Portside

Last month, thousands of people protested in Rome against austerity policies and high unemployment, urging the new government to focus on creating jobs to help pull the country out of recession. The sea of protesters waving red flags and calling for more workers' rights and better contracts. Italy is in a recession and unemployment has skyrocketed with youth unemployment at around 38 percent. "We can't wait anymore" and "We need money to live" were among slogans.

Reader Comments: NY Labor-Religion Coalition - support to people of Boston; Maduro victory - reader writes from Latin America; Capitalism; Grim jobs picture & horrible "grand bargain;" Stumble stones in Germany; Socialism; E. O. Wilson; more Announcements - 'The Bolivarian Revolution After Chávez' 4/17 & Poesîa en Abril 4/18 - Chicago; Wither the Socialist Left? - NYC - Apr 25; Today in History - Apr 15-17, 1960, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee founded

Reebok drops rapper after date-rape lyrics; Justin Bieber thinks Anne Frank would have been a fan; Trayvon Martin targets used for shooting practice; Mattel won’t make Black Barbie party supplies; Robot warriors coming soon; Indians leave the rez for unhappy city life; Americans still love libraries; Asians shouldn’t start to eat like Americans; The Nordic countries are reinventing their model of capitalism: Discuss!

More Sandys are surely headed our way, more climate-driven disasters of all sorts...They will be no more "natural" than the Chicago fire, the Johnstown flood or the San Francisco earthquake. We need to deal with now is the power of the finance, insurance and real estate sector whose leading corporations now effectively run our economy. Without doing that, the "nature" these interests have helped create will punish us all while providing a ghoulish boondoggle for a few.

capitalism, Marx, neo-liberal snake oil, intergenerational contact and more

For all its vaunted efficiency, capitalism has foisted wasteful inequality and environmental ruin on us. There is an alternative.