Portside

I’m nervously awaiting the Supreme Court ruling in Janus v. AFSCME Council 31, which would weaken public sector unions by letting workers receive the benefits of representation without contributing toward the cost. But I’ve got a unique vantage point: I work in the same building as the plaintiff.

“A land without a people for a people without a land.” As seductive as that slogan was, it was willfully false, as amply documented in personal testimonies of Palestinians and Israelis, historical records, and scholarly research.

White people keep calling the cops on black people for no reason. That’s dangerous. Calling 911 means different things to white and black people.

In September 2017, artist and scholar Yevgeniy Fiks visited the Jewish Autonomous Region to see what it is, instead of what it was expected to have been. He shared two essays with us, “Before Birobidzhan” and “Diocese of Birobidzhan”, originally published on his website http://yevgeniyfiks.com.

The Israeli government and its lobby, and its neoconservative US allies, convinced Donald Trump to sabotage the Iran deal. The forces that pushed for the Iraq war 16 years ago are sowing destruction again. The broken Iran treaty leaves no doubt; you cannot resist Trump without resisting Israel.

“Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white – separate and unequal.” Fifty years ago, on March 1, 1968, these were the grim words of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, called the Kerner Commission after its chairman, Gov. Otto Kerner of Illinois. Today the situation is worse.

What company gets the most money from the U.S. government? Weapons maker Lockheed Martin. It took in $35.2 billion from the government, or close to what the Trump administration is proposing for the 2019 State Department budget. Boeing, in second place, with a mere $26.5 billion. When it comes to the Department of Defense, perhaps we should retire the term “budget” altogether, given its connotation of restraint. Can't we find another word entirely? Like the Pentagon cornucopia?

On Sunday, a statue of the democratic hero, Orlando Letelier, was unveiled on Washington’s stately Massachusetts Avenue, near the spot where Letelier was killed in a 1976 car bombing — an assassination ordered by Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Ronni Karpen Moffitt, a 25-year-old American co-worker whom Letelier had been giving a ride, also was killed in the attack, which became a rallying point for human rights advocates.

Only a handful of European states are currently governed by left-wing governments, and several of the traditionally largest left-wing parties, such as the Socialist Party in France, have experienced substantial drops in support. Jan Rovny argues that while many commentators have linked the left’s decline to the late-2000s financial crisis, the weakening of Europe’s left reflects deep structural and technological changes that have reshaped European society, leaving left-wing parties out in the cold.

Reader Comments: Parkland vs. NRA; Trump's Arming of Teachers - Not; Criticism of Pledge to Transform the Resistance, and America; Labor - War on Workers, Labor in the 70s, Janus, West Virginia Teachers on Strike; Science; Sex and Drugs; I AM 2018 - The Fight Continues - Memphis - April 2 - 4; and more.....