The US-Mexico border has become a place where the world's most powerful military faces off against people who represent blowback from various Washington policies and are in flight from persecution, political violence, economic hardship, and increasing ecological distress. Yet these twenty-first century border "battlefields" remain hidden from the public and largely beyond discussion.
The world is witnessing the highest level of displacement on record with 22.5 million refugees, over half of them under 18, languishing in different parts of the world. Around 40,000 Rohingya refugees have fled into India over the past three years.
Albert Einstein, along with other Jewish luminaries, including Hannah Arendt, published a letter in the New York Times on December 4, 1948. That was only a few months after Israel had declared its independence and as hundreds of Palestinian villages were being actively demolished after their inhabitants were expelled. The letter denounced Israel’s newly-founded Herut party.
Source: Truthout
Just how bad are things with Donald Trump in the White House? And what does having a racist, misogynist, xenophobic and erratic president who continues to enjoy unquestionable support from his base tell us about the state of US politics and the dangers to the future of democracy in the US and in the world on the whole? Noam Chomsky shares his thoughts on these and other related questions in an exclusive interview with C. J. Polychroniou for Truthout.
C.J. Polychroniou: Noam, it’s been already 14 months into Donald Trump’s turbulent White House tenure, but sometimes we still need to pinch ourselves to make sure that it’s not a nightmare that a racist, misogynist, homophobic man who apparently cares only about himself runs the world’s most powerful nation. But, really, how bad is it having Trump in the White House?
More than a century ago, the last fluent speakers of Wôpanâak passed away. Now this school is working to revive the language.
Source: The Guardian
The World Bank is proposing lower minimum wages and greater hiring and firing powers for employers as part of a wide-ranging deregulation of labour markets deemed necessary to prepare countries for the changing nature of work.
A working draft of the bank’s flagship World Development Report – which will urge policy action from governments when it comes out in the autumn – says less “burdensome” regulations are needed so that firms can hire workers at lower cost. The controversial recommendations, which are aimed mainly at developing countries, have alarmed groups representing labour, which say they have so far been frozen out of the Bank’s consultation process.
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