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Tidbits - August 11, 2016 - Reader Comments: Elections, Supreme Court, Defeat Trump; Nagasaki; A.J. Muste; Jews Support #BlackLivesMatter; Rock Against TPP Concerts; more...

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Reader Comments: 2016 Elections, Supreme Court, All In To Defeat Trump; Nagasaki - The World Did Not Need US's Experiment; A.J. Muste - An Inspiration for Today; Labor Must Take on Capital; Black Lives Matter takes on Education and Police Unions; Jewish Support for #BlackLivesMatter; Palestine Removed from GoogleMaps - What You Can Do; Announcements: New Book - Women Fight the Islamic State;Rock Against the TPP Concerts - Seattle, Portland and San Francisco; and more.

1936: The Worst Olympic Games Ever (So far)

Simon Barnes New Statesman
As the Olympic Games go, the reviewer says, it's time to ask the big question: which were the worst Olympics ever? David Goldblatt's The Games is a history of the tarnished Olympics, from Avery Brundage to, yes, London 2012. The evidence shows indisputably that it was Hitler's Berlin games of 1936, which set the stage for spectacle and nationalist-racialist sentiment.

How Labor’s Decline Opened Door To Billionaire Trump As ‘Savior’ Of American Worker

Raymond Hogler The Conversation
How has Trump managed to attract substantial support among white men without college degrees? According to Raymond Hogler, "The answer is an interlocking set of changing economic and cultural conditions in the U.S. that has undermined middle-class incomes and values. And it starts with the steady erosion of the American labor movement."

American Gandhi

Staughton Lynd and Andy Piascik Vietnam Full Disclosure
Although this book is two years old, and this review is over a year old, the relevance of A. J. Muste still resonates in this political season, where the always essential questions of war and peace should take center stage. Muste helped shape the modern peace movement in a host of ways. This book, and this review, offers a window into the life and times of this important movement figure.

Labor Must Take on Capital

Saqib Bhatti and Stephen Lerner Jacobin
Unions must expand beyond narrow bargaining to challenge those who hold wealth and power at the highest levels. Most unions are accustomed to bargaining with their direct employers, as they have done for decades. But the financialization of the economy has rendered that structure obsolete. In order to win for workers, unions need to take their demands directly to those who actually have the money and control. They can often be found on Wall Street.