Portside

The Council on Foreign Relations is a supercharged, highly connected establishment think tank. While producing reports and staffing varied policy working-groups, its recommendations are invariably market-based. CFR leaders and members pass through the revolving door of the federal government to high positions of authority, no matter which party holds power. The book under review, Wall Street's Think Tank, charts the council's key links to US imperial policy.

Sixty miles south of the Arizona border, the devastation from a toxic spill has led to an epochal battle between a transnational mining conglomerate and an alliance of miners and farmers.

Reader Comments: Sanders and the Democrats - Inside and Outside; #BlackLivesMatter - Baltimore, Freddie Gray, Police Incitement; Trump - the Myth of Working Class Support, Whiff of Fascism; Turkey and Nuclear Weapons; Black Athletes Speak Out; Zika; Israel; Announcing - Women's Boat to Gaza is Now a Reality; and more...

If unions find better strategic partners outside the labor movement on a particular issue, they should proceed on the basis of their analysis of what is needed, not hold back and wait for labor unity. Too often a particular union’s political stance may reflect a private employer’s growth plans, not the general good for working people.

Lee Saunders, President of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, along with other trade union leaders addressed the Illinois delegation to the Democratic Party Convention and pledged support to Council 31, AFSCME who has threatened to go out on strike.

Baltimore prosecutors failed to obtain a conviction after four trials, meaning there will likely be no criminal accountability for Gray’s death from a ‘rough ride’

Minneapolis is a case study in how police hate speech fosters a climate of violence.

This new book by Enzo Traverso is "a master class in historical analysis," writes reviewer Alan Wald. This "full-on riveting reconceptualization of 1914-1945 as a 'European Civil War,"' he adds, "is a benchmark achievement in the flowering of socialist scholarship by the generation identifying with May 1968."

Between 2009 and 2013, the number of people ages 50 and older in federal prisons increased by 25 percent, making them the fastest-growing segment. Compassionate release has been granted infrequently. From August 12, 2013, to September 12, 2014,2,621 federal prisoners applied for compassionate release.Of those, only 85 people were ultimately released.

How – and how far – the “political revolution” will continue remains to be seen. What has already occurred is a surge of support for the Green party. Many of Sanders’ delegates will be pressing the campaign’s radical demands within the Convention. This activity will draw its participants beyond what they could hope to achieve within the constraints of Sanders’ candidacy. Yet it was the vast reach of that candidacy which made possible these steps to go beyond it.