Tank Man Showed The Way. Be Free In All The Moments.

It is June 4th again. A time to remember when freedom hit a Chinese wall... and at least one man kept protesting:

If Tank Man is still alive, he should be in his late 50s by now

We Americans are living in an age now of repression and police violence. Where families are getting rounded up due to fear-mongering and race-baiting. Where protestors are getting targeted and beaten for the simple act of demanding fair treatment and an end to brutal prison camps.

We are now at the moment where history will ask us "What will YOU do? Will you cower? Will you stand?"

Remember, the ones going into the tear gas are the brave ones fighting for their communities and their loved ones.

Hero

Time to stand. Time to be free.

I Love You More Than Hate Loves War

Last month, Bruce Springsteen released a protest song railing against the violence of trump's thugs towards immigrants and protestors, and it came as part of an early wave of protest songs spreading across the American airwaves as other artists chimed in.

Last week, one of the other bands I follow - U2 - released their own song about the violence in Minneapolis, on an EP (sort of a mini-album) alongside other songs protesting the state of things across the world from Ukraine to Sudan to Iran to Gaza. 

trump and his ilk have operated for years on the belief that their world-view - of greed, of fear, of hating others they can't understand or accept - is the only view that matters, and waged - still waging - a culture war to establish their hate over all of us.

Yet now our American culture - driven by music, by entertainment, by passion and heart and hope - is fighting back, delving into the long-standing traditions of protest songs to spell out where the haters are wrong, and how they're going to lose.

Keep fighting. Keep singing.

We - the communities, the families, the real Americans - shall overcome.

A City Aflame Fought Fire and Ice ‘Neath an Occupiers Boots

Just saw on Bluesky that Bruce Springsteen - someone always on the side of truth justice and the American Way - released a protest song honoring the people of Minneapolis for their struggle:

Bruce does not hold back in his lyrics: He names trump and his thugs as the instigators of violence, and even notes that the architects of the violence - Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem - are equally at fault (bit disappointing he didn't include Border Patrol (ex)capo Greg Bovino, but not a lot of words rhyme with 'Bovino' I guess).

He names the two victims - Renee Good and Alex Pretti - left dead at the hands of ICE thugs, ensuring in some way their names and their importance to this fight will not fade from our memories.

The song harkens back to the protest songs that rose up throughout American history, from the anti-war anti-racism songs of the 1960s back to the union songs of the Great Depression (and arguably the anti-slavery tunes of the antebellum era). Springsteen openly admits the influence Pete Seeger has on his music, and this is Bruce paying back his mentor and then some.

So this is what it feels like now. We're in the era of Kent State and Chicago '68 and Matewan and the Strikes of 1910 and the Abolition movement from the 1840s to the Civil War. Welcome to the Rebellion.

We're a nation now under attack by the corrupt powers in high places. Thank God we got the songs to keep us fighting through the tear gas and fire.

Into the Tear Gas

On the streets of Minneapolis where the federal agents are violent and the local citizenry are pissed:

There was a photograph of that man as well.

 

Photo by Theia Chatelle 

Local hero.

Paramount

As the ICE persecution of legal migrants/refugees escalated over the past month, more protests have erupted across the nation even in places like Minnesota. A lot of anger and frustration towards trump's thugs who are rounding up moms and children instead of the "criminal gangs" that the Far Right have screamed about for the last 40 years.

The tension made its way to Los Angeles this Friday, where the outrage among the residents - many of them in defense of their neighbors getting rounded up for doing nothing wrong - erupted into the kind of protest that brought out the LAPD and their crowd control of gas, rubber bullets, and batons.

Today, the protests continued in the neighborhood of Paramount, and the violence escalated even more (via Steve Patterson and Dennis Romero at NBC News):

Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department deputies deployed tear gas on protesters in Paramount this afternoon as they sought to end the chaotic gathering.

The deployment was preceded by explosive less-lethal rounds and the placement of cinder blocks in the street near a Home Depot where protesters believed federal immigration enforcement agents were conducting a raid. Fireworks also peppered the soundscape.

Sheriff Robert Luna said no immigration raid took place, though there was staging at federal offices adjacent to the Home Depot.

Sheriff's officials ordered the raucous crowd to disperse around 2:30 p.m., though several people remained in the area hours later.

While it's heartening to see Americans rising up against the brutality of trump's - and Stephen Miller's - anti-immigrant campaign, this is unfortunately the response those SOBs were hoping for, because it can justify trump's declaring martial law and assuming dictatorial powers (via Maya Yang and Diana Ramirez-Simon at the Guardian (US)):

The Trump administration will deploy the national guard to immigration protests in Los Angeles, border czar Tom Homan said on Saturday, as an immigration crackdown in the area erupted into mass protests with police in riot gear deploying teargas at bystanders.

“We’re already mobilizing. We’re gonna bring national guard in tonight and we’re gonna continue doing our job. This is about enforcing the law,” Homan said in an interview with Fox News.

US immigration authorities on Saturday extended area raids into Paramount, south-east of Los Angeles, and were met with more protests outside an industrial park.

Border patrol personnel in riot gear and gas masks stood guard outside the park, deploying teargas as bystanders and protesters gathered on medians and across the street, some jeering at authorities while recording the event on smartphones...

Stephen Miller, an immigration hardliner and the White House deputy chief of staff, wrote on social media that Friday’s demonstrations were “an insurrection against the laws and sovereignty of the United States”. On Saturday, he described the day’s protests as a “violent insurrection”.

During Friday’s protests at a federal detention facility in downtown LA, David Huerta, the president of the California branch of the Service Employees International Union, was arrested amid a police response that included teargas and flash-bangs.

Huerta, who was injured and detained, released a statement to the Los Angeles Times from the hospital, saying: “What happened to me is not about me. This is about something much bigger.”

“This is about how we as a community stand together and resist the injustice that’s happening. Hard-working people, and members of our family and our community, are being treated like criminals. We all collectively have to object to this madness because this is not justice,” he added.

The reports are that they'll be sending in about 2,000 Guardsmen, but if they're thinking that will subdue a metro of 18 million people covering a geographic area of 400 square miles or so, that isn't going to help. I'm willing to bet they want this deployment to get overwhelmed so trump can justify sending in the US Army to "pacify" all of Los Angeles.

California's governor Newsom is trying to defuse the situation, but it's a question of what he can do to stop his state's National Guard from answering to trump's generals.

LA authorities are able to access law enforcement assistance at a moment’s notice. We are in close coordination with the city and county, and there is currently no unmet need. The Guard has been admirably serving LA throughout recovery. This is the wrong mission and will erode public trust.

— Governor Gavin Newsom (@governor.ca.gov) June 7, 2025 at 8:14 PM

Somewhere in a dark hole, Stephen Miller is enjoying the suffering and chaos he's wanted to inflict on our nation, if the reports are true about his obsession to terrorize Latino communities (via Tom Boggioni at Raw Story):

Following up on her Wednesday report on how Miller and Donald Trump's war on immigrants is "reshaping" the focus of what crimes should be prioritized, NBC's Julia Ainsley told the hosts of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that the abrasive Miller is increasingly angering other members of the administration.

For NBC News she wrote that in May, Miller "berated and threatened to fire senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials if they did not begin detaining 3,000 migrants a day," and has since demanded other agencies help out with his "Operation At Large..."

Noting plans to use members of the National Guard to round up immigrants, Ainsley added, "This comes a week after the infamous, now infamous meeting where Stephen Miller called in the leaders of ICE and screamed at them, yelled at them, threatened to start firing the bottom 10 percent of performers if they didn't get their arrest numbers to 3000 a day."

Anna Giartelli at the Washington Examiner had more details about that rant:

“Miller came in there and eviscerated everyone. ‘You guys aren’t doing a good job. You’re horrible leaders.’ He just ripped into everybody. He had nothing positive to say about anybody, shot morale down,” said the first official, who spoke with those in the room that day.

“Stephen Miller wants everybody arrested. ‘Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?'” the official recited.

One of the ERO officials in attendance stood up and stated that the Department of Homeland Security and the White House had publicly messaged about targeting criminal illegal immigrants, and therefore, ICE was targeting them, and not the general illegal immigration population.

“Miller said, ‘What do you mean you’re going after criminals?’ Miller got into a little bit of a pissing contest. ‘That’s what Tom Homan says every time he’s on TV: ‘We’re going after criminals,'” the ICE official told Miller, according to the first official...

Miller doesn't want gangbangers. He wants Latino families. And he's desperate to shove too many of them into kennels and basements and overflowing prisons.

It's proof that the anti-immigrant forces were never interested in stopping crime. It's proof that these bastards were interested in their racist agenda to purge America of anyone too dark-skinned for their liking.

We have monsters ruling the nation.

We have to defy them. It is paramount that we do so.

Get Yer Hands Off Us, trump and Musk

So today there was an organized national protest opposing trump/Musk's attacks on our federal infrastructure and our legal migrants called Hands Off, and a local event in nearby Lakeland FL was on the calendar for 1:00 PM so I decided to contribute with my presence for an hour.

Parking downtown was intriguingly tight today, so by that metric turnout seemed pretty good. I've seen the videoclips of the marches in the major cities like New York City, Washington DC, Boston, Chicago, and... is that Salt Lake City? Did someone get video from Anchorage by any chance?

It's nice to witness that there's still more Americans siding with you against the corruption and stupidity of the trump regime. It'd just be nicer if the f-cking mainstream media will recognize that these anti-trump protests are bigger and better organized than those staged tea party ragefests the billionaires set up during Obama's tenure. /sigh

Anywho, here's a few photos and videos I took at the Lakeland rally.

I should have made a sign that noted NO ONE VOTED 4 ELON but I didn't think to do so, alas.

I hope your protests went well today.

Keep fighting.

The First Freedom Denied, The Chain Being Forged

Update: Thanks as always to Batocchio for including my blog at Crooks & Liars for their Mike's Blog Round-Up! Please, check out the whole blog, and if you're in Central Florida I hope to see you at Avon Park's Spring Book Binge local authors fair this March 29th.

With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.
-- Jean-Luc Picard, from the episode "The Drumhead"

The disappearings - the moment when authoritarians begin "arresting" others and hiding them from any transparency in the legal system - under the rule of trump (and Musk) have begun (via Ximena Bustillo and Adrian Florido at NPR):

Mahmoud Khalil, a recent graduate student at Columbia University and a green-card holder, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers over the weekend in what is likely one of the first high-profile detentions of a student who participated in the protests against the Israel-Hamas war.

The arrest follows through on one of President Trump's executive actions, which directed the government to use all its tools to punish those who have engaged in "anti-Semitic harassment and violence." The executive action cites the federal law that authorizes deporting a foreign national who "endorses or espouses terrorist activity."

The move is an escalation in Trump's effort to increase deportations from the U.S. and strip protections from those who violate the new administration's priorities.

In a social media post on Monday, Trump said the arrest was the first of many to come. He vowed that his administration "will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again..."

Khalil was one of the pro-Palestinian students who negotiated on behalf of the campus protesters who pressed Columbia to divest from Israel over its war with Hamas in Gaza.

Amy Greer, Khalil's attorney, told NPR that ICE officers arrested Khalil in the lobby of his university-owned apartment.

First, they told Khalil, who's of Palestinian descent, that his student visa had been canceled. But he's not on a visa; he's a legal permanent resident. His wife went to get his green card from their apartment, but officers said his lawful permanent residency had been revoked.

"I demanded to see a warrant or have a warrant shown to me or Mr. Khalil before they removed him, and the agent hung up the phone on me," Greer said. "Mr. Khalil was under the impression that as a lawful permanent resident, that he had some modicum of protection that may not exist for people who do have student visas or who are undocumented."

Notice how the arresting officers shifted their excuses when their first allegation didn't fit reality. It didn't matter what Khalil's legal status was; they were going to violate it, claim their scalp, and drag him off to parts unknown.

While trump's people are claiming he's endorsing/supporting terrorism, all that's certain is that Khalil was protesting - under First Amendment rights - inhumane acts of genocide by Israeli forces against Gaza residents in response to Hamas' terror attack on October 7th 2023. Nobody from ICE or Homeland Security has presented any evidence that Khalil had ties to Hamas in any way.

Adding onto the horror is that in spite of Khalil having legal representation, his lawyers haven't been able to contact him. They've got reports he's been transported to Louisiana, halfway across the nation and nowhere near his wife or his attorneys. Anything - especially any level of mistreatment if not straight-up torture - could be happening to him.

trump and his Far Right thugs are claiming they're doing this to defend American Jews from antisemitism, but all they're really doing is setting up an environment where anyone - not just Palestinians or Arabs but also Jews, Blacks, Latinos, anyone deemed "Other" or "UnAmerican" - can be grabbed off the streets and punished by the unfettered bullies that answer to the Top Bully in the White House. And there's a number of Jewish organizations who understand full well what's at stake here.

To quote friend Emily L Hauser from the Horde over at Bluesky:

I have no idea what Mahmoud Khalil's politics are or what he thinks about me & mine and I actually don't care. Either freedom of speech is inalienable or it's not. The idea that my Jewish, American-Israeli, college student daughter is made unsafe by the protests SHE ATTENDS is Orwellian. 2/

— Emily L. Hauser (she/her) (@emilylhauser.bsky.social) March 10, 2025 at 2:16 PM

Freedom of Speech - the right to peaceably assemble, which the protestors have done, and the right to redress grievances - ought to be universal among all Americans, natural-born and naturalized and legally here. It's a right being promoted and encouraged as protestors in New York City are marching right now speaking out for Khalil's rights.

While it's looking like the courts are intervening to prevent any further harm - at least stopping any deportation effort - there's still a major struggle to regain Khalil's immigrant status and his rights to stay here in America.

This isn't just for Palestinians in America. This is also for our Jewish-Americans, for our Asian-Americans, for our African-Americans, for our Latino-Americans, for our Native-Americans, for our Trans-Americans, for our Gay/Lesbian-Americans, for any and all Americans who want to express their displeasure at a trumpian leadership looking to deny our very rights to even be citizens. 

We're up against trump and his bullies looking to chain us all.

Don't let them. Your voice is your power. Speak up. Call Congress. Demand better leadership against trump's unconstitutional acts.

Break the chain.

Georgia Protests On My Mind

No, not that Georgia, the other Georgia.

There's been a lot of unrest in that nation (via Ani Chkhikvadze at Foreign Policy):

In Tbilisi, on a cobblestoned street next to the Georgian Parliament, a robotic female voice warned protesters to disperse or face legal action. The demonstrators were gathered in opposition to the reintroduction of the controversial “foreign agent” law by the ruling Georgian Dream party.

The legislation that was retracted following widespread protests a year ago, requires civil society organizations and media outlets that receive more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad, mainly from the United States and EU, to register as agents of foreign influence. Tens of thousands have flooded the streets, demanding the withdrawal of the legislation seen as aligning Georgia more closely with Russia, which has used a similar law to crush dissent.

In the past, the Georgian Dream party kept hold on power through a combination of fearmongering, vilifying the divided opposition, and engaging in diplomatic bartering with Western allies. However, these once-successful strategies appear to have waned. As the party navigates its third term in office, it finds itself confronted with genuine protests both domestically and internationally that may cost it the elections in October.

One thing to remember from history is how Ye Olde Imperial Russia - and later the Soviet Union - treated a place like Georgia as occupied territory. When the USSR broke up in 1991, Georgia was one of the earliest states to break away and form their own nation.

Unfortunately, political opportunism and ambition - and arguably mixed signals from NATO and the U.S. - led to the Georgian government triggering a disastrous conflict with Russia in 2008, reducing the nation back into a puppet state under Putin's control.

Georgians as a population still resent the situation, and are using the current Russia-Ukrainian conflict to express their anger:

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine shook the carefully crafted balance the Georgian government sought between Russia and the West.

Over the past two years, hundreds of thousands of Georgians have taken to the streets in solidarity in demonstrations aimed as much at their own government as at Moscow. At every turn in Tbilisi, “Fuck Putin,” “Russia is an occupier,” and “Georgia stands with Ukraine” are painted on the walls. Almost every establishment, from banks to bars, displays Ukrainian flags...

The relationship between Tbilisi and Kyiv was already strained over the arrest of former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who returned to his native Georgia after serving as a member of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration. Today, it’s near rock bottom. The two sides have exchanged strong words. Ukraine withdrew its ambassador from Georgia and sanctioned some members of Ivanishvili’s inner circle...

The current Georgian government is trying to spread fear and propaganda that "The West" is trying to drag their nation into another costly war against Russia, but the current street protests show that sizable numbers of their own people aren't buying those messages.

So the pro-Putin leadership is moving on to the next trick in the Putin playbook: mass arrests and beatdowns. Via Reuters:

WASHINGTON, May 9 (Reuters) - The United States is deeply troubled by actions taken against those protesting a draft law in Georgia and the government should change its course, U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Thursday.

Georgian security forces have repeatedly deployed tear gas, pepper spray and water cannon against protesters who have been staging almost daily demonstrations for around a month against the government's "foreign agents" bill.

There's been a number of reports on social media of bloody beatdowns and arrests of known opposition figures. There hasn't been any sign of the protests abating.

It does beg the question if the Georgian government destabilizes over this uprising "what would Putin do next?" He's already been shamed on the international stage over his Ukrainian warmongering, and he's invested a lot of his military and focus on breaking Ukraine's will to resist. There is still a lot of manpower in Russia he could deploy, but it would involve diverting resources away from his primary target. And any escalation of his conscription efforts to handle a multi-front war can well trigger protests back home even he can't subdue.

In the meantime, stay strong Georgia. Stay alive and alert and don't believe any of the bullshit Putin and his allies are going to shove at you.

And sing to yourselves the songs of Ray Charles, Georgia's beloved Favorite Son. Well, okay, the other Georgia's beloved Favorite Son, but we'll lend him out to you for the time being.

Anniversary of Four Dead In Ohio

While today was a Star Wars holiday and also a Free Comic Book Day for those who geek out, this was also an anniversary for one of the darker days of the civil rights/antiwar protest movements in our nation's history: the Kent State shootings.

By 1970, the Vietnam War had become an obvious quagmire that more Americans - especially the younger generations who were getting drafted to serve - wanted to exit. While Richard Nixon got elected in 1968 with a promise for "a secret plan" to get out of Vietnam "with honor," nothing had changed much. 

On May 1st, Nixon gave a speech that he was escalating matters in Southeast Asia by sending troops into neighboring Cambodia (trying to cut into North Vietnam's supply lines and trying to stop "the Domino Effect" of communism spreading).

For the college-attending Americans growing up through the early half of Vietnam's escalation, it seemed like they - or their younger siblings - were going to become fodder - once they graduated and were eligible for the draft - for a perpetual war. Protests erupted across college campuses across the United States.

In Ohio, the governor James Rhodes agreed by May 2nd to send in 1000 National Guard troops to pacify the Kent State campus after the ROTC building got hit with a firebomb. Accusing the protestors of "being the worst type of people we harbor in America" - even though he's talking about our families' own sons and daughters at the time - Rhodes declared martial law and that no further gatherings or protests be held.

The students refused to stop.

May 4th, the escalation and anger and frustration led to this:

Defying the ban, people begin gathering on the Commons around 11 a.m. on Monday. By noon, some 3,000 people are there, including a core group of some 500 demonstrators around the Victory Bell, and many more onlookers. The target of their protests shifts from Nixon, Cambodia and the Vietnam War, to the National Guard and its occupation of Kent State.

After the demonstrators refuse to disperse, some 100 of the National Guardsmen begin to march across the Commons. They push the crowd up a slope known as Blanket Hill and down the other side into a parking lot.

Following the crowd into a nearby practice football field, the Guardsmen find themselves blocked in by a fence. They throw tear gas canisters and point their guns at the demonstrators, who yell and throw rocks and other debris at them. After about 10 minutes of this, the Guardsmen begin to move back up Blanket Hill. The crowd cheers their retreat and continues throwing things at them.

At 12:24 p.m., just after reaching the top of the hill, the Guardsmen turn back and fire their M1 rifles and pistols, some of them aiming directly into the crowd. In 13 seconds of shooting, they fire between 61 and 67 shots. Jeffrey Miller, Allison Krause, William Schroeder and Sandra Scheur are killed, and nine other students are injured, including Dean Kahler, who is shot in the back and left permanently paralyzed from the waist down.

There had been numerous protests from the early 1960s onward that had ended in violence. The Civil Rights marches tended to end with police - and angry white mobs - pummeling marchers, unleashing dogs, or knocking them over with high-powered water hoses. The antiwar riots from 1967 onward tended to go the same way, culminating in the "police riot" violence that engulfed the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.

But never before had the police - or the National Guard - just opened fire like that. Nobody expected it. Eyewitnesses would later note how they and the other students present - even the ones not protesting - didn't think the Guard would fire with real bullets. The reports included how even some of the Guardsmen were stunned by what happened.

The chaos and confusion of that moment - the only emotions everyone seemed to have between student and soldier alike were fear and rage - led to tragedy. Scheur and Schroeder weren't part of the protest, they were separately walking between classes. Krause and Miller may have been protesting, but they didn't deserve to get killed like that. No one should have gotten shot.

Kent State essentially shut down right after the shooting and wouldn't reopen for months. Across the nation, outrage was immediate. Over 650 universities and high schools saw protests and walkouts by students, not only raging against the war but now raging against a nation's military willing to shoot their own citizens.

The counterculture scene - filled with antiwar activists especially the musicians - produced artwork decrying the shootings and memorializing the dead. The act Crosby Stills Nash and Young crafted a protest song "Ohio" within weeks of the incident. The song attacked Nixon by name - who had directly created both the Cambodian crisis and the authoritarian environment of state/federal agencies being brutal towards protestors - and is considered to this day one of the more impactful protest songs of that era.

In the short term, the outrage over the Kent State deaths led to little change. Nixon and his allies arranged counter-protests in favor of the war to continue harassing the antiwar crowds. Most college students - even the ones not from Kent State - returned home over the summer to find family members and neighbors arguing that the protestors were at fault. The investigations into the shooting led to arrests for around 25 student and faculty protestors, but only a few pled to lesser charges, one was acquitted, and the charges dropped for the rest for lack of evidence. For the Guardsmen, five of them faced murder charges and two more on misdemeanors, but they argued for "self-defense" as they feared for their lives. The judge agreed on that point, dismissing the charges but admonishing the National Guard that their actions that day were "deplorable."

Nixon won re-election in 1972. He resigned two years later due to his mishandling of the Watergate scandals, and it was only years later we learned how callous he got towards the antiwar students. 

The war the students originally protested didn't end well, either. Nixon's efforts to control Cambodia - honestly, to bomb it into rubble - only served to destabilize it more to where the Khmer Rouge took over in 1975. While Nixon was able to secure a "peace with honor" treaty with North Vietnam by 1972, all it did was delay the inevitable of South Vietnam falling to the Viet Cong by 1975 as well.

Nobody won anything at Kent State. Just four dead students, and a nation that still hasn't come to terms with how we should handle student protestors more than 54 years later. 

We're seeing police and National Guard getting called in again across dozens of universities and colleges trying to contain - and brutalize - the antiwar protestors rising up against the violence in Gaza towards Palestinian civilians. We have campus administrators overreacting to where escalation towards the students is creating the same kind of confused, fearful environment that built up at Kent State. Instead of using Soft Power tactics - of placating and isolating the protestors to minimize conflicts - we have heavy-handed tactics by the cops, and demonization of the Arab/Palestinian protestors as "terrorists" with a New York deputy commissioner holding up a single textbook (which is about the History of it, not a How-To like the Turner Diaries you morons) as evidence.

It's ironic how a history book underscores how our law enforcement and national leaders keep forgetting the lessons of history.

One Sentence Thought About The College Campus Protests Over Israel's Overkill in Gaza

While there are a number of pro-Hamas agitators screaming about killing Israelis and a number of counter-agitators screaming about killing Palestinians, the heavy-handed tactics by the city/county/state police towards the protests are going to escalate the anger and increase the risk of police brutality/bloodshed on our campuses to a level we haven't seen since the Vietnam-era, and which didn't do ANY of the sides - the protesters on one side, law enforcement on the other - any good.

Where the hell are the efforts at Soft Power de-escalation of hostilities: Assurances of open protest as long as there are no calls for violence, containing protest areas to ensure civility, separating agitating groups to prevent tempers flaring up and fights starting? Okay, that's two sentences, but one had to follow the other...

While Biden is talking to the media about trying to de-escalate, what is he ACTUALLY doing? Where's the hard efforts to rein in Netanyahu as the corrupt Israeli PM is openly planning a genocide in Rafah? Why is Biden focusing on the "violent protests" of occupying campus buildings instead of recognizing that a majority of the student protesters are peacefully marching out there asking for the violence to stop? Okay, that's three more sentences in forms of questions, but yeah these questions need asking, and answering. Okay, that's one mo... Okay I'll stop.

Tiananmen Square in 2023

Tiananmen Square in 1989

From Reuters (Jessie Pang and Ben Blanchard):

Hong Kong police searched and detained scores of people on Sunday, four arrested for "seditious" intent, as authorities tightened security for the 34th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.

Restrictions in Hong Kong have stifled what were once the biggest vigils marking the bloody crackdown by Chinese troops on pro-democracy demonstrators, leaving cities like Taipei, London, New York and Berlin to keep alive the memory on the June 4 anniversary...

Hong Kong activists say such police action is part of a broad campaign by China to crush dissent in the city that was promised continued freedoms for 50 years under a "one country, two systems" formula when former colonial power Britain handed it back in 1997.

Security is significantly tighter across Hong Kong this year, with up to 6,000 police deployed, including riot and anti-terrorism officers, according to local media.

Senior officials have warned people to abide by the law, but have refused to clarify if such commemoration activities are illegal under a national security law China imposed on Hong Kong in 2020 after mass pro-democracy protests...

Despite the warnings in Hong Kong, some individuals including some book shop owners, have been quietly marking June 4.

Jailed Hong Kong activist Chow Hang-tung, one of the leaders of a group called The Alliance, which used to organise Hong Kong's annual June 4 vigils before it was disbanded in 2021, said on Facebook she would hold a 34-hour hunger strike.

In mainland China, any mention of the Tiananmen Square crackdown - where troops opened fire on pro-democracy protesters, killing hundreds if not thousands, according to rights groups - is taboo and the subject is heavily censored.

China is, by the by, an absolute mess (Article is from Bloomberg but it's firewalled, so you get Yahoo! instead):

Hegang, a city with nearly a million people near the Russian border, had debt of more than double its fiscal income when it hit the headlines almost 18 months ago. It was the first time a city administration had taken official emergency steps since the State Council unveiled rules in 2016 on how local governments, from counties to provinces, should deal with debt risks.

Hegang’s residents are now feeling the brunt of the fiscal clampdown. During a recent visit to the city, locals complained about a lack of indoor heating in freezing winter temperatures, and taxi drivers said they were being slapped with more traffic fines. Public school teachers worried about rumored job cuts, and street cleaners endured two-month delays to their salaries...

Hegang represents just the tip of the iceberg of a local government debt problem that’s making investors increasingly nervous and that threatens to be a drag on the world’s second-largest economy for years to come. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. estimates China’s total government debt is about $23 trillion, a figure that includes the hidden borrowing of thousands of financing companies set up by provinces and cities.

While the chance of a municipal default in China is relatively low given Beijing’s implicit guarantee on the debt, the bigger worry is that local governments will have to make painful spending cuts or divert money away from growth-boosting projects to continue repaying their debt. At stake for Xi is his ambition of doubling income levels by 2035 while reducing the gap between rich and poor, which is key for social stability as he seeks to rule the Communist Party for potentially the next decade or more.

“Many cities will become like Hegang in a few years’ time,” said Houze Song, an economist at US think tank MacroPolo, noting that China’s aging and shrinking population means many cities don’t have the workforce to sustain faster economic growth and tax revenue.

“The central government may be able to keep things stable in the short term by asking banks to roll over local governments’ debt,” Song said. Without loan extensions, he added, “the reality is that over two thirds of the localities won’t be able to repay their debt on time.”

There had been a massive construction boom going on across China in the past two decades, as though the central government was using all of that to overcharge their economic numbers to look better than they were. Stories abound about entire cities built without residents and massive construction projects that sit unused because there was no actual demand for them. Most of these "ghost towns" look to be owned as commodities rather than residences, creating the kind of economic bubble that led to the 2007-08 housing market crash that created the Great Recession.

If China is heading down that path, how soon will their investments and financial stability collapse to where it affects their manufacturing and exporting? At what point does the economic disparity between the vast poor and the elite (party leadership) rich become another protest?

How soon before Tank Man's children rise up, Xi? 

The Revolutions Will Not Be Localized

Gets to you, doesn’t it? That’s what a reckoning sounds like. You want it to stop, but it just keeps coming. It’s when it stops, that’s when you’ll really want to start to fret.
-- Maarva (Fiona Shaw) from the episode "Reckoning" for Star Wars: Andor

I mentioned a few months back that Iran erupted into nationwide protests over the death of a young woman Mahsa Amini, who had been killed by authorities punishing her for improper wearing of the hijab.

The protests did not abate. Riots remain commonplace even as the Ayatollahs crack down harder on their own people. The protesters even went as far as to burn down Ayatollah Khomeini's museum/birthplace. 

The Iranian government is escalating violence in the Kurdish regions, as Amini was Kurdish and her ethnic group isn't beholden to the religious extremism of the Shia leadership. Via Oliver Holmes at the Guardian:

A nationwide uprising has convulsed the country since the death in September of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was allegedly beaten into a coma by the Islamic Republic’s “morality police” after they arrested her for wearing a headscarf they deemed inappropriate.

Since then, hundreds of people have been killed in a bloody crackdown on a popular revolt calling for an end to the decades-long authoritarian rule of the country’s top clerics.

Government attacks on rallies escalated at the weekend in predominantly Kurdish areas of Iran, with videos showing scenes reminiscent of a war zone.

Hengaw, a Norway-based rights group that monitors abuses, posted footage on Monday of what it said were state forces travelling to the cities of Bukan and Mahabad. The armed convoy included pickup trucks with mounted machine guns...

The Guardian article provided a map:

The protests are focused on the capital Tehran, but all those dots are everywhere in Iran. The frustration with the Islamic regime has been there for decades, and it's not going away:

Facing one of the boldest challenges to its hardline rule since the 1979 revolution that overthrew the western-friendly Shah of Iran, Tehran has shut down internet access in many areas. It has repeatedly blamed foreign enemies and their agents for orchestrating the protests and accuses “terrorists” of killing several dozen security force members.

However, the UN office of the high commissioner for human rights (OHCHR) said more than 300 people had been killed so far in Iran’s crackdown, including more than 40 children. These killings occurred across the country, with deaths reported in 25 of 31 provinces...

OHCHR spokesperson Jeremy Laurence said reports from mainly Kurdish cities were particularly distressing, with accounts of more than 40 people killed by security forces over the past week.

“Significant numbers of security forces have also been deployed in recent days,” he said.

“We urge the authorities to address people’s demands for equality, dignity and rights, instead of using unnecessary or disproportionate force to suppress the protests,” he added. “The lack of accountability for gross human rights violations in Iran remains persistent and is contributing to the growing grievances...”

These rulers, these religious extremists, cannot stop violating the rights of their citizens because they've never really cared for their citizens in the first place. All they cared about are the power and control, and Fear - via public displays of punishment and violence - was the only tool they have to keep that power and control.

Now the corrupt clerics in charge of this theocratic prison are going to test the limits of uprising again: To see if they can kill enough protesters to terrify the rest of Iran into submission, or if they run out of bullets first.

Iran's not the only nation coping with a restless and frustrated population. I woke up this morning to reports coming out of China of nationwide protests against the corrupt one-party rule there. Via Helen Davidson and Verna Yu also with the Guardian:

People opposed to China’s stringent Covid restrictions have protested in cities across the country in the biggest wave of civil disobedience on the mainland since Xi Jinping assumed power a decade ago.

Protests triggered by a deadly apartment fire in the far west of the country last week took place on Sunday in cities including Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, Wuhan and Guangzhou, according to footage shared on social media, in defiance of a series of heavy-handed arrests of demonstrators on Saturday night.

In the early hours of Monday in Beijing, two groups of protesters totalling at least 1,000 people were gathered along the Chinese capital’s 3rd Ring Road near the Liangma River, refusing to disperse...

This is more widespread than just Tiananmen Square. It's in a number of China's biggest metros:

The protests erupted on Friday in Urumqi, the regional capital of the far west Xinjiang region, after footage of a fire in a residential building that killed at least 10 people the day before led to accusations that a Covid lockdown was a factor in the death toll.

Urumqi officials abruptly held a news conference in the early hours of Saturday to deny Covid measures had hampered escape and rescue. Many of Urumqi’s 4 million residents have been under some of the country’s longest lockdowns, barred from leaving their homes for as long as 100 days...

Personally, I'm not entirely in agreement with what the protesters here are fighting against: COVID is still out there and the people do need to protect themselves from the spread of the virus. However, I do understand where the frustration is coming from: Here in the United States, we had numerous protests by anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers opposed to the quarantine restrictions we had here (which were never as severe as overseas). As a result, even two years (now maybe three) on since the outbreak, my own nation isn't even reporting on the severe uptick in COVID cases as we head into winter. There's pandemic fatigue everywhere, and everyone is struggling to abide by the safety rules.

But I may be wrong. Even global health care experts note that China's restrictions are pretty harsh even for their tastes:

China has stuck with Xi’s zero-Covid policy even as much of the world has lifted most restrictions. While low by global standards, China’s case numbers have hit record highs for days, with nearly 40,000 new infections on Saturday, prompting yet more lockdowns in cities across the country. Beijing has defended the policy as life-saving and necessary to prevent overwhelming the healthcare system.

Speaking to US political talk shows on Sunday, Dr Anthony Fauci, the outgoing director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, described China’s approach to Covid as “very severe and rather draconian”.

“A prolonged lockdown without any seeming purpose or endgame to it … really doesn’t make public health sense. In many respects it baffles me,” Fauci said.

The frustrations the Chinese people are feeling may be justified if their own government isn't working towards a more amenable - yet hopefully effective - quarantine policy. There is a tone-deafness in the leadership contributing to that anger.

There is also - at least in my reading of events - an underlying and unspoken problem at the root of the protests: Anger at how Chairman Xi has taken total control of the Chinese government for his own corrupt ends:

In an unusually bold act that appeared to indicate the level of people’s desperation, a crowd in Shanghai late on Saturday night called for the removal of the Communist party and Xi during a standoff with police, chanting: “Communist party! Step down! Xi Jinping! Step down!” Chinese people usually refrain from criticizing the party and its leaders in public for fear of reprisals...

Widespread in-person protests are rare in China, where dissent has been all but eliminated under Xi, forcing citizens mostly to vent their frustrations on social media where they play cat-and-mouse games with censors.

Just this October, Xi staged a takeover - complete with public removal of power-sharers and potential rivals - of the Chinese Communist Party that holds one-party rule over the mainland. He's essentially completed the process every autocrat/dictator performs en route to authoritarian dominance. As a result, everything that happens in China happens on Xi's orders. It now literally is all about him, and the people really didn't have much say it thanks to a government that offers no choices.

Xi may be talking about "fighting corruption" as he seizes full control of it all - not just the political but also the financial and social and spiritual well-being of China - but you need to remember Putin promised the same reforms for Russia and he turned his reforms into a massive shakedown that spread more corruption wherever he got his hand in. I can't be the only one who remembered that. I get the feeling the Chinese people remembered that as well, and are terrified by the same outcome.

So now we have a nation of billions rising up against a one-party communist regime ruled by hundreds that is giving orders to armies of millions to keep the billions in line. This is where we've seen it before - not just Tiananmen but also the Hong Kong protests eight years back - and it was bloody and shameful then and it will be again. The only difference is now all of China is rising up, and it's not a question of how soon the anger will ebb.

Now the corrupt despots in charge of this sweatshop prison are going to test the limits of uprising again: To see if they can kill enough protesters to terrify the rest of China into submission, or if they run out of bullets first.

I'm not repeating myself as a joke. History keeps repeating because the Cycle of Revolution just leads to the same dictators and crooks replacing each other. Something new needs to rise up in Iran, and in China, AND in Russia: To end the one-party corruption that has gripped those nations for decades in one form or another. A rebellion towards justice and moderation, towards open speech and better choices.

This is what a reckoning sounds like: Frustrated people unwilling to be prisoners anymore.

The Great Russian Skedaddle

I love that word, 'skedaddle.' A silly-sounding word but with purpose. An SAT word you study in high school. Three syllables long with just the right rhythm. Ske-dad-dle.

Skedaddle: (intransitive verb) to leave immediately : RUN AWAY, SCRAM : especially, to flee in a panic.

I've been thinking about the word 'skedaddle' ever since Russia's dictator - finally coming to terms with the massive loss of troops in his disastrous invasion of Ukraine - pushed his puppet government into passing laws allowing him to start up draft/conscription of at least three-hundred thousand men to restock his invasion force. Via Greg Myre at NPR:

Despite this track record, Putin's latest gamble may be his biggest yet. In the face of battlefield setbacks, the Russian leader has doubled down. Russia will mobilize 300,000 additional troops — a number larger than the original invasion force — and Moscow also appears poised to annex Ukrainian territory under its control...

Putin's move addressed growing criticism from pro-war Russian nationalists at home, who say Russia is in danger of losing because it hasn't unleashed its full fighting force.

Yet Putin called it a "partial mobilization," and continues to call the conflict a "special military operation." This appears to be a nod toward Russians who have misgivings about the military adventure in Ukraine...

Even with his blatant control of Russian media, Putin seems to fear calling for a massive conscription effort because internal tensions - aggravated by decades of corruption - would trigger nationwide protests.

Well... even the partial mobilization triggered those protests. To Charles Maynes also at NPR:

Russian President Vladimir Putin's order to mobilize more troops to bolster his struggling military campaign in Ukraine has been rippling across Russia, as the military swiftly drafts new recruits and signs of discontent appear to spread.

Putin announced the decision Wednesday, framing it as a "partial mobilization" that he insisted affects only a small percentage of Russians with a background in military service.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu ordered an immediate call-up of 300,000 additional troops — even as multiple news reports suggested the real number could be three times as many.

The Kremlin has tasked regional governors with overseeing the draft and stiffened penalties for refusal of service or desertion to 10 years in prison...

Despite government assurances only those with military service background will be drafted, multiple reports are emerging of draft papers being sent to people with no prior military experience...

Avtozak Live, a volunteer human rights monitoring group, reported as many as nine arson attacks had been carried out on military recruitment centers or government buildings across Russia.

Rights advocates say police detained more than 1,300 people in protests that erupted in dozens of Russian cities following Putin's address — with crowds yelling "No to war!" and "Putin to the trenches!..."

Anti-war activists have called for additional protests against mobilization over the weekend.

And when Putin gave the announcement that he was looking for a few 300,000 men to 'volunteer' as cannon fodder fertilizer for Ukrainian sunflowers, a noticeable number of Russian men in the designated victim demographics - anyone 18 and older with a pulse - seem to have made the collective decision to skedaddle (mmm, love that word) for the Canadian and Mexican wait this isn't 1965 Russian borders. Maynes' coverage also noted what's happening at various checkpoints:

Amid uncertainty over the scope of the draft, news reports and social media posts showed long lines of cars backed up on Russia's border crossings with Finland and Georgia, to the west, and Kazakhstan and Mongolia to the south.

Tickets for flights out of Russia to countries with visa-free travel — such as Armenia and Turkey — are either sold out or have soared in price...

To mix it up a little, here's Pjotr Sauer and Dan Sabbagh at The Guardian:

Long lines of vehicles continue to form at Russia’s border crossings on the second full day of Vladimir Putin’s military mobilisation, with some men waiting over 24 hours as western leaders disagree over whether Europe should welcome those fleeing the call-up to fight in Ukraine.

The Russian president’s decision to announce the first mobilisation since the second world war has led to a rush among men of military age to leave the country, likely sparking a new, possibly unprecedented brain drain in the coming days and weeks.

Witnesses on the border with Georgia, a popular route used by Russians to leave the country, said that some men resorted to using bicycles and scooters to skip the miles-long queue of traffic jams.

Footage from the scene circulating on social media appears to confirm these reports.

“I have been waiting in my car since Thursday afternoon,” said Anton, who declined to give his surname fearing it might complicate his travel. “Everyone is worried that the border will be closed by the time we get anywhere close to it,” he added...

For context, here's a map of Russia detailing the borders Russia has across Eastern Europe and much of Asia:

Wait, this is RISK. This is probably how Putin's generals are 
strategizing their war effort. No wonder they're losing, you can
NEVER hold Ukraine in a game of RISK. You should take
Australia first.

Okay wait let's refer to the Guardian's more accurate map.

Russia is a looooooong country - it spans 11 time zones! - so
there's a lot of borders that Russians can flee across...

Every Russian guy sober enough to understand how fucked the war in Ukraine has become are fleeing in a panic. In short, this is a Skedaddle.

Putin is doubling down on making this conscription (don't call it a mobilization like it's a good thing, this is forced military servitude) because Ukraine's recent success shredded much of the ground forces he had there and he needs as many bodies as possible to hold onto whatever he can claim. As mentioned earlier, Putin is also forcing the occupied regions of southern Ukraine - the Donbas in particular - to "vote" on a rigged "annexation" so that Russia can claim to the world that it's Ukraine invading Russia, even though most other nations would never recognize such a brazenly illegal move.

Putin is relying on the one last resource he can utilize in his war to conquer Ukraine: Manpower. Russia's overall population at 143 million is 100 million more than Ukraine's (43 million), and just on simple numbers in a slogfest Russia should be able to outlast Ukraine to conquer a bloodied landscape.

But in his desperation, Putin is overvaluing quantity over quality of armies. By all reports, Russia's armed forces are poorly trained, poorly motivated, poorly supplied... and everything that's happened since this February has proven how poor Russia's performance has been in a straight-up fight with an army that can fight back. While Putin is emphasizing in conscripting men with previous military experience, there's no guarantee those men have good enough experience in the first place, and there's no sign of them having the discipline and motivation to perform any better than the first wave of troops Putin sent in. Most military experts in the West argue that Putin needs to train his conscripts, which would take months... and Putin doesn't have months at this rate. He will send raw untrained victims to the front lines and hope to Zerg Rush Ukrainian forces by sheer attrition.

And while Putin can bring up 300,000 new bodies - if his "recruiters" can shanghai enough of them - or even a MILLION troops to continue his war, there's every sign that Russia has run low on any weapons and supplies those troops can use. Russia is deep into negotiations with China and North Korea to buy up any ammo they can use. That would still take massive logistics efforts to move all of that from the eastern end of things to the western front of Ukraine... and this war has demonstrated Russia is terrible at logistics. He is basically throwing more lives into the wood chipper of doom here, with no other goal than to hope Ukraine runs out of bodies first.

One last thing to consider how this conscription effort hurts Russia. Not just the brain drain of the best and brightest skedaddling for their lives, because they're the smartest ones to understand that fleeing is the best option: Putin is pulling away manpower that Russia relies on in their economy back home. He's taking menial workers, construction workers, office workers, anybody who couldn't run fast enough or who had reasons - likely family - to stay behind. He's disrupting the lives of millions of homefront Russians by doing this, and he's risking their anger if his war of attrition lingers ever onward.

Putin's running out of time, so he's stealing from Russia's very population thinking it will buy himself more time at everyone else's expense.

I warned before about Putin becoming more hated than feared. Disrupting the lives and livelihoods of millions of Russians is how you become more hated. This draft isn't saving Putin's time, it's hurrying his demise.

This is not going to end well for Putin or for Russia. We can only wait and pray that saner heads ensure the end is not in nuclear fire.

In the meantime, here's the soothing sounds of Christopher Cross and Michael MacDonald singing the one song on every Russian's playlist:

Iran Again: The People Will Not Stay Silent

My home Internet is dead (again) so I am struggling to blog through other means (again) so I am back with a quick observation about yet another popular uprising in Iran over the theocratic bullying that's killing their own people (again). Via Bill Chappell and Joe Hernandez at NPR:

Iranian women are burning their hijabs and cutting their hair short in protests over the death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman who died after being arrested in Tehran by Iran's notorious "morality police," who enforce the country's rules on hijabs and other conservative Islamic modes of dress and behavior...

Amini, 22, died on Friday in northern Tehran. She had been arrested on Tuesday and reportedly was taken to a hospital shortly afterward.

Amini suffered multiple blows to the head before she died, according to London-based broadcaster Iran International.

Amini was arrested in her brother's car during a visit to see family members in the capital, the outlet reported. She was originally from Saqqez in Kurdistan province...

"This is Iran's George Floyd moment," British-Iranian actor Omid Djalili said in a video posted online, drawing a parallel between demonstrators who want change in Iran and Americans who called for police reforms after Floyd's death in custody.

Social media has been buzzing with the unrest. On Wednesday morning, top hashtags in Iran included posts about police responses to ongoing protests over Amini's death and another that essentially states, "No to the Islamic Republic..."

Iranians outraged by Amini's death have been demonstrating for nearly a week, with some women setting their headscarves on fire in the streets.

Video shared by BBC lead presenter Rana Rahimpour shows women standing on top of burning police cars, railing against the Islamic Republic.

"One question is whether this will stay as a hijab protest or mushroom into a larger anti-government movement," NPR's Peter Kenyon said on Tuesday.

At least seven people are reported to have been killed since the protests began throughout Iran, the BBC reported...

The Iranian people are frustrated, again. The Shi'a theocracy that overtook their country back in the 1970s has remained notorious about their punishing and abuse of women creating a segregated society obsessed with keeping women second-class citizens. Even the men - fathers, brothers, husbands - are pissed about how the brute force "morality police" have been brazen in their assaults on women whose only crime is to be a woman in the first place.

I wrote this back in 2009, when things looked a bit hopeful that the anger among the majority of Iranians would have been enough to force the government into at least serious reforms: 

Now, it's 2009. Ayatollah Khamenei basically calls a questionable election result too early and too eagerly for Ahmadinejad. Even though enough Iranians know among themselves there's no way Ahmad could have won all those provinces so handily, even with widespread reports of ballot box tampering and fraud. Now acting like a bullying teenager caught in a weak lie, Khamenei is threatening violence on anyone who dares question him, and starts acting in a very Shah-like manner with violent arrests, use of acid sprays, the works. Thing is, for all of Khamenei's rhetoric against the Brits, and the Americans, and Zionists and 'foreign interlopers', the Iranian people know that's not really true. There's no evidence the Brits or the Russians or the Americans tampered with the election. It wasn't BBC or Fox News rushing to proclaim Ahmadinejad the winner "by divine will" inside of an hour after the polls closed. This time, the Iranians have no one to blame but their own leaders. And that's why I think the protests are going to continue, because Khamenei is now the target of blame. The violence will get worse, which is the pity of it all, but it's not gonna stop until he's gone...

Unfortunately that was 13 years ago and the Ayatollahs aren't gone, Khamenei is getting old enough for health rumors to flourish but the institution propping him up is still in power.

It's heartbreaking to realize that even with all the outrage that erupts repeatedly across Iran whenever the corrupt priests in power abuse the citizenry, those corrupt powers have remained in place in spite of the obvious outrage against them.

It's heartwarming to know that even with decades of that abuse, the people haven't given up. The Iranians are still fighting back, and one of these days a faction of the power elite - the military, the reformers in office biding their time, someone potent and capable - will turn on the Ayatollahs and bring true freedom to the Iranian people.

Tiananmen Anniversary 2022

Another June 4th, another round of China squelching protestors out of fear (via AP News by way of NPR).

Heavy police force patrolled Hong Kong's Victoria Park on Saturday after authorities for a third consecutive year banned public commemoration of the anniversary of the deadly Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, with vigils overseas the only place marking the event.

For decades, Hong Kong and nearby Macao were the only places in China allowed to commemorate the violent suppression by army troops of student protesters demanding greater democracy in Beijing's Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989. Hundreds, if not thousands, were killed.

The ban is seen as part of a move to snuff out political dissent and a sign that Hong Kong is losing its freedoms as Beijing tightens its grip over the semi-autonomous Chinese city...

And it's not just been the Tiananmen freedom protests that China's government has cracked down on.  Eduardo Baptista at Reuters documented how the quarantine lockdown earlier this year drove up anger and protests across Shanghai and other provinces (paywalled so I can't provide any quotes).

Also a reminder that China is conducting an ongoing genocide of the Uyghurs population (via Zoya Wazir at US News & World Report): 

Multiple reports from human rights and civil society organizations have found that Uyghurs have been detained in prisons and internment camps since at least 2017, with other abuses starting even earlier.

While the Chinese government argues that these re-education camps are meant to provide Uyghurs with vocational training to combat poverty, separatism and Islamic extremism, Jewher Ilham – a Uyghur rights advocate with the Coalition to End Forced Labor in the Uyghur Region whose father, prominent Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti, has been detained in Chinese prison since 2014 – says that the Chinese government’s definition of extremism is intentionally broad to allow for mass detentions...

Today, 1 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs and Muslims are estimated to be in internment camps in Xinjiang, according to the Associated Press.

(Kelley Currie, the former U.S. ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues and the U.S. representative at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women) adds that the Chinese government’s persecution of Uyghurs hinges on ethnic discrimination and a discomfort with their assertion of their distinct ethnic identity...

Foreign policy experts keep telling us that China is one step removed from being a true global superpower. They keep forgetting China can't unleash its full might because it's tied down suppressing their own citizenry.

One day, China will be free. Their leadership's own corruption will consume itself sooner rather than later, and all we can hope for is that a lot of innocent people both in China and across the globe won't suffer from that selfl-immolation.

The Shame of Tigert Hall (w/ Update)

I am with fellow University of Florida alum Betty Cracker here, I am ashamed of being a Florida Gator this weekend. (Balloon Juice linked to Washington Post article (paywall)): 

The University of Florida barred three faculty members from testifying for plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging a voting-restrictions law enthusiastically embraced by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), which activists say makes it harder for racial minorities to vote. The university’s action raises sharp concerns about academic freedom and free speech in the state.

The public university said the three faculty members — political scientists Daniel A. Smith, Michael McDonald and Sharon Wright Austin — could pose “a conflict of interest to the executive branch” and harm the school’s interests if they testified against the law signed by DeSantis in May.

“As UF is a state actor, litigation against the state is adverse to UF’s interests,” school officials said, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post...

The only conflict of interest here is with the university's administration, which is cowering at the thought of DeSantis retaliating against UF if they allowed these professors to testify. There is no conflict with regards to the freedom of information, there is no conflict with regards to research and academia, there is no conflict as those professors were going to be under oath and testifying to the facts as they knew them.

How many other cases have UF professors, or any other academic in the state of Florida, testified? How many times were they denied because of "conflict of interest"? Did this ever come up before? I've yet to hear of one during my lifetime ever since I was a student there in the late 1980s.

The leadership at the University of Florida did this out of fear. No press release or explanation will excuse this.

These professors were set to testify to the damage caused by the repressive voting law the state Republicans passed in the wake of the 2020 elections to make it harder to vote by mail, to vote early, to vote at all in certain cases. It's a law that doubles down on more IDs required to vote (as though that kind of voter fraud is rampant: IT'S NOT).

As much as these professors' rights to speech were blocked, the rights of the Florida citizenry - including the young UF students just turned 18 and able to vote - were denied from hearing any expert evaluation of this law, of any other laws that could deny them their constitutional right (under the 13th, 19th, and 26th Amendments) to vote in local, state, and federal elections.

As I said on Betty Cracker's article:

As a fellow Florida alum, I am horrified and sickened by my university’s cowardice. In the face of watching DeSantis and the state Republicans suppress our constitutional voting rights, they would rather roll over and play dead than fight for the civil rights of their own students and faculty.

What do they think they’re doing, saving their payroll, their budget, their jobs? The Republicans have repeatedly demonstrated their anti-education anti-intellectual bias, and would likely close down most of the colleges (or worse, turn them into for-profit boondoggles) for shits and giggles.

The independence and reputation of our state’s higher educational institutions are at risk from political censorship and suppression. The students at Gainesville and every other college campus in Florida should rise up and protest this enforced silence.

You better use your voice now, Florida students, before DeSantis and his craven lackeys silence them for you. You know where Tigert Hall is. You know where the corner of University Avenue and 13th Street is. You know where the spots are outside of Turlington and the Century Tower. Hey, nice big open spot in that Plaza of the Americas outside the main libraries. Why let the suspendered Bible-thumpers always out there railing against you claim that open field? It's your spot to protest.

Protest now. Speak out now. Keep speaking until the UF President and his handlers realize they answer to YOU and not the corrupt powers in Tallahassee.

Update 11/5: As Doug mentioned in the comments below, NPR is reporting that the university has changed its tune (via Deepa Shivaram): 

...The university's earlier decision, which was revealed last week through documents filed in federal court, was widely criticized as an infringement of the professors' First Amendment rights.

The case was particularly under scrutiny because the lawsuit targeted legislation, supported by Gov. Ron DeSantis, that inhibited access to the ballot — and the school has strong ties to the governor.

University of Florida President Kent Fuchs said in a letter released Friday that he had asked the university's conflict of interest office to reverse the decision and "approve the requests regardless of personal compensation, assuming the activity is on their own time without using university resources..."

You can kind of see where Fuchs is trying to redirect the focus as though this whole thing was "using university resources," when at issue was the university's argument that their professors and faculty could not contest "the state" as an absolute authority.

The fact that UF had never withheld their faculty from testifying against Florida's government until Fuchs showed up should not be ignored. Back to Shivaram:

...After the school's original decision was reported, the university's accreditor, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, said it was investigating the school. The story was originally reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education and confirmed to NPR.

UF professors Daniel Smith, Sharon Austin and Michael McDonald were originally denied the opportunity to testify; they are all experts on voting rights and elections. Their lawyers say that since the university's original decision to bar them from testifying is still a violation of their First Amendment rights, the professors are still considering their legal options...

This whole embarrassment should lead to people in Florida's college administration to resign on whatever honor they have left, with new people hired with no ties to DeSantis and no obligation to suppress either their professors' or their students' First Amendment rights to academic freedom.

And shame on DeSantis for creating this environment of intellectual suppression in the first place.