Portside

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.

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

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."

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.

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.

The full text of the new Seattle city council member's inauguration speech. Despite recent talk of economic growth, it has only been a recovery for the richest 1%, while the rest of us are falling ever farther behind. To begin to change all of this, we need organized mass movements of workers and young people, relying on their own independent strength. That is how we won unions, civil rights and LGBTQ rights.

Reader Comments - Pardon for Snowden; BDS and Israel; Turkey; NAFTA; North Carolina; Bill de Blasio; John Handcox; Philadelphia schools; Art Spiegelman; Obamacare; Announcements - Memorial for Steve Kindred -NYC -Feb.8; Pete Seeger gets first Woody Guthrie Award -NYC - Feb.22; Student activists scholarships available; Preserve Mother Jones monument in Illinois; Save the Village photo exhibit -NYC; This week in history - largest slave revolt in U.S. history