Portside

The Middle-East map is being redrawn in Syria and Iraq by Moscow and Washington. The Obama Administration is co-leading with the Kremlin to help slice the Syria-Iraq area into five or more political states so as to deconflict this region and hopefully reduce the attractiveness of ISIL.

Vera B. Williams the award-winning writer, illustrator, children's book author and social justice activist, died last Friday. Her best-known picture book, A Chair for My Mother, was named as a Caldecott Honor Book. Long active in antiwar, antinuclear and environmental causes, Ms. Williams was a past member of the executive committee of the War Resisters League.

Robin D.G. Kelley's searching tribute to Grace Lee Boggs: She never gave up on our capacity to think and act and think more deeply. She relentlessly and lovingly pushed us with the force and precision of the expert dialectician we all knew her to be.

A short video, titled “When I See Them I See Us,” was released by a range of African-American and Palestine-solidarity groups. The video, which includes Lauryn Hill, Angela Davis, Cornel West, Alice Walker, Danny Glover and dozens of other academics, activists and artists, juxtaposes high profile killings of unarmed African-Americans by police with Palestinians killed by Israeli forces and settlers.

We should rightly celebrate the defeat of Stephen Harper and a significantly increased voter turnout, but we will have to campaign even harder now to ensure that the 70 per cent of Canadians who said "it was the time for change" in Ottawa this election, get the change they deserve.

Rick Perlstein noticed Republicans showing up at Bernie Sanders events. He set out to find out just how many of them there are. They don’t know they are not supposed to like Bernie Sanders. They hear what he is saying, and like what they hear. Something is happening here that reminds us that our models for predicting winners and losers in politics always need to be subject to revision.

The discussion of democratic socialism should embrace our own American radical tradition. There’s nothing wrong with Denmark; we can learn a few things from them (and vice-versa). But we should talk first of all about our radical forebears here in the United States, for the most successful radicals have always spoken the language of American society and appealed to some of its deepest values.

In the June 7 election, Erdogan’s AKP lost its absolute majority in the legislature. The defeat was mainly due to a breakthrough by the Kurdish-led, leftist, People’s Democratic Party (HDP) that took 13.1 percent of the vote and won 80 seats, seats that in the past usually went to the AKP. Almost before the final tallies were announced, Erdogan moved to prevent the formation of a government and force another election.

Refugees; Exxon is Exxon; VW & business ethics; Bye bye centerfold; WalMart sucks eggs

The nationalists say, “An agreement will never be possible with those bloodthirsty people.” The center-left says, “There’s no way to live together.” The common denominator is racism, and the assumption that the hatred will last forever. To this we must add the arguments over the Jewish state’s sanctity and the end of the Zionist project. In short, one state means the end of the world. And now to the facts. One state already exists here, and has done so for 48 years.