Portside

International media has provided a constant stream of stories and editorials about the collapse of the Venezuelan economy. Shortages of food and medicine, hours-long lines, incomes eroded by triple-digit inflation have dominated press reports. Adherents to this explanation say the downward spiral will continue until the chavistas are removed from power, either through elections or through a coup (most pundits don't care which). The reality is more complicated.

Cleveland's baseball team flaunts the most spectacularly racist logo in professional sports. When the American League Championship series shifted to Toronto, a First Nations activist, Douglas Cardinal, went to Ontario court to bar the logo from being worn while the team played in Toronto, deeming the name and logo to be violations of the Ontario Human Rights code. Major League Baseball and the Cleveland Indians' front office sent 27 lawyers to challenge this.

“Left-wing populism” makes clear that boundaries that create and represent identities do not run between people of different geographical origin, but among those at the bottom and at the top of society. This is a useful and appropriate populism. It has nothing to do with right-wing populism: the Others on the other side of the fence are not foreigners, but the richest 10 percent of society.

The university has the largest endowment in the United States and is the birthplace of some of the nation’s most progressive ideas, but workers said they couldn’t pay basic living expenses.

"When I first heard about Bob Dylan’s selection for the prize, I wasn’t concerned that the award had gone to a musician; I was disturbed that the committee had demonstrated an apparent obliviousness to the times we are living in. The US is saddled with a presidential candidate who peddles in misogyny and appeals to white supremacists. In many other countries, neo-liberals are vying with the far right for power, and the left is at its weakest." This decision felt myopic.

The 13th effectively demonstrates that criminalization has been a persistent feature of anti-Black racism. The film does not discuss the policies that gave greater power to police, prosecutors, and prisons in those critical years.

This new book details a little-known aspect of the leaders of Nazi Germany: that many of them, including Hitler himself, were drug addicts. Rachel Cooke has interviewed author Norman Ohler and gives us this portrait.

Unions, including the United Steelworkers of America and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, rally to help elect Secretary Hillary Clinton in Ohio.

In the stellar documentary "Fire at Sea" Gianfranco Rosi contrasts the lives of the desperate thousands of migrants landing on the shores of a Sicilian island with the everyday existence of the locals.

Outage outrage; What dunnit; The big hack; Trump's parachute; Busting media in SD; Merger mishugas