Portside

Reader Comments - CIA Lied About Torture; A New Civil Rights Movement?; Grand Jury Injustice - Justice Demanded; Members of Congress (and staffers) join protest; Illegal Cop Murders; Police Reform? - Bolder Steps Needed; Low Wage Workers: 'We Can't Breathe'; Slavery, Founding Fathers and Torture; Congress Plots against Pensions; Pardon Snowden, Manning and Leonard Peltier; Israel Lobby and Ukraine; War on Terror; Israel, U.S. and space weapons; New Republic; Correction

Indian unions protest government plans for massive privatization and deregulation in the name of more ‘flexible’ labour laws that will impact precarious and unprotected workers particularly hard. The proposed changes, which will bring down social standards and social indicators, have been developed without any form of consultation or dialogue with labour unions whatsoever.

Amidst the end-of-historiography enthusiasm for the “new” history of capitalism, two recent books remind us of the enduring importance of some of the questions posed by the old history of capitalism: questions of determination, ideology, and hegemony, and of collective action, resistance, and (even) revolutionary social change.

The abrupt action has alarmed some pension rights advocates, who are concerned about a decline in retirement security for all Americans. They also worry about a creeping trend toward trimming pensions, citing retirement benefit cuts for government employees in Detroit and elsewhere.

Mainstream pundits are outraged over a Silicon Valley barbarian riding in and defacing The New Republic, a temple to all that is wonderful about deep-thinking policymaking and long-form journalism. But the truth about the Washington-based magazine is much less honorable, writes Robert Parry.

LAWCHA sponsored a Teachers/Public sector history committee that has produced an overview of teacher organizing and a bibliography of resources to understand that effort in historical context. We have provided powerpoints graphs and annotations of material organized by geography and specific unions.

Sen. John McCain spoke Tuesday on the Senate floor following the release of the CIA torture report. The Arizona Republican was a Navy pilot whose plane was shot down in enemy territory during the Vietnam War; he was tortured by the North Vietnamese as a prisoner of war.

Persnickety about Picketty; ALEC’s anti-choice clone; Rolling Stone’s rape story, two takes; Geeks reek; We are how we eat

Unions historically have supported minimum wage and occupational safety laws that benefited all workers, not just their members. But they also have recently begun investing major resources in organizing drives more likely to yield new laws than new members. Some of these campaigns seek to organize workers who, rightly or wrongly, aren't even designated as employees or lack a common employer, such as domestic workers and cab drivers.

We will likely hear these false appeals to an imaginary history a great deal with the release of the Senate report on CIA torture. It seems to me self-evident that most of the members of the Constitutional Convention would have voted to release the report and also would have been completely appalled at its contents.