WHISTLEBLOWERS AND LEAKS

JEREMY KUZMAROV—Even a broken clock is right twice a day. And even a liar like Donald Trump can sometimes tell the truth. During the 2020 election campaign, Trump accused Biden of corruption with regard to secret deals involving the Ukraine and China, in which the Vice President venally leveraged the power of his office and title to enrich himself and his son in clear violation of the law.

In that charge, Trump was absolutely right. But he did not know the half of it. Joe Biden’s history of deceit and corruption did not begin with the 2020 election campaign, nor is it limited to his dealings with the Ukraine and China, although they are a good place to start unraveling the myth of Joe Biden as secular saint, whose incorruptible honesty and nobility of character have been so vigorously propagated by corporate media and internalized even by large segments of the left. For example, let us look at “Ukrainegate” and Joe Biden’s part in it.

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.

KIM PETERSEN—Recently, circumstances have become bleaker for Assange because of a reported COVID-19 outbreak where “at least 56 people in his house block in Belmarsh prison, including staff and inmates, were found to have been infected.”

Wikileaks earlier reported that Assange, along with almost 200 other inmates of his house block, have been under lockdown since November 18.

Australia has done nothing for its citizen Assange. Australia is said to function at the behest of the US. This is so much so that Australia has put itself in a precarious economic situation with its largest trade partner, China. Furthermore, Australia has a long history of its own war criminality that it ignores.

P. GREANVILLE—Let’s get something straight: As Jimmy and Glenn discuss in these video chats, the rise of Internet censorship was initiated by the Democrats and their media shills—in their effort to protect the corporate plutocracy they serve—and not so much by the social media owners themselves,  despite the latter’s well known libertarian positions. The corporate media—notes Glenn—have now literally a legion of trolls patrolling the Internet, their chief task being to call out, shame and denounce genuine progressive voices, wherever they may be found fighting in defense of peace, the rights of oppressed peoples such as Palestinians, or to expose the fake politics and news disseminated by the establishment journos engaged in silencing true dissenting speech. To repeat: This cynical plague exists in all mainstream media now, from the august corridors of the New York Times and CBS, NBC, etc., to CNN, MSNBC, NPR, VOX and the rest of the so-called “respectable media”. 

ALEXANDER RUBINSTEIN—After former Ecuadorian President Rafel Correa, who originally granted Assange his asylum, tweeted a picture of a document showing that Moreno’s government was “auditing” Assange’s asylum and his naturalization in Ecuador — which prevents him from being extradited — WikiLeaks (which has never gotten a story wrong) asserted that a bailout for the country from the International Monetary Fund was conditioned on its “handing over Assange and dropping environmental claims against Chevron” for its pollution of the Amazon.