Portside

Economist says Canadian-style, single-payer health plan would reap huge savings from reduced paperwork and from negotiated drug prices, enough to pay for quality coverage for all – at less cost to families and businesses

Dawkins dresses up bigotry as non-belief. His anti-Muslim tweet is only the latest in a catalogue of smears. He cannot be left to represent atheists.

Morsi and the Brotherhood leadership bear a good deal of the blame for derailing the transition, since a democratic transition is a pact among various political forces, and he broke the pact. But the Egyptian military bears the other part of the blame for the failed transition. Ambitious officers such as Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Morsi’s Minister of Defense, were secretly determined to undo Morsi’s victory at the polls.

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An intimate, occasionally sad and frequently humorous insight into the life of one of the world's best known authors.

The violent clampdown by security forces has all but ended the possibility of a rapprochement with the Muslim Brotherhood. A cross section of Middle East analysts discuss the implications of the latest wave of violence in Egypt (in Al Jazeera)

Bradley Manning didn't hurt us any more than a dentist hurts a patient when removing an abscessed tooth. The brief discomfort that resulted from the WikiLeaks disclosures was necessary to begin the process of healing and reform. It is a process that we do not yet know will be successful, but which began with Manning's decision to leak vital documents to WikiLeaks. And for that, we owe Manning thanks; no apologies necessary.

Book Review and Interview: Jennifer Silva's "Coming Up Short: Working-Class Adulthood in an Age of Uncertainty." In 100 in-depth, in-person interviews, she found a new working-class adult “bewildered in the labor market, betrayed by institutions, distrustful of love, disconnected from others, and committed to emotional growth.”

There is a growing human rights movement across the country, led by prisoners and their families, that names this practice for what it is: torture.

Largest Mobilization of Fast Food Workers in U.S. History May Get Much Bigger.