US 'considering' dropping prosecution of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, Joe Biden says
Wednesday 10 April 2024 18:20, UK
The US is "considering" dropping its prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Joe Biden has said.
It comes following a request from Australia, where Mr Assange is originally from. The country's prime minister Anthony Albanese backed a motion in February calling for his return to Australia.
When asked about the request by reporters at the White House on Wednesday, the US president said: "We're considering it".
Mr Assange's lawyer described the comments as "encouraging".
The 52-year-old faces prosecution in the US over an alleged conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information.
America’s 806 Billionaires Are Now Richer Than Half the Population Combined—a Lot Richer by Michale Mechanic
April 11, 2024
Introduction:
(Mother Jones) Are you better off now than you were when Donald Trump was president? That’s a dumb question for Republicans to pose, because the answer by most measures would be, “Oh, heck yes!” But plenty of people feel otherwise, either because they are down a right-wing rabbit hole or because the poorer half of the population wasn’t doing great before the pandemic and they’re still really not doing so well.
You know who is? Billionaires.
As of April 1, according to the latest analysis of Forbes data by the nonprofit Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF), the combined wealth of the nation’s 806 billionaires—their population rises and falls with the markets—had reached a record $5.8 trillion. That’s more than $7 billion a head and nearly double their total holdings in late 2017, when congressional Republicans unilaterally rammed through a package of widely unpopular tax “reforms” skewed in favor of America’s most affluent.
Even after adjusting for the high inflation that has plagued us these past few years, billionaires have seen a 57 percent gain in their collective wealth since the so-called Trump tax cuts took effect. That legislation was a feeding frenzy for corporate lobbyists.
^^^ A very important point: capitalism as practiced now, or at least as practiced in the last part of the twentieth century, depended on the internalization of profits and the externalization of costs.
The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will not hear Mckesson v. Doe. The decision not to hear Mckesson leaves in place a lower court decision that effectively eliminated the right to organize a mass protest in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.
Under that lower court decision, a protest organizer faces potentially ruinous financial consequences if a single attendee at a mass protest commits an illegal act.
It is possible that this outcome will be temporary. The Court did not embrace the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s decision attacking the First Amendment right to protest, but it did not reverse it either. That means that, at least for now, the Fifth Circuit’s decision is the law in much of the American South.
For the past several years, the Fifth Circuit has engaged in a crusade against DeRay Mckesson, a prominent figure within the Black Lives Matter movement who organized a protest near a Baton Rouge police station in 2016.
The facts of the Mckesson case are, unfortunately, quite tragic. Mckesson helped organize the Baton Rouge protest following the fatal police shooting of Alton Sterling. During that protest, an unknown individual threw a rock or similar object at a police officer, the plaintiff in the Mckesson case who is identified only as “Officer John Doe.” Sadly, the officer was struck in the face and, according to one court, suffered “injuries to his teeth, jaw, brain, and head.”
