Portside

Perhaps unwittingly, perhaps deliberately, Wade has blurred "the distinction between storytelling and science," writes Eisen. The blurring of that line is infecting scientific discussions that have great public implications--it's visible, for example, in the political attack on climate science, the promotion of creationism, and the marketing of California's multibillion-dollar stem cell program.

During Mr. Bloomberg’s last term, use of force by officers on inmates jumped by 90 percent, according to Correction Department data. Inmates’ advocates and public officials charged with overseeing the jails said they pleaded for the administration to address the issue.

“You guys are probably in the generation that is on the precipice of a change in the labor movement,” United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1208 President Keith Ludlum told the assembled workers, most under 30. “Us old guys and some of us who have been around awhile, we can advise you on things, but don’t be afraid to push the envelope,” Ludlum said. “Don’t be afraid to do things a little bit different. Be radical. Go after them hard and don’t ever stop.”

Roger Cukierman, president of France's Crif, said French Jews were "anguished" about an anti-Jewish backlash that goes far beyond even strongly felt political and humanitarian opposition to the current fighting: "They are not screaming 'Death to the Israelis' on the streets of Paris," Cukierman said last month. "They are screaming 'Death to Jews'."

The foundation of libertarianism is skepticism toward government and a belief in individual freedom. There aren’t many freedoms more fundamental than the freedom to walk to your grandmother’s apartment, as Brown was doing, without getting shot by a representative of the government.

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.