Portside

“Although it’s fascinating scientifically to have a front-row seat to watch the ice shelf becoming unstable and breaking up, it’s bad news for our planet. This ice shelf has existed for at least 10,000 years, and soon it will be gone.”

“I wanted to connect my guitar to human emotions,” Mr. King said in his autobiography, “Blues All Around Me.” Many of the songs he sang — like his biggest hit, “The Thrill Is Gone” (“I’ll still live on/But so lonely I’ll be”) — were poems of pain and perseverance.

Slavery made America wealthy, and racist policies since have blocked African American wealth-building. Can we calculate the economic damage?

'Mr. President, the stroke of your pen can have transformative impact for millions of workers.'

0 yes votes, 72 no votes and 37 voting present, offering a blistering rebuke to Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner's anti-union agenda.

The poet explains the transition between these two poems and reveals a mordant humor.: "That Sure is My Little Dog," written some years ago, arose from what I felt at the time was a lack of political outrage on the left, particularly among younger people, but by the time of Occupy Wall Street, I was feeling more hopeful about my generation (the Woodstock era folks) passing the banner on to the next.generation. Which leads us to the second poem, "Leonard Cohen's Guitar."

The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) - what's at stake? Why the secrecy, why the rush, why cut-off debate and input? The reason is - Money, big money, says the New York Times. Major American business interests, from Nike to Boeing and Hollywood to Silicon Valley, want the deal badly. Labor and environmental groups see it as a threat to American workers at the expense of profits.

117 countries criticized, shamed and attacked the U.S. for police violence and racial discrimination at the United Nations Human Rights Council hearing in Geneva. Among the various concerns raised were the failure to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, the continued use of the death penalty, the need for adequate protections for migrant workers and protection of the rights of indigenous peoples.

Despite the volume of revelations, much of the public remains largely unaware of the true extent of the NSA's vast, highly aggressive and legally questionable surveillance activities. Given the vast amount of revelations about NSA abuses, it is somewhat surprising that just slightly more than a majority of Americans seem concerned about government surveillance. Which leads to the question of why?