Freedom

When one's sense of independence, which they have had for over 80 years, disappears, it's really hard to accept.  I can understand that. That's how my mom feels.  So she bought this scooter.  I wrote about our telephone exchange the morning it was purchased.  You can see, it is indeed red.  It's been too hot for her to take out and explore the neighborhood since May, much to her consternation.  I did ask her to hop aboard this morning so I could take a quick pic.  It was her idea for me to shoot her driving away.    Naturally, she didn't give me quite enough time before she started to circle around to the left.

I'm a day behind in my posting so it's currently 6 July.  For the past couple of hours I have been watching the live pictures of the demonstrations in Hamburg, Germany. I think the U.S.  press was caught off guard when the riot police (at about 20.00 local time) began shooting smoke bombs and water cannons at the protesters.  Up to that point, I hadn't witnessed any violence among the crowd, although some responded by throwing debris.  What surprises me is that there are almost always large demonstrations at G-20 summits.   The thing that upsets me most is that this reinforces the idea among authoritarian leaders like Putin and Erdoğan that all opposition protests must be crushed.  It worries me that others, leaning towards authoritarianism, will use this sort of scene to justify cracking down on the rights of citizens (and the press) in otherwise liberal democracies and that there will be even more crackdowns in places like Russia, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Poland.