Portside

To this day, it remains difficult to take in the degree to which the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq destabilized the Greater Middle East from the Chinese border to Libya. Though you’ll seldom find it mentioned in one place, five countries in the region -- Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen -- have all disintegrated as nation states. Three were the focus of direct American interventions, the fourth (Yemen) was turned into a drone hunting ground.

In the last 10 days, five black churches have been set on fire in the St. Louis area. And unlike the last wave of black church fires this summer in which weather played a role in some of the fires, these all appear to be the work of arsonists. The lack of media coverage about these fires is highly-noticeable, given the media’s hyper-intensive coverage of rioters in Baltimore setting fire to a CVS earlier this year.

The discussion of democratic socialism should embrace our own American radical tradition. There’s nothing wrong with Denmark; we can learn a few things from them (and vice-versa). But we should talk first of all about our radical forebears here in the United States, for the most successful radicals have always spoken the language of American society and appealed to some of its deepest values.

In 2008 Republic Window and Doors closed down down their factory in Chicago. The workers then occupied the factory and after many twists and turns they have persevered.

Pro baseball player and coach Dusty Baker was a teenage rock and roller. His new memoir details those years, centered on the legendary Monterey Pop Festival, where Jimi Hendrix played his way to stardom. Charles Bethea profiles Baker in advance of his memoir of those year of hanging out with a host of legendary musicians and learning how rock and roll is like baseball.

Rick Perlstein noticed Republicans showing up at Bernie Sanders events. He set out to find out just how many of them there are. They don’t know they are not supposed to like Bernie Sanders. They hear what he is saying, and like what they hear. Something is happening here that reminds us that our models for predicting winners and losers in politics always need to be subject to revision.

We should rightly celebrate the defeat of Stephen Harper and a significantly increased voter turnout, but we will have to campaign even harder now to ensure that the 70 per cent of Canadians who said "it was the time for change" in Ottawa this election, get the change they deserve.

A short video, titled “When I See Them I See Us,” was released by a range of African-American and Palestine-solidarity groups. The video, which includes Lauryn Hill, Angela Davis, Cornel West, Alice Walker, Danny Glover and dozens of other academics, activists and artists, juxtaposes high profile killings of unarmed African-Americans by police with Palestinians killed by Israeli forces and settlers.

Robin D.G. Kelley's searching tribute to Grace Lee Boggs: She never gave up on our capacity to think and act and think more deeply. She relentlessly and lovingly pushed us with the force and precision of the expert dialectician we all knew her to be.

Outsourcing distribution has been an effective way for grocers to dump their relatively expensive unionized workforces.