The only way to force US companies make a choice is to boycott them here locally.
Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves
191–200 of 252 posts
Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you say about classic literature being banned from classrooms because people were unable to see the content in the context of the time it was written?
I see it as an order of magnitude less dangerous than censorship at the library level.
This is upside down.
Banning books from school is 10x worse than censorship at the library.
All this library talk is a little moot because nobody goes to the library. How many copies of said 'banned books' do HK libraries even have? 10? 20?
The Internet is the Library.
But the information taught in class will define an entire generation.
Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves
#193Isn'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…
Corporations are people too.
Leaving this source and reference to Citizens United to hopefully help lift the conversation and help people understand the rights of corporations within the United States.
https://www.npr.org/2014/07/28/335288388/when-did-companies-...
Do corporations have a deeper responsibility besides enriching shareholders?
Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves
#194How 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.
You’re applying the wrong Western categories to Chinese people.
People think Chinese don’t have a religion, but they actually do and the God is China itself.
First, they all believe China needs to step up to its role in the World stage.
Second, the social pact in China is quite straightforward: you give up some useless rights that only weak westerners seem to be overly attached to, and you get in exchange growth, stability, safety, work and riches.
Chinese people that live by this social pact are genuinely happy people. They know about the data collection, they know about the limitations to the information but they don’t care as long as they feel safer, richer and on a prosperous path. Which, sadly, has been true for a while now, if you consider how many trillions of dollars the country has invested in R&D in the last 35 years.
All this while America has been gradually renouncing to their international role, or while even allies have come to reckon the instability America has been unleashing on so many regions of the world just by pretending to operate by the failed credo of “exporting democracy”.
Mix this and what the Chinese believe about their country’s place in the world and you’ll understand their perspective better.
The US and the US way of life are not the center of the free world anymore and haven’t been for a long time.
As a European, living in Germany, my only hope is in a third European way. Quite sad that Angela Merkel will be stepping down, she would have been the right leader to manage this for the entire EU.
Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is one part of a several act drama that is playing out for the home audience. Reign in the disobedient teenager (Hong Kong) by taking his skateboard away. Act two is a military provocation, which is why the US has moved more hardware into the area.
US should equip Taiwan with nuclear weapons for deterrance. Should there be invasion en-masse, deep in the mountains of Taiwan there would be nuclear weapons ready to strike. Nuclear weapons are great to keep peace in the region.
> US should equip Taiwan with nuclear weapons for deterrance. Should there be invasion en-masse, deep in the mountains of Taiwan there would be nuclear weapons ready to strike.
IIRC, the PRC considers Taiwanese possession of nuclear weapons is one of their red lines that would lead to immediate war [1]. Though I'm not sure how such a war would be supposed to work if Taiwan had an effective nuclear delivery system.
It also appears that the US did not want Taiwan to develop nuclear weapons in the 70s/80s for non-proliferation reasons and got them to shut down their program [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_status_of_Taiwan#PRC...
[2] https://thediplomat.com/2019/01/taiwans-20th-century-brush-w...
Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is one part of a several act drama that is playing out for the home audience. Reign in the disobedient teenager (Hong Kong) by taking his skateboard away. Act two is a military provocation, which is why the US has moved more hardware into the area.
US should equip Taiwan with nuclear weapons for deterrance. Should there be invasion en-masse, deep in the mountains of Taiwan there would be nuclear weapons ready to strike. Nuclear weapons are great to keep peace in the region.
This would be a violation of the NNPT and by extension America’s own laws.
Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
So any BLM “support” you see these days, you might as well expect be the result of tyranny? Interesting.
Huh? No, that’s not what I meant. Companies prefer to not be in the news. So what they do is seek out the mainstream and align itself to it. BLM was not mainstream 3 months ago, so companies remained quiet. Now, not showing support for BLM runs the risk of unfavorable PR. So they put out a low risk statement.
I'm not sure BLM support is "mainstream". Home Depot hasn't said anything official about BLM to my knowledge, and you hear loud pro BLM people saying they should be boycotted [1], but I think they're doing fine. Their stock price is as good as its ever been.
I think what we're seeing is a case of "minority rule" [2].
[1] https://www.ccn.com/7-companies-you-should-renounce-if-you-s...
[2] https://nassimtaleb.org/2016/08/intolerant-wins-dictatorship...
Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves
#198Earlier 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? It’s not just that. By encouraging civil unrest in the US/UK and continuing to funnel money to Chinese sweatshops t…
That ad was a neat PR trick, seeing as it seemed to make people forget that Apple is one of the most profitable companies in human existence. It's not a "revolutionary" company, it just makes really good products.
They do more than others in the industry with their annual transparency reports, and they are working to end unfair working conditions in their operations, and in those of their partners such as Foxconn. I do agree that they could do more, but I haven’t even brought up their recycling programs yet. They have the largest burden to bear, as the world’s largest company, depending how you measure it, and so they can commensurately do more to identify the problems and work toward solutions. To say they are only making really good products is a bit harsh, as they are measurably doing more than their competition to make their profits ethically, while making those products.
Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves
#199Hong Kong is the freedom and civil rights issue of this generation. There should be protests and boycotts in every US city about this, instead it barely receives coverage...
What is so special about Hong-Kong? It is a territorial dispute, it happens often in the world, and there are not protests and boycotts every time it happens.
Just look at the Wikipedia page here, it is quite long: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_territorial_disputes
And for Honk-Kong, we already know how it will end. Hong-Kong will become part of mainland China in 2047, that's the deal. That's unless China changes its mind, which is unlikely.
The way the US treats the Hong-Kong case is not "a freedom and civil rights issue". It is for Hongkongers, but for the US, it reeks of a proxy war. The US doesn't like China, but they can't fight directly, so instead, they support Hongkongers who oppose China.
Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any handy links for that Google-Russia story? It’s not that I don’t believe, because I do (IMO this is something that Google would have done) it’s just that I’m on mobile and am too lazy to search for those links myself.
I suggest that you read that account's post history before you believe their claims.
I read their history, and I don’t know what you mean with this comment. Could you link to specific examples? I don’t know them, but their comments seem well reasoned.