Global News and Analysis

Source: In These Times

The Left should take the Trump threat very seriously.

To gin up progressive votes for center-right candidates, Democrats cry wolf every four years: “This is the most important election ever! If the Republican wins, the world will come to an end!” Understandably, progressives who feel burned by this routine have joined the “Never Hillary” camp. And it’s hard to disagree when Clinton rubs elbows with neocons, Wall Street bankers and Henry Kissinger.

But the moral of the fable is this: The wolf eventually shows up—and no one takes the threat seriously. read more

Source: Waging Nonviolence

A significant victory in the long struggle to end the reign of Uganda’s military dictator was won last week after a bold action by the country’s burgeoning women’s movement. In late August, Uganda’s parliament presented a bill before House Speaker Rebecca Kadaga suggesting that the age limits for judges be raised, which activists believed would inevitably lead to the raising of presidential age limits. Yoweri Museveni, who has ruled Uganda for 30 years, is set to surpass the constitutionally-permitted maximum age of 75 this term. read more

Source: Truthout

How serious of an issue is climate change? Does global warming really threaten human civilization? Can it be reversed, or is it already late?

In this exclusive interview for Truthout, two scholars, Noam Chomsky, one of the world’s leading public intellectuals, and Graciela Chichilnisky, a renowned economist and climate change authority who wrote and designed the carbon market of the Kyoto Protocol, concur on a few key points. First of all, global warming and climate change constitute the greatest challenge facing humanity, and may pose an even greater threat to our species than that of nuclear weapons. Secondly, the operations of the capitalist world economy are at the core of the climate change threat because of over-reliance on fossil fuels and a perverse sense of economic values. Thirdly, the world needs to adopt alternative energy systems as quickly as possible. And finally, it is crucial to explore technologies to assist us in reversing climate change — as time is running out. read more

Source/Video: Democracy Now!

While Democracy Now! was covering the Standing Rock standoff earlier this month, we spoke to Winona LaDuke, longtime Native American activist and executive director of the group Honor the Earth. She lives and works on the White Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota. She spent years successfully fighting the Sandpiper pipeline, a pipeline similar to Dakota Access. We met her right outside the Red Warrior Camp, where she has set up her tipi. Red Warrior is one of the encampments where thousands of Native Americans representing hundreds of tribes from across the U.S. and Canada are currently resisting the pipeline’s construction. read more

Source: The Guardian

The world has been electrified by protests against the Dakota access pipeline. Is this a new civil rights movement where environmental and human rights meet?

A pioneer monument and a lot of state troopers with batons and riot helmets stood between the mostly young native activists and the North Dakota state capitol on Friday afternoon. Many of the activists arriving at the capitol’s vast green lawn hadn’t heard that the Washington DC judge had decided against the Standing Rock reservation Sioux lawsuit. That was the lawsuit asserting that the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) had gone forward without adequate tribal consultation. There was a sign of anguish when the news was delivered by megaphone, and then, a few minutes later, shouts of joy as a young woman with a long black braid standing in the pouring rain announced the victory chasing the heels of that defeat. read more

Source: Jacobin

Alexis Tsipras and his Syriza government have overseen privatizations at a scale unseen since German reunification.

The most persistent myth concerning Syriza’s capitulation to the troika is that it was a “forced choice.” To put it differently, “there was no alternative” to signing a third memorandum, given an extremely unfavorable balance of forces at a European and international level. This is the only seemingly rational argument Tsipras and his followers have been able to produce defending their actions.

The story, however, doesn’t end here. Alexis Tsipras didn’t just dismiss the alternatives proposed by nearly half his own party and lead his government to the most spectacular surrender ever perpetrated by a left-wing political force. He also agreed to stay in power to fully and faithfully implement the policies of his former adversaries. read more