Tracking Fishy Behavior, From Space

Christopher Pala The Atlantic
A new program aims to allow anybody to watch for poachers using satellite imagery and ship positioning systems. But whether it will actually send illegal fishing crews to court is an open question.

Students to Teach for America CEOs: You Are ‘Complicit’ in Attacks on Public Education

Ari Paul In These Times
USAS is the country’s largest student labor organization. The group’s main gripes with TFA and its Peace Corps-like model for American education, bringing college students—most from elite universities—to teach for a short period of time in some of the country’s poorest school districts, are that it is inadequately training teachers and promoting a for-profit, anti-union education reform agenda.

Afghan Opium Production Hits All-Time High

Mike Whitney CounterPunch
Is the US is really allowing an illicit multi-billion dollar industry to flourish right under its nose (without involvement of any kind) or is there a part of this story that’s missing from the headlines? Of course, that leads us to an area of speculation that the media considers taboo, the prospect that US intel agencies are somehow implicated.

FBI's "Suicide Letter" to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Dangers of Unchecked Surveillance

Nadia Kayyali Electronic Frontier Foundation
Should intelligence agencies be able to sweep email, read texts, track calls, locate us by GPS? Much of the conversation swirls around the possibility that agencies like the N.S.A. or the F.B.I. will use such information not to serve national security but to carry out personal and political vendettas. King’s experience reminds us that these are far from idle fears, conjured in the fevered minds of civil libertarians. They are based in the hard facts of history.

Friday Nite Videos -- May 16, 2014

Portside
Alabama Shakes - I Ain't the Same. Muscle Shoals: The Movie and the Music. Wealth Inequality In America. Movie: Chef. The Teen Brain: Under Construction.

Muscle Shoals: The Movie and the Music

This movie  transports us to the Tennessee River, Muscle Shoals, Alabama, the unlikely breeding ground for some of America's most creative and defiant music. Muscle Shoals has inspired some of the most important and resonant songs of all time. At its heart is Rick Hall, who founded FAME Studios. Overcoming crushing poverty and staggering tragedies, Hall brought black and white together in Alabama's cauldron of racial hostility to create music for the generations. Greg Allman, Bono, Clarence Carter, Mick Jagger, Etta James, Alicia Keys, Keith Richards, Percy Sledge and others bear witness to Muscle Shoals' magnetism and mystery.

Wealth Inequality In America

A must see video reveals staggering wealth inequality in the United States, and also how far we, the public, are from understanding just how unequal we are.