Information operations directed at Hong Kong

I try to not take sides, but rather to simply evaluate evidence. As the evidence shifts in one direction or another, so do my views. To see why judging issues by the groups involved instead of evidence, one doesn't need to go back far. The Iraq war ended up costing hundreds of thousands of innocent lives, trillions of dollars, and helped accelerate a rapid destabilization of the entire Mideast setting the stage of the rise of groups such as Islamic State and its ongoing reign of terror.

The mainstream media were all, in orchestrated unison, arguing loudly for the war. And the government provided lots of allusions to evidence and appeals to authority, demanding support for it. And this was a conflict with the 'good guys' versus a literal dictator who was undoubtedly a horrible person. Yet the consequences of that war far dwarfed the atrocities of that man. And it was all based on lies. There was no WMD, the secret high level insider source was a taxi driver who had no connection to the government, the 'mobile weapon labs' were helium generating stations for use in conventional artillery, etc.

Throughout history it's not infrequent that such things happen. We'd like to imagine that when the 'good guys' win good things happen, but reality is often not so kind.

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Attaching this as an addendum since I've now been throttled for getting downvoted:

I am referring to things such as the single word title piece ran by the Washington Post, "Irrefutable." [1] On the same day the New York Times published this [2] piece entitled "Irrefutable and Undeniable". And there were many other such pieces being run as well. It's just a tad tedious to dig up these articles now from 16 years ago. It was bad. Note in these articles the complete and absolute lack of any sort of critique or even consideration of the possibility that evidence might not hold up to scrutiny. Instead the media condemned and proclaimed with absolute certainty. That was not, is not, journalism - it is propaganda.

Consequently I find it important to always remain critical of anything that has substantial political undertones. And so I prefer to take information that both sides agree to and judge it for myself while giving the arguments a distant secondary interest. And while it may ultimately leave me drawing the wrong conclusion, I'd rather be able to justify my logic based on evidence I personally felt compelling beyond any doubt, rather than on parroting others' analysis.

I don't really understand why more people don't think this way.

[1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/02/06/i...

[2] - https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/opinion/irrefutable-and-u...

An analysis of information operations that caused and more importantly sustained the protests would be equally interesting.

I am 90% certain that foreign intelligence services or service are actively involved in the riots.

Probably funding it at least partially and inciting the crowd. Probably have assets in the group of protesters to direct their activity.

I have written before that China has been far more lenient than the US would have been under similar circumstances.

The moment someone had broken into congress they would most likely get shot, at least enough to stop them.

Shutting down an airport would mean spending quite a bit of time at a "detainment camp". Often in warehouses created by law enforcement to hold a large number of people outside of regular courts and jails (See the DNC in Denver).

The protesters are, for whatever reason, hell-bent on forcing China to act in a brutal manner. Any regime would.

From FB:

"We’re taking down these Pages, Groups and accounts based on their behavior, not the content they posted."

https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/08/removing-cib-china/

This is incorrect. Marketing is not necessarily used to promote political change. There are plenty of examples of propaganda in for-proft and non-profit (yet non-state) media which is clearly propaganda and not marketing simultaneously.

Unless it's from a media outlet in which case we call it "agenda"