Portside

There are concerns that Israel will now exert pressure on other allies, including America, Canada and Britain, to use state machinery and legislation to outlaw the growing BDS movement. It is high time, therefore, to expose the French action for what it is in an effort to deter such moves. 'Libert,, ,galit,, fraternit,' are all well and good; but now we must add "hypocrisie" and France should hang its head in shame.

The assault at Spring Valley runs deeper than one bad cop - it's the latest product of the school-to-prison pipeline. Over the last 20 years there has been an explosion in the number of police officers stationed in schools. This has been one of the most dramatic and clearly counterproductive expansions of police scope and power in postwar America.

A large majority of Americans, 68 percent, in a recent ABC/Washington Post poll said our economic system favors the rich rather than the majority. About half of those who said they were Republicans agreed. Economist Joseph Stiglitz has been following opinion research and consistently found that the percentages of those who see too much wealth inequality were high among men and women, Democrats and Republicans, people with lower incomes, even those with higher incomes.

TPP's fate in congress is uncertain at best; Long-awaited text reveals gaps between administration claims and actual TPP terms on key congressional, public concerns. Many in Congress said they would support the TPP only if, at a minimum, it included past reforms made to trade pact intellectual property rules affecting access to affordable medicines. But the TPP rolls back that past progress and provides pharmaceutical firms with new monopoly rights for biotech drugs.

Forty years ago, the US Senate’s Church Committee conducted a massive investigation into the intelligence community and expressed concerns that the privacy rights of US citizens had been violated by activities conducted under pretenses of foreign intelligence collection. The Secret Fisa courts were supposed to solve the problem -- however, they have made the problem worse.

With the new Investigate platform, people will be able to automatically scan their investment portfolios and find out if companies are invested in the prison industry. This free investment screening tool is provided to help individuals and institutions identify companies on their investment portfolios that are directly complicit in ongoing severe violations of human rights and international law.

The recent release of 6,000 inmates accelerated a decline in the number of inmates—but there's bad news, too.

The “Counter-CAPS Report: The Community Engagement Arm of the Police State” released by multiple Chicago-based organizations argues that the Chicago Police Department has much more to gain through CAPS meetings than do community members. Instead of providing communities with meaningful control over the police, CAPS meetings employ a self-selecting group of neighborhood residents to work with police to deflect criticism and criminalize young people of color.

“This is a Presidential debate,” says the chair of the Republican National Committee. “If people want facts, they can watch ‘Jeopardy.’ ”

A new report released October 26 by Health Impact Partners (HIP) assesses the impact of the proposed $775 million Reef project in South Central Los Angeles on existing residents. HIP found that “the Reef Development Project will place thousands of South Central LA residents at high or very high risk of financial strain or displacement.”