Wouter van de Klippe is a freelance journalist and writer based in Europe. He is particularly interested in organized labor, social and environmental justice, and social welfare states.
Cartoonishly unlikable, Ron DeSantis was a candidate seemingly engineered to appeal only to the hyperspecific grievances of social media–addled right-wingers. His failed bid shows just how cloistered the conservative movement has become.
The pandemic exposed the fragile state of Europe’s public services after years of austerity. Now the European Council has backed a new set of austerian fiscal rules — imposing an estimated €100 billion in cuts, which will hit working-class people hardest.
An exchange of air strikes between Iran and Pakistan put Balochistan on the global news agenda this month. Pakistan’s largest province is also its poorest, and the only way to establish peace there is by ending a long history of discrimination and repression.
Workers can’t stop the introduction of new technologies like AI. But they can and should fight to make sure productivity gains benefit them rather than CEOs and shareholders.
Since 2020, airlines have filed more than 1,800 safety concerns over the Boeing 737 Max to federal regulators. Safety advocates assert that understaffed airline regulators have failed to acknowledge or address the problems.
The Biden administration has chosen to open up a new front in Yemen instead of pressuring Israel to stop its onslaught against Gaza. Air strikes are unlikely to deter attacks on Red Sea shipping, but they could undercut a deal to end Yemen’s bloody civil war.
Ron DeSantis went all in on the niche fixations of online right-wing culture warriors. In the process, his failed presidential campaign proved that the Right’s obsessive “anti-wokeness” is a political cul-de-sac.
Ireland has an image as Europe’s most pro-Palestinian country, but its government hasn’t been representing strong popular solidarity with the people of Gaza. They can change that by supporting South Africa’s International Court of Justice case against Israel.
Late last month, 500 grocery workers went on strike in Brainerd Lakes, Minnesota. The strike exemplified the growing militancy in the United Food and Commercial Workers, who mounted successful strike threats against employers across the state last year.
Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign was a humiliating failure from start to finish. He deserved nothing less.
In the 1960s, artists in Britain and Yugoslavia imagined that the art of socialism might be made with — or even by — computers.
A nonprofit backed by the fossil fuel industry has wormed its way into Illinois public schools to convince students to pursue careers in oil and gas.
Why millennials don’t grow up.
Emmanuel Macron has sparked protests after appointing an education minister who sent her own children to private school. France’s school system has never delivered real equality — but as the rich flock to the private sector, it’s only getting worse.
The UAW has plans to organize more than 150,000 autoworkers in 2024.
For 19th-century Americans, robots were practical Christians, potential spouses, and a serious threat to labor power.
Germany is Israel’s ride-or-die.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Argentina was one of the world’s 10 wealthiest countries by per capita income. As of 2021, it’s 86th. What happened?
Automation is booming in rural China, the strongholds of the US auto industry, and the world’s oldest countries.