Portside

Unions were finally on an upswing. Now, they’re staring down the barrel of the GOP’s gun.

One day after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers again delayed construction of the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL)—and one week after the election of Donald Trump all but ensured the project's eventual completion—actions are taking place in hundreds of cities across the United States and around the world on Tuesday calling for the crude oil pipeline to be rejected.

The selection of Stephen Bannon, the executive chairman of the far-right website Breitbart News and the CEO of Trump’s presidential campaign, deepened the fears of liberal activists that the Trump administration would embolden and enable antisemites, racists and misogynists.

 Ross made his money collecting “distressed assets”—failing steel and textile mills in the midwest and south, and coal mines in Appalachia. Dubbed the “The King of Bankruptcy,” Ross cut jobs, wages, pensions, and health benefits at the companies he acquired, and reaped the profits.   So much for Trump’s supposed commitment to coalfield workers.

In September 2002, Amr Moussa, then head of the Arab League, offered a warning I’ve never forgotten. The Bush administration’s intention to invade Iraq and topple its ruler, Saddam Hussein, was already obvious. Were they to take such a step, Moussa insisted, it would “open the gates of hell.” His prediction turned out to be anything but hyperbole -- and those gates have never again closed.

Victors’ spoils; Broken hearts, sticky notes; The peculiar Electoral College; Misogyny and militancy; Winning

Ever since his workshop days in Japan, gunpowder artist, Cai Guo-Qiang, has been obsessed with creating a Ladder In The Sky, exploring ways to create a structure that could hang in the air and support a series of fuses. Each time he found a sponsor to underwrite the Ladder something fell through, Finally, as shown in the film, he decided to pay for the experiment himself, to create it in the fishing village on Huiyu Island, Gwanhzhu, where his grandmother was born.

Four years ago, when Obama won re-election, he carried this town by a 67-26 percent margin. This year, Trump won 50-42 percent over Hillary Clinton. They didn’t care about Clinton’s emails or where Trump likes to grab women. They cared about their jobs. They know Trump alone can’t save the mill from closure, but they felt they knew what they’d be getting with Clinton: Four, or even eight, more years of the same.

“[DAPL] brings to the surface all the issues dealing with treaties," says Bald Eagle. "It brings up all the wrongdoings that have been happening in the past. The American government has repeatedly shoved all of their wrongdoings underneath the rug, and the issue with the Dakota Access Pipeline has pulled that rug off, and now we have to look at everything that’s been done wrong.”

For many years, the U.S. — like the U.K. and other Western nations — has embarked on a course that virtually guaranteed a collapse of elite authority and internal implosion. From the invasion of Iraq to the 2008 financial crisis to the all-consuming framework of prisons and endless wars, societal benefits have been directed almost exclusively to the very elite institutions most responsible for failure at the expense of everyone else.