Monday, September 29, 2014 — Two Pictures That Speak for Themselves

Tens of thou­sands of peo­ple in Hong Kong protest against attempts of the Com­mu­nist Par­ty to crush democ­ra­cy in Hong Kong. “The stu­dents are pro­tect­ing the right to vote, for Hong Kong’s future. We are not scared, we are not fright­ened, we just fight for it,” [Car­ol Chan, a 55-year-old civ­il ser­vice work­er who said she took two days off to join the protests after becom­ing angered over police use of tear gas Sun­day, quot­ed by CBC News.] Bei­jing’s mas­sive cen­sor­ship team on Wei­bo, the Par­ty-con­trolled cen­sored inter­net engine cre­at­ed and sup­plied by Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tions, is work­ing over­time pre­vent­ing the peo­ple of Chi­na from see­ing such images.

14-09-29 BLOG Hong Kong protestCanada’s Con­ser­v­a­tive Prime Min­is­ter, Stephen Harp­er, cuts a deal with the Com­mu­nist Par­ty to allow them the pow­er to over­ride Canada’s Par­lia­ment for the next 31 years. This took place in Vladi­vos­tok in 2012, but Harp­er has kept almost all infor­ma­tion about the deal under wraps, and done every­thing in his pow­er to pre­vent debate on the treaty. It was the sub­ject of a sin­gle, one-hour “brief­ing” giv­en to the par­lia­men­tary trade com­mit­tee. Since then, only silence, until a few weeks ago, when its rat­i­fi­ca­tion and the announce­ment that it will go into effect on Octo­ber 1 were revealed in a terse press release… issued on a late Fri­day after­noon, the time reserved for announce­ments the gov­ern­ment hopes will not be noticed and for­got­ten by Monday.

14-09-29 BLOG Harper signs FIPAVet­er­an CBC reporter Patrick Brown, an expert on East Asian affairs with more par­lia­men­tary and inter­na­tion­al news expe­ri­ence under his belt than any­one since the bril­liant Joe Schlesinger, has remarked: “If Stephen Harp­er ever gets tired of being Canada’s Prime Min­is­ter, he might like to con­sid­er a sec­ond career in Chi­na – he’d fit right in.”

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