Portside

Videos: Fraud city: Atlanta & Wall Street. Football Town Nights. Battle for the Internet. Greece: Austerity Isn't Working. Willie Nelson & Trigger.

Successive High Court decisions have done more than enfranchise corporations at the expense of the rest of us. The same logic in the same cases now defines public corruption down: that a direct and palpable quid pro quo must be seen to operate. Absent that smoking gun, the financial elite has no limits on bankrolling campaigns whose candidates then vote their interests. To the nation's founders, that untrammeled influence was the essence of public corruption.

Previously Portside published Michael Brie's, The Tragedy of Party Communism and responses from three socialist activists - what lessons there may be to draw on, and which to forget. Here are additional responses from Nina Udovicki, Gilberto de Leon, Dynamite Hallinan and Scott Tucker. Those responding see capitalism as a system that needs to be abolished and socialism as an alternative - A socialism that is different from the past, and democratic.

The blockade is still in place. Travel restrictions still exist. Guantánamo Bay is still illegally occupied by the U.S. military and used for imprisonment and torture. The U.S. government still funds USAID projects aimed at undermining the Cuban government. Today, it is still critical that the Venceremos Brigade, IFCO, and all friends of Cuba are persistent in defending Cuba's national sovereignty and right to self-determination.

The 120 workers at Crown Metal Packaging have now been on strike 19 months resisting a union-busting employer aiming to slash wages and cut pensions. They have been supported by the international solidarity of Workers Uniting, the global union formed by North America's United Steel Workers and Britain's Unite.

An outline for social transformation in the United States, inspired by South Africa's Freedom Charter. The Democracy Charter, summarized below, seeks to enlarge the public's understanding of the connectedness of these issues as a way to achieve a social transformation of American society. This is the ultimate purpose of our movement.

Reader Comments - Fast Food Strike, Low-Wage Workers Struggle for More than Wages; TPP - LAtest Leak; Hillary Clinton, Fracking and 2016; Eduardo Galeano; CIA Infiltration at Home; Anne Braden; Sundown Towns; 'Driving While White'; Cuba Coops; NYT and Russian Wages; Charter Schools; Walton Wealth; Announcements: Walden Bello in New York; Vietnam - The Power of Protest and In Defense of the Public Square - Washington

The callousness of America's political and business leaders is shocking. A new report from UNICEF, on the well-being of children in 35 developed nations, turned up some alarming statistics about child poverty. More than one in five American children fall below a relative poverty line. The United States ranks 34th of the 35 countries surveyed, above only Romania and below virtually all of Europe plus Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. (The Washington Post)

Last week, Our Declaration, by Danielle Allen, made PEN/America Center's shortlist for the Galbraith Award for Nonfiction. The prize goes to "an author of a distinguished book of general nonfiction" "notable literary merit and critical perspective" that highlights "important contemporary issues." Allen's book was published last year to a host of lively reviews. Here is one of the earliest, by Steven B. Smith. Also included below is a link to Allen's homepage.