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HONG KONG Thousands of pro-democracy activists clashed with police in running scuffles in the gritty district of Mong Kok early on Saturday in a bid to reclaim part of one of the largest and most volatile protest sites in Hong Kong.

After hours of tense face-offs, with police showing relative restraint at first, hundreds of riot police baton-charged the crowds with shields, pepper spraying and wrestling a string of protesters to the ground in chaotic scenes.

Several bands comprised of hundreds of protesters, some of whom pelted police with eggs and bottled water, retreated but regrouped swiftly in other spots, stoked on rather than cowed by the clampdown.

Many rushed to lay fresh barricades across roads amid a wail of sirens and loud chants for "real full democracy."

The fresh tensions will be a set-back for authorities who have struggled for months to find a resolution to the most serious governance crisis to be faced in the former British colony since it returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

The protests have simmered for three consecutive nights in Mong Kok since police staged a swift and surprisingly smooth clearance of the area's protest encampment on Wednesday, arresting more than a hundred people including key student leaders Joshua Wong and Lester Shum.

Friday marks two months since police first fired tear gas to disperse demonstrators from the main protest site in the Admiralty district next to government offices in the heart of the Asian financial center.

Lined with jewelry and electronics shops, and grimy tenement blocks, bustling Mong Kok has been a key battleground for protesters and mobs intent on disbanding them.

The protesters, mostly students, are demanding full democracy. They have called on the city's embattled leader, Leung Chun-ying, to step down after Beijing in August ruled out free elections for Hong Kong's next leader in 2017, despite constitutional promises made by China to allow eventual universal suffrage in the city of 7.3 million.

In one tense skirmish early on Saturday morning, around a hundred activists trapped four traffic policeman, one bleeding in the face, demanding they release an activist they'd pinned to the ground. The police lashed out with batons to keep back the crowds for around 10 minutes until re-enforcements arrived.

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Hong Kong Police Crack Down on Protesters

A police officer tries to disperse a group of pro-democracy activists who were trying to block a main road in Mong Kok on Friday in Hong Kong. Photograph: Chris McGrath/Getty Images

Thousands of pro-democracy activists clashed with police in running scuffles in the gritty district of Mong Kok early on Saturday (local time) in a bid to reclaim part of one of the largest and most volatile protest sites in Hong Kong.

After hours of tense face-offs, with police showing relative restraint at first, hundreds of riot police baton-charged the crowds with shields, pepper spraying and wrestling a string of protesters to the ground in chaotic scenes.

Several bands comprised of hundreds of protesters, some of whom pelted police with eggs and bottled water, retreated but regrouped swiftly in other spotspots.

Many rushed to lay fresh barricades across roads amid a wail of sirens and loud chants for real full democracy.

The fresh tensions will be a set-back for authorities who have struggled for months to find a resolution to the most serious governance crisis to be faced in the former British colony since it returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

Arrests of hundreds

The protests have simmered for three consecutive nights in Mong Kok since police staged a swift and surprisingly smooth clearance of the areas protest encampment on Wednesday, arresting more than a hundred people including key student leaders Joshua Wong and Lester Shum.

Amnesty International on Friday, however, warned the police against the use of excessive force after Mr Wong and Mr Shum both said they were beaten during their arrests.

Several reporters were also roughed up, prompting the Hong Kong Journalists Association to lodge a formal complaint and plan a protest.

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Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters clash with police on the streets

Unless youre a basement-dwelling geek, youve probably never heard of the Golden Joystick Awards, much less voted online to determine the winners in the video-game industrys version of the Oscars. But youll be happy to know that Canada distinguished itself once again at this years GJAs.

The huge Montreal operation of French gaming giant Ubisofit was chosen studio of the year by the thousands of hard-core gamers who voted, the kind of people who know their PlayStations from their Xboxes. Unfortunately, not everyone in France is celebrating the success of their game-crazy Qubcois cousins.

Ubisofts Montreal studio was the lead developer on Assassins Creed Unity, the latest entry in the Assassins Creed series that previously used the Crusades and the American Revolution as backdrops. The company apologized this week for the games bugs and unexpected technical issues and vowed to fix them. But thats not what has upset some French politicians. AC Unity is set in revolutionary France and leftist politicians have denounced the games reactionary depiction of the Revolution as an inglorious bloodbath.

The king, a traitor and Marie-Antoinette, that cretin are presented as brave little people. And Robespierre, our liberator at one moment, is presented as a monster, Jean-Pierre Mlenchon, a former Socialist minister who now heads the Front de Gauche, charged after AC Unity was released this month. He denounced the game as propaganda against the people.

The denigration of the great Revolution is dirty work that seeks to further instill self-loathing and [a feeling of] declinism among the French, Mr. Mlenchon went on to say in Le Figaro, providing Ubisoft with priceless publicity. Historians who viewed the game to decide for themselves were blown away by the painstaking digital recreation of 18th century Paris, even if they found the bloodletting somewhat over the top.

That the game was developed in Montreal may be at the root of the controversy. The French king lost New France three decades before his successor lost his head. Except for the 1837 Rebellion, Quebec remained docile for another two centuries, as the clergy and elites avoided revolt until the Quiet Revolution. When it came, it was (almost) entirely bloodless and couched in the language of collective rights and nationalism, not individual rights or liberty.

The French Revolution is nowhere near as revered in Quebec as it is among French intellectuals, who remain fiercely anti-clerical and anti-monarchist. In France, discussions of the Revolution still tend to turn on whether the means justified the ends, with those on the left insisting they did. But if king and clergy had it coming to them in 1789, what followed was hardly a model for how to replace an unjust political order with a just and democratic one.

Writing in 1790, conservative British politician Edmund Burke vowed to suspend my congratulations on the new liberty of France until I was informed how it had been combined with government with morality and religion, with peace and order, with civil and social manners. For without them, Burke continued, liberty is not a benefit whilst it lasts and is not likely to continue long. It was a prescient observation.

During Robespierres Reign of Terror, in 1793 and 1794, the mere suspicion of counterrevolutionary thought was enough to earn one a rendezvous with the guillotine. As Charles Dickens would later write, the National Razor superseded the cross as a symbol of public worship. It sheared off heads so many, that it, and the ground it most polluted, were a rotten red.

In a world where failed states and unsuccessful popular uprisings (see Arab Spring) are still a fact of life, the French Revolution is as relevant as ever to the study of democracy and how best to achieve it. If you dont get your priorities right from the get-go, it could haunt you for centuries to come.

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Democracy and the Golden Joystick

Steel Pulse - 1982 - True Democracy (FULL ALBUM)
For full a review: http://www.roots-reggae-library.com/2014/11/steel-pulse.html Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rootsreggaelibrary 01. (0:00:00) Chant A Psalm 02. (0:04:27) Ravers...

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Steel Pulse - 1982 - True Democracy (FULL ALBUM) - Video

Hong Kong authorities continue democracy protest clearance
Hong Kong authorities tear down barricades at a protest site in Mongkok, the scene of some of the more violent clashes to take place during nearly two months...

By: AFP news agency

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Hong Kong authorities continue democracy protest clearance - Video