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Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves

theguardian.com

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Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

interesting, but Russians afaik don't get schooled overseas too much, like so many Chinese students spend years at overseas uni's, you'd think some of it would seep in. If not I'm very disappointed with the universities. Edit: a world without dissent seems so ... pointless

[flagged]

Why should the global poor have any say in world affairs? I certainly wouldn't want them to in anything that matters to me. Just like I don't want anyone else. Enough with collectivism.

Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves

#62

How is it that many Chinese students are schooled in the west, and have access to all these books and thoughts, but then they don't exist when they go back home. There must be some significant cognitive dissonance between the two situations. I don't see how they can keep a lid on this long term.

Yang Shupin is a good example of this happening.

https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/chinese-student-apolo...

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

Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves

#63
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not surprising at all. BLM is a neomarxist movement which is ideologically aligned with the CCP. The fact that all these companies are expressing support for BLM is absolutely terrifying and shows how much power this new neomarxist movement has.

I don't think wanting black people to not get regularly murdered by the police is marxism, per se. Neither is being against celebrating slavers etc. Claiming the CCP and BLM are on the same page would be comical if I wasn't so sure you were serious.

It's traditional to label any left-wing movement in the US as "Marxist", regardless of the actual content of its views, simply because that's an effective thought-terminating cliche for the rightwing audience. Nobody cares about the historical analysis. The intent is always the same; in this case, to make it clear that if the police aren't allowed to murder people in the street without repercussions, America will immediately become a communist dictatorship.

(Some people in the movement do self-identify as Marxist, yes; so what? That's a convenient way of avoiding looking at their actual politics.)

Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once asked a Chinese citizen I was working with this question. The response was that it's important for the Chinese government to censor the internet for the masses because the masses are dumb and will believe anything they read. However it wasn't important to censor the internet for smart people because smart people aren't susceptible to harmful information. So when he was in the west on uncensored internet or at…

It is true though ! Apply the same logic to the US. Wouldn't it better to censor Fox ? since it has become Murdoch's personal propaganda machine. All it has done is harm social cohesion. It would be better to have Fox viewers go through some classes on critical thinking before allowing them to consume all sorts of Media that may be trying to manipulate them.

Aegrescit medendo.

Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves

#65
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you at some point think that the corporate leadership of a massive for-profit organization was going to make a public statement that was anything other than the bare minimum lip service they were required to pay in order to weather the PR storm of the day, so that they could continue doing business? The answer to that question is almost always "no," and certainly until proven otherwise. Complaining that these cor…

What a wonderful world we’re building for ourselves

The world, for better or worse, will be built by the people in their private capacity, whether individually or acting in concert through government.

Complaining about for-profit institutions pursuing profit is, at best, a category error, and has nothing to do with our ability to shape the world except a childish inability to separate an organization represented by people from actual people.

It's like making a pool in your backyard and complaining it's a bad place to jog. That's not what it's for. Private for-profit entities aren't for public policy, or for moral leadership. They're for taking money and giving you widgets. If there's a manner in which their doing so runs contrary to desired public policy, that's a government and regulatory issue. That they've managed to somehow convince you they're "people"/"sentient" adequately enough for you to criticize their moral stance is an astounding success of marketing and branding. Because it takes a lot of marketing to convince people that widget-making is anything other than widget-making, for good or for ill.

Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once asked a Chinese citizen I was working with this question. The response was that it's important for the Chinese government to censor the internet for the masses because the masses are dumb and will believe anything they read. However it wasn't important to censor the internet for smart people because smart people aren't susceptible to harmful information. So when he was in the west on uncensored internet or at…

It is true though ! Apply the same logic to the US. Wouldn't it better to censor Fox ? since it has become Murdoch's personal propaganda machine. All it has done is harm social cohesion. It would be better to have Fox viewers go through some classes on critical thinking before allowing them to consume all sorts of Media that may be trying to manipulate them.

Isn't the trouble with that though you have to know beforehand what is correct? I think that is the advantage of free speech, you get to debate the issues in public, sure fox appears ridiculous to many, but there are many that agree with the fox arguments, I have learnt a lot about how other people think, and their point of view from following their positions (I'd like to think anyway). I feel that only by stressing a system can you build a stronger one, the current stressing has perhaps gone too far at the moment, but without the opposing forces of creation and destruction will anything new and stronger be created? That is the risk of creating something new I think - there's the risk of going to far, like its probably easier to just have a nice fixed hierarchy with everyone performing 100% efficiency in their assigned role, but is that the way to growth?

Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves

#67
post #17
post #3

Isn't it surprising that Microsoft, Apple, Google, Netflix, Blizzard and others don't express their deep regret and support the people of Hong Kong? If they really stood by their values they would act in the same way as they did by supporting the BLM movement. It's just another proof that they only did that to get press coverage for being "benevolent" and not because they genuinely supported the people. Disgraceful.

Did you at some point think that the corporate leadership of a massive for-profit organization was going to make a public statement that was anything other than the bare minimum lip service they were required to pay in order to weather the PR storm of the day, so that they could continue doing business? The answer to that question is almost always "no," and certainly until proven otherwise. Complaining that these cor…

I agree that this is the behaviour displayed by (almost?) all large corporations and thus that expecting that they will behave differently is irrational, in the sense that that expectation will always turn out to be false.

That said, I don't see why that means we should expect that behaviour in the sense that we should consider this the expected, correct, behvaiour from corporations.

Perhaps if everyone believed that moral and ethical behaviour from corporations should be the expectation and not just a fairytale for <12 year olds we'd actually see that behaviour in the world. If everyone was like OP in condeming these corporations maybe their expectations would eventually become real.

Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves

#68
post #32
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't you think that C-levels of all of them were previously dying to get into China, and were ready to do anything? > ... > treason In the case of China, doesn't the US government in some ways encourage this? I forget the colloquial name for the "policy" (if you can call it that, because I don't think it's codified into law), but isn't the idea that if the US shares some of the fruits of capitalism and liberal dem…

> if the US shares some of the fruits of capitalism and liberal democracy with China, the people of their country may follow suit? You don't share liberal democracy by teaming up with rogue regimes against it.

I'm not saying the policy is worthwhile or even justifiable, but the comment I replied to later used the word "treason" (sorry, I didn't quote it) which implies that these actions aren't endorsed, and certainly not encouraged, by the US government.

Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves

#69
post #3

Isn't it surprising that Microsoft, Apple, Google, Netflix, Blizzard and others don't express their deep regret and support the people of Hong Kong? If they really stood by their values they would act in the same way as they did by supporting the BLM movement. It's just another proof that they only did that to get press coverage for being "benevolent" and not because they genuinely supported the people. Disgraceful.

People do things that benefit them, and avoid doing things that harm them. They motivate their selfish actions, to others but also to themselves (Motivated Reasoning) with noble sounding arguments. Our brains are very good at coming up with those. Once you understand and accept this, you can process the world on a higher level. The hardest part is seeing when you do this yourself.

The book to read to learn about this is "The Elephant in the Brain".

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H8K4G9G/

Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once asked a Chinese citizen I was working with this question. The response was that it's important for the Chinese government to censor the internet for the masses because the masses are dumb and will believe anything they read. However it wasn't important to censor the internet for smart people because smart people aren't susceptible to harmful information. So when he was in the west on uncensored internet or at…

It is true though ! Apply the same logic to the US. Wouldn't it better to censor Fox ? since it has become Murdoch's personal propaganda machine. All it has done is harm social cohesion. It would be better to have Fox viewers go through some classes on critical thinking before allowing them to consume all sorts of Media that may be trying to manipulate them.

No, democracy is the only good ( but slow ) way.

Fox News had a successful advantage in the start, but their cookie of right speech is not crumbling..

It's collapsing

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