Australia #20 >>>/qresearch/15175395

PM under pressure to end Assange 'lunacy'

Marty Silk and Tiffanie Turnbull - DECEMBER 11 2021

The federal government has "raised the situation" of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's confinement with the UK and US, but has stopped short of calling for the Australian to be released.

The 50-year-old is wanted in the US over the publishing of thousands of secret US diplomatic and military files, some of which revealed war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Assange is also accused of trying to recruit hackers to provide WikiLeaks with classified US information, and if found guilty could face up to 175 years' imprisonment.

In the UK the High Court ruled on Friday he could be extradited to face 17 charges, after a lower court ruled Assange shouldn't be sent to the US due to a real and "oppressive" risk of suicide in January.

Senior judges ruled that risk was mitigated by assurances from US authorities that the father of two wouldn't be held in highly restrictive prison conditions.

Assange's lawyers intend to challenge the court's ruling with another appeal, this time in the UK's Supreme Court.

Federal Independent MP Andrew Wilkie is calling on Prime Minister Scott Morrison to "end this lunacy" and demand the US and UK allow Assange to be released.

"Mr Assange should be looking forward to spending Christmas with his two young boys and his fiancee, but instead he's facing a 175-year jail sentence and the very real possibility of living out his final days behind bars," he said in a statement.

"He is a hero, not a villain, and journalism is not a crime.

"Again the United Kingdom proves it's a lackey of the United States and that Australia is delighted to go along for the ride."

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it respected the UK legal process and Australia was not a party to the case.

DFAT said it was monitoring Assange's case, had offered him consular assistance and sought his consent to discuss his health situation with UK prison officials, but he hadn't responded.

The department did not comment on Mr Wilkie's call for the government to demand Assange be released.

"The Australian Government has raised the situation of Mr Assange with US and UK counterparts - including our expectations of due process, humane and fair treatment, access to proper medical and other care, and access to his legal team - and will continue to do so," a DFAT spokesperson told AAP.

The UK court's decision has drawn ire from the United Nations' special rapporteur on torture, Nils Melzer, who sharply criticised the verdict.

"This is a shortcoming for the British judiciary," Mr Melzer told the DPA news agency on Friday.

"You can think what you want about Assange but he is not in a condition to be extradited," he said, referring to a "politically motivated verdict".

Assange has been held in the UK"s Belmarsh Prison since 2019 after he was carried out of the Ecuadorian embassy by police and arrested for breaching bail.

He initially entered the building in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden where police wanted to interview him about sexual assault allegations, which he has always denied and which were eventually dropped.

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https://www.begadistrictnews.com.au/story/7547367/pm-under-pressure-to-end-assange-lunacy/

General Research #19205 >>>/qresearch/15180824

https://t.me/epochtimes/30228

The Epoch Times, [12.12.21 08:41]

Cemex Says US Justice Department Closed Anti-Trust Investigation

READ: https://www.theepochtimes.com/cemex-says-us-justice-department-closed-anti-trust-investigation_4152102.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

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General Research #19206 >>>/qresearch/15182087

Gavin Newsom: Hey, Let’s Do With Guns What Texas Did With Abortion

Gavin Newsom won’t let a crisis — or a court case, far away, on a different topic — go to waste.

The nearly-recalled governor of a left-wing state that’s losing citizens announced Saturday night that he will push legislation modeled after Texas’ abortion laws to allow private citizens to sue those who manufacture or sell so-called assault weapons or ghost guns.

“I am outraged by yesterday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing Texas’s ban on most abortion services to remain in place…” Newsom ranted on Twitter, while introducing his scheme, then added, “If the most efficient way to keep these devastating weapons off our streets is to add the threat of private lawsuits, we should do just that.”

Under Texas S.B. 8, abortions are prohibited after a fetal heartbeat is detected, and the law allows individuals to bring civil action against anyone who performs a prohibited abortion.

Newsom asked his staff, the state legislature, and Democrat attorney general to craft a bill that “would create a right of action allowing private citizens to seek injunctive relief, and statutory damages of at least $10,000 per violation plus costs and attorney’s fees, against anyone who manufactures, distributes, or sells an assault weapon or ghost gun kit or parts in the State of California.”

The Firearms Policy Coalition, a California-based nonprofit group, is prepared to fight the Democrat governor to the highest court.

“If Gavin Newsom wants to play a game of constitutional chicken, we will prevail,” the group said.

Newsom’s proposal would first have to pass California’s legislature, which reconvenes in January. Despite the Golden State having full-time, highly-compensated legislators, it usually takes nearly nine months for new bills to pass.

State Sen. Brian Dahle, a Republican from rural northeast California, opposes the plan, and believes it’s a stunt for Newsom to gain praise from his radical base ahead of a possible run for president.

“The right to bear arms is different than the right to have an abortion,” Dahle explained. “The right to have an abortion is not a Constitutional amendment. So I think he’s way off base.”

Dahle is correct.

Firearms, and the right to bear them, are specifically mentioned in the Bill of Rights and enshrined in the Constitution, whereas abortion is mentioned nowhere.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/ari-j-kaufman/2021/12/12/gavin-newsom-hey-lets-do-with-guns-what-texas-did-with-abortion-n1540971

Chinese Seafarers Face Crew Change Challenges

Bloomberg

December 12, 2021

By Ann Koh (Bloomberg) Chinese seafarers weary of the pandemic are returning home to celebrate the Spring Festival early next year, adding to a shortage of truckers and port workers in the country that’s compounding snarls in global supply chains.

Some of the world’s major shipping lines including Ocean Network Express and Hapag-Lloyd AG have stopped taking new bookings for container shipments to South China’s smaller ports, a decision prompted by a lack of feeder ships to haul the boxes amid a labor crunch, according to advisories sent to customers.

Getting goods from factories in China to consumers around the world relies on an intricate network of coastal feeder vessels run by independent operators to haul containers off and on bigger ships at main Chinese ports like Hong Kong and Shanghai. River barges and trucks also connect inland cities.

The suspension of feeder services in the Pearl River Delta and Hong Kong area for the Spring Festival, or Lunar New Year, typically lasts six weeks but is expected to stretch at least two months this time due to lengthy quarantine requirements for seafarers, according to shipping experts. That’s raising freight costs to ship a container out of South China to Southeast Asia by 30% from a week earlier, and could mean further delays at already backlogged U.S. ports, they said.

The journey home this year for Chinese seafarers is taking longer because of quarantine restrictions on travel that locals have nicknamed the arithmetic formula “14 + 7.” The country’s rules include a minimum 14-day hotel quarantine when they leave ships, followed by seven days of home confinement, Hapag-Lloyd said in an e-mail.

Anxiety over more viral outbreaks is prompting local authorities to implement additional restrictions to travel from port cities to Beijing or provinces further inland, the experts said.

The disruptions underscore the impact that China continues to have on global supply chains as the country presses on with its zero-Covid-19 strategy. From closures of Yantian and Ningbo port earlier this year to exhausted Chinese seafarers joining the world’s biggest human migration for the Spring Festival, these measures are adding to congestion at ports from Vancouver and Europe.

“If the clampdowns on cities go on as authorities discover more new Covid-19 cases in East China, the situation could deteriorate from here,” said Salmon Aidan Lee, head of polyesters at Wood Mackenzie.

The Eastern Chinese city of Ningbo imposed a lockdown on Zhenhai district this week after discovering a case of Covid-19 and two asymptomatic infections. Petrochemicals factories have been ordered to reduce output and the movement of all workers living in the locality have been barred, according to local media reports.

While the lockdown in Zhenhai hasn’t impacted South China shipment schedules, the situation could change if authorities change rules on quarantine requirements or restrict travel, said Tim Seifert, a spokesman for Hapag-Lloyd in an e-mail. “In such cases, cross-city travel within China could be banned or require additional quarantine at the location of seafarer joining if announced by the authorities.”

>>110819 (me)

oops, here's the sauce:

https://gcaptain.com/chinese-seafarers-crew-change-covid/

Exxon Proposing to Build Supply Depot for Guyana Oil and Gas Projects

Reuters

December 10, 2021

By Neil Marks and Sabrina Valle

HOUSTON, Dec 10 (Reuters) – Exxon Mobil Corp outlined a major new investment in Guyana amid government calls for delivering economic benefits to residents from deepwater oil and gas discoveries helping turn the South American nation into an oil powerhouse.

A coming onshore supply base will expand jobs and boost local fabrication for future projects starting with its fourth production unit, Exxon’s president for Guyana Alistair Routledge said in remarks late Thursday. It will bring total investment in Guyana to $30 billion, he told a Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry gathering.

Guyana is still reviewing needed environmental permits for the production consortium’s future project, called Yellowtail, and officials have called on Exxon and partners to add financial guarantees and local content to win needed approval.

“It is difficult to overestimate the scale of what is taking place,” Routledge said in Georgetown before a group that included Guyana Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo. Private sector investment offers “an enormous opportunity to transform the overall economy.”

Exxon is also planning a gas-to-energy project that is could reduce the cost of electricity, according to Routledge.

An Exxon-led consortium with Hess Corp and CNOOC has more than 3,200 Guyanese working on its operations and some 800 local suppliers, he said. The group discovered 10 billion barrels of oil and gas in deep waters off Guyana.

A Hess spokesperson referred questions to Exxon, whose spokesperson Meghan Mcdonalds said Exxon issued a request for information for the shorebase, the second planned in Guyana, and is currently in the process of evaluating the submitted proposals.

Exxon last month said Guyana production could hit 750,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 2026, from 120,000 bpd today. Hess separately put total output at 1 million bpd by 2027.

Most of Exxon’s “entire supply chain for our offshore activities have been relocated to Guyana,” moving “activities from the United States, Brazil and Trinidad and Tobago,” Routledge said. (By Sabrina Valle in Houston and Neil Mark, additional reporting by Marianna Parragua.)

https://gcaptain.com/exxon-proposing-to-build-supply-depot-for-guyana-oil-and-gas-projects/