91–100 of 346 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Taiwan is not easy to invade.
Neither was Ukraine.
I lived in HK 2018-2020, leaving around the passage of the “national security law”. I think HK is a perfect case study of a line of fallacious thinking popular among westerners: the idea that peaceful protesting or rule-abiding political opposition is generally effective. This is wrong for at least two reasons. The first mistake is failing to recognize that many governments (case in point) are not nearly as vulnerabl…
I remember a good thought experiment. Gandhi's peaceful protests were successful because they impressed the British public via free press, and the public opinion affected the British government. Now imagine that instead of post-war British, the colonial regime were held by their contemporary Stalin. How much would a peaceful protest achieve?
They simply had no capacity to control a country like India on the other side of the world in their state at the end of WW2, so might as well save as much face while they can.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hongkongers are not protesting peacefully lol. They literally burned people that say that they love China. I think it is a perfect case study on how creating chaos (running into parliament building and vandalise), doxxing and threaten the family of police officers and supporting Donald trump (for whatever reason) is not helping.
Sad to see you are being downvoted. I guess some protesters are peaceful, but some are not. Some police are calm but some are violent. Different countries apply different filters in order to get their expected views of Hong Kong.
To use outliers as a counterpoint is meaningless at best, subversive at worse. I constantly see people pointing to the ugly end of bell curves and throw their hands up and say, "both sides are the same" or "it's too complicated" or "it's impossible to know the true story." No, this kind of smug apathy is just a silent approval of the status quo, that it's better to just let things be than to push for messy-but-necessary changes.
I lived in HK 2018-2020, leaving around the passage of the “national security law”. I think HK is a perfect case study of a line of fallacious thinking popular among westerners: the idea that peaceful protesting or rule-abiding political opposition is generally effective. This is wrong for at least two reasons. The first mistake is failing to recognize that many governments (case in point) are not nearly as vulnerabl…
I think both of these points hold, in their own way, in the Western world. As Guy Debord writes in The Society of the Spectacle : > [The Spectacle] defines the program of the ruling class and presides over its formation, just as it presents pseudo-goods to be coveted, it offers false models of revolution to local revolutionaries. Or as Zizek once said (in paraphrase): It's not Jihad vs. McWorld, it's McJihad vs. McWo…
"Jihad and McWorld are two sides of the same coin. Jihad is already McJihad" https://www.lacan.com/zizekslovenia.htm
If you are in HK and you're able, I'd recommend leaving and bring as much family with you as you can. It's not going to get better there, at this point.
I love seeing a lotta freedom fighting hong kong folks in vancouver.
I lived in HK 2018-2020, leaving around the passage of the “national security law”. I think HK is a perfect case study of a line of fallacious thinking popular among westerners: the idea that peaceful protesting or rule-abiding political opposition is generally effective. This is wrong for at least two reasons. The first mistake is failing to recognize that many governments (case in point) are not nearly as vulnerabl…
>The first mistake is failing to recognize that many governments (case in point) are not nearly as vulnerable to bad PR, I mean we're talking about the same government on the bad side of the Tank Man photo. I think that's kind of obvious. The difference is in HK I don't think people were anticipating China to completely break the Basic Law and the handover agreement. They were protesting the elected HK government, no…
This wasn't case in later stages of the protest, or even early stages. The protestors were gambling against Beijing in the first place, since they clearly didn't trust the local governance nor its ability to meet their demands. And it kinda made it obvious for the latter stage of the protest, that the attack was focus on CCP directly.
I lived in HK 2018-2020, leaving around the passage of the “national security law”. I think HK is a perfect case study of a line of fallacious thinking popular among westerners: the idea that peaceful protesting or rule-abiding political opposition is generally effective. This is wrong for at least two reasons. The first mistake is failing to recognize that many governments (case in point) are not nearly as vulnerabl…
Is setting fires on public transport, damaging roads and buildings, beating up (in some cases almost killing) innocent bystanders "peaceful protesting"?
What westerners do not understand is that the 2019 riots in HK are motivated by hatred toward Chinese mainlanders who have risen in wealth in recent decades and to whom HK residents have historically felt superior.
A parallel in the West may be racially motivated hate crimes. You don't call Ku Klux Klan rallies "peaceful".
There is an epic tv show to be made about underground freedom fighters in HK and what they do to subvert the gestapo. Just like there is a genre now of how different groups tried to subvert the nazis, it’s pretty clear that China is the modern-day fascist state, where disagreeing with the official party line risks your career and possibly your freedom. The only permitted disagreement is whisper-networks, and the mome…
It certainly is a nightmare to think a billion people live under such a government.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> remember obama was against marriage equality amongst other things at first It is worth remembering that at that time period, which was just 2008, California literally voted to change its constitution to ban gay marriage, which was purely a popular vote which was successful. If you want 55 electoral college votes, you aren't going to be saying things that ensure the opposite outcome. I don't think it is useful to ha…
Exactly this. To effect policy you have to get elected, and Obama knew quite well that supporting gay marriage in 2008 was a big losing proposition. Regardless of your opinions of Obama's politics, he is not a stupid man. All this nonsense about his position "evolving" is just that, nonsense. Obama was never really against gay marriage, he just needed to have viable positions to get elected.
In 2012 it was different. There was no primary. Obama could afford to be less of a follower and more of a leader. Black voters might not be enthusiastic about gay rights, but there was no doubt they’d show up to vote for their guy. So Obama calculated he could get the black vote and the gay vote by “evolving” his public stance.
This is of course separate from his own personal stance, which likely hasn’t evolved in a long time. What people find difficult to understand is that public figures have public and private personas.