Portside

Reader Comments- Netanyahu Doesn't Speak for All American Jews; SYRIZA, Greece; George Washington and Slavery; Lesley Gore; Needed-Populist Challenger; Tax Top Incomes; Militarized Future; Mississippi's Racial Murders; Ai-jen Poo, Aging; Walmart; West VA Coal; Bad Cops; Chapel Hill Murders; Water Privatization; Teachers and Education Today; Medical Volunteers Needed: Rojava Announcements: Film "Made in Dagenham", Identity Politics-Foundation for Coalition Building

There are myriad ways that a peaceful resolution of the Syrian civil war can be derailed, but the pieces for an agreement are on the table. Failure to put them together will accelerate the destabilizing effects of the war in neighboring countries and deepen the misery of the Syrian people.

Reader Comments- 2014 Elections; Jim Crow Returns; Toni Morrison, Angela Davis; U.S. Used 1,000 Nazis; Syrian Labyrinth; Draft Could Be Next; Responses to Joel Klein; Nobel Peace Laureates Call Full Torture Disclosure; Activists Block an Israeli Shipping Ship; Women of Afghanistan; Saudi Arabia and ISIS; Fukushima; Announcements-Miners Shot Down-Film Screening-Nov 10; Elections-Who Won? Who Lost?-Nov 14; Folk music greats honor David Amram-Nov 20; PM Press Book Sale

America’s campaign against ISIS has already lost its way.

Book Review: Inside Syria:” The Backstory of Their Civil War and What the World Can Expect “ by Reese Erlich Forward by Noam Chomsky, Prometheus Press, New York 2014 The book covers Syrian history without bogging the reader down. This is, after all, a report on the on-going civil war. But Erlich does not glide over the important details, including how the U.S. camel first put its nose under the tent.

President Obama speaking at the Air Force Academy in 2012, told the assembled cadets that they should "never bet against the United States of America... [because] the United States has been, and will always be, the one indispensable nation in world affairs." On that basis, he suggested, the twenty-first century, like the twentieth, would be an American one. You get idea. We are... go ahead, chant it: indispensable! (Tom Engelhardt)

Reader Comments - Karen Lewis starts recovery; Philadelphia Students Support Teachers; Towards a Socialist America; War on the Islamic State; Arming Rebels Does Not Work; Silicon Valley and Organized Labor; New Voters in Ferguson; Investing in Junk Armies; Gaza Reconstruction; Doomed Without a Wealth Tax; Rosenberg Sons' Statement; Announcements - New York and Chicago events; Palestine solidarity

Reader Comments - Towards a Socialist America; War on the Islamic State; Ferguson New Voter Registration; Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism; Economy - Still Failing; People's Climate March; War and Climate Change; Berkeley Free Speech Movement; Crime Fiction; Work, Leisure, & Consumption; Israel 'Blacklist'; An Israel Equal for All; Importance of Brazil's Elections; Announcements - Race, Policing & Civil Rights-Oct 14; Paint the Town Red-Oct 22-both Brooklyn

When President Obama spoke at the UN last week, it was as if climate change and war were distinct ontological categories when in fact climate change is both a catalyst of conflict and a result of it. Competition over resources - land, water, energy - has always been the ground of conflicts within and between nations despite the fact that they may be clothed in the trappings of ethnic, religious or national rivalries.

Reader Comments - Ten Points Towards a Two-State Solution; Students Walk Out Suburban Denver Schools; Indiana Autoworkers and Two-Tier Contracts; Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism; War on Drugs Damages Black Social Mobility; Freelancer Economy; Transformative Utopias and Human Rights; Climate Change Rally; Banned Books; Texas Schoolbooks; ISIS, Iraq and Syria; Freedom University Georgia; Immigrants; Cuba Training World's Doctors