1 – Autocracy: Rules for Survival (Masha Gessen)
“Rule #6: Remember the future. Nothing lasts forever. Donald Trump certainly will not, and Trumpism, to the extent that it is centered on Trump’s persona, will not either. Failure to imagine the future may have lost the Democrats this election. They offered no vision of the future to counterbalance Trump’s all-too-familiar white-populist vision of an imaginary past. They had also long ignored the strange and outdated institutions of American democracy that call out for reform—like the electoral college, which has now cost the Democratic Party two elections in which Republicans won with the minority of the popular vote. That should not be normal. But resistance—stubborn, uncompromising, outraged—should be.”
http://www.nybooks.com/…/trump-election-autocracy-rules-fo…/
2 – Please, Theresa May, save my husband from death in Bahrain (Zainab Ebrahim)
“Their aim was to punish Mohammed for his participation in the pro-democracy protests by getting him to confess to a crime he did not commit. Eventually, Mohammed and his co-defendants signed false “confessions” to make the torture stop. Mohammed was not allowed to see or speak to his lawyer until after his trial had started. He was convicted on the basis of his forced confession, even though he had recanted it. This “evidence” – which would immediately be thrown out of any court in Britain – is the reason that my beloved husband and the father of my children is facing imminent execution.”
https://www.theguardian.com/…/theresa-may-save-mohammed-ram…
3 – After The Islamic State (Robin Wright)
“Daesh has distorted the image of Islam,” Rahim said, using an Arabic term for the Islamic State. “Everything it’s done—its videos of beheadings, burning prisoners alive, drowning them, the destruction of churches and places of worship—all of this has nothing to do with Islam. But I don’t see any country or leading figure coming in and offering new breath for the Sunni world.
“It makes me very sad,” he went on. “This is what makes me fear that Daesh may be defeated politically and militarily but the idea won’t die. If the region were stable, there would be no place for Daesh to reëmerge. But it isn’t stable. The same thing that happened in Syria or Libya could happen in Algeria or Morocco or someplace else in this chaos.”
http://www.newyorker.com/…/20…/12/12/after-the-islamic-state
