Global News and Analysis

Source: The Guardian

The US has a president who embodies many of the things Naomi Klein has been warning about for years. She says her new book had to be written before things got worse

The fact that Naomi Klein predicted the forces that explain the rise to power of Donald Trump gives her no pleasure at all. It is 17 years since Klein, then aged 30, published her first book, No Logo – a seductive rage against the branding of public life by globalising corporations – and made herself, in the words of the New Yorker, “the most visible and influential figure on the American left” almost overnight. She ended the book with what sounded then like “this crazy idea that you could become your own personal global brand”. read more

Source: Alternet

A United Nations Panel of Experts sent its report to the UN Security Council this week. The tenor of the report is bleak. Yemen, say the experts, is ‘in danger of fracturing beyond the point of no return’. Furthermore, the report suggests that despite the almost two years of war, ‘an outright military victory by any one side is no longer a realistic possibility in the near term’. The UN looked at airstrikes by Saudi Arabia’s coalition and found that these are ‘almost certain’ to violate international humanitarian law and that some of the strikes ‘may amount to war crimes’. read more

Source: The Nation

The Kurdish YPG recruits fighters at gunpoint, assassinates political opponents, and suppresses the media.

Erbil, Iraq—The raid began at 3 am in a Syrian village close to the Iraqi border. Kurdish-led military police, many masked, piled out of their pickup trucks, set up roadblocks, drew their weapons, and launched a house-to-house search.

It was America’s favorite Syrian militia, the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, at work. Top figures in the Obama administration and even the professional military praised the YPG as the most effective Syrian force against the Islamic State, or ISIS. (The Trump administration hasn’t yet indicated how it plans to work with the YPG.) read more

Source: In These Times

It’s 3:23 in the morning
and I’m awake
because my great great grandchildren
won’t let me sleep
my great great grandchildren
ask me in dreams
what did you do while the planet was plundered?
what did you do when the earth was unraveling?
—Drew Dellinger

We are living in a time of the convergence of multiple cataclysmic forces: runaway anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD), chronic wars and the most grotesque economic inequality ever witnessed on Earth. And all are worsening by the day. read more

Source: Waging Nonviolence

Throughout his campaign, critics have drawn comparisons between Donald Trump and authoritarian leaders from the past. From his proposed plans to create a Muslim registry, to threats against journalists and other opponents, these critics urge us to learn from history about the dangers of a leader like him rising to power.

Now that Trump is president, however, we must learn from history in a different way. Nonviolent social movements of the past can teach us lessons about how to resist injustice in the years to come. read more

Source: The Nation

An explosion of new activism offers a ray of hope in these dark political times.

The election of Donald Trump was a catastrophe for progressive America, but the damage may be mitigated over the long term by a remarkable surge of energy on the left in response to his election. As many as 5.2 million people participated in hastily organized Women’s Marches across the country, senators’ phones have reportedly been jammed with calls protesting Trump’s cabinet nominees and other early moves, and, according to a poll conducted by The Washington Post, more than one in three Democrats say they plan to become “more involved in the political process in the next year” as a result of the election. That’s true of 40 percent of Democratic women, and almost half of self-identified liberal Democrats. read more