Portside

Woody vs Trump; Le Guin vs Bundy; For sale: The New Republic; Neolib noblesse oblige; Bechdel test; When Donald met Sarah

There are thousands of Mexican workers in Los Angeles. Their home country is two-and-a-half hours down the I-5 South of San Diego to Tijuana, Baja California and deep into Cartelia. But as far as most of my mainstream news outlets are concerned Mexico might be located in Tibet or at the bottom of the Bermuda Triangle. I know more about Mosul in Iraq or Kiev in the Ukraine than I do about anything south of my border. I do know that Mexico is North America's ISIS...

It's like living in "some sort of a dystopian novel," Sean Crawford writes, to find National Guard troops going door to door delivering drinking water on his street. To skimp on water costs, the governor and dictatorial emergency manager exposed the whole city to lead poisoning.

Advocates say it is hard to gauge the total number of children exposed to dangerous conditions among the more than 89,000 placed with sponsors since October 2013 because many of the migrants designated for follow-up were nowhere to be found when social workers tried to reach them.

The Portside moderators send our heartfelt thanks to our readers, for coming through in response to our annual appeal! We don't do a lot of fundraising -- just this annual appeal. We are grateful, and gratified, that the response allows us to keep to this bare minimum. Again, many thanks from the left side of the ship - the portside. Full speed ahead in the new year.

The Trumps retained Roy Cohn, who two decades earlier had been a top aide to Sen. Joseph McCarthy during his infamous effort to root out communists in government. Cohn portrayed the Trumps as the victims and counter-sued the government, demanding it pay them $100 million for falsely accusing them of discrimination . . . Goldweber, the Justice lawyer who originally argued the case, said it was a clear government victory. That’s not how Donald Trump considered it.

In the American Black community, during the years leading up to the Harlem Renaissance, there was a sense of building artistic expression. Outlets and avenues for its poets, musicians, novelists, artists, and actors were few. But in 1918, as the first great World War concluded and thousands of African-American soldiers returned home victorious, this mountain of artistic expression was now ready to explode.

So-called "supercoils" change the behavior of DNA, opening a new role for topology in the study of life.

Maybe they can get away with it, but it certainly seems worthwhile putting up a fight to stop them.

A new report charges the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest charitable foundation, is dangerously distorting the direction of international development, promoting the interests of corporate America against those of ordinary people seeking social and economic justice rather than charity. The Gates Foundation is aggressively expanding the role of multinational corporations in health and agriculture, particularly in Africa and the global south.