Common Dreams
Some articles at Common Dreams
22 Years, 4 Presidents, and Just 1 Conviction Later, Dozens Still Jailed at Guantánamo
Watch New Zealand MP’s ‘Absolutely Brilliant’ 80-Second Takedown of GDP
Julian Assange’s life is at risk if his final extradition appeal fails next month, his lawyer warns
JULIAN ASSANGE’S life is at risk should his final appeal against his extradition to the US fail, his lawyer has said.
The 52-year-old WikiLeaks founder, who exposed war crimes committed by the US in the Afghan and Iraq wars, faces up to 175 years in a “political prosecution” in the US.
His lawyer Jennifer Robinson, who is an international human rights lawyer, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: “As a result of the 13 years he’s been effectively in prison or under house arrest or some form of restrictions on his liberty inside the Ecuadorian embassy he is really unwell.
“Because of the treatment he has suffered, he suffers a major depressive illness, he has been diagnosed as being on the spectrum, and the medical evidence is if he was extradited to the United States those conditions would cause him to commit suicide.
“So his life is at risk and I am not exaggerating that.”
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Fury after former Labour MP threatens ‘hundreds of years of the right to protest’
PALESTINE campaigners responded with fury today after peer and former Labour MP John Woodcock said protest organisers should foot the bill for policing their demonstrations.
As thousands once again thronged the streets of towns and cities across Britain demanding an end to the slaughter in Gaza, Mr Woodcock, now known as Lord Walney, the government’s independent adviser on “political violence and disruption,” made the call for police costs to be dumped on organisers in a review carried out for the Home Office.
He specifically targeted protests by Palestine supporters who have campaigned tirelessly against Israel’s murderous actions for three months.
The Stop the War Coalition (StWC) accused Lord Walney of attempting to end “hundreds of years of the right to protest” and said it was the police themselves who chose to mobilise thousands of officers for the protests.
Stop the War co-convener Lindsey German told the Morning Star: “This is just the latest scheme to stop the demonstrations.
“The government, the police and Lord Whatever should be clear that the demonstrations will continue as part of our democratic rights.
“We completely reject the idea that we should be paying for the police. We do not ask the police to turn out. We police our demonstrations ourselves.”
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Morning Star: Labour turncoat Woodcock wants to ban protest by the back door
BRITISH democracy is under attack. The threat comes not from foreign bogeymen but from our own overbearing state.
Lord Walney — as hard-right ex-Labour MP John Woodcock renamed himself after his ennoblement for services against Jeremy Corbyn — wants to ban protests, at least if they aren’t bankrolled by the rich.
The demand that protest organisers meet the cost of policing demonstrations is as dangerous as it is dishonest.
Woodcock claims “disorder” at Palestine demos justifies billing the organisers.
In fact the mass peace demonstrations (which Woodcock, who called on the public to vote for Boris Johnson in 2019 to dash prospects of a socialist government, terms “anti-Israel marches”) have been strikingly peaceful.
Clashes with police, where they have occurred at all, have taken place away from the main demonstrations and certainly beyond the reach of the organisers’ stewards. They have been rare, with most arrests taking place for allegedly hateful speech or signage rather than violence or vandalism.
It adds insult to injury that Lord Walney advises the Home Office to start charging people to protest when the most serious recent disorder on our streets featured far-right hooligans incited to mob the Cenotaph on November 11 by the then home secretary herself.
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Palestine demos are huge because Westminster is at loggerheads with the people it claims to represent. There is a gulf between the government and opposition’s endorsement of Israel’s murderous war and the popular demand for peace.
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Woodcock was made a lord precisely for betraying his party to help defeat that movement, something Lord Rooker (another ex-Labour MP) described as a “national service.” He was tasked by the serial liar he backed for PM with advising the British state on how to stop such movements arising again.
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Morning Star: Labour turncoat Woodcock wants to ban protest by the back door
Argentine courts grant union’s request and suspend Milei’s labor reform
Original article by Brasil de Fato republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.
The measures are part of a “decree” announced by the far-right president in December
The Argentine judiciary has granted a request from the National Confederation of Labor (CGT), the country’s main trade union center, and suspended the effects of the labor reform provided for in the “decree” launched by the government of ultra-right Javier Milei last December. The court decision published on January 3 is a precautionary one, i.e. it suspends the measure.
The decision was taken by the National Chamber of Labor Appeals, the first instance in the Argentine judiciary for appeals on labor issues. The court argued that there was no proven need or urgency to make the decision without consulting the Argentine Congress, which is responsible for legislation.
The “decretazo” is formally called the Decree of Necessity and Urgency (DNU), and is provided for in the Argentine Constitution. However, the executive branch can only issue this type of decree when there are exceptional circumstances and it is not possible to wait for Congress to meet.
Among other measures, the Milei government’s labor reform extends the probationary period for new employees from three to eight months (thus increasing the period in which employers can fire new workers without paying severance pay).
It also authorized the dismissal of workers who take part in picket lines or occupy workplaces during stoppages or strikes, as well as changes to overtime compensation systems.
According to Argentine newspaper La Nación, Wednesday’s court decision came as a surprise to the government. Clarín, another daily in the country, said that the government will appeal to higher courts to overturn the injunction issued by the Labor Appeals Chamber.
This article was translated from an article originally published in Portuguese on Brasil De Fato.
Original article by Brasil de Fato republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.
Morning Star: Starmer’s promise of national reconciliation is a mask for worsening repression
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Starmer’s project is to reconcile a turbulent people to a system that neither represents nor serves them. It’s a restoration project, an attempt to put a decade of political unrest behind us and reconcile the ruled to their rulers.
That explains the horror of “protest” politics, the paranoid vetting of candidates for public office and the determination to return decision-making to a narrow professional caste, whether by preventing ordinary party members from choosing their representatives or by establishing new fiscal oversight bodies to stop elected politicians departing from Treasury and Bank of England orthodoxy, however disastrous that orthodoxy is proving.
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His authoritarian instincts, visible in his harsh record as director of public prosecutions, have been on full display as a Labour leader who meets every dissenting voice with silencing orders, bans on debate, suspensions and rigged disciplinary procedures.
Britain is on this trajectory already: Tory governments since 2019 have dramatically curtailed protest rights, while state and corporate censorship are getting worse.
But Labour’s complete commitment to that agenda — and Starmer is on record saying he will maintain Tory policing laws — is a threat the left has yet to take seriously enough. Capitalism in Britain now maintains itself through the steady dismantling of our democratic rights.
Starmer’s appeal for an end to class conflict may be couched in the language of reconciliation but its reality means disarming citizens and working-class organisations oppressed by an ever more authoritarian state. It is a project that must be resisted to the hilt.