Portside

Puerto Rican political prisoner Oscar López Rivera reminds Americans of a colonial and imperial past whose contours are still visible. Despite a stingy record for commutations and pardons, President Barack Obama could and should use his constitutional powers to commute Oscar’s punitive sentence and grant his immediate release.

Honesty may be poetry's best gift in the coming year, as these writers and others say what needs to be said about guns, anger, racism, family, and how we can think and feel more precisely and truthfully about one another.

The fate of police officers who kill often rests in the hands of the prosecutors they typically work alongside. A Guardian analysis reveals district attorneys cleared colleagues in more than 200 cases this year

City regulators haven’t enforced a 2007 law that requires doormen, janitors and other service workers at taxpayer-subsidized apartment buildings to be paid wages comparable to union rates.

City regulators haven’t enforced a 2007 law that requires doormen, janitors and other service workers at taxpayer-subsidized apartment buildings to be paid wages comparable to union rates.

The law the Obama administration is following, immigrant advocates say, runs counter to the higher mandate the White House should be abiding by. International humanitarian law actually dictates that these desperate parents and children be granted protection from the persecution and violence they have fled in their home countries.

“When we talk to potential union members, we explain, ‘Your working conditions aren’t going to get better unless we act as a unit, as a union,’” Spink said. “We have to relearn the lessons of labor from the 1930s and 1940s – of collective action and collective message."

Two recent events – the second-round victory on November 22 of right-wing candidate Mauricio Macri in Argentina's presidential election, and the December 6 victory of the right-wing Democratic Unity Roundtable,[1] winning two thirds of the seats in Venezuela's National Assembly elections – have radically altered the political map in South America. Argentine Marxist Claudio Katz discusses what these setbacks for the left mean for the progressive “process of change.”

The United States should do everything possible to avoid choosing sides in an intensifying proxy war between the dominant Shiite and Sunni powers in the Middle East. Though history tells us we should tilt toward Saudi Arabia, our old ally, if we look toward the future, Iran is the more logical partner. The reasons are simple: Iran’s security interests are closer to ours than Saudi Arabia’s are.

Memebusters throw in the towel; Internet 2015; Open access 2015; WashPost sacks socialist; None dare call it terrorism