Portside

Fearing the federal government’s new recommendations against added sugars will embolden cities to adopt soda taxes, Big Soda is using tobacco industry tactics to stop cities like Seattle from regulating their products. Seattle was one of six cities awarded a grant from the American Beverage Association (ABA) and the U.S. Conference of Mayors to fight childhood obesity, which is like getting a grant from the tobacco industry to fight cancer.

Year after year, newsroom embarrassments like O'Reilly's undermine Fox's credibility to the point where it seems more and more journalists today start with a working assumption that Fox is not a legitimate news operation. That represents a major shift from President Obama's first year in office and it's a key reason why O'Reilly's fabrications matter.

Senator Bernie Sanders proposes raising the percentage of income subject to the payroll tax. “You can start at $250,000,” he says, “and what the Social Security Administration has told us, their actuary has told us, is that if you do that, you’re going to make Social Security solvent for the next 40 years on top of the 18 years it’s solvent. “

Our country’s bloody history of lynching, slavery and racism cannot be tackled from the top-down. Change has to be initiated organically - from the people.

Jon Stewart challenges Fox to a lie-off. Beethoven and the epigenome. The evolution of religion. Men in skirts protest violence against women in Turkey. 'Chuy' Garcia for mayor of Chicago.

Reader Comments- Netanyahu Doesn't Speak for All American Jews; SYRIZA, Greece; George Washington and Slavery; Lesley Gore; Needed-Populist Challenger; Tax Top Incomes; Militarized Future; Mississippi's Racial Murders; Ai-jen Poo, Aging; Walmart; West VA Coal; Bad Cops; Chapel Hill Murders; Water Privatization; Teachers and Education Today; Medical Volunteers Needed: Rojava Announcements: Film "Made in Dagenham", Identity Politics-Foundation for Coalition Building

"Alexis Tsipras stated it correctly. Greece won a battle - perhaps a skirmish - and the war continues. But the political sea-change that SYRIZA's victory has sparked goes on. Greece has already changed; there is a spirit and dignity in Athens that was not there six months ago. Soon enough, new fronts will open in Spain, then perhaps Ireland, and later Portugal, all of which have elections coming. It is not likely that the government in Greece will collapse." *

Greece's new government is committed to `ecological transformation'. Syriza's existing programmatic commitments to work towards "the development of a new paradigm of social, environmental and economic development," and the need to build a public sector of a "new type" could transform energy and climate politics in the EU and beyond.

Europeans, in order to lessen their dependence on Russian oil and gas, are plotting to develop European controlled solar energy in the Algerian (or Tunisian Sahara). These projects would be done in such a manner as to maintain the core-peripheral relations between France and Algeria - using neo-liberal economic models that the Europeans should own and control the energy sources while the North Africans would get nothing out of the deal. Before it was oil, now solar.

Europeans, in order to lessen their dependence on Russian oil and gas, are plotting to develop European controlled solar energy in the Algerian (or Tunisian Sahara). These projects would be done in such a manner as to maintain the core-peripheral relations between France and Algeria - using neo-liberal economic models that the Europeans should own and control the energy sources while the North Africans would get nothing out of the deal. Before it was oil, now solar.