Skip to main content
Portside aims to provide material of interest to people on the left that will help them to interpret the world and to change it.

The Ukraine - Two Counterpoints

Roger Annis; Anatol Lieven
Yesterday Portside ran Timothy Snyder's "The Battle in Ukraine Means Everything." Many readers responded (see today's Tidbits post). Anatol Lieven in the New York Review of Books and Roger Annis in an original Op-Ed for Truthout here present very different views.

Jackson Rising: An Electoral Battle Unleashes a Merger of Black Power, the Solidarity Economy and Wider Democracy

Carl Davidson Keep on Keepin' On
500 peopled attended the weekend Jackson Rising conference earlier this month, conceived of by Chokwe Lumumba. Making use of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to run as an independent in the Democratic primary, he defeated the incumbent and forced a runoff. Given that Jackson is an 80% Black city, he then won overwhelmingly. So when he died suddenly and his supporters in a state of shock, the opposition moved quickly to counterattack.

Fast-food Strikes: Why Going Global Could Work

By Claire Zillman Fortune
Fast-food workers plan to strike in 150 cities on Thursday, including 33 international sites. There's a protest planned at a Burger King in Germany, strikes are set for fast-food restaurants in Venice, Milan, and Rome. And a demonstration will take place at a Buenos Aires McDonald's. There are flash mobs planned at five McDonald's in the Philippines.

Meet North Carolina's Revolutionary Register of Deeds

By Sue Sturgis Facing South
"I don't want to reach for melodrama here, but on some level there's the question of whether we have a federal government or a Confederacy," Chilton tells Facing South. "Does North Carolina get to nullify part of the Constitution it doesn't like? I thought we settled that question."

The Battle in Ukraine Means Everything

By Timothy Snyder The New Republic
Throughout the centuries, the history of Ukraine has revealed the turning points in the history of Europe. This seems still to be true today. Of course, which way things will turn still depends, at least for a little while, on the Europeans.

Turkey Mine Disaster: Grief Turns to Rage as Hopes of Finding Survivors Fade

Constanze Letsch in Izmir and Ian Traynor The Guardian
The national association of electrical engineers said the disaster represented "murder, not an accident". It accused the mine operators of neglect and using obsolete equipment. Inadequate ventilation systems meant carbon monoxide and other toxic gases could spread more quickly, it said.

Brown v. Board at 60Why Have We Been So Disappointed? What Have We Learned?

Richard Rothstein Economic Policy Institute
The Brown decision annihilated the “separate but equal” rule, previously sanctioned by the Supreme Court in 1896, that permitted states and school districts to designate some schools “whites-only” and others “Negroes-only.” But Brown was unsuccessful in its purported mission—to undo the school segregation that persists as a central feature of American public education today.

Scientists Warn of Rising Oceans From Polar Melt

Justin Gillis and Kenneth Chang The New York Times
Two scientific papers released on Monday by the journals Science and Geophysical Research Letters came to similar conclusions by different means. Both groups of scientists found that West Antarctic glaciers had retreated far enough to set off an inherent instability in the ice sheet, one that experts have feared for decades. NASA called a telephone news conference Monday to highlight the urgency of the findings.
Subscribe to Portside