Portside

Inventing Internet drones; Farm-fresh data; Big Snoopy is listening; Bay of tweets; NSA database from ACLU; Gender inequality in all media

An offstage drama that has been playing out in New york City has highlighted the difficult economics of opera in the 21st century, which have forced several companies in the United States to close or scale back. In the city, a spate of recent emails between labor and management at the Metropolitan Opera and a review of the opera house’s financial statements have pulled back the curtain a bit on life at the Met, one of the most important opera houses in the world.

It is a common myth that the shift to precarious, irregular employment reflects either the structure of the new, digital economy or the preferences of workers themselves. But in reality, most contingent work is the result of efforts by employers to undermine wages, job protections and worker bargaining power.

Cecily McMillan's ongoing ordeal with the NYPD is a reminder that radical dissent is still so necessary.

While the U.S. and its allies may rail against the recent referendum in the Crimea that broke the peninsula free of Ukraine, Scots will consider a very similar one on Sept. 18, and Catalans would very much like to do the same. So would residents of South Tyrol, and Flemish speakers in northern Belgium.

As the New York Times highlights, contrary to the administration's claims that its "Secure Communities" deportation program is focused on “criminals, gang bangers, people who are hurting the community," a stunning two-thirds of the two million deportation cases since Obama took office have in reality involved people who were guilty of only "minor infractions, including traffic violations, or had no criminal record at all."

Workers at McDonald's file lawsuits in New York, Michigan and California claiming wage theft.

Mr. President! Ladies and Gentlemen! [Russian President Vladimir] Putin wants to solve the entire crisis in Ukraine militarily. He has not understood that humanity's problems are to be solved neither with soldiers nor with guns, quite the contrary. . . It is however the same thinking that dominated and dominates in the West: In the cases of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.