Portside

The explosion at the Tesoro refinery on the outskirts of Anacortes killed seven workers. Four years later, no one has been held publicly accountable for their deaths. Refinery owner Tesoro agreed to pay millions to families of the dead, but the company continues to fight government accusations that it willfully put its workers in harm's way.

Plea for peace from Julia Chaitin, a kibbutzim who teaches in Israel, and lives near Gaza. She and some Israelis are challenging the endless hatred and violence practiced by both sides. She is joined by some Palestinians. Together they care for each other, that there is a way forward around the violence. J.J. Goldberg, writing in the Jewish Daily Forward charges that the Israeli Gaza onslaught is built on lies, and the heavier responsibility lies on Netanyahu government.

Reader Comments - Defending Immigrants; Protecting Detroit's Water; Israeli and Palestinian Families Comfort Each Other; Hobby Lobby; Peoples Climate March; Overtime Pay; Global Action on Antibiotics; Homeopathy was quackery - readers respond; Full Employment and Shared Prosperity; Mapping Militarism; Limits of Corporate Citizenship; Abe Cohen - R.I.P. Seeger Family's Memorial Concert Series for Pete and Toshi - July 17 - 21 - New York City and surrounding area

Portside previously ran Mark Solomon's piece, Whither the Socialist Left - 2. Portside previously posted some of the comments received in Tidbits. Here are two, longer and more in depth responses by Duncan McFarland and Ethan Young. Portside welcomes additional reader responses, and will help further facilitate this discussion.

Unemployment is growing throughout Europe. Sad to tell, rather than blame this on an economic model that puts profits before people, too many of Europe's "white" working class curse immigrants, people of color and others who are "different".

The explosion at the Tesoro refinery on the outskirts of Anacortes killed seven workers. Four years later, no one has been held publicly accountable for their deaths. Refinery owner Tesoro agreed to pay millions to families of the dead, but the company continues to fight government accusations that it willfully put its workers in harm's way.

Plea for peace from Julia Chaitin, a kibbutzim who teaches in Israel, and lives near Gaza. She and some Israelis are challenging the endless hatred and violence practiced by both sides. She is joined by some Palestinians. Together they care for each other, that there is a way forward around the violence. J.J. Goldberg, writing in the Jewish Daily Forward charges that the Israeli Gaza onslaught is built on lies, and the heavier responsibility lies on Netanyahu government.

In wake of new revelations regarding NSA and FBI targeting of prominent Muslim-Americans for surveillance, civil liberties organizations denounced the monitoring as "arbitrary and abusive." They called upon President Obama to prove the government surveillance of these prominent Muslim-Americans, including a political candidate and several civil rights activists, academics and lawyers, was not motivated by "racial or religious bias."

Less than a month after Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi became president of Egypt, he launched a massive cut in state subsidies causing fuel, bread and other prices to rise dramatically. The new austerity plan has provoked anger from consumers, taxi drivers and shop owners, and threatens to spread to other sectors.

‘Lax enforcement’ is not the culprit—U.S. trade and immigration policies are. The failure of Central America's economies is largely due to the North American and Central American Free Trade Agreements and their accompanying economic changes.