Inflation’s causes are structural. The immediate driver is profiteering and speculation — and a set of rules that encourage and protect such anti-social behaviour. But this opportunism rests on three underlying factors.

Read this brief from Progressive International

The ominous warnings keep coming non-stop: some of the world’s developing nations, mostly in Africa and Asia, are heading towards mass hunger and starvation.

The World Food Programme (WFP) warned last week that as many as 828 million people go to bed hungry every night while the number of those facing acute food insecurity has soared — from 135 million to 345 million — since 2019. A total of 50 million people in 45 countries are teetering on the edge of famine.

But in what seems like a cruel paradox the US Department of Agriculture estimates that a staggering $161 billion worth of food is dumped yearly into landfills in the United States.

Read the article by Thalif Deen

But take care: some countries do not want backpackers anymore, they are looking for the High Net Worth Tourist – if you are looking for a nice place to hide next year, look at this:

Only rich tourists welcome as these 6 countries take controversial step to stamp out overtourism | Euronews

Half a century after the 1970s’ stagflation, economies are contracting as prices rise again. “Surging energy and food prices heighten the risk of a prolonged period of global stagflation.”

Read the article of Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram

What we call the past is just that: It is what happened at some point before now. Once it occurs, the past is gone forever –beyond repeating, beyond reliving, beyond replicating. It is recoverable only by the evidence, almost never complete, that it leaves behind; and that evidence must be and is interpreted by individual humans, historians principally, all of whom differ in all sorts of ways. Distinct from the actual past are the narratives and analyses that historians offer us about earlier times. That is what we have been taught to call ‘history’, i.e., what most of us make of the forever-gone past. Indeed, history is created by the application of human thought and imagination to what is left behind…

Only recently have conventional historians been confronted by others with which Herodotus was more comfortable —those coming from social and cultural (and human rights) history, through whom the history of women, slaves, laboring people, African Americans, Latinos, gays and lesbians, and others whose rights have been and are violated have been given greatly enlarged attention. This marks the emergence of all people as historical subjects not avoiding public and political historical frictions.

Read Claudio Schuftan’s article

On how the war in Ukraine is a war against Europe and its ‘soft’ values … and why the class struggle remains important

Read the article of Slavoj Zizek

Financial opacity and offshore hidden wealth have become a major economic and political problem. Tax havens continue to exist and provide financial secrecy services that allow the richest individuals in the world to hide their wealth from national tax authorities. Implementing a Global Asset Registry could help tax authorities to identify, record and tax all wealth, regardless of where it is held. It would also be a critical tool in efforts to recover stolen assets of countries suffering from widespread corruption.

Read the Policy Brief of the South Center

The London-based human rights organization, Amnesty International (AI), says protesters across the globe are facing a potent mix of pushbacks, with a growing number of laws and other measures to restrict the right to protest; the misuse of force, the expansion of unlawful mass and targeted surveillance; internet shutdowns and online censorship; and abuse and stigmatization.

AI says the right to protest is “under unprecedented and growing threat across all regions of the world”, as the organization launched a new global campaign to confront states’ widening and intensifying efforts to erode this fundamental human right.

Read the article by Thalif Deen

The governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, confessed to being “very well aware of the impact” (of a rate rise, and the Bank’s forecast of a recession) on what he euphemistically called “the least well-off”.

Impoverishing the 99 % cannot tackle inflation …

Read Ann Pettifor’s article

On 7 July 2022, the Human Rights Council (HRC) adopted without a vote  Resolution A/HRC/50/L.13/Rev.1 (hereinafter ‘the Resolution’) on “Access to medicines, vaccines and other health products in the context of the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health”.[1] The Resolution was proposed by a group of developing countries (Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Senegal, South Africa and Thailand). It highlights the unequal access to vaccines and other medical technologies during COVID-19 and beyond, recalling the various resolutions and decisions on the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, as well as the 2022 decisions which stressed the “need for ensuring equitable, affordable, timely and universal access for all countries to vaccines in response to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic”.[2] Importantly, it recalls the various human rights implications resulting from the lack of affordable and equitable access to such products, particularly for the global South, women and girls, and other marginalized communities.

Read the South Center’s Brief