When the Chinese politburo gave itself the right to veto nominees for Hong Kong elections in 2016, it ensured that any future legislature on the supposedly independent island would be a puppet regime, its electors literally beholden to Beijing for their office; and by 2019, the puppet regime of Carrie Lam began to deconstruct Hong Kong's independence by introducing the "extradition bill," which would allow Beijing to demand that political dissidents be rendered to the Chinese mainland for show-trials and arbitrary detention.
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In early June, protesters surged into Hong Kong's streets to protest a change to the country's extradition rules that would allow the Chinese state to demand the extradition of political dissidents to the mainland; as the protests grew, Hong Kong's puppet government had no choice but to withdraw its proposal -- but that wasn't enough, and millions of people poured into the streets, demanding the resignation of administrator Connie Lam and the release of imprisoned demonstrators.
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Hong Kong's 2016 Umbrella Revolution saw weeks of mass protests over a change to nomination rules for the city's ruling council, in which the central government in Beijing arrogated to itself the right to decide who could be on the ballot (Boss Tweed: "I don't care who gets to do the voting, so long as I get to do the nominating").
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This morning, the British Transport Police has ordered Virgin Media to switch off the wifi to some undisclosed London Underground stations in a bid to make it harder for climate protesters to organise their activities.
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Not all heroes wear capes.
A group of metalheads playing kazoos drowned out the hate-spreading 'Westboro Baptist Church' cult at the Virginia state capitol. I am proud of my home town. Read the rest
Several weeks ago, Ted Pilkey of Westford, Vermont installed this massive wooden middle finger sculpture on his lawn atop a 16-foot-pole. From Boston.com:
“I’m not trying to cause hate and animosity to the people who live in that town, because there’s very good people in that town,” the 54-year-old Westford native says of his fellow residents in the 2,000-person town. “All the people are very good people.”
With the exception, Pelkey says, of the Westford Selectboard, Development Review Board, and other town leaders, who have blocked his efforts to get a permit to build the 8,000-square-foot garage, so he could move his truck repair and monofilament recycling businesses in nearby Swanton to his own property.
Officials say Pelkey’s applications have fallen short of the town’s standards, but he thinks they’re biased against him...
Although the structure is visible from a state highway, it is outside of the State Right of Way and not within our jurisdiction,” Jacqui DeMen, a spokeswoman for the agency, told Boston.com in an email. “The structure does not meet the statutory definition of ‘sign’ and thus can’t be regulated under the Vermont Billboard Law.”
Perhaps Pelkey was inspired by a similar sculpture outside the Italian stock exchange in Milan.
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Monday is the end of the comment period for a sweeping National Park Service proposal that will have a dramatic effect on the ability of Americans to protest in sight of their government.
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After the fall of the Soviet Union, the political opposition who showed up in Russia's streets was old and grey: people who had lived through the Soviet era and then watched as their state industries and national wealth were looted by oligarchs, and who wanted an equitable system with broadly shared prosperity.
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Elin Ersson is a 21 year old Swedish social work student who boarded a plane at Gothenburg airport yesterday and refused to sit down until an Afghan asylum-seeker who was to be deported that day was offloaded and allowed to remain in Sweden.
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In times of trouble, people want to do something, but as activist Kat Calvin points out, make sure your time and resources are spent wisely. Otherwise you end up enriching grifters: Read the rest
She picks a Mexican restaurant. The irony is not lost on anyone.
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America will be marching to end gun violence on Saturday, March 24. #MarchForOurLives. “Have you registered to vote? RSVP’d for the march? Signed the petition? You can do it all at marchforourlives.com.”
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After the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, students at MDI High School in Bar Harbor, Maine were scheduled to have a routine lock-down drill, in which students practice how to behave if their school is the site of a similar mass shooting; these drills teach children to sacrifice themselves by distracting the shooter before they are murdered in order to give other students a few more seconds during which the police might arrive and kill the shooter.
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Enjoy the dark (very dark) comedy of this new Blondie video for the track "Doom or Destiny," starring Joan Jett and Debbie Harry anchoring an apocalyptic newscast about global warming, nuclear war, and, of course, President Trump.
From Rolling Stone:
Blondie guitarist Chris Stein – who co-wrote "Doom or Destiny" with Harry – likened the clip to "punk-style protest." "In trying times we try harder," he said. "Politics have become the new pop culture phenomena, but it seems the current landscape of music videos has so little to do with true protest or some kind of social message. It can be truthful, but irreverent, fun and funny."
Meanwhile, director Rob Roth hoped the visual would "represent a spectrum of female fierceness," calling the end product "a 'fuck you' to what's going on in the world and a call to arms for women everywhere."
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This short interview with Homer Venters from Physicians for Human Rights, recorded in May at the the Right to Protest conference in Buenas Aires, is a succinct and important summary of the lie of "less-lethal" crowd-control weapons that kill and maim protesters, from tear-gas burns on lung-tissue to lethal, point-blank rubber bullet usage.
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