Portside

Hoosiers must also understand that this latest transgression of workers' rights - the Restoration of Freedom of Religion Act - is just the latest round in a sustained Indiana effort to undermine the entire working class. It shifts further wealth and power from the vast majority to the minority, while deepening the human misery that more and more Hoosiers experience; whether they are straight, gay, white, Black, Asian, Latino, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or atheist.

While the fast-food movement may not be close to persuading McDonald’s to adopt a $15 minimum wage, even the campaign’s critics acknowledge it has achieved some of its goals by prompting a national debate about low-wage work and nudging various cities and states to raise their minimum wage.

Repression visited on social movements by conservative ruling elites has always been accompanied by a heavy dose of paranoia on the part of both the upper classes and their supporters. Adam Zamoyski has written a new history of this phenomenon, showing how it was a staple of early 19th Century European politics. In this review, Andrew Benedict-Nelson takes a look at this entertaining and intriguing story.

American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees President Lee Saunders announced AFSCME was relocating its 2015 National Women's Conference from Indiana out of disgust at its passage of a Religious Liberty Law. He called it an un-American law.

On March 13, Randy Huffman, the secretary of the DEP, acknowledged for the first time that reviewing the existing research is necessary. Four days later, the administration of Governor Earl Ray Tomblin announced that the state would conduct an official review of those studies, under the leadership of the state Bureau for Public Health’s commissioner, Dr. Rahul Gupta.

A 2009 study found that in Paris, individuals perceived as ‘black’ or ‘Arab’ were, respectively, six and eight times more likely to be stopped and searched than individuals perceived as ‘white’. Sihame Assbague, a spokesperson for Stop le Contrôle au Faciès, finds this baffling: ‘We have a left-wing government caving to a really right-wing police union.’

What would a war with Iran cost?

"The club is all their law, stand up now, stand up now, The club is all their law, stand up now. The club is all their law to keep men in awe, But they no vision saw to maintain such a law. Stand up now, Diggers all."

At $1.2 billion, Syracuse’s is the largest endowment to divest entirely of fossil fuel stocks.Katie McChesney, a campus divestment campaign organizer with the climate action group 350.org, said the successful student action showed that “if you want results, turn up the heat.”

By leading a Sunni coalition Saudi Arabia will internationalise the Yemen conflict and emphasise its sectarian Sunni-Shia dimension. US policy across the Middle East looks contradictory. It is supporting Sunni powers and opposing Iranian allies in Yemen but doing the reverse in Iraq. Whatever happens in Iraq and Yemen, the political temperature of the region is getting hotter by the day.