Portside

The United States should do everything possible to avoid choosing sides in an intensifying proxy war between the dominant Shiite and Sunni powers in the Middle East. Though history tells us we should tilt toward Saudi Arabia, our old ally, if we look toward the future, Iran is the more logical partner. The reasons are simple: Iran’s security interests are closer to ours than Saudi Arabia’s are.

Two recent events – the second-round victory on November 22 of right-wing candidate Mauricio Macri in Argentina's presidential election, and the December 6 victory of the right-wing Democratic Unity Roundtable,[1] winning two thirds of the seats in Venezuela's National Assembly elections – have radically altered the political map in South America. Argentine Marxist Claudio Katz discusses what these setbacks for the left mean for the progressive “process of change.”

“When we talk to potential union members, we explain, ‘Your working conditions aren’t going to get better unless we act as a unit, as a union,’” Spink said. “We have to relearn the lessons of labor from the 1930s and 1940s – of collective action and collective message."

The law the Obama administration is following, immigrant advocates say, runs counter to the higher mandate the White House should be abiding by. International humanitarian law actually dictates that these desperate parents and children be granted protection from the persecution and violence they have fled in their home countries.

If you’re no longer drawing lines on population but you’re selectively using criteria like age, that hits [the Hispanic] community very hard. Put aside the whole citizenship issue. The largest group of people who would be subtracted from the apportionment base would be children, and because [Hispanics] have disproportionately so many more children than the Anglo population has, that starts shifting seats all by itself, before you start to even consider citizenship.

The ILWU’s effort to create affordable integrated housing for working people says much about its values and efforts to define the city that birthed the union and remains its headquarters.

Scott Slater wants to pump billions of gallons to LA and other drought-hit cities - and make $2.4bn in the process

Problematic entries reinforce the popular impression that science is impossible to understand and isn't for most people—they make science seem elitist. And that's an impression that we as a society really can't afford.

You end up seriously thinking that between one year and the next there is a break, that a new history is beginning; you make resolutions, and you regret your irresolution, and so on, and so forth. This is generally what’s wrong with dates.

To no one’s surprise the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) was unable to come to agreement on Jordan’s proposed list of 160 terrorist groups that should be precluded from participating in peace negotiations between the Assad regime and the Syrian opposition. Jordan presented the list to the ISSG December 18th, and it was tabled. And on December 25 Qatar’s Foreign Minister announced his country’s opposition to the development of any list before negotiations begin.