Portside

Victor Grossman reports from Berlin on causes of the spate of violence striking Germany and across Europe. We need not look too far to find possible causes of such hatred or, frequently, of distorted despair. I think of what so many have gone through. War-torn home towns, shootings, explosions and bombings in their native Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, a terrifying flight to get away, to find some haven, where they can escape and perhaps even realize their hopes and wishes.

An Iraqi politician once said that the problem in his country was that parties and movements were “too weak to win, but too strong to lose.” This is increasingly the pattern for the whole region and is spreading elsewhere. It carries with it the possibility of an endless cycle of indecisive wars and an era of instability that has already begun.

As Clinton’s speech recognized, a Trump presidency promises an unprepared, dangerous foreign policy. But her refusal to engage with the real, robust alternative offered by Sanders may say more about her own war-driven foreign policy than anything else.

Art as politics in the powerful new exhibit at the Whitney Museum in New York by Laura Poitras. Museum director Adam Weinberg sets the show "in the tradition of socially and politically engaged artists - progressive artists such as Ben Shahn and Alice Neal." He said, "The aim of the projections is to provoke moral and ethical responses." Indeed, they do. Or they should.

The Middle-East map is being redrawn in Syria and Iraq by Moscow and Washington. The Obama Administration is co-leading with the Kremlin to help slice the Syria-Iraq area into five or more political states so as to deconflict this region and hopefully reduce the attractiveness of ISIL.

The refugee influx struck a strong emotional chord with me, as a Hungarian-American visiting my parents' homeland. I had arrived in Hungary on August 25 with my wife Debi, to visit my late Catholic mother's relatives, and retrace the stories of my Jewish father who had survived the genocide of World War II.

Washington helped create the conditions with its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The numbers keep on growing. The authorities are overwhelmed, as are the solidarity networks. The refugee crisis has revealed a different rift: between thousands of ordinary citizens, from Greece to Germany to Britain, ready to share their bread their homes, and governments determined to fortify their borders and protect their power, backed by both the anxious and the frankly xenophobic.