Portside

Despite a late start in his field, Kerry Knudsen might know more about lichens than anyone alive today.

A new progressive alliance could break the stalemate—but whoever wins will face a hamstrung economy and deep discontent with politicians.

“Songbook” frames its story through the memory of Lucy Parsons, the daughter of a slave who later becomes the widow of “anarchist martyr” Albert Parsons, a white man who had served in the Confederate Army, but then found his calling as a charismatic labor leader. There are unquestionably distant echoes of terrorist activity in our own time in this show, along with enduring issues of income inequality, police brutality, and a compromised judiciary and media.

This piece, the first of two parts, is excerpted from Noam Chomsky’s new book, Who Rules the World? (Metropolitan Books). Part 2 will be posted on May 10, 2016. Noam Chomsky is still writing with the same chilling eloquence about the updated war-on-terror version of this American nightmare. At a moment when the Vietnam bomber of choice, the B-52, is being sent back into action in the war against the Islamic State, Chomsky, too, is back in action.

A shocking new reports exposes rampant discrimination and denial of life-saving treatment in 1 of 6 hospital beds.

Children are still being held in isolation in detention and correctional facilities across the United States. Children can be found curled up on cement floors in bare cells for 22 hours a day, and for days at a time. In order to use bathroom facilities in Los Angeles County Jail, young people must bang on their cell door and hope that someone comes to escort them to a bathroom.

Residents of Richmond and other California refinery towns have learned, over time, to be wary of state and local officials too closely tied to companies like Chevron.

West Point’s investigation of the 16 Black women cadets who posed in uniform with raised fists determined that while the cadets didn’t violate military regulations their gesture was “inappropriate.” The U.S. Army, which vigorously defends the naming of 10 of its bases after Confederate generals who fought against the U.S. to preserve slavery, will instruct the 16 Black cadets on how “a symbol or gesture that one group of people may find harmless may offend others.”

Ya'ir Golan, the deputy Chief of Staff of the Israeli army, made a speech on Holocaust Memorial Day. Some accuse him of comparing Israel to Nazi Germany in that speech. Nothing of the sort. He compared developments in Israel to the events that led to the disintegration of the Weimar Republic. And that is a valid comparison. Things happening in Israel, especially since the last election, bear a frightening similarity to those events.

The National Academy of Sciences is urging people to focus less on the process and more on the product.