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US being allowed to challenge key psychiatric evidence in bid to reverse UK's refusal to extradite Assange


RT
Wed, 11 Aug 2021 17:41 UTC
assange protest britain court house
© Reuters / Henry Nicholls
Supporters of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange display a banner outside the Royal Courts of Justice during the U.S. government appeal against a ruling by a British judge that Assange should not be extradited, in London, Britain August 11, 2021
The High Court in London has allowed the US to challenge a psychiatric evaluation of Julian Assange, which was key in an earlier court ruling refusing Washington's request to extradite him for trial.

Wednesday's appeal proceeding is the latest development in the continuing effort by the US to extradite Assange to stand trial on American soil for alleged computer-related crimes.

A British judge refused the request in January on humanitarian grounds, ruling that there was a high risk of Assange taking his own life if she agreed to his extradition. Testimonies by psychiatrist Michael Kopelman about the poor state of the Australian's mental health were crucial in the case.

Comment: If there wasn't a real, breathing human being at the center of the matter, the legal battle over Assange's extradition could only be called farcical, given the ludicrous efforts by the US to twist the law in every possible way to accomplish it. As it stands, it is a tragedy, not only for Assange personally, but for truth speakers everywhere.

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Vader

Biden 'checking' if he can overrule states and order universal masks in schools

Samuel Chamberlain and David Marcus
NY Post
Tue, 10 Aug 2021 18:00 UTC
children masks
© Yasmina Chavez/Las Vegas Sun via AP
President Biden said Tuesday that his administration is examining whether he can order universal masking in public schools, overriding Republican governors in states like Florida and Texas.

"I don't believe that I do [have that power], thus far," Biden told reporters during an event in the East Room of the White House. "We're checking that."

Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended masking for all students, faculty, staff and visitors in K-12 schools due to the spread of the Delta variant.

However, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has dismissed the CDC recommendation. After initially banning school districts from imposing mask mandates and suggesting funding cuts for those that do require masking, the governor suggested Monday that the state could "move to withhold the salary" of local officials who make face coverings mandatory.
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Bad Guys

Taliban take 8th capital city, could take Kabul in next 3 months


Reuters
Wed, 11 Aug 2021 17:28 UTC
taliban fighter
© screenshot
Taliban fighters could isolate Afghanistan's capital in 30 days and possibly take it over in 90, a U.S. defence official told Reuters on Wednesday citing U.S. intelligence, as the resurgent militants took control of an eighth provincial Afghan capital.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the new assessment of how long Kabul could stand was a result of the rapid gains the Taliban had been making around the country as U.S.-led foreign forces leave.

"But this is not a foregone conclusion," the official added, saying that the Afghan security forces could reverse the momentum by putting up more resistance.

The Islamists now control 65% of Afghanistan and have taken or threaten to take 11 provincial capitals, a senior EU official said on Tuesday.

All gateways to Kabul, which lies in a valley surrounded by mountains, were choked with civilians entering the city and fleeing violence elsewhere, a Western security source in the city told Reuters, making it hard to tell whether Taliban fighters were also getting through.

"The fear is of suicide bombers entering the diplomatic quarters to scare, attack and ensure everyone leaves at the earliest opportunity," he said.
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Megaphone

'Liberal' West can't talk down to Russia about rights while also suppressing Covid-19 protests at home - Moscow's Foreign Ministry


RT
Wed, 11 Aug 2021 17:32 UTC
vilnius protest
© AFP / PETRAS MALUKAS
A series of crackdowns aimed at anti-lockdown demonstrators in the US and EU show that the West applies a double standard to protests happening at home, while supporting unrest in Russia, one of Moscow's top diplomats has said.

Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for Moscow's Foreign Ministry, issued a statement on Tuesday arguing that Lithuania's support for unauthorized rallies in Russia earlier this year was sharply contrasted by the government's own domestic policies. "In January, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda said that the situation in Russia, with the violent suppression of protests, is reminiscent of the Soviet era under Joseph Stalin," Zakharova quoted.
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Eye 1

NYPD spent $159mn on facial recognition, 'stingray' cellphone trackers & X-ray van spy tools using secretive fund, documents show


RT
Wed, 11 Aug 2021 17:28 UTC
nypd surveillance
© Reuters / Joshua Lott
For years, the NYPD used a "surveillance slush fund" for a range of policing tech with no public oversight - under a shadowy deal with city officials that kept equipment used in "confidential operations" secret.

Newly released documents reveal the New York Police Department (NYPD) has spent at least $159 million in public money since 2007, through a "Special Expenses" fund, on potentially invasive surveillance tools like facial-recognition software, predictive policing programs, "stingray" cellphone trackers - and even vans fitted with X-ray machines to spot weapons.

That year, the force entered into a "memorandum of understanding" (MoU) with the comptroller's office - the city's chief auditing agency - and the Office of Management and Budget that allowed it to bypass New York City council approval and keep details about its expenditures under this fund from official scrutiny.

The paperwork, which was made public by civil rights groups Legal Aid Society (LAS) and the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP), includes contracts, vendor agreements, bids, maintenance requests and special memos - all of which are heavily redacted.
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Question

After Russiagate, Why WOULDN'T People Be Skeptical About Covid?

Caitlin Johnstone
caitlinjohnstone.com
Wed, 04 Aug 2021 00:00 UTC
Maddow
You hardly ever hear about Russiagate anymore. The last time it made a blip in the radar was when disgraced Collusion author Luke Harding published a very thinly-sourced story in The Guardian claiming to have proof that Donald Trump was a Kremlin asset, but other mass media outlets barely touched it and it vanished as quickly as it came.

Looking at mainstream news outlets in 2021, you'd hardly know they'd recently spent years hammering the story into public consciousness that Vladimir Putin had infiltrated the highest levels of the US government, day after day after day after day after day.

But they did. Vast fortunes were raked in off the public interest generated by click-friendly stories about the latest BOMBSHELL revelation involving some peripheral member of Trump's associates perhaps maybe having some kind of contact with a Russian national at some point. Entire careers were built on this.

Then the Mueller investigation invalidated the entire claim by failing to indict a single American for conspiring with the Russian government, and the mass media who'd spent the previous few years bashing everyone in the face with that story just kind of slowly sidled away from it.

And now they act like it never happened.
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Eye 1

Digital health passports: The snare that will lure many into the one-world cashless system

Leo Hohmann
leohohmann.com
Wed, 04 Aug 2021 00:00 UTC
health passport
Several new technologies that appear separate and unrelated will soon converge, creating a giant digital trap that will easily entice the uninformed masses.

The digital trap has already been set and globalist elites are using COVID to speed up the process of convergence. Most people will sleep-walk right into the trap, which will ultimately reduce them to a human QR code - trackable, traceable, and 100 percent dependent on Big Tech and big government for their existence.

I'm going to unpack each of these seemingly separate threads that will be gradually merged into a single overarching socio-financial control grid.

The most imminent agenda item needed to jumpstart this system is a successful launch of digital health passports.

France, Italy, Ireland, Germany, Greece and many other nations have started mandating these passports on their citizens, many of whom are flooding into the streets to protest.

The movement toward digital health passports in the U.S. is happening more gradually but it's picking up steam.

In a briefing Monday, Aug. 2, Biden's Coronavirus Response Coordinator Jeffrey Zients announced "it's time to impose some requirements" where COVID vaccines are concerned.
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Brick Wall

Texas Supreme Court smacks down activist judge, rules AWOL democrats can be arrested upon return

Cristina Laila
The Gateway Pundit
Tue, 10 Aug 2021 13:53 UTC
awol democrats
The Texas Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled the AWOL Democrats can indeed be arrested.

State District Judge Brad Urrutia, a Democrat, signed an order Sunday night temporarily blocking the arrest of AWOL Texas Democrat lawmakers who fled the state to block the GOP's voting bills.

In mid-July at least 58 Democrat members of the state House of Representatives fled Texas and headed to Washington DC to block Republicans from advancing new voting laws through a special session of the legislature.
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Bug

Stripmining the middle class: Neoliberalism comes home to roost

Charles Hugh Smith
of two minds.org
Fri, 06 Aug 2021 00:00 UTC
neoliberalism
But once this last pool of wealth--America's middle class-- has been siphoned dry, then who's left to stripmine and exploit?

Neoliberalism loves markets, because markets enable the wealthy to own everything that produces income and capital gains. Neoliberalism--the superficially attractive notion that opening local markets to global capital generates prosperity for all involved--is all fun and games when it's stripmining some distant developing-world nation, but since opportunities have dried up globally, the stripmining machine has come home to America and its target is America's middle class.

I have long called this the Neocolonial-Financialization Model: in essence, Neoliberalism is a new, improved version of the old Colonial Model, in which the capital-rich colonial power grabs the political and economic reins via force or subterfuge and proceeds to strip the colonized nation of its wealth and resources and exploits its labor force to manufacture cheap goods for home markets.

In Neocolonialism, the forces of financialization (debt and leverage controlled by central banks and banking cartels) are used to indenture the local populace to the financial center: the peripheral "colonials" borrow money to buy the finished goods sold by the "core" corporations, doubly enriching the center with 1) interest and the transactional "skim" of financializing assets such as real estate, and 2) the profits made selling goods to the debtors.

Essential to the appeal of this colonialist model is the broad-based access to credit: everyone and her sister can suddenly afford to speculate in housing, stocks, commodities, etc., and ride this speculative bubble to a lifestyle that was once the exclusive preserve of the upper class.
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Broom

'Lost all credibility': LGBTQ group blasted for president's role in discrediting accusers of NY Gov. Cuomo's alleged sexual harassment


RT
Tue, 10 Aug 2021 15:47 UTC
Cuomo
© Getty Images / Gary Gershoff
New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo is welcomed to the stage by HRC President Alphonso David during the Human Rights Campaign's 19th Annual Greater New York Gala at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City.
Prominent US LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign has drawn flak for "stalling for time" after launching a probe into its president's alleged role in discrediting sexual harassment claims against New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

The HRC hired "outside" law firm Sidley Austin - on which it has repeatedly bestowed a number of 'corporate equality' accolades in recent years - on Monday to conduct an "internal investigation" into head official Alphonso David's involvement in helping Cuomo respond to the allegations against him.

David, who served as Cuomo's counsel from 2015 to 2019, was mentioned at least 36 times in last week's bombshell report by New York Attorney General Letitia James that stated Cuomo had sexually harassed 11 women, including former staffers.
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