Portside

"The avalanche of anti-voter surprise bills introduced yesterday by the extremist leadership of the North Carolina General Assembly in a constitutionally suspect 'extra session' is an insult to the democratic values held by all people of goodwill in this state."

Thanks to sustained, legitimate outrage from people on the Internet and a major ethical violation, there will be one fewer outlet for white supremacists to plead their case to the American people.

After a stern message to the dancers from their own union, the American Guild of Variety Artists, reminding them of the terms of their contracts and that refusal to perform at Trump's inauguration could result in termination, both the employer and the union have issued new statements. However, the AGVA emphasized the original compulsory contract terms by saying the there was no room for politics in the workplace.

With advances in genome sequencing and computational tools to analyze genomic information, researchers are able to estimate that about 8 percent of the human genome is made of sequences that originated as invasive retroviruses. To put that number in perspective, genes make up about 1 percent to 1.5 percent of your genome.

The efforts to flout voter-approved laws are part of ongoing conservative and corporate-backed strategies to keep wages low.

While inequality has become a topic of increased popularity and politicization in recent years, most of the attention has focused on how 1% own an increasingly large share of the world’s wealth, rather than on inequalities between nations. In a global context in which national borders and citizenship pose few barriers to the mobility of capital, the reality is also a story of the world’s richest nations continuing to reap a disproportionate amount of the globe’s profits.

About 60 percent of women who witnessed trauma in this South Side study had PTSD, compared to 20 percent in the general population.

President-elect Donald Trump’s decision to elevate ex-generals to the highest civilian offices in America’s national security state represents a de facto military coup against civilian oversight of the world’s largest military machine. Former generals Michael Flynn, a warrior-crusader against Islam, will be Trump’s national security adviser; James “Mad Dog” Mattis, will be the nation’s secretary of defense; and John Kelley will head the Department of Homeland Security.

In many ways the Security Council vote is Obama’s last hurrah, the swan song not only of his presidency but of unequivocal American support for a two-state solution and opposition to Jewish settlements.