Portside

As an administration decision on Keystone XL looms the protests and civil disobedience in Washington are heating up once again.

In the midst of an escalating international row with Australia, the Israeli government has been forced to admit that it secretly imprisoned a "dual-nationality" citizen – known as "Prisoner X" – who subsequently killed himself while being detained in Ayalon prison.

Consider these issues of legality and US legacy: The belligerent and misplaced aggression and ensuing chaos after the 2003 Iraq invasion led to hundreds of thousands of casualties (over a million by some calculations) and the largest refugee crisis in the region since the Nakba, with over 4 million Iraqis being displaced from their homes. After a decade of warfare Afghans have been perishing under the highest infant and maternal mortality rates in the world.

On Monday, a grassroots, anti–corporate tax-dodging coalition called Flip the Debt crashed a "Fix the Debt" party at St. Anselm's College in New Hampshire hosted by Honeywell CEO David Cote to tell the gathered deficit hawk disciples that paying their "damn taxes" would be a better solution than crippling the nation with fiscal austerity measures.

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.

Black History Month with Barbara Ransby, author of the new biography, "Eslanda: The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson. Legendary civil rights activist, singer and actor Paul Robeson - one of the most celebrated singers and actors of the 20th century - attacked, blacklisted and hounded for his political beliefs. Eslanda Robeson, was an author, an anthropologist and a globally connected activist who worked to end colonialism in Africa and racism in the U.S

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...