Ghost Dog
Ghost Dog's JournalYour Man in the Public Gallery - Assange Extradition Hearing Day 2
(This material is not copyright by Craig Murray; Distribution encouraged. A short extract from the long article follows, my emphasis added. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/02/your-man-in-the-public-gallery-assange-hearing-day-2/ ).Baraitser was making no attempt to conceal a hostility to the defence argument, and seemed irritated they had the temerity to make it. This burst out when discussing c), the Iraq war rules of engagement. Summers argued that these had not been solicited from Manning, but had rather been provided by Manning in an accompanying file along with the Collateral Murder video that showed the murder of Reuters journalists and children. Mannings purpose, as she stated at her court martial, was to show that the Collateral Murder actions breached the rules of engagement, even though the Department of Defense claimed otherwise. Summers stated that by not including this context, the US extradition request was deliberately misleading as it did not even mention the Collateral Murder video at all.
At this point Baraitser could not conceal her contempt. Try to imagine Lady Bracknell saying A Handbag or the Brighton line, or if your education didnt run that way try to imagine Pritti Patel spotting a disabled immigrant. This is a literal quote:
An unfazed Summers replied in the affirmative and then went on to show where the Supreme Court had said so in other extradition cases. Baraitser was showing utter confusion that anybody could claim a significant distinction between the Government and God.
The bulk of Summerss argument went to refuting behaviour 3), putting lives at risk. This was only claimed in relation to materials a) and d). Summers described at great length the efforts of Wikileaks with media partners over more than a year to set up a massive redaction campaign on the cables. He explained that the unredacted cables only became available after Luke Harding and David Leigh of the Guardian published the password to the cache as the heading to Chapter XI of their book Wikileaks, published in February 2011.
Nobody had put 2 and 2 together on this password until the German publication Die Freitag had done so and announced it had the unredacted cables in August 2011. Summers then gave the most powerful arguments of the day.
The US government had been actively participating in the redaction exercise on the cables. They therefore knew the allegations of reckless publication to be untrue.
Once Die Freitag announced they had the unredacted materials, Julian Assange and Sara Harrison instantly telephoned the White House, State Department and US Embassy to warn them named sources may be put at risk. Summers read from the transcripts of telephone conversations as Assange and Harrison attempted to convince US officials of the urgency of enabling source protection procedures and expressed their bafflement as officials stonewalled them. This evidence utterly undermined the US governments case and proved bad faith in omitting extremely relevant fact. It was a very striking moment...
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/02/your-man-in-the-public-gallery-assange-hearing-day-2/
(See also Hearing Day 1: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/02/your-man-in-the-public-gallery-assange-hearing-day-1/ )
The problem is, when Americans hear "Socialism" they think "Soviets",
a generally unhappy and ultimately failed experiment in history. Socialism properly involves employing the managerial powers of the state to design and execute policies leading to the maximum possible health and happiness of the greatest possible number of people in a society (not favoring the few; but remember, corruption can be anywhere and everywhere, and has to be policed). Democratic Socialism involves the people, to a degree only even with very direct democracy, in the process.
Serious criticism of socialism usually focuses on the idea that such managerial ability tends to be overrated and prone to screw up. But is this still true today, with all the modern analysis and planning tools now at our disposal? Don't societies need to do some proper planning and some effective execution if the many systemic challenges such as the need for nfrastructure modernization, education and health system improvements, less militarism, halting our poisoning of ourselves and the environment and coping with the consequences of the climate change mess are to be competently confronted?
I see none presented.
And I see no good reason why any such evidence would need to be hidden.
True. So where's the evidence?
Without evidence, it's just some US spooks visibly interfering by briefing anonymously to the WP. Advising people to beware of this happening is one thing; asserting without evidence that it is happening is quite another. If there is trolling in social or other media by Russian state actors there should be evidence of this and no reason to classify it - the opposite, in fact: disinformation needs to be called out.
The BBC did some investigative journalism, by asking the Facebook
Corporation about this (yes, I know, radical!).
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51582025
This is the only reference to 'evidence' I can find in reports on this.
Easily overlooked issues regarding COVID-19
The world economy may become very different, simply because of COVID-19. The new virus doesnt even need to directly affect the rest of the world very much to create a problem. The United States, Europe, and the rest of the world are very much dependent on the continued operation of China. The world economy has effectively put way too many eggs in one basket, and this basket is not now functioning as expected.
If China is barely producing anything for world markets, the rest of the world will suddenly discover that long supply chains werent such a good idea. There will be a big scramble to try to fill in the missing pieces of supply chains, but many goods are likely to be less available. We may discover quickly how much we depend upon China for everything from shoes to automobiles to furniture to electronics. World carbon dioxide emissions are likely to fall dramatically because of Chinas problems, but will the accompanying issues be ones that the world economy can tolerate?
The thing that is ironic is that it is possible that the Wests fear of the new coronavirus may be overblownwe really wont know what the impact will be with respect to people of European or of African descent until we have had a better chance to examine how the virus affects different populations. The next few weeks and months are likely to be quite instructive...
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2020/02/18/easily-overlooked-issues-regarding-covid-19/
Much in more detail at link.
New catalyst recycles greenhouse gases into fuel and hydrogen gas
This conversion is called "dry reforming," where harmful gases, such as carbon dioxide, are processed to produce more useful chemicals that could be refined for use in fuel, plastics, or even pharmaceuticals. It is an effective process, but it previously required rare and expensive metals such as platinum and rhodium to induce a brief and inefficient chemical reaction.
Other researchers had previously proposed nickel as a more economical solution, but carbon byproducts would build up and the surface nanoparticles would bind together on the cheaper metal, fundamentally changing the composition and geometry of the catalyst and rendering it useless...
... The researchers produced nickel-molybdenum nanoparticles under a reductive environment in the presence of a single crystalline magnesium oxide. As the ingredients were heated under reactive gas, the nanoparticles moved on the pristine crystal surface seeking anchoring points. The resulting activated catalyst sealed its own high-energy active sites and permanently fixed the location of the nanoparticlesmeaning that the nickel-based catalyst will not have a carbon build up, nor will the surface particles bind to one another...
https://phys.org/news/2020-02-catalyst-recycles-greenhouse-gases-fuel.html
Li Wenliang, 34 year-old whistleblowing doctor, died, after finally testing positive.
Hospitalised with fever and breathing problems, as he fought the illness, he also decided to fight the government, going public with details of how he had been silenced in the name of stability...
... His parents have also been reported as having contracted the virus. The health status of his wife and children is not clear.
After several negative tests, on 30 January he was finally confirmed as one of thousands of coronavirus patients, he said on a social media post, along with an emoji of a dog with its eyes rolled back and tongue hanging out, the BBC reported. Today nucleic acid testing came back with a positive result, the dust has settled. Finally diagnosed.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/06/li-wenliang-coronavirus-whistleblower-doctor-profile
So only after three weeks of sickness, and several negative tests, and having infected his family, did he finally test positive ony to die shortly afterwards.
This is bad.
This is how come China's Coronavirus statistics are highly inaccurate (BBC) :
My dad has a high fever. His temperature was 39.3C (102F) yesterday and he's constantly coughing and having breathing difficulties. We got him an oxygen machine at home and he relies on that machine twenty-four seven. He's taking both Chinese and Western medicines at the moment. There's no hospital for him to go to because his case hasn't been confirmed due to the lack of testing kits.
My mum and aunt walk to the hospital every day in the hope of getting a bed for my dad despite their own health situation. But no hospital will take them...
... If we follow the government's guidelines, the only place we can go now is to those quarantine points. But if we went, what happened to my uncle would then happen to dad.
So we'd rather die at home...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-51379088
Some (Many) Brits of the ilk of the author(s) of this sh*t live here in Spain,
while continuing to speak, think and watch TV all in Little-English English and being functionally incoherent, illiterate and profoundly ignorant in Spanish. They tend to refer to themselves as "ex-pats", unlike terms used to describe any other (except maybe Americans/Canadians, but not Kiwis or Aussies) class of international economic migrant.
Not insignificant numbers of Spaniards opine that, perhaps, such people, being no longer EU citizens, could and should now or soon be required to fuck off back "home".
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