Janine Jackson interviewed Defending Rights and Dissent’s Chip Gibbons about freeing Mahmoud Khalil for the June 12, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

Zeteo (6/12/25)

Janine Jackson: As we record on June 12, the official death toll in Gaza is…something that need not be of specific concern, given ample evidence that no number would, in itself, magically change the indifference of powerful bodies to the ongoing crime of murder, starvation, displacement and erasure of Palestinians by Israel, with critical US material and political support. UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said recently, without trying to compare his experience to that of Gazans, that he has started therapy to deal with his experience, just witnessing trauma on this scale.

But when people speak up about something that bipartisan US politicians and US corporate media support, that criticism becomes suspect, by which is increasingly meant criminal. So here we are with Columbia University graduate—or what Fox News calls “anti-Israel ringleader”—Mahmoud Khalil, charged with no crime, but detained since March.

Chip Gibbons is policy director at Defending Rights & Dissent, and journalist and researcher working on a new history of FBI national security surveillance. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Chip Gibbons.

Chip Gibbons: It’s always a pleasure to be back on CounterSpin.

JJ: There’s always a lot I could talk with you about, but, for today, I know that listeners with horrible news coming at them from all sides may have lost the thread on Mahmoud Khalil. What is the latest on his case, and how good is that latest news? What should we think about it?

CG: As of June 12, when we’re recording this, Mahmoud Khalil is still detained at the LaSalle Immigration Detention Center in Jena, Louisiana. It is a private immigration prison. If you go on their website, they talk about their commitment to family values, but the conditions there—you’ll be shocked to learn this—are not very good. I’m not sure what type of family values they’re talking about.

CBS (6/13/25)

Recently, a judge has ruled on a preliminary injunction that Mahmoud Khalil brought, asking that the immigration provision that [Secretary of State Marco] Rubio relies on, that gives the secretary of state the power to expel someone from the country if they pose a threat to US foreign policy, is unconstitutional as applied to [Khalil], enjoined Rubio from enforcing it against him, voiding the determination that Rubio made, as well as enjoining the Trump administration from enforcing what Khalil’s lawyers alleged, and what I think is not really just an allegation at this point, is a policy of arresting and detaining noncitizens who criticize Israel or support Palestinian rights. The judge has given the Trump administration until Friday to appeal, and has stayed his own order.

Of all the other similarly situated individuals in immigration proceedings over their pro-Palestine speech, the judges have granted them bail pending a final motion. Khalil submitted a motion for bail. It’s never been ruled on, and now the judge has issued this injunction that could potentially set him free, but has given the government until Friday to file an appeal, and it’s unclear, if the government files the appeal, if that will further stay his time in detention.

And Khalil is a father. His child was born while he was detained. He was not able to attend the birth of his child, and for an extended period he was denied a contact visit with the newborn child until a judge intervened.

And the thing we have to remember here, this is very difficult to keep track of, is that Khalil is really in two separate legal proceedings right now. He’s in an immigration removal proceeding, which takes place in immigration court, and immigration court is not part of the “Article Three”—that’s Article Three of the US Constitution—judiciary.

It is part of the Department of Justice. Immigration Judges work for Pam Bondi, the attorney general. You can appeal an immigration judge’s decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is appointed by Pam Bondi, the attorney general, and the attorney general can reverse or modify any decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals. So immigration court is basically a kangaroo court.

At the same time, he’s challenging the constitutionality of this detention, not the removal itself, but the detention as unconstitutional in federal court, with what’s called a federal habeas petition. And the habeas corpus, of course, goes back to before the Magna Carta, but it was enshrined as a basic human right in the Magna Carta, and he’s arguing his detention is unconstitutional.

And the reason for these two proceedings is that immigration courts are very limited in what they can do, beyond the sort of kangaroo court nature that I just described, where the attorney general is usually the party seeking the deportation, and the person making the decision works for the attorney general, and if the attorney general doesn’t like their decision, they can modify it. The Board of Immigration Appeals ruled during the Clinton years that once the secretary of state makes a determination that someone’s presence in the US has adverse foreign policy consequences, they can be removed from the country. There’s essentially no defense, and immigration judges cannot hear constitutional challenges or issues.

On the flip side, federal courts are barred from hearing challenges to the attorney general’s enforcement or commencement of immigration proceedings, but they are allowed to weigh challenges to detention. So Khalil and other similarly situated defendants are using the habeas remedy to challenge the constitutionality of the detention.

Guardian (3/13/25)

In Khalil’s case, it gets very complicated even further, because the government has brought two “immigration charges” against him. One is the claim that his presence poses a threat to our foreign policy. The other is that he misled immigration officials on his application by not mentioning he was part of a student group, which it’s unclear why that would affect his Green Card.

And there’s also allegations about when he did or didn’t work for the British government. He worked at the British Embassy, I think, in Lebanon, and the Trump administration is bringing that up, which I believe was disclosed on his application. And his lawyers have offered information refuting this charge, but the immigration judge has refused to hear it.

The immigration judge, by the way, not only works for the Department of Justice, she’s a former ICE employee. She’s refused to hear it on the grounds that she doesn’t need to make a decision on this, because she has the Rubio determination. And the preliminary injunction only applies, we think, to the Rubio determination, because the judge ruled in the previous ruling he was unlikely to prevail on a constitutional challenge to the misleading application charge.

So that’s sort of the convoluted legal situation we’re in. Khalil is in a removal proceeding in immigration court. He’s in a federal challenge to detention in federal court, and a federal judge has issued an injunction to enforcing the Rubio determination against him, but not the second charge, which an immigration judge has refused to rule on. Rubio’s saying it’s a sole removal basis. And that judge has also issued a stay giving the government time to appeal. So he remains detained even though his detention is likely unconstitutional, and a judge has found that he suffers irreparable harm by this detention.

JJ: I want to lift up a piece that you mentioned that we’re seeing, is that criminality, or the ability to be detained, has to do with something you do having “adverse foreign policy consequences.” I know that folks hear that and are like, “What? What do you mean? If the current administration has certain foreign policy objectives, and I disagree with them, that means if I speak out in opposition, I’m committing a crime?”

CG: So I think we have to remember, and this gets sort of pedantic, but Khalil is not charged with a crime, and the provision is not a criminal provision. It is a provision about whether or not you can be admitted into the US or removed from the US. So Khalil has not been charged with any criminal offense. They’re invoking a provision that says if your presence has adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States…

JJ: Your presence, OK.

Al Jazeera (3/23/25)

CG: …signs a piece of paper saying this is true, or it makes determination of it, you can be deported from the US. So this is not a criminal matter.

What does this provision even cover or does not cover is a really fascinating question. And the judge in the Khalil habeas case has stated that it’s unconstitutional as applied to Khalil, because no reasonable person would have notice that this provision could apply to domestic political speech or domestic speech.

He noted a number of instances when it was used in the ’90s by the Clinton administration, but they were all against people who were accused of criminal conduct in foreign countries. So you had a Saudi national who was accused of terrorism in Jordan; you had an alleged paramilitary leader from Haiti. You had a Mexican official who was accused of a number of crimes; but it was not someone who was in this country and engaged in political speech about a foreign government’s genocide, and therefore no reasonable person would have any notice that this statute could apply to their domestic speech.

JJ: I’m going to keep us short for today, although there are much, much and myriad things we could talk about, but you and I both know that once politicians take up an individual case—Julian Assange, Michael Brown, Mahmoud Khalil—we know that then news media bring out the microscopes. Is this really a good guy? How did he treat his mother? I’m seeing some parking tickets here. There might be some particulars to investigate.

There’s almost a vocational effort to make there be something specific about this person that makes it make sense that they are being targeted. And then the effect of that is to tell everyone listening, As long as you don’t do what this guy did, you’re going to be safe. Why is the Mahmoud Khalil case so important to folks who don’t even know who Mahmoud Khalil is, and don’t understand why it matters?

Chip Gibbons: “This is a case about whether or not we have a First Amendment right to criticize Israel for engaging in a genocide in Gaza, or support the human rights of the Palestinian people.”

CG: This is a case about whether or not we have a First Amendment right to criticize Israel for engaging in a genocide in Gaza, or support the human rights of the Palestinian people. The case is currently about an obscure Cold War immigration provision, and whether or not it can be used to deport a lawful, permanent resident, all of which has profound legal questions for individuals in this country who are immigrants or noncitizens. But at the end of the day, we should not believe this will remain only in the noncitizen realm.

The Heritage Foundation, who laid out a lot of the playbook about using deportations to target student activists, has made it clear their final goal is to equate all protests for Palestine with material support for terrorism. In the past, when we’ve seen immigration enforcement abuse for political policing, J. Edgar Hoover during the Palmer raids; the Los Angeles Eight, who were supporters of Palestinian rights who the Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II administrations sought to deport, both of those cases preconfigure or forbode larger attacks of civil liberties that eventually affect everyone.

Which is not to say that we shouldn’t care about the rights of noncitizens; we should care about everyone’s free-speech rights.

But if you believe this is going to stay with Green Card holders or student visa holders, the goal is to take away your right to criticize a foreign apartheid state’s genocide, with the eventual goal of taking away your right to criticize US foreign policy. And this is the vehicle for doing it. It starts today, with the visa holders and the Green Card holders, but they will come for the natural-born citizens eventually, too, if they get away with this.

JJ: We’ve been speaking with Chip Gibbons of Defending Rights & Dissent. They’re online at RightsAndDissent.org. Chip Gibbons, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

CG: Thank you for having me back.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.

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(Creative Commons photo: Diane Krauthamer)

This week on CounterSpin: Media are focused on public protests in LA, but seem less interested in what’s making people angry. That’s in part about the federal government’s stated bid to capture and eject anyone they determine “opposes US foreign policy.” Protesters and witnesses and journalists in LA aren’t being shot at and thrown around and sent to the hospital because they disagree with US policy, we’re told, but because they’re interfering with the federal agents carrying out that policy. See how that works? If you don’t, and it worries you, you’re far from alone.

We hear from Chip Gibbons, policy director at Defending Rights and Dissent, about the critical case of Columbia University student activist Mahmoud Khalil, held without warrant in a detention facility in Louisiana since March, for voicing support for Palestinian lives. There’s an important legal development, but how meaningfully Khalil’s case ultimately translates—just like with ICE sweeps around the country—will have to do with us.

Other Words (6/4/25)

Also on the show: If the problem were to “get rid of” unhoused people, the answer would be to house them. It’s cheaper than jailing people for being homeless, so if it’s those “taxpayer dollars” you care about, this would be plan A. Why isn’t it? We hear from Farrah Hassen, policy analyst, writer and adjunct professor in the Department of Political Science at Cal Poly Pomona.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.

Kagarlitsky, who opposed the Russian invasion of Ukraine from the very start, was imprisoned over a year ago on spurious charges of “justifying terrorism”. He faces a further four years behind bars in the penal colony of Torzhok (full details here).

There is an English saying: no justice, no peace. This is very important to remember when we are now discussing the conditions for a peace agreement or at least a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine. Because you should not forget, there are thousands, literally thousands of political prisoners in Russia.

People, most of whom are imprisoned just because of their opposition to the war. And the release of these prisoners should be a part of the peace deal, part of the ceasefire deal should be a part of any agreement, any negotiations, should be a part of any conclusion of the conflict.

This is not just an issue for us, those who are behind the bars, those who are imprisoned. It is an issue for Russia for the future of the country and the future of Europe. This is something not to be forgotten.

The post The Freeing of Russia’s Political Prisoners Must be Part of Any Putin/Trump Deal appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Boris Kagarlitsky.

Kagarlitsky, who opposed the Russian invasion of Ukraine from the very start, was imprisoned over a year ago on spurious charges of “justifying terrorism”. He faces a further four years behind bars in the penal colony of Torzhok (full details here).

There is an English saying: no justice, no peace. This is very important to remember when we are now discussing the conditions for a peace agreement or at least a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine. Because you should not forget, there are thousands, literally thousands of political prisoners in Russia.

People, most of whom are imprisoned just because of their opposition to the war. And the release of these prisoners should be a part of the peace deal, part of the ceasefire deal should be a part of any agreement, any negotiations, should be a part of any conclusion of the conflict.

This is not just an issue for us, those who are behind the bars, those who are imprisoned. It is an issue for Russia for the future of the country and the future of Europe. This is something not to be forgotten.

The post The Freeing of Russia’s Political Prisoners Must be Part of Any Putin/Trump Deal appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Boris Kagarlitsky.

This is of course consistent with the under-reporting of the Palestinians suffering the illegal military occupation, subjugation, and often murderous treatment from the Israeli military which operates largely with impunity within Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, and elsewhere.

Western media focus on the hostages is even more important in justifying Israel’s wholesale annihilation of much of the population of Hamas governed Gaza, homes, apartment buildings, mosques, schools, stores, bakeries, playgrounds all claimed by Israel to be in defence of the Palestinian guerrilla attack of Israel on October 7, 2023.

However, since the U.S. has built up the Israel military to be one of the most powerful in the world and perfectly capable of defending itself against any subsequent Hamas resistance attack, the Israeli obliteration of Gaza’s cities and its people is obviously not defensive, and after Israel’s generations of crimes against Palestinians, the October 7 invasion was hardly unexpected. UN Secretary General António Guterres  said as much right after the October 7, 2023 event. Guterres noted that “these attacks did not happen in a vacuum”—highlighting the impact of 56 years of occupation on the Palestinian people. (United Nations Press).

Israel’s Responsibilities as an Occupying Power Under International Humanitarian Law

Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories, regarding Israel’s right to self-defense in the context of Israel’s (illegal) military occupation of Palestinian lands and people: 

“Israel has the right to defend itself, but it cannot invoke this right to perpetrate acts that violate international law against a people it is occupying.”

In her report to the UN General Assembly in October 2022, Rapporteur Albanese noted,

“An occupying power has a duty to protect the occupied population and cannot invoke self-defense to justify the use of force against its own protected persons.”

Western news outlets refer to Palestinian freedom fighters as “terrorists” constantly reporting that some Western governments list Hamas and other armed groups fighting the Israeli occupation as terrorist organisations; however, China, as a permanent member of the Security Council, has backed the right of the Palestinian people to use arms. Zhang Jun, China’s UN ambassador, stated in an address to the International Court of Justice concerning Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian land, February 22, 2024:

The struggle waged by peoples for their liberation, right to self-determination, including armed struggle against colonialism, occupation, aggression, domination against foreign forces should not be considered terror acts.

Beijing’s envoy said there were “various people (who) freed themselves from colonial rule” and they could use “all available means, including armed struggle.” (This seemed an indirect reference to the American War of Independence from Britain.)

As a conscientious peoples historian activist, I have allowed myself to be subjected to anti-Chinese, anti-UN, anti-Hamas, pro-Israeli news slants in the interest of knowing just how the average mainstream media addict comes to accept genocide as an inevitable condition of modern warfare and wars as an unpreventable source of financial gain.

Therefore NBC’s very poignant, even painful to look at and read, coverage of the Israeli Defence Force killing of 64 children during its freeing of 4 hostages on June 8, 2024, came as a surprise to this writer and life long sympathiser of the Palestinian inhuman predicament. This sorrowful coverage of the horrendous head wound and death of a lovely, four-year-old boy and the sight of a seven-year-old girl alive but with more than half her face gone, is perhaps one indication that just perhaps even the CIA overseen media of the hegemonic Western nations can no longer tolerate Israeli genocide in its ever more outrageously gruesome aspects.

Readers are invited to share some grief with Arab Palestinian families suffering soul crushing amount of anguish for the sheer numbers of the dead and dying children and the catatonic state of surviving kids. Just click on the hyperlink below:

NBC News June 8, 2024

Gazan families mourn children killed during IDF’s hostage rescue

WEB Gaza’s Health Ministry says at least 64 children were killed by Israeli fire during the June 8 raid to rescue four hostages being held by Hamas. 

The four hostages — Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Shlomi Ziv and Andrey Kozlov — were safely extracted from the Gaza Strip and cameras captured their emotional reunions with their families after eight months of captivity.

The joy experienced by both Palestinians and Israelis during the first hostage exchange as they fell into the loving arms of waiting family and friends could have been repeated instead of this horrific bloodbath of some 270 Palestinians, among them 64 precious children on June 8, 2024

Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Shlomi Ziv and Andrey Kozlov will most likely never forget that their homecoming was one sided. No Palestinian got to welcome home family members long imprisoned with or without having been charged as seems to the case for so many incarcerated and more being seized every day.

Actually, how shall any of us ever forget that Americans have been backing and supplying these abominations of using weapons of mass destruction upon fellow human beings and their children in full knowledge of the profits being made by U.S. corporations.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jay Janson.

According to the latest update from the Israeli military, Hamas is still holding at least 229 hostages captured during its October 7 incursion into southern Israel. The group has stated that they will not release all hostages until Israel agrees to a ceasefire in Gaza. To discuss the release thus far of four hostages and prospects for future releases, we speak to Gershon Baskin, who helped negotiate a critical hostage exchange between Israel and Hamas in 2011. “I really think this is some kind of negotiating game and competition that exists featuring Qatar and Egypt,” says Baskin.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Seventeen Papua New Guinean schoolgirls who were kidnapped, raped and held hostage by armed men in Bosavi, Hela, last Wednesday were released yesterday.

The National’s source said they were released following a payment of 3300 kina (NZ$1500) and nine pigs as ransom to the gunmen.

“The females were released but they are traumatised. Some of them are just girls. It is the first time for them to be exposed to this kind of violence,” said the source.

• READ MORE: Armed gunmen kidnap 17 girls from remote PNG village – freed for ransom
• Two countries, two kidnappings – Port Moresby shows Jakarta how it’s done with 3 PNG hostages freed
• Marape clarifies kidnappers were paid K100,000 for freeing PNG hostages
• Other PNG kidnapping reports

“Meanwhile, the teachers of Walagu Primary School are still on the run, with the school closed since then.

“A female teacher who was seven months pregnant was airlifted by police to Komo in a chopper yesterday.”

Another government worker said: “Last week 40 armed men from Komo to Bosavi had accused the villagers for reporting them to police in the last kidnap incident [in February].

“They went to Komo passing through Walagu village near Mt Sisa.

‘Kidnapped at gunpoint’
“At Walagu, they kidnapped the females at gunpoint saying the villagers had assisted security forces and reported them to have involved in the kidnap of the New Zealand research scientist a few months back.

“They were held hostage at Mt Sisa for three days until their release yesterday.

“We are appealing to the Hela government to stop the smuggling of guns in the province.

“We also appeal to the authorities to arrest the 40 men from Bosavi, as they have raped our children who are between the ages of 13 to 15 and yet they demand a ransom.

“People in authority should meet with all its 24 council wards in Komo-Hulia electorate and arrest youths who have homemade guns in their possessions.”

Police sources also confirmed that the group seemed to be the same one that was involved in the earlier kidnap and ransom in February when the captives included an Australian-based New Zealand academic.

Lack of action ‘serious error’
The lack of follow up action by police and the military was a “serious error of judgement and appears to have emboldened them to continue with this kind of activities an easy money making venture”,  a police source said.

Meanwhile, condemnation of the action and calls for serious government action came from the Member for Koroba-Lake Kopiage, William Bando; the Vanimo Green MP and Chairman of Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence, Belden Namah; and the Lutheran Church Head, Dr Jack Urame.

Namah said last night that he was alarmed that the police hierarchy and the ministry had gone silent on a serious issue involving the lives of children.

Majeleen Yanei is a reporter with The National newspaper in Port Moresby. Republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, “Income and wealth inequality is higher in the United States than almost any other developed country, and it is rising.” In September 2022 the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report entitled Trends in the Distribution of Family Wealth, 1989-2019. The CBO found that the “growth of real wealth over the past three decades was not uniform… In 2019, families in the top 10 percent of the distribution held 72 percent of total wealth, and families in the top 1 percent of the distribution held more than one-third; families in the bottom half of the distribution held only 2 percent of total wealth.” In fact, families in the top 1 percent saw their share of the total wealth increase by at least 7.4 percentage points – from 26.6 percent in 1989 to 34.0 percent in 2019.

Since 1989 income gains have been heavily skewed toward the topmost bracket of high earners. This is strikingly evident in the growth of CEO compensation since 1965, when “a typical corporate CEO earned about twenty times that earned by a typical worker; by 2018, the ratio was 278:1.” As the Economic Policy Institute points out, from 1978 to 2018, CEO compensation grew by over 940 percent. Wages for the typical worker on the other hand grew by less than 12 percent. CEOs are getting paid exorbitantly because of their power to set pay, “not because they are increasing productivity or possess specific, high-demand skills,” according to the EPI.

This obscene source of inequality cannot even pretend to have any legitimate economic justification: it represents unchecked greed and self-aggrandizement at the expense of everyone else—especially ordinary workers. We could learn something from Spain’s Mondragon Corporation, undoubtedly the world’s largest and most successful cooperative enterprise. Mondragon employs over 80,000 workers across nearly one hundred businesses, but no manager or executive within the company can make over six times the pay than any worker. The excessive compensation of CEOs is only one contributing factor to the rise of wealth inequality in the United States, but it is a significant factor and one that “we could safely do away with.”

The intensifying concentration of wealth, and unjustifiable level of income inequality is proving disastrous in many ways. Here are just a few of them. First, less equal societies typically have more unstable economies, and this country is no exception. “The United States experienced two major economic crises over the past century—the Great Depression starting in 1929 and the Great Recession starting in 2007. Both were preceded by a sharp increase in income and wealth inequality…” It is also well-known that societies with greater economic equality generally also enjoy longer periods of sustained growth: simply put, “longer growth spells are robustly associated with more equality in the income distribution.”

Second, there is an incontrovertible link between economic inequality and violent crime. The fact is that rates of violence are higher in more unequal societies. Why is inequality associated with an increase in criminal activity? As equalitytrust.org observes, economic inequality “may curtail opportunities for some, giving rise to a sense of hopelessness which incites fear, violence and murder.” Certainly, inequality erodes social solidarity and trust, so much so that societies with “large income differences and low levels of trust may lack the social capacity to create safe communities.”

The erosion of perceived fairness and trust also explains the inverse relationship between economic inequality and happiness: a 2011 study, Income Inequality and Happiness, found that “the negative link between income inequality and the happiness of lower-income respondents was explained not by lower household income, but by perceived unfairness and lack of trust.”

Third, the undeniable fact is that the greater the economic inequality that exists, the worse it is for general health outcomes. What is sometimes overlooked is that income inequality is bad for health outcomes across economic strata, not just for those in poverty. To be sure, poor health and poverty are closely linked; but the epidemiological research shows that high levels of economic inequality “negatively affect the health of even the affluent, mainly because… inequality reduces social cohesion, a dynamic that leads to more stress, fear, and insecurity for everyone.” People live longer in countries with lower levels of inequality, as the World Bank reports. In the United States, for example, “average life expectancy is four years shorter than in some of the most equitable countries.”

The most obvious and readily available method for addressing wealth inequality is through taxation policy, subjecting those in the topmost economic echelon to a “high and rising marginal tax rates on earnings.” In 1944 the top marginal tax rate reached 94 percent, applying to income over $200,000, roughly equivalent to $2.8 million today, adjusted for inflation. With our collective amnesia Americans often forget that the top tax rate remained above 90 percent through the 1950s and did not dip below 70 percent until 1981. At no point during the decades that saw America’s greatest economic growth did the tax on the wealthy drop below 70 percent. Today it is somewhere around 37 percent.

There is another method, no less important, for addressing inequality, but one that gets little attention because it involves a fundamental reorganization of the relations of production: namely, worker self-management, workplace democracy – or, perhaps most accurately, worker self-directed enterprises, to use the wording of economist Richard Wolff. As Wolff points out, these enterprises “divide all the labors to be performed… determine what is to be produced, how it is to be produced, and where it is to be produced” and, perhaps most crucially, “decide on the use and distribution of the resulting output or revenues.” One essential way to appreciate a worker self-directed enterprise is to contrast it to a typical, hierarchically organized corporation where a small board of directors, selected by a tiny number of shareholders, appropriate and distribute the surplus produced by employees. (Surplus refers to the difference between the value added by workers and the value paid to workers). In a worker self-directed enterprise, the surplus-producing workers themselves make the basic decisions about production and distribution.

According to Democracy at Work Institute, worker cooperatives have grown in number by more than 30 percent since 2019. It is estimated that there are some 900-1000 worker cooperatives in the United States, comprising roughly 10,000 workers. What these non-capitalist firms have demonstrated, among other things, is first, that they can succeed and be competitive with respect to traditionally organized firms. And second, worker self-directed enterprises can serve to alleviate income inequality, as Mondragon Corporation does, for example, by establishing a minimum and maximum income level for all workers that is equitable, and reasonable. At US worker cooperatives, the “2:1 top-to-bottom pay ratio… points to the prioritization of reducing internal inequality over other compensation goals.”

Extricating ourselves from the quagmire of inequality will require a progressive taxation policy that includes closing corporate loopholes and tax havens. But taxation is not sufficient: genuine, meaningful equality demands economic democracy. Fortunately, there is ample historical evidence to show that worker self-management can be successfully implemented on a large scale. We also know that “investment funds can be generated by taxation instead of from private savings,” as the philosopher David Schweickart has observed.

Worker self-directed enterprises will not only facilitate economic equality but will also foster a participatory-democratic consciousness within the firm and society at large, and ultimately serve as an antidote to the alienation of labor under capitalism. This is because the members of democratized workplaces are arguably no longer estranged from the act of production: empowered to make decisions regarding the labor process, production is no longer an activity ‘alien’ to the worker. In conclusion, workers self-management is an essential component in the struggle against gross inequality, exploitation, and the alienation of labor, a process that truly begins with workers formulating their own rules.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Sam Ben-Meir.

Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape has revealed that about K100,000 (about NZ$46,000) was paid to the kidnappers for the release of the three remaining hostages in the Bosavi mountains in the Southern Highlands province at the weekend.

The three hostages, an Australian-resident New Zealand professor and his two female colleagues, were set free yesterday.

In a news conference today, Prime Minister Marape clarified that the money was given through community leaders for the release of the hostages.

• READ MORE: Nightmare over for final 3 PNG freed hostages – police hunt their captors
• Prime Minister Marape warns police will come down hard on criminals
• PNG state pays partial ransom for release of the hostages
• Two countries, two kidnappings – Port Moresby shows Jakarta how it’s done with 3 PNG hostages freed
• Other PNG hostage crisis reports

”There was no K3.5 million paid [NZ$1.6 million — the original kidnappers’ demand]. The liaison money exchanged was K100,000 paid through the community leaders for a liaison to take place.

“The demand was very high and they maintained it all the way through, but we had to break the ice and ensure the safe return of the captives,” said Marape.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

In Washington, D.C., human rights and free speech advocates gather today for the Belmarsh Tribunal, focused on the imprisonment of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Assange has been languishing for close to four years in the harsh Belmarsh prison in London while appealing extradition to the United States on espionage charges. If convicted, Assange could face up to 175 years in jail for publishing documents that exposed war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Five major news organizations that once partnered with WikiLeaks recently called on the Biden administration to drop charges against Assange. We speak to British MP and former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is in Washington, D.C., to participate in the Belmarsh Tribunal, about Assange and freedom of the press. We also cover the state of leftism around the globe, from labor rights in the U.K. and Europe to the war in Ukraine, to political unrest in Brazil and Peru.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

In Washington, D.C., human rights and free speech advocates gather today for the Belmarsh Tribunal, focused on the imprisonment of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Assange has been languishing for close to four years in the harsh Belmarsh prison in London while appealing extradition to the United States on espionage charges. If convicted, Assange could face up to 175 years in jail for publishing documents that exposed war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Five major news organizations that once partnered with WikiLeaks recently called on the Biden administration to drop charges against Assange. We speak to British MP and former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is in Washington, D.C., to participate in the Belmarsh Tribunal, about Assange and freedom of the press. We also cover the state of leftism around the globe, from labor rights in the U.K. and Europe to the war in Ukraine, to political unrest in Brazil and Peru.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.