Global News and Analysis

Source: Truthdig

The people of France are currently engaged in a major political battle with their government. But those of us on the outside watching the “Yellow Vests” bring their nation to a standstill are also learning a valuable lesson: how to make politicians bend to your will through relentless activism. Within just a few weeks of widespread and continuous protests, French President Emmanuel Macron has given in to several demands, postponing a planned fuel tax hike and offering both tax cuts and a minimum-wage increase. read more

France’s neoliberal order trembles as the yellow vest revolt shatters established political conventions. The new terrain presents both dangers and opportunities.

Source: Roar Magazine

Despite being under attack from the Turkish state and its allied militias operating under the banner of the Free Syrian Army on the one hand, and the Islamic State (ISIS) on the other, behind the front lines of the Syrian civil war the revolution in Rojava continues to develop in exciting ways. Inspired and shaped by the ideas of Abdullah Öcalan and the struggle of the Kurdish freedom movement, Rojava is a revolutionary project with the aim of challenging capitalist modernity through women’s liberation, ecology and radical democracy. read more

Source: Jacobin

The Yellow Vests movement in France is raising up a vital message: blame the fossil-fuel industry and the rich for the ecological crisis, not ordinary people.

Hundreds of thousands of French protesters have flooded into the streets and the Right is salivating, broadcasting the “Yellow Vest” (gilets jaunes) riots there — sparked by an environmentally framed fuel tax — as definitive proof that the fight for climate action is a losing battle.

Bowing to pressure, Emmanuel Macron’s government agreed to quash the tax and caved to a slew of other demands just last night, with the first installment earning praise from Donald Trump. The Rupert Murdoch–owned Wall Street Journal cast its lot in with the rabble, lauding what it called a “Global Carbon Tax Revolt” as the death knell of an “ecological transition” — scare quotes and all. The timing on theirs and Trump’s end couldn’t be better, as talks to finalize the Paris Agreement enter their second week in Poland — talks Macron will skip to attend to matters at home. read more

Source: The Guardian

As the world says goodbye to George HW Bush, I am tempted to add my own personal memories to the mix, and illuminate perhaps his legacy by recounting the two intense nights that my wife and I spent in close proximity to the former president at the end of October 2001.

It was at the Park Hyatt hotel in Sydney, where I had been invited to deliver the Centennial Lecture celebrating the Federation of Australia. The day after our arrival, the hotel manager – a corpulent, affable man of Spanish extraction – asked us if we wouldn’t mind exchanging our suite, only for the next two days, he said, for another one, just as nice, he promised, elsewhere on the premises. read more

Source: Democracy Now! 

As the United States continues to face criticism for tear gassing asylum seekers on the U.S.-Mexico border, we look at the crisis in Honduras and why so many Hondurans are fleeing their homeland. Honduras has become one of the most violent countries in the world because of the devastating drug war and a political crisis that stems in part from a U.S.-backed 2009 coup. We speak with Dana Frank, professor emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her new book is titled, “The Long Honduran Night: Resistance, Terror, and the United States in the Aftermath of the Coup.” read more