Portside

As we enter the new era of Donald Trump, amid a welter of conflicting signals, only one thing seems clear when it comes to the U.S. military. Whatever extreme figures end up in key posts in the Trump version of the national security state, as TomDispatch regular William Hartung indicates today, yet more money will be sent swirling down the Pentagon's drain.

The following is not intended to be definitive and it is inevitably incomplete. It’s more about raising questions than answering them. The sole goal is to add to and deepen the ongoing discussion. If you find this useful, please share widely and credit simply to Howie Machtinger and other Durham, North Carolina-based social justice activists.

The phone bank on Florence Avenue near Western is fully staffed on a Thursday afternoon. Its 20 callers could be hawking solar paneling or copper water pipes to anyone who answers. Instead, the men and women here are selling change in the most populous city in the most populous state in the nation. On this day, shortly before the election, they are contacting potential voters about three of California’s 17 ballot propositions.

For decades, the military and the VA have repeatedly turned to one man to guide decisions on whether Agent Orange harmed vets in Vietnam and elsewhere. His reliable answer: No.

The great insurgencies that brought back democracy to many countries in Latin America after decades of military dictatorship are now targets of growing assaults by police, military and private militias. From Honduras to Argentina, from Brazil to Colombia, labor, indigenous and black social movements are embattled. The governments’ criminalization of social movements is “legitimizing” death squads, murders and in some cases massacres.

Michael Eisenscher, National Coordinator Emeritus, U.S. Labor Against the War shares his thoughts on 2016 elections.

The actions taken recently by law enforcement at the Dakota Access pipeline site have made it plain that the climate crisis cannot be adequately addressed until we come to terms with the history that climate change and the policing of communities of color share.

Influenza kills around 36,000 people annually in the U.S. but they are the least effective of all our vaccines. The influenza virus is constantly changing, and there is a lot of guesswork involved in choosing which strains to use in each year’s vaccine.The benefit to the population depends on individuals getting the vaccine. They may not benefit personally, but they indirectly benefit others by reducing transmission rates in the community and increasing herd immunity.

Ultimately, a new left politics in the United States will have to involve recapturing the energy of some of those pre-New Deal labor, agrarian, and socialist radicals who held on to the promise of a party of their own.

Governor Pat McCrory is crying voter fraud, and rumors are swirling about a possible bid to pack the state Supreme Court.