24 October 2019

A Steady Drum-Beat of Unrest or Have We Got Global Revolutions?

When words on a page seem static - sometimes over-used where they lose impact or meaning - it's time to insert some KINETIC TYPOGRAPHY and ANIMATED IMAGES.
That's the journalistic strategy for one of this morning's post.
Please have some patience and try to follow along . . .
Sorry it's only a form of streaming consciousness for the time being until all the information from different media can get processed.
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". . . fury across the globe in recent weeks, as frustrated citizens filled the streets for unexpected protests that tapped into a wellspring of bubbling frustration at a class of political elites seen as irredeemably corrupt or hopelessly unjust or both.
They followed mass demonstrations in Bolivia, Spain, Iraq and Russia and before that the Czech Republic, Algeria, Sudan and Kazakhstan in what has been a steady drumbeat of unrest over the past few months.
[add a few more: Afghanistan, Mexico, Guatemala, Indonesia, Canada, Nigeria . . .]
Yet in many of the restive countries, experts discern a pattern:
  • a louder-than-usual howl against elites in countries where democracy is a source of disappointment
  • corruption is seen as brazen
  • a tiny political class lives large while the younger generation struggles to get by.
This new generation are not buying into what they see as the corrupt order of the political and economic elite in their own countries. They want a change.”
Few were as surprised as the leaders of those countries."
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2 contrasts:
> In countries where elections are decisive, like the United States and Britain, skepticism about the old political order has produced populist, nationalist and anti-immigrant results at the polls.

> In other countries, where people don’t have a voice, you have massive protests erupting,”
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From Chile to Lebanon, Protests Flare Over Wallet Issues
LONDON — In Chile, the spark was an increase in subway fares. In Lebanon, it was a tax on WhatsApp calls. The government of Saudi Arabia moved against hookah pipes. In India, it was about onions.
Small pocketbook items became the focus of popular fury across the globe in recent weeks, as frustrated citizens filled the streets for unexpected protests that tapped into a wellspring of bubbling frustration at a class of political elites seen as irredeemably corrupt or hopelessly unjust or both. "

 
"Decades of discontent over inequality, stagnation and corruption erupted into the open, drawing as much as a quarter of the country into euphoric antigovernment demonstrations driven by chants of “Revolution!”
> ". . . People are not being swept away by the madness of the crowds,” he said. “This is politics, with specific causes and specific issues. If you don’t acknowledge that, you make popular politics look like a series of crazy fashions, . . ."

>". . . If protests are quicker to stir and more widespread than in earlier decades, they are also more fragile.
The painstaking mobilization that once was a feature of grass-roots movements was slow but durable. Protests that organize on social media can rise faster, but collapse just as quickly.

Authoritarian governments have also learned to co-opt social media, using it to disseminate propaganda, rally sympathizers or simply spread confusion, Professor Chenoweth said.
> "And even where there is a spasm of protest, it takes a lot more for it to snowball into a full opposition movement. The soaring price of onions in India caused farmers to block highways and mount short-lived protests.
But frustration has yet to sharpen into mass demonstrations because there is nobody to channel it: India’s opposition is in disarray; divisions of caste and religion dominate politics; and the government of the Hindu nationalist prime minister, Narendra Modi, constantly raises the threat of neighboring Pakistan to distract the public. . . "

 
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