Portside

"At its core I believe the issue is really about what a great country we have that a song like this can be performed in a setting like Concert for Valor."

Life for student-athletes is no longer the quaint Americana fantasy of the homecoming bonfire and a celebration at the malt shop. It’s big business in which everyone is making money — everyone except the eighteen to twenty-one-year-old kids who every game risk permanent career-ending injuries.

Malek and Hoke spent four years, 2010 to the summer of 2014, conducting more than 250 hours of interviews in the West Bank and Gaza and ultimately culled the material into 16 chapters. The range is broad and includes a Jewish Israeli who moved to the West Bank in solidarity with her Palestinian friends and a middle-aged Palestinian professor who helped found the International Solidarity Movement.

A Richmond Rattlesnake The scale of Chevron’s own spending–to defeat low-budget municipal candidates–was so jaw-dropping that it drew national media attention. From Bay Area newspapers and The L.A. Times to Bill Moyers and Rachel Maddow and a visiting U.S. Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, everyone agreed that Richmond was ground zero for corporate-funded negative campaigning in the post-Citizens United era.

"The disparity in education resources has created an educational caste system that the Commonwealth must eliminate." —Wade Henderson, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

Putin has just delivered a speech every American deserves to hear and consider. Few will have done so for the simple reason that our media declined to tell you about the Russian leader’s presentation to an annual gathering of leaders and thinkers called the Valdai International Discussion Club, a Davos variant. Readers can now decide: What they think of the speech and what they think of the American media for not reporting it.

Frackers think pink; Gamer rage; Myths about black voters; Pulling the plug on Emma; Warrior cops; Euroleft dreams

The Green Party campaign against Andrew Cuomo must become the launching pad for an independent political movement.

West Coast Longshore workers have been without a union contract since July. Now management is complaining that the workers are slowing down on the job.

The economic divide in the world is astounding: The top 1 percent control 48.2 percent of global assets.