Portside

"Oil industry company Halliburton has been branded “obscene” for advertising unpaid UK internships, which critics say give an unfair advantage to people from privileged backgrounds."

At the end of February immigration agents descended on a handful of Japanese and Chinese restaurants in the suburbs of Jackson, Mississippi, and in nearby Meridian. Fifty-five immigrant cooks, dishwashers, servers and bussers were loaded into vans and taken to a detention center about 160 miles away in Jena, Louisiana.

The acclaimed Indian novelist and essayist whose first novel, The God of Small Things (1997) was a prize-winning, international sensation, has just published a new novel that reviewer Walter describes as "a bright mosaic."

Comey details his instant mistrust of Trump and his conviction that Trump's requests were unusual, inappropriate, and a threat to the FBI's independence.

It is only when there is a particularly dramatic abuse, or a death that can’t be hidden, that the public gets any glimpse of what life on the inside is like for so many Americans. When ordinary citizens learn of atrocities committed behind bars, most are appalled, but the sad reality is that the public has few tools to gain access to those behind bars. Not knowing is what makes it possible for unimaginable suffering to take place in the name of safety and security.

Less than a month after Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi became president of Egypt, he launched a massive cut in state subsidies causing fuel, bread and other prices to rise dramatically. The new austerity plan has provoked anger from consumers, taxi drivers and shop owners, and threatens to spread to other sectors.

In wake of new revelations regarding NSA and FBI targeting of prominent Muslim-Americans for surveillance, civil liberties organizations denounced the monitoring as "arbitrary and abusive." They called upon President Obama to prove the government surveillance of these prominent Muslim-Americans, including a political candidate and several civil rights activists, academics and lawyers, was not motivated by "racial or religious bias."

Plea for peace from Julia Chaitin, a kibbutzim who teaches in Israel, and lives near Gaza. She and some Israelis are challenging the endless hatred and violence practiced by both sides. She is joined by some Palestinians. Together they care for each other, that there is a way forward around the violence. J.J. Goldberg, writing in the Jewish Daily Forward charges that the Israeli Gaza onslaught is built on lies, and the heavier responsibility lies on Netanyahu government.

The explosion at the Tesoro refinery on the outskirts of Anacortes killed seven workers. Four years later, no one has been held publicly accountable for their deaths. Refinery owner Tesoro agreed to pay millions to families of the dead, but the company continues to fight government accusations that it willfully put its workers in harm's way.

Unemployment is growing throughout Europe. Sad to tell, rather than blame this on an economic model that puts profits before people, too many of Europe's "white" working class curse immigrants, people of color and others who are "different".