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A Swedish court finally injects some sense into Assange case

Craig Murray
craigmurray.org.uk
Wed, 05 Jun 2019 20:11 UTC
free assange sign
When, eight years late, the European Arrest Warrant request for Assange was finally put before a Swedish court, the court refused to issue it.

Readers of this blog are amongst the very few people who have had the chance to learn the information that the original European Arrest Warrant for Julian Assange from Sweden was not issued by any court but by a prosecutor; that this was upheld in the UK Supreme Court despite the Court's open acknowledgement that this was not what the UK Parliament had intended by the phrase that the warrant must come from a "judicial authority"; and that the law had been changed immediately thereafter so it could not be done again.

Consequently in seeking a new European Arrest Warrant against Assange, Swedish prosecutors had finally, eight years on, to ask a court for the warrant. And the court looked at the case and declined, saying that the move would be disproportionate. It therefore remains the case that there is no Swedish extradition warrant for Assange. This is a desperate disappointment to the false left in the UK, the Blairites and their ilk, who desperately want Assange to be a rapist in order to avoid the moral decision about prosecuting him for publishing truths about the neo-con illegal wars which they support.

Comment:

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Russian Flag

Behold Operation Bagration, 'D-Day' of The Eastern Front in WW2

John Wight
RT
Fri, 07 Jun 2019 20:12 UTC
Hill of Glory
© Getty Images / Jon G. Fuller / VW Pics
The Hill of Glory or Mound of Glory is a war memorial and open air museum commemorating Operation Bagration and the expulsion of the Nazis from Belarus in the Great Patriotic War
Operation Bagration was the D-Day of the Eastern Front. In scope, size, scale and impact, it was a remarkable feat of arms unmatched in WWII.

Crucially, Overlord (D-Day) and Bagration were planned and undertaken as part of a coordinated effort on the part of the Grand Alliance to break the back of German resistance in Europe with a determination that was equally held by the Soviets, British and Americans to force the unconditional surrender of Hitler's Germany.

In his book Stalin's Wars Geoffrey Roberts reveals that, "Soviet plans for Operation Bagration were closely co-ordinated with Anglo-American preparations for the launch of the long-awaited Second Front in France." The Soviets were informed of the approximate date of D-Day in early April and, on 18 April, Stalin cabled Roosevelt and Churchill that, "as agreed in Tehran, the Red Army will launch a new offensive at the same time so as to give maximum support to the Anglo-American operation.'"
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Star of David

Netanyahu's grip on power slipping as he calls new election to block rival Gantz

Jonathan Cook
The National
Sun, 02 Jun 2019 19:52 UTC
netanyahu
© Ronen Zvulun / Associated Press
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrives at a weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem.
In a sign of how politically vulnerable he has rapidly become, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu plunged Israel into new elections last week - less than two months after his far-right bloc appeared to win at the ballot box.

Netanyahu was forced to dissolve the 120-member parliament to block his chief rival, Benny Gantz, from getting a chance to assemble an alternative governing coalition.

Gantz, a former army general who heads the Blue and White party, won 35 seats, the same number as Netanyahu's Likud party, in the April election, but had fewer potential allies to form a majority. So in September, Israelis will cast their votes afresh.
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Post-It Note

New president of Ukraine tweets carbon-copy Poroshenko screed about 'imperial Russia' - Claims it was planted


RT
Fri, 07 Jun 2019 19:46 UTC
Poroshenko Zelenskiy
© Reuters/Vasily Fedosenko ; Reuters/Gleb Garanich
Petro Poroshenko (L) Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy (R)
New Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has already made the gaffe of a lifetime, tweeting a plagiarized part of a speech by his predecessor Petro Poroshenko. He is now putting it down to 'sabotage.'

Zelensky has been in office for barely two weeks before taking off for Brussels to meet with European Council President Donald Tusk. On June 5, his Twitter account quoted an excerpt of a statement he made during the meeting:
"Ukraine in the EU is the death of the Russian imperial project. Moreover, it is a heavy blow to Russian authoritarianism, a path toward democratic change in Russia and in the whole post-Soviet space."

Comment: So, either he's selling out Ukraine, just like Porky, and doing so with evangelical gusto, wishing to 'convert' the whole of Eurasia in the process...

Or 'my account was hacked' is actually plausible in his case because, well, he's beset on all sides by diehard Ukies.

Time will tell...

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Bad Guys

Mexico claiming some migrant caravan funding came from U.S., England - freezes assets of entities believed involved

Ildefonso Ortiz and Brandon Darby
Breitbart News
Thu, 06 Jun 2019 19:24 UTC
migrant caravan mexico
© Associated Press/Rodrigo Abd
Migrant caravan blocked by police near Arriaga, Mexico, October 27, 2018
Mexican tax officials froze the assets of 26 individuals and entities they allege are tied to human smuggling organizations or to promoting Central American migrant caravans. The caravans moved thousands of individuals from the "northern triangle" through Mexico to the U.S. border. The funding for the migrant caravans allegedly came from the U.S., England, Africa, and Central America.

Through a prepared statement, Mexico's Finance and Tax Secretariat (SHCP) announced the freezing of the accounts claiming the move resulted from an investigation by their Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF).

The operation tracked financial movements from October 2018 through current dates in an attempt to determine the sources of funding for the migrant caravans. According to their statement, the UIF identified a group of individuals that made several questionable international financial transactions from the cities of Chiapas and Queretaro during the times that the migrant caravans were moving through those places.

Comment:

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Eye 1

Twitter's 'simplified' new rules of conduct are just as vague and arbitrary


RT
Fri, 07 Jun 2019 17:07 UTC
twitter protest
© Global Look / Nicolas Datiche
Twitter has revamped its rules, cutting them into tweet-sized morsels in the name of a "healthier public conversation." Just as opaque and patronizing as before, they're now even more likely to get you banned. Move over, YouTube!

Twitter has presented its users with a reformulated "easier to understand" set of rules, moving most of the text off the main page for a pleasing aesthetic experience and upping the chance users will never read the detailed policies. The byzantine and often self-contradictory conduct code is chock full of pitfalls, and users are quickly finding out the range of bannable offenses has swollen to rival YouTube's and Facebook's.

"Private Information," "Sensitive Media" and "Terrorism & Violent Extremism" are the subsections advertised on the new rules page as having received a makeover, but reading through them is likely to leave the user even more confused than before. "We also prohibit the glorification of violence," the tweet-sized takeaway under "violence and extremism" reads, but if you click through to the actual policy page, it turns out "violent acts by state actors" get a pass.
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Blue Planet

US 'very encouraged' by Mexican migration proposals - but 'still a long way to go'


Yahoo News
Fri, 07 Jun 2019 17:01 UTC
migrants mexico border Guatamala
© Associated Press
Migrants, part of the caravan hoping to reach the U.S. border, walk on the shoulder of a road in Frontera Hidalgo, Mexico
U.S. officials were very encouraged by Mexican immigration proposals but there is still a long way to go as negotiators begin their latest round of talks on Friday, Vice President Mike Pence's chief of staff told Fox News.

"Yesterday they came back I think very open to those recommendations and so we're very encouraged as to where the negotiations are going," Pence aide Marc Short said. "But there frankly is still a long way to go." He said negotiations were under way, with White House counsel Pat Cipollone leading talks for the Americans.

Comment: See also:

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Attention

Key figure that Mueller report linked to Russia was actually a State Department intel source

John Solomon
The Hill
Fri, 07 Jun 2019 16:00 UTC
Konstantin Kilimnik

Konstantin Kilimnik
In a key finding of the Mueller report, Ukrainian businessman Konstantin Kilimnik, who worked for Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, is tied to Russian intelligence.

But hundreds of pages of government documents - which special counsel Robert Mueller possessed since 2018 - describe Kilimnik as a "sensitive" intelligence source for the U.S. State Department who informed on Ukrainian and Russian matters.

Why Mueller's team omitted that part of the Kilimnik narrative from its report and related court filings is not known. But the revelation of it comes as the accuracy of Mueller's Russia conclusions face increased scrutiny.

The incomplete portrayal of Kilimnik is so important to Mueller's overall narrative that it is raised in the opening of his report. "The FBI assesses" Kilimnik "to have ties to Russian intelligence," Mueller's team wrote on Page 6, putting a sinister light on every contact Kilimnik had with Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman.
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Light Sabers

Russia slams US Navy for 'unacceptable behavior' after warships' near-miss in East China Sea


RT
Fri, 07 Jun 2019 16:04 UTC
US Navy's USS Chancellorsville
© AFP / Anthony Wallace
US Navy's USS Chancellorsville
Russia has accused the US Navy of "unacceptable" and dangerous maneuvering, after a US warship almost caused a catastrophic collision with a Russian destroyer in the East China Sea.

The Russian Navy said that the USS Chancellorsville, a guided-missile cruiser, unexplainedly changed direction and came within just 50 meters of the Admiral Vinogradov on Friday at 6:35 Moscow time. It added that a collision was only prevented after the Russian crew implemented emergency maneuvers and changed course.

A statement from Russia's Pacific Fleet added that a complaint had been lodged with the command of the American cruiser.
"We made our protest to the command of the American ship on an international wavelength and pointed out that such actions are unacceptable."

Comment: In fact, US media is reporting a mirror version of events, in which the Russian ship was in the wrong. Video and photo evidence appears to support the Russian account:

russian us ships collision

That's the Russian ship on the left
As pointed out by Moon of Alabama:
The Handbook of Nautical Rules lists as the International Maritime Organization Rule 15:
When two power-driven vessels are crossing so as to involve risk of collision, the vessel which has the other on her own starboard side shall keep out of the way and shall, if the circumstances admit, avoid crossing ahead of the other vessel.
The book explains further:
Rule 15 requires the vessel that has the other on its starboard side to stay out of the way, and to pass behind. The vessel on the right becomes the stand-on vessel and must follow Rule 17 (Action by Stand-on Vessel). The vessel on the left becomes the give-way vessel and must follow Rule 16 (Action by Give-way Vessel).
...
The give-way vessel is required (if the circumstances of the case admit) to pass behind the stand-on vessel and so a turn to starboard would be in order. To keep the area to the left of the stand-on vessel clear for the give-way vessel's maneuvers, Rule 17 directs the stand-on vessel to refrain from turning to port.
Rule 16 says:
Every vessel which is directed to keep out of the way of another vessel shall, so far as possible, take early and substantial action to keep well clear.
and Rule 17:
Where one of two vessels is to keep out of the way, the other shall keep her course and speed.
Here's US Navy footage of the near-collision:



The Russian ship is clearly 'to starboard', meaning, according to basic nautical rules, it is the American ship that must change course.

In this case, it didn't, forcing the Russians to alter course to their starboard, something the US Navy has spun as a 'dangerous maneuver', but without which one or both ships would now be at the bottom of the ocean...

There was likely a bigger maneuver in play here. Besides the issue of who had right of way at the moment of 'near-miss', the fact that the ships were anywhere near each other - off the coast of China - speaks to the Russian-Chinese 'challenge' of American 'ownership' of the oceans...

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Bulb

Russia to launch Nord Stream 2 despite Danish hurdles & US threats to derail project


RT
Fri, 07 Jun 2019 16:01 UTC
Nord Stream 2
© Nord Stream 2 / Axel Schmidt
Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said Denmark would eventually provide the necessary permits for completing the gas pipeline from Russia to Europe despite aggressive US attempts to block the project.

The undersea pipeline passes through the territorial waters of Russia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany. Only Danish authorities have yet to allow the pipeline in its territorial waters.

The project is being implemented under an avalanche of criticism from Washington. The US has persistently slammed the EU over excessive reliance on Russian energy supplies, while accusing Moscow of abusing its dominant position in the European energy market.

"We believe that they should give their consent. There is no obstacle to it, and the Nord Stream 1 is the proof, since this project was implemented successfully," Novak told journalists at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, referring to the original pipeline that started operating in November 2011.
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