British Judge Rejects Assange Extradition

This was unexpected. The British district court judge Vanessa Baraitser rejected the U.S. extradition request against Julian Assange:

Kevin Gosztola - 11:07 UTC · Jan 4, 2021

BREAKING: Judge rules against US extradition of Julian Assange, contending extradition would be oppressive by reason of Assange’s mental health

The British judge said that the U.S. prison system is too brutal to be trusted with the health of Assange.

Kevin Gosztola @kgosztola - 10:57 UTC · Jan 4, 2021

Baraitser says Assange is at high risk of suicide and that there is a "real risk" he will be detained subject to special administrative measures (SAMs) in US prison, especially because intelligence community is hostile to him
Baraitser: Extradition would be oppressive by reason of Assange’s mental health
The United States government's mass incarceration system just lost them their case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
Holy shit, the judge ends saying she is satisfied that procedures described by US would not prevent Assange from finding a way to commit suicide in US supermax prison
The judge and defense are discussing an application for bail. US government is going to immediately appeal.

The full ruling is available here.

Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz - 11:14 UTC · Jan 4, 2021

UPDATE: Judge ordered no extradition for Assange, and orders him released from Belmarsh Prison, both due to suicide risk concerns. The US has confirmed that it will appeal extradition ruling. He's still jailed, court is in recess and then they'll discuss possible bail or release.

It's likely they'll keep him jailed until after the US appeals the ruling, as Medhurst explains. We're definitely not out of the woods yet. But getting out of Belmarsh is excellent.

This is not a win for freedom of speech or a free press. The judge has accepted the U.S. prosecution arguments against Assange. The extradition rejection is solely on humanitarian grounds.

Anyway, the British government seems to have grown a spine? We can then hope that the U.S.government's appeal will fail.

The MoA Week In Review - OT 2021-001

Last week's posts at Moon of Alabama:

• December 28 - The 'Mighty Wurlitzer' - How U.S. Financed 'Human Rights' Organizations Create Anti-Chinese Headlines
  Related:
  US and EU demand China release citizen reporter Zhang Zhan, locked up for covering Wuhan coronavirus outbreak - SCMP
  West fools and ruthlessly exploits so-called ‘citizen journalist’ Zhang Zhan - Global Times

Elena_MYL @Elena_MYL - 2:28 UTC · Dec 29, 2020
I search a bit about #ZhangZhan online and here’s what I found. She was detained several times before, from 10 days to 65 days since 2019. She got warning for the first time in 2018.
Pic. She’s holding an umbrella says” End socialism, take down CPC”.
She’s a Christian zealot with a strong tendency towards martyrdom. She made hunger strike several times during the detention.
She had psychiatric assessments during the detention since she kept talking Jesus, Bible, God, etc.
Here’s video from her YouTube channel. She spoke in a very slow speed. “I preached gospel to her : The cross of Jesus Christ bears the sins of everyone, salvation is found in no one else, but Jesus. Actually I’d prefer to preach gospel to those cops and ppl who quarantined her.
Here is an article she wrote accusing Chinese government acting like god. She used the word “神” (God) 62 times.
#ZhangZhan regards herself undertaking God’s mission. Somehow reminds me of Adrian Zens who fabricated Uyghur genocide claiming he’s been led by God against Beijing. ...

• December 30 - A Tale Of A New Year's Resolution

• December 31 - The Year Of Masks Ends - The Year Of Vaccines Arises
  Related:
  The Plague Year - The mistakes and the struggles behind America’s coronavirus tragedy. - New Yorker

• January 1 - "Pull My Finger" - (Afghan Edition)

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Other issues:

Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review - OT 2021-001

"Pull My Finger" - (Afghan Edition)

June 26 2020, New York Times

Russia Secretly Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops, Intelligence Says

August 17 2020, CNN

US intelligence indicates Iran paid bounties to Taliban for targeting American troops in Afghanistan

December 31 2020, Axios

Scoop: Trump administration declassifies unconfirmed intel on Chinese bounties

January 1 2021, Moon of Alabama

Sources: To Keep Troops In Afghanistan U.S. Intel Paid Militants Bounties To Kill Them

The Year Of Masks Ends - The Year Of Vaccines Arises

This year was weird and somewhat depressing. But there are signs that the next year will be better. The virus will be defeated (vid).

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The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic created some interesting phenomenons. Historically it moved the world's power center towards the east. China and other eastern countries proved to be much better in controlling the outbreak and were rewarded with economic success. The U.S. has lost its leading role in the world but has yet to accept the new multi-polarity. That increases the chance of new conflicts.

Below are links to some of the stories, written throughout the last year, that document and reflect on those trends.

Writing about the virus was a challenge. Not from a scientific point but due to the reaction of some commentators who were unable to accept the facts. I never before had to delete and block so much nonsense. That, astonishingly, did not diminish the blog's readership. With some 11 million page views the blog even attracted a bit more public interest in 2020 than in 2019. A great comments on this blog have a lot to do with this success.

Thanks to all of you who come read and/or comment here.

A happy New Year to all of you.

Bernhard

Cont. reading: The Year Of Masks Ends - The Year Of Vaccines Arises

A Tale Of A New Year's Resolution

The Wall Street Journal reports of another misguided decision by the Trump administration.

New U.S. Dietary Guidelines Reject Recommendation to Cut Sugar, Alcohol Intake Limit

The federal government on Tuesday issued new dietary guidelines that keep current allowances for sugar and alcohol consumption unchanged, rejecting recommendations by its scientific advisory committee to make significant cuts.

The scientific committee, which was composed of 20 academics and doctors, had recommended cutting the limit for added sugars in the diet to 6% of daily calories from 10% in the current guidelines, citing rising rates of obesity and the link between obesity and health problems like Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
...
The dietary guidelines, which are updated every five years, have a wide impact: They shape school lunch programs, mold state and local health-promotion efforts, and influence what food companies produce.

The U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services reviewed the committee’s recommendations, which were released in July, and decided not to include the lower limits because “the new evidence is not substantial enough to support changes to quantitative recommendations for either added sugars or alcohol,” said Brandon Lipps, deputy undersecretary for food, nutrition and consumer services at the USDA. Mr. Lipps said that the new limits recommended by the scientific committee didn’t meet a “preponderance of the evidence” standard required by law.

One would think that the obvious evidence of preponderance within the U.S. population would be sufficient to meet the "preponderance of the evidence"  required by law.

Anyway, I'll use the above as a hook to tell a personal story. One which is a bit off from the other content you usually find here.

Two years ago I made a private New Year's resolution to lose weight. Over the decades I had slowly, slowly gained one pound after the other. Having an office job and often being too lazy to do sports both had contributed to that. I was no longer comfortable with the look and feel of my body. So I set myself a target weight but not a time limit to reach it. Fearing failure I did not tell anyone about it.

This month I finally got there.

Cont. reading: A Tale Of A New Year's Resolution

Open Thread 2020-103

The 'Mighty Wurlitzer' - How U.S. Financed 'Human Rights' Organizations Create Anti-Chinese Headlines

During my daily skimming of the main stream media I at times detect news items that seem of little public interest but are widely published. These pieces are often suspiciously similar to each other and seem to come from the 'Mighty Wurlitzer':

In 1967 the magazine "Ramparts" ran an expose revealing that the Central Intelligence Agency had been secretly funding and managing a wide range of citizen front groups intended to counter communist influence around the world.
...
CIA official Frank Wisner called the operation his "mighty Wurlitzer," on which he could play any propaganda tune.

Today's 'Mighty Wurlitzer' song is played simultaneously by all major outlets:

• Zhang Zhan: China jails citizen journalist for Wuhan reports - BBC
• Chinese Citizen Journalist Sentenced to 4 Years for Covid Reporting - NYT
• China sentences citizen journalist to four years in prison for Wuhan lockdown reports - Washington Post
• China jails citizen-journalist for four years over Wuhan virus reporting - Reuters
• Chinese citizen journalist Zhang Zhan sentenced for reporting early on COVID in Wuhan - CBSNEWS
• COVID-19: Chinese citizen journalist Zhang Zhan jailed for four years over Wuhan reporting - SKY

From the BBC's version:

Cont. reading: The 'Mighty Wurlitzer' - How U.S. Financed 'Human Rights' Organizations Create Anti-Chinese Headlines

The MoA Week In Review - OT 2020-102

Last week's posts at Moon of Alabama:

• December 21 - A No Deal Brexit Is Now All But Certain To Happen
• December 26 - The Brexit Deal Is Done But Services Are Likely To See Losses
  Related:
  Brexit: back on our heads - EU Referendum

> What certainly has not come over is that Brussels has secreted into the system a complex and interesting treaty, one full of subtleties which is a long way from the basic "skinny treaty" that many of us originally expected.

It is one, also, which keeps the UK closer to the EU globally-based trading system than anyone could possibly have imagined at the outset of negotiations. It is one of considerable depth which creates a framework for a relationship which, if explored by people of far more diligence than Johnson and his cronies, could eventually be turned into a useful working agreement, albeit at savage cost to the UK in the interim.
...
To enable that trade, and much else, requires a working framework, which is set out in the first chapter of the treaty. One of the greatest misnomers of this modern world is the term "free trade". We have managed trade. The greater the degree of state involvement, the more freely goods (and services) flow.

In creating a framework, the first thing of this treaty that must be understood is that it is not the end of a process, but the start – where detailed sectoral negotiations will be conducted over term, to knock the basic agreement into some sort of shape which will enable the UK to re-establish a functioning relationship with the EU.

• December 23 - Deficit Hawk Joe Biden Sabotaged Pandemic Relief Efforts
  Related:
  Why Joe Biden Won’t Cancel Your Student Loans - Forbes
  Biden Won’t Abolish ICE. Can He Fix It? - Slate
  Joe Biden says he WON'T loosen all Trump's immigration laws at Mexican border - Daily Mail
  Biden ‘won’t be Africa’s saviour’ - The Citizen
  Joe Biden Won’t Close Guantanamo Bay, But He Should - American Conservative
  Biden says will not kill Phase 1 trade deal with China immediately: NYT - Reuters
  Joe Biden Is Turning Out to Be Exactly Who He Told Us He Was - Jacobin

• December 21 - Happy Christmas
  Related:
  Christmas in the grip of the Spanish Flu - Daily Mail
  As shops removed blackout curtains for the first time in four years in 1918, war-weary Britons faced the difficult decision over whether to see family during global pandemic that killed 50 million

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Other issues:

Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review - OT 2020-102

The Brexit Deal Is Done But Services Are Likely To See Losses

So I was wrong predicting that there would be no Brexit deal.

Good.

A deal was found on Christmas eve and while both sides, Britain and the European Union, may have lost, the British loss seems bigger.

The 1256 pages of the deal are mostly about trade in goods, not about trade in services. While there will be no tariffs and quotas on goods there will be new bureaucratic measures imposed on goods exports:

In announcing the trade deal this week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain acknowledged it offered “not as much” access for financial firms “as we would have liked.” But he was not as straightforward about the difficulties facing even British retailers under the deal, analysts said.

In promising that there were “no non-tariff barriers” to selling goods after Brexit, he ignored the tens of millions of customs declarations, health assessments and other checks that businesses will now be responsible for.

The declaration issues will take a few months to sort out. Border queues can be expected in the first few weeks. Sensational reporting about them will follow. But the queues will soon make place for more routine patterns. Trade in goods will then revive to previous levels.

But services like banking, insurance, and legal advice will have more difficulties. Adherence to British rules will no longer be sufficient to be recognized as legit within the EU. Service companies will have to adhere to local rules of other EU countries to do business with them. It is here where Britain is most likely to lose business:

On services, by quitting the single market, it was made clear during the negotiations that the U.K. lost some market access for trade in financial services. This is still the case since there is no provision for the sector in the agreement. More than 40 percent of the U.K.’s exports to the EU are services, and the sector accounts for around 80 percent of the U.K.’s economic activity.

A look at recent British trade balance data shows why that will matter:

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Britain has an overall trade deficit in goods and a trade surplus in services. While the deficit in goods is expected to stay in the current range the surplus in services will probably shrink. The above numbers are for all British imports and exports. The numbers for Britain's trade with the EU are even more unbalanced:

[The deal] leaves financial firms without the biggest benefit of European Union membership: the ability to easily offer services to clients across the region from a single base. This has long allowed a bank in London to provide loans to a business in Venice, or trade bonds for a company in Madrid.

That loss is especially painful for Britain, which ran a surplus of £18 billion, or $24 billion, on trade in financial and other services with the European Union in 2019, but a deficit of £97 billion, or $129 billion, on trade in goods.

“The result of the deal is that the European Union retains all of its current advantages in trading, particularly with goods, and the U.K. loses all of its current advantages in the trade for services,” said Tom Kibasi, the former director of the Institute for Public Policy Research, a research institute. “The outcome of this trade negotiation is precisely what happens with most trade deals: The larger party gets what it wants and the smaller party rolls over.”

The British trade balance with the EU as well as its global trade balance are now likely to worsen. That will put pressure on the British pound. As Britain has a sovereign currency it can devalue it. But that is likely to increase the import prices for goods, especially food, and hit its people in their pockets.

But that will be a slow process and by then few will make the connection.

I have always seen the whole Brexit idea as something born out of British nostalgy for its lost empire. Ironically the result seems to have put it even further away from that once mighty status.

Happy Christmas

Winter solstice has passed and the days are again getting longer. The dark is receding.

Time for a festivity that is about hope, about the birth of a revolutionary and savior who will make the walls come down. If only symbolically.

Picture courtesy of the Bethlehem Association

In other years I used to visit family for Christmas. This year I decided against doing that. Staying apart makes it more safe for everyone. It also relieves me of three days of cooking. Not that I mind doing that. Not at all.

I will miss the kids' surprise and smiles when they open their presents, their curiosity in trying out all the new stuff. They promised to phone me up and to tell me what they got. I will, as usual, make fun about each piece. They will then fiercely defend their new toys as the best things ever. That exchange is an important part of our ritual.

I wish you all a contemplative, hope- and peaceful Christmas.

Bernhard