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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.

Quick Thoughts: Vijay Prashad on India’s Parliamentary Elections

Vijay Prashad Jadaliyya
For the first time since 1984, a single party–the rightist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led by Narendra Modi–achieved an outright majority. Modi’s party garnered 282 seats in the Lok Sabha, while the outgoing Congress Party managed to retain a mere 44 seats. Jadaliyya asked Vijay Prashad, professor of International Studies at Trinity College and the outgoing Edward W. Said Chair in American Studies at the American University of Beirut, to comment on this election...

The Republican War on Workers’ Rights

Corey Robin The New York Times
Inspired by business groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, they [the Republicans] proceeded to rewrite the rules of work, passing legislation designed to enhance the position of employers at the expense of employees.

Thorium: The Wonder Fuel That Wasn't

Robert Alvarez Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
The United States has tried to develop thorium as an energy source for some 50 years and is still struggling to deal with the legacy of those attempts. In addition to the billions of dollars spent, mostly fruitlessly, the government will have to spend billions more to deal with the wastes produced by those efforts. America’s energy-from-thorium quest now faces an ignominious conclusion: the Energy Department appears to have lost track of 96 kilograms of uranium 233.

Always Hungry? Here’s Why

David S. Ludwig and Mark I. Friedman The New York Times
But what if we’ve confused cause and effect? What if it’s not overeating that causes us to get fat, but the process of getting fatter that causes us to overeat? Science may slowly be coming to an understanding of the complex feedback loops which control our metabolism.

Better than Redistributing Income

Richard D Wolff Truthout
Bringing democratic decision-making into the core organization of enterprises provides the best chance for a less unequal initial distribution of income than is now common in most societies. Transition to an economy where many enterprises were organized as WSDEs would likely proceed further in reducing income inequality.

Was the American Revolution Really Just A Counter-Revolution to Avoid the British Mandate to Its Colonies to End Slavery

Herbert Calhoun Op Ed News
The "so-called" American Revolution was not so much a "revolution for freedom against Great Britain, per se," as it was a shrewd and carefully calculated set of moves on the global chessboard of Real Politik, that amounted to a "Counter-Revolution" against freedom: That is to say, it was a revolution against ending freedom for its slaves and other slaves around the colonial empire.

Friday Nite Videos -- May 16, 2014

Portside
Alabama Shakes - I Ain't the Same. Muscle Shoals: The Movie and the Music. Wealth Inequality In America. Movie: Chef. The Teen Brain: Under Construction.

Contextualizing the Hobbits

Jyoti Madhusoodanan PLOS One
While very little in paleoanthropology is ever “settled,” a new study represents an important step forward in terms of settling that the "Hobbit" people were really a different human species, and not pathological individuals of Homo sapiens. The question that remains to be answered definitively is which species of archaic Homo is the most likely ancestor of Homo floresiensis.
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