Global News and Analysis

Source: Waging Nonviolence

Now that the LGBTQ movement in the United States has reached the half-century mark, what can activists learn from its story of struggle? Since polarization continues to deepen, this might be a good time to learn from a movement whose enemies once felt so panicked that some suggested gays be put in concentration camps to protect society from AIDS.

As a young man living in Philadelphia in the late ‘60s, cautiously coming out to friends, I was aware of demonstrations for gay rights at Independence Hall led by Barbara Gittings and others. I was too scared to join them. By then I’d already risked in the civil rights and peace movements, even in a war zone in Vietnam, but publicly coming out as gay seemed even scarier than getting seriously injured. read more

Source: Foreign Policy in Focus

A range of U.S. policies have been deliberately designed to provoke an Iranian response.

Some things are still unclear about Trump’s recent decision to bomb Iran — and his rapid-fire follow-up decision not to.

We still don’t know what he or his bomb-Iran cheerleaders — National Security Adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — thought the bombing would actually accomplish. We also don’t know why Trump decided to recall the bombers. (Trump claimed it’s because a general told him 150 people would die in the attack. But given Trump’s indifference to civilian casualties in Yemen and elsewhere, I’m willing to bet the store that had little to do with it.) read more

Source: The Progressive

Winona LaDuke seems like the perfect person to talk with about the myriad and connected threats we face as a democracy and as a people. Over her long career as an environmentalist and political activist, she has, as she puts it, “spent most of my life fighting stupid projects created by white guys in cities, from what I can figure. I’ve fought uranium mining, coal strip-mining projects, mega-dam projects, nuclear waste dumps—how many more stupid ideas can you come up with? Oh wait, they came up with another one!” read more

Activists are targeting the companies that make ICE run.

Source: Roar Magazine

Eight years after the Arab Spring caused little stir in Algeria, a new generation has since come of age and is taking on the old guard — but the problems run deep.

When in early February Algeria’s ailing octogenarian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced his intention to run for the presidency for a fifth term, millions of Algerians took to the streets in response. After weeks of rallies, Bouteflika was forced to resign on April 2, only to be replaced by a triad of government cronies: Abdelkader Bensalah as interim-president, Noureddine Bedoui as prime minister and Major General Ahmed Gaid Salah, who has emerged as the key power broker in the country. read more

Source: Truthdig

It’s been a harrowing couple of weeks for climate change observers. First, as Vice reported, there was an analysis from an Australian think tank, co-written by Ian Dunlop, a former fossil fuel company CEO, that posits that the planet is “reaching a ‘point of no return’ by mid-century, in which the prospect of a largely uninhabitable Earth leads to the breakdown of nations and the international order.’ ”

Then, on Wednesday, Brown University released a report revealing that the Department of Defense is “the world’s largest institutional user of petroleum and correspondingly, the single largest producer of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the world.” According to the report, the DOD released approximately 1.2 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, between 2001 and 2017. read more