BRITISH/ EU/ NATO COMPLICITY

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—Baraitser’s frightening ruling supported virtually every US prosecutorial argument that was made during the extradition trial, no matter how absurd and Orwellian. This includes quoting from a long-discredited CNN report alleging without evidence that Assange made the embassy a “command post” for election interference, saying the right to free speech does not give anyone “unfettered discretion” to disclose any document they wish, dismissing arguments from the defense that UK law prohibits extradition for political offenses, parroting the false claim that Assange’s attempt to help protect his source Chelsea Manning while she was exfiltrating documents she already had access to was not normal journalistic behavior, saying US intelligence might have had legitimate reasons to spy on Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy, and claiming Assange’s rights would be protected by the US legal system if he were extradited.

JONATHAN COOK—The US and British establishments do not care where Assange is imprisoned – be it Sweden, the UK or the US. What has been most important to them is that he continues to be locked out of sight in a cell somewhere, where his physical and mental fortitude can be destroyed and where he is effectively silenced, encouraging others to draw the lesson that there is too high a price to pay for dissent.

The personal battle for Assange won’t be over till he is properly free. And even then he will be lucky if the last decade of various forms of incarceration and torture he has been subjected to do not leave him permanently traumatised, emotionally and mentally damaged, a pale shadow of the unapologetic, vigorous transparency champion he was before his ordeal began.

That alone will be a victory for the British and US establishments who were so embarrassed by, and fearful of, Wikileaks’ revelations of their crimes.

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—Western propaganda hasn’t gotten less advanced since the Iraq invasion, it has gotten more advanced. The Russiagate psyop and the smear campaigns against Assange and Corbyn make this abundantly clear. The idea that the lies and propaganda which led to the Iraq invasion were a one-off fluke is itself the product of propaganda. You need to be more critical of western narratives than with Iraq, not less.

DAN GLAZEBROOK—Firstly, the UK is an imperial entity. The relinquishing of formal political rule over most of its colonies between the 1940s and 1970s (with the crucial exception of a string of strategically-positioned island territories such as Diego Garcia, the Caymans, the Falklands, the Virgin islands and around a dozen others) has not changed this simple reality. The basic contours of the world economy created by colonialism – a system of wealth transference from Asia, Africa and Latin America to North America and Western Europe – remain intact, and have indeed been strengthened and perfected in the era of neo-colonialism, to the extent that net resource transfers from the global South to the North today amount to roughly $3trillion per year – triple the value of goods and services flowing the other way, and twenty-four times the total value of North-South foreign aid. Much of this uncompensated wealth transfer is via ‘capital flight’, often illicit, and mostly facilitated through the network of tax havens located in Britain’s remaining island colonies.

ADRIAN CHAN WYLES—Zhang Zhan is a ‘Christian’ with links to the Western Churches which support predatory capitalism. Freedom of religion is guaranteed in China – but Zhang Zhan does not want to associate with the indigenous Chinese Churches – but is rather motivated to bring down the Socialist System of China through various acts of low intensity terrorism probably ordered and encouraged by her Western paymasters. It may well be the case that Covid19 did not start in China, or was brought to China by forces antagonistic to the Socialist System. In any case, Zhang Zhan arrived in Wuhan and started making videos uploaded onto the US-controlled YouTube rather than the Chinese-controlled ‘YouKu’. As YouTube is ‘banned’ in China – these videos made by Zhang Zhan were only for Western consumption and had nothing to do with educating the Chinese population – as she alleged during her trial.