Portside

“Ralph Fasanella was a consummate New Yorker and self-taught artist who represented the very best of American ideals,” says Dr Anne-Imelda Radice, executive director of AFAM. “He cared about people who did not have a voice, so he gave them a voice through his paintings.”

Trade union delegates to the US-Africa summit stressed that economic ties and growth are not enough. They stressed that there needs to be "a more complex view of development," that addresses the issue of growing inequality. As an example, delegates noted that it is not enough to talk about job creation, attention must also be paid to the kind of jobs being created.

27,000 home health care workers vote to unionize and join the Service Employees International Union. This is one of the largest organizing efforts in Minnesota since the great depression.

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.

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.

In the repressive one-state reality of today's Israel, which Mr. Netanyahu clearly wishes to make permanent, we need a joint Israeli-Palestinian movement to attain those rights and the full equality they imply. Only such a movement can lay the groundwork for the necessary compromises that will allow the two peoples' national cultures to flourish. They should know that Israel is not Judaism. Jewish history did not culminate in the creation of the state of Israel.

The activist and co-author of "I Am Malala: How One Girl Stood Up for Education and Changed the World" relished "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," the first book she read in the hospital when recovering from an attack by the Taliban.

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.

Many of the 112,000 active educators and school workers in the Michigan Education Association can now leave the union and stop paying fees under a state law that took effect last year. Other major unions, covered by multi-year contracts, won't reach the opt-out point until 2015 or later.

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