Global News and Analysis

Source: The Guardian

Imprisoned leaker and activist confirms plan to run as a Democrat in Maryland with video hashtagged #WeGotThis, saying: ‘We need someone willing to fight’

After seven years in military prison for carrying out one of the largest leaks in US history and coming out as a transgender woman, Chelsea Manning is embarking on the next stage in her epic journey: running for a seat in the US Senate.

The former US army private, who was held in military lockup for far longer than any other official leaker in modern times, has declared in a federal filing her intention to run in this year’s Democratic primaries for a Maryland Senate seat. Now 30, she confirmed she was entering the race in a video posted on Twitter on Sunday under her now established internet trademark #WeGotThis. read more

Source: The Intercept

Five years ago, when 350.org helped kick off the global fossil fuel divestment movement, one of the slogans the team came up with was “We > Fossil Fuels.”

The T-shirts and stickers were nice, but I have to admit that I never really felt it. Bigger than fossil fuels? With their bottomless budgets? Their endless capacity to blanket the airwaves and bankroll political parties? The slogan always made me kind of sad.

Well, yesterday in New York City, listening to Mayor Bill de Blasio announce that the city had just filed a lawsuit against five oil majors and intended to divest $5 billion from fossil fuel companies, I actually felt it. After being outgunned by the power and wealth of this industry for so many years, the balance of power seemed to physically tilt. It’s still not equal — not by a long shot — but something big changed nonetheless. Regular humans may not be more powerful than the fossil fuel companies now — but we might be soon. read more

Source: In These Times

IN SPRING 2016, a U.S. presidential candidate made the above prediction to Businessweek. That candidate was none other than Donald Trump, and he was speaking of the GOP. His words seem ludicrous, but Trump’s anti-corruption pose, populism and vaguely left-sounding economic rhetoric would ultimately take him all the way to the White House.

Trump was also openly racist, misogynistic and unencumbered by facts. But he foregrounded economic decline and corruption—and the tight link between them—with a rhetorical force and consistency that always eluded his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. read more

Source: The Nation

Trump’s threats to kill the nuclear deal have inhibited investment, leading to continued economic distress—but it was the Iranian government’s leaked budget that enraged the public.

When the Iranian protests broke out last Thursday, I immediately reached out to friends, family, and organizers of the Green Movement, which erupted after the 2009 stolen elections, to find out what was going on. But almost everyone I spoke to gave me the same answer: We don’t know. We haven’t been able to piece it together yet. We are all confused. read more

Source: ProPublica

Shortly before 5 a.m. on a recent November night, a garbage truck with a New York Yankees decal on the side sped through a red light on an empty street in the Bronx. The two workers aboard were running late. Before long, they would start getting calls from their boss. “Where are you on the route? Hurry up, it shouldn’t take this long.” Theirs was one of 133 garbage trucks owned by Action Carting, the largest waste company in New York City, which picks up the garbage and recycling from 16,700 businesses. read more

Source: Alternet

All eyes are on Iran. On December 28, as if from nowhere, protests broke out in Iran’s second most populous city, Mashhad – out in the far east, near the Turkmenistan and Afghanistan border. The protests moved with deliberate speed across the country, to Kermanshah in the west and Bandar Abbas in the south. Tehran was not spared, although it is not the epicentre of the protests. This is unlike the Green Movement of 2009, when Tehran’s reform minded citizens came onto the streets angry with what they saw as a stolen election. It is unlike the student uprisings of 1999, again centred in Tehran, when students protested over the closure of the reform newspaper Salam. read more