Portside

Nearly two-thirds of Swarthmore’s 1,500 students signed a petition last December calling on the university to exit coal, oil and gas holdings. The Swarthmore Mountain Justice campaign is calling for an immediate freeze on new fossil fuel investments, followed by a staged withdrawal over five years.

A reporter’s journey to My Lai and the secrets of the past.

The British security service, MI5, its war on communism, and its file on Eric Hobsbawm, 'one of the pre-eminent British historians of the 20th century.'

"The consciousness that violence is always something evil, that it always violates human dignity, and therefore needs to be controlled very strictly — requiring the strongest moral and institutional checks — could quickly be lost in Leninism. Rosa Luxemburg’s dictum, that the ‘true essence of socialism’ is the connection between ‘ruthless revolutionary energy and tender humanity’, was continuously reduced to the remorselessness of the communist ‘cause’."

A commentary by the Greek Finance Minister

Chicago unions and Mayoral candidate Jesus "Chuy" Garcia are pushing for a $15 per hour minimum wage.

It's clear that President Obama out-organized his opponents in both of his runs for president. But how did he do it? Elizabeth McKenna and Hahrie Han, in Groundbreakers, shows us how. As Andrew Mayersohn notes in this review, "giving people meaningful responsibilities is a powerful way to engage them and keep them engaged." This is a vital lesson in politics, one that Team Obama, in two national campaigns, realized with spectacular results.

Adjuncts make up about 70% of the American professoriate. Adjuncts usually make $20,000–$25,000 a year, often by teaching courses at various institutions each semester. They have no job security, and frequently receive no health or retirement benefits. But they have begun fighting to improve their lot. SEIU is organizing in several states.

“Taxi” is Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s third film since he was arrested in 2010 and charged with making anti-government propaganda. He was barred from making films for 20 years, from leaving the country and from speaking to the foreign media. He got around some of these restrictions this time by filming inside a taxi driving through the streets of Tehran, producing a beautifully humane fable. "Taxi" took the top prize at the Berlin Film Festival.

Company documents show VW’s management method is modeled on “lean production,” the philosophy created at Toyota, then popularized across the auto industry and beyond. In fact, VW is trying to out-Toyota Toyota. The German company aims to overtake its Japanese competitor and become the world’s most profitable automobile manufacturer by 2018. So the Chattanooga plant provides a window into the state of the art of brutal productivity-maximizing management schemes.