Politico: How (the European) Trump won a second term

The 73-year-old’s politics has invited obvious comparisons with his U.S. counterpart, although he has been on the international political scene far longer. After Trump’s election, he was an early invitee to the White House, being the only European head of state to back Trump as a candidate. “There are many politicians who admired Trump after the elections, when courage is cheap,” Zeman said last year. [...]

In the event though, Zeman ground out a win by hammering the anti-immigration playbook. And his victory was another demonstration of his consummate political skills and proof of the deep division in Czech society that he, more than anyone else, has created and exploited. [...]

Fortified by the win, he appears determined to continue his pugnacious style of governing, particularly his running battle with the media. At the victory celebration, he referred to journalists as “idiots,” and later, according to local media reports, several journalists were manhandled by his bodyguards, and one was physically assaulted. [...]

To win a second five-year term, Zeman had to shrug off questions about his health and accusations that Russia helped fund his election run and was behind a nasty smear campaign against Drahoš, falsely accusing him of pedophilia, collaboration with the former communist secret police and wanting to open Czech borders to mass migration. [...]

However, whether the allegations are true or not, the closeness of Zeman’s victory — 51.36 percent to 48.62 percent — against an opponent with no political experience, suggests that the president is vulnerable and could have been defeated by an opponent with more political savvy.

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The Guardian: We need to rethink our resistance to Donald Trump’s ideas

Every day some terrible fact is exposed and social media rouses itself and ... nothing much happens. We are caught in a cycle of ineffectual reaction. Can this man really be in charge of pushing the nuclear button, we ask, every single time he pushes our buttons? Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury was going to bring it all tumbling down. It is a belting read, in a-bucket-of-KFC way; greasy and ultimately unsatisfying. Hillary Clinton reading bits of it out at the Grammys is surely the ultimate signifier of impotence.

Let’s all laugh at him, us who are so much better.  As a collective strategy, this is proving as futile as my pathetic tweets. The Republican party keeps him in power. The Democrats still appear to be in a state of post traumatic stress disorder, stuck in the loss, unable to put it in the past. Trump has delivered to the right, to the Tea Party element, to the so-called “nativists” (also known as racists). He has cut taxes in ways Mitt Romney lost the nomination for talking about. The liberal revulsion to his misogyny and racism has been mistaken for opposition. It is not enough.

Gary Younge’s recent reporting from Muncie, Indiana, where he also spent a month before Trump’s election, revealed that most Trump voters think he is doing OK (and these people are not even his core supporters). Tax cuts, deregulation and a conservative in the supreme court are all cited as achievements. The underlying forces that propelled people to vote for Trump – a belief he would smash up the system and, yes, racism, are still there. The narrative of a maverick who works against the mainstream media operates successfully in a huge country where news remains suprisingly local.

The focus on his ludicrous ego and ignorance may make us feel superior. But that is all it appears to be doing. He will not be toppled by us jeering at a picture of his enormous arse or reports of his word salad on climate change, his links to Russia and his comments about pussy-grabbing. Not as long as he is supported by racists, the far right, Christian fundamentalists, the global business elite and his own party. And he is. It is time to get serious about what drives this presidency. At the moment, the joke is on us.

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Al Jazeera: Ownership battle heats up over Scottish island of Ulva

It's a beautiful, inhospitable and remote part of the British Isles. You might wonder who would choose to live here, and the answer is few people do. Ulva's human community is dying. In the mid-19th century it was home to 600 people. Today, just six remain. [...]

For Rebecca, and for community activists on Mull, this is an opportunity. New legislation introduced by Scotland's pro-independence Scottish National Party gives community groups an initial chance to buy land before it is put up for sale on the open market. So Rebecca and her friends have several months to raise about US$6m required to buy Ulva.

They're likely to get substantial support from the Scottish Land Fund, which gives money in support of community buy-outs. If they are not successful, they fear a "devastating alternative"; that Ulva could be bought by a wealthy absentee landlord, essentially as a private pleasure island. [...]

Today, some 430 individuals own half of all private land in Scotland, and the question of land ownership remains very emotive. The SNP would like to broaden the ownership.

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Al Jazeera: What is going on in southern Yemen?

On Sunday, forces loyal to the government of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, backed by Saudi Arabia, exchanged fire in the southern Yemeni city of Aden with an armed group aligned with the Southern Transitional Council (STC), a secession movement supported by the United Arab Emirates.

Both sides in this conflict have been fighting alongside the Saudi-led coalition against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels for the past few years now. [...]

Since its liberation from the Houthis, Aden has witnessed severe security challenges, economic and basic infrastructure problems, and most recently growing support for secession from the North. The city has also seen a deliberate attempt to silence activists supporting the Hadi-allied Islah Party (seen as having links to the Muslim Brotherhood), as well as some voices within the Salafi movement with a number of imams gunned down in the last several months. [...]

There are significant regional cleavages within southern Yemen which could gain political salience if Aden proceeds with its independence ambitions. Local identities with roots in the colonial era could re-emerge and aggressively reassert themselves. For example, the Hadramout region may not agree to be ruled again from Aden.

Additionally, the post-independence fate of South Sudan suggests that ill-conceived political separation is inherently dangerous and can lead to a major humanitarian crisis. Seven years after its independence from Sudan, South Sudan has become a tragedy rather than a model for other regions seeking independence.

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The Guardian: The transition is toxic for both Brexiters and remainers

he government’s Brexit policy is so chaotic that it is hiding from the voters the results of its own analysis, which predicts a hit to the economy of up to 8% over the next 15 years. Asked why the prime minister was not publishing the study, which has now leaked, a government source told BuzzFeed News: “Because it’s embarrassing.” [...]

But it’s not just the Brextremists who are worried. Patriotic pro-Europeans are also concerned that we would be swapping our current position, where we are one of the most influential players in Europe, for that of a rule-taker. We would lose our votes in the council of ministers, our MEPs, our commissioner and our judge on the European court of justice. That’s losing, not taking back control. [...]

The EU might well agree to these proposals. The snag, of course, is that the Tory Brextremists would have a conniption, arguing that we’d be a vassal state for even longer. We’d also have to pay yet more money for the privilege, as the £39bn divorce deal the prime minister agreed before Christmas only covers our dues until end 2020.

What’s more, we’d probably lose our budget rebate – meaning the extra payment each year would be about £12bn net. Even patriotic pro-Europeans would worry that this amounted to taxation without representation.

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