BRITISH/ EU/ NATO COMPLICITY

ERIC ZUESSE—Russia had lost, to Germany’s Nazis, 13,950,000, or exactly 12.7% of its population. Another part of the Soviet Union, Belarus, lost 2.29 million, or exactly 25.3% of its population to Hitler. Another part of the U.S.S.R., Ukraine, lost 6.85 million, or 16.3%. The entire Soviet Union lost 26.6 million, exactly 13.7% of its population to Hitler. The U.S. lost only 419,400, or 0.32% of its population. 

Katie Halper organizes a livestream to free Julian Assange, and we’re grateful for her effort, even if the roster encompasses many establishmentarians and dubious leftists who have remained silent or played duplicitous roles in the Assange saga. Still, the more voices that join the choir on behalf of Julian Assange, especially (I hope) enlightened establishmentarians, the better. 

What can Putin and Xi do with a government that seems to have many heads, often at loggerheads, and which is “agreement incapable”?

JOE LAURIA—Lord Justice Timothy Holyrode, who read the High Court’s summary decision in court in nine minutes, said the order by a lower court to discharge Assange was overturned and that he was to remain on remand in prison.  Holyrode said that the High Court had accepted the U.S. assurances that Assange would not be kept in harsh prison conditions in the U.S. He called them “solemn undertakings from one government to another.”

The High Court was satisfied, Holyrode said, that Assange would not be held under Special Administrative Measures or sent to ADX Florence maximum security prison in Colorado, that Assange would receive adequate medical treatment while incarcerated and that he could serve his post-trial and post-appeal sentence in his native Australia.

Monday’s virtual talks between Presidents Xi and Biden were “successful” in the sense that they allowed China and the US to signal to one another that they did not want tensions to spill into open conflict, but did not, and could not, resolve the root causes of the competition between the superpowers, political observers, academics and think tank fellows queried by Sputnik suggest.

“I do think it is a successful meeting in that both sides can at least use the occasion to signal to the other party that it wants to stabilize the relationship,” says Dr. Zhang Baohui, director of the Centre for Asian Pacific Studies at Hong Kong’s Lingnan University.
Characterizing the talks as an exercise in “benign signaling,” Zhang said that they have the potential to ease tensions after years of escalation.