Portside

The Texas Railroad Commission (RRC), the regulatory commission responsible for the stewardship of that state's natural resources and the environment, has sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry suggesting Russian President Vladimir Putin is bankrolling anti-fracking activists in the United States, and in particular those working in Denton, Texas, where voters will be deciding on the state's first proposed city-wide fracking ban November 4.

Three years after the Fukushima disaster, 25,000 people evacuated from the region closest to the nuclear reactor station have been told that it will take 120 years before they can return safely to their homes. Tens of thousands of other evacuees who lived outside the most contaminated area, and who the government says will be able to return soon, say they will never return because of the ongoing danger of nuclear contamination.

The political manipulation of the irrational fear of immigrants spreading disease is part of an historic pattern in United States. The recent calls for a blanket prohibition on travel from West Africa is prejudice, plain, and simple: prejudging an entire group of people, based on the sickness of a small handful. They echo the kind of bigotry directed at other immigrant groups arriving in this country since the 1800s.

Thomas Eric Duncan was a victim of a broken system. Why would the hospital would send home a patient with a 103-degree fever and stomach pains who had recently been in Liberia?. Inside story from some registered nurses at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas who have familiarity with what occurred - following the positive Ebola infection of first the late Thomas Eric Duncan and then a registered nurse who cared for him Nina Pham.

A student-led movement is seeking to `open' a prominent U.S. Jewish campus group to a broader range of voices, and it's gaining ground. Last weekend, Open Hillel will seek to model an inclusive Jewish community that embraces marginalized voices. The treatment of and solidarity with Palestinians has now become the civil rights issue of the day for modern Jews, especially younger Jews who will be here long after the older post-Holocaust generation has moved on...

President Obama speaking at the Air Force Academy in 2012, told the assembled cadets that they should "never bet against the United States of America... [because] the United States has been, and will always be, the one indispensable nation in world affairs." On that basis, he suggested, the twenty-first century, like the twentieth, would be an American one. You get idea. We are... go ahead, chant it: indispensable! (Tom Engelhardt)

"100% of the profits from 'Marching On Ferguson' will support defending the protestors in the Ferguson area who have faced attacks, wrongful arrest, and violence from the police," Tom Morello says. "I've witnessed countless incidents of racially motivated police brutality in my lifetime and it's time to say 'Enough!' " -- Hear the song, buy the song, here's the lyrics.

Reader Comments - Karen Lewis starts recovery; Philadelphia Students Support Teachers; Towards a Socialist America; War on the Islamic State; Arming Rebels Does Not Work; Silicon Valley and Organized Labor; New Voters in Ferguson; Investing in Junk Armies; Gaza Reconstruction; Doomed Without a Wealth Tax; Rosenberg Sons' Statement; Announcements - New York and Chicago events; Palestine solidarity

Rebuilding labor means more than ticking off new non-white members, however, it also means transformation—and when it comes to workers of color that means integrating individual on-the-job concerns with “off-the-clock” community concerns like climate change, racial profiling, mass incarceration and, certainly, police violence. And therein lies the rub for organized labor as it looks toward the future.

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.