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Information operations directed at Hong Kong

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Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#471

Post by Canada »

liuliu wrote: post #186
Canada wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's that worth to Hong Kongers when they can simply be renditioned to Beijing? Does it make sense to you why Americans were extremely upset when the US government did that to people in foreign countries during the Bush administration?

First, they cannot be renditioned. That's what this protest is about. Yes. It is upset. It is also upsetting that the U.S. actually have limited due process as well (thus, can forfeit the asset without due process). There are practical reasons why, but it is still ideologically upsetting.

Late reply, sorry.

My understanding is that the now suspended new law would make it legal for Beijing to have a person taken from Hong Kong with nothing more than the signoff of the CE, who is basically Beijing's appointee. It's my opinion that there is no due process in PRC, so it's effectively making Hong Kongers subject to renditioning.

I agree that civil forfeiture as practiced for the last 20 years in the United States is wrong and needs to stop. The US government does some horribly unjust things, sometimes for decades without being checked. Few commentors on this web site would deny that. It's very important that governments don't get away with criminalizing dissent otherwise it's even more difficult to stop other excesses and abuses.

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#472

Post by Arn_Thor »

stevens32 wrote: post #447
Arn_Thor wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the CCP gets its legitimacy to govern from its performance in some key areas: economic development and stability/security. That plays to the party's strengths, so the state-controlled media has actively promoted the view that these factors are the most important. Note how issues like the environment and health care were very much put on the back burner until public awareness and criticism reached a critical thres…

In a poor country, how are economic development and stability/security not pragmatically the most important values?

There are many, many countries with GDPs per capita lower than China's which have democracy and freedom of speech. It's not an either/or proposition

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#473

Post by powerapple »

solipsism wrote: post #399
powerapple wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general actually people who have access to western medias are educated enough to think differently, not to take the media's view wholly. I am sure many of them would just defend China out of pride (apply to people living in China), for others, mostly oversea Chinese, they have seen the world and concludes that is the right view to hold, and they don't have to follow western media's (CNN, BBC) view on things. I per…

I'd like to see an honest explanation of the kind of bias you're talking about, on the part of Western media. I'm open to its existence, but I also know it's an easy accusation to lob without evidence.

I wasn't going to comment because I don't have time to do research for this. There was a website collected all edited photos by CNN a few years ago, I just don't have time to do this kind of analysis. You can basically say I 'feel' them are biased because a few photos I saw on BBC. Another typical thing happen is that the Chinese edition would word differently than the English one. Just yesterday, NYT published an article about a Chinese student run college press. Apparently the interview was done in February, and they just decide to publish it now after these students published content against violent protest in HK (I am all for the peaceful part, and against violence and British flag /US flag waving in protests though) The Chinese version of the article in title says this students website only manufacture fake stories, the English title is slightly better. And when they speak about the editor, they make association with negative words (such as North Korea, because he lives in a Chinese city of North). It is typical propaganda techniques. I have to say, journalism is dead. We don't have time to verify, no patience to wait for the truth coming out, I have chosen not to read news. We are wasting too much time on politics I think. Unfortunately on Hacker News, there are still politics, mostly about China.

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#474

Post by bouncycastle »

diNgUrAndI wrote: post #436
bouncycastle wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why not? Of course, Australia is a democracy so they are free to do so. The irony is that these "anti democracy" protestors are exercising their democratic right to protest! Perhaps there are probably ulterior motives for their behavior, eg. these people want to prove their loyalty to the party in order to gain a better acceptance/ranking, or there kinds of peer pressure. Others could be simply influenced by the CC…

> The irony is that these "anti democracy" protestors are exercising their democratic right to protest! It's also irony that when "protestors" (or just people voicing their opinions) exercising democratic rights to protest are treated differently because they don't agree with your view. From what I chatted with my friends, this is not about loyalty to any party. It's as simple as, when people spreads misinformation a…

One thing I've noticed about some Australian protests, especially in Sydney when I attended some for a different thing a while back, is that there are actually a lot of "anarchists" around who love to attend any rallies and just stir shit up. These guys neither like any sort of governments, always come with their conspiracy theories... The three letter agencies, or harbour some other kinds of radical views, eg anti-Semitism. In other words, lots of weirdos.

Your're right, I have actually no evidence of anyone getting paid, so I'll retract that statement.

Curious, what kind of misinformation have you heard about your hometown? What are some of the strong opinions you would like to voice?

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#475

Post by chrischen »

LilBytes wrote: post #364
Aeolun wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly it is an alternative to democracy. It’s existed more or less successfully for some 80 years now. The question is if it’s really a place any of us (who grew up in a democracy) would want to live. The ethos of the CCP is just fundamentally incompatible with my own worldview, even though I can admit to their effectiveness so far. I’m not really willing to accept the existence of such a country in my world either…

Yes, totalitarian dictatorships are a literal alternative to Democracy, though I feel we're nitpicking on the semantics of my words here. When I say I don't see Totalitarian Dictatorships as an alternative, I don't mean in the literal sense, I mean in the viable sense. In the literal sense, yes, it's an alternative to Democracy. As is building a house on sand is a literal but not viable alternative to building a hous…

> I don't think many would want to live under a Chinese authoritarian rule given the Democratic alternatives. Or perhaps they would until they're rounded up in Xinjiang camps, shot in the face with rubber bullets for wanting to protect their current way of life or ran over by Tanks by asking for change to better their way of life.

There's an easy way to find out. Go poll the Chinese people. To be honest many Chinese do want to leave, but only because the country has been poor and most western countries are wealthy. This has been lessening over time.

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#476

Post by rjf72 »

laughinghan wrote: post #458
rjf72 wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The orchestrated unison happened after Polin Cowell gave his presentation for war at the UN. As the phenomenal article from USA Today you referenced mentions, his case was hardly compelling and full of aspersions with no unquestionable evidence (which is largely because as in hindsight we can now realize - such evidence did not exist), but that didn't stop the usual suspects of the New York Times, Washington Post, et…

I agree with you that it's not hyperbolic to call that "propaganda". Just like I don't think it's hyperbolic to call punching someone in the face "violence". That doesn't mean I think punching someone in the face is the same thing as murder. They're both violent, but they're completely, fundamentally different. The US mainstream media and the Chinese state media both engage in propaganda, but they're completely, fund…

The problem you have here is that this is a scenario where accurate reporting of this incident is in the interests of the US so why would you ever expect to see anything but forthright reporting? The question is what happens when accurate reporting is not in our interests? An extremely recent incident was the aid convoy in Venezuela. In a convoy sent by the US to Venezuela, one of the trucks ended up getting set on fire. All mainstream news sources in the US ran the story that Maduro forces had set the convoy on fire. Yet within a day non-US sources such as RT had published video showing that it was a protester had set the truck on fire. Indeed our media would eventually acknowledge it was all a lie, but only several weeks later. The timeline is:

February 23rd - truck set on fire. western media runs nonstop articles blaming Maduro. politicians use it as effort to try to justify war.

February 24th - RT publishes refutation clearly showing it was a protester who set the vehicle on fire [1]

February 25th - March 9th - US media and politicians continue shoving the Maduro did it fabrication.

March 10th - NYTimes acknowledges it was a protester who set the convoy on fire and very briefly runs a story as if its breaking news. [2]

Even getting back to the Iraq reporting. Our media did not just passively present what was said. They actively evangelized and argued in favor of the evidence which was always, at best, dubious. Fundamentally I think one of the major differences in our propaganda is that we're simply much better at it. Propaganda should not make most people suspect it's propaganda. Ours doesn't - theirs does.

[1] - https://www.rt.com/news/452326-venezuela-us-aid-truck-protes...

[2] - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/world/americas/venezuela-...

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#477

Post by mnming »

actuator wrote: post #369
ospider wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Native Chinese here. Hacker news have been a great place to learn new things to me for 5 years. But the political views on Hacker news are somewhat naive to me. It seems that the Chinese Government is always evil and wrong, but why haven't the government collapsed after so many years if there were no people supporting them? People in China, at least those millions people who are able to cross the Great Firewall, know…

Maybe people(Han Chinese) are not protesting because they know what happens if you protest, look at what happened in Tianamen square. Also, the people who are protesting are crushed like what happens in Tibet or Xinjiang. A strong central government might be good for the majority but surely when it suppresses the minorities to just get them in line with the rest, you can't overlook that.

This is unfortunately wrong.

Most people in China don't protest because: 1. they don't get enough benefit from protesting 2. they are happy

Most fellows on HN, respectfully, barely has any understanding on how CCP works internally.

Do they imagine that a bunch of Chinese officials form a party just to think about how to enslave/suppress people and inhale money everyday?

It's all about national interest, people are just pawn. On the HK matter: CCP brainwashes Chinese by amplifying the violent aspect of the protest. Western media brainwashes westerners by understating the damage caused by protest and glorifying their actions.

At the end of day, none of this matters. Power is power. Someone will figure out how to "fix" HK's education system. Leaders of protest go to good US uni on scholarship and have a good life. Fugitives will still need to be handled somehow. Game of monopoly will continue.

Life will go on.

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#478

Post by westiseast »

throwaway83263 wrote: post #226
dang wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two site guidelines that apply to this. First, it's not ok to use HN primarily for political, ideological, or national battle. If a commenter is posting as you describe, we ask them to stop. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20727426 . But by no means does it follow that a commenter behaving that way must be a sockpuppet, astroturfer, shill, spy, foreign agent, etc. That's where the second guide…

> Should we ban accounts, or allow them to be persecuted, for "pro-X" views where X is outside, say, a standard deviation of what most people here take for granted? When those views are formed under the pressure and oppression of an increasingly influential authoritarian regime? Yes, you should. Otherwise there won't be much of a community left to protect. There is little reason to believe you can have it both ways a…

Late to the party but...

I think another way of saying it is, any views coming from a country that doesn’t allow even a modicum of free speech should be discounted.

I think there’s two reasons: trust and reciprocity.

Trust - the fact that information in China is so heavily censored and moderated means that opinions are necessarily censored and moderated too. It’s as if somebody admitted that their single source of all political information was Alex Jones - it wouldn’t be unreasonable to treat their opinions with a high degree of suspicion.

Reciprocity - I don’t think China should be able to have its cake and eat it. ie. if your neighbor thinks you are too dirty to eat at their house, then they surely wouldn’t be welcome at yours whenever they please?

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#479

Post by ddlsmurf »

selectodude wrote: post #339
oefrha wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you use Google Fi’s cellular data in China, you can access sites typically blocked by GFW (source: first hand experience). So I assume the answer is yes. Not sure which entities have such access though. Edit: IIRC some local friends from Peking University and Tsinghua University once told me that they could use Google and stuff (also typically out of reach) from their college dorms.

All foreign roaming users can get through the GFW. The local carrier sends everything through what is basically a VPN to your home cell carrier so it can be properly billed. A popular way to get around GFW for those with money is to use an HK cell phone in China.

But then you don't have a mainland IP

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#480

Post by shalmanese »

isostatic wrote: post #73
kelnos wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt HN is even on the CCP's radar. Not only are we a low-value target, we're much harder to subvert.

HN isn’t even blocked in China

It started being blocked a few weeks into the HK protests. I currently can't access it from my home ISP without VPN.
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