ADDED 02/09/2019
FROM 02/02/2019 | BrasilWire
BY Brian Meier
Indigenous people and their supporters protest in 51 cities around the World against the neo-fascist Bolsonaro administration’s dismantling of reservations, cultural and land rights and his supporters’ genocidal threats. January 31 was marked by protests for Brazilian Indigenous rights in cities across Brazil as people took to the streets to protest a new wave of […]
see source
ADDED 02/09/2019
FROM 02/05/2019 | The Conversation
BY Richard Carney
Russia’s successful interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election may inspire other countries to do the same. These other countries don’t look threatening. They look like democracies. But they’re not. They’re a special kind of autocratic regime that masquerades as a democracy. And what looks like benevolent conduct by these countries can quickly change into aggressive, […]
see source
ADDED 02/09/2019
FROM 02/09/2019 | Red Pepper
BY Gabriel Levy
Evidence that anti-fascist activists were tortured by Russian federal security officers is “really disturbing”, president Vladimir Putin told the Kremlin’s own human rights council in December. He promised to “look into it”. But ten of the young activists in question remain in detention awaiting trial in the “Network” case, charged with organising a terrorist group and illegal possession […]
see source
ADDED 02/09/2019
FROM 02/06/2019 | HuffPost
BY Christopher Mathias
A Virginia police sergeant has been suspended after his apparent affinity for a neo-pagan white nationalist group was exposed by local anti-fascist activists. Sgt. Robert Stamm, 36, was placed on paid administrative leave Wednesday, according to a statement from the Virginia Division of Capitol Police, the law enforcement agency tasked with policing the state Capitol […]
see source
ADDED 02/09/2019
FROM 02/08/2019 | Middle East Eye
BY Andreas Krieg
The self-immolation of a street vendor in Tunisia in December 2010 broke a barrier of fear for Arabs, long muted and intimidated by authoritarian autocrats across the region. Mohamed Bouazizi’s desperate act of protest set in motion a wave of civil societal activism, disobedience, protest and eventually revolution that would ultimately overthrow some of the […]
see source
ADDED 02/09/2019
FROM 02/19/2018 | The Atlantic
BY JAMES TRAUB
The death of liberalism constitutes the publishing world’s biggest mass funeral since the death of God half a century ago. Some authors, like conservative philosopher Patrick Deneen, of Why Liberalism Failed, have come to bury yesterday’s dogma. Others, like Edward Luce (The Retreat of Western Liberalism), Mark Lilla (The Once and Future Liberal), and Steven Levitsky […]
see source
ADDED 02/09/2019
FROM 02/08/2019 | Truthout
BY Drew Hallowell
By now you have probably heard about Gritty, the mascot for the Philadelphia Flyers hockey team who has become nothing less than a phenomenon since debuting last September. Gritty has quickly become an NHL all-star and symbol of everything Philly, but there is much more to the orange, wide-eyed monster. Look no further than a resolution introduced by members […]
see source
ADDED 02/09/2019
FROM 02/07/2019 | Council on Foreign Relations
BY Michelle D. Gavin
The alarming reports out of Tanzania have become commonplace. Current Tanzanian President John Magufuli, who swept into office on a popular anti-corruption platform, has been presiding over a shocking decline in political and civil rights in the country. Civil society leaders, opposition politicians, journalists, and businesspeople feel unsafe on their own soil—and with good reason. […]
see source
ADDED 02/04/2019
FROM 02/04/2019 | EuropeNow
BY EuropeNow
Lombard League, Northern League, League: in recent years the regionalist formation, which had emerged in Lombardy in the 1980s as the vocal representative of autonomist and anti-southern sentiment in the rich northern region, has converted into a nativist Italian nationalist party and solidified an alliance with Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France (recently renamed […]
see source
ADDED 02/04/2019
FROM 02/04/2019 | Just Security
BY Justin Sherman
Digital authoritarianism, defined broadly as wielding technology to enhance or enable authoritarian governance, is spreading around the world. While the Economist Intelligence Unit’s annual Democracy Index found that, on a global level, “democracy stopped declining in 2018” for the first time in three years, the researchers cautioned that it may be merely a “pause.” In 2019, the […]
see source
ADDED 02/04/2019
FROM 02/04/2019 | The Guardian
BY Sean Cooney
A 17-year-old who ‘couldn’t find Spain on a map’ walked across the Pyrenees to join the Spanish civil war’s freedom fighters. Folk trio the Young’uns explain how Johnny Longstaff’s extraordinary life inspired their latest album Spanish civil war British fighter Johnny Longstaff in Catalonia. Photograph: Duncan Longstaff It began nearly four years ago in Clevedon. We were […]
see source
ADDED 01/31/2019
FROM 01/28/2019 | Truthdig
BY Chris Hedges
The ruling elites are painfully aware that the foundations of American power are rotting. The outsourcing of manufacturing in the United States and the plunging of over half the population into poverty will, they know, not be reversed. The self-destructive government shutdown has been only one of numerous assaults on the efficiency of the administrative […]
see source