Another week, another Sunday Summary to give you our opinions on the news of the week. This week has not failed to produce an abundance of interesting headlines.
Headlines such as Hong Kong’s government suspending schools until next week as everyone is getting prepared for another round of protests that will likely end in a new wave of riots. This has been an ongoing issue for quite a while now, with China’s President Xi Jinping supporting the excessive violence of the police who are using pepper spray and tear gas on innocent bystanders. Furthermore, he suggests that this is a Hong Kong issue, and that Hong Kong should restore the order and stop the violence. If only that was as easy as he makes it seem. I’m afraid that this will continue to be on the headlines and that a peaceful outcome is not that likely at this moment. Of course, we will be here to report on these issues. But I cannot help but wonder how our exchange students are doing there?
On a lighter note, the world has a new favorite insult and it’s “Ok boomer”. Apparently it has been around since 2018 but has only come to the surface this year. “Ok boomer” is something that the younger generations say to the so-called “baby boomers”, people who were born between the 40s and 60s. It is used to amplify the fact that baby boomers are a little bit out of touch with what is going on and they are quite close-minded. The New York Times calls the phrase “a rallying cry for millions of fed-up kids” and I can’t help but agree.
To make it much more amazing, it was used this week by a 25-year old lawmaker in New Zealand as a response to heckling during her speech on climate change, making Chloe Swarbrick our (s)hero of the week.
Here is the video of the magnificent moment when Chloe Swarbrick casually drops the phrase to the much older politician who commented on her age.
Since we are on the topic of baby boomers making horrible decisions on climate change, my favorite headline of this week is the Italian Council in Venice being flooded immediately after rejecting measures on climate change. The Veneto regional council was flooded on Tuesday night, at a time when Venice has the worst tide in more than 50 years. Karma really is a B… you know what I mean. Italian politician Andrea Zanoni, who is a Democratic Party councilor, said that one of the measures that was rejected included replacing diesel buses with more sustainable ones. Another one was the funding of renewable power sources and the reduction of the impact of plastics. He then proceeded to criticize the Veneto regional president Luca Zaia, a member of Matteo Salvini’s The League. As he says, he presented a budget without a concrete plan to combat climate change. At a time when climate change threatens the very existence of our planet, such measures are extremely important; especially at a place like Venice, which floods every other week.
So, to everyone who thinks that cutting budget on measures for climate change is a smart option all I have to say is “Ok boomer”.
