Portside

We acknowledge that this was written in June, 2015. However we are posting it because it describes how tangled the lines are when it comes to US and British policy in the Middle East. Unless there is a real turn around in US strategy in the Middle East the only thing that will continue will be more death and destruction, and the repercussions are world wide. This should be a big question for the US presidential debates - but will it?

Growing numbers of ‘millennials’ who are unaffiliated or atheists are causing vast changes in the American religious landscape, report says

A new study shows that two glaciers in Greenland are showing worrying changes, and that one has been retreating at an accelerating rate in recent years as it faces a dual attack by warm air from above and warm water from below. The glacier Zachariae has shrunk by 95 percent since 2002. The mass of miles-thick ice that covers most of Greenland could raise global sea levels by some 20 feet if it all melted.

Student activists held actions on some 120 campuses, demanding free tuition, cancellation of student debts and a $15 minimum wage for campus workers.

According to historian Mai Ngai, "the project was conceived and executed as though it was a military operation," with 800 immigration agents fanning out across the Southwest, apprehending as many as 3,000 immigrants a day at roadblocks and in raids on homes, farms and factories. Front-page Los Angeles Times headlines from that time touted the operation in demeaning language. "Wetbacks Herded at Nogales Camp," reads one.

John Oliver: Prisoner Re-entry. What the Actual Fact? - Truth and Fiction in the GOP Debate. How To Go To Space (with XKCD!) Demand a 2016 Election Day Holiday! 'Why use a Taser?' The death of Calvon 'Andre' Reid.

Reader Comments: 2016 Elections - Asian American Voters, Bernie Sanders (and Labor); Portside Satire; Fight for $15; BDS, France, Israel, Palestine; Syria; Our Bodies Ourselves Needs Your Help; George Houser tribute; Skateboarders of Havana; These 24 Chains are Refusing to Open on Thanksgiving Day; How Class Works-2016 - conference proposals due

True story about BAE Systems, the UK's largest aerospace and weapons company. BAE is the major bad guy in the play, as well as a major bad guy among arms traders. (In 2010, BAE pled guilty in the U.S. to charges of false accounting and making misleading statements in connection with an arms sale to Saudi Arabia. The issue was bribery to get a Saudi contract. British Prime Minister Tony Blair quashed an investigation there, as he wanted the contract.)

The current Israeli government is unlikely to permit advances in religious freedom such as civil marriage, equal funding of non-Orthodox institutions and reducing the power of the ultra-Orthodox Chief Rabbinate...an alternative to the rigid and insular Judaism that permeates Israeli public life must remind the Israeli state about the power and wisdom of a pluralistic approach to Jewish life, said Rabbi Rick Jacobs, of the Union for Reform Judaism.

America's leading Sunni ally is proving how easily hubris, delusion, and old-fashioned ineptitude can trump even bottomless wealth. The price of oil dropped from $115 a barrel in June 2014 to around $44 today. While it costs less than $10 to produce a barrel of Saudi oil, the Saudis need a price between $95 and $105 to balance their budget. The country's leaders are now burning through their foreign reserves to make up the difference.