Portside

Medicalizing normal human behavior or common symptoms, and renaming subsets or combinations of symptoms, are common strategies to sell drugs.

Last Sunday’s broad daylight shoot-out between rival biker gangs in Waco, Texas left nine dead and eighteen others hospitalized, and shocked the nation. However, the Waco shootout also served to graphically underscore how drastically different the police and media treatment of violent incidents is when those involved are white. This racial disparity was intensely explored on Twitter this week by commentators and critics on hashtag#WacoThugs.

As the investigation continues into the oil spill along the California coast, new details emerged about the pipeline operator's long history of wreaking environmental damage. Plains All American operates the pipeline that burst near Refugio State Beach on the Gaviota Coast and dumped more than 105,000 gallons of crude oil into the ocean. Plains All American has been responsible for 175 spill incidents nationwide since 2006, including 11 in California.

Earlier this month, the Israeli Defense Minister both admitted Israel has nuclear weapons, and discussed the possibility of using them against Iran, citing the U.S. nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as moral justification. Yet, the U.S. media has completely blacked out these incendiary remarks. Had the Iranian Defense Minister referenced Hiroshima in a discussion about Israel, it would have been front page news.

The New York City Police Foundation (NYCPF), a private body funded by the city’s largest finance, real estate, tourism and private prison interests, has bankrolled another proposal to overhaul the New York Police Department. This “re-engineering” is underwritten by the NYCPF, overseen by consultant John Linder and supported by Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, the triad responsible for the 1994 NYPD reorganization that introduced the “broken windows” theory of policing.

Qatar will host the 2022 Soccer World Cup, and this week the International Trade Union Confederation, Play Fair Qatar, and NewFifaNow launched a campaign to force sponsors of the Fédération Internationale de Football (FIFA) to demand a change in the slave-like conditions endured by migrant laborers building Qatar’s tournament infrastructure. According to Play Fair Qatar, “As things stand, more than 62 workers will die for each game played during the 2022 tournament.”

Roy Zimmerman -- 'Defenders of Marriage.' Killer T Cell: The Cancer Assassin. Oscar Peterson's Piano Lesson. Ensnaring Kids in 'Advertising Empire.' LA Minimum Wage: $15 by 2020.