Portside

Victor Grossman, an American who has lived in Berlin for more than sixty years, gives his reflections on the German Democratic Republic (GDR), responding to two recent posts by Portside.

'We are determined,' said students organizers in a joint letter, 'to build a movement too big to ignore that puts free, accessible and public education back on the political agenda.' Thousands marched supporting those demands yesterday.

Tonight President Obama issued an Executive Order to reform some of the broken immigration system in the country. This is not unprecedented - previous presidents have also used Executive Orders to accomplish their goals. Here is Pres. Obama's speech; along with responses from immigrant and immigration activists around the country, many outlining what more is needed.

Protests are intensifying against the Jobs Act, the labor market reforms drawn up by Prime Minister Matteo Renzi (Democratic Party, PD). After a series of protests tow major unions have called for a one day general strike in both private and public sectors on December 5.

There are numerous, obvious solutions to problems in Afghanistan which NATO countries could consider, could even attempt if the alliance wasn’t there for the mineral wealth.

The PRD, which Cardenas helped found in 1989, rules Guerrero state and the city of Iguala, where the government said 43 trainee teachers were abducted by police on the night of Sept. 26 and apparently handed over to a drug gang and killed.

At a time when more and more people around the world are coming to recognize the need for tough restraints on fossil fuel combustion, the Republicans are about to march forcefully in the opposite direction. Theirs will be a powerful vote for a fossil-fuels-forever planet.

In a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg last month, Teamster Leader Rome Aloise wrote: "This is reminiscent of a time when noblemen were driven around in their coaches by their servants. Frankly, little has changed; except the noblemen are your employees, and the servants are the bus drivers who carry them back and forth each day."

A South Dakota Sioux tribal leader says building the Keystone XL pipeline is a violation of an 1868 treaty, and threatens 'war' against the pipeline.

The so-called, undeclared "war" we have been dragged into is the product of self-righteous, panicky people with an exaggerated sense of persecution and no ability to look objectively at history. That is, they are paranoid. Because of their bizarre views, paranoid people cause trouble, then they deny responsibility and use the victim's defensive reaction to justify further aggression. That is exactly the position of the West vis-a-vis the Muslim world.