Portside

The Chilean Song Movement had become so identified with Popular Unity, it had been such a strong factor, emotional, cohesive, inspiring, that the military authorities found it necessary to declare `subversive' even the indigenous instruments, whose beautiful sound had become so full of meaning and inspiration. Together with prohibiting even the mention of Victor's name, they banned all his music and the music of all the artists of the New Chilean Song Movement.

"To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries."-Aldous Huxley. University of Georgia student Courtney Parker shares impressions of her recent trip to Cuba - one of the legal educational tour programs allowing U.S. citizens to visit neighboring Cuba. Additional post on background of Cuban Travel Ban, and resources on how you can go to Cuba - today, and legally.

Efforts to achieve such unity is possible if we maintain an atmosphere of tolerance and eschew subjective responses to past encounters and disputes. This effort should involve not only members of existing socialist groups and publications but the many unorganized left activists in the struggle for economic and social justice, democracy and peace.

Gar Alperovitz and Staughton Lynd have blueprints for an `America beyond capitalism.' Both imagine a new America that would evolve through painstaking process in which the virtues of democratic socialism would be prefigured. They offer a component of the answer to what a new New Left must do. Democracy and egalitarianism animates both visions, but neither fully imagines how the Left might gain and use state power or how to change the national or global economic rules.

Internet Blocking in Turkey, Jordan and the U.K.; Before the Elections in Iran, the US Says It's OK to Sell Them Cellphones; Internet Revolution in Cuba

Liberalism—including much of what’s published in this magazine—seems well-intentioned but inadequate. The solution lies in the re-emergence of American radicalism.

Reader Comments on Matt Taibbi: Everything Is Rigged; Chiefs Declare Keystone XL Invalid; Rape in the Military; Islamophobia; Real IRS Scandal; Kissinger; Viet Nam War; Cambodia; Marx Banned in Hungary; Announcements: Black Talkies On Parade Film Series - Los Angeles - May 25; The Future of the Left - A Conversation on Socialist Unity - New York - June 5 - event moved to larger location

Reader's Comments - Assata Shakur, Israel, Korea, Thoreau's Radicalism, Thoreau's Plea for John Brown, Cuba, Benghazi, Spanish town solves unemployment, Viet Nam, more. Announcements - Conference on the Veterans' Peace Movement - New York - May 18; Greek American Radicals - screening - New York - May 25; Radical Teacher on line; Symphony for Palestine; The Future of the Left - Conversation on Socialist Unity - New York - June 5; NY Times full page ad to close Guantanamo

As Spanish unemployment reaches another record high, the residents of rural Marinaleda could be forgiven for feeling a little smug

At the core of the reforms is an acknowledgement by the Cuban state that it must relinquish control over those activities and sectors, such as retail, that do not serve it strategically and that it believes have the capacity to absorb the growing labor force in coming years. If these conditions are established, non-state employment will meet its expected contribution to the economy, above all in terms of job creation and the production of goods and services.