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Hundreds of thousands take to Hong Kong streets against controversial bill

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Re: Hundreds of thousands take to Hong Kong streets against controversial bill

#61

Post by AnimalMuppet »

_yuow wrote: post #38
heraclius wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And probably I will get downvoted by mentioning this. The Tiananmen Square massacre, which originated due to the protesters fighting for more freedom/human rights, from I heard from my uncle, it was because of the influence from westerners. Marxism, or the morphed variety of the CCP, also originates from the West. That doesn’t mean that Mao or the 6/4 movement didn’t have a genuine appreciation of “Western ideas” a…

[flagged]

You're being downvoted because you seem to just be here to argue. You're not interacting with peoples' responses to you very much, just throwing out a blizzard of new accusations. That's not a conversation, it's just a rant. HN isn't the place for that.

Re: Hundreds of thousands take to Hong Kong streets against controversial bill

#63

Post by Zenbit_UX »

pmiller2 wrote: post #36
rcpt wrote: post #31

I don't know why but protests on the scale of hundreds of thousands just seems impossible in America

That’s what those in power want you to think. Here’s a list of 19 protests with at least 100k participants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_protests_in_the_United... Four of them have taken place since November 2016.

Fascinating link but your color commentary on those in power trying to surpress this knowledge makes you sound irrational - despite being completely right. If those in power wanted to prevent this knowledge it wouldn't be on Wikipedia for any to edit.

Re: Hundreds of thousands take to Hong Kong streets against controversial bill

#64

Post by cfarm »

hkai wrote: post #5

Just finished the 8 hour march. That was insane. But the law is even more insane. A North Korea-like totalitarian state that puts people in camps can just snatch any lawyer, businessman our journalist and take them away without trial and without revealing their location. Imagine people at startups working in sensitive areas like DNA testing, biotech, finance or data mining can be taken away and forced to reveal data,…

Do people think they'll be able to change things?

Re: Hundreds of thousands take to Hong Kong streets against controversial bill

#65

Post by yorwba »

_yuow wrote: post #38
heraclius wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And probably I will get downvoted by mentioning this. The Tiananmen Square massacre, which originated due to the protesters fighting for more freedom/human rights, from I heard from my uncle, it was because of the influence from westerners. Marxism, or the morphed variety of the CCP, also originates from the West. That doesn’t mean that Mao or the 6/4 movement didn’t have a genuine appreciation of “Western ideas” a…

[flagged]

> downvoted me for no reason, hacker news, what's the point of the upvote/downvote button anyway

In case you are genuinely confused why people would downvote you: you bring up a lot of issues like 6/4, the Opium Wars, Huawei ... that only fit into a coherent topic if you make it incredibly broad, e.g. "China vs. the West". It is hard to have a good discussion on a topic that broad, and by bringing up so many different issues you spread yourself too thin and argue none of your points particularly well.

If you were to focus on a single on-topic issue, try to provide some additional relevant information and keep your value judgment out of it (voting on opinionated comments is inevitably going to be opinion-based), it would at least make for good reading.

Re: Hundreds of thousands take to Hong Kong streets against controversial bill

#66

Post by Youden »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #57
chii wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vox video paints the Belt and Road Initiative in a negative light - which i feel is wrong. Why shouldn't China be allowed to invest and gain soft power? Why shouldn't they be allowed to make deals with countries the US deems 'undemocratic'?

If you're making deals with a government that is undemocratic, you're making a deal with the government, but not with the people. At that point, the deal is probably going to be one that benefits the government, but not the people. Countries do that, when it is in their best interest to do so. But the US (rightly) gets criticism for doing such things. If it's right to criticize the US for such actions, it's also righ…

> If you're making deals with a government that is undemocratic, you're making a deal with the government, but not with the people.

I think a better way to phrase "a government that is undemocratic" as "a dictatorship".

The idea that democracy is the only system of government that can possibly represent the people is a horrendously American view of the world.

To show an example that counters the "everything that isn't democracy is oppressive" claims I usually hear, have a look at Lichtenstein (which admittedly is partly democratic but is also a constitutional monarchy), where the people voted to give the monarchy _more_ power and refused to curb it in a referendum: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-18649156

Re: Hundreds of thousands take to Hong Kong streets against controversial bill

#67

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Youden wrote: post #66
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're making deals with a government that is undemocratic, you're making a deal with the government, but not with the people. At that point, the deal is probably going to be one that benefits the government, but not the people. Countries do that, when it is in their best interest to do so. But the US (rightly) gets criticism for doing such things. If it's right to criticize the US for such actions, it's also righ…

> If you're making deals with a government that is undemocratic, you're making a deal with the government, but not with the people. I think a better way to phrase "a government that is undemocratic" as "a dictatorship". The idea that democracy is the only system of government that can possibly represent the people is a horrendously American view of the world. To show an example that counters the "everything that isn'…

> where the people voted to give the monarchy _more_ power and refused to curb it in a referendum

This is democracy. The people voted for a strong executive and to be represented by the monarchy. Nobody gets that vote in Uzbekistan.

Re: Hundreds of thousands take to Hong Kong streets against controversial bill

#69

Post by ksec »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #24

Since Hong Kong is a former British colony, English is co-official with written Chinese there, and you can read the official brief and the text of the bill in English on the Legislative Council website: https://www.legco.gov.hk/yr18-19/english/bc/bc56/general/bc5...

>English is co-official with written Chinese there,

That is not strictly true, while both Chinese and English are the official languages, In writing, especially with any legals documents, in case of any discrepancy between the English version and the Chinese version, the English version shall prevail.

Re: Hundreds of thousands take to Hong Kong streets against controversial bill

#70

Post by wltprgm »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #61
_yuow wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You're being downvoted because you seem to just be here to argue. You're not interacting with peoples' responses to you very much, just throwing out a blizzard of new accusations. That's not a conversation, it's just a rant. HN isn't the place for that.

> because you seem to just be here to argue.

You are right. I should change my tone.

> You're not interacting with peoples' responses to you very much, just throwing out a blizzard of new accusations.

I think I have made my point even though it was harsh. This thread is about protest in Hong Kong, and what the list of accusations (as you said) don't spread too far away, since it relates to the same thing.

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