Portside

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

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.

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

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.

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.

It is no coincidence that CEO pay has reached astronomical levels at the same time that income inequality has widened to a level not seen since the eve of the Great Depression or even the Gilded Age of the late 19th century. A wide body of scholarship has linked the two. CEOs, who earn 335 times the pay of their average employee, make up a big chunk of the 1 percent. Some ideas to change that are kicking around.

Brought together to discuss writing about war and peace as part of Los Angeles City Central Public Library’s Aloud literary series, the two authors engaged in a lively conversation that spoke on representation and the effects of war and memory.

On the morning of February 18, 2015, the ExxonMobil oil refinery in Torrance, California exploded, causing chemical ash to rain on the surrounding community for hours. Eight workers had to be decontaminated and four were sent to hospitals with minor injuries. With new evidence that the explosion could have been much worse, and that other aging refineries around the country are also at risk, scientists, industry watchdogs and a few lawmakers are sounding an alarm.

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.

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