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Reader Comments - Baltimore, other cities as "Occupied Territory"; Drop the Charges against those arrested; Government-Sponsored Segregation; Bernie Sanders - a Long Tradition of American Socialism; Alberta NDP Victory; $15 per Hour or Bust; Israeli Soldiers Speak Out-Gaza Atrocities Were Orders; Labor Union Membership Now Just 11%; Feliks Tych - R.I.P.; Announcements - New York, Boston

While Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party retains control of the Prime Minister's office, various parties even further to the right grabbed other key positions, guaranteeing that the country at least continues if not escalates its rejectionism with the Palestinians and the Iranian nuclear deal. Oppostion leader Isaac Herzog Labor Party leader denies that he will join coalition government.

Over a period of nearly 20 years, Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge and his "midnight crew" allegedly tortured at least 119 people, forcing them to make confessions. The police officers beat the victims, burned them with lit cigarettes and handcuffed them to hot radiators. They tied plastic bags over their heads and nearly suffocated them. They put cattle prods on their genitals and in their mouths and electrocuted them. (Adeshina Emmanuel, The Chicago Reporter)*

During pre-industrial times, CO2 levels were at 280 ppm. Scientists have warned that, in order to achieve safe levels, CO2 must be brought down to a maximum of 350ppm—the number from which the environmental organization 350.org derives its name from.

'I said to him, "Let me get this straight. Any person I see in the neighborhood where we’re headed, I spot him and kill him?" He said, "Yes. Any sane person who sees a tank battalion in his neighborhood will run away. If he sticks around, then he’s up to something. And if he’s up to something, it’s against you. So shoot him." So I tried to dig a little deeper and asked, "What if it’s an innocent civilian?" He said, "There are no innocent civilians.'

The Alberta promise would represent a significant change, given that provincially regulated jobs do cover the most common sources of low-wage employment.

Greece has ‘become a laboratory: persons facing extreme processes of expropriation and pauperisation have to make existential decisions that may challenge habitual norms and lead in all sorts of directions’ (86). The author is undoubtedly correct that it is urgent that forces of the radical left in the rest of Europe engage with the theoretical and organisational challenges thrown up by this critical conjuncture.

This is a China whose official ideology once condemned wealth and inequality, whose government treated "rich peasants" as criminals and trumpeted the necessity of individual poverty and self-sacrifice in the service of building socialism in the world's most populous country. And yet today wealth is celebrated in China -

The report, “And Still I Rise: Black Women Labor Leaders’ Voices, Power and Promise”—named for a poem of resilience by the late Maya Angelou, could not be more timely, since events in Baltimore in the wake of the death of Freddie Gray after being in police custody have shed light on the hopelessness that can result in cities when jobs disappear and communities such as West Baltimore are left behind.

Comcast takes a hit; Social media warriors; NPR = News Protecting Rahm; Social media and future news; How Miller did in the news; Breaking bad in Baltimore