Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

asiatimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 346 posts

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#321

Post by tablespoon »

karmasimida wrote: post #311
tablespoon wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And it didn't work really. China's export to US and the world is at all-time high, and guess who is paying for those tariffs? Trump had the kernel of the right idea, but the actual goal in his mind was stupid (get a better "deal") and his execution sloppy and haphazard. A better implementation would be to ratchet up tariffs slowly, and send the certain message: "policy has changed, go all in towards adjusting your…

And now the tariffs tool is gone for good. There is little room to raise the tariff again without hurting US itself.

> And now the tariffs tool is gone for good.

> There is little room to raise the tariff again without hurting US itself.

How so?

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#322

Post by dragonwriter »

tablespoon wrote: post #301
karmasimida wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump tried to raise 25% tariffs on all Chinese goods, and that is about the most effective way to implement the boycott with scale that can't be matched. And it didn't work really. China's export to US and the world is at all-time high, and guess who is paying for those tariffs?

> And it didn't work really. China's export to US and the world is at all-time high, and guess who is paying for those tariffs? Trump had the kernel of the right idea, but the actual goal in his mind was stupid (get a better "deal") and his execution sloppy and haphazard. A better implementation would be to ratchet up tariffs slowly, and send the certain message: "policy has changed, go all in towards adjusting your…

> A better

For what goal?

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#323

Post by doesthismean »

throwaway_oil wrote: post #172
doesthismean wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... peaceful protesting... 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…

This account was created today and has only commented in this thread.

Because unpopular opinion like this will inevitably be downvoted into oblivion. But the truths must be said.

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#324

Post by dillondoyle »

vmception wrote: post #67
dillondoyle wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cool article. really long I skimmed it so far. seems focused on comparing economic elite/interest groups to common population, which would skew the policy measured to tangible economic/business outcomes? My first thought to your comment was an opposing example of gay rights. Sure gay marriage was SCOTUS but it first changed as policy at the state level. politicians changed because it became popular enough and strong…

> 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…

I think that kind of gets to my point though. Politicians follow what gets them elected and I think that's an argument that non-elite, non-special interest movements have made change.

Some rightfully point out below that there's always politician BS lip service, saying something during the election and not following through or doing the opposite.

But on this issue both 'sides' show the point I'm trying to make. Public sentiment, not industrial lobbyists, drove anti-queer policy (though to be fair with Prop 8 you could call the mormon's monied elites since they evidently have a ginormous secretive endowment controlled by a few white guys).

And then in just a few years popular opinion turned, laws/policy followed at a lightning fast pace. Because politicians want to get elected. Pretty amazing. I distinctly remembering talking about marrying my at the time long term boyfriend, my parents didn't realize I could get married like a year after SCOTUS opinion & they are very supportive.

i think and hope that there are many examples like this, which parent's study seems to show doesn't exist, at least affecting business/tax/money policy

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#325

Post by dillondoyle »

colechristensen wrote: post #142
nindalf wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I don’t know why people found Obama’s position on gay marriage so difficult to understand. It was simple. In 2008, he had to win a Democratic primary. This meant echoing the stances that would be popular with Democratic primary voters. In Obama’s case, he needed all of the black vote as well. Only 60% of Democrats in 2008 supported marriage equality, compared to 80% in 2020 ( https://news.gallup.com/poll/350486…

Would you say the same things about John McCain during his election campaign?

I think McCain might be the ultimate example of an established political personality 180'ing their rhetoric to win an election. The maverick disappeared, and then evidently came back in a wheel chair to 'bravely' thumbs down an obamacare repeal attempt lol.

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#326

Post by wolverine876 »

bakatubas wrote: post #320
wolverine876 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's plainly fallacious to say there is no difference in corruption, conduct, and outcomes of different governments and different forms of government. To say 'all governments are corrupt' is the same as saying 'all people are violent'; but some are murderers, some got in shoving matches with their siblings when they were 12, and there is the entire range in between.

Well it’s hard to say at the scope of world powers. Maybe small, local governments there’s less. But let’s be honest here, and consider the atrocities of yesteryear. They span the gamut, and they span democracy through authoritarian regimes. The only difference is how it’s conveyed/portrayed to citizens, and how quickly /easily it is for any single party to gain control of a nation. I agree that some systems are bett…

These 'it's all the same' arguments are obviously false, beyond the meaningless truism that 'nobody's perfect!'.

> it’s hard to say at the scope of world powers

No it's not, at all. Some governments and forms of government are far more corrupt than others. Nobody compares Sweden or the US with Russia or Nigeria.

> They span the gamut, and they span democracy through authoritarian regimes. The only difference is how it’s conveyed/portrayed to citizens ... let’s not kid ourselves into believing China has done anything terrible that the USA has not already done in spades.

Nobody's kidding anyone; unless you look back centuries, China does things - such as in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, Tienanmen Square - that the USA never does. There's no comparison. The USA is not about to round up the populace of a region and put them in torture and reducation camps.

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#327

Post by orestarod »

nindalf wrote: post #286
mensetmanusman wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ends don’t justify the means, but you hear a lot of elites talk about tricking the population, because they think the average person is dumb. Then they can get elected and can really change the laws when they are in power to help their subjects who “clearly can’t help themselves”.

Electing a representative who will make decisions on your behalf is what representative democracy is.

In a representative democracy, do you have a say, control or checks in what decisions those representatives you elected make? Or do they do whatever they want and, tough luck, wait 4 years? Or do they do the opposite of what they promised and tough luck, 4 years again? And the same 2 parties which are essentially the same can get elected and none else, so... tough luck in general?

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#328

Post by wolverine876 »

GordonS wrote: post #290
wolverine876 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Take the 2003 protests against the Iraq war for example - 3 million protested in Rome, 1.5 million in Madrid, 1 million in London, and millions more across the west. What happened? They went to war based on lies anyway. It's always the same. The flaw is applying a binary metric: It's not that protestors don't have either absolute power or no power. Protests have influence. Those protests limited the scope of the wa…

> Those protests limited the scope of the war and their governments' involvement. Imagine the world if nobody protested, the free hand governments would have had if nobody cared. > The Iraq War was conducted while constantly pushing back against world opinion. The cost in political capital was high; those protests imposed real costs and real limitations on the leaders. That's how democracy works Did they change the s…

I'm not sure why people are telling you these things, but that ain't what's happening.

> The media seldom even covering peaceful protests

George Floyd protests, including peaceful ones, dominated the news for the summer.

> hazing of civilian populations with helicopters and patrol cars, and several months of increased police brutality

There were problems, but I'm not being an 'optimist'. The great majority of protests were peaceful and uneventful. The only helicopter incident I remember was in DC.

> Nothing meaningful has changed as a result of all these protests

You should turn on the news, because it's good! Police reform laws have been passed and candidates have been elected nationwide; every Democratic candidate embraces them now, it's a necessity, and candidates who are far more progressive on these issues win; for example, look at the new mayor of Buffalo or at all the DAs elected and re-elected in major cities. Even Republicans in the Congress have voted for removing Confederate names from military bases, etc. Everyone remarked how the Thin Blue Line was finally broken, publicly and dramatically, in the Derek Chauvin trial.

Much more needs to be done, but it's just a reactionary fantasy to say nothing has changed.

> Video after video, image after image of police brutality and negligence. Police departments blatantly fabricating evidence. And of course, more killing of black men and women under the most dubious of circumstances.

Right, this is what people were protesting. It's not going to change overnight.

> None of our actions made any difference - and certainly where foreign policy, the military and war are concerned ...

You're just saying that, with no support. For the other claims of futility, where we do have clear evidence, they were clearly false. Maybe the same is true here.

I think the important question is: Why is it trendy on the Internet to claim democracy is so ineffective, when the reality is manifestly so much better? What do people gain from deceiving themselves? Who gains?

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#329

Post by wolverine876 »

laurent92 wrote: post #300
wolverine876 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it doesn't make any difference Can you support that? History is filled with protests leading to change. Just looking at 100 years off the top of my head: Women's vote, Gandhi, civil rights, S. Korea, the fall of the Soviet Block, the Arab Spring ...

As GP said, protests are scenarized. It looks like good protests are successful, but other protests are just delegitimized by inserting violent people in them and not arresting them. In France, countless pictures of pallets of bricks being delivered to demonstration sites in the night before the protest opposed to the leading party, in addition to criminals not being arrested, should at least give you a doubt on how…

> protests are just delegitimized by inserting violent people in them and not arresting them

It's an attempted tactic, though in the US I think by the political opposition (radical neo-reactionaries) and not the government. It has uneven success.

> countless pictures of pallets of bricks being delivered to demonstration sites in the night before the protest opposed to the leading party

Do we know those pictures were legitimate? Countless pictures on the Internet doesn't mean much.

> Many legitimate protests from people who actually are minorities in their nations, were put in bad light and you never heard of them.

How do you know?

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#330

Post by wolverine876 »

vmception wrote: post #285
wolverine876 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Democracy is just rule by majority It's not, by any meaningful definition, and not how people who study it think about it. Democracy's are rule by majority and, just as essentially, protection of minority rights. You need both or you have nothing. The Bill of Rights in the US Constitution is the best known example.

Those are factors of constitutions and has nothing inherently to do with democracies or any system Authoritarian dictatorships and single party countries have constitutions that give the same guarantees as seen in the Bill of Rights and other areas of the US Constitution You are conflating the definition of democracy with ideals you were taught to respect. This is indoctrination by definition of accepting a set of be…

You should stop telling me what I think and why, stick to the issues, and stop lecturing people like you are an authority. You have no idea what I know or where I learned it, and it seems, have little real idea about these issues.
Post reply on HN