Global News and Analysis

Source: Tom Dispatch

You remember. It was supposed to be 21st-century war, American-style: precise beyond imagining; smart bombs; drones capable of taking out a carefully identified and tracked human being just about anywhere on Earth; special-operations raids so pinpoint-accurate that they would represent a triumph of modern military science. Everything “networked.” It was to be a glorious dream of limited destruction combined with unlimited power and success. In reality, it would prove to be a nightmare of the first order. read more

Source: The Intercept

EVEN AS PRESIDENT DONALD Trump faces ever-intensifying investigations into the alleged connections between his top aides and family members and powerful Russian figures, he serves as commander in chief over a U.S. military that is killing an astonishing and growing number of civilians. Under Trump, the U.S. is re-escalating its war in Afghanistan, expanding its operations in Iraq and Syria, conducting covert raids in Somalia and Yemen, and openly facilitating the Saudi’s genocidal military destruction of Yemen. read more

Source: Waging Nonviolence

2016 saw the emergence of a powerful movement against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, or DAPL, through land vital to Native communities, especially the Standing Rock Sioux. For non-Native people who have not been paying attention to indigenous rights struggles over the past several decades, the #NoDAPL movement may have served as a wake-up call to some of the injustices still confronting these communities. For others, as Tom Hastings points out in “Turtle Island 2016 Civil Resistance Snapshot,” in the Journal for the Study of Peace and Conflict, #NoDAPL is simply another in a long line of civil resistance struggles Native communities have mobilized, often successfully, to claim their rights. He highlights this recent history of Native American and First Nations civil resistance movements on Turtle Island — the name, from Lenape mythology, that refers to the landmass others call North America — and takes stock of their characteristics, challenges and successes, arguing that nonviolent resistance has been a more effective strategy than violent resistance in defending Native peoples and their “lifeways.” read more

Source: The New Internationalist

We should not underestimate the US president’s talent for undermining his own job security.

It took only a few months.

Donald Trump scarcely made it past his first 100 days as President of the United States before the prospect of impeachment went from fringe fantasy to plausible possibility.

Trump apparently hoped that he could make a brewing scandal disappear with his abrupt firing of Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey – the official responsible for investigating his campaign’s possible collusion with Russian interference in the US election. But the move only intensified scrutiny. It also raised the spectre of presidential obstruction of justice, itself an impeachable offence. read more

Source: The Nation

They’re the next generation, and they’ve been picking up the slack of gutted local newsrooms and indifferent national outlets.

 Catherine Palmer was already a seasoned student journalist at The Johns Hopkins News-Letter when Freddie Gray, a Baltimore native and black man, died in police custody, provoking protests across the city that swelled into what would be called the Baltimore Uprising. Even so, she was only 19 when she found herself one of the first reporters on the ground at a pivotal moment in April 2015, thrust onto the scene to cover the peaceful protests and outpouring of emotion in the wake of Gray’s death. read more