Portside

The way major U.S. companies provide for retiring workers has been shifting for about three decades, with more dropping traditional pensions every year. The first full generation of workers to retire since this turn offers a sobering preview of a labor force more and more dependent on their own savings for retirement.

Erica was a rare person whose honesty far outweighed her self-interest. In a life full of tragedy, she died too soon.

The democratically-elected president and parliament (let alone the media and ordinary citizens) have no prayer of checking the powers of the Supreme Leader. As a result, the system has remained opaque, blind to its own flaws, resistant to growth and incapable of adaptation to its evolving internal and external environments. These uprisings express the frustration of the people with that obdurate rigidity.

Christian Picciolini on his new book, "White American Youth: My Descent into America’s Most Violent Hate Movement—and How I Got Out."

The dominant role played by U.S. corporations in the international arms trade owes a great deal to the efforts of U.S. government officials. “Significant parts of the government,” notes military analyst William Hartung, “are intent on ensuring that American arms will flood the global market and companies like Lockheed and Boeing will live the good life.

Year-end lists; Bluegrass at the end of the world; Bass action

"The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force." The German Ideology, Karl Marx

With unrelenting rage and idealism, Schell focused on the consequences of violence in essays and books that conveyed a hatred of war rooted in part in his firsthand observations of American military operations in Vietnam.

Neuburger’s volunteer assignments as an inside organizer in UFW recruitment campaigns, combined with his “shop floor” experience with many different employers, gave him a perspective on the union that’s rare for a gringo. Where he could, he played a very different role than the many college-educated activists who acquired UFW “membership” by virtue of their boycott activity the country or appointed staff positions at union headquarters in La Paz.

The broader point of Ohr’s ruling is that Northwestern’s scholarship football players really do work for pay. They are recruited largely for their football abilities; they spend an inordinate amount of time on their sport; they’re rewarded with valuable scholarships, which can be canceled; they’re subject to special rules other students aren’t; and their labor is clearly valuable to the school, which brings in millions of dollars in football-related profits.