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European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen’s “State of the Union” address shows she’s concentrating ever more power in her own hands. Not only are far-right parties on the rise across the continent, but the EU’s leading official is pushing their agenda.
Last week, several leading European politicians visited the Italian island of Lampedusa, presented as a symbol of a continent overwhelmed by immigrants. But there is no “migrant crisis” — just a political failure to create safe routes for people on the move.
After autoworkers in Coahuila, Mexico, organized an independent union at a VU Manufacturing facility, the company shuttered the plant and fired all the workers. Now local business elites have imposed a hiring blacklist on all the former VU workers.
After already securing agreements for deep spending cuts earlier this year, House Republicans are poised to force a government shutdown to demand even more austerity. Democrats seem ill-prepared to stand up to the GOP’s hostage-taking.
Brandon Johnson, the labor-backed mayor of Chicago, is poised to deliver his first major victory: scrapping the subminimum wage for tipped workers.
France’s education minister has banned girls in public schools from wearing the abaya, a loose-fitting Islamic dress. Emmanuel Macron’s government is whipping up conflict over identity — but ignoring the real problems that face France’s underfunded classrooms.
Since inflation started rising, British capitalists have been raking in massive profits while workers have suffered a disastrous wage slump. Yet the Bank of England still wants to boost unemployment in case workers develop their fighting strength.
In July, the European Union announced a deal with Tunisia to police migration. The deal allowed the EU to outsource the dirty work of repressing migrants — but it’s done nothing to hide the mounting numbers of desperate people dying in the Mediterranean.
The UAW strike just got bigger. The union announced this afternoon that workers at 38 GM and Stellantis locations would join the walkout — and the pressure tactics are already working, with Ford making significant concessions at the bargaining table.
The story of the African-American working class is the story of democratic struggle: of pairing the fight against racism with the fight against economic exploitation to push the US to become a freer and more just society.
Google is now on trial for illegally building a monopoly over online search — but given the weak state of US antitrust law, the company is likely to emerge unscathed. To check Google’s power, we need to bring it under public, democratic control.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman was one of the loudest cheerleaders for the war in Iraq. His condemnation of Putin’s “war of choice” in Ukraine — a horrific act of aggression, like Bush’s war — could be a word-for-word rebuke of what he wrote then.