Portside

Phyllis Bennis' new book — the latest in her Middle East primer series — is on both ISIS and the new global war on terror. Like the earlier primers on Palestine and Afghanistan, the new book is written in a Frequently Asked Questions format -- great for use as an organizing tool..

The rap song, sung by Sofia Ashraf, exhorts Unilever to clean up the toxic site of its abandoned mercury thermometer factory and compensate hundreds of its workers who have been exposed to mercury poisoning. The factory moved to India after it was shut down in Watertown, N.Y., in the early 1980s when concern over mercury in the Great Lakes was at its peak.

The San Carlos tribe is fighting to block a massive mining project that would cut a two-mile wide crater through sacred land.

As the movement for racial justice spurred by the seemingly endless series of police killings of African Americans grows we are reminded that the issues are not new, they are endemic in U.S. history. What happens after the headlines subside? The truth has been buried too often, and for too long and there can be no justice until these stories are resurrected, scrubbed of their racist falsehoods. U.S. history needs to be put right.

In their latest deal to fight ISIS, Washington and Turkey are treating the Middle East's largest stateless minority like pawns. That's a huge mistake.

An early expression of democracy, the US patent system is out of step with today’s citizens.

On Tuesday Madrid’s newly elected mayor, Manuela Carmena, overturned the eviction orders for 70 families living in social housing and safeguarded more than 2,000 similar rental contracts. The move is the latest by the administration of Manuela Carmena, a former Communist, to protect housing in a country where tens of thousands of families have lost their homes. Over 50,000 mortgage holders were evicted in 2013 and 2014 in Spain.

Billionaire “vulture funds” managers have called on Puerto Rico to increase taxes, sell $4 billion worth of public buildings and drastically cut public spending, particularly on education, in order to pay the debt they have purchased. These “distressed debt” specialists hired former International Monetary Fund (IMF) economists to produce a “typically IMF recipe for radical austerity”, rejecting any attempts to restructure the poor island nation’s $72 billion debt.

Responding to the July 20 bombing in Suruç, Turkey ended its standoff with the Islamic State (Isis), and attacked Isis positions in Syria. Then, apparently with U.S. acquiescence, Turkey launched air strikes against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) bases in Iraq and Syria, ending a two-year ceasefire. Many believe Turkey’s targeting of Isis is only a pretext for its efforts to suppress the PKK, and the Kurdish national movements in Turkey, Iraq, and Syria.

California cities are being victimized by the latest iteration of Wall Street predation—the purchase in bulk of distressed single-family mortgages and foreclosed homes, so-called Real Estate Owned (REOs) properties—with the intent to rent them. Through this REO to Rental process, investors are muscling out first time homebuyers, displacing tenants, outbidding nonprofit affordable housing developers, and changing the demographics of whole communities.