On “UK threatens to storm Ecuadorean embassy to seize Assange“
The Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act of 1987 that Britain relies on was a knee-jerk response to the shooting of a police officer by a person in the Libyan Embassy a couple of years earlier. Even then, at that time, the Act was passed on the understanding that it would be invoked only if the UK government believed with some justification that long-term criminal or terrorist activities were being carried out within embassies targeted for raids. Assange’s petition for asylum is legitimate as he has reason to believe that the UK wishes to forward him onto Sweden at the behest of the US.
Even China did not dare to invade the US embassy in Beijing when Chen Guangcheng sought and was given asylum there and then later left for the US.
That Britain would abuse its own laws in order to bend over backwards for its paymasters in Washington DC demonstrates just how debased the country has become. A suitable response to the British threat would be one where governments around the world warn the British that they too could seize British embassy buildings and hold British citizens hostage if police storm the Ecuadorean embassy to arrest Assange.
It’s ironic that by appealing for asylum with Ecuador and staying put, Assange has done more to show the criminality of the US, the UK and Sweden to the world than all the cables WikiLeaks released publicly.
Jennifer H
17 August 2012
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As everyone now knows, the threat to invade the Ecuadorean embassy was a crude bluff that collapsed once it was called by the government of Ecuador. Successive British governments have acted as agents for the US regime’s interests, and the current Conservative government continues this traditional subservience of the relatively petty bourgeois to those of larger compass. The US government clearly intends to place Julian Assange in the dock and make an example of him.
Chris
Ireland
17 August 2012
On “US downgrades crop outlook“
When I was growing up and reading about or hearing my grandparents talk about how things went in the 1930s—drought, unemployment, migration in search of a job, hunger, police attacks on protesters and strikers, racist pogroms or detention—I thought what a strange world it had to have been, and how wonderful it was that those things were largely gone, that we were not going to have another world war or major depression because these things all belonged in the “Old Days.”
Now we see all these things returning with a vengeance. What gains were made are being stripped away—under attack by the very class which finds the specter of a drought the perfect thing in which to invest for profit!
Christie
Washington, USA
15 August 2012
The level of criminality documented in this article is truly astounding.
The jaw-dropping brazenness of the financial aristocracy’s corruption and violation of even basic financial regulatory laws reminds me of the Roman Empire’s social pyramid, with the hereditary aristocracy at the top of the heap, setting the rules to prop up their financial position. Any challenge by the tribunes and plebeians to make even moderate reforms, redistribute some of the ill-gotten wealth of the aristocracy, was met with extreme violence by the privileged classes.
The capitalist system is rotting in its own criminality, and what is outrageous is that the “anti-war” president, Obama, has covered up the crimes of Wall Street, and as the article details, actively thwarts any investigation into the financial aristocracy’s criminal, predatory behaviour. It is high time to topple this monstrous, exploitative social pyramid once and for all—it should be dumped into the ash-heap of history, along with the Roman Empire.
Rupen S
16 August 2012