Portside

The fundamental problem with both the “not now, maybe later” and the “not on your life” rejections of electoral politics is their small mindedness, their view that political activity is a zero sum game where a Sanders candidacy inevitably diminishes some other truly valuable activities because there are only a limited number of potential activists out there.

It took only a few minutes for Mr. Obama’s account to attract racist, hate-filled posts and replies. They addressed him with racial slurs and called him a monkey. One had an image of the president with his neck in a noose. But they appeared to be a small number in what was an otherwise social-media-fueled show of love for Mr. Obama, who was drawing followers at a rapid pace — nearly 2.3 million by Thursday afternoon.

Stone tools unearthed at a site in Kenya predate any identified human ancestors -- previously thought to be the first makers of stone tools -- by hundreds of thousands of years. These finds "will force us [to rethink] what makes us humans ... Increasing knowledge of our remote past is casting doubts on previous certainties and is showing that the process of becoming what we are now is far more gradual than what we previously thought."

If we are serious about preventing future catastrophes of this nature, we must equip railroad workers with the necessary tools - including but not limited to those outlined below -- to enable them to perform the job safely. Railroad Workers United believes it is time we learn from these terrible tragedies and get serious about implementing the necessary measures to ensure safe railroad operations.

California poet Erica Goss raises the question, knowing the reader will have an answer: Is one child's life worth more than another's?

The left isn't important because of its numbers. It's important because its members are the canaries in the coalmine for an unresponsive political process. The left shares something else with that majority: it's heard a lot of empty promises. Many (though not all) progressives will vote for the Democrats once again in 2016, even if they're dissatisfied. But it will take more than rhetoric to win millions of other alienated voters. It will take commitment - and action.

Michael Yates presents an analysis of how the war was conducted, what its consequences have been for the Vietnamese, how the nature of the war generated ferocious opposition to it (not least by a brave core of U.S. soldiers), how the war's history has been whitewashed, and why it is important to both know what happened in Vietnam and why we should not forget it.

The compendious catalogue of a recent exhibit offers representations of art as practiced by numerous Plains tribes from first encounter with Europeans to their near decimation not only from military conquest and rough frontier justice but from European-spawned disease. Much of the work is likened to that of Italian painters of religious scenes during the Renaissance, which might be defined as the depiction of social life sustained by a sacred sacrifice of blood.