Portside

Last week, the Republican-controlled legislature in West Virginia overrode a veto by Democratic Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, making the measure officially law. The story of how West Virginia got to that point is a boiled-down version of the changes America has undergone over the past half-century — the pain of de-industrialization, the shift in political power, the casting about for anything that might create jobs.

The conclusion that the world's dominant economic model—a globalized form of neoliberal capitalism, largely based on international trade and fueled by extracting and consuming natural resources—is the driving force behind planetary destruction will not come as a shock, but the model's detailed description of how this has worked since the middle of the 20th century makes a more substantial case than many previous attempts.

Apple Computer is the current champion of privacy against U.S. government attempts to expand its spying on us. The company, a frequent NSA and FBI collaborator in the past, finds itself in the strange position of confronting a federal court order to dislodge its iPhone security system, an action Apple insists will cripple encryption as a privacy-protection measure.

Americans are being told that the virtuous course in Syria is to fight the Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian partners. We are supposed to hope that a righteous coalition of Americans, Turks, Saudis, Kurds, and the “moderate opposition” will win.This is convoluted nonsense, but Americans cannot be blamed for believing it. We have almost no real information about the combatants, their goals, or their tactics. Much blame for this lies with our media.

If American prosperity is going to be equitable and broadly shared, workers need enough power to contend with CEOs and owners of capital when they all meet at the bargaining table.

Allen <3 Bernie; Jews & gays Cruz-ified; Kocky Kasich; Onion for Hill; Things go bitter with Kochs

"Son of Saul has already won the Grand Prix at Cannes and the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film, and it’s a clear favorite at the Oscars. It is not—if my description has somehow failed to make clear—an easy film to watch. But it is a forceful and unsettling addition to the cinema of the Holocaust, a film that digs deeply into the gruesome workings of the death camps and ponders questions about duties to the living and duties to the dead." - Christopher Orr

International Left Intellectuals Respond to Venezuelan Government's Legislative Election Setback: We have to ask ourselves, “Do my statements empower and amplify the articulated priorities of the movements and governments I am in solidarity with, or do they strengthen the US government narrative and create even greater space for it to intervene in the sovereign affairs of other countries?”

According to a Tufts University report, "hazardous sites, municipal landfills, incinerators and other hazardous facilities are disproportionally located in poor minority neighborhoods".

Carter ordered Wal-Mart to offer 16 former workers their previous jobs and make them "whole for any loss of earnings and other benefits suffered as a result of the discrimination against them". Wal-Mart was also ordered to hold a meeting in more than two dozen stores to inform workers of their rights to organize under U.S. labor law.