Portside

The path to laser weapons is littered with dead lasers. The December 2014 tests on the US Navy's laser weapon were underwhelming. They reminded me of an old cartoon in which someone shot an arrow at the side of a barn, then painted a bulls-eye around the spot where the arrow landed. To add to the questionability of the December tests, they look like they were conjured up in a hurry—perhaps to impress those in charge of the purse strings.

Qatar will host the 2022 Soccer World Cup, and this week the International Trade Union Confederation, Play Fair Qatar, and NewFifaNow launched a campaign to force sponsors of the Fédération Internationale de Football (FIFA) to demand a change in the slave-like conditions endured by migrant laborers building Qatar’s tournament infrastructure. According to Play Fair Qatar, “As things stand, more than 62 workers will die for each game played during the 2022 tournament.”

The New York City Police Foundation (NYCPF), a private body funded by the city’s largest finance, real estate, tourism and private prison interests, has bankrolled another proposal to overhaul the New York Police Department. This “re-engineering” is underwritten by the NYCPF, overseen by consultant John Linder and supported by Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, the triad responsible for the 1994 NYPD reorganization that introduced the “broken windows” theory of policing.

Earlier this month, the Israeli Defense Minister both admitted Israel has nuclear weapons, and discussed the possibility of using them against Iran, citing the U.S. nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as moral justification. Yet, the U.S. media has completely blacked out these incendiary remarks. Had the Iranian Defense Minister referenced Hiroshima in a discussion about Israel, it would have been front page news.

As the investigation continues into the oil spill along the California coast, new details emerged about the pipeline operator's long history of wreaking environmental damage. Plains All American operates the pipeline that burst near Refugio State Beach on the Gaviota Coast and dumped more than 105,000 gallons of crude oil into the ocean. Plains All American has been responsible for 175 spill incidents nationwide since 2006, including 11 in California.

Last Sunday’s broad daylight shoot-out between rival biker gangs in Waco, Texas left nine dead and eighteen others hospitalized, and shocked the nation. However, the Waco shootout also served to graphically underscore how drastically different the police and media treatment of violent incidents is when those involved are white. This racial disparity was intensely explored on Twitter this week by commentators and critics on hashtag#WacoThugs.

Stone tools unearthed at a site in Kenya predate any identified human ancestors -- previously thought to be the first makers of stone tools -- by hundreds of thousands of years. These finds "will force us [to rethink] what makes us humans ... Increasing knowledge of our remote past is casting doubts on previous certainties and is showing that the process of becoming what we are now is far more gradual than what we previously thought."

It took only a few minutes for Mr. Obama’s account to attract racist, hate-filled posts and replies. They addressed him with racial slurs and called him a monkey. One had an image of the president with his neck in a noose. But they appeared to be a small number in what was an otherwise social-media-fueled show of love for Mr. Obama, who was drawing followers at a rapid pace — nearly 2.3 million by Thursday afternoon.

The fundamental problem with both the “not now, maybe later” and the “not on your life” rejections of electoral politics is their small mindedness, their view that political activity is a zero sum game where a Sanders candidacy inevitably diminishes some other truly valuable activities because there are only a limited number of potential activists out there.

Roy Zimmerman -- 'Defenders of Marriage.' Killer T Cell: The Cancer Assassin. Oscar Peterson's Piano Lesson. Ensnaring Kids in 'Advertising Empire.' LA Minimum Wage: $15 by 2020.