WikiLeaks editor-in-chief warns Assange may be extradited "within weeks"

Laura Tiernan

WSWS.ORG

Julian Assange could be extradited to the United States within weeks, WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson has warned. He told journalist Glenn Greenwald that Assange was “running out of time” and that legal avenues in London to challenge his unlawful extradition were being exhausted, “he will never get a fair trial there”.

WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson speaks with Glenn Greenwald in Brazil. 

[Photo: screenshot: System Update, Rumble]

Hrafnsson’s urgent warnings came during an interview in Brazil, published Monday on Rumble. He told Greenwald, “Julian’s case is coming to the end of all possibilities of getting a fair solution through the court proceedings. He is fighting extradition in London. Within weeks he could be extradited.”

Assange has been charged under the Espionage Act (1917) for WikiLeaks’ publications exposing war crimes by US imperialism in Iraq and Afghanistan, and anti-democratic conspiracies of the US government and its intelligence agencies throughout the world. If found guilty, the 51-year-old journalist and father of three faces 175 years in a US federal prison. He has already spent more than a decade in detention in the UK, including three years without charge in Belmarsh maximum security prison.

Hrafnsson was appointed WikiLeaks editor in 2018 after Assange’s communication with the outside world was cut under pressure from the US government, a prelude to his seizure from the Ecuadorian Embassy in April 2019. An award-winning journalist in his own right, Hrafnsson worked with Assange to verify WikiLeaks’ most famous release, the Collateral Murder video, travelling to Iraq in early 2010 to interview relatives of civilians killed by targeted airstrikes launched from US AH-64 Apache helicopters.

Speaking last week in Brazil, Hrafnsson said legal channels for Assange to appeal his extradition are fast closing. In June, then UK Home Secretary Priti Patel approved Assange’s extradition after the High Court overturned an earlier court decision barring it on medical grounds. The High Court accepted worthless assurances by the US government that Assange would not face oppressive treatment, ignoring overwhelming evidence that the CIA plotted to kidnap and kill Assange.

Britain’s courts have mounted a legal vendetta against Assange, approving the extradition request in violation of his fundamental legal and democratic rights as a publisher and journalist.The High Court and Supreme Court have handed down rulings aimed at speeding his dispatch to his would-be assassins. In March, the High Court refused Assange’s application to appeal its earlier ruling to the Supreme Court. His lawyers have since appealed the Home Secretary’s extradition order.

Hrafnsson said, “We are now in a waiting period for the appeal court in London, the High Court, to give us the answer of whether they will hear an appeal by Julian to push back against the extradition. If they decide not to hear the appeal—which would be scandalous in itself—then there is the Supreme Court, which could decide quickly not to hear the case, you know, ‘not of importance to the public’… Under the worst-case scenario, he could be on a plane to the US within weeks.

“In my perception, and I’ve been sitting in on all the proceedings in London, all the extradition proceedings in London have exposed only one thing, and that’s the fact that this is just not going to be won in a court. There’s no justice to be had in court rooms in London. That’s obvious and I don’t have to mention the United States, that’s one of the essences of the defence in fighting the extradition, that he will never be able to get a fair trial there. So, we’re running out of time. We need to push this on a different level and so I decided that we needed to go on a tour to shore up political support, because the only way to fight a political persecution is through political means.”

Hrafnsson and WikiLeaks Ambassador Joseph Farrell are currently touring Latin America, starting with a one-hour private meeting in Colombia with President Gustavo Petro and Foreign Minister Alvaro Duran at the Presidential Palace in Bogotá on November 21.

In Brazil, they held a private meeting with President Lula da Silva on November 29, followed by an address to Brazil’s parliament. In Rio De Janeiro they held a public meeting at the Brazilian Press Association, followed by a reception at the home of famous musician-composer Caetano Veloso. They have since met privately with Argentinian Vice President Cristina Kirchner and with President Alberto Fernández at the Casa Rosada. They are visiting Chile and Mexico next.

Hrafnsson told Greenwald, “Our aim is to get political leaders to apply pressure, if you want to call it that, or just request of the Biden administration to reconsider, to stand behind their own ideals, the ideals that they preach around the world of press freedom and not put this pressure on the First Amendment and their treaty commitments and basically drop the charge against Julian. That’s the only way out.”

There is enormous support for Assange and WikiLeaks in Latin America. The workers and oppressed masses of the region have suffered brutal US-backed military dictatorships that claimed tens of thousands of lives in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Panama and Guatemala. But the statements of support by Latin America’s bourgeois politicians are politically worthless. Lula, Kirchner and company have demonstrated their loyalty to imperialism, enforcing International Monetary Fund austerity and state repression against the working class.

Appeals to Biden, who has designated Assange a “hi-tech terrorist”, are more bankrupt still. Even after former US president Donald Trump called for the “termination” of the Constitution last week, Biden remained silent. Not even Trump’s fascist coup attempt in January 2021 could rouse him to defend the Constitution, let alone its First Amendment guarantees to free speech, press and assembly. Last week Biden oversaw watershed legislation enforcing a White House-brokered employment contract and banning tens of thousands of US railroad workers from striking.

The persecution of Assange is the spearhead of a massive assault on democratic rights, aimed at destroying freedom of speech, illegalizing investigative journalism, intimidating and terrorizing critics, preventing the exposure of government crimes and suppressing mass popular opposition to social inequality and war. The British government’s plans to ban strikes, including its threats to mobilise the military, show that Assange’s fate is inextricably linked to that of the working class.

NATO’s escalating war against Russia is being accompanied by authoritarian measures. The British government’s “emergency powers” are being combined with denunciations of strikers as “Putin’s stooges” – repeating word for word the Pentagon’s narrative against Assange and WikiLeaks.

Assange’s fate must not be left in the hands of political forces such as Lula, Biden and other enemies of the working class. A powerful mass constituency for Assange’s defence—and the struggle to win his freedom—is growing among millions of workers and young people who are entering the global fight against capitalist austerity, state repression and war.

Rebellion in Resistance: Profile of a Palestinian Educator


Author:
Laila Shadid
2022 REPORTING FELLOW

PULITZER CENTER

Country:
PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES

A section of the apartheid wall in Bethlehem, a five minute walk from Mariam's home.

 Image by Laila Shadid. Palestinian Territories, 2022.

Mariam* is rebellious, she always has been.

You can often find her with a guitar in her lap, strumming chords to songs she wrote herself. Mari - am doesn’t know how to read music, no, she taught herself by listening, feeling the rhythm, matching her hand placement to the pitch of her voice. When Mariam sings, you feel, you understand, even if you don’t know the language of her Arabic words. She tilts her head back and shakes the red curls that pop against her pale face, curls as fiery as her personality. Around her, whether it be one or 20, people clap, smile, and sing along.

Fourteen years ago, Mariam and her husband founded a kindergarten and elementary school with the mission of providing holistic, trauma-in - formed education to children in the Palestinian town of Al-Eizariya and its surrounding areas. It is the first and only school of its kind in the West Bank to use non-violent and trauma-informed Waldorf education.

In Palestine, childhood is under attack. As of October 17, 2,226 children have been killed as a result of Israeli military and settler presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories since 2000, according to Defence for Children International-Palestine (DCI).

The sun setting in the Jordan Desert. Image by Laila Shadid. Palestinian Territories, 2022.

The cliff overlooks the Dead Sea, its blue water punctuated by pink mountains in the distance. Image by Laila Shadid. Palestinian Territories, 2022.

“Each year approximately 500-700 Palestinian children, some as young as 12 years old, are detained and prosecuted in the Israeli military court system,” DCI stated. “The most common charge is stone throwing.”

It is this reality that makes Mariam’s work invaluable. Despite the obstacles of occupation, she has dedicated her life to bettering children’s lives through progressive, unconventional education.

Mariam describes herself as “different”—she recognizes that she doesn’t fit in' in Al-Eizariya. She knows to dress conservatively. Mariam wears long sleeve button-ups, loose t-shirts and pants that come down well past her knees, but she also has four tattoos. Only one is visible on a daily basis: the “om” on her forearm—a nod to the spirituality that guides her life and work. While Mariam was raised by a Catholic family in Bethlehem, the Church does not speak to her beliefs. Mariam is not religious. Instead, she believes in the power of the mind, body, and soul.

In any conversation, Mariam has a book to recommend, among them Paulo Cohelo’s The Alchemist and Rudolf Steiner’s Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment. A bowl of rubber bullets and empty tear gas canisters sit atop the bookshelf, the Hebrew letters fading from their silver shells. Mariam and her husband Khalil* collect them from their garden where Israeli soldiers throw them over the apartheid wall.

“This is just an appetizer,” Mariam explained about the small bowl. “I have garbage bags filled.”
Paintings of influential Palestinian leaders cover the wall of The Citadel, a cafe and community center in Beit Sahour, Bethlehem. Image by Laila Shadid. Palestinian Territories, 2022.

Mariam grew up in a two-bedroom apartment tucked in between one of Bethlehem’s main streets, Al-Khalil Road, and the Al-Aza refugee camp. She lived with her two sisters and parents. As a child, Mariam remembers encountering soldiers and learning Hebrew through the cartoons on TV, but she didn’t immediately register this as Israeli occupation. She remembers the Second Intifada (2000-2005) as a defining period of her teenage years. Walking up the stairs to her childhood home, Mariam touched the remnants of bullet holes in the wall, now filled in with plaster. She explained that their building was often in the crossfire of clashes and violence. Inside the apartment, she folded her arms across her chest and squeezed herself into the corner between the kitchen and the living room, demonstrating her hiding position from the bullets that flew into her home. Once, when she returned from hiding at her grandparents’ home in the Old City, she found a bullet hole where her head would have been.

“Here,” Mariam pointed between her eyebrows, “it would have hit me right here.”

Next door, in the bedroom she shared with her sisters, Mariam showed me where she once hung a poster of Che Guevara.

“I started being different in all the ways,” Mariam explained about her adolescence. “I didn’t understand myself. I didn’t understand the community. I felt my energy is big and the community is small.”

Mariam was traumatized by the Intifada— the curfews, the lockdowns, the tear gas, the bombs, the tanks, the murders. She witnessed it all.

“Teenage years are hard enough without occupation.”

Palestinian flags line a stone archway in the village of Deir Istiya. Image by Laila Shadid. Palestinian Territories, 2022.

"Soon everything will be magic," reads the graffiti on Al-Eizariya's apartheid wall, and underneath it, "Free is all you have to be, dream dreams no one else can see." Image by Laila Shadid. Palestinian Territories, 2022.

In early July, Mariam, her husband, and two children—eight-and 11-years-old—took me on a day trip to a Bedouin village in the Jordan Desert. A Bedouin tour guide drove us down a bumpy, rollercoaster-like path to a cli $ that overlooked the Dead Sea to watch the sunset. the view was breathtaking. The sea mirrored the blue sky, separated by pink mountains in the distance. It was a breath of fresh air from life under occupation: a reminder of the land’s beauty, tranquility, and ethereality that transcends con %ict. We all sat on the edge, mesmerized. Mariam walked o $ to a spot of her own, creating space for a moment of spirituality and connection.

I didn’t even realize when the Jeep pulled up.

Suddenly, four armed soldiers in camouflage suits and face masks stepped out of the vehicle. They started yelling in Arabic, Hebrew, and English for the family’s IDs. Apparently, we weren’t allowed to be there. Nowhere did I see a sign confirming their claims. I stood there frozen, watching a scene unfold that I had absolutely no control over. I wanted to scream, I wanted to tell them that we had every right to be here, that their humiliation tactics were so obviously a power trip—not law enforcement. I watched Mariam’s children hide in the back of the Jeep as their parents argued against a 300 US dollar fine for the driver.

“No, I don’t want to give you my ID,” she said. “No, I don’t want to give you my phone!”

Mariam had no fear, no hesitation.

Standing feet away from their M-16s, Mariam looked one of the soldiers in the eyes, the only part of his face visible.

“I know you are a human being. I know that you have a heart. But I see you killing me in the West Bank. This is what I have seen in my life.”

“Don’t continue! Khalas!” He yelled.

“You want me to stop because you don’t want to think,” Mariam continued. “You don’t want to feel your heart. You just want to say they are Arabs, they are enemies.”

Another soldier stepped in. “If you have a problem with occupation, go to the government,” he screamed. “Occupation is not my problem!”

They issued the fine, and before we left, ordered us to get out of the car. They searched every inch while we stood and watched.

Mariam turned to me. “They want to humiliate us.”

 

This large red sign in Arabic, Hebrew, and English is common across the West Bank, often standing in the middle of a rotary that leads to a Palestinian city in one direction, and an Israeli settlement in the other. Image by Laila Shadid. Palestinian Territories, 2022.

At the top of an apartment building overlooking Hebron, a satellite dish matches the view—homes surrounded by a wall on one side, and a fence on the other. Image by Laila Shadid. Palestinian Territories, 2022.

Later she explained how she felt, how the sight of these soldiers triggered her years of trauma.

“When I saw the soldiers, my mind blew away,” Mariam said. “How come you are here after me in the middle of the desert? I was unconscious and conscious at the same time.”

“Why is the occupation not ending?” she asked. “Because the government has brain - washed Israelis to believe they have to see us as enemies.”

“I am a nonviolent person. I really want peace, I want us to live all together. But I want my respect, I want my dignity, and I want my freedom.”

*All names have been changed.

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 The Constitution Has Already Been Terminated – OpEd

December 7, 2022 John W. Whitehead 0 Comments

By John W. Whitehead


If there is one point on which there should be no political parsing, no legal jockeying, and no disagreement, it is this: for anyone to advocate terminating or suspending the Constitution is tantamount to a declaration of war against the founding principles of our representative government and the rule of law.

Then again, one could well make the case that the Constitution has already been terminated after years on life support, given the extent to which the safeguards enshrined in the Bill of Rights—adopted 231 years ago as a means of protecting the people against government overreach and abuse—have been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded with the support of Congress, the White House, and the courts.

Consider for yourself.

We are in the grip of martial law. We have what the founders feared most: a “standing” or permanent army on American soil. This de facto standing army is made up of weaponized, militarized domestic police forces which look like, dress like, and act like the military; are armed with guns, ammunition and military-style equipment; are authorized to make arrests; and are trained in military tactics.

We are in the government’s crosshairs. The U.S. government continues to act as judge, jury and executioner over a populace that have been pre-judged and found guilty, stripped of their rights, and left to suffer at the hands of government agents trained to respond with the utmost degree of violence. Consequently, we are at the mercy of law enforcement officers who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to “serve and protect.” With alarming regularity, unarmed men, women, children and even pets are being gunned down by the government’s standing army of militarized police who shoot first and ask questions later.

We are no longer safe in our homes. This present menace comes from the government’s army of bureaucratized, corporatized, militarized SWAT teams who are waging war on the last stronghold left to us as a free people: the sanctity of our homes.

We have no real freedom of speech. We are moving fast down a slippery slope to an authoritarian society in which the only opinions, ideas and speech expressed are the ones permitted by the government and its corporate cohorts. In more and more cases, the government is declaring war on what should be protected political speech whenever it challenges the government’s power, reveals the government’s corruption, exposes the government’s lies, and encourages the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices. The ramifications are so far-reaching as to render almost every American who criticizes the government an extremist in word, deed, thought or by association.

We have no real privacy. We’re being spied on by a domestic army of government snitches, spies and techno-warriors. This government of Peeping Toms is watching everything we do, reading everything we write, listening to everything we say, and monitoring everything we spend. Beware of what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, and with whom you communicate, because it is all being recorded, stored, and catalogued, and will be used against you eventually, at a time and place of the government’s choosing.

We are losing our right to bodily privacy and integrity. The debate over bodily integrity covers broad territory, ranging from forced vaccinations, forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws and forced breath-alcohol tests to forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, and forced inclusion in biometric databases: these are just a few ways in which Americans continue to be reminded that we have no real privacy, no real presumption of innocence, and no real control over what happens to our bodies during an encounter with government officials. The groundwork being laid with these mandates is a prologue to what will become the police state’s conquest of a new, relatively uncharted, frontier: inner space, specifically, the inner workings (genetic, biological, biometric, mental, emotional) of the human race.

We no longer have a right to private property. If government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family, your property is no longer private and secure—it belongs to the government. Hard-working Americans are having their bank accounts, homes, cars electronics and cash seized by police under the assumption that they have allegedly been associated with some criminal scheme.

We have no due process. The groundwork has been laid for a new kind of government where it won’t matter if you’re innocent or guilty, whether you’re a threat to the nation, or even if you’re a citizen. What will matter is what the government—or whoever happens to be calling the shots at the time—thinks. And if the powers-that-be think you’re a threat to the nation and should be locked up, then you’ll be locked up with no access to the protections our Constitution provides.

We are no longer presumed innocent. The burden of proof has been reversed. Now we’re presumed guilty unless we can prove our innocence beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. Rarely, are we even given the opportunity to do so. The government has embarked on a diabolical campaign to create a nation of suspects predicated on a massive national DNA database. Having already used surveillance technology to render the entire American populace potential suspects, DNA technology in the hands of government coupled with artificial intelligence will complete our transition to a suspect society in which we are all merely waiting to be matched up with a crime.

We have lost the right to be anonymous and move about freely. At every turn, we’re hemmed in by laws, fines and penalties that regulate and restrict our autonomy, and surveillance cameras that monitor our movements. Likewise, digital currency provides the government and its corporate partners with a mode of commerce that can easily be monitored, tracked, tabulated, mined for data, hacked, hijacked and confiscated when convenient.

We no longer have a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

 In fact, a study conducted by Princeton and Northwestern University concluded that the U.S. government does not represent the majority of American citizens. Instead, the study found that the government is ruled by the rich and powerful, or the so-called “economic elite.” Moreover, the researchers concluded that policies enacted by this governmental elite nearly always favor special interests and lobbying groups. In other words, we are being ruled by an oligarchy disguised as a democracy, and arguably on our way towards fascism—a form of government where private corporate interests rule, money calls the shots, and the people are seen as mere subjects to be controlled.

We have no guardians of justice. The courts were established to intervene and protect the people against the government and its agents when they overstep their bounds. Yet through their deference to police power, preference for security over freedom, and evisceration of our most basic rights for the sake of order and expediency, the courts have become the guardians of the American police state in which we now live. As a result, sound judgment and justice have largely taken a back seat to legalism, statism and elitism, while preserving the rights of the people has been deprioritized and made to play second fiddle to both governmental and corporate interests.

We have been saddled with a dictator for life. Secret, unchecked presidential powers—acquired through the use of executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements and which can be activated by any sitting president—now enable past, president and future presidents to operate above the law and beyond the reach of the Constitution.

Unfortunately, we have done this to ourselves.

We allowed ourselves to be seduced by the false siren song of politicians promising safety in exchange for relinquished freedom. We placed our trust in political saviors and failed to ask questions to hold our representatives accountable to abiding by the Constitution. We looked the other way and made excuses while the government amassed an amazing amount of power over us, and backed up that power-grab with a terrifying amount of military might and weaponry, and got the courts to sanction their actions every step of the way. We chose to let partisan politics divide us and turn us into easy targets for the government’s oppression.

Mind you, the powers-that-be want us to be censored, silenced, muzzled, gagged, zoned out, caged in and shut down. They want our speech and activities monitored for any sign of “extremist” activity. They want us to be estranged from each other and kept at a distance from those who are supposed to represent us. They want taxation without representation. They want a government without the consent of the governed.

They want the Constitution terminated.

“We” may have contributed to our downfall through our inaction and gullibility, but we are also the only hope for a free future.

After all, the Constitution begins with those three beautiful words, “We the people.” Those three words were intended as a reminder to future generations that there is no government without us—our sheer numbers, our muscle, our economy, our physical presence in this land.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, when we forget that, when we allow the “Me” of a self-absorbed, narcissistic, politically polarizing culture to override our civic duties as citizens to collectively stand up to tyranny and make the government play by the rules of the Constitution, there can be no surprise when tyranny rises and freedom falls

Remember, there is power in numbers.

There are 332 million of us in this country. Imagine what we could accomplish if we actually worked together, presented a united front, and spoke with one voice?

John W. Whitehead is an attorney and author who has written, debated and practiced widely in the area of constitutional law, human rights and popular culture. He is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. 

Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.

UN calls on Taliban to release women's rights activists

The U.N. human rights chief on Friday called on Afghanistan's Taliban government to release five people the U.N. says were detained during a news conference organised by a women's civil society organisation. Rights groups say women's freedoms in Afghanistan have been undermined since the Taliban seized power in August 2021 as international forces backing a pro-Western government pulled out.

Reuters | Geneva | Updated: 04-11-2022

The U.N. human rights chief on Friday called on Afghanistan's Taliban government to release five people the U.N. says were detained during a news conference organised by a women's civil society organisation. Police disrupted a news conference in Kabul on Thursday intended to launch a new women's movement called 'Afghan Women’s Movement for Equality', the U.N rights office said.

A female activist, Zarifa Yaqobi, and four male colleagues were arrested. The other female participants in the room were also temporarily detained and subject to phone and body searches, before being released, it added. "We are concerned about the welfare of these five individuals and have sought information from the de facto authorities regarding their detention," said U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk via a spokesperson at a Geneva news briefing.

A Taliban spokesperson did not immediately provide a comment and said he would look into the matter. Rights groups say women's freedoms in Afghanistan have been undermined since the Taliban seized power in August 2021 as international forces backing a pro-Western government pulled out. They point to new curbs on their clothes, movement and education despite earlier Taliban vows to the contrary.

Facebook threatens to remove all news content if bill forcing payments to local media outlets passes


Robert Channick, Chicago Tribune
Tue, December 6, 2022 

Meta/Facebook is threatening to remove all local news from its platform following reports that proposed legislation to force Big Tech to pay publishers for news content is being added to a defense bill in a bid to win approval during the lame-duck Congress session.

The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act made it through the Senate Judiciary Committee in September, but is running out of time to pass before the end of the year, when the House will flip to Republican control. Including it in the National Defense Authorization Act, an annual “must-pass” bill, is seen as a strategy for getting it done before the new Congress convenes in January.

The legislative maneuver generated criticism Monday from Meta/Facebook, which issued a statement in opposition to the journalism act and its potential pairing with the defense act. The text of the defense bill had not been released as of Tuesday afternoon, but a source familiar with the matter told the Tribune that lawmakers are considering adding the journalism measure to the legislation.

“If Congress passes an ill-considered journalism bill as part of national security legislation, we will be forced to consider removing news from our platform altogether rather than submit to government-mandated negotiations that unfairly disregard any value we provide to news outlets through increased traffic and subscriptions,” Meta/Facebook said in its statement, which was posted on Twitter.

A Meta/Facebook spokesperson Tuesday declined to explain the mechanism for eliminating local news content, which proliferates in posts across the social media platform.

A Google spokesperson declined to comment.

The News Media Alliance, a Washington, D.C.-based newspaper trade organization that has lobbied in favor of the legislation, criticized Facebook’s statement but declined to comment on any efforts to include the measure in the defense bill.

“Facebook’s threat to take down news is undemocratic and unbecoming,” the News Media Alliance said in a statement Monday. “As the tech platforms compensate news publishers around the world, it demonstrates there is a demand and economic value for news.”

The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act would temporarily exempt newspapers, broadcasters and other publishers from antitrust laws to collectively negotiate an annual fee from Google and Meta/Facebook, which dominate the nearly $250 billion U.S. digital advertising market. Backers say it will boost struggling news organizations and level the playing field with Big Tech, while critics question whether local journalism or large media companies will be the true beneficiaries of the bill.

Introduced in the House and the Senate last year, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., is the lead co-sponsor of the bill, which covers thousands of local and regional newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune and other Tribune Publishing newspapers. The proposed legislation excludes large national publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.

Local TV and radio broadcasters — including network owned and operated stations — that publish original digital news content and meet other eligibility requirements would also be covered by the bill.

A Klobuchar spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

Opposition to the bill has been mounting over everything from the temporary antitrust exemption to undermining fair use on the internet. A coalition of 27 groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Common Cause, Public Knowledge and United Church of Christ Ministry, sent a letter to Congressional leaders Monday opposing the act and its possible inclusion in the defense legislation.

“This bill, despite months of advocacy and multiple revisions, contains far too many contradictions, complexities, and problems to be included in any omnibus or must-pass legislation,” the coalition said in the letter.

News publishers have struggled during the new millennium. Newspaper ad revenue, which peaked at $49.4 billion in 2005, fell by more than 80% to $9.6 billion in 2020, according to the Pew Research Center. More than a fourth of the nation’s newspapers have folded since 2005, according to a study by Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

In August, Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper chain, laid off 400 employees, or about 3% of its U.S. workforce. Last week, Gannett began another round of layoffs, cutting its news division staff of 3,440 by 6%, or about 200 positions.

McLean, Virginia-based Gannett publishes USA Today and more than 230 other newspapers.

Big Tech is eating up most of the digital advertising pie. Google is projected to generate nearly $70.1 billion and Meta/Facebook $55.5 billion, or more than 50% of the total U.S. digital ad spend this year, according to Insider Intelligence.

Under the bill, the annual fee paid by Big Tech would be distributed to all local publishers that participate in the collective negotiations, with 65% of the allocation based on how much they spend on journalists as a proportion of their overall budget.

As legislators weigh forcing social media giants to pay for aggregating local news content, Facebook, which changed its name to Meta in October to reflect ambitions to expand its social media platform into the virtual reality metaverse, is moving in the opposite direction.

In 2019 Facebook agreed to pay licensing fees to The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post and Chicago Tribune, among others, to run their content. But with revenues declining, the company announced in July it would no longer pay news publishers to aggregate curated stories.

On Monday, Meta/Facebook distanced itself even further from its former initiative to support local journalism.

“No company should be forced to pay for content users don’t want to see and that’s not a meaningful source of revenue,” the social media giant said in its statement.

rchannick@chicagotribune.com

S.Africa’s Ramaphosa future fragile despite party backing


ByAFP
Published December 6, 2022

Ramaphosa is not charged yet over the scandal - Copyright AFP Marco Longari
Susan NJANJI

The threat of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s immediate exit from office over a cash-in-sofas scandal has temporarily faded after his party vowed to rally around him at next week’s impeachment vote, but his woes are far from over.

The next days are critical for the head of state who has been championed as a graft-busting saviour after the corruption-drenched tenure of predecessor Jacob Zuma.

Ruling African National Congress (ANC) party lawmakers vowed to close ranks around him at an impeachment vote in parliament next week, but Ramaphosa remains embroiled in the worst scandal of his career that could yet bring him down.

After a tumultuous week following a report by a parliament-sanctioned independent panel which found that he “may have committed” serious violations and misconduct, Ramaphosa appeared to have earned a respite.

The parliament sitting to vote on whether he should face impeachment, initially slated for Tuesday, was at the 11th hour pushed back by a week, prolonging the uncertainty around Ramaphosa’s future.

That vote will come just three days before the ANC meets for its five-yearly conference to elect a new president. Ramaphosa is the leading candidate of the two nominees named so far for the party leadership.

But that is no guarantee he will be re-elected, or serve out his full state presidential term which should run until April 2024.

ANC members facing criminal allegations or charges are expected to step aside.

Ramaphosa is not charged yet over the scandal dubbed “Phala Phala farm-gate”, after the name of the estate in northeastern South Africa.

That gives him room to still try his luck and contest the ANC leadership — a ticket to the national presidency.

“The step-aside rule doesn’t apply here, Cyril Ramaphosa is not charged with anything,” lawyer and ANC veteran Mathews Phosa told eNCA news at the weekend.

But scandals do not necessarily decide the fate of an ANC president and the party throughout its nearly three decades in power has exhibited a tendency to protect its own people.

“In the ANC you could be charged for rape and still become president, you could be charged for an international arms deal and still be a president,” said political analyst Sandile Swana.

– Undignified exit? –

Formerly a wealthy businessman, the president may follow the footsteps of two of his predecessors, Zuma and Thabo Mbeki, who did not complete their tenures and were forced out by the ANC.

“The presidency of Ramaphosa is going to be short,” said Swana, but “his chances of leaving in a dignified manner are minimal”.

The 70-year-old president found himself in hot water in June when South Africa’s former spy boss filed a complaint to the police alleging Ramaphosa had concealed a huge cash theft from his game and rare cattle farm in 2020.

He accused the president of having organised for the burglars to be kidnapped and bribed into silence.

Ramaphosa has denied any wrongdoing, saying the cash — more than half a million dollars, stashed beneath sofa cushions — was payment for buffaloes bought by a Sudanese businessman.

But his explanations did not convince the special panel, which raised questions about the source of the cash.

On Monday Ramaphosa rushed to the country’s top court asking it to annul the panel’s report, but it is uncertain if his request will be granted.

The Constitutional Court case, which may take days or weeks to be concluded, “does not in itself stop the parliamentary (impeachment) proceedings from continuing”, said public law professor at the University of Cape Town Cathy Powell.

If the impeachment process is greenlighted it will take months of investigations and hearings before the final vote.

“The problem with this one is that it doesn’t seem to be completely frivolous,” the question whether it is serious enough to be fired for, said Powell.

When lawmakers meet next week a simple majority in the National Assembly, where the ANC has 230 out of 400 seats, will be required to initiate the impeachment process.

The impeachment vote itself would need a two-thirds majority to succeed.

If the impeachment proceedings go ahead, Ramaphosa risks being the first South African leader to be formally removed from office by parliament, said Swana.

The scandal has preoccupied South Africans who are already battling economic hardships, the inadequate provision of basic services such as electricity and a dizzying rate of unemployment.

Pandemic stress physically aged teens’ brains, a new study finds

The brains of adolescents who were assessed after the pandemic shutdowns ended appeared several years older than those of teens who were assessed before the pandemic. Until now, such accelerated changes in “brain age” have only been seen in children experiencing chronic adversity, such as neglect and family dysfunction.

A new study from Stanford University suggests that pandemic-related stressors have physically altered adolescents’ brains, making their brain structures appear several years older than the brains of comparable peers before the pandemic. The study was published on Dec. 1, 2022, in Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science.

The brains of adolescents who were assessed after the pandemic shutdowns ended appeared several years older than those of teens who were assessed before the pandemic. (Image credit: Getty Images)

In 2020 alone, reports of anxiety and depression in adults rose by more than 25 percent compared to previous years. The new findings indicate that the neurological and mental health effects of the pandemic on adolescents may have been even worse.

“We already know from global research that the pandemic has adversely affected mental health in youth, but we didn’t know what, if anything, it was doing physically to their brains,” said Ian Gotlib, the Marjorie Mhoon Fair Professor of Psychology in the School of Humanities & Sciences, who is the first author on the paper.

Changes in brain structure occur naturally as we age, Gotlib notes. During puberty and early teenage years, kids’ bodies experience increased growth in both the hippocampus and the amygdala, areas of the brain that respectively control access to certain memories and help to modulate emotions. At the same time, tissues in the cortex, an area involved in executive functioning, become thinner.

By comparing MRI scans from a cohort of 163 children taken before and during the pandemic, Gotlib’s study showed that this developmental process sped up in adolescents as they experienced the COVID-19 lockdowns. Until now, he says, these sorts of accelerated changes in “brain age” have appeared only in children who have experienced chronic adversity, whether from violence, neglect, family dysfunction, or a combination of multiple factors.

Although those experiences are linked to poor mental health outcomes later in life, it’s unclear whether the changes in brain structure that the Stanford team observed are linked to changes in mental health, Gotlib noted.

“It’s also not clear if the changes are permanent,” said Gotlib, who is also the director of the Stanford Neurodevelopment, Affect, and Psychopathology (SNAP) Laboratory at Stanford University. “Will their chronological age eventually catch up to their ‘brain age’? If their brain remains permanently older than their chronological age, it’s unclear what the outcomes will be in the future. For a 70- or 80-year-old, you’d expect some cognitive and memory problems based on changes in the brain, but what does it mean for a 16-year-old if their brains are aging prematurely?”

Originally, Gotlib explained, his study was not designed to look at the impact of COVID-19 on brain structure. Before the pandemic, his lab had recruited a cohort of children and adolescents from around the San Francisco Bay Area to participate in a long-term study on depression during puberty – but when the pandemic hit, he could not conduct regularly-scheduled MRI scans on those youth.

“Then, nine months later, we had a hard restart,” Gotlib said.

Once Gotlib could continue brain scans from his cohort, the study was a year behind schedule. Under normal circumstances, it would be possible to statistically correct for the delay while analyzing the study’s data – but the pandemic was far from a normal event. “That technique only works if you assume the brains of 16-year-olds today are the same as the brains of 16-year-olds before the pandemic with respect to cortical thickness and hippocampal and amygdala volume,” Gotlib said. “After looking at our data, we realized that they’re not. Compared to adolescents assessed before the pandemic, adolescents assessed after the pandemic shutdowns not only had more severe internalizing mental health problems, but also had reduced cortical thickness, larger hippocampal and amygdala volume, and more advanced brain age.”

These findings could have major implications for other longitudinal studies that have spanned the pandemic. If kids who experienced the pandemic show accelerated development in their brains, scientists will have to account for that abnormal rate of growth in any future research involving this generation.

“The pandemic is a global phenomenon – there’s no one who hasn’t experienced it,” said Gotlib. “There’s no real control group.”

These findings might also have serious consequences for an entire generation of adolescents later in life, added co-author Jonas Miller, who was a postdoctoral fellow in Gotlib’s lab during the study and is now an assistant professor of psychological sciences at the University of Connecticut.

“Adolescence is already a period of rapid reorganization in the brain, and it’s already linked to increased rates of mental health problems, depression, and risk-taking behavior,” Miller said. “Now you have this global event that’s happening, where everyone is experiencing some kind of adversity in the form of disruption to their daily routines – so it might be the case that the brains of kids who are 16 or 17 today are not comparable to those of their counterparts just a few years ago.”

In the future, Gotlib plans to continue following the same cohort of kids through later adolescence and young adulthood, tracking whether the COVID pandemic has changed the trajectory of their brain development over the long term. He also plans to track the mental health of these teens and will compare the brain structure of those who were infected with the virus with those who weren’t, with the goal of identifying any subtle differences that may have occurred.


The study was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health (R37MH101495 to Ian Gotlib).

Gotlib is also a member of Bio-X, the Maternal & Child Health Research Institute, the Precision Health and Integrated Diagnostics Center, and the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute. He is also a faculty affiliate of the Stanford Center on Longevity.

Ancient Turkey-Dinosaur Found in Museum after Gathering Dust for 90 Years

BY JESS THOMSON 

Update 11/08/2022

A fossil that was discovered in 1933 has finally been identified as a new species.

The fossil had sat unidentified in a museum for 89 years before it was officially confirmed to be a new species of turkey-like dinosaur named Centuriavis lioae, according to a paper published in the Journal of Paleontology.

Daniel Ksepka, curator of the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut, and Kate Dzikiewicz, curatorial associate, led a study of the fossil, in which they used CT scans to reconstruct the shape of the brain and analyzed skeletal features to place the fossil in the evolutionary tree of birds.

The species was named in honor of Suzanne Lio, the managing director and chief operating officer at the Bruce Museum.

"I'm so thankful to have even been considered for this honor," Lio said in a statement. "I'm truly blessed to work for the Bruce Museum where I'm surrounded by such an incredible, dedicated team of employees. This is really a celebration for all of us at the Bruce."

Centuriavis lioae is thought to have lived around 11 million years ago, and is a distant relative of modern day turkeys and grouse. The fossil was first discovered in 1933 in Nebraska, but hadn't been examined until now. Having lived long after the Cretaceous extinction event caused by an asteroid impact around 66 million years ago, this species only has some of the characteristics of a traditional dinosaur.

A file photo of a turkey (left) and a raptor dinosaur with feathers (right). A turkey-like dinosaur fossil was identified as a new species after laying in museum archives for nearly 100 years.

"I love that it's being called a dinosaur by everyone. That is 100% accurate, but it's also a bird, related to today's grouse and turkeys. The specimen is beautifully preserved and shows that Centuriavis was about the size of a sage grouse, which is about half the size of a big farm chicken. If it was like its relatives, it was probably a social and beautiful member of the developing grasslands of North America," Ashley Poust, a paleontology researcher at San Diego Natural History Museum, told Newsweek.

This surprisingly long period of time between discovery and identification is not uncommon in the field.

"Museums often contain hundreds of thousands or millions of specimens, and these have been collected over the last 100 years or more. Often paleontologists or biologists come back from an expedition into new territory with huge collections of specimens, and can take literally years or decades to sort out, clean up, identify and catalog everything," Mike Benton, a professor of vertebrate paleontology at the University of Bristol, told Newsweek.

"With fossils, the specimens may be enclosed in the rock, and it can sometimes take an expert fossil preparator (a technician) many weeks or months to do the painstaking work to remove rock attached to a delicate skeleton before it is ready for study or exhibit."

Additionally, newer technologies like DNA sequencing may result in the identification of newer species long after their arrival at a museum.

"Museum collections contain millions of specimens of fossil and living organisms but there are not enough scientists to study every single one; they are like an immense library where many of the books have not been fully read. So scrutiny of museum collections can yield fantastic new discoveries.

"One important new development is DNA technology—all major museums hold collections of DNA as well as physical specimens. Often, analysis of this DNA reveals what we formerly thought were a single species is actually a complex of several 'cryptic species' which are very similar, but reproductively isolated and genetically distinct," Michael Lee, a professor of evolutionary biology at Flinders University, told Newsweek.

This may mean that specimens buried in museum archives across the globe could eventually find themselves identified as new species with the advance of technology.


"It makes me excited to think about all of the studies that will happen in the future, when new technologies that we can scarcely imagine today are brought to bear on fossils and other objects that museums have been patiently securing for decades," Steve Brusatte, a vertebrate paleontologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Edinburgh, told Newsweek.

Prehistoric 50-Foot Whale Discovered in Deep Jungle Valley by Accident

BY JESS THOMSON 

ON 12/6/22 

Research Team Uncovers 50-Foot Whale Skeleton Fossil

A nearly complete ancient whale skeleton measuring 50 feet long has been discovered in Taiwan, the most complete whale specimen ever found on the island.

In May, Zhou Wenbo, one of the members of the whale fossil excavation team from the National Cheng Kung University's Archaeological Institute, was searching for fossils with local fossil collector Zhang Yumu when they found four of the whale's ribs sticking out of the ground deep in a jungle valley. After some initial excavation, they contacted Yang Zirui at the university.

The fossil, which turned out to be nearly 70 percent complete, is estimated to be that of a blue whale or "big fin whale" that lived around 85,000 years ago. The whale's shoulder blades, jawbone, back side of the skull and tail vertebrae are all well preserved, a National Cheng Kung University release said.

Pictured are students and researchers from Taiwan's National Cheng Kung University and the National Science and Technology Museum, who unearthed the most complete whale fossil found in the nation's history, at 50 feet long.

NATIONAL CHENG KUNG UNIVERSITY/NATIONAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY MUSEUM/YANG ZIRUI

Whales evolved from land animals, splitting off from hippos, their common ancestor, about 50 million years ago. Blue whales, the largest creature to ever exist, can grow up to 98 feet, with fin whales close behind at a record 85 feet long. The earliest specimen of modern blue whales ever found was identified from a skull fossil in Southern Italy, and these creatures were thought to have lived 1.5 million to 1.25 million years ago. Blue and fin whales are considered related evolutionarily as humans are to gorillas, having evolved into separate species from their common ancestor about 3.5 million years ago.

The Tougou area in Hengchun is a fossil hotspot, and many fossils from shells, sharks, crabs and whalebone have been found there, Zhou said.

1 of 4

A student lies next to the 7-foot jawbone

.NATIONAL CHENG KUNG UNIVERSITY/NATIONAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY MUSEUM/YANG ZIRUI

The 50-foot specimen was excavated in Hengchun by Yang, an assistant professor at the Department of Earth Sciences at National Cheng Kung University, as well as other researchers from there and the National Museum of Natural Science and several students from the Chengdu University of Technology.

The Taiwan fossil was excavated over 90 days and carried on foot back to the university, where it was stored at the National Museum of Natural Science. According to the release, the heaviest whale jawbone "weighed 334 kilograms [736 pounds] and was 223 centimeters [7.3 feet] long."

Zhuang Jingren, a rescue volunteer, said in the release that he had never seen jawbones longer than 3.2 feet. Eight people carried the bones on wooden stretchers over rugged terrain and through dense vegetation.

The university said the skeleton represented the second-largest mammal fossil found in Taiwan after some rhino fossils were discovered in 1971. The hayasaka rhino skeletons were found in Tainan's Zuojhen District and are specimens of a rhino species believed to have lived only in Taiwan in the Pleistocene Epoch, between 2.5 million and 11,700 years ago. A near-complete skeleton of Nesorhinus hayasakai is on display in Tainan City Zuojhen Fossil Park.

The geology team at the science museum will continue to clean the whalebone specimens. The scientists hope that further research into the fossils will "help to understand how whales adapt to environmental changes from the ice age to the present."

The excavation team carefully removed water and dirt from a mandible fossil before plastering it.

Whale scapula fossils are cast in plaster.

Pictured are the whale vertebral fossils.

NATIONAL CHENG KUNG UNIVERSITY/NATIONAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY MUSEUM/YANG ZIRUI

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Lost Medieval Graveyard With Over 1,300 Bodies Reveals Mutation Mystery

Story by Robyn White • 

An ancient graveyard holding over 1,300 medieval bodies has revealed a bone mutation mystery.


In this combination image, a stock image of a cemetery and bone found by Queens University Belfast© Getty/ queens university belast

Scientists from Queen's University Belfast and Trinity College Dublin discovered that two men, hidden within the graveyard at Ballyhanna, suffered from a condition called multiple osteochondromas, which causes benign bone tumors.

The long lost Gaelic medieval graveyard was unearthed during the construction of a large bypass in County Donegal, northwestern Ireland. It dates back more than 1,000 years.

The condition the two men suffered from stemmed from a genetic mutation within their EXT1 gene.

It was initially assumed that the men would have been related, and lived during the same time. But it turns out that the two men weren't related at all, and lived hundreds of years apart, findings published in the European Journal of Human Genetics reported.

While the condition affected the same gene, the two men had completely different mutations.

Multiple osteochondromas is incredibly rare and only occurs in 1 in 50,000 people. One of the men suffered from a mutation that has been recorded in patients today, the study found. But the other has never been seen in sequencing data before. It's also the first time a new disease mutation has been found in ancient genomic data.

Iseult Jackson, from Trinity's School of Genetics and Microbiology and first author of the study, said in a press release: "It was really surprising that these individuals had completely different mutations causing their condition, especially because it's so rare."

Those buried there would have been farmers, labourers, merchants, artisans, clergy and the very poor, Queens University said in a press release.

Others among the 1,300 buried at the lost graveyard also had skeletal indicators of stress and ill health. Some were found to have suffered from tuberculosis.

These two men likely suffered from the rare condition, as while the tumors are benign, they can cause limb deformity and extreme pain. The condition can also cause nerve compression, and in a small amount of cases, malignancy.

Professor Dan Bradley, from Trinity's School of Genetics and Microbiology, said in a statement: "Discovery of the mutations that cause serious diseases through application of whole genome sequencing has been a key medical breakthrough in recent years, but this is the first time this has been applied to ancient individuals.

The study demonstrates the important contribution that ancient DNA analysis on people from the past can make to understanding conditions that still affect people today."

The findings will allow scientists to build on osteoarchaeological research, the study said.

Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about genes? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.

References

Iseult Jackson et al, Genetic causes of bone tumors discovered in 1,000-year-old Irish skeletons, European Journal of Human Genetics, published November 28, doi 10.1038/s41431-022-01219-2