Portside

May 7 the Women’s Court on war crimes against women during the war in the 1990ies formally started in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Women have come together from all the corners of the former-Yugoslavia to participate in the Women’s Court in Sarajevo, to demand justice for the crimes committed against them during the wars and the enduring inequalities and suffering that followed.

Reader Comments - Baltimore, other cities as "Occupied Territory"; Drop the Charges against those arrested; Government-Sponsored Segregation; Bernie Sanders - a Long Tradition of American Socialism; Alberta NDP Victory; $15 per Hour or Bust; Israeli Soldiers Speak Out-Gaza Atrocities Were Orders; Labor Union Membership Now Just 11%; Feliks Tych - R.I.P.; Announcements - New York, Boston

The Paris Peace Accords were signed on January 27, 1973, making possible a re-united Vietnam. Patricia Hynes reports and observations from March 2014 trip to Vietnam to investigate the plight of 3rd generation Agent Orange-dioxin victims, dioxin contaminated sites, and ecological restoration in order to inform Americans of the on-going legacy of the “American War” in Vietnam and our responsibility and opportunities for undoing this legacy.

Reader Comments- Selma - the movie; Labor, Racism, PBA's Patrick Lynch, Police Police Unions; Sports, Athletes, Equality and Anti-Racism; the 1914 Christmas Truce; It's a Wonderful Life, Comrade; Prosecute those responsible for Torture; Okinawa rejects "Pivot to Asia"; Fighting Anti-Semitism and Jim Crow; Announcements- Invisible Lives, Targeted Bodies - Impacts of Economic Injustice on Vulnerable LGBTQ Communities; Symposium: Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction

The New York Times editorial - in the paper of record - demanded that those responsible for the vicious torture policies be brought to trial. Any credible investigation should include former Vice President Dick Cheney; Mr. Cheney's chief of staff, David Addington; the former CIA director George Tenet; and John Yoo and Jay Bybee, the Office of Legal Counsel lawyers who drafted what became known as the torture memos. There are many more names that could be considered.

It came from the top and that's never been a secret. The president authorized the building of those CIA "black sites" and the use of what came to be known as "enhanced interrogation techniques" and has spoken of this with a certain pride. The president's top officials essentially put in an order at the Department of Justice for "legal" justifications that would, miraculously, transform those "techniques" into something other than torture. - Tom Engelhardt

Reader Comments: Congress Plots to Undermine Retiree Pensions; Is It Bad Enough Yet?; Angela Davis: the unbroken line of police violence; James Baldwin on Racism; LAWCHA's Teacher/Public Sector Initiative; #BlackLivesMatter Takes the Field; They Fear and The Kill; Thousands March to Protest Police Brutality; Torture - Senate Report, Lessons from Latin America; Trade; Chanukah 2014; CELEBRATING CHARLIE HADEN memorial and celebration of his life - New York - Jan. 13

One thing that I wanted to learn in talking to a torturer - I guess every person is different - but I wanted to see: did this destroy him? Did this destroy his soul? Is he like a broken man wracked with guilt? And he wasn't.

Reader Comments - CIA Lied About Torture; A New Civil Rights Movement?; Grand Jury Injustice - Justice Demanded; Members of Congress (and staffers) join protest; Illegal Cop Murders; Police Reform? - Bolder Steps Needed; Low Wage Workers: 'We Can't Breathe'; Slavery, Founding Fathers and Torture; Congress Plots against Pensions; Pardon Snowden, Manning and Leonard Peltier; Israel Lobby and Ukraine; War on Terror; Israel, U.S. and space weapons; New Republic; Correction

Reader Comments - People's Climate March, Greening of the Labor Movement, What Next; ISIS, Syria, Iraq, Muslim Fundamentalism; Ongoing War in Middle East; Elizabeth Warren and Israel; Theodore Roosevelt; Emmett Till, Michael Brown - Ongoing Struggle for Racial Justice; Guns and the Southern Freedom Struggle; Texas School Text Books; Military Weaponry in Schools - WTF?; Socialism, Worker Cooperatives; Today in History; Abraham Lincoln Brigade celebrations