In the dusty arid town of Dikwa, tens of thousands of Nigerians queue for hours in sweltering 40-degree heat for water. Fatuma is one of 100,000 people displaced in the Borno State town, the epicenter of Nigeria’s conflict. She sifts through remnants of food aid seeds, drying them out to prepare them to eat. The violence was the first thing Nigerians feared for their lives. Now they fear famine.
Source: Alternet
Last Thursday, the head of the UN Children’s Agency (UNICEF), Anthony Lake, arrived in Amman, Jordan after a heart-wrenching tour of war-ravaged Yemen. ‘Stop the war,’ said Lake. It was a clear message. No subtlety was needed. ‘All of us,’ he said, ‘should feel ‘immense pity, even agony, for all of those children and others who are suffering, and they should feel anger, anger that this, our generation, is scarred by the irresponsibility of governments and others to allow these things to be happening.’
The British High Court recently rejected a legal action challenging the UK's ongoing export of arms to Saudi Arabia. A very bloody, very profitable business is to continue. The result will deepen the crisis unleashed by the US and UK-backed Saudi war on Yemen.
We can learn a lot about strategy from the U.S. civil rights movement. What worked for them in facing an almost overwhelming array of forces was a particular technique known as the escalating nonviolent direct action campaign. Since that 1955-65 decade we’ve learned much more about how powerful campaigns build powerful movements leading to major change. Some of those lessons are here.
Source: The Nation
The northeastern Rif, Berber heartland and site of the 1920s Rif Republic, is on fire—and the protests are spreading.
Curfews, roadblocks, checkpoints on highways leading to Al Hoceima in northeastern Morocco; neighborhoods encircled by military trucks; police attacking protesters; mass arrests; activists abducted off the streets. Since May 26, the first day of Ramadan, the city of Al Hoceima has seen continuous tumult, culminating with a day of bloody clashes on June 26, in what is now being called the Black Eid of 2017. Tensions had been running high in the Rif region, with ongoing protests since October, when a young fish vendor died at the hands of the police, crushed to death in a trash compactor as he tried to retrieve his confiscated merchandise. A truce of sorts had been negotiated in mid-May, when a ministerial delegation arrived in the city of Al Hoceima promising various development projects.
Source: In These Times
The United States is using this Pacific colony as its own private firing range.
This past Fourth of July, while I listened to the fireworks outside the Capitol building, my phone started buzzing with news alerts. North Korea, they said, had tested an intercontinental ballistic missile. Headlines emphasized that it could supposedly reach Alaska.
But much closer than Alaska is the tiny island of Guam—a U.S. colonial possession in the Pacific long exploited as a military base. My grandmother was born there, and much of my family remains. At just 30 miles long and 8 miles wide, Guam is often called “the unsinkable aircraft carrier,” as a third of the island is covered in military bases.
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