UK High Court’s decision to allow Assange’s extradition to the US branded ‘a grave miscarriage of justice’

Morning Star | November 11, 2021

Stella Morris (centre) speaks to the media outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, after the US Government won its High Court bid to overturn a judge’s decision not to extradite her partner and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange

WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange’s extradition to the US should be allowed, the High Court ruled today in what has been branded “a grave miscarriage of justice.”

Lord Justice Holroyde, sitting at the central London court, said he was satisfied by assurances given by the US government that if Mr Assange is convicted, he would be allowed to serve his sentence in Australia and receive appropriate medical and psychological care while awaiting trial.

Mr Assange, 50, is wanted in the US over an alleged conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information following WikiLeaks’ publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents relating to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

The fight to free Julian Assange is not over. We must step it up

A Morning Star Editorial | December 11, 2021

Supporters of Julian Assange demonstrate outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London

JOE BIDEN opened his “summit for democracy” this week by denouncing “rising authoritarianism” and the “diminishment of freedoms around the globe.”

His administration’s relentless hounding of Julian Assange shows he needs to look in the mirror.

Yesterday’s successful US appeal against a British court’s ruling that Assange could not be extradited to the United States brings closer the criminalisation of journalism and a potential 175-year sentence for a man whose only “crime” was to expose US war crimes around the world.

The Cuban people, neither hungry nor defeated, as honorable as ever

Hope of achieving on November 15 what enemies of the Revolution failed to accomplish in July didn’t last long

Raúl Antonio Capote

Granma | December 03, 2021

Photo: Ariel Cecilio Lemus

After the defeat of July 11 and subsequent attempts to keep the spark of “insurrection” alive, as one of its spokesmen called the pyrrhic attempt, the counterrevolution, its Miami overseers and masters in Washington desperately set out to save what they could from the shipwreck. The hope of achieving on November 15 what they had failed to accomplish in July didn’t last long. The plan was fallacious to begin with, a deception, another swindle.
Pentagon and CIA analysts knew it, government advisors and the Miami “businessmen” were aware, but it seems that, as hope is the last thing to be lost… It could happen, they believed, perhaps the “perfect storm” with the raging winds of a tightened blockade, subversion, the pandemic and a deepening world economic crisis, would weaken Cubans to the point that finally, exhausted by the hardship, they would explode and self-destruct.

How is it possible that Cuba has survived?

Because we have socialism, memory, love, courage, intelligence, science, determination, dreams, convictions and utopias

Karima Oliva Bello

Granma | December 08, 2021

Photo: Ricardo López Hevia

Although many are already predicting the decline of the empire, the United States continues to be one of the most powerful nations in the world from an economic and military point of view.
The government has spent millions and millions of dollars to attack Cuba in every possible way. They have practiced terrorism. They have trained and advised all kinds of opposition leaders, from ladies in white to ex-Marxist intellectuals, to gossipy youtubers and mediocre artists.
They have attempted to asphyxiate our economy, cut the jugular vein of our economic opportunities. They have bombarded national and international public opinion on a daily basis, with artillery of influencers working to discredit Cuban socialism, demoralize our leaders, distort our history, magnify our limitations and contradictions, destroy consensus, weaken collective consciousness and stir up dissatisfaction to the boiling point.

Environment, human rights and class power

Farooque Chowdhury

MR Online | March 12, 2021

Environment is human right, said and resolved a recent UN meet. It’s a reiteration of an already discussed issue–essential to all of the human society. It’s a much important issue to the peoples in countries facing forces ravaging environment; and, ravaging of environment is an act against people as the act denies people’s right to life and existence.

Reiterating and implementing the environment right empowers people, created/widens people’s space for a democratic life, as environment itself is an area for democracy, for people’s participation. There’s no scope for individualism, neither for person nor for capital–irrespective of capital’s power–in the area of environment. The reasons:

[1] No individual or a coterie of individuals create/can create livable environment at no level. Having a livable environment is collective contribution.

[2] No capital or an alliance of capitals create/can create livable environment with its own power. Without labor, capital is lame, useless–incapable of moving a single grain of sand a millimeter.

World’s Richest Now Own 11% Of Global Wealth – The Biggest Leap In Recent History, Says Report

Countercurrents | December 08, 2021

The world’s richest people got a whole lot richer during the COVID-19 crisis.

In 2021, billionaires saw the steepest increase in their share of wealth on record, according to The World Inequality Lab’s annual World Inequality Report.

The top 0.01% richest individuals — the 520,000 people who have at least $19 million — now hold 11% of the world’s wealth, up a full percentage point from 2020, the report found. Meanwhile, the share of global wealth owned by billionaires has grown from 1% in 1995 to 3% in 2021.

World inequality

Michael Robert’s Blog | December 08, 2021

The world has become more unequal in income and wealth in the last 40 years.  That’s according to the World Inequality Report 2022, available here.  Produced by the World Inequality Lab, run by Thomas Piketty and a group of over 100 analysts from around the world, the report has the most up-to-date and complete data on the various facets of inequality worldwide: global wealth, income, gender and ecological inequality.

The report shows how in 2021, “after three decades of trade and financial globalisation, global inequalities remain extremely pronounced … about as great today as they were at the peak of Western imperialism in the early 20th century.”  Although the World Inequality report found inequalities between nations had declined since the end of the cold war (mainly due to the rise in living standards in China), it said inequality had increased within most countries and had become more pronounced as a result of the global pandemic over the past two years.

Reason for hope? Analysis of first Omicron patients in Gauteng, South Africa paints encouraging picture

Taran Deol

Down to Earth | December 08, 2021

Photo: @GautengProvince / Twitter

The Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) was first detected in the Tshwane district of South Africa’s Gauteng province between November 21 and 27. Now, a leading health professional has prepared a detailed profile of the first patients. And the picture that emerges is encouraging.

Fewer people have been administered specialist care than previous waves of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19). The in-hospital death-rate has been significantly lower. There has also been a decline in the average length of stay in the hospital.

The results offer reason for hope even as the Omicron variant has now spread to all South African provinces and triggered the fourth wave of COVID-19 in the COVID-19. It has also spread to 40 other countries.

Climate disasters displace more people than conflicts now: World Migration Report 2022

Richard Mahapatra

Down to Earth | November 28, 2021

A truck filled with migrants breaks down in the Sahara in Chad. Photo: istock

More people are being displaced by disasters — caused by the changing climate — than conflicts, reversing a historical trend. According to the World Migration Report 2022, published every second year by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) of the UN, in 2020, “30.7 million new displacements were triggered by disasters in 145 countries and territories.”

Total internal displacement due to disaster, conflict and violence has increased in comparison to 2019, despite containment due to the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in 2020: To 40.5 million in 2020, from 31.5 million in 2019.

The report quoted the regular data collation by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).

India: One square meal: How this non-tribal forest-dweller family survives without FRA recognition in Odisha

Sanghamitra Dubey, Ravisha Poddar

Down to Earth | November 28, 2021

Srikumar Khadi’s great-grandparents moved to Bhuin-Jor from Dhamakpur in Odisha’s Sundergarh district around 100 years ago. They were offered a small piece of land in the forest by Bhuin-Jor’s inhabitants.

They settled in the forest with the passage of time and started using the land as a homestead. They also used to cultivate basic food products for their livelihood.

Today, a few generations later, Srikumar Khadi, a 55-year-old descendent of the Khadi family, lives on the same land. The land, which is about 12 to 20 decimals in area, serves as a home for his family of seven.