Portside

Some have questioned whether the Tripartite Alliance between the trade union federation, the ANC and the SACP. is still relevant to Cosatu. If the government ignores everything we say, what is the point of being in alliance with the governing party? This view is short-sighted. Yes we have suffered some setbacks, just as we did with Gear. But that battle raged for years before we eventually triumphed. It will be the same now.

Washington has an eagerness to extricate itself militarily from more than a decade of war in the Greater Middle East and “pivot” its strategic focus and resources more toward the Asia/Pacific and its highly complex relationships with China and key U.S. allies there.

Flame retardant,Walmart,Netanyahu,Black Friday,Afghanistan,pensions,Karzai

Yet transparency is essential to democracy, so that citizens, rather than an elite, make decisions, especially when it comes to life-or-death issues.

Thousands of employees at the European aviation and defense giant EADS have taken to the streets across Germany to protest looming job cuts. The company had said it would have to overhaul its sluggish defense business.

There's no reason to rollback the progress the ACA has made. But we should go all the way and dump the for-profit system.