When Imploring Your Fellow Citizens to ‘Take Their Country Back,’ It’s Best to Be Sure It’s the Right One

IN A NUTSHELL: MUST READ
 

UK Wants To Keep Visa-Free Travel From EU: The UK government plans to keep visa-free travel to the UK for EU visitors after Brexit. After the UK leaves the European Union, citizens of EU countries who want to work, study, or settle in the United Kingdom will have to apply for permission, and ministers are likely to be grilled about how they will stop visitors from staying longer and working illegally. Proposals for the UK’s new immigration system are due in the fall, and the government says it wants to negotiate with the EU about future border controls as quickly as possible. On Wednesday, the UK government said that after Brexit, there should be no hard border (such as customs posts) between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

300 Killed and 600 Missing After Mudslides in Sierra Leone: Sierra Leone’s government needs family members to identify their loved ones’ remains following mudslides and floods in the capital of Freetown that have claimed the lives of more than 300 people, including 100 children. In a statement on Wednesday, President Ernest Bai Koroma’s office asked relatives to come to the city’s mortuary and said that all unidentified corpses would be given a “dignified burial” in the coming days. The death toll is expected to rise, and The Red Cross estimates that 600 people are still missing.

 
 
 
NUTS AND BOLTS: SHOULD READ
 

Hong Kong Activists Jailed for Pro-Democracy “Umbrella Movement”: Today, a Hong Kong court jailed three leaders of the 2014 “Umbrella Movement,” the largest pro-democracy demonstrations ever held in the city. Joshua Wong, 20, was sentenced to eight months in prison (reduced to six months on account of previous community service). Nathan Law, 24, and Alex Chow, 26, were sentenced to eight and seven months, respectively. Wong, Law ,and Chow were initially given and completed community service sentences, but the Department of Justice appealed, arguing these were insufficient punishments. Following the new verdict, Wong said: “They can silence protests, remove us from the legislature, and lock us up. But they will not win the hearts and minds of Hong Kongers.

Legislative elections in September 2016 saw record-level turnout, as voters “thumbed their noses at Beijing” and elected a slew of localist and localist-leaning politicians, including Law (then 23), the youngest-ever person elected to the city’s parliament. But just a few months later by late 2016, hope among pro-democracy activists turned to disillusionment as the Hong Kong government disqualified two pro-independence lawmakers after they protested China while taking their oaths of office. Beijing then stepped in and issued a “reinterpretation” of Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, which ruled that oaths must be taken “sincerely” and “solemnly.” Shortly after Chinese president Xi Jinping’s first official visit to Hong Kong in June of this year, Law and four other pro-democracy lawmakers were also disqualified. Following today’s verdict, neither Law nor Wong will be able to run in the by-election to fill those seats, as anyone jailed for more than 3 months is banned from standing for office for five years.

 
 
 
KEEPING OUR EYE ON
 

Blood, Money, and Sanctions–China In Hollywood and IRL: For the second year in a row, a Chinese-produced film set China’s domestic record for box office receipts. “Wolf Warrior 2” grossed $722 million in its first three weeks, and while that isn’t much of a surprise, the formula with which it accomplished this feat is. TL, DR: It’s a Chinese Rambo film. The Communist Party is never mentioned (we’re still talking China, right?), and the antagonist is a swaggering American mercenary. The director/lead actor Wu Jing attributes the success of the film to a maturing wave of Chinese nationalism.

In real international affairs, China has decided to honor and enforce UN sanctions against North Korea. It seems China has realized that the nuke games North Korea has been playing aren’t all that funny anymore. Or perhaps China’s North Korean sanctions are merely a sideshow to the economic war Steve Bannon says the US and China are battling.

 
 
 
LOOSE NUTS
 

When You Implore Your Fellow Citizens to ‘Take Their Country Back,’ It’s Probably Best to Be Sure It’s the Right One: On Monday, a branch of Germany’s far-right AfD (Alternatives for Germany) party perhaps took being politically incorrect a little too literally. The group tweeted a picture of a mountain landscape with the headline “Our program for Germany” and a call to “Take your country back.” But there was a pretty glaring problem with their branding scheme: the mountain in the photo is the Matterhorn. Which is in Switzerland. The tweet, posted from the official Twitter account of the AdD’s Nuremberg office, has been deleted but the image has been used in other tweets from the same account.

Formed in 2013, the AfD is hoping to win seats in German parliament for the first time when federal elections are held at the end of September. The party’s platform is anti-immigrant and socially conservative, calls for the immediate closing of the German border, and describes the five million Muslims in Germany as “a big danger for our state, our society, and our values.” Given low birth rates in the country, many German politicians see immigration as a way to increase a decreasing population. The AfD proposes an alternative: “New Germans? We’ll make them ourselves,” reads one official campaign poster. Current polls suggest the AfD could win 7 to 10 percent of the vote come September.

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