Ekaterina Blinova | WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange may be extradited to the US in the wake of the two-day hearing at London's High Court. What would that mean for freedom of speech? | A legal team of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is fighting to prevent his extradition to the US where he will face 17 counts of espionage and one charge of computer misuse. ● Assange, who made classified data provided to him by Chelsea (born Bradley) Manning in 2010 public, shedding light on the US' alleged war crimes during its invasions and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, could receive a prison term of up to 175 years.

💬 "If Assange were to be extradited to the United States, no journalist in the world would be safe," Alfred de Zayas, professor of international law in Geneva, former UN independent expert on international order (2012-18), and a retired senior lawyer with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, told Sputnik. ● "Essentially it would mean that any journalist who publishes information that the US government does not like would be subject to persecution and prosecution. His extradition would set a very toxic precedent that the core principle of refugee law and asylum law no longer protects persons who have a well-documented fear of persecution, as codified in article 1 of the Geneva Refugee Convention."

■ APPLICATION OF THE CONVENTION ON THE PREVENTION AND PUNISHMENT OF THE CRIME OF GENOCIDE IN THE GAZA STRIP (ORDER OF 26 JANUARY 2024) (.pdf) + APPLICATION INSTITUTING PROCEEDINGS (.pdf)
■ THE EXPRESSION OF HATRED FOR GENTILES (Richard Edmondson/Nahida Izzat) (10/04/14)

The Prisoners' and Ex-Prisoners' Affairs Committee has detailed in a new report all the methods of torture "Israel" utilizes to slowly and painfully kill Palestinian prisoners. | The Prisoners' and Ex-Prisoners' Affairs Commission revealed in a new report based on a visit its lawyer took to the "Gush Etzion" prison a few days ago, that almost 90% of the 105 Palestinian prisoners have been physically assaulted since the moment of detention until arrival at the prison. ● The Committee's lawyer described the catastrophic situation in the prison, emphasizing the overcrowded cells that force prisoners to sleep on the floor, as mattresses, clothing and blankets are unavailable. This is paired with the impossibility of shutting the window, as it is a space in the wall lined with metal bars, keeping the cell piercing cold. When it rains, water seeps into the cells, forming puddles where prisoners sleep. ● The torture tactics Israeli wardens use are further highlighted in the report. Prison wardens bang on the doors in the middle of the night to wake prisoners up and deprive them of sleep, and sometimes go as far as to force them out onto prison grounds, line them up, and keep them on foot for no reason. It is worth noting that no consideration for medical cases among prisoners is taken, as they are deliberately neglected. The report indicated that these are methods "Israel" uses to inflict slow and torturous deaths on Palestinian prisoners.

■ Khaled Shawish: 9th Palestinian killed in Israeli prisons in 4 months (Al Mayadeen)
■ Day 138: 29,313 martyred, 69,333 injured in Gaza (Al Mayadeen)

Israel's economy shrank by far more than expected in the final quarter of last year in the wake of the war on the besieged Gaza Strip, marking sharpest contraction since the pandemic. | Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics said in a statement that economy plunged 19.4% in the final three months of 2023, as significant resources were diverted to the regime’s military engagement in the war on the coastal sliver. That is the equivalent of a fall of 5% between October and December. ● According to British daily business newspaper the Financial Times, the significant downturn in Israel’s economy was partially due to mobilizing 300,000 reservists, who abandoned their jobs and businesses for extended presence in the military. ● Other factors involved the Tel Aviv regime’s funding housing for over 120,000 settlers, who left the northern and southern regions of the 1948-occupied territories close to the border with the Gaza Strip.

At least two people have been killed when Israeli military aircraft carried out an airstrike against a residential building in the southwestern sector of the Syrian capital city of Damascus. | The state-run al-Ikhbariyah Syria television news channel reported that an Israeli attack with a number of missiles targeted an apartment in the Kafr Sousa residential neighborhood. The official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) also published images from the Israeli air raid, showing the outside of multi-story building partially blackened and windows blown out. An unnamed military source was later quoted by SANA as saying that “the Israeli enemy perpetrated an air aggression at around 9:40 a.m. local time (0740 GMT) on Wednesday, and fired missiles from the direction of the occupied Golan Heights at a residential building in the Kafr Sousa neighborhood of Damascus.”

■ Two civilians martyred in Israeli aggression on residential building in Kafr Sousa, Damascus (SANA)
■ Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich, What Israel is really after in Syria (04/29/13)
■ Stephen J. Sniegoski, The Yinon Thesis Vindicated: Neocons, Israel, and the Fragmentation of Syria (08/15/12)

The US has vetoed a United Nations security council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza for the third time, arguing that it would undermine negotiations over a hostage agreement. | The US was the lone vote against a ceasefire resolution put forward on Tuesday by Algeria. The UK was the sole abstention, with 13 votes in support, including those of close allies of Washington who insisted the humanitarian needs of Palestinians outweighed any reservations over the Algerian text. Washington was widely lambasted for using its veto again at a time when nearly 30,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 2 million people are under threat of famine.

■ US veto of Gaza ceasefire resolution ‘shameful’: CAIR (IRNA)
■ Russia reacts to US vetoing Gaza ceasefire (RT.com)
■ China says US veto in UN truce vote makes Gaza 'even more dangerous' (aNews)

Alarming new official data from the UK government shows that England has suffered a staggering one million deaths from Covid mRNA vaccines in just two years. | The vaccinated population in England has suffered an excessive number of deaths compared to the unvaccinated population. ● According to the UK Government department known as the UK Health Agency (UKHSA), by 3rd July 2022, 18.9 million people had refused the first dose of the COVID-19 injection, 21.5 million people had refused the 2nd dose of the COVID-19 injection, alongside 2.6 million people who had received the first dose but refused the second, and 30.4 million people had refused the third dose of the Covid-19 injection alongside 8.9 million people who had received the second dose but refused the third. ● According to the UKHSA’s figures, 63.4 million people were eligible for vaccination at this point. Therefore, 18.9 million people refused the COVID-19 vaccine in England and remained completely unvaccinated. ● But on top of this, a further 2.6 million refused a second dose, meaning 21.5 million people were not double vaccinated, and 8.9 million people refused a third dose, meaning 30.4 million people were not triple vaccinated. In July 2022, thirty per cent of the population of England remained completely unvaccinated. 34% of the population of England were not double vaccinated, and 50% of the population were not triple vaccinated.

■ U.K. data reveal PANDEMIC of the VACCINATED from 2021 to 2023 (02/20/24)

Michael Shellenberger and Peter Boghossian | By describing the psychopathological characteristics of extremist movements, we will reduce their power | Over the last few years, Woke progressives have behaved in increasingly odd ways. Black Lives Matter activists in Washington, D.C., screamed at and hovered over a woman sitting peacefully in a restaurant, demanding that she raise her fist in a salute. Climate activists threw soup at a Van Gogh painting, dumped milk on the floor of a grocery store, and cemented their hands to an airport runway. And transgender activists claimed, falsely, that there was a “genocide” against trans people, even though there’s no evidence that trans-identified people are being killed at higher rates than non-trans people. ● Some of these behaviors can be explained by the fact that Wokeism is a religion. Two years ago, the two of us published a chart, “Woke Religion: A Taxonomy,” and an accompanying essay, which described how race, climate, trans, and other Woke activists had created their own versions of original sin, taboos, and myths. We turned the taxonomy into a poster and sold hundreds of copies. Both of us still get emails from people saying that the chart helped them to understand why so many previously secular people appear to be in the grip of a deeply superstitious religion.