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German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s welcoming response to the refugee crisis won her accolades as Europe’s most humane leader. But with few European Union countries agreeing to accept even small numbers of refugees, Merkel performed an about-face, re-imposing border controls and further exacerbating the crisis. And still neither Merkel nor any other European head of state acknowledges the refugee crisis is the result of wars started and supported by “western democracies.”

After four years as a growing, thriving voice of Walmart workers, the Organization United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart) re-launched itself on Thursday. Founded and funded by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, OUR Walmart will now rely more heavily on a coalition of 20 community-based partners. OUR Walmart will not attempt to gain union recognition, but continue its fight for $15 an hour minimum pay and improved working conditions and protections.

This week’s military coup by Burkina Faso’s elite presidential guard on the eve of the scheduled Oct. 11 national elections has sparked widespread resistance and at least 10 deaths. General Gilbert Diendere, the former commander of the Regiment of Presidential Security, trained and funded by the U.S. and France, is the coup’s leader. He is also the former chief of staff to ex-President Blaise Compaore, ousted after 27 years of misrule by a 2014 popular uprising.

Former Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi and Republican front-runner Donald Trump share a flaunted machismo and political incorrectness, saying outrageous things to get free media coverage, and targeting predominantly blue-collar white males who feel threatened by globalization, multiculturalism and women’s rights. Berlusconi was initially dismissed as wholly unelectable. His political momentum lasted more than 20 years.

“It’s worth it, once you realize what you’re fighting for,” says Ahmed Mohamed. And what is he fighting for? He looks around the room, and like any American 14-year-old grappling with issues beyond his control, he answered with the rising inflection of a question. “Not just for Muslims?” he said. “But for anybody who has been through this?”

Bernie Sanders, With 200,000 Grassroots Volunteers, Says 'I Am Running to Win.' Movie -- Time Out of Mind. Steve Earle - Mississippi It’s Time. Joe Hill Documentary. Pete Seeger - Casey Jones.

Pharmaceutical firms have a history of suppressing unfavourable results from drug trials. It’s time to compel them to publish data in full.

To ignore race, C.L.R. James often said, in many contexts and many ways, was a disaster in any social understanding; only the ignoring of class would be worse. Or to put it in his own words: The race question is subsidiary to the class question, and to think of imperialism in terms of race is disastrous. But to neglect the racial factor as merely incidental, is an error only less grave than to make it fundamental.

Reader Comments: Left and Labor Dialogue on Sanders and Corbyn; A Sanders - John Lewis ticket?; David Hilliard on Black Panther film; 9/11 and Cancer; Labor Debate on Who to Endorse; Kim Davis; Student loans and College Costs; Sean O'Casey; Reconstruction; Announcements : Chicago Freedom Struggles Through the Lens of Art Shay -Sept 17-Dec 19; Operation Condor film, Bolivia's Largest Film Ever, Coming to NYC Theaters; Witness Venezuela's Elections This December

African American Kamilah Brock, a banker, was driving her BMW in Harlem. Police did not believe that African American woman could own a BMW or be a banker. She was taken into custody, transported to a psychiatric ward, stripped and forcibly, and repeatedly, injected with sedatives - for eight days. She is now suing New York City. Only in America...in 2015.