Portside

A new study released today concludes that Koch Industries and its subsidiaries stand to make as much as $100 billion in profits if the controversial Keystone XL pipeline is given the go-ahead by U.S. President Obama. The report is called the "Billionaires’ Carbon Bomb: The Koch Brothers and the Keystone XL Pipeline."

The slow advances we made in the early 20th century through unions, government regulation, the New Deal, the courts, an alternative press and mass movements have been reversed. The oligarchs are turning us—as they did in the 19th century steel and textile factories—into disposable human beings. They are building the most pervasive security and surveillance apparatus in human history to keep us submissive. It's time to pick up the pitchforks.

Jeff Crosby and Bill Fletcher Jr. analyze the September AFL-CIO Convention, stating, "This convention marked a long overdue strategic shift. The shift is to speak for the whole working class." Peter Olney responds, suggesting the federation may just be avoiding the hard questions they need to address.

Our federation and its affiliates are not ready to confront the challenges of using our existing base in certain industries to grow in non-union sectors of those industries and linked industries. Those discussions and strategies require challenging the inertia of the status quo. They are difficult discussions that challenge the power and positions of our elected trade union leaders. The interplay of the old and the new is one of the keys for renaissance. . .

Since the beginning of the summer, the Mi’kmaq sacred fire has become a place for French-speaking Acadians, Anglophones and members of the Elsipogtog First Nation to gather and organize actions. It was around this ceremonial fire that people from all three groups built their alliances, learning to work and pray together. Despite the cruel history between settlers and natives, all parties have joined together to become nonviolent protectors of the water and land.

Snowden and Manning taught Americans skepticism, and not a moment too soon. Knowing Congress would not vote to authorize intervention, the Obama administration turned to diplomacy as a face-saving measure, resulting in a rare example of a people rising up to stop a war before it could start.