Hong Kong Riots

[John Lambies Doos]

This isn't like Tianamen Square in 1989 where everybody has been silenced, and no public discussion, or commemoration of it is allowed in Chine. .   Everything that Beijing does can be instantly uploaded to the internet. 
This is people fighting for their freedoms and deserve to be supported. 

Freedom from what exactly?

[vikingTON]

49 minutes ago, Tight John McVeigh is a tit said:

 

Okay then

 

Be sure to let us know when the Chinese imperial flotilla for the conquest of Scotland sails around your decrepit bin of a country though!

[Tight minge]

Be sure to let us know when the Chinese imperial flotilla for the conquest of Scotland sails around your decrepit bin of a country though!

Okay

[beefybake]

1 hour ago, John Lambies Doos said:

On 28/07/2019 at 19:57, beefybake said:

This isn't like Tianamen Square in 1989 where everybody has been silenced, and no public discussion, or commemoration of it is allowed in Chine. .   Everything that Beijing does can be instantly uploaded to the internet. 
This is people fighting for their freedoms and deserve to be supported. 

Freedom from what exactly?

Do your own work.

 

[Cerberus]

Hong Kong on the brink of recession.

[Zawar Khan]

yes! china is eventually started to control the protest by every passing day. even they using GFW features in HK for internet blockage. 

[Guest JTS98]

Can't claim any special insight on how this will play out, but I think the Hong Kong situation raises interesting questions for those who seem very confident of China's unstoppable rise.

The Communist Party in China came to power in violence and has maintained that power essentially through violence and bribery. Disagree and you go to prison, sit tight and we give you consumer goods and make you rich.

That works as long as you make people rich and manage to keep relatively quiet the extent to which you inflict violence on people. The problem, it seems to me, is that the technology that allows China to keep tabs on its population so successfully can now also be turned against it.

Hong Kong is a tech-savvy place full of young people who know how to communicate both with the west and with those in mainland China. The crucial difference between this and the Arab Spring, in my view, is that people from Hong Kong are not generally perceived as backwards people from a terrorist-infested violent shitehole. I think most Arabs are perceived that way in the west. It turns people off. This difference in perception is important.

Also, the Arab countries involved tended not to have a clear or unified vision of what they wanted once the dictators were gone. There was a mix of secular and Islamist groups, nationalists, communists etc. It was a mess.

I don't think these protests will ultimately change much, but this is going to keep happening. VPNs exist, online newspapers exist social media exists. A drip drip of discontent could very easily spread around China, especially if the economy stalls, which some claim is already happening a lot faster than the Chinese government is letting on. China has huge economic inequality between its coastal regions and the interior and this is clearly a threat to domestic stability.

The Chinese government cannot go in and kill people on a large scale in Hong Kong. It would be a PR disaster which would quickly spread around the mainland as well as having an impact in Taiwan, Tibet etc. It would be a massive loss of face and legitimacy for the Communist Party. But if they don't, this surely emboldens those in mainland China as their complaints grow.

Could China now conceivably deal with a Tiananmen-style event in the same way and get away with it domestically? I'm not sure it could.

As I said, I don't think this will change the world tomorrow. But I think what's happening in Hong Kong is an example of the massive problems China is going to have as the age of communication develops and they are left with a 20th century ideology trying to control a huge population with access to 21st century technology.

Long term, I think China may well regret taking Hong Kong back at all. It's one thing to smother expression and dissent in an era with little mass communication that can't easily be controlled. It's quite another to suddenly, in the age of easy global communication, remove rights that people have become used to having and it's hard to see how China does that.

Nothing lasts forever. Not even China.

Edited September 15, 2019 by JTS98

[Melanius Mullarkey]

On 12/09/2019 at 11:52, Zawar Khan said:

yes! china is eventually started to control the protest by every passing day. even they using GFW features in HK for internet blockage. 

Interesting wee bit on Click ( BBC) on this kind of shit. 

[Guest JTS98]

The shooting of the protestor in Hong Kong and the CCP's defence of the action is more evidence that the Communist Party does not understand the nature of the problem it has in Hong Kong. It is trying to solve a problem through violence despite not being able (due to the global scrutiny of the situation) to use appropriate violence to solve the problem.

And there lies the Chinese state's problem. It has nothing except violence. When violence cannot be used, it cannot win.

This is becoming more interesting by the week. The rules China usually plays by don't work anymore.

[Cerberus]

Hong Kong enters a recession due to the continued protests.
The whole world will probably be effected eventually.

[welshbairn]

Beginning to think Beijing are allowing the protests to continue just to convince Mainlanders that rebelling against the regime would be a bit pointless and just creates a lot of bother for everyone.

Edited November 11, 2019 by welshbairn

[Detournement]

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-and-crime/article/3037243/hong-kong-father-two-burned-alive-after-chasing

US proxies in Hong Kong following the example of their Venezuelan colleagues by setting people on fire.

[dorlomin]

17 minutes ago, Detournement said:

US proxies in Hong Kong 

[Detournement]

Aye it would be genuinely shocking if the CIA was involved. They would never do anything like that!

[welshbairn]

2 minutes ago, Detournement said:

Aye it would be genuinely shocking if the CIA was involved. They would never do anything like that!

What would be the point?

[Ira Gaines]

HB

[Detournement]

5 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

What would be the point?

They obviously aren't going to destabilise China in any way so I'd wager the aim is to prep the public in the West for another long Cold War. Which is why the western corporate and state media are all over the story while ignoring other protests.

[Detournement]

Published yesterday by arch Neocon Ted Cruz

Quote

Ted Cruz: Hong Kong is the new Berlin

Yesterday marked the 30th anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s collapse. Its ruin would pave the way for the end of the Cold War and mark the abject failure of communism.

Throughout history, people of every color and creed have sought to flee the reach of communism. Tyrants know this, which is why the Berlin Wall was built — not to keep people out, but rather to keep people in.

Throughout the Berlin Wall’s existence, the Soviet Union’s communist regime in East Germany imprisoned and killed thousands of people yearning for freedom.

America did not bomb the Berlin Wall to the ground, or send in tanks to demolish it. Instead, the Wall’s collapse came as a result of peace through strength: rebuilding America’s military, pioneering missile defense technology, bankrupting the Soviet Union, and speaking truth to the oppression of the “evil empire.”

In 1987, President Ronald Reagan had stood before the Brandenburg Gate and made the simple yet transformational demand: “f you seek peace, if you seek prosperity ... Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

 

Three years later, the Berlin Wall fell to the ground. Speaking the truth caused the tyranny of East Berlin to crumble.

American values have immense power in advancing the cause of freedom.

Though the physical, graffiti-covered, concrete barrier was toppled in East Germany, modern Berlin Walls still exist today. Tyranny oppresses billions across the world — especially in China.

As the Chinese Communist Party continues to encroach on the autonomy of Hong Kong and eliminate the democratic norms there, the cause for freedom has never been greater.

Today, Hong Kong is the new Berlin.

China poses the most significant long-term geopolitical threat facing America and our allies. It is modernizing its military with stolen American technology and intellectual property, and China is using economic blackmail to coerce its neighbors and countries around the world.

And much like the people in the Soviet bloc experienced, the Chinese Communist Party engages in routine censorship and surveillance of its citizens and commits atrocious human rights offenses. They have created a 1984-style dystopia, with pervasive surveillance powered by innovative technology. Millions of detained Uighurs and other religious minorities are languishing in concentration camps while Falun Gong practitioners are allegedly murdered so their organs can be harvested.

As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I’ve sought to highlight and counter how the party runs that dystopia. I’ve sponsored legislation and urged the Trump administration to block China’s access to American technology companies that provide DNA, voice and facial recognition tracking of minorities such as the Uighurs. Recently, the administration implemented my recommendations, and I applaud President Donald Trump for doing so.

All tyrants, including those of the Chinese Communist Party, fear the truth. And they fear dissidents.

As the son of a Cuban political prisoner, I know firsthand the power dissidents and their stories hold, and I have sought to shine a light on oppressive regimes around the world and to fight for those yearning for freedom.

 

While many Americans are familiar with Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey’s tweet signaling support for the Hong Kong protesters that sent the party into a tailspin, many may not be familiar with the story of the late Dr. Liu Xiaobo.

Dr. Liu was a pro-democracy advocate and Nobel Peace Prize winner who was unjustly imprisoned by the Chinese government for publishing “Charter 08,” an anti-Communist manifesto calling for political freedom and human justice in China.

I worked to shine a light on his plight, hoping to shame the party into releasing him, including through legislation that would have renamed the street in front of the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., Liu Xiaobo Plaza. To the deep dismay of the party, my legislation overwhelmingly passed in the Senate, without a single vote against it.

Though the Chinese government acted too slowly to release Liu Xiaobo before he died in captivity, I continued to press them to release his wife, Liu Xia, whom they were also holding. And, in July 2018, they did.

What led to Liu Xia’s release was not an aircraft carrier pulling up along the Chinese coast, or American tanks rolling across the border. It was simply light and truth.

In October, as one of the first U.S. senators to visit Hong Kong since the marches began, I had the opportunity to meet with pro-democracy activists, dissidents and protest leaders there. I dressed in black in solidarity with them, and we discussed the critical importance of protecting Hong Kong’s autonomy, free speech and basic human rights.

Freedom from the tyranny of the Chinese Communist Party is the battle cry of dissidents in Hong Kong. What have they been waving? American flags. And what have they been singing? The American national anthem.

In the United States, it is easy to take for granted the rights that have made our country a shining beacon of freedom. But all Americans, including those employed by our sports leagues and our corporate giants, should remember that our unique defining principles have the power to tear down oppressive walls, topple tyrannies and promote freedom.

Because, as Reagan demonstrated, truth is powerful and can transform the world.

 

 

[welshbairn]

1 minute ago, Detournement said:

They obviously aren't going to destabilise China in any way so I'd wager the aim is to prep the public in the West for another long Cold War. Which is why the western corporate and state media are all over the story while ignoring other protests.

Why would the CIA set someone on fire to make the Chinese Government look like the good guys?

[Detournement]

1 minute ago, welshbairn said:

Why would the CIA set someone on fire to make the Chinese Government look like the good guys?

I don't think the CIA would particularly want anyone set on fire but it's extremely likely they are involved with the protest leaders.