Portside

Playing for Change: Pemba Laka. Fewer Police Killings in 2016? 'Make America Great Again.' Why Mormons Identify With Syrian Refugees. Noam Chomsky Endorses Bernie Sanders.

British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, in conversation with Hilary Wainwright and Leo Panitch, talks about the meaning of ‘new plolitics,' opening up Labour’s policymaking to the people, and creating an alternative to austerity.

George Jackson in the Sun of Palestine is an exhibit that opened in October at the Abu Jihad Museum on the campus of Al-quds University, a Palestinian university. The exhibit demonstrates the similarity in voice and situation" between the Palestinian and African American people for whom widespread incarceration of their communities is the product of a system designed to punish them for their very presence.

Although there were many horrible developments in 2015, there were some goods ones too -- and let these encourage us to bring in the new year truly striking back at the injustices of the empire.

In one of the largest U.S. natural gas leaks ever recorded, Southern California Gas Company’s Aliso Canyon plant outside of Los Angeles is leaking harmful methane gas at a rate of 110,000 pounds per hour, and according to the company, it may take more than three months to plug it. The single leak, which has been called the worst environmental disaster since the BP oil spill in 2010, accounts for a quarter of the California's entire methane emissions.

A recently released secret U.S. Strategic Air Command (SAC) file can be justifiably termed “Stranger than Strangelove”, the 1964 film that satirically captured the madness of the Cold War. It reveals for the first time the scale of the holocaust that would have been unleashed in a nuclear war. The U.S. planned to attack more than 1,200 “Soviet bloc” cities, killing an estimated 520 million people. Even “friendly forces and people” would be radiated.

Turkey’s major trade unions called for a one-day strike on 29 December to protest the government-led military operations against the Kurds. Union representatives declared that they would persist in struggle against those who are trying to destroy the hope of both peoples [Turks and Kurds] to live together and build a common future.

A bill being introduced in the City Council Monday would require all employers to put contracts in writing, impose civil and criminal penalties for taking longer than 30 days to deliver payments, and award double damages plus attorneys fees to contractors who’ve been stiffed — similar to the protections now enjoyed by regular employees.