Portside

Underneath global apparel's glitzy makeup lies an unglamorous underbelly - one of violent working conditions and structural faux pas. Case and point: factory fires. In September 2012, 300 garment workers lost their lives when a factory caught ablaze in Pakistan - two months later, 112 deaths after a similar tragedy in Bangladesh. Add China to the list, and 2012 will go on record as the deadliest year to be a garment worker.

American political history can also be told as the story of the great protest movements that periodically well up from the bottom of American society and the impact these movements have on American institutions. There would be no founders to memorialize without the Revolutionary-era mobs who provided the foot soldiers to fight the British; no films about the quandaries of Abe Lincoln during the Civil War without the abolitionists and the thousands of runaway slaves...

New National Drone Map * NRA's Jewish Enemies List * NYC Labor Chorus * Westboro Baptist Church Defectors * Gay Rights Bus Visits Christian Colleges * Anonymous Billboards Display Graphic Racial Inequity * Ad Campaign Redefines 'Jihad' * Coke Fights Obesity, Jim Crow * Class Appearances at Downton Abbey * Italians Still Love Il Duce * Gender Bias at Wikipedia * Day Laborers Fear Being Left Out of Immigration Reform * More

In a testament to the power of one of the greatest grassroots movements this state has ever seen, Commissioners Dr. Nirav Shah of the Department of Health (DOH) and Joseph Martens of the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) have announced today that they will postpone the decision on whether to allow high-volume hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in New York State pending further review of fracking’s impacts on human health.

Many new state workers — ranging from teachers to police officers to street cleaners — will retire with fewer retirement benefits than their current counterparts. Since 2009, faced with ballooning bills and strained budgets, 45 states have either cut pension benefits or increased mandatory employee retirement plan contributions, or both.

This for-profit hospital chain is growing fast; cutting costs with tough management, innovation. Like everything else about for-profit Steward — robotic surgery, fixed-rate insurance contracts, managers working with patients to prevent hospital readmissions — the e-ICU is focused on innovation, efficiency, and finding ways to save money. It’s a formula that has been reshaping the way business is done in the state’s health care industry since Steward took over Caritas.

What starts out as a minor skirmish can wind up determining the outcome of a war, and that seems to be the case when it comes to the mounting battle over the Keystone XL pipeline. If given the go-ahead by President Obama, it will daily carry more than 700,000 barrels of tar-sands oil to those Gulf Coast refineries, If Obama says no, the Canadians (and their American backers) will encounter difficulties in exporting their heavy crude oil, discouraging further investment.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013 is the official first day of production under workers control in the factory of Viomichaniki Metalleutiki (Vio.Me) in Thessaloniki, Greece. This means production organized without bosses and hierarchy, and instead planned with directly democratic assemblies of the workers. The workers assemblies have declared an end to unequal division of resources, and will have equal and fair remuneration, decided collectively.