Over the past 24 hours, WikiLeaks has reported that a British High Court ruling on a US appeal aimed at securing Julian Assange’s extradition is “imminent.” Several other legal sources have also stated that the decision is to be brought down in early December.

The US appeal was directed against a January District Court judgement, which blocked Assange’s dispatch to his American persecutors. That narrow verdict endorsed the authoritarian argument that states have a right to prosecute publishers of “national security” material, but rejected extradition on the grounds that it would be “oppressive,” given Assange’s acute medical issues and the draconian conditions in which he would be detained in the US.

Judge Vanessa Baraitser accepted that there would be a “high risk” of Assange committing suicide, if he were extradited.

An interview with Joel Richards

Joel Richards is a teacher, union activist, and socialist running for Boston City Council. In an interview, Richards discusses his plans to fight for Boston’s working class, why the city needs its own Green New Deal, and how Christianity shapes his socialism.

Joel Richards is a longtime public school teacher running for Boston’s District 4 city council seat on November 2, 2021. A first-generation American and union member, he’s running on a platform that speaks directly to the needs of Boston’s working class: equity in education, housing for all, and a local Green New Deal.

A member of Boston Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Richards’s campaign has been endorsed by the Boston Teachers Union, Sunrise Boston, the Greater Boston Labor Council, and the DSA.

In this interview, Richards discusses the structural problems facing his district, how he wants to transform Boston’s public schools, and the role of Christianity and faith in his vision of socialism. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

SB
Why are you running for Boston City Council?

JR
I have to give credit to being called to be a teacher. God has used teaching to shape my heart, to prepare me for a season like this where there’s a lot of change going on in Boston, but where there’s a lot of hurt going on at the same time.
"I want to help my students and their families who are being crushed at the margins of our society."

Lessons Unlearned from Hiroshima and Nagasaki

by Anne Barron

August 9 - Today marks a terrible day in US "self-defense" when we dropped another atomic bomb on the Japanese people seventy-six years ago, this time on the industrial city of Nagasaki. True - Japan was an aggressively militarized society with a strong industrial base when we dropped "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" bombs from above. This US response to increasing Japanese military power was based on lies told us about the Japanese mindset. We need war to stop war.  And did it? The US nuclear attack created terrible consequences, a chain and swell of events that now threaten human (and world) existence.

Aaron Maté·July 2, 2021 / thegrayzone.com - Facing growing outcry, OPCW Director General Fernando Arias went before the UN and told new falsehoods about his organization’s Syria cover-up scandal — along with more disingenuous excuses to avoid addressing it.

Part one of two. Watch Aaron Maté and Piers Robinson discuss this article on Pushback.

In the two years since the censorship of a Syria chemical weapons investigation was exposed, the head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Fernando Arias, has vigorously resisted accountability.

Arias has refused to investigate or explain the extensive manipulation of the OPCW’s probe of an alleged April 2018 chlorine attack in Douma. Rather than answer calls to meet with the veteran inspectors who protested the deception, Arias has disparaged them. The OPCW Director General (DG) has even resorted to feigning ignorance about the scandal, recently claiming that “I don’t know why” the organization’s final report on Douma “was contested.”

Facing growing pressure to address the cover-up – most prominently in a “Statement of Concern” from 28 notable signatories, including five former senior OPCW officials – Arias came before the United Nations Security Council on June 3rd to answer questions in open session for the first time.

In a nod to the public outcry, Arias backtracked from a previous statement that the Douma controversy could not be revisited. But while appearing to suggest that the investigation could be reopened, Arias offered more falsehoods about the scandal, and new disingenuous excuses to avoid addressing it.