Portside

Five thousand members of the Minnesota Nurses (MNA) walked out June 19, kicking off a weeklong strike at five Allina hospitals in the Twin Cities. The immediate sticking point is health insurance, but this is also a showdown over nurses’ power on the job, as Allina pushes to hand over staffing decisions to a robot.

As these and other thoughtful observers acknowledge, the question is not an easy one. On the one hand, in the U.K., the movement to leave is led by the right — with a generous sprinkling of racist elements — and a Brexit victory would likely strengthen their hand. On the other hand, the EU has increasingly become a neoliberal project and — partly because neoliberalism generally requires it — an anti-democratic one.

A historian debunks liberal myths about racism, the New Deal, and why the Democrats moved right.

Neoliberal policies and practices dominate the European Commission, European Parliament, European Central Bank, European Court of Justice and a compliant media legitimises the whole conquest. This has left the EU constitution as the only one in the world that enshrines neoliberal economics into its text. Therefore the EU is not – and never can be – either socialist or a democracy.

Net Neutrality yes; Decoding the decision; Comcast’s 3-card monte; Monday surprise; Refugees and tech

Leave’s libertarians will destroy the welfare state. The desire to give the ruling class two fingers is understandable, but we must resist this false patriotism.

'Indian Point' directed by Ivy Meeropol takes an unblinking look at the dramatic debate over nuclear power by going inside the aging plant that looms just 35 miles from New York City. With over 50 million people living in close proximity to the facility, it has stoked a great deal of controversy in the surrounding community, including a vocal anti-nuclear contingent concerned that the kind of disaster that happened at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant could happen here,

Big Food is snapping up smaller, independent companies operating in niches of the industry that are actually growing, like organics. Three much-loved small players recently succumbed to the appetites of larger players.

G4S, where Omar Mateen worked as a security guard, profits from both U.S. border militarization and the Israeli occupation.

A troubling new investigation by the Guardian has found that at least 33 large cities in the United States may be improperly testing tap water in order to pass FDA regulations on allowable levels of lead. Reporters from the paper looked at 41 cities across 17 different states, and compared local officials’ water testing methods to those suggested by the EPA.