Union membership is in decline whilst structural changes in the economy - including the rise of the so-called gig economy - are putting downward pressure on wages, and creating fertile conditions for exploitation by unscrupulous employers. So who is going to ensure that workers get a fair deal? Sonia Sodha, chief leader writer for the Observer, investigates.
30 June 2017
BBC4 A Point of View: After Grenfell
Will Self gives a very personal view of high-rise buildings in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower disaster.
"As a commentator on the built environment", Will writes, "I've been too wry, too cynical and too disengaged over the past twenty years".
"Grenfell Tower", he says, "was the bonfire of any remaining civic vanity in London ".
Quartz: Why Americans have become much more liberal about same-sex marriage, but not abortion
The trend has been across all age groups: Even in the so-called silent generation (born between 1928 and 1945) approval has nearly doubled, from 21% in 2001 to 41% in 2016. It’s also gone up regardless of religious or political affiliation, and race. Even amongst supporters of the Republican party, which, from the mid-1970s on has aligned itself with the Christian right, approval for gay marriage went up from 21% in 2001 to 40% in 2017.
But while the pro-LGBT message has gained support, that’s not the case for abortion. Though a majority of Americans (56%) still think it should be legal in all or most cases, that percentage has gone down from 60% in 1995, and has been even lower for some of the intervening period. [...]
“It is a very interesting question that no one has been able to answer fully that I know of” says Sarah Cowan, a New York University sociologist who researches attitudes towards abortion. One reason, she says, is that LGBT people are increasingly visible: The vast majority of Americans say they know someone belonging to a sexual minority. The more people feel directly connected, the more open their attitude, which in turn makes it easier to come out. Relationships are also something that comes up frequently in casual conversation. Ending a pregnancy—though much more frequent than homosexuality—typically does not. Moreover, Cowan notes “the consequences of concealing [abortion] are likely less than those of concealing who you love, whom you’re attracted to, how you spent Saturday night.” [...]
Abortion is the complete opposite. Choice is at the core of the right to abortion; deciding when and whether to become a mother is, for pro-choice advocates, a fundamental expression of human freedom. And so, for abortion opponents, the blame is fully a woman’s. “I don’t see the rhetoric about abortion in America leaving behind choice and victim,” Cowan says.
Al Jazeera: Discovering the spirit of Ramadan in Morocco
With long, hot afternoons spent awaiting nighttime festivities, and the rhythm of the day ceremoniously thrown upside down, it is unmistakably Ramadan.
The Muslim holy month, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, moves 11 days earlier each year due to the disparity between lunar and Gregorian calendars, causing it to shift throughout the year as decades pass. This year, the holy month straddled the months of May and July.
During Ramadan, Muslims must observe "sawm", which entails fasting from dawn until dusk, abstaining from food, liquids, smoking or engaging in sexual relations. It is a time for prayer, reflection, atonement and charity - when rewards for good deeds are multiplied.
In Morocco, the true spirit of Ramadan could not be clearer.
On a sweltering day in Marrakech, Rahma, an engineering student, said appreciation is at the heart of Ramadan.
“God asks us to fast so we can feel the importance of what we take for granted, to feel the hunger of the poor and encourage us to live with gratitude and empathy.”
From the taxi drivers who shared iftar from the boot of their car, to the Amazigh Bedouins who prepared mint tea on an open fire, one enjoys the hospitality that epitomises Ramadan, and which is fundamental to Islam, all 13 months of the year.
Vox: Donald Trump's refugee ban, explained
The Supreme Court allowed a partial version of Trump's executive order banning travel from 6 Muslim-majority countries to go into effect this summer. But the full order could have a lasting impact on how the US treats refugees.
Vox: Why Pope Francis just called labor unions “prophets”
Francis praised unions on spiritual grounds, calling them “prophetic" institutions that give "a voice to those who have none, denounces those who would [as in the Biblical Book of Amos] ‘sell the needy for a pair of sandals’ … unmasks the powerful who trample the rights of the most vulnerable workers, defends the cause of the foreigner, the least, the discarded. … But in our advanced capitalist societies, the union risks losing its prophetic nature, and becoming too similar to the institutions and powers that it should instead criticize.”
He also criticized the idea of a purely “market economy,” praising instead a “social market economy” balancing the goals of business with care for those “outside the walls” of industry, meaning those denied work by physical infirmity or condition, or those who, as immigrants, do not have the right to work. [...]
Francis’s open critiques of capitalism have caused their fair share of controversy within church circles, even before the election of capitalist in chief Donald Trump, previously known mostly as a real estate developer and deal-making businessman. Back in 2012, New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan contributed a pointed op-ed to the Wall Street Journal, walking back any suggestion that the then-newly elected Francis might be a threat to capitalism. [...]
So while young Bergoglio seems to have been vocally opposed to the movement — for reasons that may be as political as they were religious — he’s grown much more openly sympathetic to its theology in recent decades. In 2012, just six months after becoming pope, he invited one of the liberation theology movement’s major proponents, Gustavo Gutiérrez, to the Vatican and declared another, Oscar Romero, a “martyr.”
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