Hopefully the common folks in mainland China are watching, and is not censored, and take inspiration from HK folks in marching and fighting for their human rights.
About 2M People Rally in Hong Kong Weekend Protests
151–160 of 234 posts
Re: About 2M People Rally in Hong Kong Weekend Protests
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the sort of thing predicted by Hans Hermann Hoppe's "Democracy: The God that Failed", the basic premise of which is that short term leaders as found in democracies will try to get as much as they can in the short time they have, whereas lifetime leaders as in monarchies will treat the country more like a property owner would his own property. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy:_The_God_That_Failed
We've come full circle. I never thought I would see someone unironically support monarchy in 2019, much less cite Hans Hermann Hope as an actual source. Hacker News! A place for hackers, people who want freedom to explore new technologies, disrupt industries, and evaluate other hackers based on their merit alone. God the Internet has gone downhill. Democracy is messy and complicated, but lifetime leaders are not the…
Isn't it contradictory to consider yourself an arbiter of which opinions hackers should be allowed to have? The idea that the Internet has gone downhill because of increased participation is inherently elitist.
In any case, this forum is hosted on a website whose primary goal is to help tech minded people become rich and attain the top of the neo-liberal hierarchy. So much for the cyberpunk fantasy...
Re: About 2M People Rally in Hong Kong Weekend Protests
#153I am proud of our democratic cousins in Hong Kong; this is just the beginning. Who knows what kind of country China will be in 2047, maybe there is hope for democratic China or 50 more years of democratic Hong Kong, who knows. As for Taiwan, Taiwanese people already identify themselves with being Taiwanese. Nearly 80% of people polled identify themselves in fact, in recent polls. Now we just need the older generation…
The PLA is not China's army, it is the Chinese communist party's army.
PLA training is 90% political indoctrination, 10% combat training.
They have garrisons in Hong Kong (edited).
Unless the Chinese communist party self-destructs, there's no foreseeable end of communist rule in China.
The social credit system and online censors prevent people from criticizing and opposing the government.
Re: About 2M People Rally in Hong Kong Weekend Protests
#154I am proud of our democratic cousins in Hong Kong; this is just the beginning. Who knows what kind of country China will be in 2047, maybe there is hope for democratic China or 50 more years of democratic Hong Kong, who knows. As for Taiwan, Taiwanese people already identify themselves with being Taiwanese. Nearly 80% of people polled identify themselves in fact, in recent polls. Now we just need the older generation…
I doubt Mainland government will allow a “eventually” Taiwan independence because it hurts the legitimacy of CCP(on the MAINLAND!), which will have a cascading effect.
Not sure what your point is, CCPs legitimacy just crashed when Carrie Lam, a puppet of CCP, just bowed to the pressure of 2M protestors in Hong Kong.
Re: About 2M People Rally in Hong Kong Weekend Protests
#155I am proud of our democratic cousins in Hong Kong; this is just the beginning. Who knows what kind of country China will be in 2047, maybe there is hope for democratic China or 50 more years of democratic Hong Kong, who knows. As for Taiwan, Taiwanese people already identify themselves with being Taiwanese. Nearly 80% of people polled identify themselves in fact, in recent polls. Now we just need the older generation…
The PLA is not China's army, it is the Chinese communist party's army. PLA training is 90% political indoctrination, 10% combat training. They have garrisons in Hong Kong (edited). Unless the Chinese communist party self-destructs, there's no foreseeable end of communist rule in China. The social credit system and online censors prevent people from criticizing and opposing the government.
Source on this?
Re: About 2M People Rally in Hong Kong Weekend Protests
#156Hopefully the common folks in mainland China are watching, and is not censored, and take inspiration from HK folks in marching and fighting for their human rights.
To give due credits, the Hong Kong people put great effort to ensure that the protests--both the Umbrella protest in 2014 and the anti-extradition protest in 2019--are peaceful, largely because they don't want to turn Victorial Park into another Tiananmen Square--there are 6000 PLA troops stationed in Hong Kong, and they will come out once the Hong Kong police loses control of the situation.
Hong Kong people learned from mainland China first. I do hope that one day mainland China could learn back, when the time calls for it.
Okay, as for the bit on cleaning trashes [1], we don't learn it from China, we learn it from Japan (for example [2]). Well, we all have something to learn from each other.
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/c18ybh/protester_...
[2]: https://nextshark.com/japanese-world-cup-fans-clean-stadium-...
Re: About 2M People Rally in Hong Kong Weekend Protests
#157Some notes * French yellow vests are ignored week after week. This is all over the place. * HK already has extradiction with the USA. * USA debacle demanding a journalist extradition to prosecute. * Protesters posters are in english. * Mainstream narrative, small HK will be successful independent. UK brexit will be terrible because it will be a insignificant country.
This is a very solid round-up of what faceless accounts have been spamming all over Twitter since this story emerged. These arguments are weak enough to strain credulity. Almost all of them can be answered by saying "the context is very different" 1. Yellow Vests - no overlap in what is being protested. Dissatisfaction with policy vs dissatisfaction with fundamental political rights = very different context. 2. Extra…
The "Assange situation" is not complex, and it's not one-off. He published numerous secret documents that were deeply embarrassing to the governments of the United States, United Kingdom, and many other countries. He is being targeted for entirely political reasons, and the cooperation of the British and Ecuadorian authorities is likewise politically motivated. In the case of Britain, the motivation is twofold. Assange released documents about the UK government's actions, and the government wants to maintain good relations with the United States. In the case of Ecuador, the motivation is better relations with the United States and access to IMF loans.
The persecution of Assange is not one-off, because it sets a precedent for future prosecution of journalists in the United States, and it establishes that journalists are in danger in any country that has an extradition agreement with the United States.
Given all the concern about the Hong Kong extradition law being used to target critics of the Chinese government, I would expect the same people who oppose the HK law to also vigorously defend Julian Assange against extradition to the United States for political crimes.
Re: About 2M People Rally in Hong Kong Weekend Protests
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
The other 5/7 may watch TVB - a HK TV channel of which to many people is their only news source, and which has since been bought by mainlanders, just like many other media and publishing assets in HK - and believe in something totally else. No joke, if you watch only TVB news, you will think the HK government is doing a great job and these protesters are arrogant, dis-obedient trouble-makers. The gap in understanding…
> No joke, if you watch only TVB news, you will think the HK government is doing a great job I get that: we have the same thing here in the USA with many newspapers and some TV stations. Heck, because of this, some people actually believe President Trump is a Russian Agent, you know, despite the fact that he is one of the great capitalists of all time, and he never ran for Any elected office until he won the Presiden…
> he never ran for Any elected office until he won the Presidency
What about his failed presidential campaign in 2000? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_2000_presidential...
Re: About 2M People Rally in Hong Kong Weekend Protests
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't be so sure. If the entire US decided to gang up on one city, especially a city with a strong identity (New York or Boston) then you might see this. Look at how New York responded after 9/11. Now put yourself in the shoes of the people of Hong Kong. When a group of people come to believe they are facing an existential threat, they respond in extraordinary ways.
The last massive protests that looked like this took place in multiple cities over several weeks. That was leading up to the Iraq war. They were ignored.
Were the Iraq war protesters facing existential threats? No. So the situations are not comparable.
Imagine if the US passed a law allowing Southern States to extradite, prosecute, and imprison anyone in New York for criticizing the Republican party. You'd have ten million New Yorkers out in full force.
That is the magnitude of this situation.
Re: About 2M People Rally in Hong Kong Weekend Protests
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
How would you proceed to "annex" your own territory? HK is not Crimea (mentioned by someone else), it is Chinese but enjoys a high degree of autonomy until 2047.
You send a bunch of soldiers into the territory and say the treaty is canceled, 28 years early.
The PLA is already stationed in Hong Kong. They moved in during the early morning of 1 July 1997: