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Houston Rockets general manager apologises for Hong Kong protest tweet

reuters.com

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Re: Houston Rockets general manager apologises for Hong Kong protest tweet

#51

Post by missosoup »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #40
simonh wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proof that government agents are fomenting and inciting the violence "isn't serious"?

Trying to discard and ignore all the violent actions, and actions that look very anti-China by claiming that they are "fomented" by the government is not serious. One day we read an interview with a guy who took part in the storming of the LegCo and everybody here is in awe before its determination. The next, someone criticise violent actions and you guys claim that they are by government' agents provocateurs... And…

What would you suggest the people of HK should do instead to defend their democracy? Stop protesting, pretend nothing ever happened, keep CCP puppet Carrie Lam in power and wait for more CCP encroachment?

We already know how that turns out.

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

Re: Houston Rockets general manager apologises for Hong Kong protest tweet

#52

Post by missosoup »

UIZealot wrote: post #44
fieryscribe wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are anti-CCP because it is the CCP who has negotiated in bad faith, by agreeing to, and then not, allowing us to vote for our leaders. They have claimed there are 2 systems, yet they kidnap people in HK. They have said they were not behind the Extradition Law, and yet they force our government's hand. They have said HKers have freedom, and yet they call us terrorists and cockroaches for exercising it. The protests…

> They have claimed there are 2 systems, yet they kidnap people in HK. They kidnapped one person, as far as I know. I agree they crossed the line there, and there's no excuse for that. But that's an exception, not the norm. > They have said they were not behind the Extradition Law, and yet they force our government's hand. Where's the evidence they are behind that? How are they forcing the HK government's hand? > The…

> They kidnapped one person, as far as I know.

You don't know much, which is why you're being downvoted. The extradition law that sparked these protests was a formalisation/legalisation of a decade long string of kidnappings with increasing frequency and visibility.

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

https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/kidnap-03012019112417...

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/economy/article/2141462/chin...

Re: Houston Rockets general manager apologises for Hong Kong protest tweet

#53

Post by alkonaut »

pjc50 wrote: post #16
alkonaut wrote: post #3

Wait, a person expressed views in favour of democracy and felt he had to backtrack because of pressure from a dictatorship? Here's how this works: we express views that anger dictatorships, and if there is even a minute chance that your business tanks because of it - then you were in the wrong market or had the wrong owners. The right thing to do here for the NBA would be to stand behind this tweet. Corporations need…

Sports are businesses. Businesses, as everyone reminds each other constantly on here, are kind of obliged to seek money first and morality second. Unfortunate, but endemic to the system. In the case of football, that means taking money from dictatorships to host the World Cup in unbearably hot countries in stadia built by slave labour. Why should basketball be any different? It's not as if American sport has covered…

I think the discussion about sports and politics and how they can't be separated is as old as sports itself. I don't agree with the IAAF placing the World Champs in Doha this week, nor FIFA placing the world champs there in 3 years. But the argument that sports can be a positive force does hold water. I don't think disqualifying all non-democracies from holding competitions is the answer, but they need to be held to higher standards than they do now.

In this particular case I think the idea of applying Chinese censorship to people in the US (which is effectively what this is) in order to let the Chinese regime maintain its story about what's going on in HK is absolutely absurd.

Re: Houston Rockets general manager apologises for Hong Kong protest tweet

#54

Post by alkonaut »

dagw wrote: post #10
alkonaut wrote: post #3

Wait, a person expressed views in favour of democracy and felt he had to backtrack because of pressure from a dictatorship? Here's how this works: we express views that anger dictatorships, and if there is even a minute chance that your business tanks because of it - then you were in the wrong market or had the wrong owners. The right thing to do here for the NBA would be to stand behind this tweet. Corporations need…

had to backtrack because of pressure from a dictatorship? It's not pressure from a dictatorship that's making them back down, it's pressure from a big potential customer. The dictatorship part is both incidental and irrelevant to the NBA.

> it's pressure from a big potential customer.

That's my point when I said "you are in the wrong market". If you need to self-censor to make a billion in China, please leave that Billion on the table.

Re: Houston Rockets general manager apologises for Hong Kong protest tweet

#55

Post by goatinaboat »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #25
simonh wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't with angering dictatorships, it's about angering a lot of ordinary Chinese mainlanders who have been convinced that the HK protesters are traitors. This is a serious problem, because it's simply not possible to persuade them otherwise, because the channels to do so are censored by the Chinese government. It's a crazily scary issue. My family is half Chinese and my niece came over from China this sum…

It's not a question of censorship. This is caused by the protesters themselves (at least some of them). I'm in the UK and the Chinese people I know only need to watch the reporting on the BBC to be convinced that a lot of protesters are anti-China and potentially propped up by foreign forces: Violence, attacks on government buildings, attacks on the Chinese flag, flying foreign flags, calling on the Brits and America…

I'm in the UK and the Chinese people I know only need to watch the reporting on the BBC

It’s well known that the BBC has its own political agenda; there is no shortage of admirers of Mao in its staff.

Re: Houston Rockets general manager apologises for Hong Kong protest tweet

#56

Post by mytailorisrich »

goatinaboat wrote: post #55
mytailorisrich wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a question of censorship. This is caused by the protesters themselves (at least some of them). I'm in the UK and the Chinese people I know only need to watch the reporting on the BBC to be convinced that a lot of protesters are anti-China and potentially propped up by foreign forces: Violence, attacks on government buildings, attacks on the Chinese flag, flying foreign flags, calling on the Brits and America…

I'm in the UK and the Chinese people I know only need to watch the reporting on the BBC It’s well known that the BBC has its own political agenda; there is no shortage of admirers of Mao in its staff.

The BBC is Maoist and pro-Communist Party of China? Hold the press, this is bigger than Brexit!

Re: Houston Rockets general manager apologises for Hong Kong protest tweet

#57

Post by throw0101a »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #43
fieryscribe wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are anti-CCP because it is the CCP who has negotiated in bad faith, by agreeing to, and then not, allowing us to vote for our leaders. They have claimed there are 2 systems, yet they kidnap people in HK. They have said they were not behind the Extradition Law, and yet they force our government's hand. They have said HKers have freedom, and yet they call us terrorists and cockroaches for exercising it. The protests…

> We are anti-CCP Why do you attack the flag of the country (and even the flag of HK) rather than the flag of the party (there is one), then? > Not a single one of them is about independence nor are any anti-China. Then you should stop actions that look anti-China even when they are reported on media like the BBC... Edit: No answers to these questions, just downvotes... Some might say this speaks louder than words.

> Why do you attack the flag of the country (and even the flag of HK) rather than the flag of the party, then?

It seems to me, that in China to attack the party is to attack the state, and vice verse. To quote France's Louis XIV: L'état, c'est moi.

Am I incorrect?

Re: Houston Rockets general manager apologises for Hong Kong protest tweet

#58

Post by pjc50 »

wallace_f wrote: post #23
pjc50 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sports are businesses. Businesses, as everyone reminds each other constantly on here, are kind of obliged to seek money first and morality second. Unfortunate, but endemic to the system. In the case of football, that means taking money from dictatorships to host the World Cup in unbearably hot countries in stadia built by slave labour. Why should basketball be any different? It's not as if American sport has covered…

Money is just a form of social credit. When governments, monopolies and all other forms of violent coercion are out of the equation, money is just something people voluntarily give to each other in exchange for goods or services. What I mean is, your comment reads like you are writing an indictment about our "system," with its problems being money, markets; but then you go on to support this with problems of slave la…

> I see this pattern in comments every day on social media all the time

I think you're reading rather a lot into my post that I didn't write. But one lesson of China is that you can have "money, voluntary exchange, markets" and authoritarianism at the same time. Especially in the context of international trade, where A voluntarily exchanging money for products made by B with the slave labour of C happens a lot.

What happens when marketing products (in this case, sport) to a non-free country with an official nationalist ideology (in this case, China)? The customers voluntarily choose not to give money to products that don't support the Chinese state. That leads to westerners voluntarily choosing to support authoritarianism, so long as it's happening to someone else. All through free exchange.

(I am certainly not offering a solution to any of this!)

Re: Houston Rockets general manager apologises for Hong Kong protest tweet

#59

Post by throw0101a »

pjc50 wrote: post #16
alkonaut wrote: post #3

Wait, a person expressed views in favour of democracy and felt he had to backtrack because of pressure from a dictatorship? Here's how this works: we express views that anger dictatorships, and if there is even a minute chance that your business tanks because of it - then you were in the wrong market or had the wrong owners. The right thing to do here for the NBA would be to stand behind this tweet. Corporations need…

Sports are businesses. Businesses, as everyone reminds each other constantly on here, are kind of obliged to seek money first and morality second. Unfortunate, but endemic to the system. In the case of football, that means taking money from dictatorships to host the World Cup in unbearably hot countries in stadia built by slave labour. Why should basketball be any different? It's not as if American sport has covered…

> Businesses, as everyone reminds each other constantly on here, are kind of obliged to seek money first and morality second.

I'm going straight to Godwin's Law on this one:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

Re: Houston Rockets general manager apologises for Hong Kong protest tweet

#60

Post by mytailorisrich »

throw0101a wrote: post #57
mytailorisrich wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We are anti-CCP Why do you attack the flag of the country (and even the flag of HK) rather than the flag of the party (there is one), then? > Not a single one of them is about independence nor are any anti-China. Then you should stop actions that look anti-China even when they are reported on media like the BBC... Edit: No answers to these questions, just downvotes... Some might say this speaks louder than words.

> Why do you attack the flag of the country (and even the flag of HK) rather than the flag of the party, then? It seems to me, that in China to attack the party is to attack the state, and vice verse. To quote France's Louis XIV: L'état, c'est moi. Am I incorrect?

Very clearly, attacking the flag is seen as attacking the country... Especially when some other protesters also wave foreign flags.

As mentioned, the party actually has a flag, if they wanted to make things beyond doubt.

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