Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

I really should read my own blog.

You are here: Home / Organizing & Resistance / #OWS / #OccupyHongKong: “After A Hectic Week…”

#OccupyHongKong: “After A Hectic Week…”

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From the SCMP liveblog:

After a hectic week, Occupy Central protest sites are quiet on Monday as some demonstrators leave for work, others remain and authorities keep their distance.

Occupy supporters and the government are currently in a deadlock over negotiations. Preliminary discussions to prepare for talks with Chief Secretary Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor have begun, but progress has been slow with both sides disagreeing on the guidelines behind the meetings…

From the NYTimes, “China’s Outer Regions Watch Hong Kong Protests Intently“:

… Among Tibetans and Uighurs, beleaguered ethnic minorities in China’s far west, there is hope that the protests will draw international scrutiny to what they say are Beijing’s broken promises for greater autonomy.

The central government’s refusal to even talk with pro-democracy advocates in Hong Kong, exiled activists add, also highlights a longstanding complaint among many ethnic minority groups in China: the party’s reliance on force over dialogue when dealing with politically delicate matters.

“We’ve seen this movie before, but when people stand up to the Chinese government in places like Lhasa or Urumqi and meet brutal resistance, there is no foreign media to show the world what’s happening,” said Nury Turkel, a Uighur-American lawyer and activist, referring to the regional capitals of Tibet and Xinjiang. “The difference here is what’s happening in Hong Kong is taking place in real time, for all the world to see.”

Few places are watching the protests as closely as Taiwan, the self-governed island that China claims as part of its territory.
Beijing’s refusal to grant Hong Kong the unfettered elections that were promised when the former British colony was returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 — a move that prompted the protests — has sharpened opposition to President Ma Ying-jeou of Taiwan and his efforts to forge closer economic ties with the mainland….

In recent days, rallies in Singapore, Seoul, Manila and elsewhere have drawn thousands of people expressing solidarity with the demonstrators in Hong Kong….

Reader Interactions

7Comments

  1. 1.

    Hobbes

    That democracy index is a little biased: 4 of the top 5 countries are monarchies, and Iceland barely counts as a country, its entire population could stay in Vegas hotels at the same time.

  2. 2.

    Amir Khalid

    @Hobbes:
    I don’t see how being monarchies makes those four countries in the top five countries any less democratic. Their monarchs are merely ceremonial heads of state. And New Zealand’s ceremonial monarch lives in London, about as far away from New Zealand as one can get.

    Nor do I see how a small population diminishes Iceland’s democracy in any way.

  3. 3.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Hobbes: I was also wondering what the methodology was behind that index, the link in the twitter doesn’t work.

  5. 5.

    Amir Khalid

    @BillinGlendaleCA:
    Sure I do. But what Malaysia lacks in democracy (and I’ll be blunt, it lacks a lot) is more the fault of the coalition that has ruled since independence, and means to keep ruling no matter what, than of our constitutional monarchy.

  6. 6.

    scav

    I’d wonder about how the rate of voter participation et al factors into the ratings — hint hint. Humungous advertising budgets and perpetual campaigning among the usual clonal subjects does not an ideal democracy make.

  7. 7.

    Kylroy

    @Amir Khalid: Totally agree on the first point – they’re monarchies in name only.

    AS for the second – it diminishes it not in the sense that they’re doing it wrong, but that what they do can’t necessarily scale up. Iceland is comparitively wealthy, ethnically homogenous, and extremely isolated – the international equivalent of a gated community.

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