Skip to main content

Nuclear Powers Need to Disarm Before It’s Too Late

Conn Hallinan Foreign Policy in Focus
The U.S. has pulled out of a major arms agreement with Russia, and the Trump administration wants to bump the budget for the modernization of nuclear weapons by nearly 9 percent. The nuclear powers should observe the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

Theses on the Path to Socialism

Julio Huato Medium.com
As a rule, when the people are disposed to struggle, the task of socialists is to help them prepare and organize their political campaigns most carefully. (This was motivated by a discussion regarding Karl Kautsky’s political legacy.)

Frida Kahlo: Communist, Feminist, Global Commodity

Lauren Kaori Gurley The Indypendent
A look at a new and extensive retrospective of the outstanding Mexican artist’s work at New York’s Brooklyn Museum through more than 350 objects shows Kahlo’s political and artistic life in all of its complexities and contradictions.

Why Unions Must Bargain Over Climate Change

Nato Green In These Times
The policies of a Green New Deal require a robust and well-funded public sector with good union jobs. Because of the nature of public sector work, a Green New Deal disproportionately benefits women and people of color.

Friday Nite Videos -- June 20, 2014

Portside
NSA vs USA. George Takei: How It Got Better. Professor Louie: The Cockroach. Orange Is The New Black: Monsanto. Moral Mondays Are Back in Business.

NSA vs USA

Shahid Buttar lays down a bass track with a message:
 
What does it mean to monitor thoughts?
Spying means a lot more than watching what you bought
it's the Feds always knowing what you’ve got in your head
 
Full lyrics here
 

Professor Louie: The Cockroach

The good Professor Louie of Brooklyn has a rap for us about why the cockroach is so successful, hoping we will take a hint before our short stay on this planet is over. Live at the People's Voice Cafe, NY, Jan 2012. Accompanied by Fast Eddie.
 

Moral Mondays Are Back in Business

The first Moral Monday since court struck down the North Carolina General Assembly's new rules — interpreted by many as measures designed to silence the Moral Monday Forward Together movement — singing, praying, chanting, and civil disobedience arrests looked a lot like what we saw from Moral Monday in 2013.

The Raleigh News and Observer reports:

Days after persuading a Superior Court judge to suspend some new rules for the N.C. Legislative Building, protesters were back on Monday, raising their voices by many decibels against a state budget and Republican-controlled agenda they describe as "extremist."

As the demonstrators tested the breadth of the order signed Monday by Judge Carl Fox about the overly broad definition of "disturbing behavior," General Assembly police checked with their attorneys on the depth of their authority to remove the noisemakers from the state building.

About 20 minutes after the N.C. Senate went into session, law enforcement officers began wrapping plastic cuffs around the wrists of 20 demonstrators who had continued singing, chanting and speechmaking after being asked to quietly leave the rotunda area outside the General Assembly chambers.

The scene was reminiscent of last summer, when more than 900 demonstrators were arrested for similar actions.

Read more here.