Portside

As a contribution to this magazine I have selected the conclusion to my book Fidel Castro's Political Strategy because I consider it be absolutely relevant to the current reality we face. The first part refers to the issue of the immediate enemy and the broadness of the political front.

Statements by Communication Workers Union, United Electrical Workers Union, and AFL-CIO on South Dakota pipeline.

Mass. senator says the bank engaged in "staggering fraud."

NLRB member, Hirozawa, writing only for himself, offered an interpretation of Section 8(a)(5) of the NLRA that would arguably require employers to bargain with minority unions.

The call to leave the Democratic nominee protected by unarmed secret service agents, first made by Trump in May, raised eyebrows as a reversion to the undisciplined candidate of the primaries rather than the more scripted one of recent weeks.

The U.S response to 9/11, which began with the Bush Administration’s shock-and-awe air strikes and invasions and continued through the Obama Administration, cost ten of thousands of civilian lives and trillions of dollars, and bombed and missiled a world of Islamist terror outfits into existence. At 15 years and counting the U.S. air campaign has spread across the Greater Middle East and parts of Africa and shows no sign of ending, despite its spectacular failure.

Ted Cruz leads way as candidates discuss carpet-bombing and attacking terrorists’ families, despite Geneva Conventions ban on ‘indiscriminate attacks’

The Sanders campaign is resurrecting socialist electoral politics and paving the way for a more radical public discourse. Only the revival of a decimated labor movement and the rebirth of socialist political parties that can bring them all together could result in the major redistribution of wealth and power that would allow real movement on these individual issues.

Whatever party ends on top in the Spanish election, it will have to form a coalition, thus ending the reign of the two-party system that has dominated the country since Franco. Late polls show the right-wing PP taking a beating, dropping from 44 percent that it won four years ago to 28%, but it will still win the largest number of votes of any one party. Followed by the Socialists, at 21%, the center-right Ciudadanos Party at 19%, and the left-wing Podemos Party at 15.7%

The concerns of Front National voters are, in fact, much the same as that of left-wing parties, but the solutions the far right proposes could not be further from the values of trade unionism. The challenge is to deconstruct the discourse of the FN. It’s easier to blame refugees than to call into question the role of capital in the economic crisis. Unions must explain that to workers and to organise the mobilisation.