Portside

Tech Companies Get Millions from Us for PRISM; EFF Takes Down FISA; Kochs Loose Interest In Tribune; FCC Slashes Prison Phone Rates; Zuckerberg Launches New Initiative for Global Internet Access

Reader comments: Prisons; Labor Unions; Banning Russia from the Olympics - a Very Bad Idea; Remembering Viola Liuzzo; Bayard Rustin & '63 March on Washington; American Jews & Israeli Racism; Student Debt; Announcements: FREEDOM '63 REMIXED - Legacies of the March on Washington - Aug 16 -New York; The Forgotten History of the March on Washington, Aug 22 -Washington, DC - two events; Walmart Workers are Standing Up!; CCDS 7th Convention; Useful graphic on Climate Change

30,000 California Prisoners on Hunger Strike

Angela Davis' lectures take the reader towards a serious reconsideration of ideology and the state apparatus and the deplorable question of oppression on the basis of race, gender, class and sexual orientation. The wholesale criminalisation of young black men cannot be permitted and the concept of rehabilitation has to find some ground. The Meaning of Freedom articulates a bold vision of the society we need to build and the path to get there.

Reader Comments: Terrorism, Drones, Afghanistan, Benghazi, Obama terrorism speech, Bradley Manning, Chicago Schools, Climate Change, Letter to "The Nation" from a Young Radical, Math, Malvina Reynolds, Africa, Asia, Hope Foye, Race & Biology, Peabody Coal, Bittorrent... Announcements - Gerald Horne keynote's Chicago Human Rights Awards - Jun 15; Film Premier - Camp Kinderland "Commie Camp" - New York - Jun 28; Jerry Tucker Memorial Conference, St. Louis - Oct 11-13

The United States has come under sharp criticism at home and abroad for relying on solitary confinement in its prisons more than any other democratic nation in the world. While Immigration and Customs Enforcement places only about 1 percent of its jailed immigrants in solitary, this practice is nonetheless startling because those detainees are being held on civil, not criminal, charges.

How otherwise progressive unions stand in the way of a more humane correctional system.

Cases like that of Weldon Angelos, who was given a fifty-five-year sentence for selling marijuana, cry out for mercy. But calls for clemency have fallen on deaf ears...So why hasn't Obama done the right thing? Could it be that Angelos has just gotten lost in the shuffle? Possibly-but if that's the reason, there would be evidence that Obama has used his pardon and commutation powers wisely in other cases. Unfortunately, that's not true.