Portside

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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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.

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.

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.