Global Occupy Movement #31 Met concrete casussen en constructies

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Op woensdag 28 augustus 2013 22:28 schreef Lavenderr het volgende:

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Tjezus. Daar hebben ze dan de verkeerde mensen mee, en niet de mensen die ze bedoelen. Lekker dan .

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Op woensdag 28 augustus 2013 22:21 schreef theguyver het volgende:

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yup anonymous deed dat.
zie oud FP bericht..
aangezien Antibildeberg met zoi'n masker rondloopt, houd ik hem ... alsnog verantwoordelijk, over 1 kam scheren maar dan andersom
Anonymous toch schuldig aan PSN-hack

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Op donderdag 29 augustus 2013 00:03 schreef antibilderberg het volgende:
Dit kreeg ik net binnen van anonymous in syria.
Die zeggen duidelijk dat dit het werk is van hun overheid en Amerikaanse troepen.

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Ze komen gewoon aan kinderen geen woorden voor!!!!!!!!!!

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Op donderdag 29 augustus 2013 00:34 schreef antibilderberg het volgende:

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[ afbeelding ]

[ afbeelding ]

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Op woensdag 28 augustus 2013 23:31 schreef antibilderberg het volgende:

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als je dat al wat vind moet je eens opletten de maand september wat er plat gegooid gaat worden. en hou vooral goed de media in de gaten Thats all i say

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Op donderdag 29 augustus 2013 01:20 schreef theguyver het volgende:

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welke media, en mocht gebeuren, ik houd jou verantwoordelijk..
je KAN als je er diep ingenesteld zit dit tegenhouden he.
en je bereikt er niks mee...

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Op donderdag 29 augustus 2013 09:48 schreef antibilderberg het volgende:

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Wat intreseert mij dat nou.

Ik heb hier gvd 100 foto's binnen gehad vanuit syrie.
DODEN KINDEREN DODEN MENSEN. die is niet om aan te zien!
EN JIJ MAAKT JE DRUK OM DIT CORRUPTE KLOTE SYSTEEM.
DEZE OORLOG WAS ALLANG BESPROKEN TIJDENS BILDERBERG MEETING.
EN DIE HOER VAN EEN RUTTE DIE WEET ER ALLES VAN AF WANT DIE WAS OOK AANWEZIG! EN IRAN IS HIER NA DE VOLGENDE. DIT IS HET WERK VAN OBAMA EEN ***** ***** ****** **** . Heel Dat klote systeem van ons is eraan gekoppeld. EN OBAMA IS IN DIENST VAN DE BANKEN!!!!

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Op donderdag 29 augustus 2013 10:02 schreef theguyver het volgende:

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Nee, mr Smarty pants.
Jij staat weer te schreeuwen in een verkeerd topic, deze gaat over
Global Occupy Movement #31 Met concrete casussen en constructies
syrie topic staat ergens anders.

Plus was jij bij de Bilderberg meeting? niet... hoe weet je dan dat dit afgesproken is daar?
dit is en blijft jou mening, dat het zo is.
plus Ja het is erg wat in syrie gebeurt, maar dat komt door de bevolking die de rest van de regio volgt de ene helft is voor de andere helft is tegen Assad en dan is er een grote kans op een burger oorlog en die zijn smerig, en de bevolking staat tussen de rebellen en overheid in en die zijn altijd het slachtoffer.

+ capslock is niet nodig.
[ afbeelding ]

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Op donderdag 29 augustus 2013 10:08 schreef antibilderberg het volgende:

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Dan weet je nog steeds niet wat occupy is.
De waarschuwingen van de mensen die de het clubje bilderberg verlaten hebben. (artiesten en politicussein)
De mensen die in syrie roepen dat het werk van Amerikanen zijn.
De vrijmetselaar symbolen die daar in verband mee worden gesteld.
Dat verklaart ook weer waarom Rutte ons steeds aan het voorliegen is!
En die caposlock is omdat ik woedend ben en tranen in me ogen heb door die grofe foto's

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Op donderdag 29 augustus 2013 10:06 schreef theguyver het volgende:
+ ik had het over jou he, je weet wel Anonymous vriendjes die allerlei sites willen plat gooien en daarmee het nieuws willen halen.
Je bereikt er weinig mee je pakt alleen maar de mensen die van bepaalde diensten gebruik willen maken en die keren dan tegen jullie, zoals Ik, ik was altijd een voorstander van de Acties van Anonymous, maar pak dan gewoon een stichting Martijn of een Westboro Baptist Church of iets in die geest aan.
Maar ga niet mogelijke volgelingen pesten, en als jij een naonymous lid bent geef dit ff door aan je vriendjes DAT bedoel ik er mee.

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Op donderdag 29 augustus 2013 10:14 schreef antibilderberg het volgende:

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Mensen op straat aan spreken schiet niet echt op. het word wel beseft maar of veel te kleine schaal. De meeste acties die gedaan worden is om de interesse van de bevolking te wekken.
Door bijv ps3 eruit te gooien wil iedereen weten hoe dat kom en gaat dus op zoek naar de oorzaak. Intresse van mensen werken. van waarom word dit gedaan etc.

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Op donderdag 29 augustus 2013 10:14 schreef Lavenderr het volgende:

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Heb je een paar voorbeelden van artiesten en politici die Bilderberg 'verlaten' hebben? Ik wist trouwens niet dat er ook artiesten deel mochten nemen aan de Bilderbergvergaderingen? Tenzij je met artiesten politici bedoelt

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Op donderdag 29 augustus 2013 10:34 schreef Lavenderr het volgende:

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Wat is dat nu weer?
Get your facts straight man.

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Op donderdag 29 augustus 2013 10:34 schreef Lavenderr het volgende:

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Wat is dat nu weer?
Get your facts straight man.

twitter:

Anon_Central twitterde op zondag 01-09-2013 om 20:25:02 The only thing other then capitalism that operates on the basis of perpetual growth is cancer. And both eventually kill the host. reageer retweet

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Occupy Wall Street buys $15 million of Americans' medical debt

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An Occupy Wall Street spin-off group has bought up $14.7 million worth of Americans' personal medical debt and forgiven it over the last year as part of its Rolling Jubilee project, the group announced Monday.

The Rolling Jubilee project, organized by Occupy Wall Street's Strike Debt group, has so far spent $400,000 to buy the debt, in the process relieving 2,693 people of the money they owed for medical services Occupy thinks should be free.

"Think of it as a bailout of the 99 percent by the 99 percent," a post on the Rolling Jubilee project's website said.

The project, which launched on Nov. 15, 2012, raises money through small, individual contributions, and then uses that money to purchase distressed and defaulted debt from the lenders, who in this case are hospitals or medical groups.

The lenders are willing to sell it very cheaply, often for less than five cents on the dollar, because they think there is little chance they will be able to collect.

Andrew Ross, a member of Occupy's Strike Debt group and a professor at New York University, said the group was able to buy debt at a 50-to-1 ratio.

The group receives almost no information about the people whose debt they buy - only an address, Ross said. The group mails a letter to each address explaining the project and that the person's debt has been "canceled," Ross said.

The group does not work directly with debtors.
"One person wrote back and said that he had gone through periods of being homeless and he was trying to get back on his feet," Ross said, calling the elimination of debt a huge relief.

Ross said the group has $200,000 left to spend, and they hope to target student loan debt next.

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Occupy Central gives downtown Hong Kong gets a taste of disobedience

Campaigners want thousands to take over Hong Kong's financial district, as China signals disapproval of western-style democracy

As he lay on the tarmac of a central Hong Kong street, gazing up at the skyscrapers, Chan Kin-man came to a realisation. "I have been living a very comfortable life – up in an office, writing articles, encouraging people to negotiate. Suddenly, I have to prepare myself to go to jail.

"It was a very striking moment for me," said the 55-year-old academic later. "I have been too comfortable. And at some point, Hong Kong people have to sacrifice something to make people believe we are serious about democracy."

His epiphany came during a test run for Occupy Central, a pro-reform civil disobedience campaign that wants to see thousands take over Hong Kong's financial district – much to Beijing's alarm.

On Thursday, one of China's top leaders reportedly said that importing a western-style democratic system to the region could prove catastrophic. Zhang Dejiang, who heads the leading group on Hong Kong affairs, said that copying a foreign electoral system could "become a democracy trap … and possibly bring a disastrous result", Ma Fung-kwok, a delegate at Thursday's closed-door meeting, told Reuters.

Britain showed little interest in developing democracy in Hong Kong until the 1997 handover to China loomed. Then, under the "one country, two systems" framework, it negotiated greater freedoms for the region and a commitment to eventual universal suffrage.

Authorities agree votes for all should be adopted when the region has a new chief executive in 2017, but want to ensue there are no unwelcome candidates.

"It is obvious that the chief executive has to be a person who loves the country, loves Hong Kong and doesn't oppose the central government," the region's chief secretary for administration, Carrie Lam, has said.

Opponents complain that nominations will be channelled through a committee packed with Beijing loyalists, and want the public to gain the right to put candidates forward too.

Unless Beijing shifts by the end of the year, Occupy's organisers say they will risk their careers and freedom to press for change.

Chan and his co-founders – Benny Tai, another academic, and Baptist minister Chu Yiu-ming – hardly appear rabble rousers. Chan peppers conversation with references to the sociologist Jürgen Habermas. The full name of the movement is the hippy-ish Occupy Central with Love and Peace. Non-violent civil disobedience – modelled on the activism of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi – would be the last resort, after mass deliberative meetings that would form the basis for negotiations by the opposition pan-democratic parties that are backing Occupy.But opponents claim the campaign threatens chaos.

Robert Chow Young, a television host and a leader of the pro-business Silent Majority group, called the campaigners evil. He paints a graphic picture of a paralysed city and plunging stockmarket, with law and order breaking down.

"Let us not let some dreaming, wild-thinking person think they can be immortalised by doing something crazy. Why should we suffer for them? What do we stand to gain?" he asked. "Nothing. What do we stand to lose? Everything."

A poll by the non-partisan Hong Kong Transition Project (pdf) found that 54% were opposed to Occupy Central, and only 38% supported it – though were Beijing to warn against participation, campaigners would gain support.

The polling report concluded: "If the promise of direct, fair and free election of the chief executive, and of having a real choice of candidates, is broken, there will very likely be very strong reactions, [which] many fear will not be peaceful or without damage to Hong Kong's economy."

Public discontent appears to be fed by concern about the poor performance of the region's chief executives, living costs and the influx of mainland visitors, which some complain has raised property prices and eroded culture even as it increases the region's income.

People have come to expect more say and younger people are especially supportive of democracy.

Mass revolts have on occasion forced the authorities into climb-downs. In 2003 plans to implement article 23 of the Basic Law – requiring the region to pass laws banning acts of "treason, secession, sedition and subversion" – were dropped after half a million took to the streets. In 2012, proposals for compulsory "patriotic and national education" were scrapped after critics accused the government of trying to brainwash children, launching large-scale protests.

While Hong Kong residents will not accept Hobson's choice, an inherent tendency to conservatism would prevent them from electing someone prone to provoking or antagonising Beijing, argues Albert Ho, a veteran Democratic party legislator.

But he acknowledges that campaigners are pushing at "a very heavy door – because that door is democracy not only for Hong Kong but for the whole country, symbolically".

Beijing not only has to be willing to cede a degree of power, but also to risk the possibility that mainland citizens will draw inspiration from the region.

Many suspect the threat of Occupy Central stands a better chance of swaying Beijing towards a compromise than would an actual occupation. "We have a few bullets," said Ho. "We hope we don't have to fire the gun."

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Chilean artist steals and destroys $500 million worth of student debt papers

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Here’s one inventive way to deal with the student debt problem. Late last week, Chilean police arrived at Santiago’s Centro Cultural Gabriela Mistral and removed a white bin of gray ash — allegedly all that remained of $500 million worth of student debt notes.

The case of the destroyed student debt traces back to a hastily shot home video, a half-smoked cigarette, and a disheveled artist named Papas Fritas. In the video, which went viral last week in Chile, Papas Fritas confessed he had recently stolen the documents from the for-profit Universidad del Mar. Then he set them ablaze in a defiant, brazen act of art.

“It’s over,” declared Papas Fritas, which means “french fries.” “It’s finished. You don’t have to pay another peso [of your student loan debt]. We have to lose our fear, our fear of being thought of as criminals because we’re poor. I am just like you, living a sh—y life, and I live it day by day.

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Podemos hopes to cement rise of citizen politics in Spain after election success

Barely 100 days old, party born from indignados movement now has five MEPs and determination to change political landscape

Until recently, it appeared that the Spanish indignados movement had fizzled out. But on Sunday evening, a fledgling party born from its ashes proved otherwise, winning five seats and 1.2 million votes in Spain's European elections.

Barely 100 days old, and lead by Pablo Iglesias, a 35-year-old political science professor with a ponytail, Podemos (We Can) emerged as the third largest political force in many Spanish regions, including Madrid.

The idea behind the party is simple, Iglesias told the Guardian on Tuesday. "It's citizens doing politics. If the citizens don't get involved in politics, others will. And that opens the door to them robbing you of democracy, your rights and your wallet."

The soft-spoken, former Communist Youth party member may have stunned analysts with his party's performance, but it was not enough for him. The ruling People's party (PP) had won the elections, meaning that high unemployment and home evictions would continue, he said. "We want to build a political majority that reflects the social majority of Spain."

Podemos' lofty list of election promises includes doing away with tax havens, establishing a guaranteed minimum income and lowering the retirement age to 60. The party ran its European elections campaign on a shoestring budget, using crowdfunding and Iglesias' ubiquitous presence as a talking head on Spanish television to build momentum.

Voted in by Spaniards tired with persistent unemployment, austerity measures and corruption scandals, Iglesias said Podemos MEPs would act accordingly. Rather than the standard salary of more than ¤8,000 (£6,500) a month, "not one of our MEPs will earn more than ¤1,930, an amount that's three times the minimum wage in Spain". The remainder would either go to the party or a chosen cause.

"We're not going to travel to Brussels in business class. If any lobby group approaches us, we'll make that information public." One of his first items of business, Iglesias said, would be to propose that other MEPs do the same.

Podemos' success has had many in Spanish media asking questions about Spain's two dominant political parties. The PP and the Socialists together received less than 50% of the vote, a far cry from the 81% support they received in 2009. The top PP candidate, Miguel Arias Cañete, celebrated his victory in the elections, but acknowledged the results were a "serious warning" from voters.

The Socialists went further their worst election result. Leader Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba announced on Monday he was stepping down, adding: "It's clear that we haven't regained voters' confidence." The party will hold a meeting in late July to choose new leadership.

The fertile ground for Podemos' rapid growth was laid by the indignados movement not the Socialists, said Iñigo Errejón, the new party's 30-year-old campaign director. While the movement was incredibly expansive and impossible to fully capture in a political party, he said, "many of us were there, in the plazas and in the protests, we listened to what people were saying and we took notes. Without the changes that the movement brought about in the Spanish political scene, Podemos wouldn't be possible."

The challenge for Podemos now lies in finding a balance between a grassroots movement, whose agenda depends on hundreds of working groups across the country, and a functioning political party. It has no leadership which can inform on day-to-day decisions and no system in place to hold its MEPs to account. "We're a citizen force, made up of people who got together and ran an electoral campaign practically without any money," said Errejón.

Their model right now is more focused on what they don't want to be. "Many political parties are always looking inside, never outside," said Errejón. "We don't want to structure ourselves in the same closed off way." As an example, he pointed to the Podemos' primaries for the European elections, which were open to anyone who wanted to participate and attracted 33,000 voters.

The next few months will determine whether Podemos can translate their success into a genuine shift in the Spanish political landscape, said Errejón, and quell those who call them a populist movement or one fuelled by protest votes.

The ultimate goal, he said, is bigger than just winning seats. "We don't just want to be part of a political system that is decomposing. Spain isn't lacking political parties. But what's missing is citizens engaging in politics. And we want be a tool for that."

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The French are right: tear up public debt – most of it is illegitimate anyway

Debt audits show that austerity is politically motivated to favour social elites. Is a new working-class internationalism in the air?

Occupy Wall Street's debt buying strikes at the heart of capitalism

As history has shown, France is capable of the best and the worst, and often in short periods of time.

On the day following Marine Le Pen's Front National victory in the European elections, however, France made a decisive contribution to the reinvention of a radical politics for the 21st century. On that day, the committee for a citizen's audit on the public debt issued a 30-page report on French public debt, its origins and evolution in the past decades. The report was written by a group of experts in public finances under the coordination of Michel Husson, one of France's finest critical economists. Its conclusion is straightforward: 60% of French public debt is illegitimate.

Anyone who has read a newspaper in recent years knows how important debt is to contemporary politics. As David Graeber among others has shown, we live in debtocracies, not democracies. Debt, rather than popular will, is the governing principle of our societies, through the devastating austerity policies implemented in the name of debt reduction. Debt was also a triggering cause of the most innovative social movements in recent years, the Occupy movement.

If it were shown that public debts were somehow illegitimate, that citizens had a right to demand a moratorium – and even the cancellation of part of these debts – the political implications would be huge. It is hard to think of an event that would transform social life as profoundly and rapidly as the emancipation of societies from the constraints of debt. And yet this is precisely what the French report aims to do.

The audit is part of a wider movement of popular debt audits in more than 18 countries. Ecuador and Brazil have had theirs, the former at the initiative of Rafael Correa's government, the latter organised by civil society. European social movements have also put in place debt audits, especially in countries harder hit by the sovereign debt crisis, such as Greece and Spain. In Tunisia, the post-revolutionary government declared the debt taken out during Ben Ali's dictatorship an "odious" debt: one that served to enrich the clique in power, rather than improving the living conditions of the people.

The report on French debt contains several key findings. Primarily, the rise in the state's debt in the past decades cannot be explained by an increase in public spending. The neoliberal argument in favour of austerity policies claims that debt is due to unreasonable public spending levels; that societies in general, and popular classes in particular, live above their means.

This is plain false. In the past 30 years, from 1978 to 2012 more precisely, French public spending has in fact decreased by two GDP points. What, then, explains the rise in public debt? First, a fall in the tax revenues of the state. Massive tax reductions for the wealthy and big corporations have been carried out since 1980. In line with the neoliberal mantra, the purpose of these reductions was to favour investment and employment. Well, unemployment is at its highest today, whereas tax revenues have decreased by five points of GDP.

The second factor is the increase in interest rates, especially in the 1990s. This increase favoured creditors and speculators, to the detriment of debtors. Instead of borrowing on financial markets at prohibitive interest rates, had the state financed itself by appealing to household savings and banks, and borrowed at historically normal rates, the public debt would be inferior to current levels by 29 GDP points.

Tax reductions for the wealthy and interest rates increases are political decisions. What the audit shows is that public deficits do not just grow naturally out of the normal course of social life. They are deliberately inflicted on society by the dominant classes, to legitimise austerity policies that will allow the transfer of value from the working classes to the wealthy ones.

A stunning finding of the report is that no one actually knows who holds the French debt. To finance its debt, the French state, like any other state, issues bonds, which are bought by a set of authorised banks. These banks then sell the bonds on the global financial markets. Who owns these titles is one of the world's best kept secrets. The state pays interests to the holders, so technically it could know who owns them. Yet a legally organised ignorance forbids the disclosure of the identity of the bond holders.

This deliberate organisation of ignorance – agnotology – in neoliberal economies intentionally renders the state powerless, even when it could have the means to know and act. This is what permits tax evasion in its various forms – which last year cost about ¤50bn to European societies, and ¤17bn to France alone.

Hence, the audit on the debt concludes, some 60% of the French public debt is illegitimate.

An illegitimate debt is one that grew in the service of private interests, and not the wellbeing of the people. Therefore the French people have a right to demand a moratorium on the payment of the debt, and the cancellation of at least part of it. There is precedent for this: in 2008 Ecuador declared 70% of its debt illegitimate.

The nascent global movement for debt audits may well contain the seeds of a new internationalism – an internationalism for today – in the working classes throughout the world. This is, among other things, a consequence of financialisation. Thus debt audits might provide a fertile ground for renewed forms of international mobilisations and solidarity.

This new internationalism could start with three easy steps.

1) Debt audits in all countries

The crucial point is to demonstrate, as the French audit did, that debt is a political construction, that it doesn't just happen to societies when they supposedly live above their means. This is what justifies calling it illegitimate, and may lead to cancellation procedures. Audits on private debts are also possible, as the Chilean artist Francisco Tapia has recently shown by auditing student loans in an imaginative way.

2) The disclosure of the identity of debt holders

A directory of creditors at national and international levels could be assembled. Not only would such a directory help fight tax evasion, it would also reveal that while the living conditions of the majority are worsening, a small group of individuals and financial institutions has consistently taken advantage of high levels of public indebtedness. Hence, it would reveal the political nature of debt.

3) The socialisation of the banking system

The state should cease to borrow on financial markets, instead financing itself through households and banks at reasonable and controllable interest rates. The banks themselves should be put under the supervision of citizens' committees, hence rendering the audit on the debt permanent. In short, debt should be democratised. This, of course, is the harder part, where elements of socialism are introduced at the very core of the system. Yet, to counter the tyranny of debt on every aspect of our lives, there is no alternative.

• This article was amended on 10 June to say that Greece and Spain had been "harder hit" by the sovereign debt crisis, not "hardly hit".

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Court says Occupy Boise protesters can restore tent city in Idaho

A federal judge in Idaho agreed this week that officials have no right to keep protesters from demonstrating on the lawn of the state capitol building in Boise.

United States District Judge Lynn Winmill’s Wednesday decision declares that efforts in 2012 to remove protesters from a localized Occupy Wall Street offshoot were unconstitutional.

As that movement began to gain momentum across the US in late 2011, Idaho Gov. Butch Otter signed a law that enacted a handful of rules concerning Occupy Boise protesters wishing to protest on state property, including provisions that outlawed anything on the capitol property considered to be camping.

Judge Winmill wrote this week that a lawsuit filed on behalf of the protesters in 2012 is now moot since the laws were later rescinded, but he nevertheless agreed to make a decision requested by Occupy Boise that could open the door for future protests like the ones that were previously outlawed.

As part of the ruling, Winmill issued a permanent injunction that hereby blocks the state from removing protest tents because he said such conduct “targets political speech for suppression.”

“The defendants’ policy of enforcing I.C. §§ 67-1613–1613A to remove symbolic and assembly tents on State grounds or to prevent protesters from staffing tent protests around the clock violates the First Amendment,” the judge ruled, meaning Idaho officials might be barred from going after demonstrators in the future engaged in politically-focused protests outside the capitol or other state property.

"This has been a long and costly battle over liberties that the State should treasure, not suppress," American Civil Liberties Union Legal Director Ritchie Eppink wrote in an official statement this week. "Let's hope this permanent injunction gets our elected officials to stop and think, and to start welcoming dissent, rather than trying to squelch it."

“They may restore the tent city. The point is, the court found Occupy Boise was exercising its legal right to protest on state property,” he told Reuters.

Judge Winmill’s ruling was announced the same week that officials in new York City agreed to pay almost a total of $600,000 to settle a lawsuit related to the wrongful arrests of 14 protesters at the original Occupy Wall Street encampment in Lower Manhattan.

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'Geen vrije verkiezingen in Hongkong'

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China zal bij de verkiezingen in Hongkong in 2017 alleen kandidaten accepteren die loyaal aan Peking zijn. Volgens de Hongkongse radiozender RTHK werd een voorstel daartoe vandaag aangenomen door het Chinese Nationaal Volkscongres.

Het is de eerste keer dat de volksvertegenwoordiging zich specifiek uitspreekt over het politieke proces in Hongkong.

Mogelijk leidt het besluit tot een uitbarsting van de sluimerende spanningen tussen China-sympathisanten en het prodemocratische Occupy Central. Die beweging dreigde eerder met 10.000 mensen het zakendistrict van Hongkong te bezetten, wanneer China zich zou gaan bemoeien met het verkiezingsproces.

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Hong Kong activists vow to take over financial centre in election protest

Campaigners say city is entering 'era of civil disobedience' after China claims free leadership poll would lead to 'chaotic society'

Pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong have vowed to take over the city's financial heart in a civil disobedience campaign, after China ruled out allowing its residents to freely choose their next leader.

Beijing has long promised that the chief executive of the region would be elected by universal suffrage from 2017, prompting Occupy Central and pan-democrat lawmakers to battle for substantial electoral reforms.

But Beijing made it clear on Sunday it would control the nominating process, and the framework endorsed by the standing committee of the National People's Congress is particularly tough. It will allow only two or three candidates and require them to gain the backing of at least half the members of a nominating committee stacked with Beijing loyalists. That effectively rules out a democrat from standing.

Li Fei, the deputy secretary general of the NPC standing committee, told journalists that opening up nominations would create a "chaotic society" and that the chief executive needed to "love the country and love the party".

He added: "These rights come from laws, they don't come from the sky … Many Hong Kong people have wasted a lot of time discussing things that are not appropriate and aren't discussing things that are appropriate."

The Democratic party's founding chairman, Martin Lee, poured scorn on the idea that the two or three candidates would offer voters a meaningful choice, asking those at a Sunday night pro-democracy rally: "W's the difference between a rotten orange, rotten apple and a rotten banana? We want genuine universal suffrage, not democracy with Chinese characteristics."

Benny Tai, one of the leaders of the Occupy Central with Peace and Love movement, told the crowd of thousands that the city was entering an "era of civil disobedience".

The movement said in a statement: "We are very sorry to say that today all chances of dialogue have been exhausted and the occupation of Central will definitely happen." It will be preceded by other actions, such as a mass boycott of classes by students. Hong Kong enjoys considerably more freedoms than the mainland under the "one country two systems" framework established on the handover of the former British colony in 1997.

But Xi Jinping has tightened the party's grip on the mainland, with lawyers, activists and journalists under increased pressure since he came to power, and activists in Hong Kong fear their liberties will be eroded.

The decision passed by the standing committee of the National People's Congress, China's mostly rubber-stamp legislature, said: "Since the long-term prosperity and stability of Hong Kong and the sovereignty, security and development interests of the country are at stake, there is a need to proceed in a prudent and steady manner."

This weekend, state media quoted an unnamed Chinese foreign ministry official warning that some in Hong Kong were "colluding with foreign forces to cause trouble for the government", adding that their goal "was to turn the city into a bridgehead for subversion and infiltration against the country".

Pan-democrats have vowed to block the reforms in the legislative council vote required to pass them. If the changes fall, the electoral system will continue as present – with a committee of 1,200 people, selected by the region's generally pro-Beijing elites, picking the next chief executive.

Emily Lau, LegCo member and chairwoman of the Democratic party, said: "I am not disappointed, because I never had much expectation. I'm infuriated and very, very unhappy. Beijing has reneged on its promise.

"I guess they do not trust the Hong Kong people. The struggle will go on."

David Zweig, of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said: "This leadership is tough, as we have seen for a long time. They are not making any concessions on this."

He noted that the government needed four or five LegCo members from the pan-democrat camp to switch for the decision to be adopted. The stakes are even higher because if universal suffrage is not introduced for the election of the chief executive, it will not be introduced for the subsequent election of LegCo members.

"If it falls there is no reform at all. That is their leverage – it is take it or leave it … It is progress in the eyes of the majority of people in Hong Kong. [But] would they have wanted more? Absolutely," he said.

He added that, on the pro-democracy side, "I don't think people will pack up and go away, even with the videos of troop carriers going down the streets of Hong Kong."

Earlier this week, People's Liberation Army armoured personnel carriers were seen in busy areas of the city. While some have speculated that Beijing hardened its line in response to the pro-democracy campaign, Occupy Central co-founder Chan Kin-man said that was just an excuse.

"Look at Macau. People are really soft and submissive and they don't even give them a choice of two candidates in the chief executive election. This is the result when people don't fight," he said.

Fernando Chui, the leader of the former Portugese colony – which is another special administrative region – was picked again on Sunday by a Beijing-supportive committee of just 400 people.

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China’s Hong Kong Mistake

In the summer of 1996, the Chinese Communist Party erected a giant digital clock, fifty feet tall and thirty feet long, beside Tiananmen Square, which counted down the seconds until, as it said in large characters across the top, “The Chinese Government Regains Sovereignty Over Hong Kong.” After a century and a half under British colonial rule, Hong Kong’s restoration, in 1997, was a hugely symbolic moment for China’s national identity, an end to a history of invasion in which, as the Chinese put it, their land was “cut up like a melon” by foreign powers.

Under a deal brokered with the British, China agreed not to alter Hong Kong’s internationalized way of life—including freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and other political rights not permitted on the mainland—for half a century. The theory was that, as mainland China continued to climb out of the poverty and political instability of the past, its leaders would gradually allow more political openness on the mainland. After a half century, or so the thinking went, the gap between the mainland and its reunited territory would have narrowed so much that they could mesh without much difficulty.

But, after nearly two decades, things are turning out differently. On Sunday, the Beijing government rejected demands for free, open elections for Hong Kong’s next chief executive, in 2017, enraging protesters who had called for broad rights to nominate candidates. China’s National People’s Congress announced a plan by which nominees must be vetted and approved by more than fifty per cent of a committee that is likely to be stacked with those who heed Beijing’s wishes. If that plan comes to pass, opposition figures who favor more democracy have little chance of making it onto the ballot. (As Boss Tweed liked to say, “I don’t care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating.”)

The crisis, which will likely grow, is proving to be a test not only of Hong Kong’s political culture but also of which political ethic will prevail across China in the years ahead: globalism or nationalism, two fundamentally different conceptions of how China will relate to the rest of the world. Hong Kong takes pride in its role as Asia’s original global city, a cultural and political mashup with a raucous, multilingual press corps and hot and noisy local politics—a largely borderless world of money, people, and ideas. Its courts rely on English common law, which is, in theory, free from political influence.

But, on the mainland, even as China’s economy has continued to grow and its population has become more integrated with the world, leaders have set new limits on political liberalization. They have concluded that greater democracy would threaten political stability and sovereignty, and they believe that China must instead adhere to its own centralized, one-party model. Last summer, as the scholar Sebastian Veg described, the Party circulated an internal directive to members that singled out seven “do not mention” topics: “democracy, universal values, civil society, market liberalism, media independence, criticizing errors in the history of the Party (‘historical nihilism’), and questioning the policy of opening up and reforms and the socialist nature of the regime.”

Hong Kong’s growing activist network, known as Occupy Central (named after the city’s downtown) has increasingly alarmed leaders in Beijing, and they now describe the activism as a brush fire that could sweep over the mainland. In a piece published on Saturday, the People’s Daily, the Communist Party mouthpiece, hinted about foreign agitators “attempting to turn Hong Kong into a bridgehead for subverting and infiltrating the Chinese mainland. This can absolutely not be permitted.”

In theory, China’s President, Xi Jinping, could have sought a middle road that would have opened up the nominating process enough to produce a competitive election. But, when the protests began earlier this year, Beijing worried that backing down would embolden further acts of resistance, not only in Hong Kong but also on the mainland. “If we yield because some people threaten to commence radical, illegal activities, it would only result in more, bigger illegal activities,” Li Fei, a mainland official, told Hong Kong lawmakers.

That is a strategy that points toward confrontation. Beijing chose the safer, short-term solution, but it left in place the ingredients for growing tension. Benny Tai, a law professor and opposition leader, said that the announcement opened a new “era of resistance.” “Today is not only the darkest day in the history of Hong Kong’s democratic development,” he told reporters. “Today is also the darkest day of one country, two systems,” a reference to the relationship between Hong Kong and the government in Beijing.

The most important questions are now up to the opposition: How far will pro-democracy activists go? Historically, Hong Kong’s political culture is loud and demonstrative, but not violent. The protesters have vowed to block Hong Kong’s financial district, in order to bring it to a standstill. But will it be a symbolic effort or a functional attempt to force a confrontation?

In turn, how will the Beijing-backed local government respond? Not long ago, it would have been unthinkable to imagine People’s Liberation Army vehicles on the streets of Hong Kong, but in the past quarter century the Party has shown that it is prepared to take whatever steps it deems necessary to tamp down public protests. On Sunday, hundreds of local police, and dozens of their vehicles, were arrayed around Hong Kong’s government headquarters. Last week, at least four P.L.A. armored personnel carriers were spotted in the streets.

Most important, if the confrontation becomes more acute, how will Hong Kong’s largely moderate middle class respond? So far, it has provided ambivalent support for the Occupy Central movement, fearing that unrest, even for popular ideas, could undermine the city’s business climate or invite harsher measures from Beijing. But how many of Hong Kong’s citizens will see a show of force as a reason to back down, and how many will see it as a reason to join the more radical pro-democracy camp?

The struggle over political values at the center of this crisis runs much deeper than the technical debate over Hong Kong’s elections. It is likely to get worse before it gets better. In a statement on Sunday, the Occupy Central activists described a sense of desperation, a belief that “all chances of dialogue have been exhausted and the occupation of Central will definitely happen.” It did not say when that occupation will begin.

twitter:

OccupyWallStNYC twitterde op donderdag 04-09-2014 om 20:32:20 "We stand with our citizens. We are with you," says @DetroitPolice Sergeant Woody to #FastFoodStrike'rs http://t.co/zZmm2ANFqq reageer retweet

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Detroit Police crack down on fast food protests; Workers across country demanding higher wages

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NEW YORK (AP/WXYZ) - Hundreds of workers from McDonald's, Taco Bell, Wendy's and other fast-food chains are walking off their jobs Thursday, according to labor organizers of the latest national protest to push the companies to pay their employees at least $15 an hour.

This time, organizers said they plan to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience, which may lead to arrests and draw more attention to the cause. They also said home-care workers will join the protests, which are expected to take place at fast-food restaurants in 150 cities nationwide, including Detroit, Chicago and New York.

Here in Detroit, protestors blocked Mack Avenue on the city's east side, forcing police to crack down on the protest and take many of the protestors into custody. Reports from the scene indicated that officers were running out of handcuffs.

In many cases, police say, the protesters were given the option to be released from custody, if they would just stop blocking the street. However, police say some of the protesters refused to do so. In those cases, the protesters were arrested.

Detroit Police say about 25 people were arrested.

The "Fight for $15" campaign, which is backed financially by the Service Employees International Union and others, has gained national attention at a time when the wage gap between the poor and the rich has become a hot political issue. President Barack Obama mentioned the campaign at a Labor Day appearance in Milwaukee.

"There's a national movement going on made up of fast food workers organizing to lift wages so they can provide for their families with pride and dignity," Obama said, as he pushed Congress to raise the minimum wage. "If I were busting my butt in the service industry and wanted an honest day's pay for an honest day's work, I'd join a union," he added.

Many fast-food workers do not make much more than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, which adds up to about $15,000 a year for 40 hours a week.

The protests have been going on for about two years, but organizers have kept the campaign in the spotlight by switching their tactics every few months. In the past, supporters have showed up at a McDonald's shareholder meeting and held strikes. The idea of civil disobedience arose in July when 1,300 workers held a convention in Chicago.

Kendall Fells, an organizing director for Fast Food Forward, has declined to say what exactly is in store for the protests, other than workers in a couple of dozen cities were trained to peacefully engage in civil disobedience ahead of the planned protests. But workers involved in the movement recently cited sit-ins as an example of strategies they could use to intensify their push for higher pay and unionization.

Past protests have targeted a couple of restaurants in each city for a limited time, in many cases posing little disruption to operations.

The National Restaurant Association said in a statement that the protests are an attempt by unions to "boost their dwindling membership."

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Koch brothers’ top political strategist: The minimum wage leads to fascism!

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In what will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with their father’s Birchite beliefs, a newly released audio recording of a mid-June speech delivered by top political strategist Richard Fink indicates that the billionaire libertarian Koch brothers still surround themselves with members of some of the fringiest corners of the libertarian right.

Released to the Huffington Post by the YouTube channel the Undercurrent, the recording features Richard Fink, a trained economist whom HuffPo describes as the Koch brothers’ “top political strategist,” explaining to a small, private audience how the Koch brothers plan to turn the American electorate away from “collectivization” and toward “liberty” by persuading a critical mass of voters to repeal most of the economic regulations of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Fink’s speech was lengthy, but amid the references to North Korea, Stalin, Hitler, Mao and radical Islam, the Kochs’ political guru shared an insight that is perhaps most revealing of his and their general worldview. The insight in question? The straightforward connection between raising — or even having — a minimum wage and how a liberal democracy can disintegrate into a fascistic dictatorship.

“Psychology shows that is the main recruiting ground for totalitarianism, for fascism, for conformism — when people feel like they’re victims,” the non-psychologist Fink can be heard to explain. “So the big danger of minimum wage isn’t the fact that some people are being paid more than their value-added; that’s not great. It’s not that it’s hard to stay in business —that’s not great, either. But it’s the 500,000 people that will not have a job because of minimum wage.”

Building off this initial, extremely tenuous connection, Fink continued, “We’re taking these 500,000 people that would’ve had a job, and putting them unemployed, making dependence part of government programs, and destroying their opportunity for earned success. And so we see this is a very big part of recruitment in Germany in the ’20s.”

Perhaps worried that his audience would fail to grasp how raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 was just like the creators of the Weimar Republic’s attempt to build a liberal democracy on the still-smoldering ruins of a military dictatorship defeated in an apocalyptic world war, Fink added: “If you look at … the rise and fall of the Third Reich, you can see that. And what happens is a fascist comes in and offers [people] an opportunity, finds the victim — Jews or the West —and offers them meaning for their life, OK?”

Yet despite the specifically American context that inspired his talk, Fink warned listeners that turning into a genocidal totalitarian hellscape as a consequence of raising the minimum wage is a risk that traverses borders. “This is not just in Germany. It’s in Russia — in Lenin and Stalin Russia — and then Mao,” he said. “This is the recruitment ground for fascism, and it’s not just historical. It’s what goes on today … in the suicide bomber recruitment.” Evidently, the disguises of the worldwide collectivist menace are large in number.

You can listen to the ravings of a man who will help decide how to spend as much as $300 million to influence the 2014 elections below, via HuffPo and the Undercurrent:

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Op donderdag 4 september 2014 22:01 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

twitter:

OccupyWallStNYC twitterde op donderdag 04-09-2014 om 20:32:20 "We stand with our citizens. We are with you," says @DetroitPolice Sergeant Woody to #FastFoodStrike'rs http://t.co/zZmm2ANFqq reageer retweet

[..]

[video]

[..]

twitter:

YourAnonNews twitterde op zondag 21-09-2014 om 18:00:33 Confront the cause of the climate crisis. Stop Capital. Join us tomorrow to #FloodWallStreet #peoplesclimate http://t.co/Ia2CRc7y0z reageer retweet

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#FloodWallStreet

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Join the flood on September 22 starting at 9 am. The economy of the 1% is destroying the planet, flooding our homes, and wrecking our communities. After the People’s Climate March, wearing blue, we will bring the crisis to its cause with a mass sit-in at the heart of capital.

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Op zondag 21 september 2014 19:37 schreef Lavenderr het volgende:

[..]

Meen je dat serieus? Haters mis ik als kiespijn.

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Climate protesters plan to risk arrest during Flood Wall Street sit-in

As many as 2,000 people expected in protest that organisers will ‘highlight the role of capitalism in fuelling the climate crisis’


Hundreds of protesters plan to risk arrest on Monday during an unsanctioned blockade in New York City’s financial district to call attention to what organisers say is Wall Street’s contribution to climate change.

The Flood Wall Street demonstration comes on the heels of Sunday’s international day of action that brought some 310,000 people to the streets of New York City in the largest single protest ever held on over climate change. There were no arrests or incidents in Sunday’s massive march, police said.

Flood Wall Street organisers said they wanted to use the momentum gained by Sunday’s march to “highlight the role of capitalism in fuelling the climate crisis.” As many as 2,000 participants will meet in lower Manhattan’s Battery Park before a planned noon march to Wall Street and the steps of the New York Stock Exchange for a sit-in and blockade without a police permit, event organisers said.

Some 200 people have said they will risk arrest by the New York City Police Department during the civil disobedience action, said spokeswoman Leah Hunt-Hendrix.

“This civil resistance, civil disobedience, shows a commitment to the cause,” said Hunt-Hendrix. “We are trying to escalate this as an urgent issue and show how Wall Street is profiting from the crisis.”

The event’s organisers have roots in the Occupy Wall Street movement that started in a downtown Manhattan park in 2011 to protest what it called unfair banking practices that serve the wealthiest one percent, leaving behind 99% of the world’s population.

Flood Wall Street said they hope Monday’s action will draw a link between economic policies and the environment, accusing top financial institutions of “exploiting frontline communities, workers and natural resources” for financial gain.

The event is part of Climate Week, which seeks to draw attention to carbon emissions and their link to global warming, and comes ahead of a 23 September United Nations Climate Summit.

twitter:

1n5ur3c7 twitterde op maandag 22-09-2014 om 20:05:55 #FloodWallStreet is still holding strong sitting down at the bull penned in by police. http://t.co/YHFcgji1sE reageer retweet

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Xian: the Chinese village that took on corruption and won

Villagers’ protests led to downfall of deputy mayor and end of intimidation campaign to drive them out of their homes

To find the villagers who toppled one of southern China’s most powerful men, start just east of the Canton tower, an LED-lit column twisting more than 500 metres into the cloud cover. Head north, past two blocks of luxury apartments, until you come to a high concrete wall. Behind its gates, you’ll find Xian village.

Xian is the size of about eight football pitches, but it feels much larger. Most of its 4,000 residents live three or four to a room, up filthy staircases in boxy concrete mid-rise blocks of flats. Its tangle of dark, narrow alleys winds in on itself like a labyrinth.

On a recent rainy night, about 300 villagers gathered in the Lu family ancestral hall, a centuries-old grey-brick building next to a dilapidated kindergarten, for a traditional Cantonese feast. Some performed a lion dance with a big, black papier-mache lion. Since 19 August 2009, the villagers have been waging an open protest against official corruption and every summer they gather to celebrate their progress. This year’s banquet was especially festive. Just the day before, after years of ignoring or censoring the revolt, state media syndicated a report applauding Xian village for uncovering an “iron triangle of corruption” among village officials, two local developers and the city’s deputy mayor, Cao Jianliao. Cao was placed under investigation in December. In July, he was sacked.

“Over the past year, our lives have got better; our hearts are calmer,” said Lu Jingfeng, 43, captain of the village football team, as he tucked into a plate of roasted pork belly. “But our demands have not yet been met. So we’ll keep on fighting.”

Xian village is one of 138 “urban villages” scattered throughout Guangzhou, a sprawling, 13 million-people metropolis at southern China’s economic core. Municipal authorities consider the villages at best an eyesore, and at worst, a slum-like breeding ground for social unrest. They announced plans in 2010 to redevelop every one within the decade.

“Guangzhou has seen a severe shortage of land for buildings,” one reconstruction official said. Yet most are still standing, as many of their residents refuse to leave.

Xian village was not always surrounded by a high, concrete wall – local authorities built it in 2011. Make conditions unbearable, the logic went, and the villagers would leave. A cabal of powerful developers – Jiayu Group, Nanya Property Development, Qiaoxin Real Estate, Poly Real Estate – were anxious to turn the prime patch of land into luxury apartments and office blocks.

Yet the wall, just like the beatings, arrests and forced demolitions before it, only amplified the steady drumbeat of marches and petitions. The villagers were recalcitrant. Even now, they live amid swaths of utter devastation. Parts of the village evoke recent images of Gaza and urban Syria. Weeds grow from mountains of rubble. Concrete apartment blocks sit half-demolished, their windows blown out, their exposed tangles of reinforcement bars splayed like severed nerves.



Similar scenarios are playing out across China, as Communist party authorities attempt to move 250 million rural people into cities by 2025. It may be the largest social engineering experiment in human history, and Xian village typifies the challenge. Under Chinese law, urban land is owned by the government and rural land is owned collectively by villagers. Yet the quickest, easiest way for local governments to fill their coffers is by requisitioning that land and flipping it to developers. The less they spend, the greater their profits. Often, they bribe village leaders to keep prices low, and the villagers themselves end up with meagre compensation packages for valuable land that they have owned for centuries.

“I can’t even count the number of demonstrations we’ve had,” said Ms Lu, 40, who calls defending the village her full-time job. Many villagers, when asked about the protests, will roll up a sleeve or trouser leg and point to where they have been hit by a fist or a policeman’s truncheon. During one protest, a man lost his leg to a falling concrete slab. Lu, who declined to give her full name for fear of reprisals, has a short bob haircut, a round face and soft, lilting voice that belies an undercurrent of outrage. In 2010, a police officer hit Lu hard in the calf as she ran from a fracas.

“We don’t leave the village for fear that they’ll come and destroy it,” she said. “If anything happens, we need to stay here and resist. We need to fight back when people attack us. We need to protect each other.”

Xian residents say that the authorities began to loosen their grip in late 2012, when Xi Jinping was installed as the top Communist party leader. Endemic corruption, Xi has said, poses an “existential threat” to party rule, and an effort to root it out has become a hallmark of his early tenure. Last summer, seven Xian village cadres were placed under investigation for taking bribes. This summer, they were tried. Hundreds of villagers packed into the Guangzhou intermediate people’s courthouse to witness the proceedings. At the judge’s behest, the defendants, one by one, vowed to return their payouts to the developers. With every promise, the villagers burst into laughter and jeers.

According to the state newswire Xinhua, the village cadre investigation helped anti-corruption authorities “trace the vine to the melon” and turn their focus on deputy mayor Cao. Developers had given Cao £6.7m to strip Xian villagers of their right to decide the future of their land, the report said. When he was placed under investigation in December, the developers’ intimidation campaign abruptly stopped – no more ID checks at the village gates, no more arbitrary beatings. The party mouthpiece People’s Daily accused Cao of being “morally degenerate” and having “long-term amours with 11 women”. He was expelled from the party on 11 July. That night, the villagers set off fireworks.

The villagers claim their resistance has no organisational structure or chain of command. Yet if it did, Lu Youfeng, the organiser of the celebratory banquet, would almost certainly be its spokesman. That afternoon, Lu, a diminutive but quietly charismatic father of two, wore plastic sandals and a blue polo shirt embroidered with the word “Ferrari”. Until the late 1990s, he explained, the village was a rural idyll. Its social structure was organised by family clan, and to this day, most local people have one of three surnames: Lu, Xian or Liang. “Our village has 800 years of history,” he said. For most of it, they lived in mud-brick homes and farmed cabbage.

In the late 90s the Guangzhou government announced plans for a new financial district, the Zhujiang New Town. The Zhujiang New Town at first tentatively crept around the village and then swallowed it whole. The villagers lost their farmland to developers, so they became landlords. They built spartan, concrete residential blocks on their remaining property, subdivided them into scores of tiny rooms and rented them out to migrant workers from the countryside. The migrants came in droves; the villagers kept building. Soon, the apartment blocks were packed so tightly that sunlight could not reach below their highest floors. Migrants now make up two-thirds of the village’s population. The men work on nearby construction sites, while the women spend their days in the dank, artificially lit alleys, stripping wire for copper and selling trinkets from closet-sized stalls.

Lu said the villagers understood the value of their property – nearby flats sell for up to £5,000 a square metre – and hoped to redevelop it themselves. Barring that, they hope to sell it at market value, and demand that the government return the land that it unfairly expropriated in the past.

“The smart thing they’re doing in Xian is that they’re not fighting for a specific amount of compensation, they’re fighting against official corruption,” said Chen Hong, an assistant professor at South China Normal University who studies urban villages. “That’s how they’ve been able to hold out for so long.”

Chen said the compensation process was fraught with traps and loopholes. Residents of another urban village, Liede, agreed to relocate into decent-looking high-rises, but on arrival, discovered that the buildings were in fact jerry-built, with “terrible construction materials and a lot of wasted space”. Village officials, she said, were given the best flats.

“I think so far, we’ve been successful,” said Ms Lu, the full-time village defender. “But the cost has been huge – so many people have been hurt.”

Although this year’s village-wide banquet lasted late into the night, no speeches were given. State newspapers did not cover the event and village officials did not attend. Villagers conceded that it might be one of their last – the stalemate couldn’t go on for ever. “Demolition should be a good thing,” a police officer shouted above the din, waving his arm towards the village’s rain-slicked streets and crumbling buildings. “They’ve just made a terrible mess of it. Development is inevitable.”

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Hong Kong riot police forcibly disperse pro-democracy demonstrators - video

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Riot police in Hong Kong disperse and arrest protesters occupying the government headquarters on Saturday to protest China's refusal to allow genuine democratic reforms in the semi-autonomous region. Student groups have been spearheading a civil disobedience campaign this week in response to Beijing's announcement last month that it would choose who can stand for Hong Kong's top post of chief executive in elections in 2017

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Hong Kong police move in to arrest pro-democracy demonstrators

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Student groups have been spearheading a civil disobedience campaign this week in response to Beijing’s announcement last month that it would choose who can stand for Hong Kong’s top post of chief executive in elections in 2017.

Several people, including one police officer, were taken away on stretchers by medical personnel after about 150 students forced their way into government headquarters late on Friday night, some scaling a tall fence. Police responded with pepper spray to push them back.

Police said 12 men and a woman, aged 16 to 35, were arrested Friday night and Saturday morning, and at least 28 protesters and officers have been injured.

Protesters who remained in the complex on Saturday morning hoisted a sign saying “Hope lies with the people, change starts with resistance,” written in black letters on white cloth.

“This is an amazing turning point. Hong Kongers usually just lay there and do nothing. This time, we’re really making an impact,” said Suki Wong, a recent graduate who works as an accountant.