Portside

Will Orange Is the New Black show the complicated reality?

Denied access to some of the best antibiotics developed in the West the Soviet Union invested heavily in the use of bacteriophages — viruses that kill bacteria — to treat infections. Now, faced with the looming spectre of antibiotic resistance, Western researchers and governments are giving phages a serious look. Pharmaceutical companies remain reluctant to get on board because phage therapy, nearly a century old, would be difficult claim intellectual property.

As the incomes of the 25 best-paid public university presidents soared, the livelihoods of their faculty deteriorated. This deterioration resulted largely from the fact that tenured and tenure-track faculty were replaced with adjuncts (part-time instructors, paid by the course) and contingents (temporary faculty). Many adjuncts have incomes below the official poverty level and receive food stamps.

Some Gitmo detainees have been cleared for release for years. So why are they still there?

In this striking new film, a woman has sex, gets pregnant and has an abortion. And she isn't punished for it!

The religious right, who liked to call themselves the "moral majority" at the time, actually organized around fighting to protect Christian schools from being desegregated.

How Wall Street Skims Higher Education. Richard Pryor & Maya Angelou. Documentary: Citizen Koch. John Lee Hooker, Bonnie Raitt, "I'm In The Mood." John Oliver: Stop Cable Company F**kery.

Reader Comments - Edward Snowden, NSA and NBC; Police Crimes; U.S. Cuba Policy; Tiananmen Anniversary; Ralph Fasanella's Art; Prisons and Solidarity Confinement; Workers and Labor; Taxes and Economic Growth; Carbon Pollution; New Populism; Sexual Harassment; Sexual assault of women protestors in India; Les Orear - R.I.P.

If you want to understand why it's the case that on the one hand, the U.S. public and the majority of Congress turned against the war in Afghanistan a long time ago, and yet on the other hand, it's been so hard to end the war, this week's warmonger media storm against the diplomatic rescue of U.S. prisoner of war Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl has been very instructive.

On March 28 Brooklyn rock band The Shondes were disinvited from the Washington Jewish Music Festival, at which they were scheduled to perform on June 2, due to band members' views on Israel and Palestine. Jewish groups are now asking artists: "On behalf of the Jewish people, are you now or have you ever been a signatory to a boycott of Israel?" Shondes members, singer Louisa Rachel Solomon and violinist Elijah Oberman, wrote this open letter in response.