Portside

"I think the phony claims and renewed political chicanery are a reflection of the fact that a century-and-a-half after the Civil War, and 50 years after the signing of the Voting Rights Act, a deeper struggle for democracy, equality and inclusion continues." -- Lorraine C. Minnite

Besides a reason to enjoy baked goods while feeling mathematically in-the-know, just what is π anyway?

There’s a comforting myth in the United States that suggests African-Americans steadily moved from absolute slavery to complete freedom following the Civil War. This, however, obscures how hard many Americans of every race had fought against racism since the Revolution. It was a struggle that went deeper than slavery and right to the core of who was an American.

A leader in the Afro-Cuban jazz movement, Arturo O'Farrill reflects on the tremendous potential he sees in the new opening to Cuba. “We will be forced to acknowledge that even though we have everything we are starving, and even though they have nothing they are gorging on the richest of all human achievements—love of pueblo, love of community.” Arturo is the son of legendary Cuban trumpeter/arranger Chico O’Farrill, who moved to New York from Havana in 1948.

Following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress last week the tension between the Republican-dominated Congress and President Barack Obama has reached a near constitutional crisis. While this crisis may subside, the more lasting impact of these developments may well be a change in relationship between the Israeli government, the Republican Party, and the traditionally bipartisan U.S. consensus towards Israel and wider Middle Eastern issues.

Oklahoma's state scientists have suspected for years that oil and gas operations were causing a swarm of earthquakes, but under pressure from University of Oklahoma President David Boren and oil company executives, they publicly rejected the connection. While other states have shut down wells and imposed strict rules after earthquakes, Oklahoma continues to claim the tremendous growth in seismic activity is from "natural quakes."

It was widely believed special prosecutor Alberto Nisman died because he was about to expose a criminal pact between Argentine President Cristina Kirchner and the Iranian government to cover up the latter’s responsibility in the 1994 bombing of Buenos Aires’s Jewish community center. It now appears when the U.S. and Israeli governments rejected an agreement between Argentina and Iran that might have lead to solving the case, Nisman set about sabotaging it.

On Monday, the White House took the absurd step of declaring Venezuela an “unusual and extraordinary threat.” Obama is channeling Ronald Reagan, adopting practices similar to those used against the Nicaraguan Sandinista government. But, the world has moved forward, even if Washington has not. Venezuela today has very strong backing from its neighbors against what almost every government in the region sees as an illegal attempt to destabilize the country.

John Oliver: Guess Who Can't Vote? Anita Sarkeesian: What I Couldn't Say. Jimmy Kimmel: Message for the Anti-Vaccine Movement. Going Clear: Scientology & the Prison of Belief. Netanyahu Remix: Sit! Stand! Iran, Iran, Iran! .

A profound crisis of identity burdens the Democratic Party. What does the party really believe? Whose interests will the nominee truly fight for? Democrats lost their old soul long ago. The 2016 election could become the decisive moment that either transforms the party with an aggressively liberal economic agenda or clings to the past and the “corporate-friendly” straddle devised a generation ago by Bill Clinton’s New Democrats.