Portside

Pioneering Porn Publisher Al Goldstein Passes Away; Spy Agencies Bring Real Espionage to Virtual Worlds; Duck Dynasty Embraces Jim Crow; Pope Francis Embraces Just Catholic Economics; Islamophobia Pretends to be Feminism

Liberals are on the ascendance on faith-based issues, and as a long-time advocate of these views, I think it's great.

Every year Dispatches From The edge gives awards to news stories and newsmakers that fall under the category of “Are you serious?” Here are the awards for 2013.

Raising the floor for our lowest-paid workers is an absolute necessity, and continued victories in this area should be a priority for workers everywhere. However, these victories are not enough by themselves. For community-labor coalitions to reach their full potential, they must go beyond the political agenda that Richard Trumka outlined prior to the AFL-CIO’s convention. They must also be able to defend the gains that unionized workers have already won.

Reuters' report suggests that RSA wasn't merely following the trends when it picked the algorithm and that contrary to its previous claims, the company has inserted presumed backdoors at the behest of the spy agency.

New Dixie has replaced the aristocracy's black slaves of Old Dixie, by the local (white) aristocracy's institutionalized bigotry against poor people, now of all ethnic groups. What used to be their purely racist bigotry has, it seems, devolved into a crushing, pervasive, classist, bigotry in the South.

You have to make a choice, as a listener, if music matters to you as more than mere entertainment. And you and I have spent our entire lives with that conviction. This is not just entertainment, this is our lifeblood. This matters.

“Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long shot.” -- Charlie Chaplin: