Portside

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.

Changes in labor market policies and practices have played an important role in the dynamic of rising inequality and wage stagnation for the vast majority. One example of a change in labor market policy that has eroded the standing of typical workers vis-à-vis their employers and contributed to this dynamic is the right of workers to earn overtime pay premiums for working excessive hours.

Shock and anger have engulfed Israeli and Palestinian societies since they learnt last week of the barbarous murder of children from their communities. Hours after three Israeli teenagers’ bodies were located, a Palestinian youth, Mohammed Abu Khdeir, was kidnapped, beaten and burnt to death, apparently as revenge.These horrifying events should serve as a lesson in the obscene futility of vengeance. Sadly, that was not the message implicit in much of last week’s coverage

The “honest brokers” all too often agree with our occupiers that the destructive spread of settlements is on “disputed,” not occupied, land; and that we and the Israelis must “work out” our differences across a table. With the negotiation rules thus rigged, justice will forever remain elusive.