NINA CROSS—This article is a second piece focusing on Belmarsh prison, where the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, continues to be arbitrarily detained by the British government. The first part showed how Belmarsh prison has been systematically denying Assange access to justice by restricting all the means through which he could prepare his defence; access to and possession of legal documents, talking to his US lawyers, restricted meetings with his UK lawyers, and access to a laptop as a basic means to prepare his defence.
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STEPHEN KARGANOVIC—Without ample supplies of Soros cash to fuel the enthusiasm (and the avarice) of Sharp’s street infantry, international media satanization and isolation of the targeted country’s leadership, financial and economic destabilization and pressure brought about from abroad, as well as patient long-term intelligence recruitment and corruption of key domestic figures and institutions well in advance of the official launching of the “color revolution,” little would have been accomplished just by following Sharp’s supposedly brilliant strategic injunctions.
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But for all its limited scope, its transgressions of the norms of civil society are hair-raising. As is the blanket of silence from the media. In the first few weeks after the leak, the mainstream UK press simply ignored it even though editors must have seen it on social media, RT or Sputnik. When the story was picked up it was just about the use of Integrity Initiative’s official Twitter account to retweet negative messages about Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. After the Foreign Office was forced into replying, and claimed that the Institute for Statecraft “is independent of government and is non-partisan,” its statement was reprinted by all major UK outlets in a news wire format, without any questioning or a sarcasm emoji.
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KENNETH SURIN—Israeli conduct falls short of standards expected of democratic nations– e.g. using military snipers to murder and wound with impunity medical personnel and journalists in Gaza, all clearly identified by their clothing. There are aspects of Israeli policy and practice with tangible similarities to the Nazis– arbitrary confiscation and demolition of Palestinian dwellings, the use of attack dogs to bite and corral non-violent demonstrators, the repeated use of collective punishments, starvation as a weapon of occupation, the deliberate destruction of agricultural crops, the use of snipers to target unarmed civilians, and so forth.
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MARK TALIANO—9/11 was a neo-con coup. To believe otherwise is to willfully suspend the laws of physics, and to reject historical facts and common sense. It requires a leap of misguided faith.
