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What were the top BDS victories of 2017?

Nora Barrows-Friedman Electronic Intifada
bds demonstrators
2017 saw artists, performers, athletes, politicians, cultural workers, faith-based organizations, students, academics, unions and activists grow the movement for Palestinian rights.

Trump's Year in Islamophobia

Maha Hilal Alternet
trump speaking
Five ways the administration has waged war on Muslims at home and abroad in its first year.

Ten Awesome High School Protests that Defied the Trump Agenda in 2017

Dawson Barrett Truthout
youth demonstrating
On a wide range of issues, high schoolers across the United States opposed the Trump agenda this year, both directly and in principle. At the end of a bleak political year, here are ten stories about awesome high schoolers who led the charge in 2017. Plus five youth organizing victories in 2017 in California.

“How Can Political Shift to the Right Be Stopped?”

Immanuel Wallerstein The Stansbury Forum
This is the question people left of center have been asking for some time now. In different ways, it is being posed in Latin America, in much of Europe, in Arab and Islamic countries, in southern Africa, and in northeast Asia. The question is all the more dramatic because, in so many of these countries, this follows a period when there were significant shifts leftward.

Calorie Counts on Menus Make a Difference

Editor, University of Technology Sydney University of Technology Sydney
Calorie counts make a difference! Listing them on menus influences consumer choices.

Edward Snowden and the Golden Age of Spying - A TomDispatch Interview with Laura Poitras

Laura Poitras and Tom Engelhardt TomDispatch
Citizenfour, Laura Poitras's new film on Edward Snowden, with breaking news at film's end: there is indeed at least one new, post-Snowden whistleblower who has come from somewhere inside the U.S. intelligence world with information about a watchlist (that includes Poitras) with "more than 1.2 million names" on it and on the American drone assassination program. No matter how fiercely the government may set out after whistleblowers, there will be more. It's unstoppable.

Nurses Emerge as Front Line 'Climate Workers'

Tamanna Rahman, Brendan Smith Truthout
Many of the most deadly diseases on earth - malaria, dengue and yellow fever, encephalitis and cholera - are highly climate sensitive, and are thriving as patterns of temperature, precipitation, and sea levels shift in their favor. They are spreading to new parts of the globe, including the US. Instead of celebrating the bravery of the nursing profession, politicians and media reacted to the Ebola outbreak by blaming nurses for their carelessness.

Will Catalonia Secede From Spain?

Andy Robinson The Nation
Catalonia has decided to recast its planned November 9 referendum on independence as a nonbinding consultation.Why are so many Scots (45% in September's referendum) and Catalans (50% in recent polls) set on leaving now? The answer is surely a desperate search for sovereignty with longstanding resentments over discrimination by the power centers in their respective states. Like many other Europeans, they feel cheated by their governments' response to the Great Recession.

In Cold War, U.S. Spy Agencies Used 1,000 Nazis

By Eric Lichtblau The New York Times
U.S. agencies directly or indirectly hired numerous ex-Nazi police officials and East European collaborators who were manifestly guilty of war crimes. Information was readily available that these were compromised men. The wide use of Nazi spies grew out of a Cold War mentality and McCarthyism. Mr. Hoover, the longtime F.B.I. director, and Mr. Dulles, the C.I.A. director.believed "moderate" Nazis might "be useful" to America, records show.