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Tidbits - May 7, 2015 - Baltimore; Cities as "Occupied Territory"; Bernie Sanders; Alberta NDP Victory; $15 per Hour; Israeli Soldiers Speak Out...more

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Reader Comments - Baltimore, other cities as "Occupied Territory"; Drop the Charges against those arrested; Government-Sponsored Segregation; Bernie Sanders - a Long Tradition of American Socialism; Alberta NDP Victory; $15 per Hour or Bust; Israeli Soldiers Speak Out-Gaza Atrocities Were Orders; Labor Union Membership Now Just 11%; Feliks Tych - R.I.P.; Announcements - New York, Boston

The Wretched of the Sea: An Algerian Perspective

Hamza Hamouchene Middle East Eye
In Algeria, as elsewhere in Africa, economic neglect and despair at corrupt authoritarian regimes compels the continent's young people to risk death to escape to Europe.Due to the restrictions on freedom of expression and association and also because of the lack of space of entertainment, art and creativity, young people feel suffocated, humiliated, without dignity - foreigners in their own country and the only horizon they can see is the one beyond the sea.

Flowers Are Better Than Bullets

Laurel Krause Mendo Coast Current
Speech by Laurel Krause from the 45th anniversary of the Kent State Massacre on May 4, 2015. My sister Allison Beth Krause was one of four Kent State students killed by the Ohio National Guard. She was peacefully protesting the Vietnam war on that day and for this she was killed by the US government national guard. I was shocked when the American leadership blamed my sister and other Kent State students for the violence, the bloodshed and the massacre.

From Good Ole Boy to Progressive Activist: One Man's Story

Eleanor J. Bader, Truthout Book Review Truthout
Born into the segregated rural South, James Gustave ("Gus") Speth didn't see the oppression and poverty his black neighbors faced. A confrontation at a northern university with civil-rights advocates in the early 1960s triggered a life-long moral compulsion to support the burgeoning civil rights struggle. The newly minted anti-racist grew into a leading environmentalist, political activist, prolific author and Yale dean. The book under review is his memoir.

Not Your Chairman’s China: Reflections on a Trip to the Middle Kingdom

Bill Mosley Washington Socialist
This is a China whose official ideology once condemned wealth and inequality, whose government treated "rich peasants" as criminals and trumpeted the necessity of individual poverty and self-sacrifice in the service of building socialism in the world's most populous country. And yet today wealth is celebrated in China -

Greece What Is to Be Done? A Review

Sean Ledwith Marx & Philosophy Review of Books
Greece has ‘become a laboratory: persons facing extreme processes of expropriation and pauperisation have to make existential decisions that may challenge habitual norms and lead in all sorts of directions’ (86). The author is undoubtedly correct that it is urgent that forces of the radical left in the rest of Europe engage with the theoretical and organisational challenges thrown up by this critical conjuncture.

"Kill Anything": Israeli Soldiers Say Gaza Atrocities Came from Orders for Indiscriminate Fire

Democracy Now!
'I said to him, "Let me get this straight. Any person I see in the neighborhood where we’re headed, I spot him and kill him?" He said, "Yes. Any sane person who sees a tank battalion in his neighborhood will run away. If he sticks around, then he’s up to something. And if he’s up to something, it’s against you. So shoot him." So I tried to dig a little deeper and asked, "What if it’s an innocent civilian?" He said, "There are no innocent civilians.'

Global Carbon Levels Surpassed 400 ppm for Entire Month

Sarah Lazare Common Dreams
During pre-industrial times, CO2 levels were at 280 ppm. Scientists have warned that, in order to achieve safe levels, CO2 must be brought down to a maximum of 350ppm—the number from which the environmental organization 350.org derives its name from.

The Long Shadow Of The British Miners' Strike

Paul Dean Socialist Worker
Documentary film of the 1984-85 British miners' strike that ended in defeat. This was a great victory for the Conservative Party of Margaret Thatcher and a monumental event in the union history of the British working class.