Portside

The New York Times gets a new NSA doc confirming what some had long suspected.

GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson and Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders came to Allen University Saturday with very different views of the criminal justice system and what should be done to address its failings.

In response to the Congressional declaration of war in April 1917, delegates at a Socialist party convention declared their “unalterable opposition” to it. The federal government began prosecuting Socialist Party leaders. Socialist Congressman Victor Berger, convicted under the Espionage Act, was expelled from the House of Representatives, re-elected by the voters, and then expelled again. Debs responded with a blistering speech at a party rally in Canton, Ohio.

As the oceans continue to become more acidic as they absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, corals are under the dual stress of rising temperatures and acidity.

ISIS (and al-Qaeda) is engaged in a global “danse macabre” with the U.S. and its allies. ISIS attacks, spreading death, chaos, panic, and alarm in our world at next to no cost at all. Washington and its allies respond with big-budget versions of the same, including intensified air campaigns that wreak death and havoc on civilian populations and infrastructure. Each is committed to creating a world where there are no gray zones, only a “clash of civilizations.”

Here's how it starts: "Can't you at least say something about the bad guys?"

Over the last 10 years, thousands of businesses across the country -- from big corporations to storefront shops -- have used arbitration to create an alternate system of justice. There, rules tend to favor businesses, and judges and juries have been replaced by arbitrators who commonly consider the companies their clients, The Times found.

Increasing surveillance on the leadership of PDVSA, the most important company in a South American nation seen as hostile to U.S. corporate interests, was a priority for the undisclosed NSA division to which the analyst reported. “Plainly speaking,” the analyst writes, they “wanted PDVSA information at the highest possible levels of the corporation – namely, the president and members of the Board of Directors.”

"The IBT Carhaul Division has instructed all carhaul locals to hold meetings to ask members why they rejected the concessionary first offer. These guys are so out of touch, they need to be told the obvious: Teamsters are tired of concessions and want to protect their jobs and make reasonable gains in this boom year of auto sales." Teamsters for a Democratic Union

Seniors, disabled veterans and others will receive no COLA adjustment next year. This is because the method of measuring living costs – the Consumer Price Index for Urban Consumers – is not weighted toward seniors. For example, it counts the decrease in gasoline costs for commuters and not the big cost increases in the pharmaceuticals seniors need.