Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests • Hacker News Board

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#491

Post by c0nducktr » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 5:14 PM UTC

HeWhoLurksLate wrote: post #231

pyronik19 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're also assuming that the army wouldn't fracture under an armed populace uprising.

Honestly, that's probably a hugely underappreciated factor that would make fighting a war like that even harder. The CIA also has a document (sorry, I don't remember the name) detailing ways that civilians can sabotage efforts by doing things like holding extra meetings, etc. I wonder if anyone would stay in the military to better thwart it.

I believe this is the document. Page 28 of the book, (18 of the PDF) "General Interference with Organizations and Production"

https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/...

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#492

Post by diminoten » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 5:14 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #470

diminoten wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second amendment was nothing then like it is today; until 2008 it has been interpreted to mean the states have a right to raise a militia, not as an individual mandate to possess firearms.

And yet people did possess firearms - it was pretty necessary when living an agrarian life on the frontier, then as now. Curious how you think that would alter the conclusion? If anything organized resistance would be more effective then, because you already had state militias and rough technological parity with the military.

I'm not sure what your point is... both the Union and the Confederacy were "well regulated" armies which issued weapons to their soldiers, in great numbers, and even by then military technology was beginning to outpace simple farm muskets.

I feel like you're treating all guns as equal, when that wasn't true in the civil war and is completely not true now.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#493

Post by markus_zhang » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 5:14 PM UTC

bdamm wrote: post #418

baddox wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What policies does China have which are expansionist?

The belt and road initiative is fascinating, including their cultivation of Africa. The scheme where they lend poor nations money to build ports and then when the port authority fails to fulfill the repayments, they simply take over the port and basically establish a Chinese base is rather diabolical. From a business perspective it is brilliant but it does seem rather obviously predatory. I consider that expansionist…

At least China didn't send troops to other countries to arrest the president...if you call that parallel, well, that's a really skewed parallel.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#494

Post by CapricornNoble » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 5:15 PM UTC

coryfklein wrote: post #422

daenz wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The 2nd amendment made a lot of sense when weaponry consisted of horses and rifles, not computer-guided missiles. Let me make sure I understand your basic premise: the ability to defend yourself against a tyrannical dictatorship made sense until the government developed better technology, now it's pointless so just give up your guns? Aside from being completely contrary to the American spirit of defending yourself f…

> Where is the military going to fire those "computer guided missiles?" Blowing up a home or two harboring a "terrorist cell" during a meeting I'm sure will be deterrence enough for a lot of those gun owners. > Are they going to destroy their own infrastructure? The infrastructure is the exact kind of ground that can be held much more securely against pistols and rifles using the U.S.'s advanced weaponry. > Do you th…

>>>Blowing up a home or two harboring a "terrorist cell" during a meeting I'm sure will be deterrence enough for a lot of those gun owners.

Why would you draw that conclusion, when pretty much every available case study (re: drone strikes and terrorism) clearly shows otherwise?

>>>Besides, look at today's political climate: most of the gun owners are the one's backing our most authoritarian leader!

Is he really our most authoritarian? How authoritarian would you rank him compared to Obama, the first President to order a drone strike to kill an American citizen without due process? [1]

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#495

Post by nilkn » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 5:17 PM UTC

I prefer not to get major news from Reddit. The New York Times is covering this in great detail: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/30/world/asia/china-national...

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#496

Post by luckylion » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 5:17 PM UTC

parliament32 wrote: post #421

umvi wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't force democracy upon people that don't want it and aren't ready for it - it ends disastrously. The US tried to do that in the middle east and failed miserably. The only success story seems to be South Korea, but I would argue they wanted democracy and fought alongside the US for it.

>middle east I'm not super knowledgeable on the topic, but although the new governments didn't really work out, didn't the mass murders and other atrocities stop with the removal of the old dictator? Those countries may not be "stable" (yet), but is the situation really worse that it was?

> but is the situation really worse that it was?

Was Saddam torturing a limited amount of dissidents and his sons raping and murdering people as they pleased better or worse than ISIS ruling significant parts of the middle east? Was Gaddafi better or worse than Libya in civil war, slave markets being revived etc? Was life under Assad better or worse than civil war in Syria?

Even with bloodthirsty dictators, there's usually a way to make it worse, and NATO/US is pretty good at finding it.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#497

Post by coryfklein » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 5:19 PM UTC

daenz wrote: post #471

coryfklein wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where is the military going to fire those "computer guided missiles?" Blowing up a home or two harboring a "terrorist cell" during a meeting I'm sure will be deterrence enough for a lot of those gun owners. > Are they going to destroy their own infrastructure? The infrastructure is the exact kind of ground that can be held much more securely against pistols and rifles using the U.S.'s advanced weaponry. > Do you th…

>If, somehow, we were to slide into dictatorship you can be sure the leader would make whatever promises necessary to get the gun toters on his/her side. This demonstrates to me that you understand the political power of an armed citizenry, the same group that you used the first half of your post to discredit by suggesting "blowing up a home or two" would be enough to suppress them.

It's reductionist to say the armed civilians have no effect whatsoever. But my last point was to emphasize that "armed civilians" are not a protection against dictatorship.

I still believe that, even if he failed to persuade the gun owners, a dictator's armies win against an armed populace.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#498

Post by ryan_j_naughton » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 5:20 PM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #433

loquor wrote: post #349

This might sound alarmist, but do you think China is the biggest upcoming global problem after climate change? For two reasons: 1. China has a totalitarian ruling system. They intend to realize George Orwell's 1984. 2. Present-day China essentially has no ethics. Take the US in comparison. No matter how perverse the people in power become and even if they do messed up things, the US has some founding morals and princ…

After climate change? I have always feared totalitarian governments more than climate change. The death tolls are a hundred million higher.

The six mass extinction event that humanity is currently causing is going to affect billions of people for centuries to come. If we have systemic ecosystem collapses and 90% of species go extinct, there will be a profound effects. When crops fail and fresh, potable water is extremely constrained, authoritarianism will sweep the world at an even more accelerated pace and regional and world wars are likely. It will be interesting to see how mutually assured destruction holds up and prevents nuclear war when climate change will have already guaranteed many levels of destruction and created a very desperate populace.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#499

Post by inscionent » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 5:20 PM UTC

parliament32 wrote: post #377

loquor wrote: post #349

This might sound alarmist, but do you think China is the biggest upcoming global problem after climate change? For two reasons: 1. China has a totalitarian ruling system. They intend to realize George Orwell's 1984. 2. Present-day China essentially has no ethics. Take the US in comparison. No matter how perverse the people in power become and even if they do messed up things, the US has some founding morals and princ…

I'm usually not a huge fan of the US rolling in and stomping out governments (and installing their own, of course), but this is one faux-dictatorship where it sorely needs to happen. Some actual democracy would be amazing for these people. With the recent "trade war" and whatnot the stage has been set pretty well for a US intervention.

Are you usually a partial fan of stomping out governments? So much hubris. So little understanding.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#500

Post by SimbaOnSteroids » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 5:21 PM UTC

jhedwards wrote: post #459

loquor wrote: post #349

This might sound alarmist, but do you think China is the biggest upcoming global problem after climate change? For two reasons: 1. China has a totalitarian ruling system. They intend to realize George Orwell's 1984. 2. Present-day China essentially has no ethics. Take the US in comparison. No matter how perverse the people in power become and even if they do messed up things, the US has some founding morals and princ…

> Present-day China essentially has no ethics Source? I lived in China and didn't ever feel like I was in a place without ethics. Different ethics, sure, but it really looks to me like you simply don't know or understand China. The Great Leap Forward had nothing to do with routing out values, it was about hyper-fast industrialization, and it failed. There are real problems with modern China, and, separately, with the…

If you kill political dissidents and harvest their organs as part of an active genocide campaign, you lose any claim at behaving ethically. Ethics are measured by the actions you take that you'd rather not advertise.