Portside

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...

Yesterday the Bernie Sanders campaign released the speech Sanders would have given to AIPAC had the presidential hopeful been allowed to show a pre-recorded message at the pro-Israel lobby’s annual policy conference.

Unlike Clinton, and all the Republican presidential candidates who spoke at AIPAC, Sanders called attention to Palestinian human rights issues. He said security meant “achieving self-determination, civil rights, and economic wellbeing for the Palestinian people.” Sanders also said peace meant ending the “occupation of Palestinian territory.”

Many of the most alarming statements and policy proposals Donald Trump has made are already reality in Israel, and supported by AIPAC.

Prominent Jewish Americans, including former officials of AIPAC, in a full-page ad in the New York Times,urged Congress to support the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) -the agreement between Tehran and six world powers. Many of the signers have devoted decades to building and enhancing Israel's security and strengthening the US-Israel alliance, designed to counter claims by some on the American right that no supporter of Israel could endorse the agreement.

A tour of the "real Israel" would show members of Congress the ugly truth behind Israel's propaganda.

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

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 - Darren Wilson Acquittal - Reader Responses; Black Friday Protests; Election Lessons for the Left; Immigration Reform; Ursula K. Le Guin, Pension Reform(?); Water Grab; Facebook Drivers Vote Union; Berlin Wall's Fall - Reflections from the GDR; Israel Lobby and Ukrainian Fascists; Mexico - 43 students murdered; Israel, Palestine and Rasmeah Odeh; The Selfless Gene; Announcement - New Politics Forum on the Environmental Crisis - New York - Dec. 9

Chris Hedges gave this speech Saturday at the Sauk County Fairgrounds in Baraboo, Wis., before a crowd of about 2,000. His address followed one there by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who seems to be preparing to run in the Democratic presidential primaries. The Fighting Bob Fest, the annual event at which they appeared, brings together progressive speakers from around the country and honors Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette (1855-1925).