Portside

U.S. taxpayer funds are bankrolling the worsening human rights crisis in the Philippines. Movements are rising to shut that aid off.

Joel Jordan is a retired teacher activist who spent many years organizing with the Los Angeles teachers’ union (UTLA) before relocating to Oakland where he helps coordinate the California Alliance for Community Schools.

Although this article was published in the original Spanish version last March, now that Julian Assange is in prison the analysis in this piece on “freedom of expression” is even more valid.

Assange's arrest, The INA Papers Scandal and the IMF deal

Koji is a fungus believed to have been domesticated in Asia. As the spores grow, they release enzymes that break down proteins and starches into sugars. This reaction is also why koji mold is used to turn soybeans into miso, and rice into saki.

While Camus was a vocal advocate of Arab rights since the 1930s, his fictional universe seemed blind to their existence. . In 1957 Albert Camus uttered a widely misquoted criticism of terrorism. What he meant to say, what he in fact said, is that a policy of killing innocent civilians - whether his own mother or the mother of his adversary - is not properly named "justice."

Paul Krugman is not a Political Scientist. Krugman's "brand" is that he is a "brilliant, Nobel Prize winning economist." In fact, much of his early research was brilliant; and, to be sure, Krugman did win the Nobel Prize. BUT, the misleading discussion of economics contained in his piece, "Sanders Over the Edge" does raise this question in my mind: Is Paul Krugman still qualified to write an economics opinion column for the New York Times?

I stand against the government's saber-rattling, against ruling over and harming a civil population. It's important to me to say: No more! I'm not willing to take part in that. I want to represent a different path, to show that there's a choice and that it's possible to resist. Through my refusal I choose to represent a path of solidarity and peace, and I believe this path will create a more secure life for us all.

With Bernie in the USA, Corbyn in Britain and various kinds of leftist opposition in Ireland, Spain and Portugal, resistance to billionaire-led governments has been growing, most dramatically last year in Greece until German "austerity" smashed it (though perhaps not permanently). Germany already has the LINKE party, with 64 seats in the Bundestag (out of 630). But it has failed to fill that gap of anger, worry and distrust among working people...

It is no exaggeration to suggest that the legitimacy not only of President Jacob Zuma and the ANC, but also the notion of the liberation struggle itself is in shreds. For some of us, it was unthinkable that such an alliance of forces could degenerate into a moneymaking, lawless and violent operation represented by people who were prepared to trample on the values that we understood the movement to embody. Certainly, this did not happen overnight.