Portside

This is terrorism. It is the use or implication of violence to achieve a political end. And as in so many other instances of terrorism (harassment of abortion providers, for instance), aimed at women, the government is not protecting its citizens.

In the context of the Cold War, there’s an argument to be made that this strategy worked—the Soviet Union collapsed, after all—but in the actual conflicts, the outcomes were ambiguous and the wars longer and bloodier than they might have been otherwise. (Angola’s civil war lasted 27 years.)

Hagan presents herself as above the fray, but she is propelled by a populist mobilization that will help get out the vote, despite the voting changes and despite the off-year malaise afflicting voters generally and Democratic voters particularly.

The people’s veto of SB 5 was a triumph of organization, and of labor’s ability to tell its story to ordinary people. I draw out its lessons for organizers in my book, Collective Bargaining and the Battle of Ohio: The Defeat of Senate Bill 5 and the Struggle to Defend the Middle Class. Worse than simply “right to work,” the 500-page SB 5 was designed to destroy public unions’ ability to operate—or even, in some cases, to exist.

U.S. trade and immigration policy are linked. They are part of a single system, not separate and independent policies. Since NAFTA’s passage in 1993, the U.S. Congress has debated and passed several new trade agreements—with Peru, Jordan, Chile, and the Central American Free Trade Agreement. At the same time, Congress has debated immigration policy as though those trade agreements bore no relationship to the waves of displaced people migrating to the U.S.,...

The international aid agency Oxfam warned last week that money pledged at the global donor conference “will languish in bank accounts for decades before it reaches people, unless long-standing Israeli restrictions on imports are lifted,” adding that “under current restrictions and rate of imports it could take more than 50 years to build the 89,000 new homes, 226 new schools, as well as the health facilities, factories and water and sanitation infrastructure people need.

To put it bluntly, when confronting IS and its band of lightly armed irregulars, a reputedly professional military, American-trained and -armed, discarded its weapons and equipment, cast its uniforms aside, and melted back into the populace. What this behavior couldn’t have made clearer was that U.S. efforts to create a new Iraqi army, much-touted and funded to the tune of $25 billion over the 10 years of the American occupation had failed miserably.

Ebola facts; Black colleges in trouble; Unwholesome Whole Foods; Blue-state diaspora; Striking for the boss

Weeks after his 1492 landing in the Americas, Columbus thought he had found a large enough supply of gold and slaves to persuade the Christian "Sovereigns within three years [they] would undertake and prepare to go and conquer the Holy Places."Pope Urban II had launched the first Crusade four hundred years before. He hoped the current Pope would ask him to lead "50 thousand foot soldiers and five thousand horsemen" to march on Jerusalem. He never abandoned this hope.

Morales, who became Bolivia's first indigenous leader in 2006, will now be able to extend his "indigenous socialism", under which he has nationalized key industries such as oil and gas to finance welfare programs and build new roads and schools.