Portside

Here is the prepared text of the address that Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders delivered on Friday (April 15) at a meeting of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. The conference is focused on “Centesimus Annus,” a landmark social justice encyclical by Saint John Paul II: “The Urgency of a Moral Economy: Reflections on the 25th Anniversary of Centesimus Annus”

To use a term that has become commonplace in our world when discussing commerce, the prospect of nuclear conflict has globalized war and it’s a nightmare of the first order. In the post-Cold War world, Exhibit A in that process would certainly be the unnerving potential for a nuclear war to break out between India and Pakistan.

You could call it a perfect storm: a fiscal crisis converging with a deep secular economic decline.[1] Once touted as the showcase of U.S.- led economic development, debt-strapped Puerto Rico is currently embroiled in a struggle for survival. During the mid-twentieth century, Puerto Rico grew at a rapid pace, betting on cheap labor, privileged duty-free access to the U.S. market, and tax incentives for U.S. companies.

Let’s offer thanks for small favors when someone -- in this case, ex-Army Ranger and TomDispatch regular Rory Fanning (author of Worth Fighting For: An Army Ranger’s Journey Out of the Military and Across America) -- feels the urge to do something about the massive, militarized propaganda effort in our schools. In my book, Fanning is the equivalent of any 12 of our generals and we need more like him both in those schools and in our country. Tom Engelhardt

For Palestinians, Honduras and Guatemala might seem too distant, too irrelevant for our struggle. And while there are some apparent stark differences in our lived realities and in the faces of our oppressors, there are commonalities as well. In Palestine as well as in many parts of Central and Latin America, the oppression is directly sponsored by US military and financial aid. And in all these places our collective survival rests upon defending and preserving our land.

CSPG's Poster of the Week calls attention to the same issues that energized the ongoing Democracy Spring protests in Washington, DC--the loss of democracy in an age of big money corporate politics.

Financial meltdown, environmental disaster and even the rise of Donald Trump - neoliberalism has played its part in them all. Why has the left failed to come up with an alternative?

Out-of-control U.S. nuclear weapons programs accelerate spending, proliferation, health and safety risks. Despite a clear obligation under Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty the US continues to pursue exotic elective changes to the nuclear stockpile. Many LEPs will result in nuclear weapons with new military capabilities—contrary to promises and assertions made by President Obama.

Support for coup regimes, militarization and privatization, trade deals that wreak economic havoc—they reveal the failure of Clintonism.

In 1838, the Jesuit priests who ran the country’s top Catholic university needed money to keep it alive. Now comes the task of making amends.