UNITED KINGDOM

Right now the DNC is working hard to see if they can sabotage Sanders’ campaign by pressuring him to take a moderate stand – a change of position – on any one of his main pillars: universal healthcare, student debt cancellation, and the $15 an hour minimum wage.
The idea is to convince Sanders’ campaign strategists that in so doing, he will receive better media coverage from DNC friendly corporate outlets like CNN and MSNBC, and as a result of this moderation will become more electable for swing voters. But why would this sabotage his campaign?

Caitlin JOHNSTONE
The first week of the Julian Assange extradition trial has concluded, to be resumed on May 18th. If you haven’t been following the proceedings closely, let me sum up what you missed:


The extradition trial for journalist and publisher Julian Assange is nothing but a travesty. His brutal persecution by American and British authorities is a shocking indictment of these Western states and their hypocritical pretensions about professing democratic rights and rule of law.
Assange may be the one sitting in the dock. But the whole world can see that it is not he who is really on trial, but rather the so-called authorities who are persecuting him.

Thursday, February 27, Woolwich Crown Court.  The first round of extradition hearings regarding Julian Assange’s case concluded a day early, to recommence on May 18th.  It ended on an insensible note very much in keeping with the woolly-headed reasoning of Judge Vanessa Baraitser, who is of the view that a WikiLeaks publisher in a cage does not put all heaven in a rage.  On Wednesday, Assange’s defence had requested whether he would be able to leave the confines of his glass cage and join his legal team.

Wednesday, February 26, Woolwich Crown Court.  Today, the focus shifted to the protagonist himself and the nature of the US-UK Extradition Treaty of 2003, a contentious document that shines all too favourably for US citizens.

Robert Peston is one of the UK’s most high-profile broadcast journalists, renowned for his theatricality and… curious… halting… delivery. As political editor of ITV News he has enormous influence, including 1 million followers on Twitter, just behind the BBC’s political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, with 1.1 million. He also hosts a weekly ITV political discussion show, ‘Peston’. From 2006-2014, Peston was the business editor for BBC News and from 2014-2015 economics editor.

The second day of extradition hearings against Julian Assange and by virtue of that, WikiLeaks, saw Mark Summers QC deliver a formidable serve for the defence at Woolwich Crown Court.  “It’s difficult to conceive of a clearer example of an extradition request that boldly and blatantly misstates the facts as they are known to be to the US government.”  The targets were, respectively, allegations by the US Department of Justice that Assange attempted to conceal Chelsea Manning’s identity for nefarious purposes and, second, that WikiLeaks was reckless as to the potential consequences of harm i

TruePublica
Google is planning to move its British users’ accounts out of the control of European Union privacy regulators, placing them under US jurisdiction instead, the company confirmed on 19 February. The shift, prompted by Britain’s exit from the EU, will leave the sensitive personal information of tens of millions with less protection and within easier reach of British law enforcement. But it won’t end there.
Alphabet Inc’s Google intends to require its British users to acknowledge new terms of service including the new jurisdiction.

On Monday, WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange’s one-week extradition hearing began at Woolwich Crown Court in South East London. The judge heard the opening arguments for the prosecution and defense. The prosecution began, accusing the journalist, who exposed the US government’s war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, of espionage charges that would carry 175 years in jail.

If we are to believe it, Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, the man behind showing the ugliness of power, is the one responsible for having abused it.  It is a running theme in the US case against this Australian publisher, who has been given the coating of common criminality hiding the obvious point: that the mission is to make journalism on official secrets, notably those covering atrocity and abuse, a crime.