Portside

Lead poison; The myth that murders; Black and white in the slave south; Graham, cracker of souls; BS manufacturers; On the new gun control movement

Donald Trump’s retrograde policies on immigration, women’s rights, racial justice, LGBT rights, and economic inequality have spawned an impressive and growing resistance. It remains to be seen whether his generous treatment of the Pentagon at the expense of basic human needs will spur a similar backlash.

Why is Chavismo still so popular amid Venezuela's worst economic downturn in decades?

Dennis Magnasco said he’s a combat veteran, a gun owner and a staunch supporter of the Second Amendment. And he’s ready for gun reform. “I recognize the power of firearms. I’ve seen what they can do,” Magnasco said. “And it makes me sick to know that we have high school kids seeing this in their schools.”

Randa Harara is adamant that she will stand up to Israel’s forces of occupation again – once she has made a recovery. On 11 December, Randa – aged 21 – was shot by a sniper hiding at Nahal Oz, a military checkpoint separating Gaza from Israel. She was taking part in a protest against the announcement by Donald Trump, the US president, that he recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Six months after the FBI issued a report inventing from whole cloth the term Black Identity Extremists — claiming this group poses a terrorist threat to police — the first apparent case of the prosecution of a BIE has emerged. The BIE designation has created concern in the Black community that the FBI is launching a new COINTELPRO program targeting Black activists who have committed no crimes, with more arrests and prosecutions of those involved in racial justice movements to follow.

THE PHILIPPINES president has offered a £340 bounty for each communist rebel killed by government forces in a bid to save on the state’s anti-insurgency costs.

So you’re going to high school and have decided that you can’t abide the notion of your classmates getting gunned down by yet another perpetrator of domestic violence. You want to walk out of your classes in protest, be it on 3/14 or 4/20, but you haven’t really done anything like this before. Worse, you live somewhere that has Confederate battle flags flying near the Interstate and there’s not many adults you can trust to help you organize a walkout at your school. Don’t worry, I am here to help guide you through the process of taking your first direct action.

The Supreme Court case Janus v. AFSCME is poised to decimate public-sector unions—and it’s been made possible by a network of right-wing billionaires, think tanks and corporations.

We’ve identified people in our history who look and behave strikingly like the Koch brothers and their associates—specifically a small group that is mega-wealthy, super- privileged, highly self aware, morally self-confident, ideologically driven and deeply engaged in long-term efforts to seize the levers of government and upend American democracy. By this historian’s reckoning, it is, in general, the Old South’s slave owning aristocracy.