BRITISH DEVIOUSNESS

CHRIS MARSDEN—Spain’s acting foreign minister, Josep Borrell, said Gibraltar had seized Grace 1 in response to a request from the US to Britain. El Pais reported that Borrell, from the Socialist Party (PSOE) said the US intelligence implied that the supertanker was in British territorial waters. Madrid will now formally complain of a British incursion into Spanish waters, with Borrell, the EU’s nominee for High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, stating, “We are analysing the circumstances and seeing how they affect our sovereignty.”

JONATHAN COOK—Brand was right that the system is rigged, that our political and media elites are captured, and that the power structure of our societies will defend itself by all means possible, “fair or foul”. Corbyn is far from alone in this treatment. The system is similarly rigged to stop a democratic socialist like Bernie Sanders – though not a rich businessman like Donald Trump – winning the nomination for the US presidential race. It is also rigged to silence real journalists like Julian Assange who are trying to overturn the access journalism prized by the corporate media – with its reliance on official sources and insiders for stories – to divulge the secrets of the national security states we live in.

ELIZABETH VOS—The Nation goes on to quote Kissinger’s reassurance of US tolerance of Pinochet’s government:“We welcomed the overthrow of the Communist-inclined government here. We are not out to weaken your position.” The dialogue between Kissinger and Pinochet, as well as the despot’s friendship with Thatcher, illustrates the dominance of the realpolitik value system in Western nations, through which human rights abuses became an afterthought in comparison with perceived geopolitical advantage.

ALEXANDER RUBINSTEIN—The coalition cited by Hong Kong media, including the South China Morning Post and the Hong Kong Free Press, as organizers of the anti-extradition law demonstrations is called the Civil Human Rights Front. That organization’s website lists the NED-funded HKHRM, Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions, the Hong Kong Journalists Association, the Civic Party, the Labour Party, and the Democratic Party as members of the coalition.

It is inconceivable that the organizers of the protests are unaware of the NED ties to some of its members. During the 2014 Occupy protests, Beijing made a big deal out of NED influence in the protests and the foreign influence they said it represented. The NED official, Greve, even told the U.S. government’s Voice of America outlet that “activists know the risks of working with NED partners” in Hong Kong, but do it anyway.

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—(Quoting Gordon Dimmack)—”“For seven years you have smeared and slandered that man who is going to appear on video in that court in about fifteen minutes,” Dimmack told the mainstream press, right to their fucking faces. “You are all responsible for what has happened today! All of you in the media! Every one of you. You have got blood on your hands. When he released those documents that Chelsea Manning gave him, all he did was the job of a publisher. That’s it. Right now Julian Assange is going to court and put on trial for exposing war criminals as war criminals. And all of you for seven years have smeared and slandered him. You should be ashamed of yourselves.”’