Minimum Wage 2016: Here It Comes

Lydia DePillis The Washington Post
Labor unions are working to build tools at scale to support the spate of ballot initiatives voters will face next year.

Could We Actually Live on Mars?

There's a lot of talk these days about when and how we might all move to Mars. But what would it actually be like to live there? 

Medea Benjamin on System Change

Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK, discusses her personal journey; how corporate and militarist forces keep the U.S. in a state of perpetual war; and how social movements can develop a genuine alternative. 

Documentary: India's Daughter

India’s Daughter is the powerful story of the brutal gang rape on a Delhi bus of a 23 year old medical student. Udwin got exclusive, first time on camera interviews with the rapists and defense attorney, none of whom express remorse. Read a review. Now in theaters.

Music Is My Ammunition

Playing for Change video of Bob Marley's classic of hope and forgiveness, featuring Mermans Kenkosenki, Roberto Luti, as well as family members from Cuba and Jamaica including Stephen Marley.

Friday Nite Videos -- October 23, 2015

Portside
Music Is My Ammunition | Playing For Change. What Republicans Hear When Bernie Speaks. Documentary: India's Daughter. Medea Benjamin on System Change. Could We Actually Live on Mars?

5 Black Churches in the Ferguson Area Have Burned Since Last Week, Media Shrugs

Ben Forstenzer US Uncut
In the last 10 days, five black churches have been set on fire in the St. Louis area. And unlike the last wave of black church fires this summer in which weather played a role in some of the fires, these all appear to be the work of arsonists. The lack of media coverage about these fires is highly-noticeable, given the media’s hyper-intensive coverage of rioters in Baltimore setting fire to a CVS earlier this year.

How the U.S. Created Middle East Mayhem

Rebecca Gordon TomDispatch
To this day, it remains difficult to take in the degree to which the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq destabilized the Greater Middle East from the Chinese border to Libya. Though you’ll seldom find it mentioned in one place, five countries in the region -- Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen -- have all disintegrated as nation states. Three were the focus of direct American interventions, the fourth (Yemen) was turned into a drone hunting ground.

U.S. Wants More "Usable" Nuclear Weapons in Europe

David Swanson David Swanson
The United States keeps nuclear weapons in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Turkey, in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which bans the transfer of nuclear weapons from a nuclear weapon state to a non-nuclear weapon state. Now, the U.S. wants to upgrade its nukes in Europe, to make them "precision" and "guided," and therefore more likely to be used, even as tensions build between the United States and Russia.