Portside

The AFL-CIO isn’t lifting a finger to help the White House — it remains in negotiations at the White House and on Capitol Hill to change elements of the law it finds objectionable to workers. Those talks were put on hold earlier this month during the government shutdown — a far larger concern for the federal government employee unions — and have begun to restart only in recent days, according to officials from multiple unions.

One year on, it's painfully clear that society's choices mean the hurricane hit our poorest communities harder than the well-to-do.

Clone Wars in Taiwan; Casino Man Hedges Bets - Calls for Nuking Iran; R.I.P. Dark Knight Lou Reed; Busted for Shopping While Black; Teaching Economics Needs to Catch Up

The fact that the first round of talks on Oct.15 was hailed by Iran and the P5+1 as “positive” has energized opponents of the negotiations, who are moving to block any attempts at softening international sanctions against Teheran, while at the same time pressing for a military solution to the conflict.

The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) has rejected a group's bus ad showing Israel's expropriation of Palestinian land over time, claiming the ad could incite anti-Jewish discrimination and violence. The centerpiece is a series of four maps that show the loss of control of Palestinian land to the Zionist movement and Israel between 1946 and the present. The ad also states: “This is unfair. It is also illegal under international law.”

Book Review of "Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination," by Alondra Nelson, University of Minnesota Press, $18.95 paperback, 289 pages.

"Our state's policies and practices are being weighed on the scales of justice," the letter states. "They, and all of us who stand on the sidelines and watch them go into effect without raising our voices, are judged on the criteria established in our faith traditions and the principles in our documents which first constituted our nation and state. No matter which measure of human decency is used, our moral profile is a scandal.

From the beginning of his career, Reed identified himself as an artist who was determined to explore and explain the great societal taboos. He wrote songs about sex and sexuality, addiction, abuse, disease and communities that refused to conform or capitulate. His 1972 hit, “Walk on the Wild Side,” took AM radio and a generation of young Americans to places they had never been before.