Portside

In making this call, we wish to underscore that the Ankara massacre and the previous attacks are international in scope, and to make clear that we see the potential for such events to open the way to regional insecurity. AKP’s policy of relying on radical groups as proxies, . . . such groups as ISIS, Al-Nusra, and Ahrar Al-Sha, used particularly against Kurds in Rojava—is at the heart of today’s tragedy.

Attacks on civilians - like the ongoing drone attacks on the people of Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia about which we hear next to nothing in mainstream media - are being perpetrated in our name, with our tax dollars and often with our blood, sweat and tears. Thus the buck has to stop with us. Let's hold US officials' feet to the fire.

Mother knows best; Racial profiling made easy; Corporate users, customer losers; Facebook & Google's common market; Your emotional responses are a data goldmine

Sicario proceeds from one nail-biting scene to the next making it increasingly clear that this is a story about the merger of the tactics of the war on terror with the war on drugs, and it makes that merger look frankly terrifying -- a grisly bomb blast, bodies hung from a bridge in Juarez that seem intended to remind us of U.S. contractors in Fallujah and a secret mission to Mexico that is essentially an extraordinary rendition, with all the imagery to match.

The US Department of Defense will work on compensating the families of the victims killed in a deadly American airstrike on a Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. The strike “mistakenly” killed 22 people.

FOIA documents reveal Agent Orange Dioxin, toxic dumps, fish kills on Okinawa Base. Two veterans win compensation, many more denied.

Reflections on Prison Labor, Unions, and Whitney Benns' The Atlantic Article "American Slavery Reinvented"

Analogously, we universally refer to gas drilled conventionally or fracked as "natural." True, gas found in deep rock and soil formations and biologically formed from dead animal and plant matter, is natural. Once drilled, transported, and combusted for heat and electricity, though, it is un-natural, even anti-natural, for reasons explored here.

Palestine Legal and the Center for Constitutional Rights have released an incredible new study systematically documenting growing suppression, on US campuses, of advocacy on behalf of Palestinian human rights. Describing nearly 300 incidents of such suppression in a period of a year and a half, the report describes false accusations of anti-Semitism and terrorism; baseless legal complaints and administrative disciplinary actions; firings of professors and harassment.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement was settled last week. Next up: The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which will create the largest "free trade" zone in the world. Organizers say 250,000 people took part in an anti-TTIP protest in Berlin on Saturday.