Portside

Can the world’s biggest corporations act with impunity? When it comes to General Electric (GE) -- the eighth-largest U.S. corporation, with $146.9 billion in sales and $13.6 billion in profits in 2012 -- the answer appears to be “yes.”

Comics have the power to reach beyond political arguments and slogans, revealing true-to-life heroic stories or showing how gains have been made in the past and can be made again. Perhaps now, as organized labor threatens to fade away entirely, the struggle to reach younger audiences may press home the urgency of using comics as a medium to spread labor’s message.

Although technically a U.S. corporation, GE – with operations in 130 nations – apparently feels little loyalty to the United States. Jack Welch, a former GE CEO, once remarked: “Ideally, you’d have every plant you own on a barge to move with currencies and changes in the economy.” According to a Bloomberg analysis, to avoid paying U.S. taxes, GE keeps more of its profits overseas than any other U.S. company -- $108 billion by the end of 2012.

An up-close-and-personal report on the new Israel and its grim domestic policies when it comes to who owns the land -- Max Blumenthal, “The Desert of Israeli Democracy, A Trip Through the Negev Desert Leads to the Heart of Israel’s National Nightmare”

After decades of exclusion, home care workers are finally covered by federal minimum wage laws. Anyone who works for social change can learn from how they did it.

In the past year, the Austin Heights congregation has found itself in the thick of the intense fight over the Keystone XL pipeline, specifically the southern leg of it—running from Cushing, Oklahoma, through East Texas (within twenty miles of Nacogdoches) to Gulf Coast refineries in Port Arthur and Houston—which was fast-tracked by President Obama in March 2012 and is now nearing completion, according to TransCanada, the Canadian corporation building it.