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Geopolitics

Turkey And ISIS, Paranoid Kirchner, Moon's Square Side

A pro-democracy protestor rests under an umbrella.
A pro-democracy protestor rests under an umbrella.

TURKEY EXPECTED TO JOIN ANTI-ISIS COALITION
Today could see the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition expand, as the Turkish Parliament is expected to vote on whether to send Turkish troops into Iraq and Syria to fight against the terrorists and whether to allow foreign troops to use Turkish military bases, newspaper Today’s Zaman reports. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is under growing pressure, as the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, Abdullah Ocalan, said that peace talks between his group and the Turkish government would end if Turkey lets ISIS “massacre” Kurds on the Syrian border town of Kobani. But Ankara’s recent support of anti-ISIS strikes and its possible participation in the coalition will raise questions because of previous reports that it helped arm, finance and treat ISIS fighters.

CHINA WARNS HONG KONG PROTESTERS
China has warned Hong Kong protesters of “unimaginable consequences” if they don’t end the “illegal” pro-democracy demonstrations that have brought a halt to the finance hub for five consecutive days, The Washington Post reports. In a similar move, the Hong Kong police said there would be serious consequences if protesters act on their threat to occupy government buildings unless Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying resigns by the end of the day. British journalist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard wrote in The Daily Telegraph that China’s Xi Jinping “will surely play for time, hoping the protests will fizzle ... or try to buy them off quietly” because yielding would likely encourage a similar movement on the mainland.

REBELS GO FOR DONETSK AIRPORT
Rebel fighters have launched a new attack on the Donetsk airport, which is held by Ukrainian government forces, the latest of many attempts in recent weeks, the BBC reports. According to a military official, seven rebels were killed as Kiev forces repelled the attacks. This comes after two shells, including one that hit a school, killed 11 people yesterday, an attack that both sides blamed on the other. In a phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel “emphasized the responsibility Russia has to exert a moderating influence on pro-Russian separatists.” Read more from Reuters.

5
The rate of Ebola infections in Sierra Leone has now reached five new cases per hour, according to Save the Children, a leading charity in the region. This means demands for health care are by far outstripping demand. Reporting from a hospital in the city of Makeni, The New York Times depicts the horrific conditions in which the patients are kept.

NORTH KOREA UPGRADES ROCKET LAUNCH
Despite heavy UN sanctions after a rocket launch and a third nuclear test almost two years ago, North Korea has completed a major upgrade of a rocket launch site that enables Pyongyang to fire longer-range missiles, the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University said. The report, based on satellite imagery, explains that although there is no evidence it will happen, “a rocket could be launched by the end of 2014.” Read more from The New York Times.

VERBATIM
“If something should happen to me, don’t look to the Middle East, look to the North,” Argentina President Cristina Kirchner said this week, suggesting there’s a U.S. plot to overthrow her government and kill her.

THE SQUARE SIDE OF THE MOON
Scientists have discovered that a rocky ridge on the moon they believed was the edge of an asteroid impact is in fact a giant square rift valley that acted as a “magma plumbing system” for volcanoes billions of years ago.

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Society

Pillar Of Shame, Symbol Of Freedom: Tiananmen To Hong Kong To Berlin

The “Pillar of Shame” in Hong Kong, a memorial to the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre, was a symbol of freedom and democracy. Beijing has taken it down, but a replica is being built in Berlin. Activist Samuel Chu explains why that means so much to him.

Image of the famous statue Pillar Of Shame marking the Tiananmen Square massacre.

The famous statue Pillar Of Shame marking the Tiananmen Square massacre was removed in 2021 at the University of Hong Kong, China.

Liau Chung-ren/ZUMA
Samuel Chu

-Essay-

HONG KONG — On Dec. 22, 2021, shortly before midnight, masked workers removed the original “Pillar of Shame” statue from the campus of the University of Hong Kong, where it had stood for more than 24 years. The sculpture was dismantled into three pieces and wrapped in white sheets that were reminiscent of the shrouds used to wrap dead bodies.

The pillar has a very personal meaning for me. Its arrival in Hong Kong in 1997 marked the start of a friendship between the artist Jens Galschiøt and my father, the minister Chu Yiu-ming, a founding member of the Hong Kong Alliance.

The Alliance was founded to support the protest movement in Tiananmen Square in Beijing (Tiananmen meaning the Gate of Heavenly Peace). After the protests were brutally suppressed, the Alliance became the most important voice working to ensure that the victims were not forgotten, and for 30 years it organized annual candlelight vigils on June 4 in Hong Kong.

When the pillar was removed from Hong Kong in 2021, I traveled to Jens’s workshop in Odense, Denmark to start work on our new plan. We wanted to ensure that the pillar, as a memorial to the murdered of Tiananmen Square, as well as to those who kept these forbidden memories alive in Hong Kong, did not disappear. To understand how it came to this, you need to understand the history and the idea behind the pillar in Hong Kong.

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