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

Education is Not the Answer

Dean Baker Jacobin
Everyone deserves a great public education, but better schools alone can’t fight inequality.

Four Era's of Slavery for the Benefit of Corporations

Paul Buchheit Nation of Change
Slavery, in it's various forms of physical and mental torment, has been a part of U.S. history from the beginnings of our country to the present day, with modern day corporations profiting immensely.

Long-Term Unemployment Is Elevated Across All Education Groups

Heidi Shierholz Economic Policy Institute
Elevated long-term unemployment for all groups, like we see today, means that today’s long-term unemployment crisis is not due to something wrong with these workers, it is due to the fact that businesses across the board simply haven’t needed to significantly increase hiring because they haven’t seen demand for their goods and services pick up enough to warrant it.

Plowed Under

Jocelyn C. Zuckerman The American Prospect
Across the northern plains, native grassland is being turned into farmland at a rate not seen since the 1920s. The environmental consequences could be disastrous.

All the Presidents’ Bankers: Nomi Prins on the Secret History of Washington-Wall Street Collusion

Aaron Mate, Amy Goodwin, Nomi Prins Democracy Now!
In her new book, All the Presidents’ Bankers: The Hidden Alliances that Drive American Power, Nomi Prins traces the hundred-year history of collusion between Washington and Wall Street. Prins reveals how a small number of bankers have played critical roles in shaping a century’s worth of financial, foreign and domestic policy in the United States including the Federal Reserve, the response to the Great Depression, and the founding of the IMF and the World Bank.

The Great Cost Shift Continues: State Higher Education Funding After the Recession

Robert Hiltonsmith, Tamara Draut Demos
Since the founding of public higher education, our nation has moved progressively toward expanding the doors of access. But in the last generation, we have moved in the opposite direction. State higher education funding on a per-student basis is lower today than it was in 1980. Federal financial aid no longer provides grants robust enough to defray the rising cost of college.

Why the Palestinian-Israeli Talks Bubble Burst

Uri Avnery Redress Information
POOR John Kerry. This week he emitted a sound that was more expressive than pages of diplomatic babble. In his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations committee he explained how the actions of the Israeli government had torpedoed the "peace process". They broke their obligation to release Palestinian prisoners, and at the same time announced the enlargement of more settlements in East Jerusalem. The peace efforts went "poof".
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