Robert Stevens and Chris Marsden

Parliament and its parties are nothing more than the hirelings of an obscenely wealthy oligarchy that has complete liberty to pursue their self-enrichment and impose their counterrevolutionary social agenda by whatever means they see fit.

The two select committees are nothing more than a cover for the refusal to conduct a serious investigation of the News International scandal that would bring the guilty to book.

The appearance of Rupert Murdoch, the chairman and CEO of News Corporation, and his son James Murdoch, its deputy chief operating officer, before the British Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sports Select Committee was a piece of well-choreographed political theatre.

As with Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of News International, News Corp’s UK arm, who was questioned afterwards, the Murdochs knew beforehand that there was no danger of them being asked probing questions, let alone suffering any legal consequences from their testimony.

Far from the much vaunted reassertion of the authority of Parliament and the bringing of Murdoch to account, the event took on the character of a PR exercise for News Corp.

One would never have known by the committee’s deference that the three News Corp luminaries were appearing to answer questions relating not only to the News of the World’s phone hacking, but to bribery, corruption and blackmail of police officers, public officials and leading politicians by Murdoch’s media empire.

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Robert Stevens
WSWS

"A warning must be made. The US government and its accomplices have gone a long way towards crippling WikiLeaks and creating the conditions where Assange will likely end up spending a long time in prison. Their ability to do so testifies to the vast erosion of democratic rights in the US and internationally."

The ruling by Judge Howard Riddle at Belmarsh Magistrates Court in London that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange can be extradited to Sweden represents a grave threat to his liberty and even to his life.

The decision is only the latest episode in a massive, internationally coordinated campaign headed by the Obama administration and US intelligence agencies to discredit and destroy WikiLeaks.

Assange is the victim of a politically motivated attempt at character assassination and legal frame-up based on trumped-up charges of sexual misconduct. Washington’s chief collaborators are the British government and courts, the Swedish government and its legal system, and the Gillard government in Australia, which has done nothing to defend one of its own citizens.

Julian Assange has emerged as a major figure in journalism, fighting for a genuinely independent press. As opposed to the New York Times and the rest of the establishment media, which routinely and systematically collaborate with the state to conceal the truth and keep the public in the dark, he has worked to expose the crimes of American imperialism. For this reason he has been targeted for destruction.

The frame-up is aimed at silencing WikiLeaks, which has made public thousands of secret US military documents exposing the criminal character of the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq and US diplomatic cables documenting the filthy conspiracies that have been carried out against the world’s people by Washington and its allies.

The determination of the United States to destroy Assange has only grown as the revelations made by WikiLeaks have helped spark mass popular revolts in Tunisia, Egypt and other countries, cutting across the efforts of the US and Europe to portray themselves as benevolent advocates of democracy.

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Robert Stevens
WSWS

Julian Assange speaks to the press after the hearing at Belmarsh
Magistrates’ Court

“I can hardly imagine how, on suspicion of a sexual offence, you can do more harm to a person than has been done in this case. He is famous all over the world as a rapist and he has not even been charged.” ~ Swedish appeal court judge Brita Sundberg-Weitman

The attempt to extradite WikiLeaks founder and editor Julian Assange to Sweden on trumped-up sex charges was stepped up yesterday in the Belmarsh Magistrates’ Court in London.

Assange was appearing at the court on the first day of a two-day extradition hearing. Swedish Director of Prosecutions Marianne Ny is demanding Assange’s extradition on a European Arrest Warrant (EAW). Two women in Sweden allege rape, molestation and unlawful coercion in August of last year. Assange denies the claims.

On the morning of the hearing, Assange’s legal team published their “Skeleton Argument on behalf of Mr. Assange“ online, as one of 42 documents outlining the arguments and testimony they intend to present in court.

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Yvonne Ridley
Kabul Press

Sergey Lavrov (Серге́й Лавро́в), Foreign Minister of Russia and Hillary
Clinton, Secretary of State of the United States

I wonder if Hillary Clinton really believes in the pompous invective that shoots from her lips with the rapidity of machine gun fire.

We had a classic example of it just the other day when she let rip in her grating, robotic monotones over a Moscow court’s decision to jail an oil tycoon.

To be fair to Clinton, she was not alone. There was a whole gaggle of disapproving foreign ministers who poured forth their ridiculous brand of Western arrogance which has poisoned the international atmosphere for far too long.

The US Secretary of State said Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s conviction raised "serious questions about selective prosecution and about the rule of law being overshadowed by political considerations". Although Khodorkovsky, 47, and his business partner, Platon Lebedev, 54, were found guilty of theft and money laundering by a Moscow court, critics like Clinton say the trial constitutes revenge for the tycoon’s questioning of a state monopoly on oil pipelines and propping up political parties that oppose the Kremlin.

Clinton’s censure was echoed by politicians in Britain and Germany, and Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief, urged Moscow to "respect its international commitments in the field of human rights and the rule of law".

Now while it may appear to be quite touching to see all these Western leaders express their outrage over a trial involving the one-time richest and most powerful man in Russia’s oil and gas industry, you have to ask where were these moral guardians when other unjust legal decisions were being made in US courts, for example?

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Robert Stevens and Paul Stuart
WSWS

"The defeat of the air traffic controllers [is] a critical factor in [the Spanish government's] bid to privatise Spain’s airports, the largest remaining state-run system in Europe."

The Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) government has stepped up its offensive against 2,200 air traffic controllers.

The controllers are currently under a State of Alert, imposed by the government by Royal Decree (1673/2010) on December 4. Under the order, the controllers have been forced to work under “military discipline” under the command of the Chief of Staff of the Air Force until the State of Alert ends. The order was imposed following a mass walkout by the controllers on December 3 to protest intolerable working conditions and attacks on their legal rights.

On December 29, Eduardo Esteban [Audio], the chief prosecutor of the Madrid Court, issued a letter demanding the prosecution of air traffic controllers on charges of sedition for stopping work on health and safety grounds over December 3-4. The government has now escalated the threat of prosecution to involve controllers “in general”, according to an insider at the Public Prosecutions office reported in El País.

Attorney General Cándido Conde-Pumpido is demanding sentences of up to eight years under article 20 of the 1964 Air Navigation Laws. This is the second law carried over from the dictatorship of General Franco deployed against air traffic controllers. The government’s declaration of a State of Alert was the first since the end of the Franco regime in 1975.

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Robert Stevens
WSWS

"Today the most urgent task in Spain, throughout Europe and internationally is the building of an independent political movement of the working class, in opposition to all the parties of the political establishment and the trade unions. It is only on this basis that working people can wage a political struggle to repel and defeat the international offensive being waged by the financial aristocracy."

The decision by the Spanish government to use the army to seize airport control towers so as to defeat a wildcat strike by air traffic controllers is a warning to the entire working class.

The government of Prime Minister José Luis Zapatero of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) has handed broad powers to the military by imposing a “state of alert,” nullifying basic democratic rights. The action exposes the thoroughly rightwing character of this “socialist” government. In its determination to impose the will of the financial aristocracy, it is taking measures that have not been seen since the end of the fascist regime of General Franco in 1975.

The stench of a police state once again hangs over Spain. The 2,200 air traffic controllers were forced back to work Friday and Saturday at gunpoint. Armed soldiers now stand guard in the airport towers as the workers direct air traffic under the threat of immediate arrest should they stop work.

In an attempt to justify these actions, Deputy Prime Minister Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba said the workers were “holding the country to ransom” by defending their “unacceptable privileges.” He added, “The immediate effect is that the controllers are now under orders to go back to work and can be charged with a crime under the military penal code if they refuse. The state of alert will initially last for 15 days.”

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