Portside

“Today, President Obama showed once again that he doesn’t get it.”

Edward Snowden is the greatest patriot whistleblower of our time, and he knows what I learned more than four decades ago: until the Espionage Act gets reformed, he can never come home safe and receive justice

Drone warfare is based on the lie that war can be made more exact, limited and humane through technology.

Hunter-gatherers—and presumably all our ancestors—lived as equals

On a cool note, Miles Davis gets a NYC street. Neil deGrasse Tyson on Weather vs Climate Change. What's So Scary About Smart Girls? Maya Angelou - I Am Human. Documentary: 'Daddy I Do'.

Reader Comments - Cecily McMillan; Prison Labor; William Worthy; Syria; Timothy Geithner and Wall Street's Bailout; College Debt; U.S. Subversion in Latin America; Venezuela; Announcements - This Weekend - Left Forum (May 30 - June 1) - Reform and/or Revolution: Imagining a World with Transformative Justice; Raising America's Pay - Launches June 4; Meet UnionWiki; Call for Papers - Fighting Inequality: Class, Race, and Power

National Forum on Police Crimes held earlier this month in Chicago. Speaking at the closing rally Angels Davis said, mass incarceration and police killings stem from "structural and systemic racism rooted in the failure to fully abolish slavery." Global capital expansion and its pursuit of profit, she said, fuel the prison-industrial complex. Call issued for legislation to create Civilian Police Accountability Councils.

Piketty's central theme is not that inequality of the ownership of wealth is going to skyrocket. The central theme is that the 1% already owns a lot of the capital stock, and the capital stock is going to get gigantic relative to the rest of the economy. Whatever the weakness this meg-tome and mega-best seller, there is no denying - the rich are getting richer, the poor, poorer. (And Piketty is not a Marxist.)

Interesting new developments calling for end of ban on travel and trade with Cuba, and for full normalization of relations with socialist Cuba, our closest neighbor in the Caribbean. Open letter to Obama signed by former government officials, including ones who served in his Cabinet. Business groups in the U.S. are now clamoring for a change in policy. Today, Thomas Donohue, President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce headed a business delegation to Cuba.

NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams asked Snowden, "When the president and others have made the point that you should have gone through channels, become a whistleblower and not pursued the route you did, what's your response?" "I actually did go through channels and that is documented," Snowden answered. "The NSA has records.