Portside

De Beauvoir & Sartre in Cuba; Black women & evictions; Pepper spray drones; Alt rabbi; Revered hippy; Soccer understood

The “honest brokers” all too often agree with our occupiers that the destructive spread of settlements is on “disputed,” not occupied, land; and that we and the Israelis must “work out” our differences across a table. With the negotiation rules thus rigged, justice will forever remain elusive.

Shock and anger have engulfed Israeli and Palestinian societies since they learnt last week of the barbarous murder of children from their communities. Hours after three Israeli teenagers’ bodies were located, a Palestinian youth, Mohammed Abu Khdeir, was kidnapped, beaten and burnt to death, apparently as revenge.These horrifying events should serve as a lesson in the obscene futility of vengeance. Sadly, that was not the message implicit in much of last week’s coverage

Changes in labor market policies and practices have played an important role in the dynamic of rising inequality and wage stagnation for the vast majority. One example of a change in labor market policy that has eroded the standing of typical workers vis-à-vis their employers and contributed to this dynamic is the right of workers to earn overtime pay premiums for working excessive hours.

‘Lax enforcement’ is not the culprit—U.S. trade and immigration policies are. The failure of Central America's economies is largely due to the North American and Central American Free Trade Agreements and their accompanying economic changes.

Israel's attack on Syria shows how volatile this conflict is. A political solution is now urgent.

In light of the report that the economy contracted in the last quarter of 2012 due partly to cutbacks, Ezra Klein notes that one man's big government socialism is another man's premature and destructive fiscal retrenchment.

Most Greeks want an end to austerity; they also want real reform. The worst outcome for Greece would be the further rollback of workers' rights and the social safety net without a purge of the corrupt elites and their clients in the media, in business and in the unions-a nightmare of exploitation policed by the lads from Golden Dawn. Greece,

Mairead Corrigan Maguire, 1976 Nobel Peace Prize for her work for peace in Northern Ireland, calls for support for Julian Assange. His only crime is that he embarrassed the U.S. and other powerful governments with WikiLeaks' release of documents in which the U.S. military appear to have deliberately killed civilians.