Portside

Reader Comments - Fast Food Workers; Ralph Fasanella; US-Africa Leaders Summit; School's Back and Growing Inequality; Twin Plagues of ISIS and Ebola; Diablo Canyon Nuke Plant; Brazil's Elections; Argentina; Victory for Market Basket Workers and Consumers; Fed-Ex Workers Can Organize; New Culture on the Left; Call for papers on Harry Braverman's Labor and Monopoly Capital; Today in History - Paul Robeson Returns to Peekskill; Jewish Woman Among the Interned Japanese

Kiev throws paramilitaries - some openly neo-Nazi - into the front of the battle with rebels. Whether it is hero-worship of Hungary's Miklós Horthy, leaders of Croatia's Hitlerist Ustasha, the Nazis' Waffen SS divisions in Latvia and Estonia, or the likes of Ukraine's Bandera and his OUN and UPA, and the Waffen SS, it seeks to honor eastern European collaborators with Hitler and the Holocaust by repackaging these rightists, a reality shielded from the U.S. public.

In my visits to Israel I've met with and been at demonstrations with the thousands of both Palestinian and Israeli activists who know that Israel is at a turning point, that it faces a clear choice. They assert that it is exactly with one's enemies that one negotiates to find peace. Americans - Jewish or not and whether we wish to or not - have the opportunity and the responsibility to ensure that Israel makes the right choice. The United States is not a bystander.

Kiev's siege of the Donbass, supported by the Obama administration, is escalating an already perilous crisis.

UN estimates more than 74 percent of those killed are civilians - in a population of 1.8 million where the number of Hamas members is approximately 15,000. Israel does not deny that it killed those using modern aerial technology and precise weaponry courtesy of the U.S. This is not the first time. The gruesome images of decapitated children's bodies and stolen innocence on Gaza's shores are a dreadful repeat of Israel's assault on Gaza in November 2012 and winter 2008-09

In the looming second Iran-Iraq War, the US will be de facto allied with Iran against the would-be al-Qaeda affiliate (ISIS was rejected by core al-Qaeda for viciously attacking other militant vigilante Sunni fundamentalists in turf wars in Syria). In fact, since ISIS is allegedly bankrolled by private Salafi businessmen in Kuwait and elsewhere in the Oil Gulf, the US is on the opposite side of all its former allies of the 1980s.

Reader Comments - Politics and Post-Capitalism; Gabriel Kolko; Shondes - Blacklisted by the `Jewish Community; Yuri Kochiyama; Guantanamo: Bowe Bergdahl; Jewish Day School vs. Teachers Union; Blood Type; Europe post Elections; Supreme Court Ruling on Teacher Tenure; US Foreign Policy. Announcements - Dialogue with Leaders of Mexican Labor Movement - June 26 - New York: 45th contingent Venceremos Brigade; Peoples Climate March - New York - Sept. 20-21

Events appear to be moving toward a political solution to the East-West standoff over Ukraine. But as Clausewitz once noted: "Against stupidity, no amount of planning will prevail." Conn Hallinan looks at the possibility of a resolution to the standoff in Ukraine.

Reader Comments - Edward Snowden, NSA and NBC; Police Crimes; U.S. Cuba Policy; Tiananmen Anniversary; Ralph Fasanella's Art; Prisons and Solidarity Confinement; Workers and Labor; Taxes and Economic Growth; Carbon Pollution; New Populism; Sexual Harassment; Sexual assault of women protestors in India; Les Orear - R.I.P.

Interesting new developments calling for end of ban on travel and trade with Cuba, and for full normalization of relations with socialist Cuba, our closest neighbor in the Caribbean. Open letter to Obama signed by former government officials, including ones who served in his Cabinet. Business groups in the U.S. are now clamoring for a change in policy. Today, Thomas Donohue, President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce headed a business delegation to Cuba.