Today's WorldView: The protesters of Hong Kong and Moscow aren't backing down

[applegrove]

Today's WorldView: The protesters of Hong Kong and Moscow aren’t backing down

WaPo email: Ishaan Tharoor

https://www.google.com/amp/s/beta.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/08/12/protesters-hong-kong-moscow-arent-backing-down/%3foutputType=amp

"SNIP....

For the fifth consecutive weekend, protesters massed in Moscow, clamoring for opposition candidates to be allowed on the ballot for municipal elections next month — as well as for the release of hundreds of demonstrators, activists and opposition politicians detained by authorities in the previous weeks.

For the tenth consecutive weekend, protesters took to the streets in Hong Kong, dodging tear gas fired by security forces. Earlier this summer, Hong Kong’s protest movement succeeded in stalling a controversial extradition bill that the demonstrators feared would place Asia’s financial hub further under the thumb of China’s single-party state. But their fervor didn’t dim. They are defending political freedoms they think are under threat and demanding broader democratic reforms. They also want the resignation of the city’s leader, Carrie Lam — seen by critics as a pro-Beijing cipher — as well as the release of dissidents seized during the unrest.

In both cases, the protesters have faced a stiff and, at times, brutal response from the proxies of the regimes they are protesting. Each week this past month, videos filtered out on social media of Russian police battering unarmed and peaceful demonstrators with truncheons — no matter the scenes being ignored on Russian state television.

......

“This ability to find connections and momentum in a fractured landscape is perhaps the underlying essence of the current protests,” wrote Pomerantsev in the Atlantic. “The regimes they fight have no single ideology, united only in their aim to demotivate people and break up common efforts."

At least in the case of Moscow and Hong Kong, those regimes are, for now, failing.

.....SNIP"

[Thekaspervote]

1. We should be in the streets as well! It only takes approx 3.5% of a population to topple a dictator

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/01/worried-american-democracy-study-activist-techniques

[applegrove]

2. I was thinking it was good autocrats in Russia and China are seeing

massive pushback. That it could be a cautionary tale for would be autocrats the world lover.

[Thekaspervote]

3. Yes... we should be pushing back too! Not meaning the Dems, I think they push back hard.

Rather we the people should be pushing back harder

[JI7]

4. we have elections