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American Power Under Challenge Masters of Mankind (Part 1)

Noam Chomsky TomDispatch
This piece, the first of two parts, is excerpted from Noam Chomsky’s new book, Who Rules the World? (Metropolitan Books). Part 2 will be posted on May 10, 2016. Noam Chomsky is still writing with the same chilling eloquence about the updated war-on-terror version of this American nightmare. At a moment when the Vietnam bomber of choice, the B-52, is being sent back into action in the war against the Islamic State, Chomsky, too, is back in action.

Slowly Abolishing Solitary Confinement for Children

Bernardine Dohrn Leiden Law Blog
Children are still being held in isolation in detention and correctional facilities across the United States. Children can be found curled up on cement floors in bare cells for 22 hours a day, and for days at a time. In order to use bathroom facilities in Los Angeles County Jail, young people must bang on their cell door and hope that someone comes to escort them to a bathroom.

Army Exalts Confederate Generals But Says Black Power Salute Inapt

Jason Dempsey The Washington Post
West Point’s investigation of the 16 Black women cadets who posed in uniform with raised fists determined that while the cadets didn’t violate military regulations their gesture was “inappropriate.” The U.S. Army, which vigorously defends the naming of 10 of its bases after Confederate generals who fought against the U.S. to preserve slavery, will instruct the 16 Black cadets on how “a symbol or gesture that one group of people may find harmless may offend others.”

Israel Today, Germany Then

Uri Avnery gush-shalom
Ya'ir Golan, the deputy Chief of Staff of the Israeli army, made a speech on Holocaust Memorial Day. Some accuse him of comparing Israel to Nazi Germany in that speech. Nothing of the sort. He compared developments in Israel to the events that led to the disintegration of the Weimar Republic. And that is a valid comparison. Things happening in Israel, especially since the last election, bear a frightening similarity to those events.

The Fading Meaning of ‘GMO'

James Hamblin The Atlantic
The National Academy of Sciences is urging people to focus less on the process and more on the product.

Friday Nite Videos -- May 20, 2016

Portside
'America Was Never Great.' Bernie Sanders: 'Let the People In.' Wilmore vs Trump Impression-off. Pirates of the Caribbean (in Vietnam). Spiralling Global Temperatures.

Tidbits - May 19, 2016 - Reader Comments: Bernie, Hillary: A Test of Leadership; Nevada; White Workers; Israeli Nationalism; Brown vs. Topeka Anniversary; and more

Portside
Reader Comments: Hillary, Bernie - A Test of Leadership; Nevada Convention - What Really Happened; Burying the White Working Class; Do We Need a Socialist Think Tank?; Israeli General who Compared the Jewish State to Nazi-era Germany; Fracking - Pennsylvania Township Legalizes Civil Disobedience; Trump, Racism and the Left; Resources; Announcement: Brown at 62: School Segregation by Race, Poverty and State; Green Olive Tours - Ethiopia Sport & Culture Tour

The Life and Times of Karl Marx, in the words of Ronnie Kasrils

Ronnie Kasrils Daily Maverick (South Africa)
What fashioned Marx, Marxist theories and challenges faced in South Africa. Essential today is an international solidarity movement uniting the broad masses of people of all lands under the leadership of organized labor, of hand and brain, to stop the perfidious transnational corporations, their government tools, and capitalism's imperialist wars - towards a new internationalism of the working class, labor masses, and freedom loving people everywhere.