Portside

The signature dish at its restaurants is the famed Maryland-style crab cake, and its dining rooms feature models of antique fishing boats and romanticized images of the bay watermen culture that is fading fast. But organizers say it’s mostly fake—a cover story for a rapacious, globalized business that preys on poor Indonesian women to extract rich profits for its U.S. owners.

On August 21, 2017, people across North America will be able to view either a total or partial solar eclipse. The last time most people in the U.S. were able to observe a total solar eclipse was 1991 and the next time won’t be until 2024! Here’s a guide to get you ready for the big event.

Ernest Renan, the 19th century French historian, said “the historian is the enemy of the nation.” I often ask students, what does he mean by that? What he’s saying is nations are built on myths, historical myths, and then the historian comes along and if he’s doing his job, shatters those myths, and often that makes the historian very unpopular. People like their myths but “myth” is not a good way of understanding how the society developed to where it is today.

When a stockpile of aging explosives blew up at a former Army ammunition plant in Minden, Louisiana, the U.S. military had a public relations disaster on their hands. What were they going to do with the remaining 18 million pounds of old explosives? They shipped it to a plant in Colfax, a tiny, African-American corner of Louisiana, the only commercial facility in the nation allowed to burn explosives and munitions waste with no environmental emissions controls.

Jeff Immelt’s resignation as CEO of General Electric shows that we cannot think of industry as finance’s opponent.

The article warns that conservative American Catholics have strayed dangerously into the deepening political polarization in the United States. The writers even declare that the worldview of American evangelical and hard-line Catholics, which is based on a literal interpretation of the Bible, is “not too far apart’’ from jihadists.

What follows is a different manual from the one we put out over 50 years ago. Then, movements operated in a robust empire that was used to winning its wars. The government was fairly stable and held great legitimacy in the eyes of the majority.

The author, 56, talks about writers’ humility, bygone bestsellers, memory loss, heroes and being exactly famous enough

The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) is the largest coalition in Palestinian civil society. It leads and supports the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Follow on social media. In face of continued USA-funded and supported Israeli atrocities, participate in BDS actions!

An important new study has come out showing that Clinton paid for this arrogance: professors argue that Clinton lost the battleground states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan in last year’s presidential election because they had some of the highest casualty rates during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and voters there saw Clinton as the pro-war candidate.