Portside

This open-ended cease-fire is fragile. Some of the goals of the two sides will be very hard to attain. And, at root, the Israel-Gaza war won’t really be over until there is a comprehensive peace settlement with either a two-state or a one-state solution to Palestinian statelessness.

Market Basket employees — who are not unionized — ran a grassroots campaign that included walk-outs, rallies, and online actions. The New York Times describes the saga as "one of the strangest labor actions in American business history," and the Boston Globe notes that these activities "stunned longtime observers of the grocery industry and captured the imagination and attention of a region."

Reader Comments - "I Question America" -- Remembering Fannie Lou Hamer; The Coming Race War Won't Be About Race; Ferguson - Politicians and AFL-CIO - Both Missing; Israelis in US: An Open Letter to American Jews on Gaza; Minnesota Home Health Care Workers Unionize; Ukraine and Neo-Nazis; Sanctions & the Dollar; Economic Democracy Project's first event: Economic Democracy And The Struggle For Black Independence - Sept. 3 - New York

The chaos enveloping U.S. foreign policy stems from President Obama’s unwillingness to challenge Official Washington’s power centers which favor neoconservatism and “liberal interventionism”, writes investigative reporter Robert Parry. Obama's failure to confront "neocon absolutism" and "liberal interventionists" has resulted in a foreign policy that is unrealistic, hypocritical, and deadly.

Israel and the Palestinians agreed Tuesday to a plan to end the fighting in Gaza after 50 days of combat in which more than 2,100 Palestinians, most of them civilians, 64 Israeli soldiers and five civilians in Israel were killed. In addition to a cessation of hostilities, other immediate steps include the opening of some of the Gaza border crossings closed by Israel and Egypt. Further indirect discussions are to take place within a month.

Slow but significant progress was made in the peace talks to end the five decades of armed conflict in Colombia being held in Havana, Cuba. But, many complex problems remain in a peace process the United Nations representative termed "a unique experiment that has not been seen anywhere else." The Colombian conflict is the last civil war in Latin America, costing an estimated 220,000 lives since 1958.

In the wake of the police killing of 18 year old Michael Brown, a black teacher in South Los Angeles describes how "death is intimately woven into the experience of being a black child in America." She says the trauma of constant death, loss and mourning shapes all of her students' lives. She argues the movement response to the "spate of police murders and beatings" must also expose the "apartheid policies and mentalities" that plague American schools.

A new report released by the non-profit Public Accountability Initiative is critical of the Center for Sustainable Shale Development (CSSD), and its relationship with the oil and gas companies. The report questions whether CSSD and other environmental organizations' work with industry may cross ethical lines and serve to promote the oil and gas industry's agenda with a green "stamp of approval."

Ferguson, Brought to You by the Black Internet; NYT Gets Called Out by Its Own on Ferguson; What 1 Million Net Neutrality Comments Look Like; Boston and Big Blue Look You In the Face; CWA Challenges Local Media Consolidation; Gov't Info Plays Favorites

Microsoft Corp. is currently sitting on almost $29.6 billion it would owe in U.S. taxes if it repatriated the $92.9 billion of earnings it is keeping offshore, according to disclosures in the company's most recent annual filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Such maneuvers -- although often legal -- threaten to signficantly reduce U.S. corporate tax receipts during an era marked by government budget deficits.