Protest

It was Tuesday, Wednesday.

Maandamano was on Wednesday.

And then on, on, on Friday night, I am watching the news, on Thursday night, and then there's a church fundraising somewhere in Nairobi.

The guest of honor is, is, um, Mama Rachel Ruto.

Um, so we did talk about the role of civility in politics, insti- political institutions, and democracy.

Um, but chapter three, or part three, sorry, part three, Civility, Social Justice, Civil Disobedience, and Protest, um, is really interesting in terms of taking up the question of who gets to be civil and who gets to be sort of civilly disobedient or disobedient in some way that is considered not civil.

Um, can you talk a little bit about that section?

Sure.

I was reading this book.

Sorry, this week we are reading a book called Comfort and Protest by Alan Bozic, who is a South African liberation theologian who is still alive, which is very interesting and has a... fascinating, if not sometimes troubling life.

But I was reading his book about Revelation, about apartheid, about the end of the world, just as I went to go see a film about Fidel Castro, which is very cool.

In Glasgow, there's a thing called the Havana Glasgow Film Festival, where people put on basically a small film festival, and they will show films about Cuba and Beyond just sort of like the revolutionary stuff, there's, you know, a whole sort of, I don't know, menu of Cuban films you can watch, which is great.

He is a black Reformed pastor, and that I thought would be an interesting contribution, because so far we have talked mostly through some Catholic literature on Revelation.

Earlier in the year, we spent a lot of time with Pablo Richard.

We looked at some Catholic feminist stuff around Revelation as well, but not a lot of Protestant literature yet.

And I feel like...

But if we tell you that this is a narrative of the Trump family bad, resort bad, we're doing this story a complete disservice.

Because to understand why Albanians are able to protest like this for the first time, sustained, leaderless, night after night... and why they're furious enough to want their whole government gone, not just a real estate deal, you have to understand what's been done to Albania for the last 500 years.

So, let's get into it.

Now Albania sits on the Adriatic across the water basically from Italy wedged into the Balkans and I had the pleasure of getting to go to Albania last September in 2025 and And I got to talk to locals while I was there.

An estimated 170,000 plus concrete bunkers were built across the country because Hoxha believed invasion was always imminent.

Political dissent could get you executed or sent to a labor camp.

There was no protest movement in Albania for over 40 years because there was no space where one could exist because of this.

Cezanne Island, the very island at the heart of today's story, was part of that fortress state.

So why do that? That's performative for your audience.

That's right.

Your audience, which is particularly white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, gets off on hearing you saying that like watching a porn of you.

And that just, it made me mad.

But I know I look at you like a sister.

One of the stories, the big stories of the week has been the One Nation student walkout.

So we had students skip school recently and take to the streets to protest against Pauline Hanson and One Nation with this happening across many cities across And I watched some of the footage and the students, they're obviously politically active and invested.

Some of the signs were quite a bit more on the feral side and the messages were getting quite violent.

There was some calling to kill Pauline Hanson and others.

So I was just wondering what your view on teen protest is specifically about this and whether you'd seen any of these signs.

Oh, I think you can be super offensive, but the more offensive you get, the more it has to be really witty and clever.

So I'd say make sure your sign is really clever and funny, but if it's just obnoxious, like, you know, I can't give it maximum marks.

Yeah.

Horas antes, el ministro de Asuntos Exteriores de Japón, Toshimitsu Motegi, había señalado que las islas son territorio intrínsecamente japonés, tanto histórica como jurídicamente, según el derecho internacional, y que el Gobierno de Japón protestaba enérgicamente por dicha visita.

Pero a pesar de las protestas japonesas, los medios estatales rusos trataron el viaje como una declaración de intenciones, como explicaba un reportero de la cadena estatal rusa Rossiya 24, cadena hermana de Rossiya 1.

But despite Japanese protests, Russian state media treated the trip as a statement of intent, as a reporter from Russia's state-run Rossiya 24, Rossiya 1's sister network, explained.

Pero a pesar de las protestas japonesas, los medios estatales rusos trataron el viaje como una declaración de intenciones, como explicaba un reportero de la cadena estatal rusa Rossiya 24, cadena hermana de Rossiya 1.

Japón necesita por fin reconciliarse con la realidad y, tras ochenta y un años, aceptar finalmente los resultados de la Segunda Guerra Mundial.

Japan needs to finally reconcile with reality and, after eighty-one years, finally accept the results of World War II.