Portside

They’ll tell you it was abortion. Sorry, the historical record’s clear: It was segregation.

The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, [into Afghanistan] I wrote to President Carter, essentially: “We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war." -- Zbigniew Brzezinski

Leonard Cohen | Democracy Is Coming to the USA. Leela James | A Change Is Gonna Come. Trump Cries Fraud and Calls Dibs on the Presidency. How QAnon Has Gone Global. Trump, McCain, Bush and Carter: Different Reactions to Bad Election Results.

Against all odds, 122 countries agreed in July to ban nuclear weapons. At the heart of the United Nations treaty is an explicit ethical goal: to protect peoples of the world from the humanitarian catastrophe that would ensue if nuclear weapons were employed. Once 50 states ratify the treaty, it will enter into international law. The United States, the only country to use nuclear weapons, dropped the first atomic bomb on Aug. 6, 1945 at Hiroshima, and Aug. 9 on Nagasaki.

The UN should mandate an end to the siege of Gaza as a first step towards a settlement.

The late Venezuelan president's Bolívarian revolution has been crucial to a wider Latin American philosophy - "History will affirm, justifiably, the role Hugo Chávez played in the integration of Latin America, and the significance of his 14-year presidency to the poor people of Venezuela" former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva