simple. In a well-functioning democracy, a well-functioning press and a well-functioning parliament would help a well-functioning judiciary do its job. Britain is not that country. There is a vacuum where questions should be, the committees, the inquiries, the headlines on the TV bulletins. What was Nigel Farage doing in the Ecuadorian embassy? More to the point: why has no public official asked him? Why is he giving speeches – for money – in the US? Who’s paying him? I know this because my weirdest new hobby of 2017 is to harry Arron Banks, the Bristol businessman who was Ukip and Leave.EU’s main funder, and Andy Wigmore, Leave.EU’s comms man and Belize’s trade attache to the US, across the internet late at night. Wigmore told me about this new US venture – an offshore-based political consultancy working on Steve Bannon-related projects – in a series of tweets. Is it true? Who knows? Leave.EU has learned from its Trumpian friends that black is white and white is black and these half-facts are a convenient way of diffusing scandal and obscuring truth.
(You got this? Farage visited Trump, then Assange, then Rohrabacher. Rohrabacher met Don Trump’s Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya. Then Assange. And is now trying to close the circle with Trump.)
In these post-truth times, journalists are fighting the equivalent of a firestorm with a bottle of water and a wet hankie. We desperately need help. We need public pressure. We need parliament to step up and start asking proper questions. There may be innocent answers to all these questions. Let’s please just ask them.
I try to make every effort to NOT infringe copyrights in any commercial way & make all corrections of fact brought to my attention by an identifiable individual
The regional broadcaster has suggested the Elvis Presley tribute act, A Vision of Elvis, has sold more tickets than the erstwhile Ukip frontman for their respective shows at the Prince’s Theatre in Clacton, Essex.
As the Ukip MEP Godfrey Bloom pointed out, the problem might stem from the Farage show being £25 per head for an ‘An Evening with Nigel Farage’.
“I’m surprised anybody at all is prepared to pay £25 to listen to any politician,” Bloom told the broadcaster.
“I still do lots of after-dinner speaking and stuff, but if people are going to cough up 25, 30 or 40 quid they expect a three course meal to go with it.”
According to BBC Essex, Farage is expecting to sell hundreds more tickets before the show, and the burst of publicity may well tip the balance against ‘A Vision of Elvis’.
Well lets look at what seems to be FAKE NEWS courtesy of #Liberty Nation’
I’ve commented in black in text below:
Nigel Farage to Speak in DC
LibertyNation.com brings BREXIT Leader
Firstly Farage is not nor has he ever been so called ‘BreXit Leader’ – he was refused any part of the official Leave Campaign as it was widely believed he was damaging to the cause!
Let us remember he colluded with the criminal John Ison who was involved with Farage & carried out a series of thefts & editing of material to provide false evidence to try to have Nikki Sinclaire, who if anyone can be called the ‘Leader of BreXit’ it is she!
Nikki Sinclaire set out single handedly and using her own money to build a team who obtained a valid petition of 200,000+ signatures from members of the electorate that when presented at Downing Street forced the Government’s hand to hold a full debate of the issue of Leaving_The_EU which led to the largest revolt Cameron as PM had had in Parliament and the undertaking that an IN/OUT Referendum would be held.
You will be pleased to cnow the Police prosecution which Farage had colluded in with the criminal John Ison was shown to be a pack of lies which it does seem the Police & CPS colluded in either utterly corruptly for the Government of the day or as a result of complete incompetence it is hard to say – though there are many ‘coincidences’ which I find would indicate the former rather than the latter!
Not least of which is the failure of the police to prosecute John Ison and even possibly Farage based on the crimes John Ison admitted to in Court, further the Police have on various items outright lied to Nikki Sinclaire & her legal team, in efforts to cover their tracks and also the fact that neither the Police nor the CPS have either appologised nor have they offered any compensation for the damage done to Nikki Sinclaire nor for the destruction of her career!
Farage clearly was no ‘BreXit Leader’ in fact he did a great deal to try to prevent the public vote for BreXit besides his divisive nature!
to Washington to Speak on Trump Presidency and Populist Revolution
The so-called Donald Trump of Britain, Nigel Farage, is set to speak on Thursday, October 12 at 8 PM at the Georgetown Marriott located at 1221 22nd St NW, Washington, DC.
Pray tell: By who is Farage known as ‘The Donald Trump of Britain’ beyond his shaving mirror & his own publicity?
As leader of the UK Independence Party
Farage is no longer Leader of the UK Independence Part – he stood down a year ago & due to his failure as a leader & lack of leadership skill the ‘Cult’ he had built has all but collapsed and is already on its 6th leader since he quit! A mere 12,000 members could even be bothered to vote in the last election, which many claim was, like so many other Ukip internal elections, rigged; as the clear front runner was an extreme Islamaphobe & seen by much of the media as an outspoken racist!
and longtime member of Parliament,
Farage has stood & campaigned 8 times to be a Member of Parliament and has never been elected to the British Parliament. He has however placed himself as top of the list in the safest Ukip region & become one of several members of the largely irrelevant EU Parliament based on a list vote!
Farage stoked the Trump-like populist revolt which resulted in the dramatic, game-changing withdrawal of Britain from the European Union.
It is true that like Trump Farage did much to scrape the bottom of the barrel and play on fear & what was widely seen as overt racism to mobilise support for his ‘cult’ – in much the same way as has Macron in France, the AfD in Germany, Corbyn in the UK Labour party, Le Penn in France’s National Party and others seeking personal power and glory at any cost – argueably in a style not too dissimilar to Cuba and Chavez in Venezuela!
The Brexit uprising against the established order has already changed the face of Britain, the EU, and the US.
Schedule of events: 7 PM open bar reception – West End Lounge
8 PM Nigel Farage Speaks followed by open Q & A – Metropolitan Galleries 1-2
9 PM Dessert, coffee and photo ops/interviews with Mr. Farage – West End Lounge
I try to make every effort to NOT infringe copyrights in any commercial way & make all corrections of fact brought to my attention by an identifiable individual
Greg Lance - Watkins (Greg_L-W)
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