Portside

“Paul Robeson: A Watched Man” A book by Jordan Goodman. “Paul Robeson,” historian Joseph Dorinson ruefully wrote in the 2002 introduction to his co-edited collection of essays about him, “is the greatest legend nobody knows.”

In 2011 Barack Obama led an allied military intervention in Libya without consulting the US Congress. Last August, after the sarin attack on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, he was ready to launch an allied air strike, this time to punish the Syrian government for allegedly crossing the 'red line' he had set in 2012 on the use of chemical weapons.

In a narrow vote this week, the Senate politely smothered the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would have protected workers’ rights to compare and discuss their wages at work. Aimed at dismantling workplace “pay secrecy” policies, the legislation built on the 2009 Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which strengthens safeguards for women and other protected groups against wage discrimination.

POOR John Kerry. This week he emitted a sound that was more expressive than pages of diplomatic babble. In his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations committee he explained how the actions of the Israeli government had torpedoed the "peace process". They broke their obligation to release Palestinian prisoners, and at the same time announced the enlargement of more settlements in East Jerusalem. The peace efforts went "poof".

Last month, UPS in New York City fired 250 drivers who had rallied in support of a fired union member. Teamsters Local 804 gained massive public support in favor of the fired workers, and this week UPS agreed to rehire all 250 workers.

Evidence from Cassini spacecraft suggests a large body of liquid water beneath the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus

Walmart employees consume billions in food stamps each year, but raising their wages to a point where they wouldn’t need them anymore would only increase prices by about 1.4 percent

The sad truth is that open source software — which underpins vast swathes of the net — has a serious sustainability problem. Money doesn’t necessarily buy good code, but it pays for software audits and face-to-face meetings, and it can free up open-source coders from their day jobs.

Seven reasons why we should be raising the federal minimum to $15 an hour