Portside

Can the EU still unite a continent shattered by world wars, or is it little more than a vehicle for austerity capitalism? Soon British voters will vote on Brexit - leaving the EU. Given the absence of a strong, continent-wide left, however, reversing the current economic rules of the EU may be a country-by-country battle. It's already underway - and for all of the economic power of the EU, the organization is vulnerable to charges that Brussels has sidelined democracy.

Support for coup regimes, militarization and privatization, trade deals that wreak economic havoc—they reveal the failure of Clintonism.

Among the accomplishments of the Cuban revolution have been the great strides made in the education of its entire people. Education is completely free from primary school through university. Cuba today has a literacy rate of over 96 percent, putting it at the top of all Latin America. But the struggling economy has not created the kind of economic opportunity that is commensurate with an educated population, particularly in the professions.

TPP's fate in congress is uncertain at best; Long-awaited text reveals gaps between administration claims and actual TPP terms on key congressional, public concerns. Many in Congress said they would support the TPP only if, at a minimum, it included past reforms made to trade pact intellectual property rules affecting access to affordable medicines. But the TPP rolls back that past progress and provides pharmaceutical firms with new monopoly rights for biotech drugs.

The TPP is still secret and according to the terms in this year's fast-track legislation it will remain secret for 30 days after the president formally notifies Congress that he will sign it. That could be a while still, as the agreement's details need to be "ironed out." After that 30-day wait the full text has to be public for 60 days before Congress can vote. Expect a massive and massively funded corporate PR push. The biggest corporations very much want TPP.

Mexican labor unions and workers are, overall, in the worst situation in decades. President Peña Nieto has succeeded in passing a series of so-called reforms - education, labor, energy, and communications - that will have devastating effects on an already weakened labor movement. The Mexican government has controlled unions since the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920, but it was in the 1930s that the system of one-party state control over the unions was fully developed.

If China had bombed thousands of U.S. factories over the past decade, America would respond. But the nation has done virtually nothing about thousands of factories closed by trade violations.

The ire of McConnell and other tobacco-state lawmakers throws a wrench into the negotiations.

The “allegedly unstoppable momentum” of the pro-fast-track forces just hit the immovable object called transpartisan grassroots democracy. Now the focus will be on “permanently retiring” the fast-track trade promotion authority process, borne out of the Nixon presidency, and replace it with a more inclusive, transparent process that instead of more job-offshoring can deliver trade deals that create American jobs and raise our wages.