Portside

"If a hugely profitable corporation like Verizon can destroy the good family-supporting jobs of highly skilled workers, then no worker in America will be safe from this corporate race to the bottom," Trainor said last week in a statement that announced the strike.

Hotepism; When democracy was in Vogue; Boars' revenge; Cruz has a cross for you; Erasing the wall; Intersectionalizing the rich

Capitalism wedded to delusional American manifest destiny–including our fatuous decades-long effort to control of the Middle East and recent militarized pivot to Asia–meets its limits in Nature. Either we heed those limits immediately and aggressively, or we face an ecocide from which not even those who own lifeboats will escape.

Udi Aloni's Junction 48 is a melodic drama set Isreal in the town of Lydd (Lod) with a nearly all-Palestinian cast that forcefully confronts anti-Arab racism in Israel by shining a light on the oft-forgotten Palestinian citizens of Israel (PCIs). (The title Junction 48 presumably refers to Lydd’s historic transit-point between Palestine and Egypt and the designation often applied to PCIs as “’48 Palestinians.”)

The old model of collective bargaining can’t be resurrected. Herewith, some new models of how workers can win and wield power.

CSPG's Poster of the Week calls attention to the same issues that energized the ongoing Democracy Spring protests in Washington, DC--the loss of democracy in an age of big money corporate politics.

At a time when much of the culinary world believes in farming like pioneer settlers and looking its meat in the eyes, This wants us to abandon peas and carrots (“Middle Ages!”) for their constituent parts—glucose, sucrose, cellulose, amino acids, and more.

For Palestinians, Honduras and Guatemala might seem too distant, too irrelevant for our struggle. And while there are some apparent stark differences in our lived realities and in the faces of our oppressors, there are commonalities as well. In Palestine as well as in many parts of Central and Latin America, the oppression is directly sponsored by US military and financial aid. And in all these places our collective survival rests upon defending and preserving our land.

Let’s offer thanks for small favors when someone -- in this case, ex-Army Ranger and TomDispatch regular Rory Fanning (author of Worth Fighting For: An Army Ranger’s Journey Out of the Military and Across America) -- feels the urge to do something about the massive, militarized propaganda effort in our schools. In my book, Fanning is the equivalent of any 12 of our generals and we need more like him both in those schools and in our country. Tom Engelhardt

You could call it a perfect storm: a fiscal crisis converging with a deep secular economic decline.[1] Once touted as the showcase of U.S.- led economic development, debt-strapped Puerto Rico is currently embroiled in a struggle for survival. During the mid-twentieth century, Puerto Rico grew at a rapid pace, betting on cheap labor, privileged duty-free access to the U.S. market, and tax incentives for U.S. companies.