Portside

Documentary film of the 1984-85 British miners' strike that ended in defeat. This was a great victory for the Conservative Party of Margaret Thatcher and a monumental event in the union history of the British working class.

During pre-industrial times, CO2 levels were at 280 ppm. Scientists have warned that, in order to achieve safe levels, CO2 must be brought down to a maximum of 350ppm—the number from which the environmental organization 350.org derives its name from.

'I said to him, "Let me get this straight. Any person I see in the neighborhood where we’re headed, I spot him and kill him?" He said, "Yes. Any sane person who sees a tank battalion in his neighborhood will run away. If he sticks around, then he’s up to something. And if he’s up to something, it’s against you. So shoot him." So I tried to dig a little deeper and asked, "What if it’s an innocent civilian?" He said, "There are no innocent civilians.'

The Alberta promise would represent a significant change, given that provincially regulated jobs do cover the most common sources of low-wage employment.

Greece has ‘become a laboratory: persons facing extreme processes of expropriation and pauperisation have to make existential decisions that may challenge habitual norms and lead in all sorts of directions’ (86). The author is undoubtedly correct that it is urgent that forces of the radical left in the rest of Europe engage with the theoretical and organisational challenges thrown up by this critical conjuncture.

This is a China whose official ideology once condemned wealth and inequality, whose government treated "rich peasants" as criminals and trumpeted the necessity of individual poverty and self-sacrifice in the service of building socialism in the world's most populous country. And yet today wealth is celebrated in China -

However, skillful propagandist that Kennedy is, in her effort to whitewash history and try to ferret out something positive in a colossal debacle, there’s something even she can’t hide. Look closely at the newsreel clips as the NVA tanks roll into what was renamed Ho Chi Minh City. Not only are the soldiers jubilant, but look at the smiling faces of the Vietnamese masses as they are being liberated from decades of Japanese, French and Yankee occupation and imperialism.

In the last few years we have seen an unprecedented number of cities set citywide minimum wages. States - even fully red states - are also raising wages, and many are indexing those to inflation. Minimum wage and living wage campaigns are on the agenda in many other countries as well. Where did this movement for higher wages come from? To what extent is it helping build worker movements and improve workers' lives?

The report, “And Still I Rise: Black Women Labor Leaders’ Voices, Power and Promise”—named for a poem of resilience by the late Maya Angelou, could not be more timely, since events in Baltimore in the wake of the death of Freddie Gray after being in police custody have shed light on the hopelessness that can result in cities when jobs disappear and communities such as West Baltimore are left behind.

Comcast takes a hit; Social media warriors; NPR = News Protecting Rahm; Social media and future news; How Miller did in the news; Breaking bad in Baltimore