Portside

The national association of electrical engineers said the disaster represented "murder, not an accident". It accused the mine operators of neglect and using obsolete equipment. Inadequate ventilation systems meant carbon monoxide and other toxic gases could spread more quickly, it said.

In India, even as prominent left parties falter, radicalism persists.

Billy Frank Jr, fishing rights fighter; Piketty and critics; Demystifying abortion; Lessons from old school labor; Deconstructing the fashion industry

The Brown decision annihilated the “separate but equal” rule, previously sanctioned by the Supreme Court in 1896, that permitted states and school districts to designate some schools “whites-only” and others “Negroes-only.” But Brown was unsuccessful in its purported mission—to undo the school segregation that persists as a central feature of American public education today.

Low-income workers from 150 U.S. cities and 33 countries in protests on Thursday to call attention to wealth inequality.The protest comes amid a national push to raise the minimum wage - and it could mark a significant moment in the campaign, according to John Logan, a professor of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University.

Two scientific papers released on Monday by the journals Science and Geophysical Research Letters came to similar conclusions by different means. Both groups of scientists found that West Antarctic glaciers had retreated far enough to set off an inherent instability in the ice sheet, one that experts have feared for decades. NASA called a telephone news conference Monday to highlight the urgency of the findings.

This is publication day for Greenwald’s new book, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Security State, about his last near-year swept away by the Snowden affair. It’s been under wraps until now for obvious reasons. This essay is a shortened and adapted version of Chapter 1 of Glenn Greenwald’s new book, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Security State, and appears at TomDispatch.com with the kind permission of Metropolitan Books.

Economist Joseph Kile in written testimony has warned that "revenues from the users of roads and from taxpayers are the ultimate source of money for highways, regardless of the financing mechanism chosen." The significance of Kile's statement can be seen in the fact that one partner - the private sector - has almost no financial skin in the game. Meanwhile, the public partner - that is, the taxpayers - carries nearly the full financial burden.

Historian Mark Lause discusses an intriguing slice of baseball history, including the Knights of Labor influenced fight for labor rights and against the color bar in baseball. Great even for those who don't associate spring with baseball!

Looking for another reason to worry about fracking? We're going to bubble-wrap the entire planet with the overabundance of plastic it produces.