"A chorus of international human rights and press freedom groups roundly condemned a British court's Friday ruling that WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange can be extradited to the United States where he could face torturous conditions and life in prison.
'This is a travesty of justice,' said Nils Muižnieks, Europe director for Amnesty International. Muižnieks was part of a chorus of condemnation that swiftly followed the High Court decision, which blocks a lower court's January ruling rejecting the U.S. government's attempt at extradition because it would be 'oppressive by reason of Assange's mental health' and create 'substantial' risk of him dying by suicide.
The new ruling marks in a win for the U.S. government—which has charged Assange with 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act related to his publication of classified documents exposing American war crimes."
-->To be fair, the NYT did print a few sentences by human rights groups condemning Assange's prosecution, but it was buried in a much longer reposting of what most people already know about the case. What was missing? Any suggestion that the US attack on Julian Assange will bring about catastrophic censorship of the press, both in the US and in the rest of the world. In essence, the US case states that any revealing of US war crimes secrets is illegal for the entire world, simply because US empire declares it so. The NYT, a longtime ally of the Empire, won't risk printing anything that could get itself into trouble. Some defender of press freedom!
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Common Dreams:
"Probe Shows Big Pharma 'Manipulated' Patent System and 'Raised Prices With Abandon.' Bolstering calls for the U.S. Senate to pass the Build Back Better bill with drug pricing reforms, a House panel on Friday released a report detailing how Big Pharma has not only "raised prices with abandon," but also "manipulated the patent system" to suppress competition.
The final staff report is the culmination of a nearly three-year investigation by the Committee on Oversight and Reform launched under the late Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), who died in 2019. He was succeeded as the panel's chair by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.).
'The committee has obtained more than 1.5 million pages of internal company documents, held five hearings, and released eight interim staff reports,' Maloney noted in a letter at the beginning of the report. 'The investigation has provided a rare glimpse into the decision-making of many of the world's most profitable drug companies.' "
-->The NYT and most of the country's media didn't print this story. Politico did, but very few other national media sites. We have to conclude that the US media is one of the principal reasons that the corruption of Big Pharma goes unpunished.
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United National AntiWar Coalition:
"The US government and its corporate media have been trying to build a case that Russia is getting ready to invade Ukraine. Their main argument is that they have observed around 90,000 Russian troops near the border with Ukraine. Near the border means that they are on Russian territory, this is what the US calls aggression.
Although US and NATO forces have surrounded Russia and have conducted military maneuvers right at the Russian border, that is deemed to be not provocative, but Russia massing troops in its own territory is. What is never said in any of these reports is that there are 125,000 Ukrainian troops in the Donbass region right near the Russian border.
These troops have been freshly equipped by the US with advanced weaponry and US military 'advisors' have been aiding them in their aggressive military posture. The massing of Russian troops near its border is a defensive move on their part to counter the threat of the US and NATO and their ally Ukraine that wants NATO membership."
-->We have to go to a US antiwar coalition to even get a hint that the war narrative given to us by our major media might be off the mark. When the US Pentagon is pushing one set of the facts, newspapers like the NYT always sacrifice their commitment to quality journalism. The Independent in the UK and Reuters at least reported Russian claims of 125,000 Ukrainian troops at Russia's border.
