Portside

“Every society has its radical fringes. But today we need to ask ourselves: What is it in the public atmosphere that allows extremism and extremists to walk freely in broad daylight?” asked Israeli President Reuven Rivlin at an Aug. 1 protest rally in Jerusalem, following the July 30 stabbing murder of a teenage girl, Shira Banki, at the Gay Pride parade, and the July 31 torching of the Dawabsheh family’s West Bank home and the murder of their toddler son, Ali.

President Obama’s Clean Power Plan puts the responsibility on states to develop the strategies for reducing climate pollution. But states are already charged with monitoring and mitigating their air pollution, which hasn’t boded well for communities close to pollution-heavy facilities. And despite the plan’s emphasis on “community involvement and environmental justice,” the agency responsible for its implementation has a very poor environmental justice record.

Increasingly technology companies are aggressively gathering information on their unsuspecting customers even when they are not using a company’s app or software. The ride-hailing company Uber, for example, has changed its privacy policy to track its users through a “unique identifier,” even after they have arrived at their Uber destination. Yet these same tech execs are taking byzantine steps to keep their personal information out of the public domain.

While most of Latin America has been reducing poverty, Mexico is moving in the other direction: new official figures reflect an increase in the number of poor in the last two years. The negative impact of the 2014 fiscal austerity program, poorly-designed and mismanaged public policies, sluggish economic growth, and frozen family incomes are all factors underlying the rise in the number of people living in poverty in the region’s second-most populous country.

Portside readers may have noticed that our website has been intermittently off line for the past week. May First/People Link, which hosts Portside also hosts several pro-choice sites and those sites have been subjected to a massive attack. Women's health/pro-choice sites have been under ruthless, relentless attack for decades and the cyber front of those attacks has now expanded significantly.

On a 70th anniversary in which the madness shows no sign of ending, it’s good to turn to Susan Southard’s monumental new book, Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War, which offers a riveting, if chilling plunge into nuclear realities. Nuclear destruction of an almost unimaginable sort was the initial reality of the atomic age, with such weaponry actually used on two utterly defenseless cities. -- Tom Engelhardt

The progressive favorite has views on foreign affairs but has avoided articulating them to voters.

Under adverse conditions and with a difficult balance of forces within Europe and the world, we tried to assert the point of view of a people and the possibility of an alternative path. Ultimately, even if the powerful were able to impose their will, what remains is the absolute confirmation on the international level that austerity is a dead end.

As we approach the one year mark of the tragic police killing of Michael Brown and the Ferguson uprising that sparked a growing movement, Hughes' words remain painfully true today. Meanwhile, The hate site Stormfront and other racist groups have raked in hundreds of new members and tens of thousands of dollars since Dylann Storm Roof’s brutal June 17 killing spree in Charleston, S.C.

Verizon in 2005 was nearly 70 percent union. Today it's about 27 percent. "We cannot allow them to do what they are doing--and neither can the public," said newly elected CWA President Chris Shelton on the town hall call. "Because if they get away with it with us, they'll get away with it with everybody else, and there will be no more middle class in this country."