Portside

Drain the Swamp. Oil | Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj. Boy Erased | Movie. Ice Cube | Arrest the President. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Joins Climate Change Activists in Protest at Nancy Pelosi's Office

Ben Fountain's "Beautiful Country Burn Again" revisits (and tries to make historical sense of) the convulsions of the 2016 election as prelude to--and forewarning of--the perfervid run-up in Trump country to the 2018 midterm contests.

Reader Comments: 2018 elections - What Next; Proportional Representation; Police Links to White Supremacists; Anti-Gravity; Labor International Solidarity; Private Equity and Workers; Refugee Caravan; New War in Gaza; FREE Film Showings; and more....

While Americans teetered, arguing as to which side gained more in the elections, Germans have been balancing on a seesaw of their own – which can also have decisive consequences.

Since the 2016 elections, corporate media narratives about US politics have fixated on the “white working class” as a pivotal demographic, presented as a hardscrabble assortment of disaffected outsiders.

Only 25 countries have ratified ILO convention 189 that declares domestic workers should enjoy the same rights as other workers. Nonetheless, important advances in their struggle have been made world-wide.

Democrats have to keep reminding themselves, and America, that they beat Trump and the Republicans in the competition that mattered most - the only truly national competition this fall. The Democratic mandate is not overwhelming. But it is real.

"Apparently, neither Saudi Arabia's brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi nor its mid-summer bombing of a school bus packed full of children were enough to break the ice surrounding House Majority Leader Paul Ryan's heart."

Crackdown in China, German Greens Surprise Vote, Domestic Workers to Congregate in Cape Town, UK Demos Hit Brexit and Fascists, Chile National Strike, Migrants Fill Rome Streets