Portside

South Africa’s ruling African National Congress party conceded defeat in Nelson Mandela Bay and could lose political control of Johannesburg and Pretoria in the greatest electoral defeat for the ANC since the fall of apartheid. Widespread unemployment and poverty, rampant corruption, and political infighting were deemed the main contributors to the ANC’s political setback, particularly in the urban centers. Never before had the ANC received less than 60% of the vote.

This week, activists from Jewish Voice for Peace and other groups stood behind Black Lives Matter while more conservative parts of the American Jewish community condemned the movement after it criticized Israeli policies towards Palestinians, which it characterized as “genocide,” ...It’s the latest example of how the growing Palestinian rights movement has driven a wedge in the American Jewish community.

We live in a state of widespread public ignorance and public passivity because of government secrecy and denial about the “raging, insatiable beast” of nuclear weapons and because of the immense insider power of the defense industry.

At the People's Assembly, Alicia Garza said that her decision about who to vote for would be based on choosing “the battlefield that is most advantageous for us to move the vision that we want,” backing the candidate that allows us “to embrace our biggest vision of what’s possible” while insisting “that we deserve a whole lot more.”“I am not voting for candidates,” she said. “I am voting for terrain." See the video at https://youtu.be/p13WBHQrxpE

Some people think the Court is the most important issue, but maybe it is not.

The theme of Indiana poet Brian Brodeur's poem is the loss caused by the slave trade: lost history, lost identity, and the disbelief that follows its discovery.

Noted journalist John Pilger talks about China, Okinawa, and U.S. policy in Asia.

A year after diplomatic relations between the two countries were reestablished on July 20, 2015, Granma International spoke with Josefina Vidal, director general for the United States at the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Relations, to discuss Cuba-U.S. relations as they stand today.

The factory, now controlled by the workers, can provide 20 percent of the national demand for hard-to-find personal hygiene products.

Democracy briskly and transparently recasts traditional world histories and world populations frequently left out of the narrative into a consideration of how different political alliances, including those of repressed and typically underrepresented groups, demand democracy through use of language and direct action. Democracy connects the local and the global, as well as the past and present, in understanding the complex and shifting notions of democracy.