Portside

Scientists know that we have taste receptors for fatty acids in our mouths and intestines. They are studying if fat meets the criteria to qualify as a primary taste along with sweet, salt, sour, bitter and umami.

With baseball's opening day this week, Malik Abduh's "Barnstormers" evokes the days when race prejudice barred great athletes from the major leagues.

At the 104th anniversary of the Triangle Fire in New York City, poet Tom Karlson reminds us that factory tragedy remains a real issue in the global garment-making industries.

Palestinian citizens of Israel - and their political parties - agreed on a most basic principle: there should be equality under law and in practice between them and Israeli-Jews. Everything else, the peace process, the two state solution, could fall to the side. Netanyahu's demographic fear-mongering is rooted in the foundation of the Zionist project in Palestine and demographic engineering to ensure political power remains in the hands of one ethno-religious group.

Golden Dawn's penchant for violence led to the charge that it is a criminal organization. It is accused of several murders, as well as attacks on immigrants, leftists, and trade unionists. Raids uncovered weapon caches. Investigators turned up information suggesting close ties to wealthy shipping owners, and the National Intelligence Service (EYP) and municipal police departments. Close ties between the extreme right and Greek security forces is not new in Greece.

The Democratic Party finds itself with some serious divides that ought to be settled by the electorate. Some are clear-cut policy differences, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an enormous free-trade agreement with Pacific Rim nations that Warren opposes and Clinton backs. The big-picture debate on financial regulation and income inequality is what's most at peril if the Democratic primaries come and go without top-notch opponents for Clinton.

In Ireland, with a population of 5 million, upwards of one hundred thousand took to the streets to protest the new charges for water. The Irish government's austerity measure has sparked widespread public anger, with Saturday's street protest the fourth since October.

Reader Comments - Today's Student Protests; Vietnam War History, My Lai; Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism; Israel - Right Wing Nation with Nukes; Unions Key to Fighting Inequality; Women Fighters; Venezuela Sanctions; Socialists, Socialist Movement and Socialism; Human Genome Tinkering; Hey, World! Let's create a nuclear-free future -- April 24-26, New York City Remembering Jean Hardisty, Geraldine Blankinship and Grace Paley

The movement led by Cesar Chavez , Dolores Huerta and others created a union and reduced the oppression of farm workers for a time. Then the corporations and the Right Wing forces adapted their strategies of oppression. The assault on the UFW and the current reconquest of power in the fields are examples of strategic racism, that is a system of racial oppression created and enforced because it benefits the over class -- in this case corporate agriculture.

Coney Island's standing for some 147 years as inspiration for artists, from its inception as an elite seaside resort through its days as an entertainment mecca and leisure refuge for New York's working people, up to its more recent decline and the closing in 2008 of Astroland, its last iconic amusement park.