Demonstrations, Protests and Riots

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      ‘Hatred and Vitriol’ at the Trump Rally in New York

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      More from our inbox:What My Gut SaysThe Benefits of Electric CarsDonald Trump at Madison Square Garden.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “At the Garden, a Vivid Display of MAGA Fury” (front page, Oct. 29) and “The Pain of a Son’s Death, Worsened by Politics” (front page, Oct. 29):As I read these two articles, I wondered again where Trumpism has put its compassion. The first was about Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, which included unbelievable amounts of hatred and vitriol. The second told the story of the Springfield, Ohio, family who lost a son in a school bus accident involving a Haitian driver and has since faced heckling and threats for objecting to the politicization of the accident.I cannot vote for a party that voices that much hatred and talk of violence. Where is the compassion? Where is the love, mercy, justice, humility?Kent OlsonSioux Falls, S.D.To the Editor:Even eight years ago I would have been astonished if anybody at a Trump rally were to dispense the kind of raw racist hatred that was heard at Madison Square Garden, but I was not astonished this time. Donald Trump and his minions have put down the dog whistle and have picked up an industrial-strength bullhorn. Why? Because they know that it will resonate with a large section of the American population.We have to stop living in denial: The majority of Americans are not racist, but racism is not a fringe movement; it infects many millions. Mr. Trump would not be beating the drum so hard if this were not true.The disheartening hard truth is that whoever is in the White House, racism remains a national cancer. How can we battle it? I wish I had an answer, but I know this much: As a starting point, it is imperative that we acknowledge that the malignancy exists.David EnglishActon, Mass.To the Editor:What a coincidence. Sunday was also the 50th anniversary of the national day of solidarity with Puerto Rican independence, also held at Madison Square Garden, which drew nearly 20,000 people.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tommy Robinson, U.K. Anti-immigrant Agitator, Jailed for Contempt of Court

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      The founder of the English Defence League was sentenced to 18 months for ignoring a court order to stop making false claims about a teenage Syrian refugee.Tommy Robinson, Britain’s best-known far-right and anti-immigrant agitator, was sentenced on Monday to 18 months in prison for defying a court order by repeating false claims about a teenage Syrian refugee who had successfully sued him for libel.Mr. Robinson appeared in court and admitted to breaching a High Court order in 2021 that barred him from repeating the libelous allegationsIn announcing the sentence, Justice Jeremy Johnson said that no one was above the law.“The breaches were not accidental or negligent or merely reckless,” he said, according to Reuters. “Each breach of the injunction was a considered and planned and deliberate and direct and flagrant breach of the court’s order.”Mr. Robinson, 41, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was the founder of the English Defence League, a nationalist, anti-Muslim group known for its violent street protests in the late 2000s and 2010s.He had returned to Britain last week after several months abroad and turned himself in on Friday at a police station in Kent ahead of his court hearing in Woolwich, a town in southeastern London.The sentencing came two days after thousands of his supporters took to the streets of London for a rally that prompted a large counter demonstration. Both events were mostly peaceful, with a heavy police presence and just a handful of arrests.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Republic of Georgia Election

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      The ruling Georgia Dream party won a majority in the vote. The opposition, which fears the country is moving away from the West, says the voting was not fair and that it will not appear in Parliament.Georgia, a strategically-located republic at the center of the Caucasus, plunged into political crisis on Sunday as the ruling party celebrated victory in a pivotal election that the pro-Western opposition declared as falsified, vowing to boycott the new parliament.The shaky situation further polarized a political struggle between Georgian Dream, which has governed Georgia for 12 years, increasingly steering it away from its decades-long path to join NATO and the European Union, and the four political groups that aimed to keep it moving toward the West.The crisis will likely push Georgia further away from the West, with European observers criticizing the conduct of the election on Sunday. Zlatko Vujovic, the head of the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations, characterized the election as “not good.”“They were not conducted in the proper way as should be expected from a country that has a E.U. candidate status,” Mr. Vujovic said at a briefing with journalists.Critical violations included violence against opposition members, voter intimidation, smear campaigns targeting observers, and extensive misuse of administrative resources, he said.The Election Administration of Georgia, the body that oversees elections in the country, reported on Sunday that the ruling party garnered more than 54 percent of the vote with the four main opposition groups receiving 37.5 percent. That means that Georgian Dream will have 89 seats in Parliament with the remaining 61 occupied by the opposition.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Chapo Wins Mozambique’s Presidency in Disputed Election

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      Daniel Chapo of the Frelimo party, which has governed the southern African nation for nearly 50 years, was declared the victor amid violence and widespread allegations of fraud.Daniel Chapo was declared the winner of Mozambique’s presidential election on Thursday after a process marred by violence and widespread accusations that his party, Frelimo, which has run the country for nearly five decades, committed fraud.The country’s electoral commission announced that Mr. Chapo won with nearly 71 percent of the vote in the election, which was held on Oct. 9. He will replace Filipe Nyusi, who has served his limit of two five-year terms.The announcement came amid deep upheaval in a southern African nation that has been battling a yearslong insurgency by Islamist extremists in its northern coastal region of Cabo Delgado. The conflict has only deepened the divisions between those who benefit from Mozambique’s trove of natural resources — including natural gas and precious stones — and those struggling with widespread poverty and unemployment.On Monday, tear gas and gunfire filled the streets of the capital, Maputo, as the police clashed with thousands of demonstrators, who accused the governing party of rigging the election and orchestrating the fatal shooting of two supporters of Mr. Chapo’s main rival.Frelimo has said it has not committed any fraud and was not involved in the killings.“Frelimo is confident that the results reflect the will of the people,” Ludmila Maguni, a party spokeswoman, wrote in an email to The New York Times.This month’s election and the sporadic protests around it may be one of the sharpest tests of Frelimo’s power since it led Mozambique to independence from Portugal in 1975 and weathered a civil war in the years after.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      As Trump Served Up McDonald’s Fries, Vitriol Boiled Outside

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      In Pennsylvania, a critical swing state, supporters of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, some in weird costumes, gathered along a roadside and screamed at one another.On Sunday afternoon, former President Donald J. Trump dropped by a McDonald’s in Bucks County, Pa. He had cooked up a stunt to troll Vice President Kamala Harris, who has talked about having worked at McDonald’s one summer during college. Inside the restaurant, Mr. Trump wore an apron and dropped French fries into a vat of gurgling oil. Across the street, something much unhealthier was bubbling up.A few hundred Trump supporters were lining the shoulder of the road and holding a tailgate party in the parking lot of a strip mall right where Philadelphia ends and the suburbs begin. Another group of locals — maybe 50 people — had turned up to protest Mr. Trump’s visit. People on the two sides spent the sunny autumn afternoon screaming into one another’s faces while filming the skirmishes on their iPhones.The parking lot throbbed with hatred, fear and neighbor’s suspicion of neighbor. It became a microcosm of this year’s election, vicious and absurd. There was shouting about Project 2025 and the Jan. 6 riot. Transgender youth and vaccines. Tariffs and abortion. Fascism and communism. Mr. Trump’s supporters wore T-shirts that said “I’m voting for the convicted felon.” The other side yelled, “Lock him up.” One person wore an orange prison jumpsuit and a mask of Mr. Trump’s face.The crowd near the McDonald’s in Feasterville, Pa., on Sunday.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThis is what the mood is like in a swing state, 16 days before an election. Sixteen days before this election. Nearly a decade into the Trump-era of politics, the language is apocalyptic. Social media has supercharged the crude negativity.Both campaigns are spending wildly here. You can barely turn on the television or scroll on your phone without seeing a nasty advertisement. Many ordinarily nice people seem to have gone a little mad. They’re wearing political merchandise to dive bars and posting videos of themselves fighting over yard signs. Every day, Nov. 5 creeps a little closer, and the partisan tinnitus rings a little louder.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What Joko Widodo Achieved as President

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      Joko Widodo rose from a slum to the presidency. As his term ends, he is being accused of undermining the democracy that made that possible.The words “emergency warning” galvanized protesters in Indonesia in August. It was a rallying cry to protect the world’s third-largest democracy, which broke free from dictatorship less than 30 years ago. Thousands of protesters took to the streets. Some stormed the gates of Parliament, tearing one down in fury.The threat, as they saw it, was from their elected leader, President Joko Widodo.In his two terms in office, Mr. Joko, who steps down on Sunday, has transformed Indonesia, virtually eradicating extreme poverty in the sprawling archipelago, where about 280 million people live. But many believe he has also tried to bend the laws to install a political dynasty, undercutting the very democracy that let him become the country’s first president who was not from the military or the long-established political elite.Last year, critics say, Mr. Joko — widely known to Indonesians as Jokowi — engineered a Constitutional Court ruling that let his 36-year-old son run for vice president. The son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, was elected in February alongside Mr. Joko’s choice to succeed him as president, Prabowo Subianto, a former defense minister and general who has been linked to human rights abuses. In August, Mr. Joko’s allies attempted another maneuver to get his 29-year-old son, Kaesang Pangarep, on a ballot for political office. Infuriated Indonesians saw it as another about-face from Mr. Joko, who once declared, “Becoming a president does not mean channeling power to my children.”Thousands of protesters took to the streets in August, enraged by a plan to revise a law that would allow the younger son of Mr. Joko to run in local elections next month.Timur Matahari/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThousands of protesters gathered outside the Parliament and Constitutional Court in Jakarta, the capital. Mr. Joko was subjected to very personal attacks, as social media users cursed him by using his birth name, Mulyono. (Mr. Joko was a sickly child whose parents renamed him in hopes of better health; calling him Mulyono was tantamount to casting a hex.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      New York Man Who Brought Knife to Jan. 6 Riot Pleads Guilty to a Felony

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      Christopher D. Finney was charged after federal investigators found images of him during a search of a “militia” group chat, prosecutors said.A New York man pleaded guilty on Friday to a felony charge of civil disorder for storming the U.S. Capitol while armed with a knife on Jan. 6, 2021, as supporters of former President Donald J. Trump sought to halt the certification of the 2020 presidential election results.The man, Christopher D. Finney, 32, of Hopewell Junction, entered his plea before Judge Trevor N. McFadden of federal court in the District of Columbia, according to court documents.Mr. Finney’s sentencing is scheduled for January. His lawyer, Christopher Macchiaroli, said Mr. Finney “accepted full responsibility for his presence inside the U.S. Capitol” and looked forward to the “closure” he believed sentencing would bring.Mr. Finney is among more than 1,500 people to be criminally charged in connection with the Jan. 6 riot, in which supporters of Mr. Trump, including members of far-right groups, violently tried to stop Congress from certifying President Biden as the winner of the 2020 election.Like many of those charged, Mr. Finney had traveled to Washington to attend a rally, according to court documents. A video Mr. Finney recorded before the rally showed him wearing plastic goggles and a protective plate-carrier vest, with a knife holstered to his hip and plastic flex cuffs in the vest’s pouches, prosecutors said.“We’re going to storm the Capitol,” Mr. Finney recorded himself saying, according to prosecutors. “We’re going to make sure that this is done correct and that Donald Trump is still our president.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      North Korea Accuses the South of Sending Drones Over Pyongyang

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      Pyongyang threatened military action if the provocations continued, while the South advised its angry neighbor not to act “rashly.”North Korea on Friday accused South Korea of sending unmanned drones to scatter propaganda leaflets over its capital city of Pyongyang, and threatened military action if the flights continued.South Korean drones were seen over Pyongyang on Wednesday and Thursday night this week, the North’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Friday. The drones dropped “numerous leaflets full of political propaganda and slander” against the government of Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, it said.North Korea called the intrusions “a grave political and military provocation” that could lead to “an armed conflict.” It said its military was preparing “all means of attack” and would respond without warning if South Korean drones were detected over its territory again.“The criminals should no longer gamble with the lives of their citizens,” it said.No anti-North Korean activist group in South Korea has claimed responsibility for the drones. The South Korean military said it could not confirm the North Korean claim, but advised North Korea “not to act rashly.” The North Korean statement on Friday did not describe what type of drone was spotted.“We will retaliate resolutely and mercilessly if the North endangers the safety of our people,” South Korea said in a statement.Tensions between the two Koreas have increased in recent months as anti-North Korean activists in the South — mostly defectors — have sent balloons filled with leaflets criticizing Mr. Kim’s government across the border. North Korea has also released thousands of balloons toward the South since May. The payloads mostly contained scrap paper and other household trash.North Korea has resorted to increasingly hostile language toward the South ever since Mr. Kim’s diplomacy with former President Donald J. Trump collapsed in 2019. The two leaders were meant to negotiate an agreement on rolling back the North’s nuclear weapons program in exchange for easing United Nations sanctions.Mr. Kim has since expanded his weapons tests while South Korea has redoubled its military ties with the United States and Japan.During the Cold War, the two Korean militaries often sent propaganda balloons across the border. When the leaders of the two Koreas held the first inter-Korean summit meeting in 2000, they agreed to end the government-sponsored balloon campaigns.But North Korean defectors and conservative and Christian activists in the South have continued the practice, sending balloons filled with mini-Bibles, USB drives containing K-pop and K-drama and leaflets calling Mr. Kim a “pig.”Mr. Kim’s government has called the leaflets political “filth.” More