Portside

Elsevier is an academic publishing company based in Amsterdam that annually publishes hundreds of thousands of articles to the tune of $2,000,000,000 in revenue. Meanwhile, The European Union has announced that all scientific papers published there and based on publicly funded research will be freely available beginning in 2020.

In the seventy years since organized labor gave up on shorter hours, not only did the length of the U.S. work week bottom out, then begin a steady climb that still continues, but labor force participation rates also rose. Women work for pay at ever-increasing levels; the elderly work until death. Ever-more hours work are siphoned from households, drawing in ever-more people.

In her recent address honoring the distinguished Palestinian intellectual and activist Edward Said, noted Canadian author and environmentalist Naomi Klein speaks to the urgent need for the environmental movement to understand Said and other anti-imperialist, postcolonial thinkers; or what we can learn from reading Said in a warming world. Klein says without that knowledge there is no way to understand how we ended up in this dangerous place or how we can get out of it.

Tom Morello told Bloomberg Politics, “Well there a thing called the Republican National Convention in July and that’ll be a perfect place for a band like Prophets of Rage to cause a ruckus and we will be there on the streets in the fields and in the concert hall.”

The N.C. Chamber of Commerce, a familiar player in state Supreme Court elections, has spent $450,000 on a TV ad supporting the conservative justice. As many ads in court races do, it touts him as tough on crime.

In the California primary, the independent voters registered as NPP, or no party preference, can vote in the Democratic primary. They can ask for a ballot and they are allowed to vote. The Orange County poll workers were told if NPP voters ask for a Democratic Party ballot to vote for Bernie or Hillary, they are not to be given regular ballots, but provisional ballots.

Reeves’ injunction barred all “agents, officers, employees, and subsidiaries” of Mississippi from treating same-sex couples differently from opposite-sex couples. HB 1523 explicitly contravenes this order, granting circuit clerks the total freedom to turn away same-sex couples while continuing to license opposite-sex couples.

An interview with Michael Lebowitz

Trump University is an outrage. But the lesson to learn goes beyond Trump himself and his alleged crookedness. What’s also likely true is that this egregious institution is yet another example of how profit-making and education are a bad mix for all except the few who are able to bank the results.

We can only guess as to why a group of Neanderthals built a series of large stalagmite structures in a French cave 175,000 years ago – but the fact they did provides a rare glimpse into our extinct cousin’s potential for social organisation in a challenging environment.