Free Republic

Christy Leung is a 21-year-old college student from Hong Kong. She feels threatened by Chinese censorship these days — but she doesn’t even live in Hong Kong right now. Instead, she attends the University of Queensland in Australia. Recently, when she and other students from Hong Kong organized a peaceful rally on campus to support the anti-extradition bill protesters in Hong Kong, they were met by a pro-Beijing counterprotest. A video shows some of the Chinese nationalists resorted to physical violence in order to shut down students from Hong Kong. According to a New York Times report, “A student...

A prominent Russian opposition leader was discharged from a Moscow hospital Monday and sent back to jail, despite claims by his doctor that he may have been poisoned by an unknown chemical agent while in custody. Navalny was arrested several days before an opposition demonstration held on Saturday and is currently serving a 30-day sentence. More than 1,300 people were detained after protesting the exclusion of opposition candidates from Moscow's city council elections. In 2017, he suffered a partial loss of vision after being assaulted and doused with a green antiseptic. His sight was restored after he sought treatment abroad.

Former Hong Kong leader Tung Chee-hwa has accused the United States and Taiwan of orchestrating the “well-organised” recent protests against the Hong Kong government. Tung, vice-chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, also warned on Wednesday that there could be no compromise with those who challenge Beijing’s sovereignty and damage the city’s stability. He said he remained firmly behind the Hong Kong police and Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor. He called on Lam’s government to listen to public opinion and solve long-standing problems such as housing, health care, education and pensions. “Some young people have vented their anxiety...

While covering the ongoing mass protests in Hong Kong, originally sparked by a controversial and now-shelved bill that would have allowed extradition from Hong Kong to China, CNN’s Anna Coren and her crew were hit by tear gas. Video at the source

Riot police and protesters clash: Police and protesters are facing off in the Hong Kong district of Sheung Wan. Police have been firing tear gas for hours now to clear the crowds -- but the hundreds of protesters left are still pushing back. Summer of discontent: People have been protesting for three days in a row -- and beyond that, for the past eight weekends. Mass demonstrations, clashes with police, and escalating violence have become the norm. Growing demands: The protests began against a now-suspended extradition bill, but have since broadened to include calls for democracy and police accountability.

"Detention of over 1000 peaceful protestors in Russia and use of disproportionate police force undermine rights of citizens to participate in the democratic process," U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Andrea Kalan tweeted. Police in Moscow detained more than 1,300 people in a day of protests against alleged irregularities in the run-up to local elections...Officers clad in riot gear used batons against demonstrators who had gathered outside Moscow City Hall on July 27 and roughly detained people. It is unclear how many people turned up for the rally because authorities prevented a mass crowd from gathering together in any one location. A July...

BEIJING (Reuters) - China’s military recently carried out air and naval drills along its southeast coast, the Defence Ministry said on Sunday, following the latest arms sales from the United States to self-ruled Taiwan, which China claims as a renegade province. In a brief statement, and without giving an exact geographical location, the ministry said that the People’s Liberation Army had in “recent days” held the exercises. “These drills were routine arrangements in accordance with annual plans for the military,” it said, without elaborating. China’s southeast coast is one of the country’s most sensitive regions as it faces Taiwan across...

While the rest of the world watches in awe at the sight of millions of Hong Kongers protesting against an extradition bill and demanding greater political freedom, a different protest erupted in Wuhan, in the heartland of mainland China.Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei province, is the seventh-largest city in China, with 10 million residents. Sitting on the bank of Yangtze River, it has long served as an important harbor, a commercial and industrial center in central China. Wuhan is known for its hot weather, hot food, and hot-tempered (but talented) people.It’s the hometown of tennis star Li Na,...

In yet another protest of immigrant detention policy far from the Mexico border, hundreds took to the streets in Boston Tuesday in a “Jews against ICE” demonstration that saw 18 people arrested. Marchers chanted and waved signs on a route that took them from the city’s Holocaust Memorial to the South Bay ICE detention facility at the Suffolk County House of Correction. The rush hour protest disrupted busy roadways in downtown Boston, and the Boston Globe reports that police arrested 18 who had linked arms in front of the building’s entrance. Video shows more than a dozen people dressed in...

According to the Communist ideology, ‘We are the people’s representatives’, so the party cannot accept people rising up against it and forcing it to back down,” said Joseph Cheng, retired political science professor at the City University of Hong Kong. The authorities also have a deep-rooted tendency to blame problems on foreign interference instead of their own governance weaknesses, political commentator and veteran journalist Ching Cheong said. “China sees Hong Kong as influenced by years of colonial rule and having no sense of responsibility to introduce laws to protect the national security or to help the country nab fugitives,” said...

Flights carrying Russians to nearby Georgia will be halted after anti-Russian protests flared in the former Soviet republic. Russian President Vladimir Putin has issued a temporary flight ban to begin next month, state news agency TASS reported on Friday. It added that Putin has also ordered the repatriation of Russian citizens temporarily living in Georgia. "Starting on July 8, 2019, Russian airlines are temporarily prohibited from carrying out air transportation (including commercial) of citizens from the territory of the Russian Federation to the territory of Georgia," TASS said. The announcement comes after Thursday's large-scale demonstrations by Georgian protestors against a...

WASHINGTON - Connecticut Democrats on Capitol Hill for the most part walk a fine line on proposed highway tolls, calling for more robust federal infrastructure spending but sidestepping clear support for Gov. Ned Lamont’s controversial measure. “Once the General Assembly and the Governor come to an agreement on how best to fund state transportation projects moving forward, I will work with state leaders in any manner necessary to further the goal of improving Connecticut’s infrastructure,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee. Recommended Video Lamont’s strongest supporter in Washington by far is Sen....

China’s Global Times newspaper defended the pro-Communist leadership of Hong Kong’s decision to use tear gas and rubber bullets on pro-democracy protesters Wednesday, insisting that the thousands of mostly young students opposing a law that would allow their extradition into the mainland were “violent” extremists radicalized by the United States. .... Many protesters expressed concern that the law would result in their extradition and imprisonment if they criticized the government in public in Hong Kong, where China nominally agreed to allow autonomy following Britain’s withdrawal. China and Hong Kong agreed to co-exist under what China calls “One Country, Two Systems,”...

Despite pleas from two former state governors and at least 90 environmental and community groups and businesses, Gov. Ron DeDantis on Friday signed a multibillion-dollar plan to build long stretches of toll roads across undeveloped sections of the state. The legislation has been labeled “the worst environmental bill in twenty years.” And the Florida Sierra Club has warned of pristine areas becoming urban sprawl, where “subdivisions and strip malls will proliferate and the natural resources that bring visitors to the state will be overused and overrun.” DeSantis approved the bill anyway. The announcement came not from the governor’s press office...

HONG KONG—Demonstrators staged the biggest rally challenging China’s authority over the city since Britain ceded control in 1997, thronging streets for hours to protest a proposed law that would let Beijing take people across the border to stand trial in the mainland. Organizers estimated more than a million people—almost one for every seven residents in the city—took to the streets to demand the city’s leaders and their political masters in Beijing shelve the law. Police estimated 240,000 protesters took part at the peak of Sunday’s march. A snaking crowd that included young families, students, professionals and the elderly streamed through...

<p>FOX NEWS - A woman popped the massive balloon depicting President Trump as a baby in London on Tuesday, berating protesters for disrespecting the "best president ever."</p> <p>"That's a disgrace," she told bystanders in a video posted by The Sun newspaper. "The president of the United States is the best president ever." It's unclear what she used to deflate the balloon but she prompted people to yell in response.</p>

The video is at the link, showing the paltry (5,000) crowd of anti-Trump protesters.

The nation of Canada has been giving us a chilling vision of what it looks like when a western nation completely succumbs to the dangerous ideology of multiculturalism, the cultural Marxism that always inevitably restricts the rights of some to pave the way for the rights of others. There is no equality in multiculturalism. Christians have faced increasing adversity in Canada as of late, but new proposed legislation that would make it a crime to publicly express one’s faith is a chilling new low. In the proposed legislation, it would become illegal for Christians to make any public displays which...

Thus the revolution begins,” the SerpomPo telegram channel says, with the population ready to come into the square to defend its rights and dignity against the powers of “the mafia state, in this case, the state’s church department,” a segment of the regime which has failed to draw the necessary conclusions from its Ukrainian losses. The church hierarchs “continue to conduct themselves boldly, hoping that the bosses will provide them protection forever,” forgetting that they and their protectors have fallen into “two ‘black holes,’ corruption in the state and corruption in the church. “The atmosphere in the country is changing...

COLUMBIA — After outrage from students and faculty over the search for a new president, the University of South Carolina board of trustees decided against choosing any of their four finalists Friday and reopened the hunt for a new campus leader. Dozens of protesters chanting, “We want answers,” came to USC’s Alumni Center in downtown Columbia where trustees deliberated for much of the afternoon after interviewing the finalists earlier Friday. Some faculty members talked about a walkout if the front runner, a former West Point superintendent, was picked. After the decision was announced, the activists cheered outside the boardroom and...