Portside

At a time when more and more people around the world are coming to recognize the need for tough restraints on fossil fuel combustion, the Republicans are about to march forcefully in the opposite direction. Theirs will be a powerful vote for a fossil-fuels-forever planet.

In a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg last month, Teamster Leader Rome Aloise wrote: "This is reminiscent of a time when noblemen were driven around in their coaches by their servants. Frankly, little has changed; except the noblemen are your employees, and the servants are the bus drivers who carry them back and forth each day."

A South Dakota Sioux tribal leader says building the Keystone XL pipeline is a violation of an 1868 treaty, and threatens 'war' against the pipeline.

The so-called, undeclared "war" we have been dragged into is the product of self-righteous, panicky people with an exaggerated sense of persecution and no ability to look objectively at history. That is, they are paranoid. Because of their bizarre views, paranoid people cause trouble, then they deny responsibility and use the victim's defensive reaction to justify further aggression. That is exactly the position of the West vis-a-vis the Muslim world.

Francisco Goldman writes that we might be witnessing the beginning of a second Mexican Revolution. Laura Carlsen says that the disappearances might take the “historic struggle between Mexico’s student left and the federal government, one that has been brewing for years if not decades” (at least since 1968’s Tlatelolco massacre) and generalize it “into the rest of the country.” Protests and civil disobedience are spreading throughout Mexico.

Nixon's announcement, which came ahead of the grand jury's decision in the police shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, is "both premature in its application and presumptuous in [its] intention to the hundreds of peaceful demonstrators who have embraced their Constitutional right to protest," said NAACP president William Brooks.

A draconian proposal threatened Massachusetts teachers. Here’s how they defeated it.

Despite constant harassment, retaliation and intimidation by permit holders and dispatch companies over the last five years, and despite obstruction by public agencies, the taxi workers workers stuck together, fought back against injustice, and prevailed. It reminds and teaches all of us that a union is not formed by formal government recognition, it is formed by workers standing together to fight for justice and a brighter future for their families.

Who runs Wikipedia?; Brooklyn for net neutrality; Net lobbying; GOP tweets away campaign laws; Social media and socialization; Ted Cruz can't get no respect

Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell is proving that he is a man of the past, not a leader for the future. No matter how much he may stick his head in the ground, climate change is already a real and present danger. He is showing that he has no understanding of climate change, or of bi-partisanship.