Portside

Reader Comments (Lots): Solidarity with Standing Rock Sioux Tribe against Dakota Access Pipeline - And Then the Dogs Came; America's Own Genocide; Slavery and the National Anthem; Sit with Colin Kaepernick; Woody Guthrie's Assault on 'Old Man Trump'; Donald Trump and White Voters; How Fugitive Slaves Kept Their Freedom - Deep in the Swamps; Black Lives Matter; Fred Hellerman; Gene Wilder; Solidarity with Yemen; Announcements; and more...

An Iraqi politician once said that the problem in his country was that parties and movements were “too weak to win, but too strong to lose.” This is increasingly the pattern for the whole region and is spreading elsewhere. It carries with it the possibility of an endless cycle of indecisive wars and an era of instability that has already begun.

Reader Comments: Bernie, Hillary and AIPAC; GOP Tax Plans; What Americans Don't Get About Nordic Countries; Rekia Boyd - Still Waiting for Justice; The Rise of 1,000 Small Jails; Chinese Daily News Workers and The Newspaper Guild; Ireland's 1916 Easter Rebellion; TPP; Yemen; Drones; This Is Not Dixie: Racist Violence in Kansas; Flights to Cuba Are Getting Cheaper; Announcements: New York; Raleigh (NC); Oakland (CA); Bethlehem (PA); SUNY Stony Brook; and more...

Saudi Arabia’s relentless war in Yemen is a destructive failure. The U.S.-backed military intervention that began one year ago has killed an estimated 6,400 people, half of them civilians, injured 30,000, and displaced 2.5 million. According to the UN, 80 percent of the population (20 million people) is now in need of some form of aid. This week the Saudis agreed to a cease fire and peace talks, but will the Obama Administration press them to end the carnage?

Art as politics in the powerful new exhibit at the Whitney Museum in New York by Laura Poitras. Museum director Adam Weinberg sets the show "in the tradition of socially and politically engaged artists - progressive artists such as Ben Shahn and Alice Neal." He said, "The aim of the projections is to provoke moral and ethical responses." Indeed, they do. Or they should.

The Yemen crisis should serve as a prime moment for the U.S. to reconsider its alliance the Saudi regime, a regime that not only denies human rights to its own people but exports death and destruction abroad.

America's leading Sunni ally is proving how easily hubris, delusion, and old-fashioned ineptitude can trump even bottomless wealth. The price of oil dropped from $115 a barrel in June 2014 to around $44 today. While it costs less than $10 to produce a barrel of Saudi oil, the Saudis need a price between $95 and $105 to balance their budget. The country's leaders are now burning through their foreign reserves to make up the difference.

Reader Comments: Ethel Rosenberg Celebrated in New York City; Elizabeth Warren and #BlackLivesMatter; The Obama Presidency - Afghanistan; Arne Duncan and 'Educational Reform' - Not; Racist Violence-Kansas; Syriza and its 'Left' Critics;

Human rights experts charged the U.S. with sabotaging an independent UN inquiry into human rights violations in Yemen. The Netherlands put forward the resolution authorizing the inquiry, which the Saudis and their Gulf allies vigorously opposed. In what was termed “a shameful capitulation to Saudi Arabia” that “denied Yemeni victims their first real opportunity for justice,” the U.S. pressured the Dutch to modify and ultimately withdraw their resolution.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is warning of a major humanitarian crisis in Yemen, where violence “has radically increased” since March, when the U.S.-backed Saudi aerial offensive began. According to Teresa Sancristóval, the head of MSF’s emergency unit, “The impact of this conflict is much wider than only the bombing or the shooting. Yemen is predicted to be the first country in the world to have a capital without water, and water scarcity has an enormous impact.”