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A Walk in Hong Kong

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Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#251

Post by icebraining »

tombh wrote: post #163
bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The conclusion makes sense to me - that HK is not Taiwan. However, after so many generations I do think that some of the HK people do recognize the irony of how they got to their situation but that doesn't mean their yearning for the situation Taiwan has isn't legitimate.

Of course their yearning and indeed protest actions are legitimate. To what extent though would you agree that, using the computer world's RFC vocabulary (MUST, SHOULD, MAY, OPTIONAL, etc), Hong Kong MAY ask for recognition whereas Taiwan SHOULD ask for recognition? It feels to me that HK is exploiting the fact that most of the world automatically assumes big superpowers, especially little understood foreign ones, ar…

> preventing HK getting the actual relevant help that will bring about the most practical solution

What is this help, and how is it being prevented?

> When in fact China is a fundamental component in the global economy and everybody's quality of life, such that we all implicitly support it by, for example, buying their cheap-labour subsidised goods.

How is that relevant?

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#252

Post by eeZah7Ux »

raxxorrax wrote: post #183
eeZah7Ux wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main negative driver in asian societies is shame, while the main one in "western" societies is guilt. And yes, both emotions are often at the root of street violence.

What would you say is the difference? Isn't guilt just a form of shame that is consciously acknowledged?

They are very different emotions:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilt_(emotion)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shame

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#253

Post by baby »

terryf wrote: post #125
macspoofing wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't put Honk Kong in that list though as much as I like the people and the city. I've been a few times and the infrastructure looks like it's falling apart. Electricity wires are hanging haphazardly, alleyways are dirty, and most facades of buildings are straight out of the third-world. The contrast between high-end boutiques interspaced with tiny mom-and-pop shops selling second hand stuff is a little surreal…

What you described is the exact impression I got when I first travelled to New York :) "Is it supposed to be this dirty?"

Come visit downtown San Francisco :D

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#254

Post by mytailorisrich »

sherjilozair wrote: post #249
tombh wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sometimes like to have a little thought experiment like this: I'm British, so what if, during the 1800s, China had, through unprovoked war, forced the handing over of the port city of Liverpool because we didn't let them sell us heroin? Or if you're American, think of San Francisco being a sovereign state of the CCP. Of course you can never justify oppression, but I think such a thought experiment can give some ver…

What is this thought experiment meant to say? If the people of Liverpool or San Francisco want freedom and make their own country, many in the west would support such a thing. After Trump got elected, the separationism meme was spread in California half-seriously. The reason this thought experiment doesn't really work is that it disregards a crucial piece of information that the CCP is an authoritarian regime, while…

The governments of the UK and the US would not countenance the idea of cities gaining independence.

In fact the US fought their bloodiest war over such issue...

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#255

Post by baby »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #25
smcl wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is by a green-name account, isn't responding to anyone in particular and has that online-commenter-army feel to it. Genuine question for HN: what's the right term for this sort of comment, or commenter?

If political submissions are accepted then we should also accept comments expressing opposite and contradicting views on the issue instead of trying to suppress them by labeling them as "bots", "online-commenter-army", etc.

This is just relaying the propaganda articles you can see all over the place on chinese social media. I think this is worth a downvote unless it's about analyzing propaganda itself.

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#256

Post by [deleted] »

tombh wrote: post #207
homonculus1 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large Western corporations do not select which books I'm permitted to read. Large Western corporations do not forbid me from criticizing their CEO's. Large Western corporations do not harvest organs from the poor. Large Western corporations do not imprison minorities in concentration camps. Large Western corporations do not scrape thousands of protesters into a gutter with bulldozers and disappear anyone who speaks o…

And that is exactly what Western propaganda looks like: absolute and automatic conviction of superiority. The truth is large Western corporations invented most of the things you describe and are now so advanced you don't even recognise it. Unchecked political lobbying dictates the major themes of news cycles and school curriculums, the places where censorship and distortion of the written word most matters. (Eg. Face…

[deleted]

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#258

Post by gwathk »

nathanyukai wrote: post #155
ekc wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignoring that police shot a medical volunteer's eye out.

It's hard to do that delibrately right? I think this is an accident(I could be wrong). On the other hand, in the Chinese media they report some protestor bite a police officer's finger off.

They didn't report the first half of the story: "police"(without any ID) suddenly charged into a mall filled with retreating protestors and common folks. One "police" poked the said protestor's eyes. The protestor instinctively bit back.

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#259

Post by baby »

abcdefghijklmn3 wrote: post #95
smcl wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is by a green-name account, isn't responding to anyone in particular and has that online-commenter-army feel to it. Genuine question for HN: what's the right term for this sort of comment, or commenter?

Well, in this context, you could accuse me of being a 'wumao'. You would be completely wrong though because nobody is compensating me for writing any comments here and I do not belong to any group. I am quite disappointed because of where these protests have lead. People would have you believe that 2 million people in HK are against the police but there is no basis for believing that as far as I can see.

There's definitely a drop in trusting the police. How could you trust them after they hired the mobs to beat up people? In most places this would have triggered a civil war.

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#260

Post by mytailorisrich »

germanier wrote: post #241
mytailorisrich wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expectation of privacy in public places has never been a concept anywhere. Privacy and public space are simply contradicting terms.

> Expectation of privacy in public places has never been a concept anywhere It's certainly a concept in Europe, see the famous Caroline cases. Quoting for example from the European Court of Human Rights case von Hannover v. Germany > The Court notes at the outset that in the present case the photos of the applicant in the various German magazines show her in scenes from her daily life, thus involving activities of a…

Widely publicising is not the same as an expectation of privacy, strictly speaking.
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