Portside

Cyber contraband; Get ready for the Internet of Things; Your TV is listening; Troll hunters; Return of the little magazines; URLs as clickbait

Anti-union laws don’t help the economy, don’t create jobs and don’t end ‘compulsory union membership’. They can only kill off unions

Bernie Sanders’s announcement may well signal a turning point in the domestic politics of Mideast policy. Despite his strong progressive vision, Sanders has in the past been reluctant to criticize Israel. He, like many on the American left, held up Israel in general as a progressive cause, regardless of the country’s colonial actions in the Palestinian West Bank or its illegal blockade of Gaza.

With survivor stories and data, the Beyond Survival report and campaign paint a stark reality of domestic worker trafficking in the United States. Including clear policy recommendations for domestic and international decision-makers, emphasizing that survivors themselves must lead the way to end labor exploitation, Beyond Survival empowers trafficking survivors through integrated trainings and leadership development to transform work and end human trafficking.

The North Korean (DPRK) government disclosed on January 10 that it had delivered to the United States an important proposal to “create a peaceful climate on the Korean Peninsula". The US should negotiate with North Korea on its proposal to cancel nuclear tests in exchange for a US suspension of joint military exercises with South Korea.

Last week SEIU and adjunct professors launched a national campaign calling for $15,000 per course.

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback wants to make a decades-long bet that pension-fund returns will exceed current interest rates for taxable municipal bonds. “The use of pension bonds impugns an issuer more than a downgrade, because it shows they’re willing to saddle future generations with risk in order to make current budget discussions easier,” says Matt Fabian, a partner at Concord, MA-based research firm Municipal Market Analytics.

Greece needs a viable exit option, both because it may actually want to go this route and also because it needs greater bargaining power with the troika.

Does the public have the right to be protected, or is corporate power going to run roughshod over the public?

Foner wanted to document his last time teaching the course, and he's teamed with edX to present it as three online classes. The themes running through his work—race in America, the influence of radicals on history, and economic oppression as a force of white supremacy—have never felt more relevant.