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Portside aims to provide material of interest to people on the left that will help them to interpret the world and to change it.

Time’s (Almost) Reversible Arrow

Frank Wilczek Quanta Magazine
The laws of physics work both forward and backward in time. So why does time seem to move in only one direction? One potential answer may also reveal the secrets of the universe’s missing mass.

The Silvertown Strike - A Partisan History

John Tully Monthly Review
The bourgeoisie does not rule by force alone; it does so by inculcating its ideas and values—its ideology—into the population at large. It follows, then, as the GMB’s John Callow argues in his preface to Silvertown, that “history, like politics…is a fiercely contested ideological space.” Historians who claim to be impartial and “value-free” are not to be trusted—or they are simple.

Chicago Police Hid Mics, Destroyed Dashcams To Block Audio, Records Show

Mark Konkol and Paul Biasco DNA Info
Chicago Police Department officers stashed microphones in their squad car glove boxes. They pulled out batteries. Microphone antennas got busted or went missing. And sometimes, dashcam systems didn’t have any microphones at all, DNAinfo Chicago has learned. Police officials last month blamed the absence of audio in 80 percent of dashcam videos on officer error and “intentional destruction.”

Dangerous Regulatory Duet

Corporate Europe Observatory
How transatlantic regulatory cooperation under TTIP will allow bureaucrats and big business to attack the public interest.

UN Experts Catalog Seemingly Endless List of Racial Discrimination in US

Andrea Germanos Common Dreams
"Despite substantial changes since the end of the enforcement of Jim Crow and the fight for civil rights, ideology ensuring the domination of one group over another continues to negatively impact the civil, political, economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights of African Americans today,"

Austerity Unbroken

Alp Kayserilioglu & Jannis Milios Jacobin
Syriza was elected a year ago today, only to retreat in the face of European pressure. Is there a way forward for the Greek left?

The Re-Emergence of Social Cleansing in El Salvador

Carlos A. Rosales and Ana Leonor Morales OpenDemocracy
El Salvador is now the most violent country in the world. Youth is killing youth, the state is in turmoil, death squads and extrajudicial killings are on the rise. More than 6,670 people were killed in 2015, primarily in clashes between rival gangs and between gangs and the security forces. And the U.S., which exported the gang culture to El Salvador, including the most violent gangs and most hardened gang members, owes El Salvador yet another “moral debt.”

Friday Nite Videos -- January 29, 2016

Portside
Stephen Colbert Moderates An All-Trump Debate. Jefferson Airplane: Crown of Creation. Planned Parenthood Indictments: Seth Meyers. Sesame Street With Donald Grump. An American Disaster: The Crisis in Flint.
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