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Entering the Nuclear Age, Body by Body -- The Nagasaki Experience

Susan Southard TomDispatch
On a 70th anniversary in which the madness shows no sign of ending, it’s good to turn to Susan Southard’s monumental new book, Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War, which offers a riveting, if chilling plunge into nuclear realities. Nuclear destruction of an almost unimaginable sort was the initial reality of the atomic age, with such weaponry actually used on two utterly defenseless cities. -- Tom Engelhardt

Cyber Attack on Women's Health

May First/People Link May First Movement Technology
Portside readers may have noticed that our website has been intermittently off line for the past week. May First/People Link, which hosts Portside also hosts several pro-choice sites and those sites have been subjected to a massive attack. Women's health/pro-choice sites have been under ruthless, relentless attack for decades and the cyber front of those attacks has now expanded significantly.

Open Letter of WPC President Socorro Gomes about 70th Anniversary of Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Socorro Gomes World Peace Council
On this 70th anniversary of the criminal US bombings against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki we renew our commitment to abolish nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. In our anti-imperialist endeavor, we are certain that unity among us will defeat warmongering and militarist policies, since the peoples’ will is a just peace.

The Srebrenica Precedent

David N. Gibbs Jacobin
A truly pivotal event in the post–Cold War era, Srebrenica helped forge a pro-interventionist alliance of both militarist liberals and conservatives. This alliance remains a potent lobby for war to the present day.

From Liberal Hand-wringing to the Political Economy of Assassination: The Charleston Shootings and Mainstream Society’s Complicity in Murder

Jonathan Michael Feldman Submitted by the author to Portside
The under-regulation of guns is a conscious political project of the NRA. If the NRA is like other elite organizations it follows a general formula of organizing of being not only tied to political power but also media and economic power. Political pressure can be placed on the NRA and these politicians by going after the direct sponsors of the NRA and the corporate sponsors of NRA-politicians.

The Revolt Against the Ruling Class

Robert Reich Robert Reich
Despite the growing revolt against the ruling class, it seems likely that the nominees in 2016 will be Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. After all, the ruling class still controls America. But the revolt against the ruling class won’t end with the 2016 election, regardless. Which means the ruling class will have to change the way it rules America. Or it won’t rule too much longer.

Democracy -- the End of an Experiment

Steve McGiffen Morning Star
The recently published Roadmap for the Future of the Economic and Monetary Union, signed by five “presidents” — of the European Council, the European Commission, the European Parliament, the European Central Bank and the Eurogroup — it doesn’t contain much that’s strikingly new, but what it does do is systematise and confirm the abolition of national democracy.

Why My Fellow Adjuncts and I Decided To Form A Union at Our Community College

Luke Niebler In These Times
The barriers to organizing adjuncts are real and difficult to overcome. We often don’t know our coworkers, we are decentralized and our lack of security creates a pervasive fear among adjuncts. However, the only way that we will be able to fight for increased pay, greater job security and a voice in the college is by working collectively.

Restoring Pell Grants for Prisoners: Reversing a 20-Year Ban

Alan Pyke ThinkProgress
It’s been 20 years since federal Pell Grants were revoked from prisons during the tough-on-crime heyday of the 1990s, amid a bipartisan political fervor that helped transform U.S. prisons from a corrections system to a punishment business. Two decades later, mass incarceration is a runaway train, and America imprisons so many more people than any other country that it’s hard to even compare the thing in one chart.