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Joshua Wong (L) and Alex Chow, leaders of Hong Kongs Umbrella Movement, before their court appearance Photograph: Anthony Wallace/AFP/Getty Images

Hong Kongs democracy movement has suffered the latest setback in what has been a punishing year after three of its most influential young leaders were jailed for their roles in a protest at the start of a 79-day anti-government occupation known as the umbrella movement.

Alex Chow, Nathan Law, and Joshua Wong, the bespectacled student dubbed Hong Kongs face of protest were sentenced to between six and eight months imprisonment each.

The trio, aged 26, 24 and 20 respectively, had avoided jail a year ago after being convicted of taking part in or inciting an illegal assembly that helped spark the umbrella protests, in late September 2014. But this month Hong Kongs department of justice called for those sentences to be reconsidered, with one senior prosecutor attacking the rather dangerous leniency he claimed had been shown to the activists.

Judge Wally Yeung argued the sentences were a necessary deterrent to what he called a sick trend of anti-government protest. Such arrogant and self-righteous thinking [has] unfortunately affected some young people, and led them to damage public order and peace during protests, he said, according to the Hong Kong broadcaster RTHK.

See you soon, Wong tweeted shortly after the verdict was announced.

In another message he wrote: Imprisoning us will not extinguish Hongkongers desire for universal suffrage. We are stronger, more determined, and we will win.

You can lock up our bodies, but not our minds! We want democracy in Hong Kong. And we will not give up.

The decision to increase the activists punishments sparked outrage among supporters and campaigners who condemned what they called the latest example of Beijings bid to snuff out peaceful challenges to its rule.

It smacks of political imprisonment, plain and simple, said Jason Ng, the author of Umbrellas in Bloom, a book about Hong Kongs youth protest movement.

Mabel Au, Amnesty Internationals director in Hong Kong, said: The relentless and vindictive pursuit of student leaders using vague charges smacks of political payback by the authorities.

It is not a surprise but it is a shock. It is another blow for basic freedoms and the rule of law in Hong Kong, said Benedict Rogers, the deputy chair of the conservative human rights commission.

There was also criticism from the United States where Republican senator Marco Rubio attacked the decision as shameful and further evidence that Hong Kongs cherished autonomy is precipitously eroding.

Joshua Wong, Nathan Law, Alex Chow and other umbrella movement protesters are pro-democracy champions worthy of admiration, not criminals deserving jail time, said Rubio, who heads the congressional-executive commission on China.

Beijings heavy hand is on display for all to see.

Beijings heavy hand is on display for all to see as they attempt to crush the next generation of Hong Kongs pro-democracy movement, he added.

Speaking before the verdict, Wong told the Guardian he was sure he would be jailed since the decision to seek stiffer punishments was driven by politics, not legal arguments. Its a political prosecution, he said. It is the darkest era for Hong Kong because we are the first generation of umbrella movement leaders being sent to prison.

Wong claimed the decision to use the courts to crack down on umbrella activists showed Chinas one-party rulers had managed to transform the former British colony, once a rule-of-law society, into a place of authoritarian rule by law.

No one would like to go to prison but I have to use this as a chance to show the commitment of Hong Kongs young activists, he said. It is really a cold winter for Hong Kongs democracy movement but things that cannot defeat us will make us stronger.

Thursdays controversial ruling caps a torrid year for the pro-democracy camp of this semi-autonomous Chinese city, which returned to Beijings control on 1 July 1997 after 156 years of colonial rule.

During a June visit marking the 20th anniversary of handover, Chinese president Xi Jinping oversaw a tub-thumping military parade which observers said underscored the increasingly hardline posture Beijing was now taking towards Hong Kong amid an upsurge in support for independence. The implication is: We will come out in the streets and put you down if we have to, the political blogger Suzanne Pepper said at the time.

A fortnight later, the democracy movement suffered a body blow when four pro-democracy lawmakers, including Law, were ejected from Hong Kongs parliament for using their oath-taking ceremonies to thumb their noses at Beijing. That decision robbed the pro-democracy camp of its veto power over major legislation.

In an interview with the Guardian, Law, who had been the youngest person elected to Hong Kongs legislature, said the disqualifications were an attempt by Beijing to suppress the more progressive voices in Hong Kong.

I wont give up fighting. If Liu Xiaobo can persist under much harsher circumstances, so can we, Law vowed, referring to the late democracy icon who died in Chinese custody last month, becoming the first Nobel peace prize winner to perish in custody since German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky, who died in 1938 after years in Nazi concentration camps.

On Tuesday, 13 umbrella activists were jailed for storming Hong Kongs parliament in 2014, a decision Human Rights Watch condemned as part of a surge in politically motivated prosecutions.

Ng, the author, said he believed the decision to jail Wong and Law was deliberately designed to stop them running for office later this year in local byelections. Their imprisonment was not intended to deter violence or social disorder but to crack down on the willingness of young, idealistic people to engage politically.

[These sentences] significantly increase the cost of dissent in Hong Kong, Ng warned. From now on, protesters will need to think about the possibility of getting locked up for months or even years.

It has an enormous chilling effect especially on young people, and sends a strong message to them that they should shut up or else.

Speaking on Wednesday night, Wong said he would not be silenced, even behind bars where he planned to spend his time reading novels, studying and writing columns about politics.

Wong also used his final hours of freedom to send a message to Xi: Please respect the desires of Hong Kong people. The people are united and they will never stop.

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Hong Kong democracy campaigners jailed over anti-China protests - The Guardian

Last Tuesday, Nairobi felt like a city awaiting the apocalypse. Streets normally clogged with traffic were eerily quiet. Grocery-store shelves had been largely emptied of supplies. Anxious wealthy residents booked flights out of town, conveniently scheduling their summer vacations to avoid the chaos of a Kenyan national election. The Chinese government, Western private-sector companies, and other foreign investors braced as well. A peaceful vote in Kenya, which is regarded as the most vibrant economic and democratic power in East Africa, could unleash billions of dollars in infrastructure and development contracts.

Kenya has had a long and calamitous history of political violence and corruption since it gained independence from British colonial rule, in 1963. Much of this conflict is rooted in ethnic tensions between different tribes, which many historians attribute, in part, to decades of British colonial rule that intentionally played major tribes against one another. Rich and poor Kenyans alike feared a repeat of the 2007 post-election violence between two of the countrys largest tribes, the Luo and Kikuyu, which killed more than twelve hundred people and displaced more than half a million.

In this years Presidential election, the Kikuyus and Luos were once again competing for the highest office in the land. Uhuru Kenyatta, the incumbent President, is a member of Kenyas largest, and arguably most powerful, ethnic group, the Kikuyu. His opponent, Raila Odinga, is a member of the Luo, who live predominantly in western Kenya. This years race was Odingas fourth bid for Presidency. After each past loss, he has accused his victorious opponents of corruption and fraud. After his loss in 2013, he unsuccessfully challenged the final results in Kenyas Supreme Court, citing the widespread failure of the countrys electronic voting system.

In an effort to insure fairness and prevent renewed violence, Kenyas nonpartisan Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, known as the I.E.B.C., was tasked with overseeing the countrys voting and tallying processes. But, just a week before the election, the police discovered the tortured and mutilated body of the I.E.B.C.s head of information technology, Chris Msando, on the outskirts of Nairobi.

On election day, throngs of voters across the country waited patiently to fill out their ballots. As I made my way through the crowds, I spoke to people who had woken up as early as 4 A.M. to beat the long lines. Many were fresh-faced young voters, such as Rafael Nyunge, a twenty-three-year-old who hoped that his generation could use their vote to end Kenyas legacy of entrenched tribal politics.

When Im voting, Im expecting change in our country, Nyunge told me. Im not concerned about tribalism. We dont encourage tribalism in Kenya. Right now were voting on how the quality of that leader is and how he or she is good to us.

Election day ended auspiciously, with no reports of major violence and only a handful of irregularities at polling stations. International observers, including former Secretary of State John Kerry and hundreds of others from the United States, European Union, and African Union, hailed the day as a success and said that the voting had run smoothly.

Over all, things went very well, Owora Richard Othieno, a Ugandan observer with the East African Community Election Observer Mission, said. He has observed the past three Kenyan elections and noted that this one had the highest voter turnout. Peaceful. No confrontations.

When the initial results began appearing on Kenyan televisions that evening, showing President Kenyatta in the lead, the mood began to shift. Overnight, Odingas National Super Alliance coalition ( NASA ) released a statement alleging election fraud and hacking of the election commissions electronic system, sowing doubt in the minds of his supporters. NASA claimed that the initial results being sent electronically to the election commission were incorrect, and could be verified only by comparing them with the hand-counted paper tallies coming in from polling stations. The I.E.B.C. rushed to post images of the hand-written forms online as proof.

On Wednesday night, small riots began breaking out in areas with high concentrations of Odinga supporters, in Western Kenya and in slums across Nairobi, with protesters chanting, No Raila, no peace. Kenyan police and government officials cracked down. On the Friday after the election, undercover police officers raided NASA s alternative tallying station and shut it down. Government actions just before the election had also fuelled doubt. Days before the vote, Kenyan officials deported several international analysts working on Mr. Odingas campaign. And the unsolved murder of Msando, the election-board chairman, stoked suspicion of election fraud as well.

I would say the real troubling issues in this election were the death of Chris Msando suspiciously close to the election, given how sensitive that position is, and the harassment of the NASA people, particularly at their tallying centers, a Kenyan human-rights expert told me, speaking on the condition of anonymity. These secret-police goons are seen to operate as though theyre above the law. There is a danger of the country going backwards in terms of political harassment.

The final spark for Mr. Odingas supporters came late on Friday. The election board officially declared President Kenyatta the winner. Violence erupted in Odinga strongholds across the country, and police, heavily armed with tear gas, water cannons, and live ammunition, battled protesters.

In a step that exacerbated suspicion and anger among Odinga supporters, many Kenyan television stations that night aired only footage of jubilant celebrations across the nation. And, the following day, police arrested and harassed international and local journalists covering the protests. The total number of dead remains unknown, but at least twenty-four people, including a young girl, have been killed since election day, according to the nonpartisan Kenya National Commission on Human Rights. The Kenyan Red Cross said that a hundred and eight people had been injured. Kenya, poised to move past ethnic divides and emerge as one of Africas most promising democracies, was behaving like some of its more dictatorial neighbors.

But some signs emerged that electoral reforms, namely devolution, are succeeding. In 2010, Kenya revised its constitution to allocate more power and development funding to local governments. The hope was to place checks and balances on central-government power, and to reduce corruption and encourage voters to consider competence over ethnic affiliation in local races, according to Kenyan political experts.

In Makueni County, in southern Kenya, Governor Kivutha Kibwana gained public attention when he gave local communities the power and funding to implement their own development projects. Kibwana is a prominent human-rights activist and a Harvard graduate. During his last term, he refused to bribe local members of the county assembly for support, an expert told me, and unsuccessfully called for the assembly to be dissolved. Kibwana switched parties this year and ran as an outsider, but he still won, with nearly eighty-eight per cent of the vote. Many of the members of the county assembly who had opposed him were voted out.

During the first devolution cycle, we laid the foundation. On this second cycle of devolution, we will emphasize on development, Kibwana tweeted two days after his election win. One of his supporters responded, We also made sure that you have 100% new faces who we think will support you. But, in other parts of the country, candidates who ran campaigns that did not rely heavily on ethnic affiliation or traditional political parties, including Boniface Mwangi , a photojournalist turned activist who is the countrys best-known critic of established political machines, could not capture enough votes to win.

Nic Cheeseman, a professor of democracy and international development at the University of Birmingham, who was in Kenya for the vote, told me that it was unrealistic to expect an overnight shift in Kenyan politics. Its very difficult to break out of this cycle of mistrust and a cycle of violence, he said. That kind of memory exerts a strong hold. Its going to take incrementally better elections, and Kenyas going to eke up there slowly. Maybe over twenty years it can do it. On Sunday, Odinga addressed huge crowds of supporters. He pledged to remove the government of Kenyatta and encouraged his supporters to skip work on Monday to observe a day of mourning for the dead.

But some Kenyans ignored Odinga and returned to work. Weve [been] resting at home and the little money we have is depleted, Joseph Kirui, a fifty-nine-year-old Uber driver in Nairobi, who decided to work on Monday, told me. He said it was very irresponsible for Odinga to encourage a strike. Because we, the voters, have done our part, so its [up to] them, the politicians, to sort out their issues.

On Wednesday, Odinga held a press conference and announced that he would, in fact, take his challenge to Kenyas Supreme Court, after initially stating that he would not use the legal system. He referred to this years post-election violence and the recent crackdown on civil-society organizations in the days after the vote as evidence of the current governments unfitness to rule. Odinga encouraged Kenyans to keep resisting, albeit peacefully, and to not become sheep who will willingly go along with democracys slaughter.

Cheeseman said that Kenyas traditional politicians were squandering a chance to use the election to move the country forward. I think this is Kenyas wasted opportunity, Cheeseman told me. Because, in contrast to all those other elections, less seems to have gone wrong this time. The question here is why? Why, even when the process is right, can Kenya not seize the opportunity to build public confidence in the state? And thats the Kenyan conundrum.

More here:
Kenyan Democracy's Missed Opportunity - The New Yorker

Remember the reply Benjamin Franklin gave when asked what type of government the Constitutional Convention of 1787 had created. He stated, A republic, if you can keep it.

Many Americans believe that we live in a democracy. This claim is almost universally accepted in the news media, but is it true?

If the United States of America is a democracy, then why, in the Pledge of Allegiance that used to be universally recited by schoolchildren every morning, is reference made to the republic (not democracy) for which it (the flag) stands? Why is the famous war hymn not titled The Battle Hymn of the Democracy?

In The Federalist, No. 10, James Madison clearly spells out the difference between democracies and republics. A pure democracy he defined as a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, while a republic is a government in which the scheme of representation takes place. Based on the example of the ancient Greek city-states, Madison opined that democracies are inherently unstable and short-lived, spectacles of turbulence and contention that were actually injurious to liberty; as in the French Revolution (1789-1799).

Democracy in theory was more beloved of egalitarians (later named socialists) than of true partisans of liberty. In republics, the instability occasioned by direct self-government is tempered by the scheme of representation. Delegation of government duties to elected officials, stated Madison, would refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. Put otherwise, republics, by ensuring that decisions are made by bodies of elected or appointed magistrates, are far less likely to act precipitously and unwisely, especially in times of crisis or public agitation. This is because duly-appointed government bodies have the ability to deliberate, which the general public does not.

Thus, while our electoral system is partly democratic, and other features of direct democracy, such as town hall meetings and referenda, are found here and there, the United States was created to be, and remains (at least in intent), a republic a government of laws, and not of men.

Remember the reply Benjamin Franklin gave when asked what type of government the Constitutional Convention of 1787 had created. He stated, A republic, if you can keep it.

Let us strive to keep it.

Steve Czonstka, Okaloosa Republican State Committeeman, Niceville

Link:
LETTER TO THE EDITOR: A Republic, not a democracy! - Crestview News Bulletin

The trolley problem, that hoary old mainstay of philosophy syllabi and drunken ethical squabbles, is, to put it bluntly, hot right now. Just this year, its popped up in episodes of both Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Orange Is the New Black, as characters wrestled with the principles of utilitarianism and what it means to try to do good in the world. Its also become a meme, as New Yorks Select All explored last year: a framework for people to explore everything from pro-life principles to the death of Harambe.

The problem, in its most basic form, goes like this: A runaway trolley car is heading toward five people, and if it hits them, they will die. You, the problem solver, are standing by a lever that enables you to redirect the trolley to a siding where only one person is standing. By pushing the lever you will save five lives but be directly responsible for the loss of one. Do you pull the leverseek the greatest good for the greatest numberor do nothing, and let fate take its course?

Escaped Alone Finds Comfort at the End of the World

The issue with this particular conundrum, though, as Sarah Bakewell wrote in 2013, is that while people think theyre creatures of reason, our instincts are actually fickle and easily manipulated. And this is also the problem with direct democracy in generalwhen were asked to vote on matters of national importance, we tend to be uninformed, personally biased, or swayed by the strangest of factors. The Majority, a new show at Londons National Theatre by the performer and playwright Rob Drummond, is inspired by a wave of recent electoral upsets, from the Scottish independence referendum in 2014 to the Brexit vote last year. Throughout the show, Drummond asks a series of timely questions to which the audience votes yes or no on in real time, with the results immediately revealed, as he demonstrates how easily the shape of a question can alter its answer.

The questions range from the personal to the timely. Are we, the audience members, liberal? (90.55 percent yes.) Are we white? (91.18 percent yes.) Do we use social media? (67.29 percent yes.) Do we believe in absolute freedom of speech? (61.68 percent no.) Is violence sometimes the answer? (51.16 percent no.) Would we pull the lever to save five people? (70.94 percent yes.) What if, instead of pulling the lever, we had to push a fat man over a bridge to save five lives? Could we do it? (71.05 percent no, almost exactly the same percentage that would pull the lever the first time.) Its different when its a person, isnt it? Drummond notes, as if pondering our inconsistency.

These votes tend to play out as if the audience is participating in a game of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? While we vote, on small devices that are given out before the show begins, jaunty music plays and a giant clock projected onto the stage ticks down the time remaining. The votes are interspersed with Drummonds narrative, a strange, meandering story about how he got involved with the anti-fascism movement and ended up being arrested for punching a white supremacist. Drummond seems to want to use his personal experiences to illuminate the questions at hand, but his gonzo style means its hard to tell whats real and whats creative license.

As the show proceeds, the tone of the recurrent trolley questions gets darker, as if to emphasize to the audience the potential consequences of even the most theoretical questions. Would we save one innocent person to kill five nonviolent neo-Nazis? Should we vote for Drummond to dox a Scottish white nationalistwho pops up a handful of times in the storyright then and there? (On the night I attended, the audience voted yes, and Drummond dutifully typed the mans name and address into a comment section on a website that may or may not be real.)

Drummond is an engaging host, although the shows frequent jumps in style and tone sometimes make him feel like an interrogator rather than an entertainer. The pace often drags in his measured descriptions of his friendship with a mentally ill Scottish beekeeper obsessed with bringing down the Nazis who were overtaking his town, and the narrative doesnt cohere as well as it should with the questions The Majority asks. But the shows concept is a fascinating one, exposing the foibles and contradictions embedded in the minds of an audience of majority white, liberal, non-male theatergoerswhich is exactly the audience Drummond wants to target, although conservatives who attend might find themselves in the majority more than theyd think. When he asks people to vote on whether they believe in absolute freedom of speech, and only 38.82 percent say yes, he pauses. Liberal, he says, with ironic emphasis.

By the end of the 90-minute production, after Drummond has shared his disgust with himself for, as he puts it, punching a man for having an opinion, the audience seems shaken. When he asks us again whether its okay to abuse someone for something they personally believe, 87.64 percent say no. He has, essentially, converted us. But the ease with which hes done it is yet another unnerving element to bolster his argumentthat few of us really know or deeply consider what were voting for.

Here is the original post:
The Majority Tests the Limits of Democracy - The Atlantic

Remember the reply Benjamin Franklin gave when asked what type of government the Constitutional Convention of 1787 had created. He stated, A republic, if you can keep it.

Many Americans believe that we live in a democracy. This claim is almost universally accepted in the news media, but is it true?

If the United States of America is a democracy, then why, in the Pledge of Allegiance that used to be universally recited by schoolchildren every morning, is reference made to the republic (not democracy) for which it (the flag) stands? Why is the famous war hymn not titled The Battle Hymn of the Democracy?

In The Federalist, No. 10, James Madison clearly spells out the difference between democracies and republics. A pure democracy he defined as a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, while a republic is a government in which the scheme of representation takes place. Based on the example of the ancient Greek city-states, Madison opined that democracies are inherently unstable and short-lived, spectacles of turbulence and contention that were actually injurious to liberty; as in the French Revolution (1789-1799).

Democracy in theory was more beloved of egalitarians (later named socialists) than of true partisans of liberty. In republics, the instability occasioned by direct self-government is tempered by the scheme of representation. Delegation of government duties to elected officials, stated Madison, would refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. Put otherwise, republics, by ensuring that decisions are made by bodies of elected or appointed magistrates, are far less likely to act precipitously and unwisely, especially in times of crisis or public agitation. This is because duly-appointed government bodies have the ability to deliberate, which the general public does not.

Thus, while our electoral system is partly democratic, and other features of direct democracy, such as town hall meetings and referenda, are found here and there, the United States was created to be, and remains (at least in intent), a republic a government of laws, and not of men.

Remember the reply Benjamin Franklin gave when asked what type of government the Constitutional Convention of 1787 had created. He stated, A republic, if you can keep it.

Let us strive to keep it.

Steve Czonstka, Okaloosa Republican State Committeeman, Niceville

See the rest here:
LETTER TO THE EDITOR: A Republic, not a democracy! - The Northwest Florida Daily News