Portside

Slavery to Mass Incarceration. Mess Within Texas - Sandra Bland's Arrest. Traffic Stop. Are We Really 99% Chimp? The First Openly Asshole President.

When fast-food workers started protesting just two years ago for a $15 minimum wage, they were mocked. This week, they secured their biggest victory yet.

In Jurassic World, Velociraptors are depicted as big, drab-coloured, scaly brutes. We've known for some time that wasn't true - Velociraptors had feathers. And now, thanks to a spectacular fossil of a new dinosaur, we know in detail what the real Velociraptor would have been like. Far from being a scaly-skinned reptilian monster, Velociraptor would have been a fluffy, feathered poodle from hell.

When mass shootings fit into Gov. Bobby Jindal’s view of “radical Islamic terrorists” he is quick to condemn the violence as terrorism. But when the incidents are results of lax gun control laws and radical right-wing shooters he simply calls the situation tragic and is quick to move on. The evidence already indicates that the shooter in the Lafayette Theater was a fan of David Duke, neo-Nazis, and antigovernment conspiracies.

Public ownership is already widespread in the United States, and is popular in practice, if not in the abstract, with both liberals and conservatives. It includes hospitals, parks, public utilities, public Internet systems, hotels, and Public Wealth Funds generated by state owned oil and mineral wealth that subsidize public education and provide guaranteed incomes to millions of people. With skepticism about capitalism growing, will we see more such endeavors?

While it has become clear in the past three or four decades that electoral politics is a blunt instrument for radical change against the global strength of the corporate market, it is equally clear that the full realisation of people’s transformative capacities will be enhanced if those organising and sharing these capacities gain support from state bodies, local and national, through legislation, redistribution and measures.

Reader Comments: #BlackLivesMatter and Bernie Sanders; The Value of Protest; US Cited for Police Violence, Racism; Private Prisons; Euro Agreement and Greece; Urban Renewal and Public Space; Announcement: Rosa Luxemburg Conference - New Takes on a Longtime Classic - New York - August 21 - 22 (Moderator's Note - There will be no Tidbits for the next three weeks)

People and groups have been labeled terrorists by the Philippine government, the U.S. government and other countries at the behest of the U.S. government. The Philippine government engages in - red tagging - political vilification. Targets are frequently human rights activists and advocates, political opponents, community organizers or groups struggling for national liberation. Those targeted for assassination are placed on the order of battle list.