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On Domestic Workers Day, Millions of Indian Women Continue to Work in the Shadows

Sindhu Menon Equal Times
Domestic work is one of the few areas of work available for unskilled women workers in India -- the overwhelming majority of whom are illiterate or educated only up to the primary level. They frequently work seven days a week, enduring poverty wages [despite often working in multiple households], no paid leave, zero maternity or social protection, violence and unhygienic living and working conditions.

`Rise of the Robots' and `Shadow Work'

Barbara Ehrenreich The New York Times
Even the most expensively educated - Lawyers, radiologists and software designers, among others - have seen their work evaporate to India or China. Tasks that would seem to require a distinctively human capacity for nuance are increasingly assigned to algorithms, like the ones currently being introduced to grade essays on college exams.

Ornette Coleman's Revolution

John Pietaro CounterPunch
There was no one like Ornette, this brilliant musical philosopher and singular voice who forged a path of revolt in a time when racism and inequity coursed through the nation unashamed. His musical journey inspired new generations of free improvisers and experimental composers and demonstrated that undeterred vision can conquer the status quo.

Black Like Her

Jelani Cobb The New Yorker
Dolezal’s primary offense lies not in the silly proffering of a false biography but in knowing this ugly history and taking advantage of the reasons that she would, at least among black people, be taken at her word regarding her identity.

New NASA data show how the world is running out of water

Todd C. Frankel The Washington Post
Scientists had long suspected that humans were taxing the world’s underground water supply, but the NASA data was the first detailed assessment to demonstrate that major aquifers were indeed struggling to keep pace with demands from agriculture, growing populations, and industries such as mining.

Argentine Women Call Out Machismo

UKI GOÑI The New York Times
The term “femicidio,” which encompasses the murder of women by domestic violence, in honor killings and in other categories of hate crime, has now entered our everyday language in Argentina. “The cause is our country’s macho culture,” said Fabiana Tuñez, executive director of Casa del Encuentro, a women’s shelter. Women’s rights advocates like her see a continuum between the deadly violence and supposedly harmless everyday sexism.

The Walmart Web: How the World’s Biggest Corporation Secretly Uses Tax Havens to Dodge Taxes

Americans for Tax Fairness Americans for Tax Fairness
Most people know that Walmart is the world’s biggest corporation. Virtually no one knows that Walmart has an extensive and secretive web of subsidiaries located in countries widely known as tax havens. Typically, the primary purpose for a corporation to set up subsidiaries in tax havens where it has little to no business operations and few, if any, employees is to pay little, if any, taxes and to maintain financial secrecy.

Bernie, GE & Uber

Bernie Sanders wins backing of South Carolina AFL-CIO EBoard; Negotiations with General Electric continues with GE demanding concessions from workers; A judge rules that an Uber driver is an Uber employee, not a freelancer!

My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family's Nazi Past

Charles S. Weinblatt New York Journal of Books
In these days of heightened discussion about "race" and racism, it is useful to keep reminding ourselves about the contingency of racial categories. Jennifer Teege is a German author who is the daughter of a Nigerian father and German mother. In her search for origins, she found that her grandfather was an officer in the SS who ran a World War II concentration camp. Charles S. Weinblatt reviews this harrowing tale of cross-racial family discovery.