#OWS

Friday Morning Open Thread: The Internet Is For Remembering Grudges

by Anne Laurie| April 15, 20164:12 am| 121 Comments

This post is in: #OWS, Open Threads, Assholes

The UC system spent $175,000 trying to remove this picture from the internet, so please, please do NOT retweet this. pic.twitter.com/Jh22fVLnR9

— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) April 14, 2016

Hey, remember Pepper Spray Everything Cop? (It was in all the media!) UC Davis would rather you didn’t. The LA Times reports that UC Davis is SOL on this:

… Newly released documents obtained by the Sacramento Bee show the university worked to clean up both its own image and that of Chancellor Linda Katehi.

In one case, UC Davis worked with Maryland company Nevins & Associates on a six-month contract that paid $15,000 a month, according to a copy of the contract. That contract was signed in January 2013, just a few months after the UC regents agreed to pay a settlement to 21 UC Davis students and alumni who sued the university….

As part of its contract, Nevins & Associates said it would work to remedy the “venomous rhetoric about UC Davis and the chancellor” through “strategic placement of online content.”…

Results, right now the top three insta-google results for ‘UC Davis’ are about the coverup, rather than the original incident; first two results for Chancellor Linda Katehi are local news covering last night’s calls for her resignation.

***********
Apart from snark fatigue (and/or cursing tree pollen, if your histamines are as hairtrigger as mine), what’s on the agenda as we wrap up another week?

Friday Morning Open Thread: The Internet Is For Remembering GrudgesPost + Comments (121)

Au Revoir, #OccupyHongKong

by Anne Laurie| December 16, 20142:35 am| 10 Comments

This post is in: #OWS, Foreign Affairs, Daydream Believers

https://t.co/3ipZEQCt56 #umhk #OccupyHongKong pic.twitter.com/VErtiDzf5w

— Helen Ng (@helenlena_hk) December 16, 2014

The PRC tanks never rolled in, but eventually the street-clearing trucks did. According to the Washington Post, “Evidence has emerged that authorities have drawn up a blacklist of those involved in the protests, with several young people denied entry into mainland China in recent weeks.” There are rumors that “Beijing has permanently transferred large numbers of security and intelligence specialists to Hong Kong to keep a much closer eye on the Chinese Communist Party’s many critics.” The protestors made it to the website (though not the cover) of the Rolling Stone. And “leading Hong Kong businesswoman & member of the city’s Executive Council… who is also a board member at the prominent bank HSBC” Laura Cha earned brief international noteriety with a bizarre historical analogy: “American slaves were liberated in 1861 but did not get voting rights until 107 years later,” she was quoted as saying by the Standard newspaper. “So why can’t Hong Kong wait for a while?”

Louisa Lim, in the New Yorker, “Scenes from Occupy Hong Kong’s Last Stand“:

… “We don’t want this to be over,” Theresia Hui, a business consultant in her forties, said. She was distributing free bookmarks stamped with motifs of the Umbrella Movement, as the protests have come to be known—a reference to the umbrellas deployed by students to shield themselves from teargas. For her, the tent city, brimming with collaborative creativity, had been a transformative experience. When university students began boycotting classes at the end of September, she decided to stay neutral. Then police fired teargas at protesters, and she experienced a political awakening. “I was white, and then I became dark yellow, even golden yellow,” she says, referring to the color adopted by the Umbrella Movement. “The government made me this way. They pushed me to become deep yellow.” The use of teargas and the subsequent violence in late September has resulted in plummeting public satisfaction with Hong Kong’s police force—once lauded as Asia’s finest. They are now ranked below China’s People’s Liberation Army in popularity.

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The sense of disenchantment, fuelled by growing economic inequality, has extended into impatience with existing political channels and increasing support for radical forms of civil disobedience. “I really think the whole method of protesting is changing. We can’t go back,” a twenty-five-year-old named Chrono Yuen said, as he tucked into a last supper of fish-ball hot pot with fellow-residents of a scrappy clump of tents, known as “Tung’s village,” pitched at the peak of a flyover. “If the protesters do things like civil-disobedience acts and the government still refuses to listen, what can people do to make the government listen?”

Future tactics suggested by protest leaders include hit-and-run occupations (an approach they call Guerilla Occupy), refusal to pay taxes, and other methods of insubordinance aimed at making Hong Kong more difficult to govern. Protesters were already trying a new strategy: staging large gatherings in busy commercial districts under the guise of mass shopping or singing outings, tying up police resources. One of the “shopping” protests, in Mong Kok, was declared unlawful….

As the hours dragged on, the authorities slowly dismantled the barricades specified by the injunction, then, after a lunch break, methodically disassembled the remainder of the Admiralty camp with brutal efficiency. A second settlement, in Mong Kok, had already been cleared, leaving one small camp remaining in the shopping district of Causeway Bay. By the end of the day, two hundred and forty-seven protesters in the Admiralty had been arrested for illegal assembly and obstructing police work. They had spent most of the day obediently sitting in Connaught Road Central, waiting to be detained. A local newspaper headline pointed out that the arrest list read like a Hong Kong Who’s Who, including some of the best-known student leaders, the island’s veteran politicians, the millionaire tycoon Jimmy Lai, and a local pop star, Denise Ho. They were subsequently released from police custody; it is not clear whether they will be prosecuted…

Bloomberg, “Occupy Hong Kong’s End Start of ‘Permanent’ Political Unrest“:

… While the protesters failed to wrest concessions from China on their demands for open elections in 2017, students, politicians and analysts say the city is not the same. The rallies — which saw the first use of tear gas in Hong Kong in almost a decade — triggered an awakening across a generation of young people who are now willing to risk recrimination by publicly calling for political change.

“It definitely isn’t the end of Hong Kong’s democratic movement,” said Lester Shum, a leader of the Hong Kong Federation of Students. “It is unrealistic to think a single movement can change everything. Real civil disobedience is long term, so we must equip ourselves so we can organize better and rally more people from different parts of society.”

The tent camps in the shadows of the regional headquarters of some of the world’s biggest banks posed the biggest challenge to China’s authority since the end of British rule in 1997, deepening tensions between those who welcome or at least tolerate Chinese influence and those who oppose it. With the emergence of the students as a political force at the expense of established parties the city risks becoming harder to govern amid legislative gridlock, waning support for the authorities and periodic civil unrest…

The Hong Kong Federation of Students has emerged as the most popular political force in the city, according to a poll by the University of Hong Kong in October. Backing for the five main political parties — both pro-government and pro-democracy groups — slipped to record lows.

The demonstrations had limited economic impact. Retail sales gained in both September and October, though at a slower pace than previous years. The benchmark Hang Seng Index fell 1.6 percent since the protests began in late September, less than the 3.4 percent decline in the MSCI Asia Pacific Index…

Yahoo News Digest, “Hong Kong Leader Declares Occupy Protest Over“:

…“Other than economic losses, I believe the greatest loss Hong Kong society has suffered is the damage to the rule of law by a small group of people.” — Hong Kong chief executive Leung Chun-ying

Hong Kong chief executive Leung Chun-ying is vilified by protesters who cast him variously as a wolf and a vampire and have repeatedly asked for him to step down. But Beijing has backed his administration throughout the occupation. Students who spearheaded the street protests were among the sit-in group in Causeway Bay Monday. They were joined by a 90-year-old campaigner surnamed Wong who was later led away by police, walking slowly using a cane.

NYMag, “10 Images From the End of Hong Kong’s Protest Movement.”

75 Days of Occupy Hong Kong. A great video capsule of what the HK protests mean for the future http://t.co/EZ5FW3gS8u

— Paul Beckett (@paulwsj) December 15, 2014

Some great shots by my good friend @Alex_Ogle well worth a look: Occupy Hong Kong in 140 pics http://t.co/3XJlTdK816 pic.twitter.com/DaRzqD4ZBr

— Neal Mann (@fieldproducer) December 12, 2014

See photos of the 79 days that shook Hong Kong http://t.co/jIobJl6rFg Photo: Xaume Olleros—AFP/Getty Images pic.twitter.com/WQqeVhpbxW

— TIME.com (@TIME) December 15, 2014

Au Revoir, #OccupyHongKongPost + Comments (10)

#OccupyHongKong: “After A Hectic Week…”

by Anne Laurie| October 6, 20144:28 am| 7 Comments

This post is in: #OWS, Foreign Affairs

A mini-library, yellow ribbon notes, and a #HongKong police shift change at #OccupyCentral pic.twitter.com/ALfTgI4KYA

— SCMP VideoMoJo (@SCMPVideoMoJo) October 6, 2014

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.

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#OccupyHongKong: “After A Hectic Week…”Post + Comments (7)

#OccupyHongKong (#UmbrellaRevolution)

by Anne Laurie| October 3, 20144:37 am| 11 Comments

This post is in: #OWS, Foreign Affairs

GLOBV: Hong Kong's Pro-Democracy ‘Occupy Central’ in Photos: The massive rally has so far stood its ground aga… http://t.co/yN48wvKtil

— Hong Kong Stream (@hkstream) October 3, 2014

From the NYTimes:

As the people of Hong Kong gathered over the past week in the city’s central business district staging the biggest pro-democracy protest in a Chinese-controlled area in decades, headlines around the world compared today’s movement to the 1989 student demonstrations in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

While the authorities have not yet used the brutal force that the Chinese army used to suppress the 1989 protests, observers are concerned about the possibility.

The latest warning coming from Beijing has been especially reminiscent of the 1989 rhetoric, and worryingly so, analysts say. The People’s Daily, a government-controlled newspaper, said the protests are creating “chaos.” “That is a significant term in Chinese Communist Party ideology, suggesting that the situation could threaten the Party’s hold on power, and therefore that decisive action is required,” writes Al Pessin at the Voice of America. Mr. Pessin writes that the same word was used 25 years ago to describe Tiananmen Square.

The memory of Tiananmen and its historical legacy is crucial to today’s “Umbrella Revolution,” named so after the ubiquitous umbrellas that the protesters held to defend themselves from tear gas and pepper spray used by the police. Hong Kong, the only area under Chinese control with freedom of speech, commemorates the massacre with an annual vigil. As Max Fisher writes for Vox, that part of Chinese history has been so heavily censored in mainland China that many in the younger generation had never heard of it. Hong Kongers feel responsible to keep the memory alive, Mr. Fisher says, but they are also scared they could face the same repression…

In a plea for action in The Wall Street Journal, Yang Jianli and Teng Biao, former political prisoners in China, ask the world to prevent Tiananmen from happening again. Mr. Yianli and Mr. Biao ask the Obama administration to put pressure on the Chinese government to allow democratic elections in Hong Kong and “forcefully condemn” violence against demonstrators. “The United States and the international community share the responsibility to prevent another murderous attack on pro-democracy demonstrators,” they write. “While the Tiananmen Square massacre surprised the world, this time the world is on notice.”

The Hong Kong protests are being called the Umbrella Revolution. I just hope they've also developed anti-tank raincoats.

— Stephen Colbert (@StephenAtHome) October 2, 2014

Done my shift at #occupycentral. Think the system is working well – students during the day, working ppl at night #UmbrellaRevolution

— Ken Lee (@silverbear117) October 2, 2014

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#OccupyHongKong (#UmbrellaRevolution)Post + Comments (11)

#OccupyHongKong (Still)

by Anne Laurie| October 2, 20145:27 am| 17 Comments

This post is in: #OWS, Foreign Affairs

"@panphil: Voices of Hong Kong’s Protest http://t.co/mR2333F41h via @nytvideo" and earlier @WSJ video, same title http://t.co/8iefaqExkI

— adam najberg (@adamnajberg) October 2, 2014

James Fallows has been providing a most informative series of links at the Atlantic. He wrote on Tuesday:

… It would be wonderful to think that the PRC leadership would take the soft-power, high-road route out of this confrontation. It could recognize the maturity and responsibility of the newly politically aware Hong Kong populace. It could cannily assess the advantages to China of “controlling” Hong Kong while letting it continue to operate with rule of law, uncensored Internet, untrammeled media, free universities, transparent financial markets, and all the other attributes of a first-world center. With a light hand, the PRC government could have it both ways.

But that’s not likely. Any more than it’s likely that the current leaders will throw the doors to China open to the world’s journalists—which would be the best way to advance the country’s image, given that more interesting/good is underway there than depressing/bad—or that they’ll uncensor the Internet or realize that they’re magnifying their problems in the long run by jailing, for life, a moderate, intellectual leader of the Uighur cause. This is why it is hard to imagine a pleasant ending to the currently inspiring movement in Hong Kong.

I could say that the Chinese leadership is on a self-destructive course—but, hell, I have said that about America at countless stages. For now, thanks to Hai Zhang; consider reading these items; and most sincere admiration and best wishes to the people of Hong Kong.

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#OccupyHongKong (Still)Post + Comments (17)

#OccupyCentral (“Hong Kong People!”)

by Anne Laurie| October 1, 20144:08 am| 9 Comments

This post is in: #OWS, Foreign Affairs

#HongKong students turn their backs as flag is raised for National Day to start Day 4 of city-wide protests: http://t.co/5GYpKiNdMu

— WSJ China Real Time (@ChinaRealTime) October 1, 2014

From SCMP‘s liveblog:

… October 1, the Chinese national day and what was believed to be the intended date for Occupy Central before it was started early in support of student protests, will see rallies occur in more than 30 cities around the world.

Hundreds of people are expected to doorstep the Chinese embassy and consulates in London, Manchester and Edinburgh, to protest at Beijing. Some 400 protests gathered for an impromptu protest in Trafalgar Square, London, last Sunday to denounce the heavy-handed police tactics

“It’s intolerable for the government to treat their people like this,” said student Anthony Lau On-wing at the London protests. “I think we have a critical mass right now – there are enough people who are angry whose coming out to really say what they feel about the government.”

More than 27,000 people have signed up on Facebook to ‘Wear Yellow for Hong Kong on October 1st‘, an event started by students at Harvard University which has quickly spread to other American colleges and internationally…

From the NYTimes:

… The pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong appeared headed for a showdown with the authorities on Wednesday, with larger numbers expected over a national holiday and some organizers threatening to escalate the conflict by seizing government buildings.

Yet it has been a diligently clean, exceedingly polite and scrupulously peaceful insurgency, one that supporters are calling the Umbrella Revolution.

“An umbrella looks nonthreatening,” said Chloe Ho, 20, a history student distributing apples, chocolate and wet towels on a six-lane expressway occupied by protesters. “It shows how mild we Hong Kong people are, but when you cross our bottom line, we all come out together, just like the umbrellas all come out at the same time when it rains.”…

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The mass sit-in — and for hardier participants, sleep-in — in several of Hong Kong’s key commercial districts has presented the Chinese leadership with one of its biggest and most unexpected challenges in years. The protesters are demanding the right to elect the city’s leader, or chief executive, without procedural hurdles that would ensure that only Beijing’s favored candidates get on the ballot.

China’s state-run news outlets have depicted the protests as the handiwork of a conspiracy aided by the West to topple the Communist Party. But what leaders in Beijing and Hong Kong face is something even more alien to party thinking: an amorphous movement that does not answer to any particular individual or agenda…

The society that has sprung up on the baking-hot roads has already developed its own rhythms. The days begin mostly with university students, retirees and middle-class office workers who have taken time off or been given leave by sympathetic bosses.

In the evenings, as temperatures cool and the workday ends, the crowds expand and become more diverse. Teenagers do their homework on the streets. And then the die-hards settle in for the night, sleeping under the skies on newspapers or foam before heading home in the morning for a shower and a nap.

“We want to stay clean to show that we are normal citizens fighting for our democracy,” said Billy Chan, 21, a computer science student who was heading home on Tuesday morning to wash up…

Hong Kong democracy activists are offering their umbrellas to rain-soaked police #OccupyCentral http://t.co/OXo1KtCYYR via @qz

— Andrew Au (@AndrewAu) October 1, 2014

Natasha Lennard, in Vice, “Occupy Central Is Not Like Previous Protest Movements“:

… Occupy Central is making demands from and on a political system, it is not seeking to upturn it. This is not my judgement — Occupy Central’s official website asserts as much. As the FAQ section of the site notes, the protests have an “ultimate goal.” The site asserts, “This campaign is not a ‘revolution’ because Occupy Central does not aim at overthrowing the existing system. The Occupy Central campaign has one and only one goal, without other associations.”

The official goal is democracy, but not in some broad ideological sense, which aligns democracy with goodness and fairness. Occupy Central’s expressed goals deal very explicitly with voting and elections. Hong Kong’s constitutional document — the Basic Law — determines how the region would move from British to Chinese hands, and what degree of autonomy Hong Kong’s government can exercise. Basic Law promised the people of Hong Kong universal suffrage, but the devil lay in the lack of detail. Interpreting the document to their own advantage, China ruled recently that the nominees for Hong Kong’s Chief Executive would be vetted by Beijing. The protesters want the promise of universal suffrage fulfilled, as well as the resignation of current chief executive, Leung Chun-ying.

Of course there are broader issues at play. Hong Kong’s record-breaking levels of inequality undergird arguments for suffrage. It is the second-most expensive city in the world but its minimum wage is only $3.86 per hour. Occupy Central does not barter in the language of economic struggle nor class conflict, but the demand for more direct democracy reflects an anger at how Beijing’s control serves Hong Kong’s billionaires not, as the protest chant goes, “Hong Kong People!”…

Anytime you hear a white liberal talking about #OccupyCentral becoming another Tiananmen, tell them that the US already did that in Ferguson

— Chuks (@OwningMyTruth) October 1, 2014

Louisa Lim, “visiting professor of journalism at the University of Michigan, and the author of ‘The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited’”, in the NYTimes, “Hong Kong People!“:

… What causes pause is that so many of the tactics used against the Hong Kong protesters echo those used in Beijing in 1989. Indeed, in the run-up to the weekend’s protests, as Hong Kongers debated the future of democracy in the territory, the state-backed press repeated familiar accusations that “hostile foreign forces” were whipping up dissatisfaction. This culminated in an “exposé” on Thursday in the pro-Beijing Wen Wei Po newspaper charging the 17-year-old student leader Joshua Wong of having ties to the American government and being manipulated by a “black hand” behind the scenes, in an eerie echo of Tiananmen-era language. Mr. Wong said the accusations were false…

Another prominent figure forced to deny links to the American government — this time with the C.I.A. — was the media baron Jimmy Lai, an outspoken advocate for democracy. He was the target of an investigation by the Independent Commission Against Corruption after his email was hacked and then leaked, revealing large donations to pro-democracy politicians and activists. The timing of the anticorruption investigation — just as debate about political reform was at its zenith — was seen as suspiciously convenient.

And in a sensational corruption trial last week, the man who was once Hong Kong’s second-highest civil servant, Rafael Hui, admitted to taking a payment of almost $1.5 million from a Beijing official as far back as 2007. So the vaunted political neutrality of Hong Kong’s civil service, trained by colonial administrators, is looking somewhat shakier.

The growing anger in Hong Kong stems not just from a lack of democracy, but also from gaping inequality, embodied in government policies perceived to be rigged to benefit the city’s billionaires. So when President Xi Jinping responded to the growing discontent by summoning Hong Kong’s business tycoons to Beijing last week, this further underlined the gaping chasm between the governor and the governed, the wealthy elite and the ordinary people…

The moment that Hong Kong citizens have been dreading for 17 years has finally arrived. And the ramifications will ripple out, to Taiwan, whose residents are increasingly wary of the idea of reunification, as well as to the fringes of Beijing’s empire, where it is struggling with suicidal Tibetan protests and a murderous ethnic insurgency in the northwestern province of Xinjiang…

Live blogs from Hong Kong: From @ChinaRealTime: http://t.co/YQZBip5Fuo CNN: http://t.co/JebPTtwRmq @SCMP_News: http://t.co/sSKTkCYhV1

— China Digital Times (@CDTimes) October 1, 2014

Meet the man behind HK's protest movement Occupy Central with Love & Peace. Benny Tai spoke to Newsday's @BBCNuala http://t.co/ZMNJuXhhcF

— BBC World Service (@bbcworldservice) October 1, 2014

`In just a week, Hong Kong’s student-led class boycott has morphed into a social movement.' http://t.co/eZWSxy2pIT via @emilyrauhala

— Scott Cendrowski 孙卓 (@scendrowski) October 1, 2014

"@adammccauley: Birdseye view on tonight's crowd. #OccupyCentral @ajam / #uncountable http://t.co/h7LfXsD7q9 pic.twitter.com/wqkTE3sChz"

— Gyanendra Awasthi (@GyanendrAw) October 1, 2014

(for Amir Khalid)

"@paulmozur: This depressingly cynical image is making rounds among wealthy Chinese on Facebook. #OccupyCentral pic.twitter.com/B6j14eyERn" ouch

— Dora Fang (@dorafang) October 1, 2014

Come on #OccupyCentral at least let me do my shopping today? How else can I spend my corruption money? #HongKong

— Xi Jinping (@RealXiJinping) October 1, 2014

HK lawmaker seen with yellow umbrella at China's Oct 1 celebration http://t.co/uojvGpHtek pic.twitter.com/qxr1QHhj3B @ChannelNewsAsia

— China Outlook (@ChinaOutlookMag) October 1, 2014

I can't believe XJP let it rain in Beijing on National Day. First #OccupyCentral and now this.

— Ryan Vande Water (@RyanVandeWater) October 1, 2014

Tourist visit Causeway Bay #HongKong show solidarity #OccupyCentral #OccupyHongKong #UmbrellaRevolution pic.twitter.com/0zIttUf2ck

— JU (@JigmeUgen) October 1, 2014

#OccupyCentral (“Hong Kong People!”)Post + Comments (9)

Occupy Central (Hong Kong): #Umbrella Revolution

by Anne Laurie| September 30, 20142:19 am| 20 Comments

This post is in: #OWS, Foreign Affairs

Top 10 moments from Occupy Central so far http://t.co/atC8RESodC via @SCMP_News pic.twitter.com/MoazN88Ham

— James Griffiths (@jgriffiths) September 30, 2014

Yeah, it’s the middle of the night for most BJ readers, and the middle of the afternoon over in Hong Kong, so let me indulge myself. The South China Morning Post is still liveblogging, here.

… Since Monday morning, Hongkongers have had the very novel experience of walking along streets empty of traffic, as much of Central and Admiralty remain completely closed to cars.

Low pollution has proved to be an unexpected but welcome side-effect of the protests, with Environmental Protection Department data showing that air quality in all the affected areas was far better than on a normal weekday…

NBC, Monday evening [warning: autoplay video]:

Pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong set a Wednesday deadline for a response from the government to meet their demands for reforms after spending another night blocking streets in an unprecedented show of civil disobedience.

A brief statement from the Occupy Central civil disobedience movement said it had set an Oct. 1 deadline for the city’s unpopular Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying to meet their demands for genuine democracy and for him to step down as leader of Hong Kong. It said they would “announce new civil disobedience plans same day.”…

Hong Kong's chief executive rejects protesters' demands, says China won't back down http://t.co/yfCSS0yacL pic.twitter.com/X0JGH5UieO

— Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) September 30, 2014

Wall Street Journal‘s ChinaRealTime liveblog here.

1.3 million tweets about #OccupyHongKong the last four days. Spiked Sunday as police unleashed tear gas. http://t.co/H1STUgsrdb

— Stuart Leavenworth (@sleavenworth) September 30, 2014

So we appear to have a new #OccupyCentral meme. Cop who seems a bit too happy with the pepper spray: pic.twitter.com/A3Mn2MQXZn

— Mark Pesce (@mpesce) September 29, 2014

(This is actually from last night.)

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Occupy Central (Hong Kong): #Umbrella RevolutionPost + Comments (20)

WaterGirl on Time for a Nap Open Thread (Jun 4, 2023 @ 5:23pm)

trollhattan on Time for a Nap Open Thread (Jun 4, 2023 @ 5:17pm)

eclare on Time for a Nap Open Thread (Jun 4, 2023 @ 5:15pm)

Van Buren on Time for a Nap Open Thread (Jun 4, 2023 @ 5:15pm)

Geminid on Something To Talk About (Jun 4, 2023 @ 5:12pm)

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

People are complicated. Love is not.

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

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

Everybody saw this coming.

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

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

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

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

Second rate reporter says what?

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Let’s finish the job.

Not all heroes wear capes.

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

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Good lord, these people are nuts.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Consistently wrong since 2002

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

Friday Morning Open Thread: The Internet Is For Remembering Grudges

Au Revoir, #OccupyHongKong

#OccupyHongKong: “After A Hectic Week…”

#OccupyHongKong (#UmbrellaRevolution)

#OccupyHongKong (Still)

#OccupyCentral (“Hong Kong People!”)

Occupy Central (Hong Kong): #Umbrella Revolution