[Patrickov]

What about the actual British colonialism that occurred in the region?

If even Sun Yat-sen finds them make the society in Hong Kong more respectful than his home country who are you to judge?

*At least* for the years after WW2 (actually much longer) British made the place a safe haven from power-hungry (Mainland) Chinese, possibly even more.

[Donna]

If even Sun Yat-sen finds them make the society in Hong Kong more respectful than his home country who are you to judge?

I come from a point of view that values a thorough criticism of all that exists.

[Igor Antunov]

All those who participated in the attempted colonization of China in the 1800's, especially Britain, should butt out of this debate. China drafted a new law pertaining to its sovereign territory when it became apparent that decolonization had not yet run its course fully. There is no logical reason as to why middling regional powers such as the UK should have any input on Hong Kong governance anymore. The UK is yesterday's news now.

Out of the 3 million they offered residence to, I calculate less than 30,000 miscreants and criminals will make their way to the isles now. Just as Cuba had done in regards to its Florida exiles, they won't send their best. Except in this case the scenario is amplified, as Hong Kong is richer than the UK and has much more favorable income taxes and business prospects. Any existing millionaires or people with actual prospects in the territory could have gained residence abroad and moved their families years ago. But they didn't. Hong Kong's economic links with the manufacturing engine of the world just next door in Guangdong are going nowhere. There's a reason Hong Kong has more billionaire residents than any other city. It's a very comfy nest-egg and nothing has changed in that regard.

Good to hear that the lunatic who had stabbed the cop in the neck a few months ago was apprehended at the Airport today, in the act of trying to escape to Londonistan. He will fittingly be tried on the mainland.

[skinster]

I was born here and so was my mother and grandmother. Now some robbers is snatching my home (by making it like the tyrannic and corrupt China), and you are asking me to leave in favour of them, robber?

Since you used that dumb line of me not being grateful about where I live and should leave, I wondered how it might work on you.

China is not a "robber" of Hong Kong, that was the Brits. Hong Kong always belonged to China even though the Brits occupied it for over 100 years. 1997 was when the Brits "gave" HK back to China. Stop being a cuck for your previous occupiers.

Hong Kong doesn't "belong" to China.

But it does.

[Patrickov]

Since you used that dumb line of me not being grateful about where I live and should leave, I wondered how it might work on you.

I said that because you "suggested" me "take up the offer" first, although I do think you don't deserve living in a free place to start with.

China is not a "robber" of Hong Kong, that was the Brits. Hong Kong always belonged to China even though the Brits occupied it for over 100 years. 1997 was when the Brits "gave" HK back to China. Stop being a cuck for your previous occupiers.

Legitimacy of administration of a place ultimately lies on both mandate of residents and force. The British surely got the place with violent means but over time they also won over a lot of, if not most, residents' approval. China, even 2 decades after taking it (back), failed to do so, and they are now worse than the Qing. They have lost their legitimacy and mandate, and that's why they turn to violence (by making a arbitrary law).

In short, the British started bad but got better. China did the reverse. You only focus on the start of British, and is intentionally blind to China going back to that point and worse. By doing this, I see you as my enemy.

[Patrickov]

Good to hear that the lunatic who had stabbed the cop in the neck a few months ago was apprehended at the Airport today, in the act of trying to escape to Londonistan. He will fittingly be tried on the mainland.

There is no doubt that some action must lead to some consequences and the said person must bear it, but branding him as a lunatic shows your true colours as an evil tyranny advocate.

[skinster]

No, you're evil and an enemy, get in the sea!

[Igor Antunov]

There is no doubt that some action must lead to some consequences and the said person must bear it, but branding him as a lunatic shows your true colours as an evil tyranny advocate.

Going out of your way and Stabbing people because you disagree with them is a lunatic action. No way around it.

[Patrickov]

Going out of your way and Stabbing people because you disagree with them is a lunatic action. No way around it.

No one can garuantee they can keep it when their comrades are being captured.

[skinster]

[Patrickov]

https://twitter.com/isgoodrum/status/1279200252268933121?s=20

This is a comment piece beating in the thin air. Those funds cannot explain sentiment from, say, previous generation of my family, many of whom even had experience in CCP-funded or operated organisations.


As I can see, the second comment already calls this stupid article out:

Is Alex Lo naive or an idiot ...or both ?

Every country supports and finances activities in another country if it is deemed in its national interest. The USA is just doing what any other country is doing including China.

China historically engaged in similar activities in Asia and Africa interfering and supporting regimes to its liking and destabilising those that it does not. Examples :
.
Malaya and Indonesia communist insurgencies post WW ll.
.
Interfere in Vietnam by supporting South North Vietnam (Note: She made a mistake in this post of hers)
.
Interference in Laos and Cambodia. I
.
Influencing regimes in Africa like Zimbabwe. Taking sides in the civil war in Sudan.

And then we have this:

The US doesn't have the power to create protests in HK. That was the people rising up

I never understood how the logistics of this works.

So just one march last year had 2 million people. Does the US just have people standing on the sidewalk giving out $1 to everyone as they walk by? It would have to be a lot of people doing this and no evidence at all. Do they get 2 million bank account numbers of Alipay info to transfer this money? And seems unlikely that people would brave the heat and congestion for only $1.

And what about the dozens of other protests. Was there funding for those as well? Did they pay $1 to each person in HK to vote overwhelmingly against pro-Beijing candidates? Is Alex suggesting HKongers are so mindless and easily swayed by foreign powers for $1?

Sometimes the simplest explanation is the most parsimonious. HKongers and Taiwanese genuinely don’t like CCP and USA has nothing to do with it.

Also:

The CCP has spent tremendous effort to stop their populace from doing critical thinking so I guess illogical conspiracy theories can make sense to some.

This is most true. At least one global (Global Times), one national (People's Daily) and three Hong Kong (Wen Hui, Ta Kung, Hong Kong Commerce) newspapers wouldn't have existed if they were not funded by the CCP.


China is behaving like a violent immature brat, resorting to arbitrary persecution when they found themselves unable to persuade even their own people, and have to treat them like conquered foreigners.

The likes of Alex Lo, skinster and other "anti-imperialists" only see how "deceitful" Western governments are, but they are blind that CCP, and those Chinese foolish enough to believe their propaganda, do not even reach that level.


IMHO this kind of argument would be proved meaningful only if China had a regime change (for the better) but this still continues. Although I don't really think this condition would happen anyways.

It all comes down to one thing: Many of the 2M protesters actually knew this but they still did it. Pro-China scums have to understand why it is so and stop thinking the people simply being foolish and manipulated -- such kind of action only ever succeeded in pushing the people over to the other side.

After all, they had tried to manipulate us themselves, but why it didn't work until they actually threaten us with arbitrary prison terms?


EDIT:
In comparison, Donald Trump is a very good example on how countries like the United States have such a good system that even dictator wannabes like him are restricted. He could only verbally bash Antifa but not much more. Russia is also superior in many senses, considering that they made a lot of illusions of grandeur to get more people support the constitution change. China does not even try to learn from Putin.

[Rugoz]

The book burning has started:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... ry-shelves

[skinster]

[Patrickov]

Xinhua is undoubtedly fake, at least many of them must be paid Mainlanders. (Not that others don't, e.g. Falun Gong's "300 million resigns from CCP and associated organisations" was also laughable exaggeration)

And this totalitarian propagandist called skinster is so dreadful that she chooses to spread propaganda against someone supposedly as against Western elites as she does. Apart from Carrie Lam herself I probably cannot think someone worse.

And all those propaganda didn't answer my question before -- the problem is not who's in the back, which is a constant factor. The problem is why it worked.

P.S. I also found an article from Hongkongers against Cuba, but it's in Chinese and my workweek starts again. If someone is interested they can try to machine translate or such:
Title: Lies of the "Free" Cuba

[JohnRawls]

@skinster

About our usual talk about China. It is nothing specific what we talked about but just a video that might be interesting to you.

[Rancid]

A shame. My wife was starting to reconnect with her family in Hong Kong. Our plan was to spend a month next summer in Hong Kong. That plan has been cancelled. Maybe if we didn't have kids, but not with kids.

[AFAIK]

It's interesting the skinster doesn't know that Hong Kong island and Kowloon peninsula were leased to Britain in perpetuity and only the outer territories had a limited lease that expired in 1997. It was the Chinese who suggested maintaining 2 systems for 50 years in order to keep Hong Kong as a singular entity. I don't see how Britain is interfering just because it is unwilling to abandon this agreement 27 years early.

[skinster]

I don't see how Britain is interfering

I guess you haven't been paying attention to the rhetoric of British politicians who act like they still rule Hong Kong. Preeeeetty sure I've posted clips ITT thread or elsewhere on the board where Brit corporate media stations have Chinese ambassadors and such on their shows where they're talking to them like they are children, about their own territory.

[Patrickov]

Some quick updates.

Hong Kong Authorities Forces Pan-Democratic Legislative Council Candidates "Clarify" Their Past Statements

To put in simply: Hong Kong Government has possibly started the move to disqualify most, if not all, opposition from all political institutions they can control.

Democracy should be about allowing anybody to run without interference (American presidential elections even allow write-ins). Anything less is despotism.

[Patrickov]

The arrest of four students in Hong Kong’s first crackdown on political figures after the enactment of a sweeping national security law imposed by China and the disqualification of at least 12 pro-democracy candidates in the legislative election have prompted widespread public outrage.

Tony Chung, 19, the convenor of disbanded pro-independence group Studentlocalism and three other members were arrested late on Wednesday.

Without naming them, Hong Kong police’s newly-formed national security division said young people aged between 16 and 21 had been arrested under the new national security law for “organising and inciting secession” by their advocacy of independence.

Pro-Beijing press reported on the “thwarting” of the pro-independence group. The China-owned Wen Wei Po newspaper said the “national security police brandished its sword” in making the arrests and attacked the group for superficially closing but continuing to operate to “spread its pro-independence poison”.

The national security law stipulates that secessionist crimes are punishable by three to 10 years in jail or, in “serious” cases, life imprisonment.

The arrests were the most high-profile crackdown on political figures since the introduction on 1 July of the national security law, which punishes crimes of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces. Ten people were arrested during a protest on national security charges on the first day of the law’s enactment.

The suppression of pro-democracy activists stepped up on Thursday, with the Hong Kong government announcing that at least 12 opposition candidates have been barred from running in the legislative council elections. The elections, scheduled for September, are likely to be postponed for a year with the local press saying the government would use the coronavirus pandemic as a pretext to stop pro-democracy candidates from scoring a majority in the elections.

China’s liaison office said in a statement that it supported the disqualification of the pro-democracy politicians, particularly the 23-year-old activist Joshua Wong and lawyer Dennis Kwok. It alleged that the 12 have advocated independence, lobbied “foreign powers to put sanctions on Hong Kong”, vetoed government budgets and opposed the national security law.

“These people intended to paralyse the government and subvert state power ... how can they genuinely uphold the basic law (constitution) and swear loyalty to our country?” the statement said. “How can these heartless people be admitted into the chamber?”

The Hong Kong government also said that people who advocated the city’s independence, solicited intervention by foreign governments or opposed the national security law, could not uphold the duties of legislative council members.


Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, said the move was “an outrageous political purge of Hong Kong’s democrats”.

“It is obviously now illegal to believe in democracy, although this was what Beijing promised in and after the (1984 Sino-British) joint declaration. This is the sort of behaviour that you would expect in a police state,” he said.


Kenneth Chan Ka-lok, a political scientist at the Hong Kong Baptist University, said the disqualification was a violation of human and political rights that should be protected by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and “an excessive form of electoral manipulation to remove candidates that the state cannot stomach”.


On the arrests of the four young activists, Nicholas Bequelin, of Amnesty International, said: “This first coordinated police operation to enforce Hong Kong’s national security law is a significant and alarming moment for the right to freedom of expression in the city.

“That four young people could potentially face life imprisonment on the basis of some social media posts lays bare the draconian nature of the national security law. The idea that anybody can now be jailed for expressing their political opinion on Facebook or Instagram will send a chill throughout Hong Kong society.”

Critics said the group arrested on Wednesday had done little except to advocate their political opinions online. They said that despite the government’s reassurance that civil liberties were protected under the security law, it was sending a strong signal that voices of dissent would be ruthlessly suppressed.

“These arrests show exactly what the national security law is intended to achieve: criminalising free speech,” said Victoria Hui, a political scientist at the University of Notre Dame in the US, noting that the four were merely making a declaration on social media. “The law covers not just actions, but also ‘activities’ which we now know include any mention of the banned term: ‘Hong Kong independence’.”.

“Their young age shows how Beijing has alienated young Hongkongers. Instead of wooing hearts, Beijing has treated them as enemies and taken all possible measures to destroy them,” she said.

Chan said: “This shows the clear intention of the newly established national security agency to eagerly use their powers given by the new law to draw ‘red lines’ and ‘no-go areas’ in Hong Kong.”

After the enactment of the security law, the Hong Kong government also banned the popular protest slogan “Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of our times” and the protest song “Glory to Hong Kong”, saying these effectively advocated independence from China and therefore breached the law.

“It is a reflection of a besieged mentality which imagines the nation and the city are subverted by enemies of the state within and without,” Chan said.

Studentlocalism announced its closure on the eve of the enactment of the national security law but announced later the establishment of its US division. It said on social media on 21 July that a new group called Initiative Independence party had been set up by former members overseas.

The Facebook page of the new group says it is pro-independence because “Hong Kong will never achieve democracy under China” and “building a Republic of Hong Kong … is our only way out.”

On his Twitter account, media tycoon Jimmy Lai said: “China is purportedly the second most powerful nation in the world. What can four school age youngsters do to overthrow such super power?”

The Guardian


Given the Government's intention so well known, it would be far quicker and more efficient to simply disqualify everybody who's suspected to be not falling over heads and heels, especially now that protest is effectively banned. Even screening is a waste of time and energy.

A side question: Does having a "besieged" mentality actually attracts a siege?