Global News and Analysis

Halfway through the year, the number of large strikes in the United States is at the highest level in decades.

It is past time for the U.S. government to be wrested out of the stranglehold of evangelical conservatives. The rights of women and the LGBTQ community especially cannot be held hostage to the retrograde visions of this politically powerful faction.

Source: The Guardian

I’m 93, and, as extremism sweeps across Europe, I fear we are doomed to repeat the mistakes which created the Holocaust

Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel stated this summer that “when the generation that survived the war is no longer here, we’ll find out whether we have learned from history”. As a Polish Jew born in 1925, who survived the Warsaw ghetto, lost my family in the Holocaust, served in a special operations unit of the Polish underground, the Home Army, and fought in the Warsaw uprising of 1944, I know what it means to be at the sharp end of European history – and I fear that the battle to draw the right lessons from that time is in danger of being lost. read more

Source: Refinery 29

Ever wondered what it might be like to live through a revolution? A revolution which puts women and young people at the leading edge of change? When society as you know it and all its institutions are turned upside down, virtually overnight, in the pursuit of ideals such as women’s equality or true democracy or environmental protection? Ideals which you may be passionate about but which constantly crash into walls erected by a society which puts profit before people and planet. read more

Source: The Nation

Colin Kaepernick is now the face of Nike, which raises questions we should not be afraid to ask.

On Sunday, shock waves went through the sports and marketing worlds when news broke that the quarterback blackballed by the NFL for kneeling during the anthem to protest police violence, Colin Kaepernick, would be the face of the 30th anniversary of Nike’s “Just Do It” ad campaign. The ad is an unairbrushed black-and-white close-up of Kaepernick’s face with the slogan “Believe in something even if it means sacrificing everything. ” read more

The increasing violations of free speech should command our attention.