The decision by the UK Government overnight to approve the extradition of Julian Assange to the US, to face trumped up espionage and other charges, is an outrageous betrayal of the rule of law, media freedom and human rights.

This matter is so deeply wrong on so many levels. Mr Assange is a Walkley Award winning Australian journalist who revealed hard evidence of US war crimes and other misconduct. This outraged Washington and the Americans are desperate to get even, with the UK and Australian governments tripping over themselves in the rush to please the US and go along for the ride.

Good grief the US doesn’t even have global legal extraterritoriality, and nor does the UK/US extradition agreement include the charges levelled at Mr Assange.

Against the background of the current Japanese government’s clearly ill-conceived policies, which are causing ever greater misery for its people, criticism of Fumio Kishida’s cabinet has increased markedly, with his rating dropping by a further 4.6 percentage points to 56.9% over the month. This is evidenced, in particular, by published data from a survey conducted by the Kyodo agency. According to Japan’s main news agency, 64.1% of respondents were negative about the government’s actions to combat rising prices.

BY Vladimir Danilov

But for the most part so far, if you’ve consumed any of the previous January 6–related content out there, you already know what you’re going to get. The hearings have been little more than a reminder that the Capitol riot happened and that it was bad, only this time with a narrower focus on Trump and his personal role in the incident.

Boris Johnson put problems plaguing his Tory party at home on the backburner on Friday as he paid a second surprise visit to Kiev to meet with Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky. The UK Prime Minister offered to launch a major military training programme for Ukrainian forces “with the potential to train up to 10,000 soldiers every 120 days.”

Boris Johnson, fresh from his surprise visit to Ukraine, has urged western leaders to “steel” themselves for a long conflict in Ukraine.

US President Joe Biden fell from his bicycle while stopping to greet supporters in Rehoboth, Delaware on Saturday. The 79-year-old president did not require medical attention, the White House said.

Video footage of the incident shows Biden crossing a street at low speed, before putting one foot down on the asphalt as if to dismount his bike. Instead, the president fell to the ground, landing on his side.

Biden, who was wearing a helmet, was helped to his feet by assistants. He rode away after speaking briefly to the small crowd of supporters who had gathered along his bike route.

According to the White House, Biden fell after his “foot got caught on the pedal,” and did not need medical attention.

When people talk about Asia, they do not generally mean Australia. After all, it is the largest part of a theoretically separate continent, Oceania, and its people are white and British in origin for the most part.

However Oceania is a cultural term as much as anything. It refers to places where there a mix of native Polynesians and white European settlers, and English is the language of the educated, and more prestigious than native languages. As a functioning entity, it has no meaning, so Australia, which should be taking the lead as the largest country in that continent, has to be part of something else to serve any purpose.

BY Seth Ferris

Hillary Clinton has criticized Emmanuel Macron’s policy towards Russia – the French leader should take it as a compliment

If the warmongering American chastises you for seeking diplomacy, you know you’re doing something right

Former US Secretary of State, First Lady, Senator, and failed presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, passed through Paris last week, and seized an opportunity to chastise French President Emmanuel Macron on his own turf. 

BY Rachel Marsden

Caitlin Johnstone: Assange is doing his most important work yet

Thanks to him, we know what Western leaders' claimed support of free press is really worth

By Caitlin Johnstone, an independent journalist based in Melbourne, Australia. Her website is here and you can follow her on Twitter @caitoz

June 14 (Reuters) - A growing number of people are selectively avoiding important news stories such as the coronavirus pandemic, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the cost-of-living crisis, according to a report released on Tuesday.

Any government that is a national-security state needs big official enemies — scary ones, ones that will cause the citizenry to continue supporting not only the continued existence of a national-security state form of government but also ever-growing budgets for it and its army of voracious “defense” contractors.

That’s, of course, what the current brouhaha about Russia is all about. It’s really a replay of the Cold War decades, when Americans were made to believe that the Reds were coming to get them, take over the federal government and the public schools, and indoctrinate everyone into loving communism and socialism.

BY Jacob Hornberger

The U.S. Capitol Police arrested a group of nine staffers from CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert for allegedly trespassing in the U.S. Capitol on Thursday night, according to Fox News. 

The group of Colbert staffers was arrested in the Capitol’s Longworth House Office Building and charged with illegal entry into the House office buildings after hours. These nine individuals were reportedly escorted out of the January 6 Committee hearing earlier Thursday for not having proper press credential.

Britain’s prime minister intends to scrap his own Brexit deal and provoke a crisis in Northern Irish politics. Everyone who assisted Boris Johnson’s rise to power to block a left-wing government now shares responsibility for his criminal recklessness.

After several months of brinkmanship, Britain’s Conservative government has decided to launch a direct assault on the Northern Ireland Protocol of Boris Johnson’s Brexit agreement. Instead of haggling with the European Union for concessions over the way it operates the protocol, Johnson’s foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has announced legislation to override it altogether. The EU has responded with threats of legal action and a trade war.

Matthew Duss is a leading figure 0n the American political left. However, the left is fragmented, and so we have to qualify this and say he is an important voice in one part of the left — the “connected” left. 

Duss is a foreign policy adviser to the independent Sen. Bernie Sanders. Sanders is allied with the Democratic Party, which gives Duss some access to the foreign policy debate inside that party. This can be considered a good thing. We certainly need as many “connected” progressive voices as we can get. 

BY Lawrence Davidson 
TothePointAnalysis.com

Diogenes, one of the ancient world’s illustrious philosophers, believed that lies were the currency of politics, and those lies were the ones he sought to expose and debase. To make his point, Diogenes occasionally carried a lit lantern through the streets of Athens in the daylight. If asked why, Diogenes would say he was searching for an honest man.

An artificial atmosphere of hostility, sustained by geopolitical agendas, double standards, fake news and skewed narratives has made it difficult to tackle specific human rights problems particularly in Xinjiang.

As former UN rapporteurs we are committed to the promotion and protection of human rights in all corners of the world, including China. Progress can only be achieved on the basis on good faith implementation of the UN Charter and UN human rights treaties, and requires patience, perseverance, and international solidarity.