Portside

Is the US is really allowing an illicit multi-billion dollar industry to flourish right under its nose (without involvement of any kind) or is there a part of this story that’s missing from the headlines? Of course, that leads us to an area of speculation that the media considers taboo, the prospect that US intel agencies are somehow implicated.

Two views! Neil DeGrasse Tyson and David Grinspoon.

A new program aims to allow anybody to watch for poachers using satellite imagery and ship positioning systems. But whether it will actually send illegal fishing crews to court is an open question.

Hope and pessimism have defined two traditions of American thinking about race. Fully acknowledging recent setbacks, the author makes the case for the tradition of hope.

Upon initial analysis, noted journalist Naomi Klein sees the US-China climate deal as a badly need piece of good news. For the first time, China is committing to capping its emissions, robbing U.S. obstructionists of their most effective argument for inaction. This is an important pledge by the Presidents of the U.S. and China and pledges matter because movement can "harness them to win even more."

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops voted this week to add further restrictions on reproductive health care at a time when Catholic hospital systems now make up four of the five largest nonprofit health-care networks in the U.S. and account for one in six of all hospital beds in the country. Women's organizations and consumer advocates are worried about the implications of this week's actions for reproductive and maternity care.

Twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the influence of the former German Democratic Republic is more than the united Germany wants to admit. In social policy areas such as health care, women in the workplace, education, youth football and recycling, the country has looked to the East.

A joint investigation by National Public Radio and Mine Safety and Health News found thousands of mine operators fail to pay safety penalties while they continue to manage dangerous — and sometimes deadly — mining operations. Most unpaid penalties are between two and 10 years overdue; some go back two decades. And federal regulators seem unable or unwilling to make mine owners pay or improve working conditions.

A Republican-controlled computer system allegedly meant to identify fraudulent voters, may have contributed to GOP victories in Senate races in Colorado and North Carolina, and a tight gubernatorial race in Kansas. While Interstate Crosscheck has not discovered a single instance of voter fraud, it was used by Republican elections officials in 27 states to purge thousands of voters, a high percentage of whom were minorities, from the voting rolls.

Twain aims a blast of laughter at a society making itself sick with its consumption of “sweet-smelling, sugar-coated lies,” believing that it is allegiance to the truth and not the flag that rescues the citizens of a democracy from the prisons of their selfishness and greed.