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Tidbits - February 25, 2016 - Reader Comments: Why America Is Moving Left; The Bernie Movement; Angela and Fania Davis; Socialism; Puerto Rico; Solidarity with India; and more...

Portside
Reader Comments: Times Invents 'Left' Economists to Attack Sanders; Trump - Most Dangerous Face in GOP Field; Bernie and the Movement; Why America Is Moving Left; Fania and Angela Davis - New Kind of Civil Rights Activism; Teachers Walk-In in 30 Cities; Sanitizing Socialism and Needing to Create a New Kind of Capitalism With a Conscience; Announcements: Life Is Waiting - Film Banned in UAE, Lebanon, Belgium; New York Faculty Unions Supports India Students and Faculty

What Does the Academy Value in a Black Performance?

BRANDON K. THORP The New York Times
The uproar over #OscarsSoWhite made me curious. What does the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences value in black performance? Black artists have been nominated for best actress or actor on 30 occasions, for work spanning 28 films. Over the last few weeks, I watched all of them.

Sanitizing Socialism and Needing to Create a New Kind of Capitalism With a Conscience!

Beth Lamont Portside
Socialism can mean what we citizens wish for it to mean, by exercising our People Power! Hooray for Bernie Sanders! His vision and his rousing passion for the plight of the people is the greatest remedy for the painful ills of humankind that fear and greed have brought us. I warily approve of Hillary Clinton and would want for her "negotiating experience" to prevail. I've been joking for some time now about him teaching her, and teaming up. This would be powerful.

That Was Easy: In Just 60 Years, Neoliberal Capitalism Has Nearly Broken Planet Earth

Jon Queally Common Dreams
The conclusion that the world's dominant economic model—a globalized form of neoliberal capitalism, largely based on international trade and fueled by extracting and consuming natural resources—is the driving force behind planetary destruction will not come as a shock, but the model's detailed description of how this has worked since the middle of the 20th century makes a more substantial case than many previous attempts.

Apple Champions Privacy; Government Seeks to Trash It

Alfredo Lopez This Can't Be Happening!
Apple Computer is the current champion of privacy against U.S. government attempts to expand its spying on us. The company, a frequent NSA and FBI collaborator in the past, finds itself in the strange position of confronting a federal court order to dislodge its iPhone security system, an action Apple insists will cripple encryption as a privacy-protection measure.

The Media Are Misleading the Public on Syria

Stephen Kinzer The Boston Globe
Americans are being told that the virtuous course in Syria is to fight the Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian partners. We are supposed to hope that a righteous coalition of Americans, Turks, Saudis, Kurds, and the “moderate opposition” will win.This is convoluted nonsense, but Americans cannot be blamed for believing it. We have almost no real information about the combatants, their goals, or their tactics. Much blame for this lies with our media.

The Economy is Very Peaceful Today. That's Bad News

Jeff Spross The Week
If American prosperity is going to be equitable and broadly shared, workers need enough power to contend with CEOs and owners of capital when they all meet at the bargaining table.
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