Julian Assange: Does Wikileaks founder have a powerful ally in new Australian PM?

By Tiffanie Turnbull
BBC News, Sydney

11/06/22

After more than a decade spent trying to avoid extradition from the UK, Julian Assange is running out of time and options.

But with the election of a new government in his native Australia last month, his supporters hope he has a new, powerful ally.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has previously spoken against Mr Assange's incarceration, and the activist's family are counting on him to put pressure on the UK as the deadline for a critical deportation decision looms.

The Wikileaks founder is wanted in the US over classified documents leaked in 2010 and 2011, which it says broke the law and endangered lives.

But Mr Assange's supporters say the reports exposed US wrongdoing in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and were in the public interest.

After a long legal battle in the UK, the courts in April referred the US extradition request to the Home Secretary for her final decision.

Priti Patel has until 19 June - exactly 10 years since Mr Assange was last free - to make it.

"At this point, until Priti Patel signs off, it is entirely political. And so it's open to a political solution," says Mr Assange's brother, Gabriel Shipton.

So what - if anything - can Australia do?

Mr Albanese - a signatory to the Bring Julian Assange Home Campaign petition - last year said the 50-year-old should be freed.

"Enough is enough," he said at a party room meeting.

"I don't have sympathy for many of his actions but essentially I can't see what is served by keeping him incarcerated."

Anthony Albanese has previously spoken in support of Mr Assange's release

But since taking office Mr Albanese has been coy on what action his government will take on the matter.

When asked about Mr Assange at a press conference last week, he said "not all foreign affairs is best done with the loud hailer".

The comment has buoyed Mr Assange's family, with Mr Shipton saying it represents a huge shift from the position of previous governments.

"[They] have always said 'Julian is receiving consular assistance' and said things like 'this as a matter of for the UK courts and the government cannot interfere'."

"[They] have become complicit in Julian's persecution and imprisonment by sitting on their hands."

He says the family is finally confident Australia is having conversations "behind closed doors", which they hope could be pivotal.

Gabriel Shipton (right) has advocated for Mr Assange's release alongside his father John Shipton

Donald Rothwell, a professor of international law, agrees the Albanese government's election presents a "reset" opportunity and says any intervention could have sway.

Though there has been little transparency, Australia's previous government seemingly did not seek to raise the matter at a high level, he says.

It's a particularly sensitive problem as it involves two of Australia's closest allies and - as the previous government often pointed out - it is a legal matter.

"To degree, they're right," says Prof Rothwell, from Australian National University.

"That doesn't mean to say that - at this very pointy end - the Australian government is not able to start to make political representations."

Mr Albanese is seen as likely to quietly appeal to both the UK and US through diplomatic channels.

"There was some speculation that the Biden presidency could see the government take a different view on Assange," Prof Rothwell says.

"There's really been no indication. But it needs to be understood that the power to halt this matter clearly rests with President Biden. The US could end it tomorrow."

UK precedent to deny request

In 2000 the UK decided that former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet should not be extradited to Spain to face charges over human rights violations on health grounds.

So regardless of any Australian pressure "there is a significant precedent in another very, very high profile matter," Prof Rothwell says.

And in 2012, the UK refused a US extradition request for British computer hacker Gary McKinnon, judging it to be "incompatible with his human rights".

"He had similar depression and Asperger's syndrome as Julian and Theresa May rejected that extradition because the care that he needed he would not be able to get in the US prison system," Mr Shipton says.


Protestors across the world have called for the UK Home Secretary to deny the extradition request

But the expectation of Mr Assange's legal team is that Ms Patel will sign off on the extradition order anyway, he adds.

Mr Assange is still able to appeal to the High Court and raise his case at the European Court of Human Rights.

Legal battle already spans a decade

In 2012 Mr Assange sought asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, fearing US prosecution.

But after seven years confined to the embassy, he was removed and arrested in 2019 after Ecuador withdrew his asylum status - citing alleged bad behaviour.

He has since been held in London's Belmarsh Prison, where his health has deteriorated. His legal team argues he will die if he's sent to the US.

Assange arrest anniversary prompts London protests

Julian Assange: Campaigner or attention seeker?

In January 2021, a judge sided with Mr Assange's team, ruling he could not be extradited because there was no guarantee that American authorities could look after him.

The High Court then reversed that decision last December, saying that the US had since provided sufficient assurances that Mr Assange could be safely cared for.

Mr Assange faces a possible jail term of up to 175 years in the US, his lawyers have said.

However the US government told the High Court the sentence was more likely to be between four and six years - and it would even consider sending him to an Australian jail.

'Threat to democracy'

Mr Shipton argues much is at stake - including global press freedoms.

Mr Assange's supporters say he is a publisher and a journalist and his extradition would have a chilling effect.

"People should be able to expose war crimes, they should be able to publish about government corruption or torture.

"Julian's prosecution means that… journalists can't do their job, and that's a threat to democracy."

Speaking about his brother, he adds: "This endless Snakes and Ladders legal situation takes its toll on him. It's punishment by process.

"This man is suffering."

Watch: The background to Julian Assange's extradition case

Shamans predict Peru to reach 2022 World Cup

MALAYSIA
Ex-Bar chiefs call for full details of mandatory death penalty repeal, formalised by tabling of Bill

Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan, in welcoming the move to abolish the mandatory death penalty, said ‘the devil is in the details’. — File picture by Ham Abu Bakar

By R. Loheswar
Saturday, 11 Jun 2022 

KUALA LUMPUR, June 11 — Lauding the government’s move to abolish the mandatory death penalty, two ex-Bar Council presidents said they want to see the details of the proposed amendments and hope the Bill to amend related laws are presented in Parliament with full transparency.

Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan and Ragunath Kesavan said yesterday's announcement was an important first step. but it does not mean the death penalty has been abolished totally and they would like to see what amendments were proposed in detail in Parliament.

Ragunath Kesavan described as 'excellent', the move to abolish the mandatory death penalty. — File picture by Ham Abu Bakar

"The ideal position is to abolish the death penalty altogether but this is an important first step,” Ambiga told Malay Mail.

"Of course, the devil is in the details and I would like to see the actual bills and to see the actual amendments."

Ragunath when contacted was ecstatic at the news and said he is optimistic that the laws would be passed given the government's commitment to it.

"Excellent move. A huge step forward for a more humane criminal justice system in Malaysia. It puts back the discretion in the judiciary to decide on the punishment.

"The other proposed reforms are very progressive and welcomed. This is the commitment given by the government. A clear indication of intent and willingness to commit to reforms,” he said.

For years local NGOs and human rights groups have called for the mandatory death penalty to be abolished as there have been countless drug mules and innocent people duped into trafficking drugs.

They have no choice but to face the gallows once sentenced and many of the accused families did not know how to get clemency.

In August 2019, the Pakatan Harapan (PH) administration formed the Special Committee to Review Alternative Punishments to the Mandatory Death Penalty to examine alternatives to the mandatory death sentence.

The PH government collapsed in February 2020, however, before the Bill for the abolition of the death penalty could be tabled in the March meeting of Parliament that year.

At the time, de facto law minister Datuk Seri Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar said that before the government decides on any amendments, it needed to determine the effectiveness of capital punishment as a deterrent to crime while also looking at alternative punishments.

Yesterday, Wan Junaidi announced that the government has agreed to abolish the mandatory death penalty and substitute sentence at the discretion of the court.

In explaining the move to abolish the mandatory death penalty Wan Junaidi said they needed to ensure the relevant laws took into account the principles of proportionality and constitutionality in terms of the crime committed.

Goh Cia Yee, a criminal lawyer with the Young Lawyers Movement also welcomed the move adding that sentencing guidelines should be offence specific and must be subject to review.

"The discretion should not be limited by a set of circumstances as in the current 39B provision. The court should be allowed to exercise its discretion fully with the guidance of common law in choosing the appropriate sentence,” Goh told Malay Mail.

"Rather than stating the circumstances in the provision itself, a better approach would be to have sentencing guidelines that may suggest factors to consider in the determination of whether the death sentence should be met or not.

"The sentencing guideline should be offence specific and subject to proper review from time to time by the sentencing council,” he said.

Lawyer and The Malaysian United Democratic Alliance (Muda) vice-president Lim Wei Jiet said the move was a long time coming and will distance the country from the status quo of sentencing someone to death automatically for drug offences whether they deserve it or not — which he said is a thing of the past.

"Moving forward I hope the prime minister will immediately table the amendments to all legislations relevant to this matter to make sure this mandatory death penalty is taken out from out books.

"The next thing we need is a moratorium on all executions for those convicted under the death penalty pending these amendments,” Lim said when contacted.

Following Wan Junaidi's announcement, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob explained that the death penalty will remain and not be abolished, and the change is only on the fact that judges are now given discretion in sentencing.

Wan Junaidi had said the Cabinet had also agreed for a further study to be carried out on the proposed substitute sentences for 11 offences carrying the mandatory death penalty, one of which is under Section 39B of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952.

He also said the government has yet to set a timeframe for the abolition of the mandatory death penalty to take effect with many areas needing refining, including the proposal to set up a tribunal to study cases already served with the mandatory death sentence.

After announcement of repeal, PM says death penalty still remains but judges given discretion in sentencing

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob speaks during the Peninsular Malaysia Orang Asli Association’s (POASM) annual general meeting in Bera June 10, 2022. — Bernama pic

Friday, 10 Jun 2022 

BERA, June 10 — Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob today explained that the death penalty will remain and not be abolished, and the change is only on the fact that judges are now given discretion in sentencing.

He said this in response to Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Parliament and Law) Datuk Seri Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar’s statement earlier that the government had agreed to abolish the mandatory death penalty and to substitute it with other sentences which are subject to the discretion of the court.

Ismail Sabri said with the decision, the “mandatory” part will be removed and judges will no longer be bound by the word (mandatory) which had left them with no choice but to impose the death penalty on criminal offenders as provided by law, such as in drug trafficking cases.

“We are of the view that everyone deserves a second chance. If there are two options (of sentences), and if the offender is found to be a hardcore drug trafficker to the extent of causing hundreds of thousands of people to die (due to drugs), he can be sentenced to death and allowed to be sent to the gallows.

“However, if the judge, in his discretion, felt that the offender should be given a second chance and decided to sentence him to life imprisonment with whipping, he can substitute the mandatory death penalty with that life sentence,” he said.

Ismail Sabri was met after officiating the Peninsular Malaysia Orang Asli Association’s annual general meeting here today.

Ismail Sabri said Section 39B of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952, for example, provides for a mandatory death penalty upon conviction, which left the judge with no choice but to impose the death penalty even though there may be several factors that can be taken into consideration.

“Sometimes, the case involved an 18-year-old. The judge may find him ‘trapped’ as drugs were found in his bag but he could not prove that they belonged to somebody else, and the court had to send him to the gallows even though the judge felt that the accused was just a young man who should be given a second chance to change.

“We have to understand that the death penalty is not abolished and will remain, it’s just that it will no longer be mandatory,” he said.

Ismail Sabri added that although the government agreed in principle to abolish the implementation of the mandatory death penalty, the matter still needed to be scrutinised. — Bernama

New study estimates 1.6 million in the US identify as transgender

The study estimates that about 0.5 per cent of all US adults, some 1.3 million people, and about 1.4 per cent, or 300,000, of youth between 13- and 17-years-old identify as transgender, having a different gender identity than the sex they were assigned at birth. ― AFP pic

Saturday, 11 Jun 2022 

WASHINGTON, June 11 ― A study published yesterday estimates that nearly 1.64 million people over the age of 13 in the United States identify themselves as transgender, based on an analysis of newly expanded federal health surveys.

The study estimates that about 0.5 per cent of all US adults, some 1.3 million people, and about 1.4 per cent, or 300,000, of youth between 13- and 17-years-old identify as transgender, having a different gender identity than the sex they were assigned at birth.

The analysis was done by researchers at the Williams Institute, a think tank at UCLA's Law School focused on gender identity public policy, and concluded that the percentage and number of adults who identify as transgender had “remained steady” since the institute last made estimates in reports in 2016 and 2017.

“This report shows trans people live everywhere and their needs and concerns need to be listened to and be addressed in the public policy landscape,” Jody L. Herman, one of the study's authors, said in an interview.

The researchers used data collected between 2017 and 2020 from two different kinds of surveys done by the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

Jae Sevelius, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the study, called it the best population estimate yet using “the best available data that we have currently to make these estimates.”

“That being said, even the best available data is not great,” Sevelius said, adding that the findings of the new study, which was not peer-reviewed, aligns with earlier estimates.

Sevelius and a colleague conducted a peer-reviewed meta-analysis published in 2017 in the American Journal of Public Health that found nearly 1 million US adults were transgender, based on more limited data than in the Williams Institute study. They called it a conservative estimate and concluded in their paper that future surveys would likely find higher numbers of transgender people.

The Williams Institute researchers and Sevelius noted the CDC data has limitations. For example, in 2017 the CDC introduced an optional set of questions about gender identity in its Youth Risk Behavior Survey for high school students, but only 15 states have used those questions, the Williams Institute study said.

Also, the language used in some survey questions is not ideal, Sevelius said: For example, some CDC questions ask transgender respondents if they consider themselves “male-to-female” or “female-to-male,” terminology some trans people reject.

“It's using a very crude tool to measure something that's extremely nuanced, especially for youth,” Sevelius said. ― Reuters

CLIMATE CHANGE SILVER LINING
Mystery over Italian climber's death in Himalayas solved as boot emerges from glacier 50 years later

10 Jun, 2022 


Nanga Parbat is the ninth-highest mountain on Earth, at 8126m high. Photo/ Getty Images
Daily Telegraph UK
By Nick Squires


The discovery of a climber's boot that lay entombed in a Himalayan glacier for more than 50 years has laid to rest, once and for all, one of the most enduring controversies in the world of mountaineering.

The leather boot belonged to Guenther Messner, a young Italian climber who died on the ice-shrouded slopes of 8126m-high (26,660ft) Nanga Parbat in Pakistan in 1970.

He was the brother of Reinhold Messner, who went on to become one of the world's most celebrated alpinists and became the first person to climb Mt Everest without additional oxygen.

For decades there was speculation and rumour that Reinhold left his less-experienced brother to die on the mountain in a selfish push to win glory for himself by reaching the summit.

Two of the climbers on the expedition, Hans Saler and Max von Kienlin, wrote books in which they claimed Reinhold was so obsessed with conquering Nanga Parbat he abandoned his frostbitten and delirious brother.

Italian mountaineer Reinhold Messner points to a photograph of Mount Everest after his unprecedented solo ascent without supplementary oxygen, 1980. Photo / Getty Images

Reinhold always denied the accusations, saying the pair had reached the summit of Nanga Parbat, the ninth highest peak in the world, only for his 23-year-old brother to be tragically swept away in an avalanche during the descent.

Reinhold barely escaped with his life, staggering down the mountain, wandering for six days until he was rescued and losing several toes to frostbite.

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Now, 52 years on, the location of the boot appears to corroborate his insistence he did not abandon his younger brother.

The boot was found by local people at the foot of the mountain's western Diamir face – exactly where Reinhold said his brother had been swept to his death.

A photograph of the boot was posted by Reinhold Messner on Instagram, where he has more than 170,000 followers.

"This is further proof that I did not abandon Günther," he told Corriere della Sera newspaper. "People said I left him to die, sacrificing him for my own ambition. I'm at peace with myself, even if the accident changed my life."
Reinhold Messner is seen at the special exhibition at Messner Mountain Museum on July 15, 2020 in Bolzano, Italy. Photo / Getty Images

He recalled that bones belonging to his brother had been found in the same area in 2005, along with his other boot.

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DNA analysis by Austrian experts showed the bones belonged to Günther Messner.

"The remains were found on the slope which I had always said was the place where I saw him disappear."

There was no doubting the recently discovered boot also belonged to his brother because it had been specially made for the expedition, he said.

The discovery offered final vindication of his account of what happened to his brother on the frozen flanks of Nanga Parbat more than half a century ago, he said.

In a book he wrote in 2003, The Naked Mountain, Reinhold said as they descended the mountain, his brother was suffering from altitude sickness. He said after they became separated he made desperate attempts to locate Günther, but to no avail.

"The mountain never lies and, if there was still the need, the discovery of this boot definitively establishes the truth of my brother's death. This is incontrovertible proof that Günther disappeared during the descent, not during the ascent."

The unearthed boot belonged to Guenther Messner, who died on the slopes of Nanga Parbat in 1970. Photo / Instagram

He now wants the boot sent back to Italy, where it will go on display in one of the Messner Mountain Museums that he has established in his native South Tyrol, the German-speaking corner of northern Italy.

The fact he survived the treacherous conditions that carried away his brother was a miracle, he said.

"When they found me down in the valley I hadn't eaten for six days and I weighed 56kg. I cheated death."

A legend in the climbing community, Reinhold Messner was the first person to scale all 14 of the world's peaks that exceed 8000m (26,250 feet) in height.

A former member of the European Parliament, where he championed environmental issues, he has traversed Antarctica on foot via the South Pole and trekked solo across the Gobi Desert.

Smithfield Foods to shutter California meat-packing plant


VERNON, Calif. (AP) — Meat-packing giant Smithfield Foods said Friday it will close its only California plant next year, citing the escalating cost of doing business in the state.

The Farmer John meat-packing plant in Vernon, an industrial suburb south of Los Angeles, will shut down in February, with its 1,800 employees receiving severance and job placement support along with bonuses for those who choose to stay on the job until the closure, said Jim Monroe, vice president of corporate affairs.

Some workers, who on average earn about $21 per hour, also will have opportunities to relocate to other facilities owned by the Virginia-based Smithfield Foods Inc.

The Vernon plant slaughters pigs and packages products such as ham and bacon. Some operations will be moved to other facilities in the Midwest, but the overall reduction in processing capacity is prompting Smithfield to reduce its sow herd in Utah. The company also said it is exploring ways to exit its farms in California and Arizona.

Monroe said operating costs in California are much higher than in other areas of the country, including taxes and the price of water, electricity and natural gas.

“Our utility costs in California are 3 1/2 times higher per head than our other locations where they do the same type of work,” he said.

The shutdown is not expected to reduce supply or increase costs on products, and Farmer John Products will still be sold in California, Monroe said.

“There won’t be any impact on our customers,” he said.

The Vernon plant has been the target of repeated protests by animal rights activists over its treatment of hogs. It also was hard-hit during the COVID-19 pandemic, with some 300 employees exposed to infections in 2020. Several were hospitalized.

California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health fined Smithfield Foods about $60,000 for safety violations that exposed workers to infection.

Smithfield Foods was founded in Smithfield, Virginia, in 1936 and according to its website provides more than 40,000 jobs in the United States. It was acquired in 2013 by Hong Kong-based WH Group.

Washington Post promotes Trump’s other “big lie”: The Wuhan Lab theory

Andre Damon@Andre__Damon
WSWS.ORG

On Thursday, the Senate held a public hearing documenting how former president Donald Trump used his “big lie” about the 2020 election to justify an attempted fascist coup, aiming to abolish the peaceful transfer of power and turn the United States into a dictatorship.

But that same day, the Washington Postpublished an editorial promoting Trump’s other big lie: the claim that COVID-19 is a man-made virus created at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.

 

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro (right) called COVID-19 a "weaponized virus" that created by the Chinese Communist Party. Trump repeatedly called COVID-19 Kung-Flu and the China virus.

 (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The Post promotes the “hypothesis” that “the infection might have resulted from a laboratory accident or an inadvertent spill connected to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” It adds, “At the time, the WIV was carrying out experiments using genetically modified viruses similar to the pandemic strain.”

The Post frames its promotion of Trump’s racist effort to blame China for the COVID-19 pandemic as a declaration that “two broad hypotheses have arisen about how the virus first infected humans in Wuhan in late 2019.”

This is like saying that there are “two broad hypotheses” about the validity of the 2020 presidential election results. No, there are not. There is the truth, and there is a right-wing conspiracy theory.

Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen had no evidence to support it and was a transparent falsification. It does not require forensic examinations of voting machines, polling booths, or electoral records. Any politician or journalist who gives the slightest credence to this claim is a fascist sympathizer.

Trump’s election lie was concocted by Trump advisers Stephen K. Bannon, Peter Navarro, Jason Miller, and their co-conspirators, organized around Bannon’s Podcast, “War Room: Pandemic.” On January 5, the day before Trump’s coup attempt, Bannon declared, “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow.”

Bannon’s podcast was, however, created to promote a different lie. On January 25, 2020, Bannon rebranded his “War Room: Impeachment” podcast to focus on the claim that China had created COVID-19 as a biological weapon to attack the United States. He called it “War Room: Pandemic,” which is its name to this day.

In the photo above, published by CNN, Wang DingGang, who appears to have originated the claim that COVID-19 was a man-made virus, is pictured with Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, as Bannon is shown in the background. Li-Meng Yan, a lab leak advocate who Bannon claimed was a 'Whistleblower,' Is reflected in a mirror. Credit: CNN

In the first episode of the podcast, taped on January 25, Bannon invited Washington Times columnist Bill Gertz to speak about an upcoming article (of which Bannon had advanced knowledge) asserting that “Coronavirus may have originated in lab linked to China’s biowarfare program.”

Days earlier, Bannon’s business partner and collaborator, the Chinese expatriate Miles Guo, published an article asserting that “the real source of the coronavirus is from ‘a lab in Wuhan’ linked to its covert biological weapons programs.”

Trump, Navarro and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo would all promote the claim that COVID-19 was a biological weapon created by the Chinese Communist Party. Trump’s Deputy National Security Advisor Matthew Pottinger would promote a variant of the lie claiming that COVID-19 was released by accident.

This conspiracy theory would be embraced by the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, as well as leading columnists for the New York Times.

In the midst of this right-wing firestorm, led by the fascist gutter press (Breitbart, the National Pulse, Newsmax, OAN) and supported by the “mainstream media,” the World Health Organization published its interim report on the origins of COVID-19 in March, 2021.

The report dismissed out of hand the claim that COVID-19 was developed as a biological weapon, concluding that this “has been ruled out by other scientists following analyses of the genome.”

It declared the possibility that COVID-19 spilled over to humans from a lab leak as “extremely unlikely,” declaring, “There is no record of viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2 in any laboratory before December 2019, or genomes that in combination could provide a SARS-CoV-2 genome.”

Most critically of all, the report did not recommend further inquiries into the potential laboratory origins of COVID-19, cutting across the efforts of warmongers, xenophobes and demagogues of both parties to turn the scientific investigation into the origins of COVID-19 into a witch-finding expedition that could be used to accuse China of a cover-up.

America’s yellow press howled with indignation, with leading US newspapers condemning the findings and making personal attacks against committee member Peter Daszak, the most vocal opponent of the conspiracy theory within the scientific community.

Under relentless pressure from the US State Department, which officially endorses the conspiracy theory, the World Health Organization disbanded its committee into the origins of the disease and formed a new one: The Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO).

That group published its preliminary report Thursday. In the period between the reports, the evidence of zoonotic origins of COVID-19 has only grown, with the identification of coronaviruses that are extremely similar to COVID-19 in the wild, and more information tying the initial outbreak to the Huanan wet market, which carried out a significant trade in wild animals.

There has, at the same time, been no new evidence to indicate a laboratory origin of COVID-19, adding to the nonexistent prior evidence, bringing the total evidence supporting the conspiracy theory to zero.

Reflecting this reality, the SAGO report concludes, “At the present time, currently available epidemiological and sequencing data suggest ancestral strains to SARS-CoV-2 have a zoonotic origin with the closest genetically related viruses being beta coronaviruses, identified in Rhinolophus bats in China in 2013 (96.1%) and Laos in 2020 (96.8%).”

It adds, “there has not been any new data made available to evaluate the laboratory as a pathway of SARS-CoV-2 into the human population.”

But while recognizing that new scientific findings have worked to refute the conspiracy theory, the SAGO, under relentless political pressure by the United States, declared, it “remains important to consider… the possibility of the introduction of SARS-CoV-2 into the human population through a laboratory incident.”

This assertion came despite the protests of three members of the Committee, who declared, “there is no new scientific evidence to question the conclusion of the WHO-convened global study of origins of SARS-CoV-2: China Part mission report published in March 2021.”

In other words, after the World Health Organization disbanded its team investigating the origins of COVID-19 under right-wing political pressure, removed all outspoken opponents of the conspiracy theory, and brought in figures sympathetic to the right-wing campaign, all the report could come up with was fundamentally the same conclusion as the earlier study: “At the present time, currently available epidemiological and sequencing data suggest ancestral strains to SARS-CoV-2 have a zoonotic origin.”

Commenting on the SAGO study, a source close to an earlier WHO-China joint study on the origins of COVID-19 observed, “even though they removed the alleged ‘conflicted’ members they still end up with the same conclusion!”

“The irony is, we had a window where China was supplying new data. The right wing pushed politically against the WHO team’s work, they disbanded the team, brought in a lab leak contingent, removed people who argued that there was no evidence and who were politically expedient and now have a report that is demanding lab info from China under a politically charged atmosphere, without any evidence to support that line of inquiry.”

The source added, “The Post piece simply adds to the politicization of this, and ironically will continue to keep the window closed for any real understanding of COVID origins.”

The Post’s promotion of the Wuhan Lab Lie is transparently political. Last month, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said in a major speech on US-China relations, “we will remain focused on the most serious long-term challenge to the international order—and that’s posed by the People’s Republic of China.”

He continued, “China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it.... We will defend our interests against any threat.”

The efforts of the Post to promote the Wuhan Lab Lie are aimed at stoking xenophobic hatred of China to promote the military aims of the United States. They must be rejected with the contempt they deserve.

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/06/world-health-experts-now-say-covid-lab.html

Hyundai Motor plants in extra weekend run, S.Korea truckers' strike continues

Reuters/YONHAP NEWS AGENCY
By Byungwook Kim and Heekyong Yang

ULSAN, South Korea (Reuters) - A huge Hyundai Motor Co factory complex added weekend production on Saturday, despite a nationwide strike by truckers that has hit ports and other South Korean industrial giants, including steelmaker POSCO.

On day five of the strike, some 100 unionised truckers, about a tenth of Friday's show of force, assembled at the main gate of the Hyundai factory in the southern city of Ulsan, protesting soaring fuel prices and demanding higher freight rates to cover costs.


© Reuters/YONHAP NEWS AGENCYFILE PHOTO: 

Members of the Cargo Truckers Solidarity union take part in a protest in front of Kia Motor's factory tin Gwangju

About 800 striking union members were rallying at the gates of a nearby major petrochemical complex in Ulsan. They had cut the number of vehicles to one-tenth of normal levels on Friday, according to union officials.

South Korea is a major supplier of semiconductors, smartphones, autos, batteries and electronics goods. The strike has deepened uncertainty over global supply chains already disrupted by China's strict COVID-19 curbs and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The Transport Ministry said on Saturday it planned to meet with union representatives to continue talks aimed at ending the strike and called on union members to return to work immediately.

At the country's main seaport in Busan, which handles about 80% of the country's container movement, traffic was down to a third of normal levels on Friday, a government official said.

About 7,350 truckers, a third of the 22,000 members of the Cargo Truckers Solidarity union, were expected to be on strike on Saturday, the Transport Ministry said. The government estimates about 6% of the country's 420,000 truckers are unionised.

The union has contended a larger number of truck drivers were on strike and that many non-union truckers are also choosing not to work.

A Hyundai Motor union official said production at the Ulsan plants picked up slightly on Friday in some lines and the factory was operating at about 60% capacity overall, slightly higher than the 50% to 60% level in Thursday.

Hyundai declined to specify the status of its operations or delivery of finished cars.

"There are some disruptions to our production due to the truckers strike, and we hope production would be normalised as soon as possible," a Hyundai spokesperson said.

The union official said Saturday's factory run had not been anticipated because of worsening parts supply issues but the company was pushing ahead, likely to meet growing backorders.

Hyundai employees have started driving finished cars out of the factory complex and parking those that could not be delivered to customers because space inside had filled up, he said.

Outside factory gates and ports, union members were flagging down approaching vehicles driven by non-union truckers, asking them not to proceed but to cooperate with the strike. They were not blocking gates.

The union has said strikers would not prevent trucks from going through factory gates, and police were on hand.

(Reporting by Byungwook Kim in Ulsan and Heekyong Yang in Seoul; Writing by Jack Kim; Editing by William Mallard)

UK

Billions up in smoke as unusable PPE burned

The Hound
June 10, 2022

Credit: Natallia Boroda via Shutterstock

The government is being forced to burn some £4bn-worth of personal protective equipment (PPE), in what has been branded “perhaps the most shameful episode of the pandemic”.

A damning cross-party report by the Public Accounts Committee found that the Department for Health and Social Care lost 75 per cent of the £12bn it purchased on highly-inadequate and grossly-inflated PPE for frontline workers.

Of the £9bn wasted by officials, £4bn will now have to be recycled or incinerated. Dame Meg Hillier, the committee’s chair, wrote: “The costs and environmental impact of disposing of the excess and unusable PPE is unclear.”

The Labour MP said that the government’s “haphazard purchasing strategy” overwhelmed the National Health Service and “exposed weaknesses in the department’s commercial contracting capability”.

She added: “In a desperate bid to catch up the government splurged huge amounts of money, paying obscenely inflated prices and payments to middlemen in a chaotic rush during which they chucked out even the most cursory due diligence.

“This has left us with massive public contracts now under investigation by the National Crime Agency or in dispute because of allegations of modern slavery in the supply chain.”

Her report comes after the High Court ruled that the “high priority lane” to help “VIPs” win lucrative procurement contracts for PPE were unlawful.

Pat Cullen, chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing, described the findings as “galling”, while Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner said the episode represents “the shameful and toxic waste of Boris Johnson’s Conservatives”.

The official inquiry into the government’s performance during lockdown has not even started, but the government’s shortfalls are already floating to the surface.

Virginia Thomas and Trump’s election coup: More revelations about role of Supreme Court justice’s wife

Jacob Crosse
WSWS.ORG


A day after the January 6 House Select Committee held the first of a series of nationally televised hearings, the Washington Post reported on the discovery of dozens more emails between Virginia Thomas and 29 Republican state lawmakers from Arizona in which she advanced Trump’s scheme to replace duly elected electors with fraudulent pro-Trump substitutes.

Last month it was revealed that Thomas, the wife of arch-reactionary Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, had sent emails to the Arizona Speaker of the House Rusty Bowers and state Representative Shawnna Bolick, demanding that they reject the popular vote and “take action to ensure [a] clean slate of electors are chosen.”

Spreading Trump’s fascistic claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent and Biden was illegitimate as president, Thomas called on the Arizona Republicans to overturn Biden’s victory in the state, which he carried by more than 10,000 votes. She urged them to install a slate of pro-Trump electors instead of the Biden electors, who had actually been chosen by the voters.

On Friday the Post confirmed that Thomas sent the same email to more than half of the Republicans in the Arizona state legislature, 29 different state representatives in total. The first messages were all sent on November 9, 2020, two days after Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 election. In the messages, she called on the politicians to “stand strong in the face of political and media pressure” and “fight back” against (non-existent) voter fraud.

Trump himself made a similar to appeal to over a dozen Michigan state lawmakers, who convened at the White House on November 20, 2020. Another Trump co-conspirator, Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry, likewise advanced efforts to have Pennsylvania’s Democratic electors rejected by the state legislature in pursuit of Trump’s coup.

One of the Republicans who responded affirmatively to Thomas’s call to overthrow the government and install Trump as president-dictator was then-state Rep. Anthony Kern. The Post noted Kern was “a Stop the Steal supporter” who “was photographed outside the Capitol” during the January 6 attack. The former state legislator, who has yet to be charged for participating in the attack, has already earned Trump’s endorsement in his 2022 primary contest, no doubt for prior services rendered.

The Post reported that Thomas, a life-long Republican operative and Trump’s henchwoman, continued to badger lawmakers via email for over a month, demanding they install pro-Trump electors. On December 13 Thomas sent another batch of emails to 22 Arizona House members and one senator. In a bald-faced lie, she told the lawmakers they had the “Constitutional power and authority” to “protect the integrity of our elections” which had “never before in our nation’s history ... been so threatened by fraud and unconstitutional procedures.”

The emails confirm that Trump’s conspiracy to overthrow the election did not begin with his December 19 call to action on Twitter, where he instigated his followers and Republican accomplices to descend on Washington D.C. and “be wild” outside the Capitol on January 6. Trump’s coup did not rest on the combat prowess of the far-right militias like the Proud Boys or Oath Keepers.

In reality, the effort to enlist state legislatures to overturn the election was planned well in advance by Republicans like Thomas and the fascist Stephen Bannon through Republican-funded think tanks like the Claremont Institute, the Bradley Foundation, Groundswell and others, in coordination with Republican politicians at the state and federal levels.

On January 6, a majority of the Republicans in Congress supported Trump’s effort to overturn the election, with 147 Republicans voting to challenge the Electoral College results even after the attack on Congress, while all but 10 Republicans in the House voted against impeaching Trump over his role in the attack.

The Republican Party as a whole continues to back Trump’s fascist lies that the election was “stolen” and that the attempted coup was “legitimate political discourse.” Following Thursday’s hearings, Trump again attacked the January 6 committee as an “unselect committee of political HACKS” and called the fascist attack on Congress as the “greatest movement” in the history of the United States.

It was a deliberate decision that during Thursday’s nationally televised hearing, neither committee chair Bennie Thompson (Democrat-Mississippi) nor vice chair Liz Cheney (Republican-Wyoming) mentioned Virginia Thomas’ role in the plot.

They sought to limit the exposure of the political crimes of January 6 to Trump’s personal role, while covering up the fact that fascism has found support both in the Republican Party and in significant sections of the Supreme Court and police-military-intelligence apparatus as well.

The scope of the ultra-right takeover of the Republican Party was underscored by the arrest Thursday morning of Michigan Republican gubernatorial candidate Ryan Kelley for his actions in connection with the failed coup.

FBI agents arrested the 40-year-old real estate agent at his home in Allendale, Michigan. Kelley was charged with four misdemeanors, including knowingly entering the US Capitol or Capitol grounds, disorderly and disruptive conduct in that space, knowingly engaging in physical violence against a person or property on the Capitol grounds and willfully injuring or attacking property of the United States. Each count carries a maximum one-year prison sentence.

Evidence cited in court documents includes video of Kelley pushing up the Capitol steps and goading others to attack, with one video showing him yelling to Trump’s foot soldiers, “Come on, let’s go! This is war, baby!”

Kelley, who has previously described January 6 as an “energizing event,” has centered his gubernatorial campaign on appealing to Trump and his fascist supporters. He has previously touted his endorsement by Michigan’s Three Percenters militia group and participated in the April 2020 storming of the Lansing state Capitol, a prelude to the January 6 attack.

Kelley was a leading Republican candidate for governor prior to his arrest, after five other Republican candidates were denied ballot status last month when the Michigan elections bureau found substantial numbers of fraudulent and duplicate signatures on their nominating petitions.

The five remaining Michigan Republican candidates for governor on the ballot for the August 2 primary are Kelley, the ultra-right media commentator Tudor Dixon, pastor Ralph Rebandt, businessman Kevin Rinke and Garrett Soldano.

Kelley’s next hearing will be held virtually next week after he was released on bond Thursday afternoon to the cheers of a small crowd of supporters who had gathered outside the federal courthouse in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Washington Post: 29 Arizona lawmakers received messages from Ginni Thomas

The message urged the lawmakers to “fight back against fraud”

Patrick Semansky/Associated Press File photo: Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, right, arrive for a State Dinner with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and President Donald Trump at the White House, Sept. 20, 2019, in Washington.

By CNN COM WIRE SERVICE 
PUBLISHED: June 10, 2022 
By Tierney Sneed | CNN

Virginia “Ginni” Thomas’ efforts to call on state lawmakers to disrupt President Joe Biden’s 2020 election win were broader than previously known, with The Washington Post reporting Friday that the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had sent form letters to 29 Arizona legislators encouraging them to meddle in the state’s slate of presidential electors.

The new report adds 27 recipients of the messages to the two Arizona lawmakers who, it was reported last month, received apparently prewritten emails from Ginni Thomas.

Ginni Thomas’ support of the efforts to overturn former President Donald Trump’s electoral defeat have come under scrutiny given her husband’s participation in a case that was before the Supreme Court concerning the House’s January 6 investigation. There is the potential that he will be involved in other cases related to that investigation.

Justices decide for themselves whether cases present a conflict requiring their recusal. The Supreme Court public information office did not respond to CNN’s inquiry about the latest report.

Twenty members of the Arizona House and seven state senators received identical messages on November 9, 2020, the Post wrote.

The message urged the lawmakers to “fight back against fraud” and exercise their supposed constitutional authority to unilaterally choose a “clean” slate of presidential electors.

Another batch of letters from Thomas — aimed at 22 members of Arizona’s House and one of its state senators, according to the Post — went out on December 13, the day before representatives were set to meet at statehouses across the country to vote to certify their slates of electors. The messages asked the lawmakers that, before they chose the electors, they “consider what will happen to the nation we all love if you do not stand up and lead.”

Last month it was first revealed — in a previous report by the Post as well as in tweets by one of the lawmakers involved — that Ginni Thomas had participated in the messaging campaign to Arizona lawmakers.

One of the November form letters from Thomas went to state Rep. Shawnna Bolick, who responded to the message with a suggestion that Thomas file any complaints of fraud to the state attorney general and who posted the exchange on Twitter.

Thomas’ messages were sent via an online platform for sending prewritten messages to lawmakers called FreeRoots, the Post reported.

Justice Thomas was the only justice to publicly dissent from the Supreme Court’s move in January not to block a court order greenlighting the release of Trump White House documents to the House investigators. CNN has since reported that his wife exchanged texts with Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in 2020 urging him to continue the fight to overturn Biden’s win. (Those texts had been turned over to the committee voluntarily by Meadows).

Ginni Thomas did not comment to the Post and didn’t immediately return a request for comment from CNN.

She has been publicly critical of the House January 6 investigation, calling on House GOP leaders to boot from their conference the two Republicans serving on the select committee. She attended the rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol, as she said in an interview with the Washington Free Beacon, where she stressed that her and her husband’s professional lives are kept separate. She said that she had left the gathering before the protesters turned violent.