Five centuries ago, Germany experienced a massive popular revolt that spread through the countryside and towns. The German lords drowned the revolt in blood, but the popular demands for freedom and equality have resonated right up to the present day.
Though inflation-adjusted wage growth resumed earlier this year, real wages are still down overall since Joe Biden took office. It’s not crazy to suppose that this could be affecting people’s attitudes toward the economy.
Bandcamp was meant to be an alternative to the corporate behemoths of music’s streaming age, giving a better deal to independent artists. But the company’s new owner, Songtradr, has suddenly laid off half its workers, putting Bandcamp’s future in jeopardy.
Through years of austerity, Europe’s radical-left parties spoke of a common challenge to EU neoliberalism. But without any real shared strategy, parties focused on domestic politics are rarely able to build collaboration across borders.
The US is threatening military action in the waters off Yemen to protect international shipping routes. The people of Yemen have already borne the brunt of a US-sponsored war that has caused devastation similar to the horrific scenes in Gaza.
On this day in 1973, Basque separatists ETA assassinated far-right prime minister Luis Carrero Blanco. The action played an important role in ending Franco’s dictatorship — an inconvenient truth for the democratic Spain against which ETA then turned its fire.
From the rate and scale of civilian slaughter to the killing of protected groups and the type of munitions, Israel’s war on Gaza is an exceptionally brutal campaign unlike almost anything we’ve seen.
In Russia, the wives of men mobilized to the Ukrainian front are increasingly demanding that they be returned home. While the movement is not mainly directed at opposing Vladimir Putin, it offers hope of breaking the war machine from within.
In early 2020, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink announced that the firm was turning toward climate-friendly investments. The record, though, shows that Fink’s green branding turned out to be entirely bogus.
In the 1930s and ’40s, the Congress of Industrial Organizations unionized American workers with an energy never seen before. But its peak years were short-lived, and the labor movement has struggled to reach such heights again.
Seeking to distance himself from rank elitism, Tucker Carlson called conservative luminary William F. Buckley one of the “great villains of the 20th century.” He’s right — but Carlson himself hasn’t broken with Buckley’s contempt for the working class.
In Wonka, Timothée Chalamet dons the eccentric chocolatier’s purple jacket in yet another film adaptation of the Roald Dahl classic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. This one is playful and harmless, but it can’t touch the 1971 original movie.