RE: Some recent footage from Hong Kong
As bad as it is and as much as I support the cause, it's a pretty one-sided post.
The protestors are indeed rioting, literally setting an old man on fire, shooting police with arrows in the leg, petrol bombs, throwing bricks into a mans face killing him, as well as endless things that are, by any rights, illegal (roadblocks, vandalism, looting etc).
For once the religious sector is actually right in HK: Both sides need to show restraint.
We know, everybody knows - indeed, everybody in Hong Kong knows - that their cause is an impossible goal. Short of the CCP being overthrown by a democratic government that arises from nowhere with no military (as in, impossible) or invaded by the US (impossible), HK will fall in line, one way or the other.
So turning to violence may be the natural flow of events for this kind of thing all over the world (look at Chile, Bolivia, Iraq and more going on right now, too), but in the case of HK it's nothing but damaging their only goal: to raise awareness and show the Chinese government for what they are.
In fact, the CCP is loving this. There's no risk of the government being overthrown and running away to Mexico, and at the same time, they get to prove 'the HK youths are violent uncivilized thugs/terrorists and the peaceful people of HK just want to get back to their way of life - the only way for this is for military intervention to create peace once more'
Meanwhile, the rest of the world is slowly losing support the more news of violence they see. It's totally counter to their cause at this point.
Yes, the police are being overly brutal, but so are the protestors. What they need is a leadership role. Decentralized protests make it impossible to negotiate or open any form of dialogue
It's true, the protesters have become more violent compared to a few months ago but their 'brutality' is no where near the police. Its kindergarten vs university level. The brutality by the police you see in this post is just a small snapshot of what's happening.
As to the poor guy who was killed by a brick, yes thats true. The protesters set up bricks blockage on the road for the police. A group of pro China came out and hurled the bricks at the protestors. The protestors retaliated by throwing bricks back at them and a 70 year old pro China guy was killed. If caught, the protesters are willing to accept the punishment according to a fair trial.
The issue is
1/ if caught, the police carry out their own punishment first. That is not the police responsibility. They have no right carry out any form of punishment
2/ the police are arresting people who have not committed any crime. You can be arrested for being a young male wearing black, and you can be arrested if you're going to work in Central. Anyone can be arrested if the police feel like it.
3/ looting is not from the protesters. They vandalise selected shops, those who are pro China, including a chain of store called 360 that sells snacks food stuff. Once done they move on. The people who loot are other passer bys, middle age women were caught on camera talking advantage of the situation helping themselves to freebies.
4/ there are many pro China gangs taking things in their own hands. The police turn a blind eye to their action and even escort them away. The 721 incident is a classic example.
Arrest and charge the protestors and give them a fair trial for the crimes they've committed. No one has an issue with that. At the same time, the same needs to apply to the police for the excessive brutality. Do you think that's going to happen under the current lame duck government?
I mostly agree here. My only issue is that we can't possibly know the balance, even with freedom of the press, because we can only be exposed to what we are more or less already follow and surround ourselves with. I've done my best by joining some telegram accounts and such and I see a LOT of brutality from police, but I also see totally unnecessary actions from protestors that work hard to legitimize the presence of the police.
Vandalizing stores that happen to disagree with you politically is not something you can excuse, even if it's a big, cold corporation such as Starbucks. I shouldn't have to fear for my life or my wellbeing if I happen to disagree with you, because what if I agree with you instead? What's stopping the others who disagree on the other side vandalising my home or store or family?
But yeah aside from that, I'm in agreement here
In order for more fair governance to come into existence people had to fight back. Sometimes, we just have to fight. The founding fathers of the United States got violent, and it was necessary.
If people in history did not get violent at some point we'd still have colonialism, slavery, kings rather than presidents and human liberties would still not be recognized. The law is only legitimate so long as its ethically correct. These people want their natural liberties as humans recognized, that's all.
As for the CCP, well, they might eventually get sanctioned by the US over it. I'm a fan of Real Vision the financial youtube channel and according to them China's economy is about to plummet. Their economy is already fucked by the tariffs, but if they get sanctioned on top of that their economy is really going in the shitter.
Right now, US democrats and republicans are majorily divided, but the one thing both sides are beginning to agree on is that presidential candidates are feeling pressure to be hard on China. Both Elizabeth Warren and Trump seek to appear tough on China because everyone from folks in the Fed to truck drivers want it.
China wants to appear strong but its economy is a house of cards. I think you underestimate how huge this Hong Kong crisis is. There are approximately 1,000,000 people protesting in Hong Kong and there's only 7.4 million people in Hong Kong. When that large of a percentage of the population is angry you have a serious and real revolution on your hands. China can't stop it, not without killing a million people, and if they do, the west will respond.
There are more than 1m supporting the protest in HK.
2m turned out to the 616 march, that's nearly 1/3 of the HK population. When Carrie Lam did a dialogue with citizens the other month, attendance was via a ballot. Anti china vs pro China questions during the dialogue was 8:2.
Eateries supporting the protest nearly always have a long queue outside whilst their next door neighbour who support China struggle to keep their business going.
Citizen support is strong for the protest. The government and police only have guns, tear gas, water cannons, and of course power.
Was this necessary?
I understand the philosophy and support it, but there is always a line you shouldn't be crossing.
I live in China and often visit hong kong with friends there. I'm very up to date on the situation.
What people don't recognize, however, is that this is a unique position in the world. China and anything like it has never happened before. The police and military of HK could turn its back against the CCP and join the people, and it would still be ineffective because the CCP literally own their military in the mainland which by size makes efforts of HK little more than a dead pixel on a screen.
HK used to be significant in terms of economic contribution but now it's a fraction of China's overall economy.
The west is doing close to nothing, with who you would think are the closest allies, the UK, not even talking about it and just letting China do its thing. The US is making vague gestures but politicians are not openly talking about it at all to the mainstream.
Countries are doing nothing because they want to keep their profits which largely comes from China. HK is alone in this with some little whispering voices on Reddit and whatever muttering support on a casual level.
Chinas economy is not doing great at all, true, but those who tell you the country is on the verge of collapse are messing with you. This place has a life-time president, a one-party system, and the ability and freedom to manipulate their economy pretty much however they please, even if that means, like in the days of Mao Zedong, creating another 'Great Leap Foward'. This is entirely within their 'right' and ability.
I mean what do you think will happen just because HK is in the news a lot? Xi is going to bend over and be like 'ok you win guys, freedom for all!'?
I get the HK thing is huge, but I also get, as most HK people do, it's futile. That is sad, but we are powerless to anything
If you can get past the firewall from China to uncensored news, I recommend the follow to get impartial news
https://www.hongkongfp.com/
https://www.hongkongwatch.org/
CGTN is not known for impartiality, likewise the South China Morning Post is now owned by Jack Ma from Alibaba, so is also indirectly controlled by China.
Yep I'm well aware of these but thanks - good for others to see this for sure. However there is yet to be a legitimate independent investigation, which is desperately needed. Hopefully sooner than later
Totally agree. But the governement won't want an independent investigation to dig into their dirt, despite it being all over the news. Perhaps the International Criminal Court would be our only last resort.
At this point it's pretty hard to conceal the actions of the police, that much is certainly true!
What happened to that man is terrible and should not have been done. However, with all due respect to you, your way of thinking is still wrong. If people were not willing to fight in the past there would be no liberty recognized anywhere.
As for your reply to understanding the crisis:
I have lived in Beijing for 5 years, I speak Mandarin Chinese and my ex-girlfriend was from Hong Kong, a place I regularly spend time at. I love mainland Chinese people, I also had an ex that was from Mainland China. I hope the very best for the people, the CCP is different and separate of the people.
China wants to appear strong, but only the weak really do that. The US military might is not for show, its hidden, while China shows their stuff off every day on subway TV screens. Its kind of like what people say about bitcoiners, if you show how much bitcoins you got in reality you don't own much.
What is happening in Hong Kong resembles the US revolutionary war in many ways. Everyone thought the redcoats couldn't lose until they did.
Your viewpoint that China is too powerful is historically inaccurate. People always think something can't happen until it does, and the historical record of nations indicates that revolutions, civil wars, genocides and other major events actually happen much more often than people want to believe. No state or system is truly ever stable.
You may live in mainland China, but I do not think you understand its economy well enough. China's internal economy feels good due to inflation rates that would make the US Fed scowl, while it tries to balance this out by export revenue that is dried up and tariffed to all hell.
All a US president (concerned with what their voters think) would have to do is wave that magic wand, declare sanctions and the CCP would crumble as the internal economy fell apart. The CCP has both internal and external issues and cannot afford to fight the Hong Kong war.
Let's briefly finish with a lesson from the US revolutionary war. Americans want to believe they were special, selected by the deity in the sky to win that war, and that's silly. It came down to logistics, although the British were the best, strongest, mightiest, richest and even had fancy Santa Clause jackets it was more expensive for them to fight that war than it was for the locals. As long as the Americans did not lose they were winning, and as long as the British did not win they were losing.
Logistics. The CCP can't win.
Not sure that's how opinions work, but sure.
Yes, historically this is true. But that argument only works when there is precedent, and there is nothing in history that even remotely resembles precendent of a nation 20% the population of the planet, run and controlled and grown at this alarming rate with this much technology... it's not even just China. The idea that the US can be toppled by protests is laughable. The right to bear arms is essentially the right to shoot oneself in the face if the military come rolling in.
Sure, it's feasible according to the laws of physics that a big enough protest could topple a government of this magnitude, but there is no precedent and thus no evidence that it ever will. The very idea of expecting it any time soon is just kinda wishful thinking, I'd say. We could see a slow, or eeven a rapid decline over the next few centuries which cause massive internal conflicts between sects of the politburo of the CCP, this could be a more likely cause of collapse. But a protest in a tiny city that contributes very little to the social fabric or economy... nah.
I think I am quite well acquainted (I've written about it somewhere deep in Steem before). I just know what is realistic, and at no point with the US people approve of $600billion trade being cut off entirely - including precious metals in which almost all of it resides in China, and basically lead a short spiral into war. Nobody would want this, not the US, China, nobody.
I know their economy is struggling but as I've written in my most recent post, there are no limits to what they can and will do to maintain power, as historically this is exactly what they do, from cappinig and shutting down financiial markets to control the flow of trade according to their whims, to manipulating the sentiment of bitcoins, banning and encouraging platforms, controlling how many homes families can have an how long they can own it, manipulating the housing market entirely; even banning people from coming into cities if they're from certain other places, and forcefully shifting farmers into industrialized factory lifestyles according to an intricate plan I forgot the details of. In the same vein came the Great Leap Forward, and for all its heinous and horrifying truths, China's economy boomed.
The final point once again referring to the US revolution, that was a time of muskets and small boats. It's is only similar to the current Chinese scenario in vocabulary only; revolution. Revolting against a state that controls nukes, aircraft carriers and intercontinental missiles, is kinda daft.
Unless you're referring to the US going to war again rather than the small city of Hong Kong, in which case, again, nobody wants that and nobody will do that. It's just not in the interest of anyone at all
We can confirm that this particular burning was probably not by any of our undercover officers. The officers involved are on vacation.
Freedom has always been illegal, and only criminals are free. No one needs a leader to be free. All one needs to do to be free is not obey overlords.
You can't do that legally. Any leader that pops up will draw fire. Overlords and their minions cannot direct fire at non-targets, so decentralized freedom remains the best option, and more so the more centralized tyranny is.
Each of the protesters actually has a leadership role IMHO. Leading their own lives.
[Citation Needed]
I don't really understand any of this in terms of the real world. Criminals, that go to prison and are then extremely limited in their rights... are free? How do you figure?
I mean... yes they can, and do... all the time, with ease. in China it's happening on a constant basis so I'm not sure where you're getting that idea from...
Decentralised freedom just means the same people can get shot down or imprisoned, with nobody around to open dialogue because everyone has slightly different ideas and thus nobody can speak for everyone, nor compromise. Chaos ensues and the 'overlords' take over, no problem.
But this isn't decentralized freedom we're talking about. We're talking about decentralized protests to desperately demand and maintain the status quo of centralized freedom that is HK city. They're not fighting for an Anarchist state, they're fighting against Totalitarian rule.
Remember, this is not a protest which can possibly, ever, lead to the overthrowing of the government like we see around the rest of the world. There is precisely 0% risk for Xi jinping in this case. All they can hope for, in the best, and still an extremely unlikely scenario, is to control and limit the powers of the local government, and the more fuel they give with violence (rumour has it the University is exposed as a weapons factory with almost 10,000 petrol bombs, but we'll see how reliable that is), the more likely the 'overlords' are going to drop their iron fist.
Being 'free' by not obeying is only going to lead you to being very un-free or dead, which I guess is the ultimate freedom
The GAO (Government Accounting Office) estimated in the early 1990s that over 90% of Americans were guilty of violating the law. Almost all criminals are never punished.
Vast reams of new law has been written since then, creating vast hordes of new criminals by creating new crimes.
What I mean by 'freedom has always been illegal' is that whenever some gang asserts supremacy, any that do not accede to that demand are criminals. Any that do aren't free.
This is the context from which you extract your next question, and this context answers your question. Leaderless mobs have no leaders, so those leaders cannot be targeted, because they don't exist.
Edit: this may pique your interest:
http://www.starfishandspider.com/preview/04.html
Re-edit:
This.
"Freedom" is merely a rhetorical slogan to mobilise unwise youths and the gullible into destabilising current sociopolitical status for the benefit of the ambitious. The so-called protests in Hong Kong has no meaning or purpose other than increasing chaos and destruction. These self-indulgent mob violence only accomplished Hong Kong being economically severed from the international financial system, and thus, more easily controlled politically by Beijing in the future. Without the anti-Xi factions to hamper central government response and provide support for the rioters, these riots would not have lasted for 5 months. These so-called freedom fighters are nothing more than pawns in the political game between communists.
Freedom isn't merely a slogan. It's the actual state of living beings, including people.
The rest of your comment seems factually correct, despite the sincerity of rebels misled by instigators deploying Hegelian Dialectic techniques to incite them to rebellion.
It's unfortunate free people suffer violent oppression anywhere, ever, and I look forward to that happy day when nominal security tech renders political power obsolete.
"Freedom" is nothing more than whim repackaged in pretty sounding abstraction. Western freedom, in which every whim is catered and considered as divine law, results in chaos and death. The muck in Hong Kong deluded themselves into actually believing the nonsense that their fickle whims are some type of divine and physical law. They will have plenty of time and opportunity to reflect on their monumental error regarding the human condition in Hong Kong prisons.
Men have previleges granted them befitting their station and duties; that is the state of human life within a sociocultural matrix. Not everyone wishes, nor are able, to live as hermits in a desert. Freedom drunk societies result in the libertarian paradise of Somalia, Lybia, and Syria. What do you think would have happened to Hong Kong, if these rioters were allowed to exercise their "freedom" unhindered by the police force?
I note that Uighur men are not granted such privileges, yet their Chinese masters grant the wives of Uighur men as possessions of their minions while the Uighur lawful husbands languish as slaves in camps. You cite Libya, Somalia, and Syria, which are not examples of the free civilian people exercising their natural soveriegnty, but of brutal oppression by savages intent on nothing more than the destruction of those nations as violently as possible.
The consequences of submission to overlords revealed in China, in the UK, and everywhere the wealth of natural resources causes nations possessing them to become targets of your acquisitive slavers does not recommend agreeing to serve them. War is their meat, and slavery their drink. It is not the excesses of free men you use as examples, but the lack of freedom and subjection to brutal dictators and violent overlords.
Watch the videos above. Observe the hindering you recommend. Tell me that it's good for people. Let me listen to you lie, again, and again, as you advocate slavery. It reminds me that the price I have paid for my freedom is cheap. It reveals that no matter the price, freedom is a bargain.
How convenient for you to begin the failed state narratives from the middle, as if the failure/decline of central authority and its subversion by the revolutionary elements had nothing to do with the rise of petty warlords. The hells of Somalia, Libya, Syria, etc. are but a direct consequence of central government failure, for which the religion of "freedom" calls. Men need to be governed; without strong central government, men exist in hell of their own creation, not in some libertarian fantasy of "free" civilians exercising "natural sovereignty."
Did the lack of police hinderance during the race riots of 1960s in the "free" 'Murica transform her cities into prosperous, libertarian paradise or devolve them into subsistence ghettos? Allow the muck to "exercise" their base tendencies, and all of civilisation will crumble into dust. The only proven method of stopping riots is mass display and use of force. That the modern world lacks rulers with greater sense of duty to preserve social order, but instead waver and hesitate at the mewling of peasant ethics, is the legacy of populist government.
Indeed the CCP is a cruel, brutal, and obtuse institution that rules 20% of humanity in his merciless, iron fist. It is also true that all ethnic minorities, including the Uighurs, are being exterminated by the Han dominated CCP. As terrible as the CCP may be, at least the institution acts according to its purpose: international communist revolution. Within the sociopolitical sphere of CCP, there exists no other god than the atheist communist ideology. That they exterminate other ideologies and obstacles are but natural and logical consequence. However evil these communist drones may be, at least they are respectable in their adherence to the duty to their god. There is a terrible beauty in such unvarnished evil. What, in contrast, does the West offer other than accumulation of shiny things that clink and meaningless slogans?
"Religious freedom" is a nonsense statement of an atheist that perceives all religion as fantasies of children. Insisting on "religious freedom" upon a society is akin to insisting upon having no measurement standard regarding distance, weight, or height. Religion is mutually exclusive ideology that cannot coexist. Only men so removed from all purpose, meaning, or identity would bandy about such nonsense as freedom and tolerance when regarding ideologies inimical to the central tenets of a sociocultural matrix.
Uighurs are indeed being exterminated, but are their lot any more different from the numberless natives the 'Muricans swept away in their Manifest Destiny? Are they any more pitiable than the millions of natives sentenced to slow-death in the gold mines of South and Central Americas to feed the limitless hunger of Western central banks and consumers? Are they any more worthy than the millions of blacks imported from Africa to die in the plantations of the Americas? The wealth and comfort of the civilised worlds are built upon the bones of those we have killed and enslaved. No one has their hands clean of the blood and muck required to sustain their current lot in life.
Men have killed men from the beginning of time; and men will continue to kill other men into the bright, shiny future about which you constantly preach. Men are born only to die. Duty and obligation give purpose to their lives. Men clinging to "freedom" are merely slaves to their whims and desires; ultimately their deaths bring no meaning.
It is difficult for me to upvote duplicity, mendacity, and fabrications, but it is so well crafted I am compelled to do so in this case.
You begin with false statements, and end with false despair. As you said above about ravenous Communist oppressors, at least you're consistent. I commend you to the tender mercies of your idols, those same savage Chinese imperialists that so perfectly fulfill your dreams. May you quiver with joy at every blow they land on you. May every theft of what is yours they undertake leave you happily more deprived, and may the silencing of your voice ring forever in your heart as your true legacy to your posterity.
You have earned it with these words, and I would not deny you your just compensation.
Should your heart faint at the hardship of the road you recommend and must travel, perhaps it will be strengthened to know that all political power and institutional contrivance will pass away soon, just as soon as we altruistic tinkerers can effect mechanisms that render them obsolete, and all the vicious, venal vituperation they, the predators on free men, undertake will be their lot, theirs alone that commit it.
Perhaps a day comes when you will seek facts, the truth, and the good faith of your peers. Then you can join us who daily bring forth the reality of freedom, justice, and happy people by our labors.
Thanks!
Thanks for the insight and you're right, I couldn't find any posts on Reddit of what the rioters are doing.
The false equivalencies are strong with this one.