Portside

Last week Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier died, signaling the passing of the last Duvalier to rule Haiti. But corruption in Haiti is still rampant, and the U.S.-backed regime of President Michel Martelly uses the political toolbox developed by the Duvaliers to control the country. "Papa Doc" and "Baby Doc" Duvalier are dead; but Duvalierism lives on.

A ProPublica analysis of killings by police shows outsize risk for young black males.

When President Obama took office, there were five million Americans at home all day who are now, sadly, not at home

In this view, hand stencils and animal paintings in Europe and Asia, separated by some 13,000 kilometers, have a common, far deeper origin in Africa.

The prescription, he argues in "Being Mortal," is to rethink our priorities for the dying—and give 'em something to live for.

The point isn’t whether Obama is or isn’t a radical. It’s that we ourselves need to be.

Reader Comments - Towards a Socialist America; War on the Islamic State; Ferguson New Voter Registration; Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism; Economy - Still Failing; People's Climate March; War and Climate Change; Berkeley Free Speech Movement; Crime Fiction; Work, Leisure, & Consumption; Israel 'Blacklist'; An Israel Equal for All; Importance of Brazil's Elections; Announcements - Race, Policing & Civil Rights-Oct 14; Paint the Town Red-Oct 22-both Brooklyn

Herein lay the difference between my son's black childhood and my own. Not only was I assaulted by the n-word so much earlier in life - at age 7, while visiting relatives in Memphis - but I also had many other experiences that differentiated my life from the lives of my white childhood friends. There was no way that they would "forget" that I was different. The times, in fact, dictated that they should not forget; our situation would be unavoidably "racial."

BRICS and the SCO are the two largest independent international organizations to develop over the past decade. What role these new organizations will play internationally is not clear. Certainly sanction regimens will be harder to maintain because the SCO and the BRICS create alternatives. South Africa, for instance, announced that it would begin buying Iran oil in the next few months, an important breach in the sanctions against Iran.

Rahm Emanuel is vulnerable. True, he cleared the snow in the winter, the Chicago equivalent of making the trains run on time. But beyond that, his neoliberal policies have made him a lot of enemies. The ramifications of an Emanuel defeat go beyond Chicago. He has been central to the Democratic Party's rightward swing since the Clinton years. The potential for a Lewis victory is as yet unclear. The election is just five months away - she has yet to declare her candidacy.