Portside

The TPP is still secret and according to the terms in this year's fast-track legislation it will remain secret for 30 days after the president formally notifies Congress that he will sign it. That could be a while still, as the agreement's details need to be "ironed out." After that 30-day wait the full text has to be public for 60 days before Congress can vote. Expect a massive and massively funded corporate PR push. The biggest corporations very much want TPP.

It may seem as if Christian conservatism, as a social movement, has always been with us. However, as Kim Phillips-Fein observes in this review of Kevin M. Kruse's history of the phenomenon, much contemporary conservative Christian discourse reflects "specific politics of the post-New Deal era, and the effort to shore up Christian commitments to capitalism as opposed to the welfare state."

Two twenty-first century phenomena have changed the way moving pictures are made and perceived. The first is the accelerating use of digital technology and the inexorable rise of a cyborg cinema that, by combining animated and photographic images, compromises the direct relationship to reality that had long been the medium’s claim to truth. The second is the trauma of September 11, 2001, which for many provided the ultimate movie experience that was more than a movie.

School policy ripped out of time and history: In many ways that is Arne Duncan’s gift to us. School policy focused on disparities in test scores instead of disparities in opportunity; a Department of Education obsessed with data-driven accountability for teachers but preferring “game-changing” innovation for itself and paying inadequate attention to oversight; ...

Day; Rosenberg; Davis; Purple; Coates

Negotiators may have reached agreement, but that does not mean the process is complete. TPP is not a done deal until it is signed by heads of each country and and their respective legislatures agree to it. In the United States, both the House and Senate will have to vote on the TPP after a 60-day period of review during which the public is supposed to have access to the text of the agreement.

The US Food Sovereignty Alliance upholds the right to food as a basic human right and works to connect our local and national struggles to the international movement for food sovereignty. The Federation of Southern Cooperatives, primarily African-American farmers across the deep South, shares the prize with the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras, Afro-indigenous farmers and fisher-people. The prize will be presented in Des Moines on October 14, 2015.

It's high time UN agencies and the mainstream media acknowledge the true scale of global poverty and engage in a long overdue public debate on how ambitious and transformative the international development agenda really is.

The 43. A group of 43 Jewish ex-services personnel attended the meeting and so the 43 Group was born with the unvarnished intent of, quite literally, beating British anti-semitic activists into submission. But as its participants dwindle in number, it was announced this week that the story of their campaign is to be re-told in a six-part television drama for the BBC and the American network NBC, written by the Emmy-winning creator of Band of Brothers.

Smaller tableware 'could help reduce over-eating and obesity.' Shrinking the size of plates, knives, forks and glasses could go some way towards tackling over-eating and obesity, a study suggests.