RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/trending/peaceful-hong-kong-protests-escalate-as-protesters-storm-legislative-council-550k-take-to-streets/

On July 1, Hong Kong marked the 22nd anniversary of its return to Chinese rule with peaceful protests that partly turned into violent clashes, exposing divisions within the protest movement.

Consistent with the activities of the past months, protesters demanded the permanent withdrawal of a bill that would allow extraditions to the Chinese mainland and the resignation of city leader Carrie Lam.

Around 550,000 Hong Kong protesters marched peacefully on the streets in the afternoon without any scenes of violence or chaos.

From around 4 a.m. until 8 a.m. local time, protesters initially clashed with the police when they attempted to unsuccessfully block Lam from attending the flag-raising ceremony where the handover of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China is celebrated.

At around 9 p.m. local time, hundreds of protesters attacked the Legislative Council building—the headquarters of the unicameral legislature of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, accessing it through an entryway that they had smashed with the help of a metal trolley, poles, and scaffolding.

According to the South China Morning Post, when the protesters initially entered the Legislative Council, the police “were nowhere to be seen.” CNN claims that some Hong Kong police were present “in full riot gear,” but did not take actions.

In addition to smashing touchscreen panels and vandalizing the walls, protesters ripped down and smashed portraits of Legislative Council President Andrew Leung and former President Rita Fan, and dismantled closed-circuit cameras inside the building.

https://quillette.com/2019/06/29/eastern

In recent years, most of the debate around the global migration of people has focused on the movement into developed countries and the political battles that ensue. Most famously, Trump has overturned the wisdom of the American political establishment by saying the unsayable on immigration. Politicians from Riga to Rome have won votes (and office) by exploiting similar anxieties. But we seldom talk about the places which, year after year, see more people leave than arrive, and the consequences of countries saying goodbye to some of their best and brightest—often for good.

Nowhere is this concern more pressing than in Eastern Europe. According to the UN, of all the countries that are expected to shrink the most in the coming decades, the top 10 are all in the eastern half of the continent, and seven of those are in the European Union. One cause for concern among many of these countries is the EU’s freedom of movement, one of the four “fundamental freedoms” of goods, capital, services, and people that bind the 28. Although most press coverage of the bloc’s easternmost nations has focused on the rise of anti-immigration populism, there is mounting concern about the brain drain of its most highly qualified citizens to better jobs abroad. In at least six of the EU, the people leaving have become as controversial as those arriving, with some countries now favouring emigration controls.

In essence, the EU’s freedom of movement guarantees an absence of barriers for anyone looking for a job within the 28 countries and makes discrimination based on nationality in work or employment illegal. For many of the EU’s new entrants in the East—including Poland, Hungary and Romania—a future where capital and people could move more freely between themselves and France, the UK, or Germany looked like a fast-track to the top-tier of developed nations. But somewhat ironically, it has only accelerated the departure of those who are crucial to getting there.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/07/01/socialism-ruined-greece/

Last Thursday, we were in Athens as part of a tour of several Greek islands and the mainland. The port seemed as austere to me then as it must have seemed to the ancients. The ride across the city toward the Acropolis was a sad view of failing developed city, rife with graffiti, viewed from the comfort of an air-conditioned Mercedes van.

Our Athens tour guide was articulate in four languages and a veritable fount of information about Greece and the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. She was a college graduate and a mother, who went to school for more than two extra years, passed exams, and had to be licensed to be a tour guide—more training than a typical graduate degree. Her extensive knowledge punctuated our observations.

Yet, like many Greeks, she could not afford to have more than one child. She worried both about the economics of living in Greece and what she referred to as the dilution of Greece by hordes of immigrants unwilling to assimilate. It was what we heard from three of the four guides during our sojourn in Greece.

Athens, the birthplace of democracy and the first republic, was then a functioning contradiction of ideals that were an enforced blend of brilliant thought and selective democracy amid cruelty, demagoguery, and oppression. The touted yet imperfect Athenian republic was a crucible of true social inequality and sanctioned slavery.

This heavily traversed land, rich with knowledge, prolific with olives, and bereft of arable land, was destined to suffer by the influential indignities of commerce and conquest. The great Greek constructs that were meticulously designed to withstand millennia were damaged, destroyed, ransacked, or further diminished by discordant decisions of ignorant or incompetent leadership born of greed and fear aided by acquiescence born of complacency. If this song sounds all too familiar, it has played throughout history.