Portside

Over the last 10 years, thousands of businesses across the country -- from big corporations to storefront shops -- have used arbitration to create an alternate system of justice. There, rules tend to favor businesses, and judges and juries have been replaced by arbitrators who commonly consider the companies their clients, The Times found.

Increasing surveillance on the leadership of PDVSA, the most important company in a South American nation seen as hostile to U.S. corporate interests, was a priority for the undisclosed NSA division to which the analyst reported. “Plainly speaking,” the analyst writes, they “wanted PDVSA information at the highest possible levels of the corporation – namely, the president and members of the Board of Directors.”

Seniors, disabled veterans and others will receive no COLA adjustment next year. This is because the method of measuring living costs – the Consumer Price Index for Urban Consumers – is not weighted toward seniors. For example, it counts the decrease in gasoline costs for commuters and not the big cost increases in the pharmaceuticals seniors need.

Here are four different takes on the speech Bernie Sanders gave on Democratic Socialism. As Kshama Sawant says, "Such an audience for socialist ideas has been unprecedented in the U.S. in several generations."

Leaders fear worsening ‘climate of hostility’ as conservative candidates call for database to track Muslims and equate Syrian refugees to ‘rabid dogs’

Evoking Franklin Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Jr., the Vermont senator bridged the aspirations of New Deal liberalism with the democratic socialist tradition.

Start Getting Used to Saying President Trump. Grateful Dead 50: Ripple. Mexican Donald Trump Hosts Mexican Saturday Night Live. Daily Fantasy Sports. Bernie Sanders: How I See Democratic Socialism.

Reader Comments: Paris, Beirut, Yemen, Turkey, Syria, Palestine; Postal Workers Endorse Bernie Sanders; Left Activists and Popular Opinion; Southwest Airlines - Reader Strong Criticism; Saudis Stumbling - Reader Exchange with Author; Young Adults Love Walking, Biking, and Buses Need for consideration of older population, those with disabilities, children; Democratic Campaigns To Join Black Lives Matter Forum

Reader Comments: Paris, Beirut, Yemen, Turkey, Syria, Palestine; Postal Workers Endorse Bernie Sanders; Left Activists and Popular Opinion; Southwest Airlines - Reader Strong Criticism; Saudis Stumbling - Reader Exchange with Author; Young Adults Love Walking, Biking, and Buses Need for consideration of older population, those with disabilities, children; Democratic Campaigns To Join Black Lives Matter Forum

How many US military bases are there in Africa? For years, US Africa Command gave a stock response: one. Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti was America's only acknowledged "base" on the continent. Research by TomDispatch indicates that in recent years the US military has, in fact, developed a remarkably extensive network of more than 60 outposts and access points in Africa. These bases, camps, compounds, port facilities, fuel bunkers, and other sites are in at least 34 countries