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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

#131

Post by josteink »

refurb wrote: post #109
Aqua wrote: 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.

Saying they support BLM costs them almost nothing and is pretty low risk (now that’s moved mainstream). I know my company quietly waited until it was clear nobody would bat an eye if they did a press release supporting BLM. Hong Kong? That might actually require a bit of financial risk and negative publicity (at least in China). Now that real money is involved? “Our company believes the best way to support change in…

> I know my company quietly waited until it was clear nobody would bat an eye if they did a press release supporting BLM.

It may have a vocal (majority?) support, but it’s still a very divisive issue.

It’s probably better to not raise any flag, unless you really mean it and genuinely want to support it.

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

#132

Post by dwaltrip »

arkades wrote: post #65
pixelrevision wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

I don’t think it is correct to say that for-profit orgs have absolutely no moral agency or responsibility. It is obviously different than that of individuals, but it very much exists.

I honestly can’t even imagine what it would mean for companies to have absolutely no moral responsibility. Wouldn’t they behave like gangs or mobsters? Or even more extreme?

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

#133

Post by magicsmoke »

MarkSweep wrote: post #126
magicsmoke wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that in China's case, authoritarianism has been good for both people in authority and the majority, as evidenced by increasing economic growth and standards of living. You could make a theoretical argument that if China was democratic, then everyone would be even better off. But people in China use India as a mirror since both countries had massive populations, were underdeveloped, and gained independenc…

> Currently, governing decisions are made behind closed doors by a group of elites that carefully deliberate their choices after taking public opinion into account. How do you know how carefully choices are deliberated and how much public opinion is taken into account if decisions are being made behind closed doors?

You don't. You just have faith that's being done, like you have faith that democracy will always produce the best outcome eventually.

Which of those two assertions above makes you more uncomfortable reflects the education system you went to, the society you grew up in, the people you interact with, and your sense of identity.

I'm reminded of how Greek city states all used to have their own deities, believed their deities would lead them to wealth and glory, and that war between cities would prove who had the more powerful divine protector. Swap out deities for government systems and the world doesn't seem to have changed all that much.

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

#134

Post by magicsmoke »

WiseWeasel wrote: post #125
magicsmoke wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that in China's case, authoritarianism has been good for both people in authority and the majority, as evidenced by increasing economic growth and standards of living. You could make a theoretical argument that if China was democratic, then everyone would be even better off. But people in China use India as a mirror since both countries had massive populations, were underdeveloped, and gained independenc…

With speech suppressed, and a population trained to avoid unflattering expression, how do you suppose the group of elites behind the closed doors of their ivory tower are able to collect public opinion in order to take it into account?

There's a lot of variance between 0% and 100% suppression of speech.

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

#135

Post by ksec »

hkai wrote: post #41

Two things are true at the same time: - Hong Kong's rule of law has disappeared; - The books in question are written by pretty radical young revolutionaries. Personally I am more concerned that libraries in Hong Kong seem to keep less and less books in the local version of Chinese and more books written in Simplified Chinese used in Mainland China. It's like if you are in California and suddenly half of the books in…

Not quite. A better analogy would be Books in Portugal are in Spanish or vice versa.

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

#136

Post by fuoqi »

baybal2 wrote: post #128
fuoqi wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an easier explanation: Kremlin just started to spend money on its Internet presence and opposition could not match it, which got amplified by more people getting connected to the Internet (thus instead of tech savvy crowd sympathetic to opposition, you get a bigger share of conservative "simple man"). Opposition just got relaxed and thought that Internet will be their home ground forever. And it's far easier…

Even that wouldn't mean nearly all opposition media vanishing from the Internet in the span of few weeks.

Any independent confirmation of those allegations?

In my personal experience Meduza articles are near the top for some topics and several years ago Dozhd was popular as well, also sometimes I get links to opposition LJ blogs. Also there was a large shift to Telegram channels from traditional websites.

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

#137

Post by corey_moncure »

oefrha wrote: post #102
corey_moncure wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as charitably as possible, comments like these indicate to me that the poster has never been to China and has no idea about the actual conditions there. If you just step outside the select few favored economic zones you will see a very different, much lower, standard of living that accounts for the vast majority of the land area. Granted the last time I was there was about eight years ago, but taking a bus f…

> Granted the last time I was there was about eight years ago, but taking a bus from Taicang to Kunshan for instance, on the Eastern coast just out of Shanghai, I rode through villages that didn't even have electricity. Speaking as someone who’s travelled extensively in the region, I’d say you might have been there 28 years ago, not eight. I heard there are still extremely poor villages without electricity scattered…

>there’s no way you can simply stroll through one on the way from one city to another

Maybe! I could be wrong. My memory has been degrading for eight years and the situation has hopefully been improving! I'd go try to retrace the journeys I took on Google street view, for my own edification and yours, but of course, it's unavailable for China.

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

#138

Post by bpodgursky »

derefr wrote: post #117
caymanjim wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's odd that you include Spanish since until recently the same argument was made about half the books in the library being in Spanish instead of English.

Maybe in other states, but the US purchased much of California from Mexico, so that population isn’t immigrant to that region, but native to it. That historical basis—of there being (acquired) natural US citizens whose primary spoken language is Spanish—is one of the main reasons that Spanish is a national language. Spanish-language books aren’t at-all strange to see in (Southern) California libraries. They’re part o…

That's.... only sort of true. California was actually almost depopulated at the time of US conquest. The Spanish (mostly via disease) had essentially wiped out the native population, and there was very little hispanic re-settlement of CA by 1846.

A lot of the remaining population was Native, which (shocker!) did not actually speak Spanish as a native language -- they spoke their own native languages. There was a Spanish mission system TRYING to "civilize" the remaining natives, but it was floundering by that time.

The actual real native languages (not Spanish) are gone, for all practical purposes. Arguing whether Spanish or English is the "native" language is sorta nonsensical, given that the Americans only showed up a hundred years after the (mostly failed) Mission system started teaching Spanish.

I don't want to get into a fight as to Spanish or English is a native language or whatever, but it's pretty deceptive to argue that most of the hispanic population in CA is leftover from the US conquest -- actually very little of it is, the vast majority is from immigration after 1846.

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

#139

Post by LatteLazy »

chadcmulligan wrote: post #12

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.

The people schooled in the West already have power, democracy would weaken their positions not strengthen them.

Plus democracy and other Liberal institutions (rule of law, equality, education, social engagement) are basically collapsing throughout the Anglo-sphere. Touring the ruins of the coliseum doesn't exactly make you want to live in antient Rome...

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

#140

Post by input_sh »

jbay808 wrote: post #103
baylearn wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I took a screen snapshot of the front page: https://imgur.com/gallery/thY5Tl6 Compared to #1 and #2 ranked posts, which have half the upvotes, but uploaded within the same hour or two, this post is ranked #19. Maybe many people are "flag"-ing the post so the HN ranking algorithm pushes it lower. (Edit: For the record, I don't believe the HN mods are doing any downmodding here, and it's probably just due…

I've been surprised by the absence of discourse about HK on HN over the past week, given the magnitude of what's going on there and its relevance to this forum's interests. Meanwhile, relatively trivial articles are holding the front page for days.

Mods often suppress anything remotely political in order to keep the forum "civil". It's one of the aspects of this forum that I personally dislike.
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