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Chaos in Hong Kong as hundreds of masked men assault protesters, journalists

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Re: Chaos in Hong Kong as hundreds of masked men assault protesters, journalists

#191

Post by haasteagle »

PauloManrique wrote: post #99
MadSudaca wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The progressives in HN downvote you, but the truth is that being able to use violence to protect your individual freedoms is instrumental to democracy. Few places can boast the level of stability that EEUU has had in the last 150 years. Many were taken over by tyrants and armed mobs, than eventually chose their tyrant. It's no coincidence that in Venezuela the regime disarmed the people with a law that according to t…

1) it's false Venezuela disarmed people; 2) to say armed people can stop dictators, it's a totally braindead assumption. Please, go understand how the world works.

Please keep discussion civil, no need to use words like braindead etc. Justify your arguments instead of resorting to name calling.

As for the content of your argument. 1) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-29308509 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-18288430

2) While not directly comparable, several invasions have been successfully warded off by an armed populace. Even the strongest military to ever trod the Earth had little success against uneducated farmers in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. I agree these comparisons are flawed.

Re: Chaos in Hong Kong as hundreds of masked men assault protesters, journalists

#192

Post by my_username_is_ »

nabla9 wrote: post #9

Back to low-tech solutions like paid mobs to control the situation. People in HK use Chinese apps and Chinese intelligence probably has comprehensive mass surveillance system in place, but it could not predict recent events. Chinese and HK leaders were caught by surprise.

People in HK typically don't use Chinese apps to communicate. WhatsApp and Telegram seem to be the most popular right now, and both use end-to-end encryption. Suggesting communication over WeChat to your average Hong Konger is laughable.

Re: Chaos in Hong Kong as hundreds of masked men assault protesters, journalists

#193

Post by shuzheng407 »

basementcat wrote: post #168
Renaud wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically it's ok for the Police to leave an area they were pre-warned will become violent because that district is controlled by thugs and criminals who can basically do what they want? I think you have a distorted view of what the role of Police is in a society.

Authorities are simply leveraging "thugs and criminals" as a force multiplier.

Although I dont agree what you said but I understand where it comes from.having said that, is worth pointing out, in East Asian Society, gangs have a much more complicated face than in west. there has been a culture of gang in Easter Asia, actually, nearly every modern party functioning in Japan, China and Korea has a gang root. China republican party relied on Shanghai gangs to maintain resistance under Japanese occupation. Japanese Yamaguchi-gumi is a crucial local power to maintain rules and help with social crisis. yes, they do bad things,really bad things. but Gangs in East Asia is not only about bad things. they sometime act like a rule keeper. like in the heartbroken earthquake in Japan in 2011, local gangs are required to help with injured and transporting supplies etc, they have their own ways doing things.police sometimes have some kind of agreements with local gangs：restraint your people, help us when we need, and we keep one eye closed for your business.

Re: Chaos in Hong Kong as hundreds of masked men assault protesters, journalists

#194

Post by cgriswald »

lm28469 wrote: post #77
AmericanChopper wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of what you think of 2A, this is exactly the sort of situation it was designed to address. In Hong Kong, you have a completely unarmed population demanding democracy. Being oppressed by an (in the particular case, arguably foreign) government, with a long history of slaughtering unarmed populations who demand democracy.

What if the 60% of US citizens who don't approve of Trump want to overthrow his government ? Would that be part of the 2nd amendment ? Where do you draw the line ?

Generally speaking: "There are four boxes to be used in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury and ammo. Please use in that order."[0]

Where to draw that line is a personal choice. There are no simple answers. "You can never make that choice" is just as extreme and absolute an answer as "any time you are unhappy about anything the government does, start shooting."

[0]-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_boxes_of_liberty

Re: Chaos in Hong Kong as hundreds of masked men assault protesters, journalists

#195

Post by traderjane »

leroy_masochist wrote: post #56
keanzu wrote: post #42

Excellent analysis here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20492145 The Chinese and HK governments have realized they've lost the culture wars and public opinion so they've resorted to the tried and tested handbook of authoritarian governments, to create a cycle of violence to create justification for cracking down. This is a provocation. Protesters will now counter arm themselves with similar bats and stick…

One would hope that the protesters will continue to use the ingenuity they've shown over the last month (intensely coordinated logistics, hand signs, etc) and refuse to take the bait while finding a clever, asymmetrical response to the intimidation tactics.

Refusing to take the bait may be useless as they might need to arm themselves in order to be successful, if success is even in the cards for them absent a foreign intervention.

Re: Chaos in Hong Kong as hundreds of masked men assault protesters, journalists

#196

Post by hker »

L_226 wrote: post #112
keanzu wrote: post #42

Excellent analysis here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20492145 The Chinese and HK governments have realized they've lost the culture wars and public opinion so they've resorted to the tried and tested handbook of authoritarian governments, to create a cycle of violence to create justification for cracking down. This is a provocation. Protesters will now counter arm themselves with similar bats and stick…

HK police have already uncovered a stash of TATP stockpiled by "protesters" - https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/20/asia/hong-kong-explosives...

HK police had made high-profile-arrest followed by low-profile-release on protesters. They claimed to have found an arsenal of protected substances during arrest, and found nothing until release half a year later (weapon of mass destruction, Hong Kong style).

For a case related to earlier protest in 2016, see [1] in Chinese.

[1]: https://thestandnews.com/politics/高調拉人-低調撤案-警方旺角騷亂後-環保倉當-武器庫...

For this particular case of arrest you mentioned, one thing stood out: the supposed “petrol bombs“ were in fact sealed, unopened beer bottles (see the zoom-in here [2]). The correct way to make a petrol bomb needs to replace the content [3]. For all we know, the police have found 10 bottles of unopened beer and claimed to have found 10 petrol bombs.

[2]: https://lihkg.com/thread/1335217/page/1

[3]: https://img.appledaily.com.tw/images/ReNews/20130804/640_13b...

Re: Chaos in Hong Kong as hundreds of masked men assault protesters, journalists

#197

Post by turk73 »

Drakim wrote: post #65
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a hell of a lot harder (or at least more costly) to violently impose your will on people who can violently defend themselves.

A civilian population armed with guns to the teeth will still not be able to stand up even a little to a real well organized military with gear. Maybe it would be more costly, but the escalation would also provide the justification to strike down the population completely and simply murder all the protesters. Instead of reading about peaceful protesters being attacked you'd read about the military taking out insurgen…

You're missing the point. You don't face them head on, you do hit and run attacks on logistics and infrastructure and target the other side's families. Make it as painful as possible for them to continue their miserable campaign. Weapons are just tools that create options.

The American Revolution and the War of 1812 that everyone forgets (British came back a second time) was tomahawks in the middle of the night taking out loyalists, quick skirmishes and ambushes against numerically superior forces, sabotage of key resources like burning farm fields, killing animals, sinking boats.

That's what real war is. Hunger, chaos, no electricity, poor sanitation. Basically everything Venezuela has going on right now.

Re: Chaos in Hong Kong as hundreds of masked men assault protesters, journalists

#198

Post by yorwba »

ISL wrote: post #189
koheripbal wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I think people forget that the majority of those who died in Tienanmen were non-violent.

Can you provide a reference for such a statement? It is, as stated, counter to my recollection.

I don't think proof of this could exist, since you can't look at a corpse and determine whether it belongs to a violent or non-violent protester. Individual eyewitnesses can only establish that some non-violent protesters were killed, but not what the ratio of violent to non-violent protesters among the victims was.

If the Hong Kong protesters want to avoid a repeat of 1989, they'd do well to study the tactics that were tried back then, among which establishing friendly relations with the soldiers appears to have been particularly effective: "Contact with protesters and residents of Beijing sapped the will of the troops to follow their orders, and the food and water offered to them, in lieu of their absent army rations, further diminished their will to act against the protesters." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insubordination_in_the_PLA_dur...

Re: Chaos in Hong Kong as hundreds of masked men assault protesters, journalists

#199

Post by turk73 »

0898 wrote: post #130

Could one make a case in favour of China's one party system by likening it to Apple's tightly integrated ecosystem? I mean, people argue that technology works better when one system controls the hardware, the software and the ecosystem around it. Could the same principle apply to human society? Which is an order of magnitude more complex than a piece of technology. Again, I don't know if this argument has been made b…

My family and I are not "Apple products" nor are we statists. We don't worship the state nor are we its subjects. We are citizens and it will deal with us on a 1:1 basis always.

Re: Chaos in Hong Kong as hundreds of masked men assault protesters, journalists

#200

Post by impostir »

modi15 wrote: post #82

Seems to me this is Tiananmen part 2 unfolding before our eyes. And doesnt look like anyone will come to Hongkongs help. Hoping India will step up and do something. Seems unlikely though.

I strongly disagree with any one nation, but especially India, intervening in this situation. Firstly, what is the actual support that is being provided? Sanctions would do nothing to China, except maybe the EU and/ or the US. Military support, in any form, would explode the region into WW3. Secondly, India and China already have some significant animosity; India supporting HK would royally piss off mainland China. Also, I cannot see India's benefiting the HK resistance; mainland China will never surrender control of HK.

Overall, I am super pessimistic about HK; unless mainland China experiences a similar scale of unrest, HK will become just another mainland city.

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