Winston Churchill told the Peel Commission in 1937:
“I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly-wise race… has come in and taken their place”.
27 June 2020 (Wall Street International)* — When making an online purchase, any reputable website will require a secure HTTPS connection before requesting payment information and completing the transaction. This is the method used by browsers and websites to securely exchange sensitive data. Its underlying encryption uses digital certificates and strong encryption to create a secure tunnel between a web browser and a web server.
28 June 2020 (Greenpeace International)*— Last month, Russia suffered one of the worst environmental disasters in its history when an oil spill at the Nornickel plant spewed thousands of tonnes of oil into land and water in Taimyr, Siberia, turning the Ambarnaya River red. It is possibly second in scale only to the 1994 Komi pipeline spill, which was by some estimates over eight times bigger in volume than the Exxon Valdez in Alaska in 1989.
ILO/Marcel Crozet | Two workers on a construction site in Pokhara, Nepal.
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A project run by the International Fund for Agricultural Development, IFAD, which was already in place before the pandemic, developing enterprises in rural areas of Nepal, is now providing a range of services for migrants, forced to return home..These include repatriation for workers stranded overseas, matching job-seekers with available jobs within the country, helping them to find other income-generating activities, and providing technical and vocational training.
28 June 2020 (IWGIA)* — Spending time with the Baka, as we have both done over several years, is a humbling experience. This group of over 40,000 spread between the forests of Cameroon, the Republic of Congo and Gabon, practice hunting and foraging as a traditional livelihood. Through their long history in the Congo Basin they have accumulated and passed on extensive ecological knowledge and sophisticated cultural mechanisms of egalitarianism, sharing and human-nature conviviality.
Despite (or because of) this rich cultural heritage, the Baka, and hunter-gatherers around the world, have consistently been forced into categories of ‘primitive’ and ‘uncultured’ by neighbouring agriculturalist communities, national governments and some international actors.
Our total human population and economy have imposed on the global environment an excessive weight.
Malthus’ Essay on the principle of population
27 June 2020 (Wall Street International)* — T.R. Malthus’ Essay on the principle of population, the first edition of which was published in 1798, was one of the first systematic studies of the problem of population in relation to resources. Earlier discussions of the problem had been published by Botero in Italy, Robert Wallace in England, and Benjamin Franklin in America.
As academics, we teach about empire, slavery and colonialism because without them, the world makes no sense.
The Rhodes Must Fall campaign in Oxford, UK – 9 Jun 2020 | SOPA Images/SIPA USA/PA Images
27 June 2020 (openDemocracy)* — Observing the protests against racism in the streets of the US, UK, Australia and elsewhere feels like watching not only a mass movement, but also a classroom, crackling with intellectual energy.
(UN News)* — The UN Charter “brought rules and hope to a world in ruins”, Secretary-General António Guterres told a virtual ceremony on 26 June 2020, commemorating 75 years since the Organization’s foundational text was signed.
UN Photo/Yould | The UN Charter being signed by a delegation at a ceremony held at the Veterans’ War Memorial Building on 26 June 1945.
Adopted by Member States as the Second World War was coming to a close, the UN chief noted that the world today was marking the milestone anniversary “as global pressures are spiraling up”. The Charter was signed in San Francisco on 26 June 1945 and came into force on 24 October 1945.
(UN News)* — The decision by the United States to authorize sanctions targeting staff at the International Criminal Court (ICC) is “a direct attack to the institution’s judicial independence”, UN human rights experts said on Thursday [25 June 2020].
Washington announced this month that it would launch an economic and legal offensive against ICC officials investigating alleged war crimes committed by all sides in the conflict in Afghanistan, including US troops.
“The implementation of such policies by the US has the sole aim of exerting pressure on an institution whose role is to seek justice against crimes of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression”, saidDiego García-Sayán, UN Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, speaking on behalf of the 34 experts.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jun 25 2020 (IPS)* – Katharina Pistor’s recent book, The Code of Capital: How the law creates wealth and inequality shows how law has been crucial to the creation of capital, and how capital continues to survive, evolve and enhance its ability to ‘make money’, or secure wealth legally, i.e., through the law.
Legal coding makes capital
In her magnum opus, the Columbia Law School professor explains how legal systems create capital and how law enables wealth creation through what she terms ‘legal coding’.
Notions of property and property rights have changed over the ages, reflecting and redefining social and economic relations more generally.
Pistor sees ‘legal coding’ — e.g., via collateral, trust, corporate governance, bankruptcy, contracts and other property laws — as means for assets to become capital, creating wealth for their holders. When “coded in law”, even “dirt” can become a valuable asset, capable of enriching its owners.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 