Protests in Algeria have been building since the start of the year. The protests, that have already forced former president Abdelaziz Bouteflika to step down after 20 years, have lately been facing increasingly hostile repression from police and security services. In this interview with imprisoned student leader Yani Aïdali, he discusses the nature of the student movement, and the possibility of its generating a national-level co-ordination.

The protests in Hong Kong continue to escalate. Yet, the Western left has struggled to come to terms with the situation – torn between the contradictory desire to support the movement and the mainly liberal democratic demands of the protestors themselves. In this article, Pang Laikwan analyses the nature and stakes of the movement.

What starts as a humorous study of a middle-class family imploding through its own greed, vanity and entitlement, soon takes a much darker turn. And as it does, the question of who we believe becomes much more critical.