Portside

Just before breakfast, the government of India secretly hanged Afzal Guru, prime accused in the attack on parliament in December 2001, and interred his body in Delhi's Tihar jail where he had been in solitary confinement for 12 years. Was this execution just? Was the trial fair? Or are the political parties and the institutions of Indian democracy on trial?

Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation is in character in several ways. As an institutionalist who believes in the Roman Catholic Church as the carrier of truth in a sinful world, he would worry a great deal about the impact of his own infirmities on the institution’s capacity to thrive. He is a traditionalist who was nonetheless greatly affected by modernity.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013 is the official first day of production under workers control in the factory of Viomichaniki Metalleutiki (Vio.Me) in Thessaloniki, Greece. This means production organized without bosses and hierarchy, and instead planned with directly democratic assemblies of the workers. The workers assemblies have declared an end to unequal division of resources, and will have equal and fair remuneration, decided collectively.

What starts out as a minor skirmish can wind up determining the outcome of a war, and that seems to be the case when it comes to the mounting battle over the Keystone XL pipeline. If given the go-ahead by President Obama, it will daily carry more than 700,000 barrels of tar-sands oil to those Gulf Coast refineries, If Obama says no, the Canadians (and their American backers) will encounter difficulties in exporting their heavy crude oil, discouraging further investment.

This for-profit hospital chain is growing fast; cutting costs with tough management, innovation. Like everything else about for-profit Steward — robotic surgery, fixed-rate insurance contracts, managers working with patients to prevent hospital readmissions — the e-ICU is focused on innovation, efficiency, and finding ways to save money. It’s a formula that has been reshaping the way business is done in the state’s health care industry since Steward took over Caritas.

A challenge to a bitterly fought election for 10,000 Fresno County homecare workers has ended with the withdrawal of a complaint that was set for a hearing Wednesday.

Readers respond on - The White South's Last Defeat; Henry Wallace; The Americanization of the United States; Climate RALLY - Bay Area - Sunday Feb 17

Is the country more or less racist? How can the percentage of people holding anti-black attitudes have increased from 2006 to 2008 at a time when Obama performed better among white voters than the two previous white Democratic nominees, and then again from 2008 to 2012 when Obama won a second term? In fact, the shifts described by Tesler and Pasek are an integral aspect of the intensifying conservatism within the right wing of the Republican Party.