Portside

In the face of aggressive attacks, a wide range of national organizations have come together to create A Grand Alliance to Save Our Public Postal Service. These organizations are united in the demand that the public good must not be sacrificed for the sake of private investment and profit. A strong public Postal Service is our democratic right. The Alliance is fighting to protect and enhance vibrant public postal services now – and for many generations to come.

There is nothing new about Republican opposition to teachers unions, but in recent years, it has become increasingly clear that some Democrats have turned against them as well. In the following post we hear from a union leader, Bob Peterson, the president of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association, about how he thinks teachers union must change to keep alive public education.

The aftermath of the murder of the three American students in Chapel Hill reconfirms the truth that Muslim lives matter only when they're villains not victims. But the responsibility extends beyond the media. Government-run programs targeting Muslims as "enemy combatants", "national security risks", and "unassimilable", affix the state seal of approval on the vilification of Muslim Americans, stirring Islamophobia and spurring violence.

Edward Snowden’s 2013 revelations about the NSA’s global surveillance practices sparked outrage around the world, but nowhere more than in Latin America. Now that the dust has settled, we should ask: Did the Latin American response to the NSA disclosures represent a historic break in hemispheric relations? Or was this just business as usual, another insult added to the ongoing injury of U.S. hegemony in the Americas?

Private U.S. corporations, taking advantage of lucrative opportunities created by the intentionally crippled tax base of local governments, are grabbing public assets and resources, particularly water. But water is not a commodity; it is a human right. And in the U.S., as around the world, the onslaught of corporate privatization is being countered by a powerful backlash to reclaim that precious resource for the public sphere.

Journalists from 45 countries have unearthed secret bank accounts that reveal the global banking giant HSBC profited from doing business with arms dealers who channeled mortar bombs to child soldiers in Africa, bag men for Third World dictators, traffickers in blood diamonds and other international outlaws. These disclosures shine a light on the intersection of international crime and so-called legitimate business at one of the world’s largest banks.

Already there is debate about who "won" and who "lost" in the agreement on the crisis in the Ukraine reached in Minsk, the capital of Belarus this week. The big difference between the so-called Minsk II agreement, announced February 12 and the previous agreements is the Europeans are now formally involved. But any progress in implementing the accords will depend on whether the European governments can convince the government in Kiev to abide by the agreements.

A Friday Nite Videos special edition featuring Jon Stewart and Daily Show spin-offs, offspring and talents.