#freedom

#freedom

The defeat of Viktor Orbán required not just an ordinary election campaign but the construction of a broad, diverse, and patriotic grassroots social movement, changing politics around the world.

The cycle of dread and panic, of being driven to the edge at full speed before someone slams the brakes, harms our nervous systems, and has the potential to break our spirits.

In 2024 alone, authorities imposed 304 internet shutdowns across 54 countries - the highest number ever recorded. This reflects a growing trend of governments treating connectivity as a weapon.

A chief tenet of liberation is the freedom to define oneself while being accorded the rights and privileges established and guaranteed under law and social standing.

Once upon a time, adding official to an announcement served a purpose. It distinguished fact from rumour, press release from pub chat. Sensible. Helpful. Civilised. But in recent years, the word has gone rogue. Nothing can simply happen anymore. It must be officially announced.

[The U.S.] does not recognize a legal right to reparations for historical wrongs that were not illegal under international law at the time they occurred.

During World War I, women in Russia went on strike. They demanded "bread and peace." Among the results of their four-day protest: the Czar abdicated and women gained the right to vote. This bold strike began on Feb. 23, 1917, according to the Julian calendar then used in Russia. That date translated to March 8 in the Gregorian calendar that much of the world uses.

In the early 20th century, sociologist Max Weber noted that sweeping industrialization would transform how societies worked. As small, informal operations gave way to large, complex organizations with clearly defined roles and responsibilities, leaders would need to rely less on tradition and charisma, and more on organization and rationality. He also foresaw that jobs would need to be broken down into specialized tasks and governed by a system of hierarchy,

Last week- after the Wall Street Journal broke more news about the Trump family's dodgy crypto-business dealings and before the President shared a racist video of the Obamas depicted as dancing apes-the Amazon entrepreneur Jeff Bezos decided that one of his smaller properties, the Washington Post, has proved such a drag on his two-hundred-and-thirty-billion-dollar fortune that prudence required that he obliterate much of its newsroom.

In the United States, we haven't yet seen rifles aimed at large crowds, but we do observe masked federal agents detaining protesters in unmarked vehicles, flashy ICE raids staged like military operations and pardons for political violence all clear warning signs. Ignoring this is the first step toward complacency, which can kill liberty. Fascism is often misunderstood. It is not just political oppression; it is a set of traits, as scholars and observers point out,

Like us, you may feel paralyzed in the face of the relentless images of violence we see every day. Suffering children, military occupations, the devastated neighborhoods, the cries of parents mourning their dead-these scenes haunt us. Whether it is happening in Palestine or Minneapolis, we are witnesses to suffering, and that witnessing takes a heavy toll. Clearly, the devastating situations in the West Bank and Gaza and in Minneapolis differ

One political conversation with a gay friend that I'll never forget occurred the night before Election Day in 2016, where my friend told me that he hoped Donald Trump would win so that "The Revolution" would finally happen. The idea, I suppose, was that Trump would make things so bad that it would finally wake up the proletariat of the world, and it would unite in the ultimate class war to overthrow the messed-up liberal world order,

The word that comes to my mind is dissidence. If we want to understand why the whistleblowing, camera-wielding people of Minneapolis have caused the Trump administration-and Donald Trump himself-to flinch, I believe we need some added history, and a bigger map. What we've been watching is part of a long, established tradition-one that might help Americans unlock a different kind of future.