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| On June 17, UK Home Secretary Priti Patel approved the extradition of Julian Assange to the United States to face 18 criminal charges: One count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, and 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917. If convicted on all charges, Assange faces up to 175 years in prison. His final recourse is an appeal to the High Court of Justice where, if the history of his case is any indication, he'll be told that they're all out of justice and have none for him. If justice had anything to do with it, previous courts would have thrown out the US extradition request on grounds of both jurisdiction and treaty language. The "crimes" of which Assange is accused were not committed on US soil. And Article 4 of the US-UK extradition treaty forbids extradition for political offenses. Be clear on this: Assange is a political prisoner, held for and charged with committing ... journalism. |
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| The Washington Post reports the White House is planning for an extended conflict in Ukraine. Leaders in NATO, the UK and Germany have joined the US in support of a long war. However, there is anxiety among some in the Western alliance that war fatigue will set in and support for Kiev will dry up. The Post reported an unnamed senior State Department official said, "Biden administration officials had discussed the possibility of a protracted conflict with global spill-over effects even before February, as U.S. intelligence suggested Putin was preparing to invade." Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said, "We're here to dig in our spurs." Austin made the comment during a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group. At the conference, the defense secretary announced Germany was sending long-range rockets to Kiev, and Slovakia was sending Mi-series helicopters. |
| Citing current and former US officials, CNN reported Tuesday that Israel has ramped up its covert attacks and assassinations inside Iran but has kept the US in the dark about its operations. Over the past month, Israel has been suspected of being behind a string of mysterious deaths inside Iran. US officials told CNN that Israel was responsible for the killing of Hassan Sayyad Khodaei, a colonel in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), who was gunned down in Tehran at the end of May. Israel was also likely behind the death of a young Iranian engineer, who was killed in a drone attack on an Iranian military facility outside of Tehran. Israel is suspected because it has launched similar operations against Iranian facilities in the past. Iran believes Israel was also behind the killing of two Iranian scientists, who were both poisoned separately at the end of May and died within a few days of falling ill. |
| | The Russian Foreign Ministry on Monday demanded that Lithuania lift all restrictions on the shipment of goods to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, which is sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic Sea. Lithuania announced last week that it was banning the transport of sanctioned goods through its territory to Kaliningrad, which the governor of the Russian enclave estimates will impact 50% of all goods that are transported to the territory by rail. The Russian Foreign Ministry said if these restrictions aren't lifted, Moscow will retaliate. "If the transit of goods between the Kaliningrad region and the rest of Russia through Lithuania is not fully restored, Russia reserves the right to take action to protect its national interests," the Ministry said after summoning Virginija Umbrasene, Lithuania's Charge d'Affaires in Russia. |
| Here is a puzzle. What did Israel Katz, an Israeli legislator and until recently a senior government minister, mean when he threatened Palestinian students last month with another "Nakba" if they continued to wave the Palestinian flag? He urged them to "remember 1948" and speak to their "grandfathers and grandmothers." "If you don't calm down," he told the Israeli parliament, "we'll teach you a lesson that won't be forgotten." And similarly, what was in the mind of Uzi Dayan, a former army general who is also a member of the Israeli parliament, when he warned Palestinians two months earlier "to be careful"? They would face "a situation you know, which is Nakba," if they refused to passively submit to Israel's dictates. |
| A Russian oil refinery near the Ukrainian border reported Wednesday that it was attacked by two drones that crashed into the facility that flew from the direction of Ukrainian territory. The Novoshakhtinsk oil refinery in Russia's Rostov Oblast is just five miles from the border with Ukraine. The plant's management said one of the drone attacks caused fires, but no injuries were reported. "As a result of terrorist actions from the Western border of the Rostov region, two unmanned aerial vehicles struck at the technological facilities of Novoshakhtinsk," the plant said. |
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