Portside

The author makes a radical case for cities to buy sports teams and not sports stadiums. Last month Washington D.C. approved the largest public subsidy ever for a Major League Soccer franchise, $183 million for D.C. United's stadium. And soccer stadiums have never been known to revitalize anything. Millionaire owners will resist any attempt to erode their monopoly power over team ownership, but cities need to explore radical alternatives to sports extortion.

At the end of 2014, President Obama announced the "responsible conclusion" of the longest war in U.S. history, leaving behind an Afghanistan that everyone acknowledges is still a very "dangerous place." Despite more than 130,000 U.S. and NATO troops, the effort to eliminate the Taliban has ended in total failure. Year 2014 was the worst of America’s 13-year war, and a weak, divided, and vulnerable government in Kabul faces severe challenges in 2015.

After 53 years the United States and Cuba have restored diplomatic relations, with the U.S. formally ending its unsuccessful attempts to isolate the socialist island republic. One commentator termed President Obama's decision to restore diplomatic relations his most positive foreign policy decision. Another said the accord proves "dignity wins battles." Many hope the Cuba decision will augur more realistic U.S. approaches to countries such as Iran and Venezuela.

Analyzing page views of Wikipedia articles could make it possible to monitor and forecast diseases around the globe.

Nobel laureate in economics Joseph Stiglitz talks about what forces are driving economic inequality and a policy framework for reversing the trend.

The game has changed, and the bosses are operating on outdated software. They are losing in a contest where they barely seem to grasp the rules. Meanwhile players, fans and political activists have been able to take the carefully scripted narrative of corporate sports and engineer a series of dramatic rewrites.

Even amid the racial turmoil of 2014, we are making progress.

Michael Franti - Same As It Ever Was. Neil deGrasse Tyson on 'Interstellar.' Top 10 Surprising People Who Advocated Socialism. Movie: The Imitation Game. What's Really Weird About Placebos.

Reader Comments- Selma - the movie; Labor, Racism, PBA's Patrick Lynch, Police Police Unions; Sports, Athletes, Equality and Anti-Racism; the 1914 Christmas Truce; It's a Wonderful Life, Comrade; Prosecute those responsible for Torture; Okinawa rejects "Pivot to Asia"; Fighting Anti-Semitism and Jim Crow; Announcements- Invisible Lives, Targeted Bodies - Impacts of Economic Injustice on Vulnerable LGBTQ Communities; Symposium: Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction

How will pay for high-quality transportation infrastructure, including roads, trains, bicycles, planes and other multimodal forms of transportation. Here are three under-reported infrastructure privatization issues we need to pay attention to. First, who actually benefits from and pays for infrastructure? Second, how are opinion makers talking about privatized infrastructure? Third, what is the quality of the process used to build large infrastructure projects?