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'Do Not Split': A Hong Kong protest film [video]

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Re: 'Do Not Split': A Hong Kong protest film [video]

#41
post #29
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Liberal yes. But they insist on "democracy" which is ridiculous, as it didn't happen under the British. They "almost" instated it shortly before the handover, but didn't succeed for some reason. Extremely amusing indeed. And HK people's lives were almost unbearable under the tycoons' feudalism, which has nothing to do with Beijing.

> They "almost" instated it shortly before the handover, but didn't succeed for some reason. Extremely amusing indeed. Perhaps because China declared that they'd invade if HK was allowed to self-govern? https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/28/world/asia/china-began-pu... "documents recently released by the National Archives in Britain suggest that beginning in the 1950s, the colonial governors who ran Hong Kong repeatedly…

Grantham convinced London to scrap all plans for political reform on the basis that it did not "interest the British electorate". Later, when confronted by the Hong Kong public, he blamed London.[12] All major democratic reforms for Hong Kong were dropped by British Cabinet decision. In October 1952, the British Colonial Secretary Oliver Lyttelton announced that the time was "inopportune for...constitutional changes of a major character".[16]

Of course, British has its own interests, while China also has its own interests. In the end, HK is part of China, and it should be returned to China fully. If British consider Hong Kong's freedom is more important, maybe they should went to war with China instead.

Re: 'Do Not Split': A Hong Kong protest film [video]

#42
post #10

anyone else have family/friends working/born and raised in hk and have zero care about the "protests" ? yeah most people go about their lives while the media bread and circus blasted this to western audiences when it was trendy. extremely amusing to watch internet nobodies absolutely nuke reddit with hk posts when chances are they have no idea how to locate hk on a map

My friends in Hong Kong care a lot. They were born and raised there. They're all making plans to leave because they don't want their children to grow up in a CCP-dominated Hong Kong.

Re: 'Do Not Split': A Hong Kong protest film [video]

#43
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding arrest for accessing online information, I have become fascinated lately with the concept of legal warfare. It is the use of legal constructions to align other governments or subordinate bureaucracies to your strategic goals. For example, when Russia invaded Ukraine, they used the pretext that only volunteers from Russia were traveling to Ukraine to support a legal separatist movement. Now none of these cla…

is this not just propaganda by another name? Seems to me that everyone wants to cast their war as a just war [0]. If that means deniable approaches or false flag operations [1] then so be it. In particular I found this excerpt from [1] ironic in the context of your comment: > Russo-Swedish War In 1788, the head tailor at the Royal Swedish Opera received an order to sew a number of Russian military uniforms. These wer…

We can define propaganda in contrast to psychological warfare. Whereas psychological warfare is the dissemination of cultural products by a military to the population of a foreign adversary in pursuit of a strategic objective, propaganda is the dissemination of cultural products by a government to their own people in the pursuit of strategic objectives. This definition serves the discussion of propaganda in the broader context of warfare well.

Re: 'Do Not Split': A Hong Kong protest film [video]

#44
I'll try to strictly source my remarks and refrain from commenting on the political content of the HK demonstrations to keep this purely factual, as I think this could be a rather controversial thread; however, it's interesting how different the reception to these demonstrations is to the reception to the US Capitol riots and the BLM demonstrations of last year. Hong Kong demonstrators have stormed government buildings[1], thrown gasoline bombs at police[2], attacked plainclothes police[3], and the like. In total, one pro-liberalization demonstrator died after falling from a parking garage[4], and one anti-liberalization demonstrator died after being bludgeoned with a brick by pro-liberalization demonstrators[5]. To keep this in context, the current Hong Kong SAR government is democratically elected[6] according to the provisions of an international treaty signed by the PRC and the UK which took effect in 1997[7].

If these events occurred in the United States, whose government surveils almost all telecommunications[8], what would its government do? One part of that answer is to have the military occupy a city with limited congressional representation (DC)[9]. This is clearly a much more restrictive measure than the measures taken by the HKSAR government, but its presentation by non-Chinese media has been the exact opposite. For what it's worth (zero), my opinion is that both government responses are consistent with what can be expected given their respective situations. Why are they portrayed differently? Is it ideology, or am I missing something that differentiates the two?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storming_of_the_Legislative_Co... [2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-50115629 [3]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/hong-kong-... [4]: https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3036833... [5]: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/14/asia/hong-kong-protest-el... [6]: http://www.legco.gov.hk/general/english/intro/about_lc.htm [7]: http://www.cmab.gov.hk/en/issues/jd2.htm [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program) [9]: https://nypost.com/2021/03/09/pentagon-extends-national-guar...

Re: 'Do Not Split': A Hong Kong protest film [video]

#45

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/18/hong-kong-huge... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-48656471 At many different times in 2019, 1.7M-2M Hong Kong citizens, or 25% of the population, proudly protested in the streets and requested for their freedom. If only something good had came out of it. Now it's sunk to what China's best at: false arrests: https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/mc5bah/young…

The irony is that HK is being used as a model to get rid of peaceful protest in the U.K. - 10 years in jail for peacefully walking up the road with a sign that annoys an MP.

What are you referring to?

Re: 'Do Not Split': A Hong Kong protest film [video]

#46

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/18/hong-kong-huge... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-48656471 At many different times in 2019, 1.7M-2M Hong Kong citizens, or 25% of the population, proudly protested in the streets and requested for their freedom. If only something good had came out of it. Now it's sunk to what China's best at: false arrests: https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/mc5bah/young…

The irony is that HK is being used as a model to get rid of peaceful protest in the U.K. - 10 years in jail for peacefully walking up the road with a sign that annoys an MP.

The US is doing similar things, via a combination of long sentences for petty crimes and abuse of arrest and pretrial detention powers.

Re: 'Do Not Split': A Hong Kong protest film [video]

#47
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your estimate, and how did you measure it? I live in Paris where most of French demonstrations take place (including the yellow vest movement) but I can't pretend to have better estimates than all local and global media sources and public observers.

Historically, HK protestors grossly over exaggerate for optics, but MSM usually endorses organizer headcount uncritically. Reality consistently closer to police (under)estimates. Professionals at crowd control are better at estimating crowd sizes. Study from HKU of pre 2019 protests: https://graphics.reuters.com/HONGKONG-EXTRADITION-PROTESTS/0... Another analysis with machine learning, about 1/2 protestor estimates.…

The articles you are referring to doesn’t show the full picture. In all protests only a part of the crowd is visible on the streets, the majority of the day is spent trying to get up to the streets from the MTR.

Re: 'Do Not Split': A Hong Kong protest film [video]

#48
Western politicians are looking up to their Chinese friends with awe. They feel sheer excitement when they think how much power Chinese government wields. They don't particularly like the concentration camps or child labour (although for sure their rich mates would love to have free labour on tap), but social scoring? Playing Sim City with real human lives? Yes please, sign me up! That's why you don't see anything done to help Hong Kong. They are trying to go the opposite way to which Western social-democracies are drifting towards. The lockdowns was like that first taste of human blood and there are already plans how to make our lives a game where the government officials are the masters.

Re: 'Do Not Split': A Hong Kong protest film [video]

#50
post #40

The CPC propaganda department has ordered its local media to stagger the Oscars this year and downplay the event because this documentary short was nominated. https://variety.com/2021/film/asia/china-tells-media-stagger... I watched it recently and thought it didn't go nearly far enough in highlighting the abuses by the HK police, and even glossed over or omitted some very important events that triggered the continue…

All things considered, the Hong Kong police did what they had to given their precarious position. Compare the 2 deaths during a year of protesting to the 19 deaths within a couple weeks of the George Floyd protests. Keep in mind that they're stuck with the Hong Kong police even if they are allowed to become independent, so it doesn't make sense to demonize them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_Hong_Kong…

I would be interested in seeing normalized comparisons, data allowing - e.g., X deaths per person-protest-hour, that sort of thing.
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