Portside

Ex- Bush official confesses. President George W. Bush would have ordered the war even without United Nations support. "That led to a war that resulted in catastrophic losses for the region and the United States-led coalition, and that destabilized the entire Middle East". This should not be forgotten, since the Trump administration is using much the same playbook to create a false impression that war is the only way to address the threats posed by Iran.

The Chinese Communist Party, at its 19th Congress, set the goal to eliminate extreme poverty by 2022 and then begin process of "socialist modernisation." The challenge the country will face is to combine economic growth with environmental protection and to address the extreme inequality within society.

When soldiers are idolized, respect for militarism and war grow accordingly. Military training, military expenditures, military intervention, and military escalation become ways to “support the troops” or, at the least, take on a friendlier glow.

Most people who die in US jails, prisons, and immigration detention centers remain invisible, with little and often no information shared with family, friends and the broader public. 

In the fall of 2014, word got around Pendleton, in Indiana, that a crew was coming to make a film, called “O.G.” It was to feature prisoners and guards as actors and extras. No one had ever attempted anything like it.

Bresha Meadows was 14 years old when she took the drastic step of shooting her father, after systems repeatedly failed her. We can learn from Bresha’s case that while she’s free, there is still an epidemic of criminalizing women and girls who fight back against domestic and family violence.

Happy birthday Open Source; FBI is reading this; SOS FOIA; Say it loud; Bitcoin bubble; Free speech and attacks on democracy

Bargaining for the common good campaigns are when union and community groups together leverage contract negotiations for broader, shared gains.

Amazon's high-tech sheen hides its abusive labor practices.

In the end, Trump’s infrastructure plan is simply another in the long line of policies designed to benefit the private sector, and keep the public sector sufficiently small and ineffective that it can be controlled and contained by plutocrats.