Portside

Ashley Smith interviews Ellen David Friedman about the recent crackdown on labor organizers in China.

Context is crucial to the politics of a narrative, always. In the context of the #BlackLivesMatter protests, and the increasing public focus on police brutality toward particularly African American communities in the U.S., it is important to ask how the fantasy of Luke Cage – a black man who is “unbreakable” – fits into the current socio-political landscape.

Experts on banking and labor markets offer their reasons for optimism and pessimism going into 2016.

If you’re no longer drawing lines on population but you’re selectively using criteria like age, that hits [the Hispanic] community very hard. Put aside the whole citizenship issue. The largest group of people who would be subtracted from the apportionment base would be children, and because [Hispanics] have disproportionately so many more children than the Anglo population has, that starts shifting seats all by itself, before you start to even consider citizenship.

The ILWU’s effort to create affordable integrated housing for working people says much about its values and efforts to define the city that birthed the union and remains its headquarters.

Scott Slater wants to pump billions of gallons to LA and other drought-hit cities - and make $2.4bn in the process

Problematic entries reinforce the popular impression that science is impossible to understand and isn't for most people—they make science seem elitist. And that's an impression that we as a society really can't afford.

You end up seriously thinking that between one year and the next there is a break, that a new history is beginning; you make resolutions, and you regret your irresolution, and so on, and so forth. This is generally what’s wrong with dates.

To no one’s surprise the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) was unable to come to agreement on Jordan’s proposed list of 160 terrorist groups that should be precluded from participating in peace negotiations between the Assad regime and the Syrian opposition. Jordan presented the list to the ISSG December 18th, and it was tabled. And on December 25 Qatar’s Foreign Minister announced his country’s opposition to the development of any list before negotiations begin.

Like almost all 11th hour FBI terror busts, the only thing the media has to go off is a DOJ criminal complaint that’s released to the press. Statements from the accused or their lawyer very rarely reach the public. And the criminal complaint and FBI press release are framed to deliberately deceive the media.