BOUGHT POLITICIANS & PHONIES

NINA CROSS—This article is a second piece focusing on Belmarsh prison, where the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, continues to be arbitrarily detained by the British government.  The first part showed how Belmarsh prison has been systematically denying Assange access to justice by restricting all the means through which he could prepare his defence; access to and possession of legal documents, talking to his US lawyers, restricted meetings with his UK lawyers, and access to a laptop as a basic means to prepare his defence. 

T P WILKINSON—Now if we shift to a completely different part of the world, we can begin to imagine the contradictions and parallels. Hong Kong has been subjected to terrorism quite obviously sponsored by the main instigators of such foreign disruption — the CIA (NED) and most certainly other agencies of HM Government. In the scheme of things — as opposed to the ludicrous “internet of things” — it is impossible to say who is agitating in Hong Kong against the local government and the authority in Beijing. However, if we take the long view; e.g., back to the Opium Wars, the patterns are recognisable.

ROBIN DAVERMAN—The Chinese government has zero interest in stopping Hong Kong’s “popular protest” or riot. The big picture is that Hong Kong has been viewed as an increasing case of cancerous growth since 2008, for two reasons. Both are “long-term fatal”-kind of diseases. One is that it’s a prime case of “rentier economy” that Mr. Martin Wolf just wrote about in Financial Times. Martin Wolf: why rigged capitalism is damaging liberal …Basically rent-seekers (real estate cartel) squeezing blood out of rocks and choking off healthy competition and innovation. The other is that it’s too big of a Tax Haven for Mainland cash.

FRANK LEE—German big business, therefore, likely does not want to see its exports blocked in order to appease US geopolitical ambitions. And there is little sympathy among most of the German public for the ongoing US/NATO occupation. The decline of the SPD and CDU and rise of the AfD are indicative of this trend.

According to the “Leticia Amazon pact”, the Amazonian countries will “strengthen coordinated action”, “establish [a] regional cooperation mechanism”, “increase efforts associated with monitoring forest cover”, and “strengthen the capacities and participation of indigenous and tribal peoples”, among other actions. The pact was thin on specifics, however.