Free Republic

Aerial footage filmed by a drone shows the large number of people joining pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong democracy protesters camped out in the centre of the global financial hub on Monday (September 29), continuing a stand-off that represents one of the biggest political challenges for Beijing since the Tiananmen Square crackdown 25 years ago. The unrest, the worst in Hong Kong since China resumed its rule over the former British colony in 1997, sent white clouds of gas wafting among some of the world's most valuable office towers and shopping malls before riot police suddenly withdrew around lunchtime on Monday, after three nights of confrontation. As riot police withdrew, weary protesters slept beside roads or...

Hong Kong Protests

Thousands of pro-democracy protesters are taking to the streets of Hong Kong ahead of a national holiday on Wednesday, and they're using a messaging app to keep in touch and defy censorship. FireChat is a messaging app built by the San Francisco-based company Open Garden, which creates products facilitating a more open, decentralized internet. What makes the app fascinating is that it doesn't require the internet for local chat, instead allowing people to connect via Bluetooth. When you first download FireChat, the app doesn't let on that it has become a hub for pro-democracy protesters around the world. Instead, the...

San Francisco politicians, eager to showcase their democratic credentials in their liberty-loving city, traditionally have not shied from taking stances on human rights, checking in on everything from apartheid in South Africa to Burma’s military junta. But on Wednesday, as tens of thousands of peaceful democracy demonstrators who had already been tear-gassed marched in Hong Kong, Mayor Ed Lee was on his City Hall balcony hoisting the flag of the target of those protests — the autocratic government of China.

THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE Keeper of the Flame of the Enlightenment HONG KONG STUDENT PROTESTS The differences between student-led movements in this country and in Hong Kong are striking. One need look no further than their respective demands and the ideas that animate their protests. When American college students are moved enough to organize, they are almost always calling for more “freebies,” not more freedom, as the courageous students today in Hong Kong are doing. The students in Hong Kong are speaking truth to serious power, with all too real consequences for questioning and challenging their ruthless masters in Beijing. When...

The differences between student-led movements in this country and in Hong Kong are striking. One need look no further than their respective demands and the ideas that animate their protests.  When American kids are moved enough to organize, they are almost always protesting for more "freebies," not more freedom, as the courageous students today in Hong Kong are doing.  The students in Hong Kong are speaking truth to real power, with all too real consequences for questioning and challenging their ruthless communist masters. When the Hong Kong protests have subsided, those lucky enough to avoid imprisonment will face a bleak future.  With their...

Americans are caught up with the Ebola crisis and the Secret Service lapses in protecting the White House and the president's family. But what is transpiring in Hong Kong may be of far greater consequence. Last weekend, Hong Kong authorities used pepper spray and tear gas to scatter the remnants of a student protest of the decision to give Beijing veto power over candidates in future elections. The gassing was a blunder. Citizens poured into the streets in solidarity with the protesters. Hong Kong police lacked the nerve or numbers to remove them. The People's Liberation Army stayed in its...

Hong Kong protesters stockpile supplies, fear fresh police advance By Donny Kwok and Yimou Lee HONG KONG Tue Sep 30, 2014 7:26am EDT (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters extended a blockade of Hong Kong streets on Tuesday, stockpiling supplies and erecting makeshift barricades ahead of what some fear may be a push by police to clear the roads before Chinese National Day. Riot police shot pepper spray and tear gas at protesters at the weekend, but by Tuesday evening they had almost completely withdrawn from the downtown Admiralty district except for an area around the government headquarters....

The Hong Kong government said Monday that riot police have pulled back from pro-democracy demonstrations around the city. Explaining the move, the government said in a statement that the protesters on the streets are "calm again." It urged the protesters to disperse to allow emergency vehicles, public transport and other traffic to pass.

Hong Kong police have fired repeated volleys of tear gas to disperse pro-democracy protests and baton-charged the crowd blocking a key road in the government district after official warnings against illegal demonstrations. Student groups are spearheading a civil disobedience campaign along with democracy activists to pressure Beijing into granting full democracy to Hong Kong. The city's central district descended into chaos on Sunday as chanting protesters converged on police barricades surrounding their colleagues, who had earlier launched a "new era" of civil disobedience. Riot police staged repeated pepper spray and baton charges and threw tear gas at the crowds. Police...

The American people have had enough with the assault on their first amendment rights. They just want to be left alone by their government and government-affiliated pressure groups. It is the establishment in both parties, who is on the take from these pressure groups, that prevent ordinary Americans from speaking their minds like the civilized people we ARE. People disagree, sometimes vehemently. That’s normal and healthy, and it shouldn’t be the job of the government to shut people up. That’s not American – that’s totalitarian. How do we fix this? It’s remarkably simple. We, the normal people, outnumber the control...

What if you were allowed to vote only because it didn't make a difference? What if no matter how you voted the elites always got their way? What if the concept of one person/one vote was just a fiction created by the government to induce your compliance? What if democracy as it has come to exist in America today is dangerous to personal freedom? What if our so-called democracy erodes the people's understanding of natural rights and the reasons for government and instead turns political campaigns into beauty contests? What if American democracy allows the government to do anything...

With the rise of Islamist organizations, repressive regimes, and civil conflicts which threaten regional stability, the promise of the Arab Spring of 2011 quickly devolved into an Arab winter. In an expansive article in The Economist, the threat to the Middle East is discussed in appropriately grave terms; Syria and Iraq are in flames while Jordan looms as the next domino to potentially fall. Libya and Yemen, where Islamic terror networks operate with impunity, are labeled “failed states.” Those Middle Eastern nations that are not in danger of imminent collapse are either absolute monarchies or counties which merely maintain...

The Once and Future King: The Rise of Crown Government in America, by F.H. Buckley, Encounter Books, 2014, 319 pages, $27.99.Try making sense out of what Americans tell pollsters. According to the Pew Research Center, fewer than one in five of us trusts the federal government. Gallup says that nearly three quarters of us consider it "the biggest threat to the country in the future." Yet by equally overwhelming margins, Gallup shows Americans agreeing that "the United States has a unique character because of its history and Constitution that sets it apart from other nations as the greatest in the...

July 1 marks 17 years since the former British colony became a Chinese Special Administrative Region. Calls for popular representation are growing ever fiercer in the freewheeling metropolisWhen typhoons begin to lash along Asia’s coastlines each midsummer, Hong Kong usually manages to escape serious damage, since storms in the South China Sea tend to lose their muster over the Philippines and Taiwan by the time they make landfall. Some locals will cheekily boast that the city, constructed across an archipelago and on a peninsula extending south of the Chinese mainland, is protected by an invisible dome that blocks out these...

For the past few centuries, the Western world has witnessed a contest of historic visions. On the one side was the dream of the beautiful collective. Human progress was a one-way march toward socialism. People would liberate themselves from religion, hierarchy and oppression. They would build a new kind of society where equality would be the rule, where rational planning would replace cruel competition. On the other side was . . .

Is the election of a pro-business, pro-American, growth-oriented prime minister in the world's largest democracy good news or bad news for the world's oldest democracy? We in that oldest democracy are currently governed by the Democrats, a party that has more in common with the defeated Congress party in India than with the victorious Bharatiya Janata Party. You could tell that the White House was less than overjoyed at the election of Narendra Modi when the spokesman recited boilerplate praise of a "free and fair election." Are there sensitivities regarding this particular small-government guy? Sure. India is not Indiana. The...

Until We Learn to Be Sovereign, the Illegitimate State Will Continue.A recent editorial column here at the PanAm Post spoke of the failures of the opposition parties in Venezuela and their culpability in the collapse of their country. The article raises some very important questions about democracy itself. Democracy, after all, is a very good system, and can produce some very positive results. However, it is also a system fraught with incredible danger. Democracy represents the will of the people, but it also represents their whims, their fears, and their prejudices. The Historical Legacy: False Promises, Division, Failure It was...

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