By Nicola di Cora Modigliani
Today we talk of geo-politics and the freedom of information. But what is happening today technically (i.e. politically) began on 12 December 2008, though some say September of that year, but it took four years for the shock waves to reach Europe and America.
The issue relates to Julian Assange, Wikileaks, and the Republic of Ecuador. Mind you, it was assumed in the entire American continent, Australia, and Europe that the world was the same as ten years ago. But the world does not work that way anymore.
In Italy, no one was told of the fight growing between Brazil and the United Nations, badly managed by Christine Lagarde who heads the International Monetary Fund, whereby Italy was officially relegated from the eighth largest to the ninth largest economy in the world. It was overtaken by Brazil. So at the next G8, Italy will not be invited, but Brazil will. So we had the decision to abolish the G8 and G10 becoming the new standard.
Europe, with England and Germany at the helm, simply cannot accept the “Keynesian” triumph of South America. In essence the western guideline remains: “Let them stay home and remain grateful that we let them survive like the Africans. Otherwise one by one they will all end like Gadaffi.”
This is the warning in a nutshell So, quietly, South America has in the last 40 days sent three powerful messages; the last and most important was on August 3, and it was televised live from the New York office of the International Monetary Fund. Now for some facts.
On 15 June 2012, Julian Assange understands that for him it’s over. He knows that he will be arrested in Stockholm, picked up at the airport, not by police forces of His Majesty the King of Sweden, but by two officers of the CIA and a US diplomat, using specific formal agreements between the two nations to claim that Assange “actively intervened” in the NATO conflict in Iraq while the war was in progress. He will then be taken directly to the US, to the state of Texas, and subjected to criminal prosecution for terrorist activities. There will be a demand for the death penalty based on the provisions of the Patriot Act.
So Assange consults with his group, and at 9 a.m. on 19 June, enters the Embassy of Ecuador. His team opens negotiations with British agents in London, with the Swedes in Stockholm, and American diplomats in Rio de Janeiro. They agree to let the Olympics pass, after which he can quietly go to South America, ‘just do not talk about it.’ But somehow they don’t trust the Anglo-Americans and rightly so. So they carry out two masterstrokes on 3 August and 4 August.
On 3 August 2012, 16 months ahead of schedule, Argentina President, Cristina Kirchner, arrives at the headquarters of the IMF in Manhattan, accompanied by finance minister and foreign minister of Ecuador, Patino, representing ‘Alba’ (Labour Alianza Bolivariana America), the economic union between Latin America and the Caribbean.
On that occasion, Kirchner hands a cheque of €12 billion to the IMF (whose loan was due on 31 December 2013). She announces that with this instalment, Argentina has shown itself to be solvent, to be a responsible nation, trusted and reliable for anyone who wants to invest money. Argentina in 2003 went in default of $112 billion, but refused to seek cancellation of the debt; it declared bankruptcy and sought 10 years to return the money, including interest.
For 10 years, Argentina fought IMF’s attempts to impose restrictive measures of economic austerity. It opted for a different path, in line with Keynesianism, and based on financing infrastructure, research, innovation, instead of cutting expenditure. And it recovered. And it paid off the last instalment of the IMF loan 16 months in advance. It thus proved once more that the ideas of the IMF and World Bank on economic ideas are noxious and wrong headed. TINA (“There is no alternative”) is a lie forced upon the majority of the world’s population by the oligarchic elites.
Fifteen minutes after making the payment, Kirchner lodges a formal complaint against the US and UK to the World Trade Organization, on the basis of files made available by Wikileaks, that is, Assange.
Argentina, having settled the debts, now wants damages; with compound interest. It’s a fight between Kirchner and Lagarde. Thanks to Assange, as his team has the transcripts of several conversations in different governments of the globe, involving the US, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, the Vatican, where money is the master: Osama Bin Laden has been sent to the attic and replaced as the arch villain by John Maynard Keynes in the minds of the financial hegemons.
Assange has become public enemy number one of the great powers since he has gained the classified records of these long conversations about how to cripple the economies of South America, how to take away their energy resources and prevent their recovery; how to prevent their governments from pushing through Keynesian economic plans instead of applying the dictates of the IMF, whose sole purpose is to pursue a neo-colonialist policy principally for the benefit of Spain, Italy and Germany, with British capital.
Most files have already been published on the internet. Those and others were handed over by Assange in Britain to the Ecuadorian ambassador there.
On August 3 in New York, Ecuador became the first nation in the Americas and only nation in the Western world since 1948, to apply the concept of “immoral debt” or the political and technical refusal to pay foreign debts because they were made by previous governments through corruption, in violation of constitutional laws and requirements.
On 12 December 2008, Rafael Correa the new president of Ecuador (whose GDP is around 50 billion euros, or 30 times less than Italy’s) announced on television that he had decided to cancel the national debt considering it illegal, because it violated the constitution to oppress the people. Today in Ecuador, the new constitutional principle is that what is right for the community is legitimate.
Amount of debt: € 11 billion. The IMF literally expunged Ecuador from the list of civilized nations. “The country is isolated,” declared Dominique Strauss-Kahn, then IMF Director General.
The very next day, Hugo Chavez announced that Venezuela would contribute free oil and gas to Ecuador for ten years. Four hours later, President Lula announced that Brazil would give 100 tons/day of wheat, rice, soy and fruit free to feed the population, for a long as the nation takes to recover. In the evening, Argentina announced it would give 3% of its beef production free to Ecuador to ensure adequate protein for the population. The next morning, in Bolivia, Evo Morales announced the legalization of cocaine for domestic production and collection, and free coca leaves to Ecuador with a loan of 5 billion interest-free, repayable in ten years in 120 instalments.