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."

"We have a choice, and we will choose between the world economy of today—with slow growth, high unemployment and obscene levels of inequality—and the world of tomorrow, of broadly shared prosperity. We will choose between a world of wealth for the 1%, with poverty for the rest of us, and a world in which all of us who work hard can enjoy the fruits of our labor."

Yet the skills story just keeps showing up in supposedly informed discussion. Again, I think that this is because it sounds like the kind of thing serious people should say.

Colombian autoworkers take fight to the U.S.

Just watching staid Angela Merkel and stout Sigmar Gabriel trying to straddle the crevice - figuratively speaking - was quite a sight, no easy matter for the chancellor or the vice-chancellor, who is also head of the Social Democratic Party (SPD).