Portside

A Richmond Rattlesnake The scale of Chevron’s own spending–to defeat low-budget municipal candidates–was so jaw-dropping that it drew national media attention. From Bay Area newspapers and The L.A. Times to Bill Moyers and Rachel Maddow and a visiting U.S. Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, everyone agreed that Richmond was ground zero for corporate-funded negative campaigning in the post-Citizens United era.

"The disparity in education resources has created an educational caste system that the Commonwealth must eliminate." —Wade Henderson, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

Putin has just delivered a speech every American deserves to hear and consider. Few will have done so for the simple reason that our media declined to tell you about the Russian leader’s presentation to an annual gathering of leaders and thinkers called the Valdai International Discussion Club, a Davos variant. Readers can now decide: What they think of the speech and what they think of the American media for not reporting it.

Frackers think pink; Gamer rage; Myths about black voters; Pulling the plug on Emma; Warrior cops; Euroleft dreams

The Green Party campaign against Andrew Cuomo must become the launching pad for an independent political movement.

West Coast Longshore workers have been without a union contract since July. Now management is complaining that the workers are slowing down on the job.

The economic divide in the world is astounding: The top 1 percent control 48.2 percent of global assets.

"Rasmea came under attack by the U.S. government because she is Palestinian and because for decades she has organized for Palestinian liberation and self-determination, the Right of Return, and an end to U.S. funding of Israeli occupation,"

"President Obama released a statement today unreservedly calling on the Federal Communications Commission to protect net neutrality by reclassifying broadband providers as common carriers under Title II of the Telecommunications Act. His statement comes on the heels of an unprecedented public outcry in favor of real net neutrality, including a record-breaking four million comments on the issue to the FCC." ACLU Statement

There are more than forty thousand Chinese restaurants across the country—nearly three times the number of McDonald’s outlets. The restaurants, connected by Chinese-run bus companies to New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, make up an underground network—supported by employment agencies, immigrant hostels, and expensive asylum lawyers—that reaches back to villages and cities in China, which are being abandoned for an ideal of American life that is not quite real.