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HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

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101–110 of 346 posts

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#101
post #39
post #3

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…

Disney won’t even make gay characters in their animated films, so they can make lots of China dollars. So good luck finding funding for your TV show to deeply hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.

>So good luck finding funding for your TV show to deeply hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.

'to deeply hurt the feelings of Chinese people'... why would you say that?

And why would you jump into assuming malice?

This is what I see 10 year olds do when cranky.

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#102

The best way to put pressure on the Chinese Communist Party and help pro-democracy voices in Hong Kong (and the reduce Uygher genocide) is to avoid buying Made in China goods where possible. This means buying Western, Korean and Japanese brands that aren't manufactured in China. Eg, a Samsung phone over Apple (made in Vietnam than Made in China), a Western Digital hard drive (made in Thailand) etc. There are an incre…

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?

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#103
post #5

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…

There is a Cambridge University Press / APSA study about the United States that shows populist swelling or the popular vote rarely results in any legislative change that matches the sentiment, and legislative changes come from well funded special interests that were already there. It is either purely coincidence when those changes match what the protesters want because special interests became interests, or were alre…

This is a reoccurring theme in political science research and yet we still delude ourselves that the United States is a democracy in any form.

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#104
post #5

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…

Question to wyager or anyone else about that second point: what are some examples of political changes that people think were caused by protests, but in reality were already in development before the protest started? Also, who are the best-known advocates for this idea? If the answer is "I, wyager, came up with it", that's totally fine, I'm just curious if the concept has an interesting history.

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#105
post #6

"Who control the past controls the future". Same is happening in Belarus at that moment. Most popular portal "TUT.BY" is removing everything from their Telegram channel.

But the rate of increasing connectivity between a population has never been greater.

I wouldn't bet against the trend toward net-freedom.

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

To be honest that sounds like lying and manipulating the public.

Not singling out Obama here because all politicians do it to an extent (the ones who don’t never get far).

Just calling out it’s not exactly a virtue.

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the idea that peaceful protesting or rule-abiding political opposition is generally effective. I understand you are making a stylized appeal for liberal political change via violence. China's leadership has peaks and troughs of liberalism, and violence there, in the Soviet Union, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Iran and in many other places around the world was followed more often by a hardening, not a softeni…

> Eventually, Xi will die, and it's more likely than not that his successors will liberalize It is more likely there will be a contest for power. It could become violent, though that is unlikely. In that event, I see no reason to ensure like-minded Chinese are sufficiently armed, or at the very least informed. China's path changed when Xi installed himself as dictator for life. It's foolish to ignore that seismic shi…

I think eventually something is going to break with the CCP system. But that could easily take another 50 years or more. Something many of us will not live to see.

The Chinese government sustains itself in power through economic growth and nationalism. That then leads to the two most likely factors (in my opinion) to lead to its eventual downfall – (i) if economic growth gets replaced by stagnation or even decline; (ii) a national military humiliation, such as if an attempt to conquer Taiwan turns into a costly failure. And I think either or both factors is likely to happen eventually, but still that could be many decades away. 10 or 20 years from now, the CCP will most likely still be going strong.

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#108

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.

Does it seem weird to anyone else that a foreigner would say this? Surely someone else living there would understand their own situation better.

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand opening up economically to China didn't bring the Democracy we envisioned either.

It's almost like we can't force them to do things our way.

the idea of democracy thru trade isn't to force CCP to do anything in anyway.

its to have free flow of information that CCP might block which they did with firewall.

Re: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests

#110
post #106

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…

To be honest that sounds like lying and manipulating the public. Not singling out Obama here because all politicians do it to an extent (the ones who don’t never get far). Just calling out it’s not exactly a virtue.

Is it virtuous to be truthful when that means giving up a chance to meaningfully improve the world?

Obama presided over many terrible things, but overall the amount of terrible things dropped during his tenure.

Not sure virtue is the right word but it’s more complicated than “lying bad”.

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