Portside

As presidents, celebrities, dignitaries and a plethora of VIPs descended on New Orleans to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Katrina, activists in the streets of New Orleans were also getting organized.

In a major victory for prisoners' rights, California has agreed to greatly reduce the use of solitary confinement as a part of a legal settlement that may have major implications in prisons nationwide. The decision on Tuesday, September 2, 2015 came following years of litigation by a group of prisoners held in isolation for a decade or more at Pelican Bay State Prison, as well as prisoner hunger strikes.

The United States and European allies have launched wars on the Middle East creating an enormous refugee crisis. The same nations threaten Russia. The question of maintaining peace with Iran is on the tip of everyone's tongue. Even in Asia, Pacific and Africa, the biggest military buildup is by the U.S. So why does Japan, of all places, have streets full of antiwar demonstrations for the first time since the U.S. war on Vietnam?

Consumers gravitate to favorite mouthfeel behaviors, whether it involves chewing, crunching, "smooshing" or sucking. The Understanding & Insight Group (U&I) has found a previously unrevealed, unexpressed need that drives texture preferences: mouth behavior. The truth is that individuals have a preferred way to manipulate food in their mouths (mouth behavior) and this BEHAVIOR determines the food textures they will prefer.

Who knew that capitalism and protein were so well aligned?

"When the coal industry rebounds to the extent that it does, and non-union operators take a look around and see that there's no union competition, and they'll see that they can begin to cut wages, they can begin to cut benefits, they can begin to cut corners on safety, they'll do that," said Phil Smith, a national spokesman for the miner's union.

Trump’s candidacy has already left a durable mark, expanding the discourse of hate such that we barely even registered that Senator Ted Cruz had called the sitting President “the world’s leading financier of radical Islamic terrorism,” or that Senator Marco Rubio had redoubled his opposition to abortion in cases of rape, incest, or a mortal threat to the mother. Trump has bequeathed a concoction of celebrity, wealth, and alienation that is more potent than any we’ve seen

Common Core “results” aren’t actually test scores. In fact, the numbers tell us more about the states’ test scorers than they do about schoolchildren.

Review by Paul Buhle founder of the Oral History of the American Left at Tamiment Library, New York University, and co-editor of the Encyclopedia of the American Left.

AMC's "Humans" demonstrates exactly how complicated it is to outsource something as personal as domestic work and care.