Protests

John Wilson on “the Short 68,” “the Long 68,” and what’s missing from a new account of the protests and their legacy.

Politicians talk about "witch hunts" so often that the occult has almost become cliche in American politics. But in Arizona, there's at least one candidate on the ballot who takes sorcery very seriously.

“Harness that energy.”

When ill-conceived jokes become false information.

Just Do It™. Whatever it is.

It’s July. The news tends to be less momentous than at other times. The Scrapbook understands that. But the media’s sudden fixation on individual acts of “protest” has us wishing for more stories about kids giving back to the community and celebrities saying dumb things.

A community organizes against his library plans.

Like Paul Newman’s chain gang in Cool Hand Luke, Starbucks is suffering from a failure to communicate. First, of course, was the Philadelphia branch manager who had two African-American men arrested on the grounds they were loitering (they weren’t). Then, in a burst of enthusiasm and contrition,…

Hosted by Charlie Sykes

In the era of gesture politics, when political discourse consists of an endless sequence of symbolic protests and counterprotests, there are few winners. The shouting and sign-waving protesters look bitter and sanctimonious, the objects of their disgust are obliged to defend themselves against…

The school walkout—or to speak correctly, the Enough! National School Walkout—took place on March 14. The point of the event was to call attention to the need for gun-control legislation. Students were to walk out of their classrooms at 10:00 a.m. for 17 minutes to remember the 17 people killed at…

In a recent New York Times op-ed, Temple University professor of psychology Laurence Steinberg argues that “the federal voting age in the United States should be lowered from 18 to 16.” The bulk of Steinberg’s piece is devoted to explaining why teenagers aren’t the empty-headed narcissistic…

Every month, we eagerly anticipate the arrival of our GQ magazine. There are few other places where The Scrapbook can glean instruction on how to wear capri-pants-for-men without our calves looking chunky. This month is no exception. For fresh out on newsstands—assuming there is still such a thing…

Philadelphia

Vice President Mike Pence departed an NFL game Sunday afternoon in response to several players who knelt during the playing of the National Anthem, he said in a statement.

Few if any Americans are associated with more apocryphal quotes than Thomas Jefferson, but the false notion that he said, “dissent is the highest form of patriotism” is among the easiest to dispel. Because Jefferson never would have said something so idiotic. Of course dissent can be patriotic, but…

Recent NFL seasons have begun with waves of negativity: the Ray Rice controversy to start the 2014 season, the assault on the airwaves by DraftKings and FanDuel at the start of 2015, the Tom Brady suspension in the first month of 2016. This year it’s President Donald Trump denouncing NFL players as…

Josh Cobin seems a good enough guy. A little pudgy, maybe, with his hair thinning on top and a beard borrowed from a Civil War officer—one who forgot to get a trim before Mathew Brady showed up to take the battalion photograph. At 29, Josh is probably a little old for the sloppy look he affects. A…

Josh Cobin seems a good enough guy. A little pudgy, maybe, with his hair thinning on top and a beard borrowed from a Civil War officer—one who forgot to get a trim before Mathew Brady showed up to take the battalion photograph. At 29, Josh is probably a little old for the sloppy look he affects. A…

For several days in mid-August, Donald Trump found himself ensnared in a bizarre controversy over the “very fine people” marching alongside neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Va. It was a stupid thing to say—he said it several times, of course—and he was roundly criticized for his failure to condemn…

During the 2016 presidential primary campaign, Jeb Bush took to calling Donald Trump the “chaos candidate.” It didn’t seem to have much effect at the time, but Bush was prescient: The chaos candidacy is now the chaos presidency. And yet, as Henry Adams once wrote, while order is the dream of man,…

What a bore. Are you a Tesla fanboy? So much so that you pressure your friends into buying one of the heavily subsidized electric sports cars so you can get referral points? (They are expensive!) Well, you're in luck. The fine minds at Tesla have launched a new incentive to further motivate you:…

Updated, 10:45 p.m.: Violence around a planned white nationalist rally in Virginia left three people dead and over a dozen injured Saturday, multiple news outlets reported.

Not all the news coming out of Evergreen State College is bad. Only most of it.

At Evergreen State College, the revolution will be televised. And it already has been, thanks to the smartphone.

In recent decades, Portland, Oregon, has acquired a reputation as one of America's most tolerant and liberal cities. In practice, this means there are taxpayer-funded sex changes for municipal employees and lots of bike lanes, but comparatively little tolerant liberalism. The city government has…

Give National Public Radio some credit: In an All Things Considered feature, reporter Martin Kaste actually interviewed some anti-leftist protesters and did not present them as crazy people. Also to NPR's credit, the story, "Trump Supporters Accuse Liberal Communities of Hostility Toward Free…

At Evergreen State College, the revolution will be televised. And it already has been, thanks to the smartphone.

In recent decades, Portland, Oregon, has acquired a reputation as one of America's most tolerant and liberal cities. In practice, this means there are taxpayer-funded sex changes for municipal employees and lots of bike lanes, but comparatively little tolerant liberalism. The city government has…

Here's the latest academic news: It turns out that letting left-wing protesters run roughshod over your campus is bad for business.

When the Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke at the Brookings Institution in Washington in March 2016, a handful of Armenian-American pickets appeared on the sidewalk beside Massachusetts Avenue, holding signs aloft and chanting about Erdogan's burgeoning Islamist dictatorship and the…

That liberals run American universities is never going to be a man-bites-dog news headline, but the urgent question ought to be: When are university liberals going to stand up and defend liberalism?

The recent campus rioting against unpopular or conservative political views is awful, but I have discovered the solution—by accident.

As long-suffering Venezuelans take to the streets and the government itself executes its most audacious seizure of a private business, a General Motors plant, it's worth looking at precisely how we got here.

The campus novel is overripe for a renaissance. Because it will take a satirical rendering à la Lucky Jim—or perhaps dozens of them—to expose the painfully silly social politics of campus protest culture to the clarifying light of enough readers' wry, self-aware laughter. Unsurprisingly, few have…

Never again will a non-holiday pass without some sort of public #Resistance exertion. While anti-Trump emotions run high, festivals of malcontent give the aggrieved opportunities to vent in vague opposition to the administration. International Women's Day, that Soviet feast day sanitized and…

It might come as news to the millions of pink-hatted anti-Trump marchers, the marauding rioters at Berkeley and Middlebury, and the anti-pipeline hippies in North Dakota, but apparently Americans’ right to protest is under threat. We know that because two "special rapporteurs on freedom of…

The State Department censured Russian authorities for detaining peaceful protesters Sunday as anti-corruption demonstrations swept the country, according to a statement provided to THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

Allison Stanger, the Middlebury College professor who ended up in a neck brace after protests at the private Vermont institution spiraled out of control, wrote a piece in the New York Times Monday reflecting on the mob scene that transpired.

Politicians' children are supposed to be off limits to reporters, per the rules of what we used to call "common decency." (It was a thing, I'm told.) The agreement holds because it's a shared standard of upright social practice and interpersonal ethics that helps the world run smoothly. And because…

Social science has a way of confirming what we humans already knew about ourselves. Data that validate one's intuitive gleanings about the species make a timeless gift, always in season. "Extreme Protest Tactics Reduce Popular Support for Social Movements," from sociologists Matthew Feinberg of the…

Small-scale demonstrations continued at the Dakota Access Pipeline protest camp in Cannon Ball, N.D., on Monday, with holdouts facing a Wednesday deadline to vacate the area and allow the Army Corps of Engineers to help expedite cleanup of what North Dakota's governor called "five or six months of…

In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Fred Barnes joins host Eric Felten to tell why Republicans should take up tax reform first, before getting bogged down in Obamacare; Michael Warren reports on how the White House agenda got slowed down this week; and Ethan Epstein peers behind the mask…

After masked marauders invaded the campus breaking and burning things, rioting to shut down a speech by alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, a question for the University of California, Berkeley, was whether the miscreants were students or (in the immortal words of The Graduate's Berkeley…

After masked marauders invaded the campus breaking and burning things, rioting to shut down a speech by alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, a question for the University of California, Berkeley, was whether the miscreants were students or (in the immortal words of The Graduate’s Berkeley…

Dan Mogulof, a vice chancellor at the University of California, Berkeley, must boast X-ray vision. After about 150 people rampaged through his picturesque campus in early February, setting fires, smashing windows, and launching fireworks at the police—all ostensibly to protest an appearance by an…

The work of THE WEEKLY STANDARD was briefly interrupted when a handful of Greenpeace stuntivists mounted a crane on a neighboring construction site, unfurled a banner, and then dangled in the air for several hours. Our office window had a perfect view of the pranksters as their banner folded in on…

The work of THE WEEKLY STANDARD was briefly interrupted last week when a handful of Greenpeace stuntivists mounted a crane on a neighboring construction site, unfurled a banner, and then dangled in the air for several hours. Our office window had a perfect view of the pranksters as their banner…

Seven Greenpeace activists climbed to the top of a crane north of the White House and hung a large banner reading "RESIST" on Wednesday morning. Given the timing, one would think the word might allude to President Trump's orders to revive the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines. Greenpeace is…

"Don't try to divide us," said Gloria Steinem, the reigning queen of second-wave feminism, now 81, who first rose to fame for going undercover as a Playboy bunny. She'd come to help rally a crowd reportedly surpassing 500,000 women, male allies, and acquiescent children—all of whom find a common…

Gee, I'm having a tough time deciding which exciting anti-Trump demonstration to attend this weekend. Fortunately the Huffington Post published a helpful list:

Nebraska senator Ben Sasse has come under fire for this tweet:

Students at American University burned flags in protest of Donald Trump's election victory Wednesday.

Over the weekend, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for the national anthem at the beginning of an NFL preseason game. Predictably, this touched off a firestorm after Kaepernick explained at a press conference after the game that this was done to protest injustice in…

Philadelphia

Cleveland

Bill Clinton was again confronted about his controversial 1994 crime bill during a campaign stop for his wife in New Jersey Friday.

Congressmen Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) and Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) were standing a long first-down pass apart in front of the Supreme Court building on Monday, each man commanding a microphone and armies of decibels. Gohmert is a particularly carnivorous hawk on border security. Gutierrez would just…

'The history of the Reformation is very largely a history of books and publication," writes Marilynne Robinson in an essay on the schism within Western Christianity and one of the great seismic movements of the last millennium. On the eve of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation comes this…

On December 7, Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced a federal investigation of the Chicago police department. Recent history shows that the Obama Department of Justice cannot be counted on to perform a competent investigation, but at least this particular inquiry is not without cause. The city…

Under three different CEOs, Walmart has done all kinds of somersaults to appease left-wing critics. In 2005, Lee Scott set goals of “zero waste” and “100 percent” conversion to renewable energy. In 2009, Mike Duke, the next CEO, took on Obamacare—as an outspoken supporter of the unpopular health…

A Vietnam veteran interviewed on CNN last night told protesters to go get "their butts at home." The veteran, who identified himself as Robert Valentine, said, "I'm very pissed." Watch here:

Attorney General Loretta Lynch reponds to the violence in Baltimore:

Baltimore police are warning that there is a "credible threat" to "take-out" law enforcement officers, according a press release from the Baltimore Police Department. 

Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake told the press that her city "gave those who wished to destroy space to do that" at last night's protest. Watch here:

In a Capitol Hill hearing about President Obama's proposed Authorization of Use of Military Force, Secretary of State John Kerry was heckled by anti-war protesters:

Some walked out of Jeb Bush's CPAC speech earlier today outside Washington, D.C.:

A "die-in" protest greeted Democratic Senators Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar yesterday in St. Paul, Minnesota, at an event marking Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Other notable politicians present include Governor Mark Dayton and Rep. Keith Ellison.

New York Police Department chief Bill Bratton said that "some people get caught up" in the "anti-police" movement: 

With the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Beijing safely over and regional leaders departed, China’s new strongman Xi Jinping decided to lower the boom on Hong Kong. Police there began clearing the barricades last week from the city’s main thoroughfare with the students in…

Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick explained on CNN that part of the point of protests yesterday in Boston, New York City, and Washington, D.C. was to be "disruptive." 

President Obama held a townhall today in Burma where he was met with signs that read "Reform is fake" and "Change." He commented on the signs before getting on with the program.

President Obama responded tonight to an immigration heckler in Wisconsin by telling her to protest Republicans:

Representatives of the student led democracy protests in Hong Kong are due to enter into a dialogue with the Hong Kong government on Tuesday.  The prospects for success are not good.  The two sides are far apart, with the government saying it will not even discuss the protesters’ chief demand – the…

Should it matter to the rest of us that Hong Kong has erupted this past week with demonstrations for democracy? China’s rulers say this is an internal matter. Western leaders, while expressing concern, seem inclined to agree.

Hong Kong

Ferguson, Mo.

The State Department is warning of a protest in Malaysia on Friday, one day before President Obama is expected to arrive there on Saturday.

The Obama administration is wasting no time in showing support for the new government forming in Ukraine.  The State Department has announced that Deputy Secretary of State William Burns will visit Kiev, Ukraine on a February 25 to 26 trip that will include a stop in Istanbul, Turkey, as well.…

An office building manager in downtown Washington, D.C. is preparing for the 9/11 "Million Muslim March" by explaining to the tenants of the building what's expected for tomorrow.

Women Speak for Themselves, a grassroots organization of more than 40,000 women for religious freedom, gathered today at Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C. to protest enforcement of the Health and Human Services mandate, which requires employers (including some religious institutions) to cover…

The Scrapbook takes no official position on whether the Koch brothers should buy the newspapers owned by the Tribune Company. It’s an open question whether the Baltimore Sun, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and a half-dozen other papers are national treasures which must be saved from…

The spirited debate over suspension of aid to Egypt has given rise to a good argument over how to encourage progress in Egypt toward stable, responsible, and democratic government. We know what we would, as Americans, like ideally to see there: respect for civil liberties such as freedom of speech…

The Associated Press reports:

President Obama called President Morsi of Egypt today to say that " the United States is committed to the democratic process in Egypt and does not support any single party or group." Obama "stressed that democracy is about more than elections," according to a readout of the call provided by the…

Protesters gathered at the American embassy in Amman, Jordan to signal opposition to the U.S. and President Barack Obama, according to the Jordan Times.

Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat from Michigan, encouraged folks to "keep fighting!" after her side lost the labor dispute that will now give union members the right-to-work.

Tampa

Last week, at the beach with my family, I deliberately ignored all newspapers. Not for the reason most people do—because print is dead. But because whenever I’m surrounded by salt -water, steamed crabs, and even mediocre fishing, I tend to hold that true happiness is having no idea what chronically…

Working to suppress the protesters in Syria, the army there, the New York Times reports, is "gathering confidence":

Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal is moving ahead with education reform--but it isn't without controversy.

This morning, the White House released a statement regarding further atrocities committed by the Syrian regime.

The Associated Press crunches the numbers and finds that Occupy protests have "cost local taxpayers at least $13 million." 

Opposition forces stormed the parliament yesterday after marching on the house of the prime minister, Sheikh Nasser Mohammad al-Ahmed al-Sabah, to demand he resign. Protesters hold the prime minister responsible for failing to fight the country's growing corruption—this report from Al Arabiya's…

In a graphic video posted on CBS's website, an Occupy Wall Street protester threatens violence: “No more talking. They’ve got guns, we’ve got bottles. They’ve got bricks, we’ve got rocks…in a few days you’re going to see what a Molotov cocktail can do to Macy’s.”

Earlier this week, a group of Harvard undergraduates aligned with Occupy Wall Street protesters made a statement yesterday by staging a “walkout” of an introductory economics course taught by conservative professor Greg Mankiw. Mankiw, who chaired the Council of Economic Advisers for President…

I know what you're thinking. But he did everything right!:

A new Emergency Committee for Israel ad asks Democratic leaders who have embraced Occupy Wall Street to condemn the anti-Semitism elements of the protest. "Why are our leaders turning a blind eye to anti-Semitic, anti-Israel attacks?" the ad asks. "Tell president Obama and Leader Pelosi to stand up…

“What do we want?” “Jobs!” “When do we want them?” “Now!”

The MacIver Insitute in Wisconsin put together this video about a union protest of a school in Wisconsin where Governor Scott Walker recently made an appearence. The building was vandalized, and the head of the exemplary school understandably worries about what example this protest sets for the…

For the last several months, Syrians have been loudly protesting their own government. The regime, led by strongman Bashar al-Assad, has responded by killing its own citizens, including women and children, and shutting off channels of communication that the protesters have been utilizing (such as…

Last Friday, protesters in Syria burned Russian and Iranian flags as they took to the streets to speak out against the regime. Today's Friday, so protesters again took to the streets.  This time, some were spotted burning pictures of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Haartez reports:  

Benghazi

The New York Times reports that Bashar al-Assad continues to murder Syrians who are protesting his regime:

Bloomberg reports that the Syrians are continuing to protest today against the Assad regime. According to the news report, this comes after "the discovery of a mass grave containing the bodies of anti-government activists." Bloomberg reports:

It’s Friday, so Syrians are out in the streets again protesting, as they have been on every Friday now for almost two months, braving the atrocities of a regime that has surrounded several Syrian cities with tanks and allegedly fired on its citizens with artillery.

Three months after the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak, the new Egypt is still sorting itself out—and perhaps will be for some time to come. Observers are concerned about both the country’s domestic problems—attacks on the Coptic Community, the rise of the long-repressed Salafi movement,…

The Syrian regime is pledging to fight until the end, as protesters continue to take to the streets across the Arab nation. "We will sit here," a cousin of Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad said, according to the New York Times. "We call it a fight until the end."

CNN reports: 

With the popular uprising in Syria completing its first month, protests against Bashar al-Assad’s regime have spread to encompass most Syrian regions and cities, including now the capital, Damascus. On Friday, April 15, crowds from surrounding suburbs swarmed the city, heading downtown to…

In a move supposedly meant to placate protesters, Syria has abolished its 48-year-old ‘emergency’ rule law. But this isn’t a sign that the regime is totally giving in. (It seems instead that the regime just wants the world to think that it’s meeting the demands of the protesters, without actually…

Haaretz reports:

Protesters in Syria are out on the streets again today, despite the severity of the force they were met with in last week's protests. The New York Times reports:

Former Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak has reportedly been placed under detention in his hospital room in Sharm el-Sheikh. Mubarak has been there since last night, when he is thought to have had a heart attack. The AP reports:

Beirut

The Washington Post reports that Egyptian military forces broke up protests early this morning in Cairo's Tahrir Square. At least two civilians were killed and another 15 were seriously wounded. The protests followed a day of peaceful demonstrations, which continued after the 2 a.m. curfew and into…

Al Jazeera reports: 

Manama, Bahrain

Beirut 

Lee Smith writes at Tablet: 

Beirut

According to Al Jazeera, "Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, has accepted the resignation of the country's government, following two weeks of anti-government protests that have gripped Syria."

Reuters reports that Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad has deployed his army to subdue protesters: 

Elliott Abrams, writing in the Washington Post, argues that the Syrian regime will be the next one to fall in the region:

Al Jazeera reports:

Nowhere has the Obama administration been more reluctant to embrace the revolutions sweeping through the Middle East than in Yemen. This is, in part, understandable.

Where the political shockwave inspired by Tunisia's democratic rebellion will lead we don't yet know. We do know what set Tunisia's revolt in motion: the end of Arab fear. When an oppressed people snap fear's psychological bonds, they shatter the tyrant's most potent weapon.

Cairo

This YouTube video shows a protester in Bahrain being shot multiple times at point-blank range by security forces. Warning: this video is extremely graphic. 

Beirut

Beirut

On February 7, I published a piece in the Guardian that answered the question, Will Syria be next? That is, would Syria be the next Arab country to witness a popular uprising after Tunisia and Egypt? My answer was, no. The ground was not ready due to the complexity of the Syrian situation, I…

It's hard to tell how many protesters are in the streets of the Syrian capital, but it's hardly surprising that, after Egypt and Libya, the regime in Damascus might be next in line. Bashar al-Assad and his security chiefs guessed as much, which is why the last few weeks they warned the foreign and…

Sometimes the New York Times is hard to believe--on March 12, for instance.

Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton writes in the Daily that “President Obama’s indecisiveness has unquestionably limited American options, making almost any potential intervention riskier and less likely to succeed.”

The Washington Post reports today that "The United States and its European allies are considering the use of naval assets to deliver humanitarian aid to Libya and to block arms shipments to the government of Moammar Gaddafi..."

On February 22, several days into the Libyan regime’s campaign of terror, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was asked whether the U.S. was going to stand by while Moammar Qaddafi and his military slaughtered their fellow countrymen.

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

President Obama’s apparent frustration that he and his senior policymakers were taken by surprise with recent events in Tunisia and Egypt, reminds us of Yogi Berra’s famous line, “It’s like déjà vu all over again.” Some momentous event occurs on the world scene—whether it’s the Soviets putting…

On Sunday, Mary Bell, president of the Wisconsin Educational Association Council, instructed the teachers in her union to return to the classroom after many of them skipped school for three days last week. The unexpected move energized Republicans in Wisconsin, who took it as a sign that negative…

Government security forces in Bahrain fired on mourners today in Pearl Square. The New York Times reports:

Madison, Wisconsin has become quite the mob scene with protests by union members opposed to Republican governor Scott Walker's legislation that would require most public sector union employees, including teachers, to pay 12 percent of their health care premiums--up from the current average of 6…

The Bahrain military and police cracked down on protesters early this morning in Pearl Square. The New York Times reports:

One frequent criticism of the war in Iraq has been that it is impossible to impose democracy from above. The revolution in Egypt represents an attempt to achieve democracy from below, as it were. The jury is out on both nations--and on both paths. However, as many have noted, revolutions that…

Following the fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, protesters in Iran seem to be getting a second-wind:

UPDATE: On Friday the Army made its decision. Mubarak was forced out. His Thursday speech was a disaster and it seems to have helped persuade the generals that they had, at last, to choose between Mubarak and the people. They made the right choice.

Herzliya, Israel

Fox News is reporting that an assassination attempt has been made on newly named Egyptian vice president Omar Suleiman. Two of the longtime intelligence chief’s bodyguards, Fox says, were killed in the attack. Egyptian security officials, reports Al Arabiya, are denying the reports.

Here's a very graphic video of an Egyptian police truck running over anti-regime demonstrators. As the vehicle cruises past, without having stopped, you can hear demonstrators referring to the police as "infidels," "sons of bitches" and then starting a chant, "Hosni Mubarak is falling."

Just last night I had encouraged an Egyptian friend, Raouf, living in the United States, who wanted to go back home to witness his country’s historic events. “I need to see this,” he told me excitedly. Now with fighting in the streets today I’m not so sure.

This is the 3 a.m. phone call. Will President Obama rise to the occasion?

PressTV:

The prestigious and, since its formation less than a year ago, consistently ahead-of-the-curve Working Group on Egypt, co-chaired by Michele Dunne of Carnegie and Robert Kagan of Brookings, has just issued a new statement late Saturday. The Group includes Middle East and foreign policy experts…

Egyptian sources are dismissing reports that Gamal Mubarak and his family have left Cairo for London. If those earlier accounts were not outright propaganda, they seem to have been based more on wishful thinking than reality.The Mubarak regime is not as brittle as that of Tunisia’s erstwhile…