20A013 The Silence of the Beeb by Jim Davies, 3/31/2020    

Julian Assange leads Wikileaks, a group dedicated to exposing bad acts to public view, especially those by governments. As such, he has made a large number of enemies, from all over the map; Americans and others, Dems as well as Reps; he is an equal-opportunity revealer. Here's a list of what he's published.

The true evil is not that he revealed these otherwise secret actions, but that they took place at all; and of course that the perpetrators are trying to silence him.

The very first ZGBlog featured Bradley Manning, one of his sources, and later Editions (eg here and here) reported on how he was quieted, by the invention of a bogus charge of rape, in Sweden. Today, he is in an English jail, awaiting a verdict from a judge (without a jury) about how the BritGov will respond to a FedGov request for extradition. Should he enter US jurisdiction, he will most likely be imprisoned for ever.

Yet the BBC, the UK's primary source of news and known locally as the Beeb, has failed to report any detail of that hearing since February 25th, despite its web site having plenty of spare room for trivial items of "news."

Craig Murray, though, has been watching and reporting on the current show trial and Lew Rockwell's site has published many articles on the subject.

President Trump has failed to intervene. When campaigning he expressed admiration for Assange's courage in exposing wrongdoing, but once in power he has done nothing to cause the demand for extradition to be canceled. Why, is not clear to me. One of the valuable documents Wikileaked was a set of emails from the supposedly neutral Democratic National Committee that revealed heavy bias against Bernie Sanders; a revelation that must have helped Trump in 2016. He ought at least to return the favor; one intriguing report suggests that he may be trying to do so. We'll see.

As Murray wrote in one of his court reports, the BritGov has done all it can to prevent news of the travesty getting out. By long tradition the "normal" procedure to handle extradition requests is to hold a hearing in Westminster in central London, open to the public who may be passing by. Instead, a single judge is hearing this one in a room adjacent to Belmarsh prison, a high-security lockup much less accessible in the South of the city, with multiple security checks on the way in.

As above, the media's coverage has been minimal and when anything is reported, it is clearly derived from prosecutor press releases, not from what reporters can actually see and hear. The BritGov is going through the motions of a judicial procedure, but is keeping the details from public view.

Clearly, this is all at the behest of the US prosecutors, who are chomping at the bit to get their hands on the Wikileaker. It's an ominous example of how the FedGov can heavily influence governments around the world. Do our will, it says in effect, or favors will be with-held. In this case, the key favor is that of more tariff-free trade between the US and UK, perceived in London as important because of the recent exit from the EU.

Such is the American Empire. Such are the lethal games played by governments, at our expense. They must be caused to disappear, and the means is available.

I've launched a supplement called Jim's Wuhan Bug Blog, here which offers a frequent commentary on the progress of the Corona virus outbreak. It will be heterodox and, hopefully, informative and stimulating.