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Afghanistan: How a Pink Flower Defeated the World’s Sole Superpower

Alfred W. McCoy TomDispatch
Each stage in Afghanistan’s tragic 40-year history of intervention-- the 1980s covert war, the 1990s civil war, and the U.S. occupation since 2001 --- helped transform this remote, landlocked nation into the world’s first true narco-state --where illicit drugs dominate the economy, fuel corruption and determine the fate of foreign interventions. Afghanistan can only progress when it is no longer a client narco-state with its rural areas dependent upon the opium crop.

Gravitational Waves Hit the Late Show

What are gravitational waves, and why does it matter that we've seen them? Brian Greene stops by to demonstrate an exciting new scientific discovery.

'You're Fired!' The Abuses of 'Skilled' Worker Visa Programs

Sarah Jaffe The Progressive
The H-1B visa program is supposed to have safeguards against abuse, including rules designed to ensure that guest workers are not a significantly cheaper option for companies looking to save a buck. But Costa says 83 percent of the H-1B recipients are paid wages below the average for that occupation, because of flaws in the system.

The Post-Hope Democrats

Doug Henwood Jacobin
There's a perverse form of American exceptionalism circulating around the Clinton camp: just because things work in other countries doesn't mean they can work here. As Hillary herself put it, "We are not Denmark. I love Denmark, but we are the United States of America." True enough, but that has no bearing on why single-payer couldn't work here. The only obstacles are political -- elites, which include Hillary and Starr, don't want it.

Criteria of Negro Art

W.E.B. DuBois Red Wedge
"Black Art Matters." If there were a way to sum up the thrust of this essay in one very brief sentence then that would be it. W.E.B. DuBois is one of those thinkers who needs very little introduction: lifelong socialist and Black liberationist, founder of the N.A.A.C.P., author of what is still to this day one of the definitive books on Black Reconstruction in the south. What is often overlooked is how central art was to DuBois' ideas about Black freedom in the U. S.

Graduate Workers at Mizzou Stage Work-In for Union Recognition

William Rodgers Left Labor Reporter
"The University of Missouri System has chosen to take the hard route, and we are willing to do it that way," said Senff to the Maneater. "We want to be able to enact our constitutional rights. A collectively bargained contract is the only thing that will make us feel secure in our position at the university."

Gimme Shelter | Playing For Change

This song expresses the urgency we all face to unite together as a planet and offers us wisdom with the words, "War, children, it's just a shot away... Love, sister, it's just a kiss away". Dedicated to all the lost, homeless and forgotten people in this world. It is in the shelter of each other that the people live.

Reagan's Gift

Tom Karlson portside.org
Tom Karlson is not inhibited by the cliche Do not speak ill of the dead but it's still true that a certain justice of the Supreme Court is still dead.