Portside

Facing a Scottish referendum on independence September 18th that suddenly appears to close to call, the not so united United Kingdom and its pro-unionist partners in Scotland are panicking and resorting to desperate measures. If, after 307 years as a part of the United Kingdom, Scotland votes to secede, the UK loses one-third of its land mass and 10 percent of its Gross National Product.

Cuba's Minister of Public Health announced September 12th that Cuba would be sending a medical team of 165 experienced medical professionals to Sierra Leone to help combat the Ebola crisis there. The announcement, which came at the World Health Organization's headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, represents "the largest offer of a foreign medical team from a single country during this outbreak," according to WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan.

A damning report released last week by the Sentencing Project lays bare how racial bias, and the interconnecting systemic structures that reinforce it, disproportionately affect African-Americans. The report, a powerful condemnation of the "perversity" of racial oppression, reveals how "the overassociation" of blacks with criminality has a devastating impact on society in general and Black and other people of color in particular.

In yet another example of a corporation using international laws to prevent countries from restricting their profits, an obscure tribunal housed at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. will soon decide the fate of millions of people in El Salvador. At issue is whether the government of El Salvador will be punished for refusing to let a Canadian mining company operate on its territory because it wants to protect its main source of water.

What happened in Atlanta this week is not a matter of Southerners blindsided by unpredictable weather. This snowstorm underscores the horrible history of suburban sprawl in the United States and the bad political decisions that drive it. It tells us something not just about what's wrong with one city in America today but what can happen when disaster strikes many places across the country. It's not an act of nature or God - this fiasco is manmade from start to finish.

Open letter to Mayor de Blasio from prominent New York City Jewish leaders" "the needs and concerns of many of your constituents - U.S. Jews like us among them - are not aligned with those of AIPAC, and that no, your job is not to do AIPAC's bidding when they call you to do so. AIPAC speaks for Israel's hard-line government and its right-wing supporters, and for them alone; it does not speak for us." (The following letter was shared with Mondoweiss)

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett's administration has decided to sign a 40-year contract to privatize the state's crumbling bridges, but there has been little to no media coverage of the deal and what it will mean for two generations of Pennsylvanians.

Brooklyn College and the Center for Workers Education continues to be in the news. Recently, the New York Times ran what many feel to be a "one-sided" expose on the controversy. Here John Yong, attorney for Joseph Wilson responds to the Times' story. This was previously sent to the Times, but they have refused to print it. Previously Portside ran numerous articles on the controversy.

Reader Comments - Pete Seeger; Harry Belafonte Tribute to Seeger; Seeger before HUAC; Seeger - a life-long socialist; Costs of Privatization; Adjunct Professors; Scarlett Johansson and Israeli Occupation; Fracking; Net Neutrality; Radical Art in History; Arlo Guthrie; Solidarity with Russian airline pilots; Today in History

Union members in Pennsylvania held a mass demonstration inside the state capital to protest a Republican effort to strip public employee unions of their right to have member dues collected through payroll deduction. The protesters were clear that they see this Republican effort as just the beginning of an attempt to destroy unions and workers' rights in the state.