The U.S. appeal of a British court ruling on the Assange extradition case has concluded, and the judges will probably not have a decision ready until at least January – a full year after the extradition was denied by a lower court. Assange, despite being convicted of no crime, will have remained in Belmarsh Prison the entire time. Their old tactics never seem to have the intended effect. The harder they struggle to keep him from being able to expose their crimes, the more of their own criminality they reveal.

Every so often there seems to be a test of the public’s will to check its obedience. As children in once meaningful classes in public school (when I was a kid), we were always taught how the Chinese, for example, could change collective policy overnight because the population did as it was told. That’s why it accepted the "one-child-per-family" rule almost overnight and by edict. This despite the fact that the Chinese people love children to an extreme. This is the sort of fealty you can expect from a vassal state. And it works. The Chinese people do as they are told.

Publisher's Note: The Reader is pleased to present our second Q&A with the Scott and Rock Island County Health Departments on controversies, contradictions, and conflicts that continue to plague the COVID-19 pandemic narrative. Questions were sent to both county health departments and simultaneously published in our June 2021 edition. And once again, to their huge credit, Scott and Rock Island health officials have fully engaged in this process, providing comprehensive responses for Quad Citians to consider.

The Justice Department under President Joe Biden plans to continue the case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange that was launched under President Donald Trump. "We continue to seek his extradition," Justice Department spokesperson Marc Raimondi told Reuters days before February 12 – the deadline for the United States government to submit its "grounds for appeal." The statement represents a departure from President Barack Obama's administration, which declined to prosecute Assange. Justice Department officials were reportedly concerned about the threat it would pose to press freedom.