Portside

I propose that a consequential Left can only proceed as a project for reconstructing American democracy, root and branch. We are not finished with making this country a real democracy. We need to complete the process of Radical Reconstruction that began after the Civil War, and stalled until the Second Reconstruction of the mid-twentieth century.

I am not an expert on Egypt, or Chile – most of my knowledge about General Pinochet comes from a book by a Guardian writer, Andy Beckett. But I know enough that when Margaret Thatcher died, reminders of her enduring support and praise for Pinochet left a nasty taste in the mouth. While people are dying in the streets of Cairo, to read an expression of the same sentiment from a respected, globally-read newspaper is repellent.

Melville, who had been a sailor on clipper ships and whalers, was keenly aware that the wealth of industrialized societies came from the exploited of the earth. “Yes; all these brave houses and flowery gardens came from the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans,” Ishmael says of New England’s prosperity. “One and all, they were harpooned and dragged up hither from the bottom of the sea.”

Anyone who expects a huge uptick in investment to provide a major boost to demand is either smoking something serious or simply has never looked at the data. It hasn't happen in the last 65 years and it's not about to happen now.

Ant colonies have been used throughout history as models of industry, obedience, and wisdom. Although the ants themselves can be indolent, inconsiderate of others, and downright stupid, we have much to learn from ant colony protocols. The ants have evolved ways of working together that we haven’t yet dreamed of.

It’s well known that as the Truman White House made plans to use the first atomic bombs against Japan in the summer of 1945, a large group of atomic scientists, many of whom had worked on the bomb project, raised their voices, or at least their names, in protest.

Four Years Into the Recovery and We’re Just a Fifth of the Way Out of the Hole Left by the Great Recession

How three young undocumented activists risked everything to expose the injustices of immigrant detention—and invented a new form of protest.

Instead a negotiation process that is neither democratic and or transparent is likely to perpetuate a managed trade regime. The US refusal to eliminate its cotton and other agricultural subsidies torpedoed the Doha round of trade talks.

A community and labor coalition has just won a years-long battle against the largest private healthcare provider in San Francisco