Portside

More than a billion years ago and a billion light years away, two black holes merged. This was a truly cataclysmic event a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. In Star Wars Darth Vader tells us not to “underestimate the power of the dark side.” This amazing discovery shows how right he was.

Stewart Acuff, national organizer for 1199, brings a poet's eye to the struggle for social justice. Fear, he says, is "our humanity overcoming that fear."

Change comes precisely when you do change hearts -- and once that change has come, then the laws and the "allocation of resources," and the "way systems operate" follow pretty easily. Large majorities of Americans are, like Sanders, "democratic socialists." Sanders favors private ownership and markets, but with rules that protect little people from abuses and uncertainties. Even substantial majorities of Republicans support much of the Sanders economic plan.

The Labor Party plan, because they see it difficult to envision a Palestinian state in the foreseeable future, Israel should no longer be ashamed for adopting a Bantustanian approach. The Labor Party considered by many a viable alternative to the current Likud government, has unanimously supported a plan that would have been applauded by apartheid South Africa. It does not seem likely that a just solution to the Palestinian plight will come from within Israel.

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Only a genuine social and democratic refounding of the eurozone, designed to encourage growth and employment, will be sufficient to counter the hateful nationalistic impulses that now threaten all Europe. We should put together a conference of eurozone nations on debt-just like those that were held in the postwar years, to the notable benefit of Germany. The objective would be to reduce public debt as a whole.

Art as politics in the powerful new exhibit at the Whitney Museum in New York by Laura Poitras. Museum director Adam Weinberg sets the show "in the tradition of socially and politically engaged artists - progressive artists such as Ben Shahn and Alice Neal." He said, "The aim of the projections is to provoke moral and ethical responses." Indeed, they do. Or they should.

Unions are the most effective force for social equality, writes British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. He recalled that Keir Hardie -- who 120 years ago became the first unionist to enter Parliament -- didn’t just fight for workers, he fought for universal suffrage, a universal pension, free education for children, decent homes for all, against powerful monopolies and for peace.

On the morning of November 22, 1963, President Kennedy told his wife Jackie as they started for Dallas, where he would later be assassinated, "We're heading into nut country today." The city was full of reactionary Kennedy haters, led by powerful ultraconservatives who would eventually remake the Republican party in their image. The book under review charts what made Dallas a hub of far-right activism back then, shedding light on today's national political landscape.