What started in June as protests against a controversial extradition law has grown into something much larger and more formidable. On this week’s episode of WorldAffairs, David Rennie, columnist for the Economist, Illaria Maria Sala, a freelance journalist based in Hong Kong, and a Chinese reporter who has asked to remain anonymous join WorldAffairs co-host Ray Suarez to discuss what the protests mean for Hong Kong, China, and the pro-democracy movement.
27 October 2019
The Daily Beast: How Warren Went From Wonky Blogger to Democratic Frontrunner
Those who have run for the party’s nomination in the past have largely hailed from one of two perches: insurgents or establishment types. Warren’s candidacy is a synthesis of the two. She has spent decades operating in elite institutions from Harvard to the Obama administration to the halls of Congress. But she is also the first true candidate of the Netroots era of the Democratic Party, in which wonkiness and unapologetic progressivism are both regarded as unimpeachable political virtues. [...]
The Democratic Party has had candidates closely associated with online activism before. Howard Dean’s 2004 campaign was fueled by a nascent Internet culture that was, in retrospect, the first true iteration of the so-called blogosphere. Barack Obama took concepts of community organizing and applied them to emerging social media channels to fuel his rise. And Bernie Sanders built a small dollar online donor network that has far surpassed anything previously constructed in electoral politics. [...]
Warren may not be the preferred candidate for all of these individuals or others whose roots are in the era of blogging. Indeed, many veterans of the early Netroots era have gone on to work for other presidential candidates or media outlets or political entities that simply won’t play in the 2020 primary. But her rise does represent the remarkable degree to which Democratic politics has shifted from a place where insurgents were seen as pesky naifs and political outsiders to one where they run the show.
The Guardian: Trump's America will be saddled with debt – just like his bankrupted hotels
Once upon a time, conservatives said they hated Barack Obama because of his budget deficits. They said he was destroying America and its future, which made them very angry indeed. They were so mad about all those Obama debts that they invented a new party, and named it after the revolutionaries who opposed a nasty British king. The Tea Party was a collection of strange people, including one candidate who promised she wasn’t a witch.
But the strangest thing happened after Obama moved out of the White House, and an orange man moved in. That was when conservatives all across America decided they didn’t actually hate debt and deficits after all. [...]
Even the prayer people were happy to set aside their morals. They know that Trump’s kind of magical thinking is precisely what the world needs right now, otherwise everybody would get very upset at the way the planet is warming, the threat of nuclear war, and the global refugee crisis. Right now we obviously need the kind of leader who is completely ignorant about the consequences, and just lives in the moment.
TLDR News: Europe's Top 10 Richest and Poorest Places - Data Dive (Sep 11, 2018)
The is a lot of difference between rich and poor areas all over the world, and Europe is no exception. We run down the richest and poorest areas in Northern Europe and discuss the issues which arise from income inequality in Europe.
The Guardian: Trump's presidency is built on lies. Does he actually believe them?
From the phantom peace in Syria to the phantom wall on the Mexican border, the Trump presidency is based on the theory that reality is created by mere assertion. The scariest interpretation of the torrent of Trump lies is that the president actually believes the words that he is saying each time his lips move. [...]
By any rational measure, the Watergate break-in was dangerously unnecessary since Nixon would go on to carry 49 states against the hapless McGovern, even without planted microphones at Democratic headquarters. [...]
Taylor’s written statement ended with an earnest plea: “We must support Ukraine in its fight against its bullying neighbor. Russian aggression cannot stand.” Sadly, the same thing can be said about the Kurds, whom Trump also cynically and willfully abandoned.
read the article
By any rational measure, the Watergate break-in was dangerously unnecessary since Nixon would go on to carry 49 states against the hapless McGovern, even without planted microphones at Democratic headquarters. [...]
Taylor’s written statement ended with an earnest plea: “We must support Ukraine in its fight against its bullying neighbor. Russian aggression cannot stand.” Sadly, the same thing can be said about the Kurds, whom Trump also cynically and willfully abandoned.
read the article
The Guardian: Anti-LGBT rhetoric stokes tensions in eastern Europe
In Poland, and elsewhere in central Europe, there has been a notable rise in tolerance and empathy towards the LGBT community in recent years, illustrated by the emergence of a confident new generation of activists in smaller towns and cities. But across the region, populist politicians and church leaders are using the issue to mobilise their conservative bases. [...]
That message will resonate with activists in Poland, where senior members of the ruling right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS) have engaged in an increasingly ferocious campaign portraying so-called “LGBT ideology” as a menace akin to that of Soviet-imposed communism. In the run-up to parliamentary elections this month, which PiS narrowly won, the “LGBT issue” emerged as one of the main campaign grounds. [...]
In Hungary, where the church is less powerful than in Poland, there is less deep-rooted homophobia. Budapest was one of the first cities in the region to have pride marches. But in recent months the ruling Fidesz party of the far-right prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has begun what appears to be a coordinated homophobic campaign. [...]
n the Czech Republic, attitudes are even more progressive, with a recent survey showing 61% of people supported a bill currently under consideration that would legally enshrine gay marriage. But here too, conservative politicians are rallying part of their base with homophobic rhetoric disguised as a promotion of “traditional values”.
The Guardian: Life in the 'hairy underground': the lost history of Soviet hippies
Lampmann is one of the stars of Soviet Hippies, a film by the Estonian writer and director Terje Toomistu about a lost period in Soviet history. The documentary explores a subculture that was inspired by the west yet distinctly homegrown – existing in a society shaped by communism and watched over by the KGB.
“In the west, nobody was arrested simply for having long hair or wearing strange clothes,” Toomistu explains. The USSR, by contrast, wanted complete control of its citizens’ lives: how people worked, dressed, or even danced. Anyone who rejected the Homo sovieticus model could be in “big trouble”, including having their hair forcibly cut. [...]
By the late 70s, the hippies had developed a counterculture, with Russian slang and a music scene. There was what Toomistu calls “analogue Facebook” – notebooks listing names and numbers of contacts across the USSR, used by travellers seeking somewhere to crash for the night. This network is gloriously animated in the film, which features psychedelic drawings and cartoons.
The Guardian: Offshore windfarms ‘can provide more electricity than the world needs’
Analysis by the International Energy Agency (IEA) revealed that if windfarms were built across all useable sites which are no further than 60km (37 miles) off the coast, and where coastal waters are no deeper than 60 metres, they could generate 36,000 terawatt hours of renewable electricity a year. This would easily meeting the current global demand for electricity of 23,000 terawatt hours. [...]
The study predicts offshore wind generation will grow 15-fold to emerge as a $1tn (£780bn) industry in the next 20 years and will prove to be the next great energy revolution.
The IEA said earlier this week that global supplies of renewable electricity were growing faster than expected and could expand by 50% in the next five years, driven by a resurgence in solar energy. Offshore wind power would drive the world’s growth in clean power due to plummeting costs and new technological breakthroughs, including turbines close to the height of the Eiffel Tower and floating installations that can harness wind speeds further from the coast.
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