Populists are out to divide us. They must be stopped -Timothy Garton Ash, theguardian.com

Anthony Bourdain: The Post-Election Interview- eater.com

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable

A fictional embodiment of toxic masculinity building his own fascist state

is no longer just a dark fantasy to be indulged on Sunday nights. I had to share this critique made by Sam Adams from Slate. The article wasn't about Donald Trump but about the seventh season of AMC's The Walking Dead. He was writing about how the shows viewership has plunged by about 50% since the sociopath Negan character was added to the mix. Since the season began after the election of Trump he mused about the show coming too close to real life. The opening sentence of this thread is how he phrased it. I think he is spot on.

Russia and the Threat to Liberal Democracy

Source: The Atlantic

Since the end of World War II, the most crucial underpinning of freedom in the world has been the vigor of the advanced liberal democracies and the alliances that bound them together. Through the Cold War, the key multilateral anchors were NATO, the expanding European Union, and the U.S.-Japan security alliance. With the end of the Cold War and the expansion of NATO and the EU to virtually all of Central and Eastern Europe, liberal democracy seemed ascendant and secure as never before in history.

Under the shrewd and relentless assault of a resurgent Russian authoritarian state, all of this has come under strain with a speed and scope that few in the West have fully comprehended, and that puts the future of liberal democracy in the world squarely where Vladimir Putin wants it: in doubt and on the defensive.

On the global chessboard, there has been no more deft and brilliant (and of late, lucky) player than Putin. From the early days of his presidency a decade and a half ago, he began to signal that he intended to make Russia great again, and that he saw this imperative as a zero-sum game: As the West gained friendships among post-communist states, Russia lost, and so everything possible had to be done to force Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, and the Balkan states out of a Western liberal orientation and back into the greater Russian orbit.

he first dramatic salvo came in the summer of 2008, when Russia intervened militarily to back separatist forces in the enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia seeking to break away from Georgia. Russia’s military assault was brief but brutal, and involved bombing civilian populations both in the disputed areas and in the rest of Georgia, as well as attacking fleeing civilians. The overconfident pro-Western president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, was dealt a painful lesson courtesy of Putin, and the two breakaway “republics” remain under Russian occupation to this day. It was the first time since the end of the Soviet Union that Russia’s military violated the sovereignty of an independent state, but it would not be the last.



Read more: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/12/russia-liberal-democracy/510011/

Civil rights group condemns move to block Trump inauguration protests

Source: france24

A civil rights group on Wednesday urged US officials to free up Washington landmarks for thousands of people planning protests around the inauguration of president-elect Donald Trump.

The Washington-based Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) said the National Park Service (NPS) had handed over control of sites such as the Lincoln Memorial to the private committee overseeing Trump’s inauguration “weeks” before and after the ceremony on January 20.

That move has left at least a dozen protest groups without prime venues, a violation of Americans’ constitutional rights, fund officials said. The Lincoln Memorial is a symbolic reminder as the site of 1960s protests for civil rights and against the Vietnam War.

The National Park Service “has done a massive land grab inhibiting all those who want to exercise their right to free speech,” Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a constitutional rights lawyer and PCJF executive director, said at a news conference.

Read more: http://www.france24.com/en/20161209-usa-trump-inauguration-protests-civil-rights-group-condemn-womens-march-washington