Wednesday, August 7, 2019

hopes of the opposition/fears of the elite


-Mikhail Tereschenko / TASS

Two successive Saturdays of peaceful protest in Moscow, two successive days of the old ultra-violence in response. Indiscriminate arrests, beatings, maybe even a poisoning: this is a step up from what we have become used to seeing in the Russian capital.  What can one learn from the authorities’ response?
Overall, the decision was clearly made that these protests had not simply to be controlled but crushed --this was to be an object demonstration of the state’s will and capacity.  Of course this is not about the Moscow city council elections as such but rather the hopes of the opposition and the fears of the elite.         https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/08/05/the-old-ultra-violence-in-moscow-solves-nothing-and-everything-a66706
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                                                                                                             -Héloïse Bargain / MT
    L. Sobol's supporters have issued an online call for a fifth consecutive march in central Moscow this Saturday.  “There’s no other way to defend our rights than to take to the streets.  We should show them that we’re here and we’re not afraid,” Sobol told viewers.  
  The CEC earlier on Wednesday had denied the appeal of three other opposition members, including jailed municipal deputy Dmitry Gudkov.  One other opposition candidate is expected to hear later on Wednesday whether the CEC will allow them to run.  On Thursday the CEC plans to consider the appeals of four other candidates, including the jailed municipal council deputy Ilya Yashin and Yulia Galyamina, who was handed a 15-day arrest after serving almost 10 days.    https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/08/07/opposition-candidate-sobol-barred-from-moscow-vote-a66752
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-Yegor Zhukov attends his court hearing in Moscow on August 2.     8-6-19  MOSCOW -- Sitting in the Moscow apartment he shares with his parents and brother, Yegor Zhukov shared the latest video with his nearly 114,000 YouTube subscribers.  "Who will help us in these fundamental moments in Russia's history?  No one," the 20-year-old student said in the August 1 video, leaning closer to the camera as he implored Russians to oppose their government.  "We have only each other--we the real Russian nation which stands alone before a murderous authoritarian machine."    https://www.rferl.org/a/moscow-jails-critics-but-students-defend-outspoken-peer/30096297.html
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-Mikhail Bykanov is carried away by riot police amid protests in Moscow on July 27.
8-2-19   MOSCOW   Mikhail Bykanov went out for a stroll in his city on a Saturday evening.  Two nights in police custody and one court case later, he returned home a convicted man.

Bykanov, a public-relations manager at an energy consultancy, left his apartment around 8 p.m. on July 27 and walked south into central Moscow.  It was the end of a hot summer day and his girlfriend Inna Kolesnikova was out with friends.  Bykanov messaged to say he was going to exercise in a nearby park.

He had spent the afternoon at home, doing household chores and following online reports from an opposition protest that was being violently suppressed by riot police throughout the city. Bykanov had never taken part in politics, but he was curious.  On his way to the park, he planned to walk past the protest and get a sense of the mood, he said.

As he later told the judge, Bykanov approached Trubnaya Square just as a crowd rushed in his direction, fleeing from police armed with pepper spray and truncheons.  Bykanov instinctively turned and ran with it, then sat down on a bench to take a breather.  When a protester beside him began loudly cursing the police, officers seized both men and carried them to a waiting riot van.  Bykanov’s possessions were confiscated and he was taken to a police station on the outskirts.             https://www.rferl.org/a/caught-up-in-the-crackdown-one-muscovite-s-long-weekend-in-a-police-van-a-holding-cell-and-a-courtroom/30089495.html
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10-13-18   Uighurs are neither extremists nor separatists as Beijing claims.  They just want their rights.   https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/china-erase-uighurs-culture-181012155613937.html
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8-7-19     In her home town in southwest Nigeria her mother had trouble making enough money to feed her three children.  But when Blessing arrived in Abuja, instead of going to school, the family worked her round-the-clock, beat her with an electrical wire if she forgot one of her chores and fed her rotten leftovers. 
 When her mother later moved to the city to be closer to her daughter, Blessing was unable to be alone with her when she came to visit.  “They would tell me that my mother was coming, that I should not tell her what was happening to me, that I should not even say anything,” she says of the family. “If she asks me how am I doing I should say I am doing fine, they said.” 
  As the world marks 400 years since the first recorded African slaves arrived in North America, slavery remains a modern-day scourge. Over 40 million people are estimated to be trapped in forced labor, forced marriages or other forms of sexual exploitation, according to the United Nations.   Blessing, now 11, is one such victim.  She was rescued in 2016 by the Women Trafficking and Child Labour Eradication Foundation (WOTCLEF), an anti-human trafficking group, after two years of isolation and abuse....
After Osadolor’s family in Benin City in southern Nigeria hit hard times, she dropped out of university and headed to Russia after a cousin told her about someone who could help her get work there, with travel expenses paid.  She left Nigeria with three other girls she did not know in June 2012.  When she got to Russia a “madam” came to pick her up. 
  Osadolor, now 28, says she was forced into prostitution and suffered internal injuries after being made to sleep with up to 20 men a day.  She was trapped for three years, with the madam coming round every two weeks to take almost all of her money.  She cries as she recounts the trauma and her relief at escaping thanks to a chance meeting with a representative of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) at a metro station.  https://www.reuters.com/article/us-africa-slavery-nigeria/west-african-slavery-lives-on-400-years-after-transatlantic-trade-began-idUSKCN1UX1NF
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8-7-19   Hong Kong:   More protests are planned in several districts across the city this weekend, starting on Friday, with demonstrators also planning a three-day rally at the city’s international airport.  https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-protests/more-protests-as-u-s-raises-hong-kong-travel-warning-amid-growing-unrest-idUSKCN1UY06E
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   “the little guy has a credit card charging 17%, and big banks can borrow from the Fed at 2%.”   https://usawatchdog.com/radical-economic-reengineering-after-2020-election-1-catherine-austin-fitts/#more-22127
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