Portside

More than 2,000 workers remain on strike in Kohler, Wisconsin, a site of historic struggles for labor rights.

Portside's moderators every day contribute our best at finding and sharing the most interesting and useful material we can for the modest task of remaking the world into a fairer and more peaceful place. We expect no pay -- seeing the material on Portside read and forwarded and acted on is reward enough. Once a year, we appeal to readers to contribute some cash to sustain the Portside infrastructure that makes our work possible. Here's why...

Tuberculosis (TB) is winning a deadly race – this year it overtook HIV as the world’s deadliest infectious disease, killing 1.5 million people annually. The findings of the Out of Step report into national TB policies. The report will be launched on December 2 at the 46th Union World Conference on Lung Health, Cape Town, South Africa.

A half-century ago, Gabriel García Márquez, after yet another visit to the pawnshop, sent his now signature novel to his publisher. As Solitude turns 50, Paul Elie interviews Gabo’s longtime agent—just weeks before her death, at 85—and discovers the events that led to a literary revelation.

Forty-seven new restrictions passed, including clinic regulations, mandatory waiting periods, and measures aimed at Planned Parenthood.

The whole November 24 incident looks increasingly suspicious, and one doesn’t have to be a paranoid Russian to think the takedown might have been an ambush.

Through the secret 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, Britain and France reconfigured the boundaries of the Middle East, dividing Arab provinces of the former Ottoman Empire into areas of future British and French control. While the devious and unjustified character of the Sykes-Picot Agreement is indisputable, a century later there is growing talk of yet another remapping of the Middle East, a dangerous Balkanization along ethnic lines that will exacerbate communal hatred.

Speech given at the 79th Annual Celebration of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Berkeley, California 11/8/15

Successful negotiations in Paris can only be the start of something far more sweeping when it comes to the forms of energy we use and how we live on this planet. Fortunately, experiments are underway in the world of alternative energy, funding is beginning to appear, and a global environmental movement is expanding and could someday, on a planet growing ever less comfortable, put the heat on governments globally before Emperor Weather can turn up the heat on history.

Not only is explicit bigotry toward Muslims not new, implicit bigotry toward Muslims has been the foundation of the largest public project in the United States for the past quarter century.