This Tiananmen Protester Is Now Beijing’s Troll-in-Chief 
ANOTHER RE-EDUCATION CAMP GRADUATE

Brendon Hong,The Daily Beast•June 12, 2020

Illustration by The Daily Beast/Getty

HONG KONG—U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is comparable to Joseph Goebbels. Harvard University is a “third-rate intelligence agency dedicated to politics,” because academics at the institution tried to pin down when the coronavirus may have first appeared in China. And the Black Lives Matter Movement? It has been infiltrated and appropriated by protesters from Hong Kong.

These are cracks by Hu Xijin, the chief editor of Global Times, the Chinese Communist Party’s most devoted cheerleader within China’s state media network. He calls it his “sarcasm,” as he said during an interview with Hong Kong’s public broadcaster last week, smirking as he tried to explain the joke.

But nobody else is laughing.

Have no doubt: there is a propaganda war being waged in cyberspace as self-important public figures blast away at each other, their salvos delivered 280 characters at a time.
‘WOLF WARRIORS’

On this side of the Pacific, Hu’s missives are part of a campaign that, depending on how you squint, either provides insight about how the CCP processes world events, or gives momentum to conspiratorial ideas that travel fast in the digital ether.

There are the “wolf warrior” diplomats, so named after a movie franchise in which soldiers of China’s People’s Liberation Army Special Operations Forces save the day. These include the spokespersons for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who take a page from Donald J. Trump and spam our screens with lies, like how the coronavirus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic was introduced to China by the U.S. Army.

China’s ‘Great Firewall’ Is Closing Around Hong Kong

And there are Chinese ambassadors stationed around the world who echo some of the more extreme views shared by their colleagues in Beijing, functioning as loudspeakers for the CCP’s tweet-form agitprop.

(Occasionally, the CCP even dreams up fantastical scenarios that are impossible to look away from, like sending 100,000 “duck troops” to Pakistan to consume locust swarms that are the size of cities. Never mind that this wouldn’t work, as a scientist at China Agricultural University explained to reporters in February, shortly after state media reported the plan. Now, four months later, new swarms are still forming, devastating fields in the Horn of Africa and South Asia, and the ducks recently resurfaced—on Twitter.)

Together, these diplomats and accounts run by personnel from Chinese state-run media outlets sent out 90,000 tweets in English, Chinese, and other languages between the beginning of April and mid-May—specifically to wage a propaganda campaign regarding COVID-19.

This escalation could be a response to the frequent, unhinged tweet storms that Trump whips up as slimy, rhetorical sleight of hand to distract, misdirect, or simply evade responsibility. But when Hu spouts off, he’s doing so as a member of state media, not as a representative of China’s diplomacy, which gives the country’s officials cover to put a little distance between Hu and themselves.
‘DEFINITELY TRUE’

On Twitter, which has been blocked in China since 2009, Hu has a mere 315,000 followers—a mixture of people accessing the site from China through VPNs, members of the Chinese diaspora, China-focused think tankers and researchers, and tankies who are his genuine die-hard fans.

It is within the Great Firewall where he wields incredible influence—he speaks to nearly 23 million followers through his Weibo account, the dominant platform for microblogging in his home country, and reaches multiples more through reposts by people who read his words or watch his videos.

Not merely the CCP’s most high-profile propagandist, Hu oversees the operations of a newsroom of 700 people in the Chinese capital. He is a walking nexus of information that bubbles up from all corners of the country or funnels down through the Chinese Communist Party’s hierarchy. Whether you recognize him as an oracle or a mouthpiece, tweets by Hu can move markets—much like the current occupant of the Oval Office.

Indeed, the Global Times chief is a lens through which outsiders may view the CCP’s stance on the trade war, its tech race with the United States, the world’s view of China as nations recover from the pandemic’s first wave, and just about every other matter of global importance. Last year, Hu told Bloomberg in an interview that if he adds the phrase “based on what I know” to what he posts, then it’s “definitely true.”

Yet between what Hu frames as levity in his eyebrow-raising comments and certainty about the party’s collective head space, serious moral breaches have surfaced. He is a vocal defender of the detention and “transformation” of Uyghur Muslims in indoctrination camps, and has called for Hong Kong’s police force to deploy snipers to kill the city’s protesters.

Hu’s fanaticism toeing the party line is in stark contrast with his own life experiences.
HU'S LONG MARCH FROM TIANANMEN

His path to editorship at Global Times began when he joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1986, the year he turned 26 and started studying Russian at the Beijing Foreign Studies University. The Tiananmen Square demonstrations broke out in April 1989, and he joined the many people who gathered daily in central Beijing. A fast, harsh military crackdown came in June. Many died. He made it out.

Five months later, Hu joined People’s Daily, the most widely circulated newspaper in China. Eventually, he was dispatched to Yugoslavia in the 1990s as a war correspondent. Hu spent three years covering the civil war, and cites this experience watching the blood-drenched breakup of Yugoslavia as the impetus behind his devotion to the stabilizing power and uniformity of the Chinese Communist Party.

In 1996, Hu was back in Beijing, and in the next year rotated to become the assistant chief editor of Global Times, an ultra-nationalistic rag that employs extreme language typically not found in People’s Daily. In 2003, he embedded himself in a conflict zone again, this time covering the war in Iraq. Two years later, he was promoted to editor in chief, and has been in charge of setting the Global Times’ tone since then.

Even within the CCP, Hu is a polarizing figure. Although his loyalty to the party is unquestionable, there are elements within the Cyberspace Administration of China that believe he takes things too far, eliciting scrutiny by Western media, governments, and other entities.

He is one of the few figures within China who has chronicled the country’s breakneck changes in the past three decades, all of them set against his abandoned passion for Chinese democracy.
MOLOTOV COCKTAILS

Last year, in the late summer, Hu visited Hong Kong to see the city’s anti-government protests up close for himself.

By his recent account, the city “has been in chaos for the past year.” Last September, donning a high-vis vest, Hu observed the black bloc in action, watching them build roadblocks and face off with riot police.

There was the smell of Molotov cocktails—gasoline vapors that gave away where they were stockpiled, then the hot sting of torched asphalt after the makeshift bombs were smashed to feed flames. Electricity shot through a crowd working toward a common, far-fetched goal. Broken teeth and skin were left on the street after beatings.

If Hu had encountered any of these things, they wouldn’t have been alien to him after stints in places where conflicts were far more destructive—or where similar struggles once took place, in his hometown of Beijing.

There are survivors of the Tiananmen Massacre who draw parallels between their protest movement in 1989 and Hong Kong’s current series of demonstrations. They see the same spirit unifying two events that happened three decades apart from each other.

During Beijing’s summer of optimism in 1989, Patrick Henry’s “give me liberty or give me death” was painted on banners, in six Chinese characters, and hoisted by many young people in the crowd. The same line is invoked frequently in Hong Kong now.

There was a point in time when Hu saw the hope and ambition that is embodied in that quotation, and he even had the courage to join a million of his compatriots in a public square to demand political reforms, some degree of democracy, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and an end to corruption within the Chinese Communist Party.

Yet more than 30 years later, those aspirations have eroded completely. Today, Hu follows CCP leader Xi Jinping’s diktat for state media to “tell China stories well” and to “hold the family name of the party.” In other words, the CCP’s media organs must function like Pravda in the USSR to show the party’s will and make true the party’s pronouncements, at least in people’s minds.
‘POLITICAL VACCINE’

Last week, on June 4, when Hong Kong marked 31 years since the Chinese army cleared Beijing’s streets with tanks, Hu said, “The Tiananmen incident gave Chinese society a political vaccine shot.” The disease? Democracy. He followed up by juxtaposing videos of NYPD vehicles driving into a group of people blocking a road against the recognizable scene of a column of tanks stopped by a man in Beijing, in an attempt to suggest that American authorities are committing to a crackdown that is harsher than the CCP’s in Tiananmen Square, where many hundreds of people were killed.

With the American response to the pandemic lagging far behind much of the world, turmoil intensifying on the streets as a conduit for rage against systemic injustice, and Trump’s threats to mobilize the military, there is now plenty of material for Beijing’s party loyalists and propagandists to hijack, reinterpret, and recontextualize. Their message, no matter what issue it rides on, is uniform—that the American way, even its most meaningful ideals, are inferior to the superficial stability brought about by the CCP’s strictures on free thought and expression.

It may be easy to dismiss CCP shills’ presence on Twitter, but their message shows up in reputable American publications, too. According to our calculations based on documents filed by China Daily with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (PDF), The Washington Post has been paid more than $4.6 million by China Daily to run sponsored content, while The Wall Street Journal took nearly $6 million from Chinese state media. The Los Angeles Times, The Seattle Times, The Boston Globe, and Chicago Tribune have all received payments from the CCP’s state media.

Has Beijing’s paid-for propaganda about Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative or China’s take on the trade war in American outlets had much of an impact on public opinion? The answer, it seems, is no. Outside of the Great Firewall, other opinions count too, and some of Hu Xijin’s abandoned ideals still matter to the rest of the world.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

WHO?US?!
Pentagon Denies Spying on Americans Protesting Police Killings

Eric Schmitt, The New York Times•June 13, 2020
 

Demonstrators raise their hands before holding a silent march in Seattle, June 12, 2020. (Ruth Fremson/The New York Times)

WASHINGTON — A top Pentagon official has told Congress that the nation’s military intelligence agencies did not spy on American protesters during the wave of nationwide demonstrations against the police killings of African Americans.

In a letter Thursday to the House Intelligence Committee, Joseph D. Kernan, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security, said he had received no orders from the Trump administration to conduct such surveillance, and he underscored citizens’ constitutional right to protest peacefully.

But he reminded lawmakers of the role of Pentagon intelligence agencies to help defend against foreign interference in U.S. domestic political affairs.

Without mentioning any specific role Pentagon spy agencies might have played in monitoring foreign activities during the recent protests, Kernan acknowledged that such clandestine efforts could be misconstrued.

“Given the complex and classified nature of foreign intelligence collection, it is not always readily apparent to the American public how lawful foreign intelligence collection and analysis differs from unlawful intelligence activities rightfully prohibited by U.S. law and DOD policy,” he wrote, using the initials for the Defense Department.

In the two-page letter, which the committee made public Friday, Kernan stressed that he had “not been asked by anyone in the administration or the Department of Defense to undertake any unlawful or inappropriate intelligence activities that could violate civil liberties in association with the domestic civil disturbances.”

Kernan said that the directors of the Defense Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency “have all personally assured me they have not received or made any such requests” to spy on Americans.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff, D-Calif., who leads the committee, asked the Pentagon this week to address concerns raised by some intelligence agency personnel in the Defense Department who feared they might be compelled to help conduct surveillance on Americans participating in demonstrations.

The letter came after the administration was roundly criticized for rushing thousands of National Guard and federal law enforcement personnel to the streets of the capital to help in the crackdown on mostly peaceful protesters and occasional looters after the death of George Floyd in the custody of the Minneapolis police.

The deployment of U.S. military intelligence units on American soil in support of domestic law enforcement operations is unusual, but it has happened before.

In 2002, at the request of the FBI, the Army deployed secret surveillance planes as part of a broadening effort to catch a sniper in the Washington area.

To do so in support of ferreting out foreign interference here — for example, to determine if another country was trying to provoke greater unrest on the streets — would be even more unusual. U.S. military officials said Friday that they were not aware that had happened during the recent protests.

Intelligence and Pentagon officials said they had been closely monitoring the protests for any sign of attempts by Russia or other foreign powers to seize on the racial tensions, but so far they have noted only public statements by Russian officials criticizing the United States for its handling of the demonstrations.

The Russian government has in recent months increased efforts to inflame racial tensions in the United States as part of its bid to influence the presidential election in November, including trying to incite violence by white supremacist groups and to stoke anger among African Americans.

Russia’s lead intelligence agency, the SVR, has apparently gone beyond methods of interference in 2016, when operatives tried to stoke racial animosity by creating fake Black Lives Matter groups and spreading disinformation to depress black voter turnout. Now, Russia is also trying to influence white supremacist groups, U.S. officials said.

“Our country faces a myriad of foreign bad actors attempting to interfere in our political process, and those threats are only likely to increase as we approach the 2020 elections,” Schiff said in a statement. “Constant vigilance, robust congressional oversight and greater transparency will be necessary to combat that interference.”

The militarized response to the protests, however, has prompted some military spy agency personnel to express fears of overreach.

During an unclassified virtual gathering last week, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Robert P. Ashley Jr., fielded questions from employees about whether they could be ordered to support domestic intelligence efforts to investigate protesters, according to an account first published by Yahoo News.

“The mission of the Defense Intelligence Agency is to provide intelligence on foreign militaries to prevent and win wars,” James M. Kudla, an agency spokesman, said in an email. “Any claims that DIA has taken on a domestic mission are false.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2020 The New York Times Company

Colombia's Medellin emerges as surprise COVID-19 pioneer

CHRISTINE ARMARIO, Associated Press•June 13, 2020

Virus Outbreak Colombia - Trailblazing Medellin
In this June 8, 2020 photo, a sign reminding citizens to maintain a safe social distance sits on a park bench between a woman and child, amid the new coronavirus pandemic in Medellin, Colombia, which recently went five weeks without a single COVID-19 death. The new challenge for Medellin will be to convince citizens to continue abiding by safety measures like wearing face masks and social distancing. In some poor neighborhoods, local activists say they've encountered skepticism about the virus. (AP Photo/Luis Benavides)

In this June 8, 2020 photo, Mayor Daniel Quintero, wearing a protective face mask as a measure to curb the spread of the new coronavirus, talks to the media during a COVID-19 prevention campaign, in Medellin, Colombia. Quintero, Medellin's youngest mayor ever, is an engineer by training who began holding COVID-19 prep meetings in January, weeks after taking office. The virus was a blip on the radar for most Latin American governments back then. (AP Photo/Luis Benavides)

In this June 8, 2020 photo, commuters travel on a train marked with social distancing graphic cues, amid the new coronavirus pandemic, in Medellin, Colombia. The metropolis recently went five weeks without a single COVID-19 death. (AP Photo/Luis Benavides)

In this June 9, 2020 photo, a nurse measures the body temperature of a shopper at the El Tesoro mall, amid the new coronavirus pandemic, in Medellin, Colombia. The metropolis recently went five weeks without a single COVID-19 death. (AP Photo/Luis Benavides)

In this June 8, 2020 photo, a stylist, dressed in protective gear as a measure to curb the spread of the new coronavirus, washes a client's hair, in Medellin, Colombia. As COVID-19 cases surge in Latin America, the Colombian city of Medellin is defying expectations and managing to keep numbers remarkably low. (AP Photo/Luis Benavides)

In this June 8, 2020 photo, an El Tesoro mall employee uses his mobile to scan a customer's app to verify he is registered for entry, in Medellin, Colombia, Monday, June 8, 2020. The metropolis recently went five weeks without a single COVID-19 death. (AP Photo/Luis Benavides)

In this June 8, 2020 photo, a police officer uses a newly developed software to scan the identification card which determines if a resident has the authorization to be out in public, amid the new coronavirus pandemic, in Medellin, Colombia. Critics of the city’s mayor fear the immense data being collected on citizens amounts to a severe invasion of privacy, but even they admit that it has proven effective in containing COVID-19. (AP Photo/Luis Benavides)

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Two and a half million residents. Four confirmed coronavirus deaths.

As coronavirus cases surge in Latin America, the Colombian city of Medellin is defying expectations and managing to keep numbers remarkably low.

Months into the pandemic, there are just 741 confirmed cases citywide and only 10 patients hospitalized in ICUs with COVID-19. The metropolis recently went five weeks without a single COVID-19 death.

“Medellin can be considered a best-case scenario,” said Dr. Carlos Espinal, director of Florida International University’s Global Health Consortium.

In theory, that shouldn’t be the case. The city is dense, home to many poor residents who will go hungry if they quarantine for too long and connected by a congested public transportation system. All these factors have made the virus especially hard to contain in Latin America.

How has Medellin, so far, defied the odds?

City officials and epidemiologists credit early preparation, a novel app that connected needy residents with food and cash while also collecting important data that later helped track cases, and a medical system that has moved rapidly to treat the sick before they fall critically ill.
Mayor Daniel Quintero’s critics fear the immense data being collected on citizens amounts to a severe invasion of privacy, but even they admit that it has proven effective in containing COVID-19.

“It’s impossible to fight the virus without information,” Quintero, 39, said. “We’d have deaths in the hundreds if we hadn’t made these decisions.”

Quintero, Medellin’s youngest mayor ever, is an engineer by training who began holding COVID-19 prep meetings in January, weeks after taking office. The virus was a blip on the radar for most Latin American governments back then. Some thought he was absurd for worrying about a virus raging in China.

Medellin did many of the things other cities would try in the weeks ahead, but it had some built-in advantages. Its international airport receives far fewer travelers from abroad than bigger cities like Bogota. That made tracking passengers landing from hot spots like Spain and the U.S. easier. It also has what is considered one of the best public health systems in Latin America.

Quintero said he knew that in order for many residents to quarantine, they’d need food and cash. Using his tech background, he led the city in launching Medellin Me Cuida (Medellin Takes Care of Me), an app offering aid to those who signed up and requested help.

The response has been enormous: 1.3 million families – some 3.25 million people in total – from Medellin and surrounding areas registered.

The aid was key for Maritza Alvarez, who lives with six elderly relatives, two of whom are street vendors. Since signing up, she said they’ve gotten packages of food three times and two cash transfers. That has allowed them to mostly stay indoors instead of going out to earn money and buy food.

The app also asks questions such as who users live with, if they have COVID-19 symptoms and what pre-existing health conditions they suffer. That information has proven key in identifying cases, but it has also raised concerns.

Two cases have been filed in court challenging Medellin’s assertion that downloading and registering with the app is voluntary, noting that businesses and employees are being asked to sign up in order to restart work. A judge ruled in favor of one complainant, agreeing that not all the information requested should be obligatory. Others are concerned about what the data might be used for once the pandemic is over.

“Technology is an important tool in controlling the virus,” Daniel Duque, a councilman, wrote in a recent blog post. “But the pandemic shouldn’t be an excuse for governments to turn into a Big Brother that watches and controls everything.”

In an interview with The Associated Press, Quintero brushed such concerns aside.

“They’re partly right. Medellin is the city in Latin America with the most information on its citizens,” he said via Zoom from his headquarters, brightly lit screens with charts and maps behind him. “But the question of our intentions in how we use this data can’t be doubted.”

In Medellin, medical workers test anyone suspected of having COVID-19 at their home. Those who test positive are given a free oximeter. If their blood oxygen levels dip, nurses bring oxygen to their homes. Those who don’t improve are taken to the hospital.

The app has proven key in quickly tracking down those who may have had contact with someone who tests positive. Medellin does about 40 coronavirus tests for each case diagnosed, a number over double the nationwide average, officials said.

Though Medellin’s per million testing rate is low, several epidemiologists said they believe the city’s more targeted testing is proving effective. Colombian scientists estimate that for each COVID-19 death there are at least 100 more cases. That means in Medellin, which has had four deaths, there should be at least 400 infected people. The city has currently identified about 300 cases on top of that amount.

Bogota, by contrast, has reported at least 339 coronavirus deaths but has only detected around 14,500 cases, suggesting that despite more testing per million people, they still haven’t found many of the existing cases.

Still, confirmed coronavirus cases in Medellin have increased from around five to 16 per day since the city reopened its economy in May. Police officers are using newly developed software to scan ID cards of citizens boarding buses and entering malls to ensure they have permission to be out and about.

“We are entering a new phase now,” said Dr. Juan Carlos Cataño, an epidemiologist with the Antioquia Foundation for Epidemiology. “We hope to count on a health system that is sufficiently prepared.”

Like much of Latin America, Medellin found it difficult to equip hospitals with more ICU beds. Global prices for ventilators skyrocketed at the start of the pandemic and supply dried up. Medellin initially had 332; today it has 453. In an emergency scenario, the city plans to utilize ventilators made at a university in Medellin.

Current projections indicate the city will reach peak caseload in July or October.

The challenge for Medellin will now be to convince citizens to continue abiding by safety measures like wearing face masks and social distancing. In some poor neighborhoods, local activists say they’ve encountered skepticism about the virus.

“People think it’s a lie, that COVID-19 is a government invention,” said Gustavo Lainez, a community leader. “Misinformation is a huge factor.”

Still, he said all but perhaps 2% of the 140,000 people who live in the area where he works have agreed to sign up for Medellin Me Cuida.

Over the last two decades, Medellin has undergone an urban transformation, leaving behind the days marred by the violence of Pablo Escobar’s drug cartel and boosting education, libraries, parks and other civic projects. But the virus has brought new hurdles. Unemployment in the metro area is now at 17.3%, the highest in 18 years.

Locals believe their reputation for discipline and industriousness will carry them through another difficult chapter in Colombia’s history.

“We feel supported,” said Alvarez, the beneficiary of food packages. “I never thought big data would help me.”

Brazilians dig mock mass graves to protest President Bolsonaro's handling of coronavirus outbreak

Our Foreign Staff The Telegraph 12 June 2020

Protesters on Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro dug 100 mock graves to protest bad governance - CARL DE SOUZA/AFP

Brazilians critical of their government's ambiguous response to a surging coronavirus pandemic dug 100 graves and stuck black crosses in the sand of Rio's Copacabana beach on Thursday in a tribute to the nearly 40,000 people who have died so far.

The country has become a major epicentre of the global pandemic, with the world's worst outbreak after the United States.

"The president has not realized that this is one of the most dramatic crises in Brazil's history," said organizer Antonio Carlos Costa, referring to President Jair Bolsonaro. "Families are mourning thousands of dead, and there is unemployment and hunger."


An aerial perspective of the graves dug by the NGO 'Rio De Paz' as part of their protest against President Jair Bolsonaro - Buda Mendes/Getty Images South AmericaMore

"We are here to demand a change of attitude from the president... who must understand that our nation is facing the most difficult moment in its history."

The action comes as a worrying social crisis is brewing in Latin America where the coronavirus pandemic is spiralling, experts are warning.

More than 1.5 million people have been infected in Central and South America - 70,000 of them are already dead - with no signs of the disease slowing, especially in hard-hit Brazil.

The crisis could provoke the region's "worst recession in history", the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) said.

Hong Kong policeman reprimanded for 'I can't breathe' 'BLM' remark

AFP 13 June 2020

Protesters on June 12 marked the one-year anniversary of major clashes between police and pro-democracy demonstrators

Hong Kong police on Saturday said they had reprimanded an officer who shouted "I can't breathe" and "Black Lives Matter" as his unit dispersed reporters covering a pro-democracy rally the night before.

The officer was part of a team of riot police responding to protests on Friday evening in Yau Ma Tei district.

In a video posted online that quickly went viral, he could be heard saying "I can't breathe" at the press as reporters were asked to move back.

He could also be heard saying "Black Lives Matters, here is not America."

The phrase "I can't breathe" has been embraced by racial justice protesters in the United States following the death of George Floyd, a black man killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis on May 25.

Floyd died after gasping the phrase as the officer knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes.

Hong Kong's police force said the officer had been reprimanded for his comments.

"The officer has been rebuked and reminded to always present himself professionally and enhance his sensitivity," the force said in an email statement.

The same officer, identified by his badge number, had shouted "Black Lives Matter" to an AFP journalist the same evening.

When asked what he meant by the phrase, he replied: "That means we are the best in the world."

China, alongside Hong Kong's police and city leaders have seized on the US police response to racial justice protests in recent weeks as a way to exonerate its own reaction to pro-democracy protests in the city.

Hong Kong police spent seven straight months last year battling huge and often violent protests, hammering the force's reputation.

More than 9,000 people have been arrested, while officers fired about 16,000 tear gas rounds and shot three people with live rounds, all of whom survived their wounds.

Rights groups and protesters accuse officers of regularly using disproportionate force and an independent inquiry into the police has been a core demand of the democracy movement for the last year.

Police have denied all brutality accusations, saying their force matched that of protesters.

Last month the city's police watchdog cleared the force of any wrongdoing.

The finding did little to mollify protesters who have long accused the wacthdog of being stacked with government loyalists and lacking teeth.

A group of international experts quit an advisory panel last year saying it was not equipped to properly investigate the police.

The coronavirus outbreak and arrests enforced calm on the city for the first four months of 2020.

But protests have restarted -- albeit on a smaller and less violent scale -- especially after Beijing announced plans to impose a national security law on Hong Kong last month.

New Zealand city takes down statue of British navy commander

 12 June 2020

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - A New Zealand city on Friday took down a statue of a British navy commander accused of killing indigenous Maori people in the 19th century, as global debate swirls over monuments that represent racial oppression.

Statues glorifying colonialists and slave traders have come into focus as part of a broader movement inspired by the Black Lives Matter protests that started in the United States following the death of George Floyd.

Floyd, 46, died on May 25 after a police officer knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes, sparking anti-racism protests around the world.

Protests in Australia and New Zealand have focused on atrocities committed against indigenous people by European colonisers, with thousands of anti-racism protesters marching over the past week.

The statue of British commander John Hamilton in the New Zealand city of Hamilton, named after him, was taken down a day after a Maori leader threatened to tear it down himself.

Mayor Paula Southgate said a growing number of people found the statue personally and culturally offensive.

"We can’t ignore what is happening all over the world and nor should we. At a time when we are trying to build tolerance and understanding between cultures and in the community, I don’t think the statue helps us to bridge those gaps," Southgate said.

Hamilton led a regiment at the Battle of Gate Pā between the colonial government and Maori tribes in the 1860s, where he was killed.

There had been repeated calls by the Maori community to remove the statue. It was vandalised in 2018.

However, not everyone agreed with the idea of taking down statues. Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters called it a "wave of idiocy".

“A country learns from its mistakes and triumphs and its people should have the knowledge and maturity to distinguish between the two,” he said.

WESTPOINT PRODUCED 

GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE, 
GENERAL GEORGE CUSTER, 
AND MIKE POMPEO

THAT SAYS IT ALL 

Clip from "Santa Fe Trail" (1940; 110 min) Santa Fe Trail is a 1940 American western film directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Raymond Massey and Ronald Reagan. Written by Robert Buckner, the film is about the abolitionist John Brown and his fanatical attacks on slavery as a prelude to the American Civil War. Subthemes include J.E.B. Stuart and George Armstrong Custer as they duel for the hand of Kit Carson Holliday. The film was one of the top-grossing films of the year, and the seventh Flynn–de Havilland collaboration.

The film's premise is that many of the major figures of the Civil War- especially the ones who became "boy generals", were all in the West Point Class of 1854 and that several of them served in "bleeding Kansas" and at Harper's Ferry. Some of what the film depicts is true. Some of it is not. John Brown did raid in Kansas in 1855-56 and then made the raid on Harper's Ferry on 10/16/1859.

UH OH
Protests in Trump country test his hold in rural white areas

Polls suggest white voters without college degrees could be more open to supporting Biden than they were to supporting Clinton four years ago

Published: June 13, 2020 By Associated Press

In the lake country 200 miles northwest of Detroit, hundreds danced, prayed and demanded racial justice in Cadillac, a Michigan town that was long home to a neo-Nazi group.

It was not an isolated scene. In eastern Ohio, even more demonstrated in rural Mount Vernon, a town with its own current of racial intolerance, just as others did in Manheim, Pennsylvania, a tiny farming town in Lancaster County, with its small but active Ku Klux Klan presence.

The protest movement over black injustice has quickly spread deep into predominantly white, small-town America, notably throughout parts of the country that delivered the presidency for Donald Trump. Across Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, more than 200 such demonstrations have taken place, many in cities with fewer than 20,000 residents, according to local media, organizers, participants and the online tracking tool CrowdCount.

“That’s what’s so striking, that these protests are taking place in rural places with a white nationalist presence,” said Lynn Tramonte, who grew up near Mount Vernon and is monitoring the Black Lives Matter demonstrations around Ohio.

The protests in these Republican-leaning areas offer a test of the president’s ability to reassemble his older, white voting bloc. If he cannot replicate that coalition, it would leave Trump with few options, especially since he continues to lose support in suburbs.
“If President Trump cannot hold onto white, working-class voters in rural, small-town Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Ohio, I don’t know how he wins the election,” said Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. “Can you rule out he won’t have that same level of enthusiasm? No, you can’t.”

Trump carried Pennsylvania by about 44,000 votes in 2016, in part with overwhelming support from a patchwork of rural, white counties.

The pattern also played out in Michigan and Wisconsin, where he won by even fewer votes. In Ohio, that coalition propelled him to an easy victory.

Trump’s reelection campaign is working chiefly through online outreach to hold onto his largely white base and to identify new voters in rural areas as a defense against inroads by presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

Some polls suggest that, while white voters without college degrees are still a strong group for Trump, they could be more open to supporting Biden than they were to supporting Democrat Hillary Clinton four years ago.

Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh did not directly address the protests taking place in counties won by the president, but said more generally in a statement to The Associated Press, “President Trump expressed disgust and shock over what happened to George Floyd and praised the peaceful demonstrations, but also knows that Americans cannot live with riots and lawlessness in cities nationwide.”

But the pace of change over racial justice after Floyd’s death last month by police in Minneapolis has quickened and has sparked protests in hundreds of communities in every state, on a scale rarely, if ever, seen before. It is not that Biden will necessarily win rural counties that Trump carried easily, but he may be able to cut into Trump’s margins enough to bring those states back to the Democratic column.

In Cadillac, branch home of the National Socialist Movement — among the nation’s prominent neo-Nazi groups as recently as 2007 — black organizers were undeterred in staging their event at a lakeside pavilion even as armed opponents associated with the white nationalist group Michigan Militia parked nearby as a show of force.
Trump won Wexford County, home to Cadillac, with 65% of the vote, similar to neighboring counties in the lightly populated region, where unemployment has run higher than average in Michigan.
In neighboring Grand Traverse County, which Trump won by a smaller margin, more than 2,000 packed Traverse City’s Lake Michigan shoreline park to hear protest organizer Courtney Wiggins. The 38-year-old black woman listed demands, including that police in the 95% white town of 14,000 end racial profiling, as armed protesters affiliated with the far-right Proud Boys dotted the perimeter.

Though similar events popped up in exurban Cedarburg and Grafton, keys to Ozaukee County in the GOP-leaning suburbs of Milwaukee, far more have materialized many miles from the major metropolitan areas in these four pivotal states, according to organizers and advocates who have tracked the protests.

In Mount Vernon, Ohio, the seat of Knox County where Trump received 66% of the vote, 700 people turned out on June 6 despite threats from opponents, who staged an impromptu rally later that day.

Dozens of protests have taken place in counties in these four battleground states that Trump flipped from Democrat to Republican. Among them were Macomb County outside Detroit, Portage and Mahoning counties in northeast Ohio, and — perhaps most notably — Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, where voters swung dramatically from President Barack Obama in 2012 to Trump four years later.

Still, the vast majority have taken place in more than 200 small cities and towns across these four states, like Oconto, Wisconsin, Marietta, Ohio, and Meadville, Pennsylvania, all with populations under 20,000 and in counties Trump carried with at least 60% of the vote.

And while the battle for the White House will likely be waged most intensely in these states’ diversifying suburbs, where Democrats made gains in 2018, even a slight uptick among Democrats or a softening of Trump support in the vast spaces between could be enough to alter the election.

If Biden carries every state Clinton did in 2016 and reclaims Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, he would win a majority of the Electoral College votes.

Of those states, none was as close as Michigan, which Trump won by 10,704 votes out of more than 4.7 million ballots cast.

A little more than 11,000 voters backed Obama in 2008 and either didn’t vote or supported Trump in 2016 in Grand Traverse County and the five counties surrounding it, including Cadillac’s home in Wexford County, according to state voting records.

“These marginal numbers, a few extra votes here and there, we’re talking, like, a handful of votes per county, and they exist in my six-county region,” said Betsy Coffia, a Democratic Grand Traverse County commissioner. “This can make a difference.”

AUSTRALIA
Police disrupt planned anti-racism rally in Sydney
RICK RYCROFT, Associated Press•June 12, 2020


Protestors carry an Aboriginal flag as the walk past a statue of British explorer James Cook in Sydney, Friday, June 12, 2020, to support U.S. protests over the death of George Floyd. Hundreds of police disrupted plans for a Black Lives Matter rally but protest organizers have vowed that other rallies will continue around Australia over the weekend despite warnings of the pandemic risk. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)

SYDNEY (AP) — Hundreds of police disrupted plans for an anti-racism rally in downtown Sydney on Friday, but protest organizers vowed that other rallies will continue around Australia over the weekend despite warnings of the coronavirus risk.

Police ringed Sydney Town Hall hours before around 3,000 people were expected to attend a rally inspired by the death of George Floyd while in police custody in Minnesota. Police vans were parked in side streets in preparation for mass arrests for breaching a 10-person limit on public gatherings because of the pandemic.

Protesters instead split, with about 100 dispersing around the hall while a few hundred converged on nearby Hyde Park.

Protesters in the park held a banner reading “Stand up Australia" near a statue. Those near the hall chanted “Too many coppers, not enough justice.” They appeared to obey police directions to leave or be arrested.

Government leaders have urged activists not to attend anti-racism and other rallies planned for the weekend due to the pandemic risk.

Rallies are planned for Australian cities this weekend over Floyd, the coronavirus risk posed to asylum-seekers held in crowded Australian immigration detention centers, and a pandemic threat created by eating meat.

Police largely did not enforce social distancing rules during peaceful anti-racism rallies attended by thousands in Australian cities last weekend that focused on the high incarceration rate of indigenous Australians.

But Prime Minister Scott Morrison urged police to charge protesters with breaching pandemic restrictions during the coming weekend.

“The very clear message is that people should not attend those events, because it is against the health advice to do so,” Morrison told reporters.

A court on Thursday ruled that a refugee rally planned for Sydney on Saturday is illegal because of the pandemic threat, increasing the range of powers available to police to block it.

Organizer Ian Rintoul said the protest would continue because asylum seekers are in urgent need.

“The point has come, even in terms of the COVID-19 experience in Australia, where the street protests are possible. They can be held safely, and I think we need to insist on that,” Rintoul told Ten Network television.

Animal rights group PETA plans to limit numbers at a Sydney protest on Saturday to avoid police attention. PETA blames the consumption of wildlife sold in Chinese wet markets for the pandemic.

“If a pandemic born out of animal abuse is not the best time to talk about and protest animal abuse, then when is?” PETA spokeswoman Aleesha Naxakis said.

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann suggested demonstrators could lose government welfare payments if they attend rallies, but Morrison later ruled out any such federal retaliation. The government pays a wage subsidy to 3.5 million Australians to keep them in work during the pandemic lockdown.

A protester became sick after attending a Melbourne rally on Saturday and later tested positive for COVID-19. Authorities suspected he was infected before the rally and might have spread the virus to other protesters. Authorities say any disease cluster caused by last weekend’s rallies might not become apparent for weeks.

Australia is relaxing its pandemic restrictions, with 2,000 fans allowed in Adelaide for an Australian rules football match on Saturday, but no protest rallies.

Melbourne is the state capital of Victoria, which is alone among Australia’s eight states and territories to experience community spread of COVID-19 in recent weeks. Most cases involve people who have returned from overseas.

Australia has not recorded any COVID-19 deaths since May 23, when the toll rose to 102. The country has confirmed 7,285 coronavirus cases and 524 cases remain active.

___

Associated Press writer Rod McGuirk in Canberra, Australia, contributed to this report.

Patel condemns ‘unacceptable thuggery’ as ‘statue protectors’ clash with police

NOT PROTECTING THE MANDELA STATUE THEY WERE PROTECTING A STATUE OF CHURCHILL WHO ORDERED TROOPS TO ATTACK STRIKING WORKERS DURING THE 1926 GENERAL STRIKE

Jess Glass and Taz Ali, PA
PA Media: UK News13 June 2020

Police were pelted with bottles during confrontations in central London after large crowds gathered claiming they were there to protect statues from Black Lives Matter protesters.

Hundreds of mostly white men converged on Parliament Square on Saturday after far-right groups, including Britain First, called on supporters to guard the monuments.

Many of those present were drinking and there were a number of clashes with police in riot gear as crowds chanting ‘England’ and raising their arms surged towards lines of officers.

View photos

Police are confronted by protesters in Whitehall near Parliament Square, London (Jonathan Brady/PA)More

As several hundred demonstrators blocked roads around Parliament Square, police tried to corral them onto the pavements.

Other officers, some holding shields, remained in a line blocking access to the Cenotaph in Whitehall, while some in the crowd screamed abuse at them.

Their behaviour was slammed by Home Secretary Priti Patel, who tweeted: “Thoroughly unacceptable thuggery.



Throughly unacceptable thuggery.

Any perpetrators of violence or vandalism should expect to face the full force of the law. Violence towards our police officers will not be tolerated.

Coronavirus remains a threat to us all. Go home to stop the spread of this virus & save lives. https://t.co/HsOx9cgrqD

— Priti Patel (@pritipatel) June 13, 2020

“Any perpetrators of violence or vandalism should expect to face the full force of the law. Violence towards our police officers will not be tolerated.”

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan also took to Twitter to condemn the violence, writing: “This is totally unacceptable. We will not tolerate attacks on our police and perpetrators will feel the full force of the law.

“It is clear that far right groups are causing violence and disorder in central London, I urge people to stay away.”



This is totally unacceptable. We will not tolerate attacks on our police and perpetrators will feel the full force of the law.

It is clear that far right groups are causing violence and disorder in central London, I urge people to stay away. https://t.co/4fzPEbwCQD

— Mayor of London (gov.uk/coronavirus) (@MayorofLondon) June 13, 2020

On Friday, statues in Parliament Square including of Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi, were boarded up to prevent them being targeted by protesters both from the Black Lives Matter movement and far-right groups.

Police on horseback pushed back demonstrators near the statues of Mandela and Gandhi on Saturday as protesters continued to throw objects towards them, including at least one smoke bomb.

Large groups of far-right protesters moved to Trafalgar Square, where fireworks were thrown across the crowds.

Police attempted to stop them getting to Hyde Park where a Black Lives Matter demonstration, which had largely been peaceful, was taking place.

View photos

People taking part in a Black Lives Matter protest (Victoria Jones/PA Wire)More



The violence continued as some protesters managed to break metal barriers around the Cenotaph on Whitehall while hurling flag poles, a smoke flare and a traffic cone towards police who were striking them back with batons.

Speaking before the clashes, Paul Golding, leader of Britain First, said the crowds had turned out to “guard our monuments”, telling the PA news agency: “I am extremely fed up with the way that the authorities have allowed two consecutive weekends of vandalism against our national monuments.

Britain First leader Paul Golding (right) shakes hands with a BLM protester in Parliament Square (Jonathan Brady/PA)

“Anyone who comes along today to try and vandalise them will probably be dealt with by all of these Englishmen that turned up, and they’re fed up as well.”

But when asked the Nelson Mandela statue, Mr Golding said: “Why should we have a communist terrorist mass murderer in the capital city of England? It doesn’t make any sense.

“We would like to see that one go, on good grounds, but the rest of them are our historical heritage.”

A demonstrator from south London, who gave her name as Victoria, was in the square with a banner reading “All lives matter”.

Discussing controversial statues, she told PA: “It’s the past. You’ve just gotta learn to live with it, they’ve done w they’ve done but it’s still in the records they hatdid good things.

A protester in Newcastle holds up a picture of George Floyd (Owen Humphreys/PA)

“I’ve got things I don’t want to remember, but I wouldn’t go smashing things up because of it.”

Daisy, a 26-year-old from Pimlico, passed demonstrators in Parliament Square as she went for a run at around 10.30am on Saturday morning and claimed many were already drinking alcohol.

“They were all drinking beers and there was already loads of cans lying round on the floor treating it like it was some sort of football away-day,” she told PA.

“It was a really tense and hostile atmosphere. I didn’t stay too long… it was really uncomfortable.”

In an attempt to avoid a repeat of last week’s sporadic clashes with officers during BLM protests, the Metropolitan Police warned people joining demonstrations on Saturday that they must be off the streets by 5pm or risk being arrested.

In response to the statements by far right groups, BML organisers urged supporters to stay away from central London on Saturday.

Protesters from Black Lives Matter take part in a silent vigil in Brighton (Andrew Matthews/PA)More

There were similar gatherings on Saturday in Belfast, Glasgow and Bristol with crowds massing around monuments.

In Brighton, more than 1,000 protesters formed a line along the seafront in a Black Lives Matter demonstration.

Protests against police brutality and racism have erupted all over the UK and across the globe following the death of African-American George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police nearly three weeks ago.

Last week, the statue of slave trader Edward Colston was pulled down and dumped into Bristol harbour by Black Lives Matter protesters, while the UK’s war-time Prime Minister memorial in London was defaced with the words “was a racist”.