Portside

Review by Paul Buhle founder of the Oral History of the American Left at Tamiment Library, New York University, and co-editor of the Encyclopedia of the American Left.

Common Core “results” aren’t actually test scores. In fact, the numbers tell us more about the states’ test scorers than they do about schoolchildren.

Trump’s candidacy has already left a durable mark, expanding the discourse of hate such that we barely even registered that Senator Ted Cruz had called the sitting President “the world’s leading financier of radical Islamic terrorism,” or that Senator Marco Rubio had redoubled his opposition to abortion in cases of rape, incest, or a mortal threat to the mother. Trump has bequeathed a concoction of celebrity, wealth, and alienation that is more potent than any we’ve seen

"When the coal industry rebounds to the extent that it does, and non-union operators take a look around and see that there's no union competition, and they'll see that they can begin to cut wages, they can begin to cut benefits, they can begin to cut corners on safety, they'll do that," said Phil Smith, a national spokesman for the miner's union.

Who knew that capitalism and protein were so well aligned?

The so-called “racial discipline gap” has been documented since an influential report by the Children’s Defense Fund first identified the racial disparity of suspension rates in 1975. In the 40 years since the report’s release, national organizations, schools, educators, and other stakeholders have all shined a light on the disparity, with little demonstrative success. If anything, new data shows the problem has markedly increased since it was first identified.

Recently the mainstream media has portrayed the political crisis in Brazil as a result of internal corruption and the lack of economic growth, which is blamed on the President Dilma Rousseff and the Workers’ Party. What is rarely mentioned, however, is that Brazil is experiencing a historical divide. Some Brazilians believe President Rousseff hasn’t followed the dictates of neoliberalism closely enough, while others argue the corporations have far too much power.

Two years after Katrina, in 2007, the Pentagon released its first major report on climate change, warning of an “age of consequences” in which “altruism and generosity would likely be blunted.” An EU security report followed which said climate change “threatens to overburden states and regions which are already fragile and conflict prone.” And soon, the national security strategies of the global north would be rewritten to offer the same dystopian vision.

The latest brilliant plan to curtail Isis in the Middle East? Give weapons to members of al-Qaida. This week former ex-CIA director Gen. David Petraeus publicly broached what columnist Trevor Timm termed this “dangerous and crazy idea.” But, according to Timm, Petraeus is probably not the only one in Washington who thinks working with and arming members of the al-Nusra front in Syria is a good idea. It’s preposterous, but that doesn’t mean they won’t try it.

A coalition of reproductive rights groups and healthcare providers filed a formal request Thursday for the U.S. Supreme Court to permanently block enforcement of key provisions in Texas’ extreme anti-choice law. "Without the Court's intervention, the impact on Texas women will be immediate and devastating," says the Center for Reproductive Rights. Women’s health groups say if the law is allowed to go into effect 31 of the 41 women’s clinics in Texas will be closed.