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Hong Cong Umbrella Revolution of 2014 and 2019

News Color revolutions Recommended Links Compradors Neocolonialism as Financial Imperialism
Control of the MSM during color revolution is like air superiority in the war NGOs as braintrust of color revolutions EuroMaidan Russian Color Revolution Ukrainian orange revolution
The Technique of Nonviolent Action by Gene Sharp The Politics of Nonviolent Action by Gene Sharp Gene Sharp Recipies and Russian Experience Inside "democracy promotion" hypocrisy fair The art of manufacturing of prisoners of consciousness
Sect of fraudulent election witnesses Human right activists or globalism fifth column Exploiting Revolutionary Romantics as polit-technology Delegitimization of Ruling Party Inside "democracy promotion" hypocrisy fair
Predator state Two Party System as polyarchy Super Imperialism Foreign Agents Registration Act Russian compradors
Corporate Media: Journalism In the Service of the Powerful Few The Real War on Reality Frustrated underachievers IntelliXencia: Corruption of Intelligentsia and it usage in fifth column in Russia Net Hamsters as a part of fifth column
The Guardian Slips Beyond the Reach of Embarrassment British hypocrisy The Iron Law of Oligarchy Russian Fifth column Humor Etc

Introduction

You can view color revolutions from two positions - idealistic and realistic.

Here is a small dialog between two Guardian commenters, which reflects those two points of view (The Guardian, Oct 10, 2016):

GeorgeSherban, 10 October 2014 11:41am

To some extent, you could say that the motives of the US government are altruistic. Of course there will also be strategic reasons for intervening.

Whether it is advisable or not is another matter.

Chanelle47 -> GeorgeSherban , 10 October 2014 12:00pm

Altruistic is the last thing they are. Why did the US launch an Iraq War 2.0 in the early 2000? At various points it was because Saddam cause 9/11, because of the Taliban, because of Al Qaida, because Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (tee hee). Then, a couple of years in, it wasn't any of those things. It became about "sowing the seeds of democracy" in Iraq.

It was all bullshit. One thing you can be sure of: if a politician's lips are moving in regard to Iraq, Isis or terror then what is coming out is never the truth. Their buddies in The Press merely amplify, obfuscate and confuse as required and to order.

We can observe similar two modes of coverage of Hong Cong color revolution. Idealists in Western MSM see the spread of freedom and democracy like was in the case of EuroMaidan, Libya and before that in Serbia, Georgia, Turkmenistan and Moldovia. While realists consider this as a geopolitical clash of powers in the struggle for influence, an attempt to show Chinese elite its place, by hitting China in its soft belly.

While to understand dynamic of Hong Cong revolution without knowledge of the language and living on the island is really difficult, so far, judging from MSM and alternative press reporting, it looks like yet another color revolution. Someone really should probably compile the "Regime Change Dictionary" and "Regime Change Blueprint" to simplify analysis of such events despite the smoke screen of Western MSM propaganda, which always promote idealists position.

In reality, color revolutions usually has nothing to do with the democracy and often bring topower brutal dictators or far right nationalists, disguised as democrats. Typically they are dirty wars of imperial expansion of neoliberal capitalism fought with dupes and fifth column hands with full support of World Bank, IMF and other controlled by neoliberals international institutions. And they far less costly then conventional wars. For example February coup in Ukraine cost a tiny fraction of the cost of Iraq war and did not resulted in any US troops casualties. But the goal of subduing the country as essentially achieved. They are also the only type of wars possible against major nuclear powers such as China or Russia.

From the point of view of the level of inequality Hong Cong is by definition is a power keg. in 2007 it has had the highest Gini coefficient in the world:

Gini score: 43.4
GDP 2007 (US$ billions): 207.2
Share of income or expenditure (%)

Ratio of income or expenditure, share of top 10% to lowest 10%: 17.8

Renowned for its high concentration of Rolls-Royces, expensive real estate, and posh shops, the Chinese special administrative region has plenty of rich who enjoy showing off their wealth. However, Hong Kong also has one of the largest public housing sectors in the world, with about half the population living in government-supported or -subsidized housing estates. The city has no minimum wage — except for domestic helpers from the Philippines, Indonesia, and other countries.

There is also a deep and troubling analogy between EuroMaidan. Here is something that you need to be aware of:

  1. The EU (of which GB is a part) and the US were treacherous entities which positioned themselves outside the law. Their explicit goal was the "regime change" via color revolution. They willfully and blatantly discarded the agreement between Yanukovich government and opposition dated February 21, 2014.
  2. The EU and the United States immediately recognized the coup d'état leaders as a legitimate government. And this is in a country with working general election mechanism and elections schedules in less then two years.
  3. Later in similar circumstances the EU and the US do not recognize the people's will in the Donbass.
  4. Actually three points above is all the you need to know to put in proper context Hong Cong events and "leading Western democracies".

 Discreditation of any genuine social protest by USA color revolution technology

In any case using color revolutions for regime change by the USA discredited ingenious protests movements in countries like China and Russia, to the extent that now the first natural reaction is crying "color revolution, watch out the USA machinations!" even at movements that are chiefly based on real grievances.

Any modern "pro-democracy movement" now is embedded in a complex matrix of money, subterfuge, foreign influence, oligarchic clans war, propaganda, and manipulation by foreign actors. It can be easily hijacked and misused by color revolution strategists at NED and similar organizations (who are actually very good at their craft).

Here are a couple of pretty telling comments:

Guest77 | Oct 5, 2014 6:52:31 PM | 84

I don't see what any personal sympathies with the protestors even matters. Sure, we all want people to be able to fight for their rights and have the government they want, but right now there is a larger priority, and that is making sure that the world maintains a multipolar political structure. The importance of a multipolar world outweighs even our desire to see vocal minorities to take to the streets, I think. (And these are vocal minorites, no doubt).

I think, as "westerners" we have to support the group that will insure the independence of the state in question. We cannot support any group that looks to the US as a model or a hope, because we here know better than anyone that this is a sham. And any group that panders to the US and it's citizens via social media has to immediately be suspect.

Sloppy always comes to crow about how much b hates America. I don't think b "hates" the USA, but he is certainly right to make the USAs aggressive moves toward hegemony the key focus of all of his posts, and right to make a stand against this issue over all others because it is truly the gravest threat the world faces today.

- if the emergence of liberal freedom in every corner of the world means it's sure evaporation from all parts very soon after (which will surely occur if the USA achieves total global domination) we cannot support this. We will only see real opportunities for peace, political expression, and true democracy only after the US is prevented from perverting these good things into instruments of its domination. But until then, the independence of foreign governments is far more important for world peace, stability, and prosperity than the rights of a few minorities to threaten their governments in Russia, China, or Iran.

guest77 | Oct 5, 2014 7:23:42 PM | 86

@84 And of course for inside "the west" the exact opposite holds true. We should support any protests, any movement that attempts to degrade the aggressive capabilities of the US Empire, because this will allow real democracy and prosperity to flourish in more places around the world.

No one can claim that countries like Russia, China, Brazil, India and Iran - where standards of living are rising and the governments have the broad support of the people - are "dictatorships".

Just like no one of any honesty should call the banker dominated oligarchy like the United States, where cash determines every election down to the lowest rungs on the political ladder - a "democracy".

Demian | Oct 6, 2014 3:14:41 AM | 100

@brian #95:

Gee, you seem to follow Project pretty closely. I have no such inclination.

As I said before, all one needs to do is watch the Maidan girl video and then the Occupy central video, both of which you directed us to, to see that what is going on in Hong Kong is just another attempted color revolution.

Another link, obtained from the link guest77 gave at #89:

US State Dept Funding and Occupy Central, the Ties that Bind

This is the most through demonstration of how Occupy Central is just the US State Department being up to its usual tricks that I have seen so far. The post the Saker put up today, in which a Hong Konger explains why he does not support Occupy Central, is also worth reading.

Analogy of Hong cong event with Ukrainian EuroMaidan events run so deep that sometimes it looks like the same blueprint was used in Hong Cong as in Kiev.

Is Hong Cong a cleft region?

Cleft regions or countries are areas that contain large groups of people identifying with different civilizations, for examples India (with Hindu majority and large Muslim minority), and Ukraine (with Catholic-dominated, nationalistic and pro-Western Western section and its pro-Russian Orthodox-dominated East).

The question is: can we consider Hong Cong to be a cleft county with people identifying themselves both with Anglo-Saxon and traditional Chinese civilization? I think students are more exposed to Anglo-Saxon civilization and its values that the rest of population. It would be interesting to have statistics of cosmetic "europeization" surgeries for Hong Cong young woman, especially students and especially the percentage of Catholics who took part in the protest.

Many members of "old" Hong cong elite feel threatened by influx of mainlanders ( The Leaf Chronicle )

Joseph Cheng, 64, a political science professor at City University of Hong Kong who was arrested at Sunday's protest and held for 12 hours, said,

"We want to uphold our core values, our lifestyle and our dignity. We don't want to be reduced to an ordinary big city in mainland China."

Huntington’s contention that civilization clashes are inevitable within cleft countries, and that such countries are inherently instable and fragile. The augments he uses are somewhat similar to Amartya Sen’s discussion in ‘Identity & Violence' and they are interesting although not totally convincing.

Huntington suggests that people’s cultural (which include religious as a part) identities will be the primary source of conflict in the post-cold war world. He argues that civilizations forms highest rank of cultural identity. Due to increased contacts between each other and modern communications, people have become civilization conscious. As a result, post dissolution of the USSR politics (post Cold War politics) are dominated by these civilization oriented conflicts.

Huntington’s civilization categories are

  1. Western;
  2. Latin American;
  3. Orthodox (Russia and parts of the xUUSR);
  4. Buddhist,
  5. Chinese,
  6. Hindu,
  7. Japonica civilization;
  8. Islam;
  9. African civilization except Ethiopia and Haiti (who he think are no-civilization countries);
  10. Israel.

Critics have pointed to superciliousness of the civilization classification. This aspect was well catched in The wider concerns of Hong Kong's protesters ( bbc.com, Oct 3,  2014 )

"For middle class residents, many with passports to other countries, that's a choice they can make. But, as Mr Xie points out, many young Hong Kongers educated after 1997 find themselves trapped. "

For the Hong Kong students thronging the streets of the Central business district this week the issue at stake has been wider democracy.

But for the thousands more young professionals living and working in the city's nearby office blocks, the protests have re-ignited some worrying memories.

It was in the late 1980s or early 90s that many Hong Kong families took out citizenship of another country. They were prompted by fears of what might happen after the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from the UK back to China.

Quotes

"That's a sizeable number of people, even though we are still talking about less than 5% of the population.
Deep down most people are concerned about bread and butter issues” -- Andy Xie, Independent economist

"You have this sector of society who identify with Western values.

"This idea comes into play when you have a situation when people are dissatisfied with Hong Kong - they have this other cultural identity too, and that leads them to think that they can land in another country."

"People are desperate and they are looking for a quick solution - I don't see that coming - so this thing is going to go on” - Andy Xie, Independent economist

In the case of Joyce Man's family it was Canada that provided a temporary refuge; as an insurance policy in case things turned nasty in Hong Kong.

Ms Man, 30, was a teenager at the time of the handover. She moved with her parents and sister to Canada in 1989, and after obtaining Canadian citizenship, they later moved back to Hong Kong.

But now, like many of her contemporaries, Ms Man is thinking about moving again - and this time it could be for good.

"I think like a certain section of the Hong Kong population I grew up with the idea that you can leave," says Ms Man, who is now a writer of a popular blog: Criss Cross Culture.

"Hong Kongers are also outward looking. Before '97 many people left to go to England, Australia , Canada, or the USA.

... ... ...

Veteran Hong Kong and China expert, Jonathan Fenby, was editor of the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong during the handover in 1997.

He says there are many different currents flowing under the surface of the current unhappiness with life in Hong Kong. One of the key issues is the identity of the citizens - how they see themselves.

Mr Fenby points out that surveys of the population by Hong Kong's universities going back over the past 20 years have frequently found that Hong Kong people do not identify themselves as being purely Chinese - most say instead that they are "Hong Kongers" or "Hong Kong Chinese".

And that makes the leadership in Beijing uneasy, he believes.

"A very large proportion of the people living in Hong Kong at the moment are the children or grandchildren of refugees from mainland China," says Mr Fenby.

"This is a more fluid population, and that is not something the authorities in Beijing like very much.

"Because they like the idea of Chinese national unity, Chinese stability and the Han race sticking together - and the Hong Kongers are different."

And it's the feeling that they want to maintain the differences between Hong Kong and China that appears to be driving many Hong Kongers onto the streets. But it could also drive many away from Hong Kong altogether if events take a wrong turn.

For middle class residents, many with passports to other countries, that's a choice they can make. But, as Mr Xie points out, many young Hong Kongers educated after 1997 find themselves trapped.

"It's difficult for the people here to leave now," he says. "Hong Kong introduced mother tongue education in '98 - in Cantonese.

People are less likely to speak either English or Mandarin than before the handover. So it is very difficult for people to emigrate."

"People are desperate and they are looking for a quick solution - I don't see that coming - so this thing is going to go on. ''

Loyalty of elite, especially comprador elite,
in any neoliberal state in not automatic ;-)

The main beneficiaries of corrupt privatization is states such as Russia and Ukraine, commanded significant resources and began to place their own interests above those of the state. This pehnominen is exemplified by the “oligarchs” of Russia and Ukraine. They used their resources and political connections to defend against encroachment. Some parlayed their fortunes into political careers, most often to win a seat in parliament that came with immunity from prosecution. Among them are those who are more connected to global market and those who are less connected to global market. The former created natural based on color revolution support and financing within the country.

Putin's "purge' of Yeltsin "family" somewhat suppressed this phenomena in Russia, but in Ukraine it played in full force.

The second part of non-loyal to the state "cosmopolitan" elite are university professors and administration, especially in typical neoliberalism dominated fields, such as economic, advertizing, public relations, etc.

Hong cong is a classic neoliberal "state within state" and as such it has substantial share of this "comprador" type of elite.

Comprador class is an important concept in the neo-colonial dependence model. It reflects a specific way to force the country to fulfill the demands of capital (aka transnational corporations) of rich countries. They are dependent on the unequal relationship between the centre (the developed countries) and the periphery. Policies of the USA and EU countries are based on support of a small, but powerful elite or comprador class.

The comprador class is consisted of people with strong ties to the West such as export industry owners, financial traders, military and civil top bureaucrats, university professors and administators, professionals with better employment prospects in foreign corporations, such as programmers. Such people often keep their financial assets in Western banks, there families live in Western capitals and their children typically get an education in prestigious Western universities. There is a convergence of the interests of comprador elite with the interests of financial and industrial elite of developed nations. The comprador group serve to inhibit any genuine reform efforts that might benefit the wider population of underdeveloped countries and, due to this service, the group is highly rewarded by the international interest groups including MNC, aid agencies, World Bank and IMF, which are tied allegiance or funding to wealthy capitalist countries.

I think that comprador elite was the central element of the current Hong Cong protests.

Role of students and "rector revolt" ; University administration and "grant-eating" professors as a Trojan horse of color revolutions.

Importance of "guiding" students into protest movement was recognized by Marxists long ago. For example in 1903 Lenin wrote ( The Tasks of the Revolutionary Youth):

“revolutionary sentiment alone cannot bring about ideological unity among the students”, that “this requires a socialist ideal based upon one or another socialist world outlook” and, moreover, “a definite and integral” outlook

This revolutionary (read "regime change" ;-) sentiments are nothing new. The Petrashevsky circle was a group of "anti-regime" intellectuals formed in St. Petersburg in the mid-forties of the eighteen century around M. V. Butashevich-Petrashevsky, a follower of the French utopian socialist Fourier. Among the members were writers, teachers, students, minor government officials, army officers, and so on. While not uniform in their political views, most of them were opponents of the tsarist autocracy and the serf system. Among those connected with the Petrashevsky circle were the writers Dostoyevsky and Saltykov-Shchedrin and the poets Maikov, and Taras Shevchenko.

Like Marxists who long ago recognized the importance of importance of revolutionizing the students and pushing them into social action, neoliberals too work with students to push them to the protests during color revolutions, making them the vanguard of fighters for neoliberal globalization. That was very vividly demonstrated at the beginning stages of Maidan, when the core of protesters were students of Kiev, Lvov and Ivano-Frankovsk universities.

But the most interesting innovation introduced by color revolution technologists here was cooptation of university administration and professors via grant system and expensive foreign trips. This process can be called "rectors revolt" similar to practicing in color revolutions "revolt of diplomats". This allowed students freely attend protests without the danger to the excluded from the university for non-attendance.

Importance of financing and co-opting using money based incentives of the university bureaucracy and "grant-eating" professors, and creating within the universities self-sustained "resistance-centers" and "pro-democracy groups" with its own press outlets is such that it can be viewed as the mother’s milk of such a regime change. In a way the color of any "color revolution" is always green.

That including special training which is often outsourced to members of similar movements from countries with successful color revolution attempts (COLOR REVOLUTIONS AND GEOPOLITICS Template Revolutions Marketing U.S. Regime Change in Eastern Europe (2008))

Youth movements and NGOs were also employed as couriers for regime change. Following the Serbian ‘bulldozer revolution’, several former foreign-trained members of the local Otpor student movement became traveling consultants on non-violent political tactics. The Serbians' trips to those countries were paid, respectively, by NED grantee Freedom House and Soros's Open Society Institute (MacKinnon 2007, 60, 67, 109, 110). Sensing another ‘colour revolution’ opportunity, Otpor advisors began working with Ukraine's opposition as early as 2002 (Bransten 2004).

... ... ...

Anika Binnendijk and Ivan Marovic cite an internal memo written in April 2003 by Yushchenko's Our Ukraine in which his party discusses the importance of preparing a propaganda response to expected vote fraud:

[The elections will] be a game without rules, unprecedented competition of informational, organizational, financial and administrative resources for the regime…we need allies and at least 500,000 active supporters (Binnendijik and Marovic 2006)

... ... ...

In Ukraine, the U.S. spent in 2004 alone about $34 million on regime change initiatives (U.S. Department of State 2004), while Soros pitched in about $1.6 million in support of a local ‘Freedom of Choice’ NGO coalition and Ukraine's ‘New Choice 2004’ (Wilson 2005, 184). The German Marshall Fund of the United States, Freedom House, and the Canadian International Development Agency together provided $130,000 for activist training (Kaskiv, Chupryna and Zolotariov, 2007, 134). Foreign assistance also staked various get-out-the-vote programs, including ‘leaflet campaigns, street theatre, rock concerts, door-to-door campaigns, and karaoke shows’ (Freedom House 2005). The Center for Political and Legal Reforms, financed by various U.S. foundations, linked its website directly to Yushchenko’s home page ‘under the heading “partners”’, USAID brought the group to Washington, D.C. for three weeks of training in ‘political advocacy’ (Kelley 2004)..

...pro-Yushchenko Pora (‘yellow’ faction) student movement was one recipient of USAID and other foreign groups’ support (Kaskiv, Chupryna, Bezverkha, and Zolotariov 2005);

... ... ...

A U.S. plan of transporting activists from one nation to another to teach “revolutionary” electoral tactics may have started in 1997 when the NED arranged a Vienna meeting between Slovakia's oppositionist leader Pavol Demeš and veterans of Bulgaria's recent pro- Western elections. Demes returned home and designed “OK'98,” the Slovakian campaign which brought down Vladimir Mečiar. Demes next went on to train GONG, a Croatian NGO aimed overthrowing Franjo Tudjman (MacKinnon 2007, 31, 34).

... ... ...

Other grants on the NED website include a 2000 grant to the Student Union of Serbia to encourage "greater student involvement…for democratic reform" and a grant to the NDI to help the Alliance for Change publish a newspaper called "Changes."

Students are the social group the most susceptible to "revolution marketing" efforts. The first who realized that were actually Bolsheviks. Now this idea were appropriated by neoliberals (especially neocons, aka neo-Trotskyites) and they became the fodder of color revolutions. 

The deployment of ‘revolutionary’ symbols and slogans, selected for their agitating and mobilising effects, financial support to local media outlets to stir up antagonism, and the foreign training of dissenters and professional organization of dissent are some of the stratagems in regime change initiatives. As local organizers readily admitted, marketing tactics were key to winning over their supporters.

The use of Western-funded exit polls served as a catalyst for protest. On a broader front, the steady flow of anti-government reporting from the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the BBC World Service, and other Western broadcasting media incited activists to take to the streets.

One could add to the template the efforts of U.S. government and private foundation visitor programs for Eastern European politicians, journalists, students, academics, cultural and athletic performers, and others, which tend to animate their support for Western-oriented political, economic, and cultural institutional practices (Roelofs 2003).

Analogies with EuroMaidan and steps of color revolution that were already replicated

The first to realize this deep, step-by-step analogy of the blueprint of this color revolution and EuroMaidan were social sites that were active in analyzing EuroMaidan. Here are some interesting early comments from marknesop.wordpress.com

Fern, September 30, 2014 at 5:17 am
...There’s a never-ending, never-satiated appetite in the West for articles like the one by Lilia Shevtsova you deconstruct so well. It’s a real cottage industry and one that probably pays quite well. These screeds are always fact-free zones but are received as though handed down on tablets of stone from the mountain and quoted and re-quoted as unimpeachable sources. A comment on the appalling intellectual vacuousness of the West as much as anything else – it’s just supply and demand.

Today’s going to be interesting. The mandarins of the EU are meeting to ‘review’ the ceasefire in Ukraine – if they’re happy with it, they may lift some sanctions on Russia.

And, in other news, right on cue, HRW issues a statement calling on the Hong Kong authorities not to use force against the protestors there – a sure sign the latest colour revolution is up and running. Since CR@2 seem to involve far more violence than CR@1, so HK could be in for rocky times.

This has appeared on ‘Moon of Alabama’ but is worth repeating here – the National Endowment of Democracy’s 2012 funding of the very subject that’s now in the news.

National Democratic Institute for International Affairs - $460,000

To foster awareness regarding Hong Kong’s political institutions and constitutional reform process and to develop the capacity of citizens – particularly university students – to more effectively participate in the public debate on political reform, NDI will work with civil society organizations on parliamentary monitoring, a survey, and development of an Internet portal, allowing students and citizens to explore possible reforms leading to universal suffrage.

(Extract from NED’s 2102 Annual Report)

All a happy coincidence, no doubt.

marknesop , October 1, 2014 at 9:08 pm

Ummmm….who is the democratic freedomizer waiting in Hong Kong’s wings? To the best of my knowledge there is no Chinese Navalny. Who have the “peaceful protesters” got in mind if Leung resigns (which I very much doubt he will)?

China better not dick around with this, because you know what’s next if the street mobs don’t get it done. Cue the rooftop snipers.

Moscow Exile, October 1, 2014 at 10:32 pm

So it’s started!

Kerry has called on HK police to show restraint over the “pro-democracy” movement.

So I suppose they can start lobbing Molotov cocktails at them now, knowing that “the Americans are with us”, as they liked to chant in the Ukraine.

China is not pleased.

The Grauniad reports a report by a press agency, and a French one to boot:

Hong Kong protests: China warns US not to meddle in ‘internal affairs’

Moscow Exile, October 1, 2014 at 10:45 pm

And accusations in the comments of Putinbots metamorphosing into Chinabots are now already appearing.

Langleybots at work?

astabada , October 2, 2014 at 1:50 am

I think we’ll see two key differences vis-a-vis the Ukraine:

  1. The difference between a country thoroughly infiltrated by Western agents and one which is not
  2. The difference between a true leadership and an oligarchy of crooks.
yalensis, October 2, 2014 at 2:33 am

Expect to see mysterious “snipers” show up at some point, to stir the pot.

Moscow Exile, October 2, 2014 at 2:44 am

Nay, before that happens that old fart McCain has to fly in and say to them “America is with you!”

yalensis, October 2, 2014 at 3:29 am

A cia-bot named “jecoz” posts this inane comment:

Here we go another home-grown rebellion against a dictatorship and the leftist faithful blame America instead of supporting those who dare to defy an unelected tyrant. Message to china and her guardianista lackeys: the US has nothing to do with this. Just try to resist the temptation to bring in the tanks and run over people please.

Which is responded to by “JiminNH” (2 OCT 3:51 AM), with supporting links, regarding the ties of the Chinese dissidents with U.S. State Dept.

Are you so sure about your assertions? Did you actually inquire into the facts before making that definitive statement?

If so, you missed the following articles from April 2014 regarding two of the foremost protest leaders (Anson Chan and Marin Lee) meeting with US VP Joe Biden:

http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1466666/beijing-upset-after-martin-lee-and-anson-chan-meet-joe-biden-white

http://www.worldtribune.com/2014/04/14/china-gets-vulgar-white-house-meeting-hong-kong-pro-democracy-leaders/

You also missed this about Occupy Central leader Prof. Benny Tai and his several year relationship with the US State Dept’s National Endowment for Democracy and the National Democratic Institute: http://journal-neo.org/2014/10/01/hong-kong-s-occupy-central-is-us-backed-sedition/

(…)

In other words, this is CRC (“Colour Revolution Classic”) at its best, Gene Sharp style.

With Jen Psaki mewing about the lovely winsome students seeking democracy, etc.

The 18-year-old Chinese freshmen are admittedly a tad more winsome than grizzled old Ukrainian Nazis like Tahnybok; however, in the latter case, Psaki had to improvise and just toss in whatever debris she had in her scrap heap; whereas, the storyboard arc for the Chinese revolution seems to have been better plotted out over a longer period of time.

Jen, October 2, 2014 at 5:30 am

That bespectacled geeky student leader Joshua Wong and his Scholarism group are said to be receiving money from the US Consulate in HK and secret American donors. I’ve heard also that another of those Occupy Central leaders, Jimmy Lai, has met with Paul Wolfowitz in the past.

Analogy with EuroMaidan was also early on noted by commenters to Moon of Alabama first post on the subject -- The (NED Financed) Hong Kong Riots (Sep 29. 2014):

The alleged issue in question is the election of new Hong Kong chief executive in 2017. According to Hong Kong's basic law, which was implemented when Britain gave up its dictatorship over the colony, there will be universal suffrage - everyone will be allowed to vote - but the candidates for the position will have to go through some pre-screening by a commission. This is what China had promised and this is what the students, falsely claiming that China is backtracking from its promises, want to change.

brian | Oct 2, 2014 6:51:54 AM | 170

Andrew Korybko
1 hr ·

Gene Sharp's protégé, Jamila Raqib, coauthored an op-ed in Huffington Post advertising the fact that the 'Albert Einstein Institute's' destabilization tactics are being used in Hong Kong.

I've read every one of Sharp's major works and they are designed, even in his own words, to topple governments. He has written strategic guiding manuals on how to achieve this.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-shank/why-hong-kongs-occupycent_b_5906184.html

Hong Kong is not a protest, it is a Color Revolution. Well-intentioned individuals are being duped to join a movement aimed at overthrowing the authorities through a soft coup (for now), in a move that has never happened before in modern China. Legitimate grievances are being exploited by a revolutionary core and their cohorts to bring as many peaceful civilians into the fracas for use as human shields, in the hope that this will guarantee their own security amids the crackdown that some of them are trying to provoke.

My full analysis on this event will be forthcoming in the next couple of days on Oriental Review
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10104993491934055&id=12462833

brian | Oct 2, 2014 5:44:16 PM | 193

@188

very interesting, as is this comment left by someone

Do you remember the "please help us" video clip from Ukraine?

Here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgpELf-0X8E

And here you have another "please help us" video. This time from Hong-Kong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vvxlGUki7U

Did you notice any similarities? :)

also its 'open' societies that are more prone to penetration/infiltration by foreign powers

Demian | Oct 2, 2014 6:30:51 PM | 196

@brian #193:

Brilliant catch! The juxtaposition of those two videos tells you everything you need to know about the Hong Kong riots. That comment deserves to be front paged. (I still don't think that snipers will be used in Hong Kong, though.)

As is the case with ISIS, MoA is turning out to be my most useful source of information.

For the Euromaidan video, I used the Youtube comment translation feature for the first time: very nice. Since the vast majority of commenters are Polish, it comes as no surprise that most comments are very stupid.

... ... ...

Chronology

From 2014 Hong Kong protests - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

26 September[edit]

Aerial view of protesters on Lung Wui Road on the evening of 27 September

Having received a Notice of No Objection approving the assembly that day between 00:01 to 23:59, protesters proceeded to gather in Tim Mei Road in the forecourt at the eastern entrance of the Central Government Offices.[29] At around 22:30 on 26 September, up to 100 protesters led by Joshua Wong, the Convenor of Scholarism, went to "reclaim" the privatised Civic Square for the public by clambering over the fence of the square; they tried to tear down the metal barriers around the central flag podium.[30] The police force mobilised on Civic Square and started to physically carry away the protesters two hours afterwards.[31][32]

27 September[edit]

At 00:45 on 27 September, a large police force surrounded protesters at the centre of the Civic Square. At first, the police allowed protesters to leave voluntarily if they showed their personal identification documents. For those who refused to leave, each was carried away by at least four police officers. Protesters in the Square included secondary students and their parents, as well as representatives from student organisations. At 1:20am, the police applied pepper spray to the crowd near the Legislative Council, with some secondary students injured. From the evening of September until the following midnight, 13 people were arrested including Joshua Wong, who was detained for over 40 hours.[33] He was released after the High Court unconditionally approved his lawyers' writ of habeas corpus.[34][35]

At 1:30 pm, the police force carried out the second round of clearance during which 48 men and 13 women, aged between 17 and 58, were taken into custody for forcible entry into government premises and unlawful assembly.[36] A 27-year-old man was also arrested for possession of an offensive weapon. All the arrested were detained at the Police College in Wong Chuk Hang. The police spokesman declared the assembly outside the Central Government Complex at Tim Mei Avenue illegal, and advised citizens against participating in the assembly, passing by or getting close to that area. The arrested demonstrators, including Legislative Councillor Leung Kwok-hung and some HKFS members, were released around 9 pm. However, HKFS representatives Alex Chow Yong-kang and Lester Shum were detained for 30 hours.[37] The police later cleared the assembly, arresting a total of 78 people who ranged from 16 to 58 years of age.[38][39]

28 September[edit]

Protesters occupy Harcourt Road on 29 September

At 1:40am, Benny Tai, one of the initiators of the Occupy Central movement, announced the beginning of Occupy Central at a rally taking place the Central Government Complex at Tim Mei Avenue.[40][41] Occupy Central had been widely expected to start on 1 October, but was accelerated to capitalise on the mass student presence.[40] The Occupy Central movement similarly demanded the immediate withdrawal of the decision on political reform by the National People's Congress Standing Committee, and immediate public consultation on the issue.[42] Later that day it was reported that at least 34 people had been injured in that day's protests.[43]

Tear gas fired on protesters outside Government Headquarters

Later that morning, protests escalated as police blocked roads and bridges entering Tim Mei Avenue. Protest leaders called upon citizens to come to Admiralty to encircle the police force.[44] Tensions at the junction of Tim Mei Avenue and Harcourt Road kept rising after several jostles which ended up with the usage of pepper spray. As night fell, armed riot police advanced gradually from Wanchai toward Admiralty. As the police progressed towards Central and Sheung Wan, a police officer unfurled a black banner that stated "Warning, Tear Smoke". At that point, shots of tear gas were fired, and protesters hastily distributed masks and bottles of water amongst themselves.[45] The first few tear gas canisters were fired by armed riot police which were surrounded at around 6 pm.[46][47] Protesters retreated to Admiralty. The tear gas used against apparently unarmed and peaceful protesters was cited by the media as a trigger for anger and more citizens joining the protests.[48] Tens of thousands of citizens joined in the protest in reaction to the firing of tear gas and built up new strongholds in Causeway Bay and Mong Kok, two major commercial areas of Hong Kong.[49][50]

According to police spokesmen, officers exercised "maximum tolerance," and tear gas was used only after protesters refused to disperse and "violently charged".[51][52] The police confirmed that they had fired tear gas 87 times.[53] The media recalled that last time Hong Kong police had used tear gas was on Korean protesters during the 2005 World Trade Organization conference.[47][51]

29 September[edit]

With the closure of Admiralty Station and the use of tear gas, many citizens joined in the protests and went to other parts of the city, including Wan Chai, Causeway Bay, Mong Kok, and universities.[54] At dawn after the night of tear gas, the number of protesters that remained in the occupation area was more or less the same. Yet police had changed their strategy, easing their defence level; some police negotiation cadres were at the occupation areas to negotiate with protesters to urge them to leave. A police spokesperson announced that 89 protesters had been arrested. There were 41 casualties, including 12 police.[55]

On 29 September, Carrie Lam announced that the second round of public consultations on political reform, originally planned to be completed by the end of the year, would be postponed. Also, the annual National Day fireworks celebration on 1 October was announced to be cancelled.[56]

1 October[edit]

Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the Golden Bauhinia Square in Wan Chai

Joshua Wong and several Scholarism members attended the National Day flag raising ceremony at the Golden Bauhinia Square, having undertaken not to shout slogans or make any gestures during the flag raising. Instead, the students faced away from the flag to show their discontent. District councillor Paul Zimmerman opened a yellow umbrella in protest inside the reception after the ceremony.[57][58][59]

2 October[edit]

Volunteer-organized recycling station on Harcourt Road, Admiralty, inside the occupation zone

Activists lay siege to the Central Government Headquarters in Tim Mei Avenue. Over the end of the first week, protesters alleged that the police made use of ambulances and trucks to bring weapons, such as tear gas canisters, into the headquarters buildings.[60] Subsequently, protesters have demanded the right to inspect ambulances and vehicles delivering food and water passing through their barricades. This demand was conceded to by the police, with SCMP reporting there was only food and supplies on the trucks after the trucks were inspected by the protesters.[60]

Shortly before midnight, the Hong Kong Government responded to an ultimatum, to CY Leung, demanding universal suffrage with unfiltered rights of candidate nomination. Chief Secretary Carrie Lam was to hold talks with student leaders about political reform at an unspecified date.[61]

3 October[edit]

Police amidst a confrontation between opposing groups in Mong Kok

In the early morning, violence started to break out in Mong Kok, Kowloon and Causeway Bay, Hong Kong Island. Groups of anti-Occupy Central activists including triad members and locals punched and kicked protesters while tearing down their tents and barricades.[11][12][60][62] and locals whose day-to-day activities had been affected by the Occupy movement.[63] The group in Mong Kok also attacked reporters; and gave a student head injuries.[11][62][64] Occupiers accused the police of giving the attackers free rein by arresting them but releasing them shortly after. Occupiers said anti-Occupy groups were linked to the triads,[65] and one legislator accused the government of orchestrating triads to clear the protest sites.[12] It was also reported that triads, as proprietors of many businesses in Mong Kok, could have their own motivations to disperse the protesters.[50] Amnesty International condemned the police for "[failing] in their duty to protect protesters from attacks" and stating that women were attacked, threatened, and sexually assaulted while police watched and did nothing.[48] Commander Paul Edmiston of the police admitted officers had been working long hours and had received heavy criticism. Responding to accusations that police chose not to protect the protesters, he said: "No matter what we do, we’re criticized for doing too little or too much. We can't win."[51]

In the aftermath of the scuffle, police arrested 20 people. There were 18 people injured, including 6 police officers. Police confirmed that eight of the people they had arrested had triad backgrounds. All eight were released on bail.[12][66] As a response to the clash, student leaders of Hong Kong halted plans to hold talks with the government, citing CY Leung's "insincerity and stealth tactics" as the main reason.[67]

4 October[edit]

On 4 October 2014, counter-protesters wearing blue ribbons marched in support of the police and the tactics they employed, claiming they were not excessive.[60] Patrick Ko of the Voice of Loving Hong Kong group accused the protesters of having double standards, and said that if the police had enforced the law, protesters would have already been evicted.[68] Another anti-Occupy spokesperson Chan Ching-sum complained the continued occupation of roads was "destroy[ing] Hong Kong people's daily lives" and unrelated to democracy.[69] The anti-Occupy group Caring Hong Kong Power staged their own rally, in which they announced their support for the use of fire-arms by police, as well as the deployment of the People's Liberation Army.[70]

In the afternoon, Chief Executive CY Leung insisted that government operations and schools affected by Occupy Central must resume on Monday. Former Democratic Party lawmaker Cheung Man-Kwong claimed the occupy campaign was in a "very dangerous situation," and urged them to "sit down and talk, in order to avoid tragedy".[71] The Federation of Students demanded the government explain the previous night's events before continuing talks and that they would continue to occupy streets in different areas, including Mong Kok and Causeway Bay.[72] The Pan-Democratic camp held a press conference criticising the police response on the previous night, accusing it of being an orchestrated attack involving the triads. They also criticised the police presence as insufficient.[73] Secretary for Security Lai Tung-kwok denied accusations against the police, and explained the reason for not using tear gas was due to the difference in geographical environment. Police claimed that protesters' barricades had prevented reinforcements from arriving on the scene.[74]

Pan-democracy member of the Legislative Council James To said that "the government has used organised, orchestrated forces and even triad gangs in [an] attempt to disperse citizens."[12] Violent attacks on journalists were strongly condemned by The Foreign Correspondents' Club, the Hong Kong Journalists' Association and local broadcaster RTHK.[75] Three former US consuls general to HK, Richard Williams, Richard Boucher and Stephen M. Young, wrote a letter to the Chief Executive asking to solve the disputes peacefully.[76]

5 October[edit]

A barricade in Mong Kok

Leading establishment figures who had been sympathetic to the liberal cause, including University heads and politicians, appeared to urge in concert for the occupy movement to leave the street for their own safety.[77] The rumours of a planned operation by the police did not occur. Another group of 80 scholars released a statement later in the day urging the government to listen to the protesters' demands. Alex Chow Yong-kang, leader of the Federation of Students, rejected calls by the government for dialogue unless demands and the protesters' safety were met. Later in the night, he announced that the police had met this requirement, and talks continued throughout the night between the Federation and the government.

6 October[edit]

Conflict between Occupy and anti-Occupy groups continued on Sunday but was less than on previous days. Some protester groups disagreed on whether or not to un-occupy Lung Wo Road in Admiralty and the Mong Kok district.[78][79][80] On 6 October, Patrick Ko, politician and leader of Voice of Loving Hong Kong, said that it was "forgivable" for triads to attack protesters in Mongkok, since the occupation was disrupting triad business.[81]

7 October[edit]

Protest numbers dwindled after leaders met with government officials and agreed to meet for talks, beginning on 10 October, which would be limited in scope. Student protest leader Lester Shum said that protests would continue in the meantime until "practical measures [have] been forged between the government and the people."[82]

9 October[edit]

The government cancelled the meeting with student leaders that had been scheduled for 10 October.[83] The government's Chief Secretary for Administration, Carrie Lam, explained at a news conference that "We cannot accept the linking of illegal activities to whether or not to talk."[84]

Alex Chow, head of the Federation of Students, said "I feel like the government is saying that if there are fewer people on the streets, they can cancel the meeting. Students urge people who took part in the civil disobedience to go out on the streets again to occupy."[84] Pro-democracy legislators threatened to veto non-essential funding applications, potentially disrupting government operations, in support of the protesters.[85]

10 October[edit]

In defiance of police warnings, thousands of protesters, many bringing tents with them, returned to the streets.[85] Over a hundred tents were pitched across the eight-lane Harcourt Road thoroughfare in Admiralty, alongside dozens of food and first-aid marquees. The ranks of protesters continued to swell on the 11th.[86]

11 October[edit]

The student leaders issued an open letter to President Xi Jinping saying that CY Leung's report to NPCSC disregarded public opinion and failed to account faithfully for citizens' wishes.[87][88]

12 October[edit]

In an exclusive pre-recorded interview with the Chinese-language TVB show On the Record,[89] CY Leung said the occupy protest is not considered a revolution and declared that his resignation "would not solve anything".[90] Leung said the decision to use tear gas was made by the police, without any political considerations.[91] Several press organisations including the Hong Kong Journalists Association objected to the exclusion of other media, feeling that Leung owed the public full explanations since the start of the protests. They suggested Leung was deliberately avoiding questions about the issues surrounding the electoral framework.[92][93]

13 October[edit]

Police dismantle roadblocks on Queensway

At 5.30 am, police started an operation to remove unmanned barricades in Harcourt Road (Admiralty site) to "reduce the chance of traffic accidents".[87]

Within hours, hundreds of men, many wearing surgical masks and carrying crowbars and cutting tools, began removing barricades at various sites and attacked protesters. Police made attempts to separate the groups. Protesters reinforced some barricades using bamboo and concrete.[94][95][96] Protesters claimed that the attacks were organised and involved triad groups.[97]

Police made three arrests for assault and possession of weapons. Although police cautioned against reinforcing the existing obstacles or setting up new obstacles to enlarge the occupied area, occupiers reinstated the barriers overnight.[94] In the early morning of 14 October, police conducted a dawn raid to dismantle barricades in Yee Wo Street (Causeway Bay site), opening one lane to westbound traffic.[98] Police reclaimed Queensway, dismantled barricades and reopened it to traffic.[99]

14 October[edit]

Also on 13 October, anti-occupy protesters began to besiege the headquarters of Next Media, publisher of Apple Daily, accusing the paper of biased reporting of OC and obstructing its distribution.[100] Masked men among the protesters prevented the loading of copies of Apple Daily as well as The New York Times onto delivery vans. However, the delivery of Hong Kong Economic Journal, which is also printed at the works, was allowed.[101] Apple Daily sought a court injunction and a High Court judge issued a temporary order to prevent any blocking of the entrance saying this was important to the freedom of press.[102] Five press unions made a statement condemning the harassment of journalists by anti-occupy protesters.[103]

15 October[edit]

Protesters occupying Lung Wo Road in front of the Office of the Chief Executive. People's Liberation Army Hong Kong Garrison is just next to it

Before midnight, protesters stopped traffic on Lung Wo Road, the arterial road north of the Central Government Complex at Central, and began erecting barricades. The Hong Kong Police Force was unable to hold their cordon at Lung Wo Road Tunnel and had to retreat for reinforcement and organised redemption. Around 3 am, police began to clear the road using batons and pepper spray. By dawn, traffic on the road resumed and the protesters retreated into Tamar Park, while 45 arrests were made.

Footage from the local television channel TVB shows that during the operation, one protester, later identified as volunteer social worker and Civic Party member Ken Tsang, was carried into a secluded location with his hands tied behind his back, and then punched, kicked and stamped on repeatedly by about six police officers in rotation. The beating lasted for about four minutes.[104][105][106][107] The video clips have been transmitted internationally and provoked outrage; Amnesty International called for the prosecution of the police officers involved. Hong Kong's secretary for security, Lai Tung-kwok, announced that "the officers involved will be temporarily removed from their current duties."[104][105] Reporters at the scene said that journalists were treated no differently to protesters.[108] One reporter alleged that he was grabbed, kicked and punched by police officers, who ignored his protestations that he was a journalist.[109]

17 October[edit]

Police forcing the protesters back southwards on Nathan Road in the evening

At 5am, Police dismantled the barricades and tents at the Mong Kok site, including the main camp at the intersection of Nathan Road and Argyle Street, and opened the northbound side of Nathan Road to traffic for the first time in three weeks. The protesters were allowed to remain on the southbound side of the road. After work and school let out, at least 9000 protesters returned to Nathan Road to try to retake the northbound lanes, leading to clashes between protesters and police armed with riot gear. The police claims to have 15 police injuries and made at least 26 arrests, including veteran war photojournalist Paula Bronstein.[110] Around midnight, the police retreated and the protesters re-erected barricades on Nathan Road.[111][112]

18 October[edit]

Clashes resumed in Mong Kok as protesters donning hard hats and protective gear made of baby mats fought off police officers armed with batons. 20 injuries were reported.[113]

19 October[edit]

Demonstrators packed the streets in Mong Kok where there were repeated clashes. Democrat Martin Lee at the scene said "triad elements" in Mong Kok were trying to stir up violence to undermine the pro-democracy movement.[114] At night, two pro-democracy lawmakers, Fernando Cheung and Claudia Mo, appeared at Mong Kok to mediate between the protesters and the police, leading to a lowering of tensions as the police and protesters each stepped back and widened the buffer zone. No clashes were reported for the night.[115]

21 October[edit]

The government and the HKFS held a first round of talks on 21 October in a televised open debate. HKFS secretary-general Alex Chow Yong-kang, Vice secretary Lester Shum, general secretary Eason Chung (鍾 耀華), and standing members Nathan Law (羅冠聰) and Yvonne Leung (梁麗幗) met with the HK government representatives Chief secretary Carrie Lam, secretary of justice Rimsky Yuen, undersecretary Raymond Tam, office director Edward Yau and undersecretary Lau Kong-wah.

The discussion was moderated by Leonard Cheng (鄭國漢), the president of Lingnan University.[116][117][118][119]

Later version of Wikipedia page

2014 Hong Kong protests

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the protests in Hong Kong from 26 September 2014 to 15 December 2014. For the related political movement, see Umbrella Movement.

2014 Hong Kong protests
Umbrella Revolution in Admiralty Night View 20141010.jpg

The Admiralty protest site on the night of 10 October

Date 26 September 2014 – 15 December 2014
Location Hong Kong:
Causes Standing Committee of the National People's Congress decision on electoral reform regarding future Hong Kong Chief Executive and Legislative Council elections
Goals
Methods Occupations, sit-ins, civil disobedience, mobile street protests, internet activism, hunger strikes, Internet hacking
Result
  • No changes to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress decision on 2014 Hong Kong electoral reform
  • Suffragists launched mobile street protests in various areas
Concessions
given
  • The Hong Kong SAR government promises to submit a "New Occupy report" to the Chinese Central government[5]
Parties to the civil conflict
Umbrella Movement
Pro-democracy activists
Hacking groups
Authorities
Anti occupy movement
Triads[6]
Injuries and arrests
Injuries 470+ (as of 29 Nov)[7]
Arrested 955[8]
 

75 turned themselves in

Sites of significant protests
Sites of significant protests

Admiralty

Admiralty

Mong Kok

Mong Kok

Causeway Bay

Causeway Bay

Tsim Sha Tsui

Tsim Sha Tsui

Protests in Hong Kong began in September 2014, after the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPCSC) of the People's Republic of China announced its decision on proposed reforms to the Hong Kong electoral system. In its decision, the NPCSC said that civil nominations, whereby a candidate could run for election to the Hong Kong Legislative Council if he or she received signed endorsement of 1% of the registered voters, would be disallowed. The decision stated that a 1200-member nominating committee, the composition of which remains subject to a second round of consultation, would elect two to three electoral candidates with more than half of the votes before the general public could vote on them.[9]

Demonstrations began outside the Hong Kong Government headquarters, and members of what would eventually be called the Umbrella Movement occupied several major city intersections.[10] The Hong Kong Federation of Students and Scholarism began protesting outside the government headquarters on 22 September 2014 against the NPCSC's decision.[11] On the evening of 26 September, several hundred demonstrators led by Joshua Wong breached a security barrier and entered the forecourt of the Central Government Complex (nicknamed "Civic Square"), which was once a public space that has been barred from public entry since July 2014. Officers cordoned off protesters within the courtyard and restricted their movement overnight, eventually removing them by force the next day.[12][13]

On 28 September, the Occupy Central with Love and Peace movement announced that they would begin their civil disobedience campaign immediately.[14] Protesters blocked both east–west arterial routes in northern Hong Kong Island near Admiralty. Police tactics (including the use of tear gas) and attacks on protesters by opponents that included triad members, triggered more citizens to join the protests, occupying Causeway Bay and Mong Kok.[15][16][17] The number of protesters peaked at more than 100,000 at any given time.[18][19] In a poll conducted in December, up to 20% of the 1,011 surveyed responded that they have taken part in the protests.[20] The government called for an end to the protests by setting a 'deadline' of 6 October, but this was ignored by protesters, although they allowed government workers to enter offices that had previously been blocked.[21]

The state-run Chinese media claimed repeatedly that the West had played an "instigating" role in the protests, and that "more people in Hong Kong are supporting the anti-Occupy Central movement," and warned of "deaths and injuries and other grave consequences."[22] In an opinion poll carried out by Chinese University of Hong Kong, only 36.1% of 802 people surveyed between 8–15 October accept NPCSC's decision but 55.6% are willing to accept if HKSAR Government would democratise the nominating committee during the 2nd phase of public consultation period.[23]

On 23 October, the United Nations Human Rights Committee emphasised "the need to ensure universal suffrage, which means both the right to be elected as well as the right to vote."[24] China's Foreign Ministry responded that China's policy on Hong Kong's elections had "unshakable legal status and effect".[25]

 

Contents

Background

Main articles: Democratic development in Hong Kong and 2014 Hong Kong electoral reform

Political background

As a result of the negotiations and the 1984 agreement between China and Britain, the British colony Hong Kong was returned to the People's Republic of China and became its first Special Administrative Region on 1 July 1997, under the principle of "one country, two systems". Hong Kong has a different political system from mainland China. Hong Kong's independent judiciary functions under the common law framework.[26][27] The Hong Kong Basic Law, the constitutional document drafted by the Chinese side before the handover based on the terms enshrined in the Joint Declaration,[28] governs its political system, and stipulates that Hong Kong shall have a high degree of autonomy in all matters except foreign relations and military defence.[29] The declaration stipulates that the region maintain its capitalist economic system and guarantees the rights and freedoms of its people for at least 50 years after the 1997 handover. The guarantees over the territory's autonomy and the individual rights and freedoms are enshrined in the Hong Kong Basic Law, which outlines the system of governance of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, but which is subject to the interpretation of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPCSC).[30][31]

The leader of Hong Kong, the Chief Executive, is currently elected by a 1200-member Election Committee, though Article 45 of the Basic Law states that "the ultimate aim is the selection of the Chief Executive by universal suffrage upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee in accordance with democratic procedures."[32] A 2007 decision by the Standing Committee opened the possibility of selecting the Chief Executive via universal suffrage in the 2017 Chief Executive election,[33] and the first round of consultations to implement the needed electoral reforms ran for five months in early 2014. Chief Executive CY Leung then, per procedure, submitted a report to the Standing Committee inviting them to deliberate whether it is necessary to amend the method of selection of the Chief Executive.[34]

Standing Committee decision on electoral reform

On 31 August 2014, the tenth session of the Standing Committee in the twelfth National People's Congress set limits for the 2016 Legislative Council election and 2017 Chief Executive election. While notionally allowing for universal suffrage, the decision imposes the standard that "the Chief Executive shall be a person who loves the country and loves Hong Kong," and stipulates "the method for selecting the Chief Executive by universal suffrage must provide corresponding institutional safeguards for this purpose". The decision states that for the 2017 Chief Executive election, a nominating committee, mirroring the present 1200-member Election Committee be formed to nominate two to three candidates, each of whom must receive the support of more than half of the members of the nominating committee. After popular election of one of the nominated candidates, the Chief Executive-elect "will have to be appointed by the Central People's Government." The process of forming the 2016 Legislative Council would be unchanged, but following the new process for the election of the Chief Executive, a new system to elect the Legislative Council via universal suffrage would be developed with the approval of Beijing.[10]

The Standing Committee decision is set to be the basis for electoral reform crafted by the Legislative Council. Hundreds of suffragists gathered on the night of the Beijing announcement near the government offices to protest the decision.[35][36]

Events

At a gathering in Hong Kong on 1 September to explain the NPCSC decision, deputy secretary general Li Fei said that the procedure would protect the broad stability of Hong Kong now and in the future.[35] Pro-democracy advocates viewed the decision as a betrayal of the principle of "one person, one vote," in that candidates deemed unsuitable by the Beijing authorities would have been pre-emptively screened out by the mechanism.[35] About 100 suffragists attended the gathering, and some were ejected for heckling and protesting.[35] Police broke up a group of demonstrators protesting outside the hotel where Li was staying, arresting 19 people for illegal assembly.[37]

In response to the NPCSC decision, the Democratic Party legislators promised to veto the framework for both elections as being inherently undemocratic; Occupy Central with Love and Peace (OCLP) announced that it would organise civil disobedience protests.[35] The Hong Kong Federation of Students (representing tertiary students) and Scholarism mobilised students and staged a coordinated class boycott. They organised public rallies and street assemblies.[38][39] Tertiary students would commence a one-week boycott from 22 September. At the same time, Scholarism organised a demonstration outside of the Central Government Offices barricade on 13 September 2014 where they declared a class-boycott on 26 September.[40]

September 2014

Policemen surround the students protesting at Civic Square (27 September)

Having received a "notice of no objection" to the assembly on 26 September 2014 between 00:01 to 23:59, protesters gathered in Tim Mei Avenue near the eastern entrance of the Central Government Offices.[41] At around 22:30, up to 100 protesters led by Joshua Wong, the Convenor of Scholarism, went to "reclaim" the privatised Civic Square for the public by clambering over the fence of the square.[42] The police mobilised on Civic Square, surrounded protesters at the centre and prepared to physically remove the protesters overnight.[43][44] Protesters who chose to depart were allowed to do so; each of the remaining ones was carried away by four or more police officers. At 1:20am (of 27 September), the police used pepper spray on a crowd that had gathered near the Legislative Council, and some students were injured. By the following midnight, 13 people had been arrested including Joshua Wong, who was released after more than 40 hours upon being granted a writ of habeas corpus.[45]

At 1:30 pm, the police carried out the second round of clearances, and 48 men and 13 women were arrested for forcible entry into government premises and unlawful assembly.[46] A man was also arrested for possession of an offensive weapon. A police spokesman declared the assembly outside the Central Government Complex at Tim Mei Avenue illegal, and advised citizens to avoid the area. The arrested demonstrators, including Legislative Councillor Leung Kwok-hung and some HKFS members, were released around 9 pm. However, HKFS representatives Alex Chow and Lester Shum were detained for 30 hours.[47] The police eventually cleared the assembly, arresting a total of 78 people.[48][49]

File:Hong Kong Umbrella Revolution-HD.webmPlay media

Tear gas fired to disperse protesters outside government headquarters (28 September)

Occupy Central with Love and Peace had been expected to start their occupation on 1 October, but this was accelerated to capitalise on the mass student presence.[50] At 1:40am on 28 September, Benny Tai, one of the founders of OCLP, announced its commencement at a rally near the Central Government Complex.[50][51]

Later that morning, protests escalated as police blocked roads and bridges entering Tim Mei Avenue. Protest leaders urged citizens to come to Admiralty to encircle the police.[52] Tensions rose at the junction of Tim Mei Avenue and Harcourt Road after the police used pepper spray. As night fell, armed riot police advanced from Wan Chai towards Admiralty and unfurled a banner that stated "Warning, Tear Smoke". Seconds later, at around 6 pm, shots of tear gas were fired.[53][54][55] The heavy-handed policing, including the use of tear gas on peaceful protesters, inspired tens of thousands of citizens to join the protests in Admiralty that night.[56][57][58][17][59][60] Containment errors by the police – the closure of Tamar Park and Admiralty Station – caused a spill-over to other parts of the city, including Wan Chai, Causeway Bay and Mong Kok.[58][61][62] 3,000 protesters occupied a road in Mong Kok and 1,000 went to Causeway Bay.[59] The total number of protesters on the streets swelled to 80,000,[62] at times considerably exceeding 100,000.[18][19]

The police confirmed that they fired tear gas 87 times.[63] The media recalled that last time Hong Kong police had used tear gas was on Korean protesters during the 2005 World Trade Organization conference.[55][64] At least 34 people were injured in that day's protests.[65] According to police spokesmen, officers exercised "maximum tolerance," and tear gas was used only after protesters refused to disperse and "violently charged".[64][66] However, the SCMP reported that police were seen to charge the suffragists.[67]

On 29 September, police adopted a less aggressive approach, sometimes employing negotiators to urge protesters to leave. 89 protesters were arrested; there were 41 casualties, including 12 police.[17] Chief Secretary for Administration, Carrie Lam announced that the second round of public consultations on political reform, originally planned to be completed by the end of the year, would be postponed.[68]

October 2014

Joshua Wong and several Scholarism members attended the National Day flag raising ceremony on 1 October at the Golden Bauhinia Square, having undertaken not to shout slogans or make any gestures during the flag raising. Instead, the students faced away from the flag to show their discontent. District councillor Paul Zimmerman opened a yellow umbrella in protest inside the reception after the ceremony.[69][70][71] Protesters set up a short-lived fourth occupation site at a section of Canton Road in Tsim Sha Tsui.[72]

On 2 October, activists lay siege to the Central Government Headquarters.[58][73] Shortly before midnight, the Hong Kong Government responded to an ultimatum demanding universal suffrage with unscreened nominees: Carrie Lam agreed to hold talks with student leaders about political reform at an unspecified date.[74]

On 3 October, violence erupted in Mong Kok and Causeway Bay when groups of anti-Occupy Central activists including triad members and locals attacked suffragists while tearing down their tents and barricades.[15][16][75][76] A student suffered head injuries. Journalists were also attacked.[15][77][78] The Foreign Correspondents' Club accused the police of appearing to arrest alleged attackers but releasing them shortly after.[79] One legislator accused the government of orchestrating triads to clear the protest sites.[16] It was also reported that triads, as proprietors of many businesses in Mong Kok, had their own motivations to attack the protesters.[60] There were 20 arrests, and 18 people injured, including 6 police officers. Eight of the people arrested had triad backgrounds, but were released on bail.[16][80] Student leaders blamed the government for the attacks, and halted plans to hold talks with the government.[81]

On 4 October, counter-protesters wearing blue ribbons marched in support of the police.[82] Patrick Ko of the Voice of Loving Hong Kong group accused the suffragists of having double standards, and said that if the police had enforced the law, protesters would have already been evicted.[83] The anti-Occupy group Caring Hong Kong Power staged their own rally, at which they announced their support for the use of fire-arms by police and the deployment of the People's Liberation Army.[84]

In the afternoon, Chief Executive CY Leung insisted that government operations and schools affected by the occupation must resume on Monday. Former Democratic Party lawmaker Cheung Man-Kwong claimed the occupy campaign was in a "very dangerous situation," and urged them to "sit down and talk, in order to avoid tragedy".[85] The Federation of Students demanded the government explain the previous night's events and said they would continue their occupation of streets.[86] Secretary for Security Lai Tung-kwok denied accusations against the police, and explained that the reason for not using tear gas was due to the difference in geographical environment. Police claimed that protesters' barricades had prevented reinforcements from arriving on the scene.[87]

Pan-democracy legislator James To said that "the government has used organised, orchestrated forces and even triad gangs in [an] attempt to disperse citizens."[16][88] Violent attacks on journalists were strongly condemned by The Foreign Correspondents' Club, the Hong Kong Journalists' Association and local broadcaster RTHK.[89] Three former US consuls general to HK wrote a letter to the Chief Executive asking him to solve the disputes peacefully.[90]

On 5 October, leading establishment figures sympathetic to the liberal cause, including university heads and politicians, urged the suffragists to leave the streets for their own safety.[91] The rumoured clearance operation by the police did not occur.[21] At lunchtime the government offered to hold talks if the protesters cleared the roads. Later that night, the government agreed to guarantee the protesters' safety, and Alex Chow Yong-kang, leader of the Federation of Students (HKFS), announced that he had agreed to begin preparations for talks with Carrie Lam.[21]

On 9 October, the government cancelled the meeting with student leaders that had been scheduled for 10 October.[92] Carrie Lam, explained at a news conference that "We cannot accept the linking of illegal activities to whether or not to talk."[93] Alex Chow said "I feel like the government is saying that if there are fewer people on the streets, they can cancel the meeting. Students urge people who took part in the civil disobedience to go out on the streets again to occupy."[93] Pan-democrat legislators threatened to veto non-essential funding applications, potentially disrupting government operations, in support of the suffragists.[94]

On 10 October, in defiance of police warnings, thousands of protesters, many with tents, returned to the streets.[94] Over a hundred tents were pitched across the eight-lane Harcourt Road thoroughfare in Admiralty, alongside dozens of food and first-aid marquees. The ranks of protesters continued to swell on the 11th.[95]

On 11 October, the student leaders issued an open letter to Xi Jinping saying that CY Leung's report to NPCSC disregarded public opinion and ignored "Hong Kong people's genuine wishes."[96]

At 5.30 am on 12 October, police started an operation to remove unmanned barricades in Harcourt Road (Admiralty site) to "reduce the chance of traffic accidents".[96] In a pre-recorded TV interview[97] CY Leung declared that his resignation "would not solve anything".[98] He said the decision to use tear gas was made by the police without any political interference.[99] Several press organisations including the Hong Kong Journalists Association objected to the exclusion of other journalists, and said that Leung was deliberately avoiding questions about the issues surrounding the electoral framework.[100][101]

Police dismantle roadblocks on Queensway

On 13 October, hundreds of men, many wearing surgical masks and carrying crowbars and cutting tools, began removing barricades at various sites and attacking suffragists. Police made attempts to separate the groups. Suffragists repaired and reinforced some barricades using bamboo and concrete.[102][103][104] Protesters again claimed that the attacks were organised and involved triad groups.[105] Police made three arrests for assault and possession of weapons. Although police cautioned against reinforcing the existing obstacles or setting up new obstacles to enlarge the occupied area, suffragists later reinstated the barriers overnight.[102] Anti-occupy protesters began to besiege the headquarters of Next Media, publisher of Apple Daily. They accused the paper of biased reporting.[106] Masked men among the protesters prevented the loading of copies of Apple Daily as well as The New York Times onto delivery vans.[107] Apple Daily sought a court injunction and a High Court judge issued a temporary order to prevent any blocking of the entrance.[108] Five press unions made a statement condemning the harassment of journalists by anti-occupy protesters.[109]

In the early morning of 14 October, police conducted a dawn raid to dismantle barricades in Yee Wo Street (Causeway Bay site), opening one lane to westbound traffic.[110] They also dismantled barricades at Queensway, Admiralty, and reopened it to traffic.[111]

Before midnight on 15 October, protesters stopped traffic on Lung Wo Road, the arterial road north of the Central Government Complex at Admiralty, and began erecting barricades. The police was unable to hold their cordon at Lung Wo Road Tunnel and had to retreat for reinforcement and organised redemption. Around 3 am, police began to clear the road using batons and pepper spray. By dawn, traffic on the road resumed and the protesters retreated into Tamar Park, while 45 arrests were made.

Local television channel TVB broadcast footage of Civic Party member Ken Tsang being assaulted by police. He was carried off with his hands tied behind his back; then, while one officer kept watch, a group of about six officers punched, kicked and stamped on him for about four minutes.[112][113][114][115] Journalists complained that they too had been assaulted.[116][117] The video provoked outrage; Amnesty International joined others in calling for the officers to be prosecuted. In response, Secretary for security Lai Tung-kwok said that "the officers involved will be temporarily removed from their current duties."[112][113]

Police forcing the protesters back southwards on Nathan Road in the evening

At 5am on 17 October, police cleared the barricades and tents at the Mong Kok site and opened the northbound side of Nathan Road to traffic for the first time in three weeks. In the early evening, at least 9000 protesters tried to retake the northbound lanes of the road. The police claimed that 15 officers sustained injuries. There were at least 26 arrests, including photojournalist Paula Bronstein.[118] Around midnight, the police retreated and the suffragists re-erected barricades across the road.[119][120]

On Sunday, 19 October, police used pepper spray and riot gear to contain the protesters in Mong Kok. Martin Lee, who was at the scene, said that "triad elements" had initiated scuffles with police "for reasons best known to themselves".[121] The police had arrested 37 protesters that weekend; the government said that nearly 70 people had been injured. At night, two pro-democracy lawmakers, Fernando Cheung and Claudia Mo, appeared at Mong Kok to mediate between the suffragists and the police, leading to a lowering of tensions as the police and suffragists each stepped back and widened the buffer zone. No clashes were reported for the night.[122]

On 20 October, a taxi drivers' union and the owner of CITIC Tower were granted a court injunction against the occupiers of sections of several roads.[123] In his first interview to international journalists since the start of the protests, CY Leung said that Hong Kong had been "lucky" that Beijing had not yet intervened in the protests, and repeated Chinese claims that "foreign forces" were involved.[124] He defended Beijing's stance on screening candidates. He said that open elections would result in pressure on candidates to create a welfare state, arguing that "If it's entirely a numbers game – numeric representation – then obviously you'd be talking to half the people in Hong Kong [that] earn less than US$1,800 a month [the median wage in HK]. You would end up with that kind of politics and policies."[125][126] A SCMP comment by columnist Alex Lo said of this interview: "Leung has set the gold standard on how not to do a media interview for generations of politicians to come."[127]

On 21 October, the government and the HKFS held the first round of talks in a televised open debate. HKFS secretary-general Alex Chow, vice secretary Lester Shum, general secretary Eason Chung, and standing members Nathan Law and Yvonne Leung met with HK government representatives Chief secretary Carrie Lam, secretary of justice Rimsky Yuen, undersecretary Raymond Tam, office director Edward Yau and undersecretary Lau Kong-wah. The discussion was moderated by Leonard Cheng, the president of Lingnan University.[128][129][130][131] During the talks, government representatives suggested the possibility of writing a new report on the students' concerns to supplement the government's last report on political reform to Beijing, but stressed that students' proposal of civil nomination falls outside of the framework imposed by the Basic Law and the NPCSC decision, which cannot be retracted.[132] The government described the talks as "candid and meaningful" in a press release, while the students expressed their disappointment at the lack of concrete results.[133]

On 22 October about 200 demonstrators marched to Government House, the official residence of the Chief Executive, in protest at his statement to journalists on 20 October about the need to deny political rights to the poor in Hong Kong.[134] At Mong Kok, members of the Taxi Drivers and Operators Association and a coalition of truck drivers attempted to enforce the court injunction granted two days earlier to remove barricades and clear the street. They were accompanied by their lawyer, who read out the court order to the demonstrators. Fist fights broke out during the afternoon and evening.[135]

A yellow banner which read "I want true universal suffrage" was hung on Lion Rock.

On 23 October, a massive yellow banner which read "I want true universal suffrage" was hung on the Lion Rock, the iconic hill that overlooks the Kowloon Peninsula.[136] The location was chosen because Lion Rock represents Hong Kong's special identity[136][137] and is in contrast to Victoria Peak, which represents the elite.[138] The banner was removed the following day.[139]

On 25 October, a group of anti-Occupy supporters wearing blue ribbons gathered at Tsim Sha Tsui to show their support of the police. Four journalists from RTHK and TVB tried to interview them and were attacked.[140] The police had to escort the journalists out.[140] A female reporter for RTHK, a male reporter and two photographers for TVB were taken to hospital.[141] A group of about 10 men wearing face masks attacked suffragists in Mong Kok.[142] Six people were arrested for common assault.[142] Alex Chow Yong-kang said that citizens deserved a chance to express their views over the constitutional reform proposal and the National People's Congress Standing Committee's decision of 31 August. He said that the protest would only end if the government offers a detailed timeline or roadmap to allow universal suffrage and withdrawal of the standing committee decision.[143][144]

On 28 October, the HKFS issued an open letter to the Chief Secretary Carrie Lam asking for a second round of talks. HKFS set out a prerequisite for the negotiation, that the government's report to the Chinese government must include a call for the retraction of the NPCSC's decision. The HKFS demanded direct talks with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang should the Hong Kong Government feel it cannot fulfil this and other terms.[145] The 30th day since the police fired tear gas was marked at 5.57 pm exactly, with 87 seconds of silence, one for each tear gas canister that was fired.[146]

On 29 October, after James Tien of the pro-Beijing Liberal Party urged Leung to consider resigning in a public interview on 24 October,[147] the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference Standing Committee convened to discuss Tien's removal from the body as a move to whip the pro-establishment camp into supporting Leung and the country.[148] Tien, a long-time critic of Leung, said that Leung's position was no longer tenable as Hong Kong people no longer trusted his administration, and that his hanging onto office would only exacerbate the divisions in society.[149] Tien stepped down from his position as the leader of the Liberal Party after the removal.[150] Lester Shum refused bail extension based on conditions imposed after his arrest on 26 September, and was released unconditionally by police.[151] That day was also the day of the Umbrella Ultra Marathon event.

November 2014

A police cordon during the clearance of Mong Kok site, with yellow towers from which liquified tear gas was sprayed on protesters.

The anti-Occupy group Alliance for Peace and Democracy had run a petition throughout the end of October to the start of November, and at the end of their campaign claimed to have collected over 1.8 million signatures demanding the return of streets occupied by the protesters and restoration of law and order. The group's previous signature collection has been criticised as "lack of credibility" by its opponents.[152][153]

The High Court extended injunctions on 10 November that had been granted to taxi, mini-bus and bus operators authorising the clearance of protest sites. On the following day, Carrie Lam told reporters that there would be no further dialogue with protesters. She warned that "the police will give full assistance, including making arrests where necessary" in the clearance of the sites, and advised the protesters to leave "voluntarily and peacefully".[154] However, the granting of the court order and the conditions attached to the execution attracted controversy as some lawyers and a top judge questioned why the order was granted based on an ex parte hearing, the urgency of the matter, and the use of the police when the order was for a civil complaint.[155]

On 10 November, around 1,000 pro-democracy demonstrators, many wearing yellow ribbons and carrying yellow umbrellas, marched to the PRC Liaison Office in Sai Wan to protest the arrests of people expressing support for the protest.[156] The marchers included Alex Chow, who announced that the Federation of Students were writing to the 35 local delegates to the National People's Congress to enlist their help in setting up talks with Beijing.[157] On 30 October Chow and other student leaders had announced that they were considering plans to take their protest to the APEC summit to be held in Beijing on 10 and 11 November.[158] As observers had predicted, the student delegation led by Chow was prevented from travelling to China when they attempted to leave on 15 November.[159] Airline officials informed them that mainland authorities had revoked their Home Return Permits, effectively banning them from boarding the flight to speak to government officials in Beijing.[160]

On 12 November, media tycoon Jimmy Lai was the target of an offal attack at the Admiralty site by three men, who were detained by volunteer marshalls for the protest site.[161][162] Both the attackers and the two site marshalls who restrained them were arrested by the police, which led to condemnation by the pan-democracy camp, who organised an unauthorised protest march the next day. The two marshalls from the protest site were later released on bail.[163]

On the morning of 18 November, suffragists pre-emptively moved their tents and other affairs that were blocking access to Citic Tower, which was subject to a court injunction, avoiding confrontation with bailiffs and the police over the removal of barricades.[164]

In the early hours of 19 November, protesters broke into a side-entrance to the Legislative Council Complex, breaking glass panels with concrete tiles and metal barricades.[165] Legislator Fernando Cheung and other suffragists tried to stop the radical activists, but were pushed aside.[165][166] The break-in, which according to The Standard was instigated by Civic Passion,[167] was criticised by the three main activist groups of the protests, and legislators from both the pan-democracy and pro-Beijing camps.[165][166] Three police were injured and six men were arrested for criminal damage and assault.[166]

On 21 November, up to 100 people gathered outside the British consulate accusing the former colonial power of failing to pressure China to grant free elections in the city and protect freedoms guaranteed in the Sino-British Joint Declaration.[168]

Amidst declining support for the occupation, bailiffs and police cleared the tents and barriers in the most volatile of the three Occupy sites, Mong Kok, on 25 and early 26 November. Suffragists poured into Mong Kok after the first day's clearance, and there was a stand-off between protesters and police the next day. Scuffles were reported, and pepper spray was used. Police detained 116 people during the clearance, including student leaders Joshua Wong and Lester Shum.[169] Joshua Wong, Lester Shum and some 30 of those arrested were bailed but subject to an exclusion zone centred around Mong Kok Station.[170][171] Mong Kok remained the centre of focus for several days after the clearance of the occupied area when members of the public angry about heavy-handed policing.[172][173] Fearing re-occupation, in excess of 4,000 police were deployed to the area.[172][173] Large crowds, ostensibly heeding a call from C. Y. Leung to return to the shops affected by the occupation, have appeared nightly in and around Sai Yeung Choi Street South (close to the former occupied site); hundreds of armed riot police charged demonstrators with shields, pepper spraying and wrestling a string of them to the ground. Protesters intent on "shopping" remained until dawn.[172][173]

December 2014

On the morning of 1 December, there were the most vigorous clashes between police and protesters in Admiralty after the Federation of Students and Scholarism called upon the crowd to surround the Central Government Offices. The police used a hose to splash protesters for the first time. The entrance to the Admiralty Centre has also been blocked. Most of the violence occurred near Admiralty MTR station.[174] Also, Joshua Wong and two other Scholarism members started an indefinite hunger strike.[175]

On 3 December, the OCLP trio, along with 62 others including lawmaker Wu Chi-wai and Cardinal Joseph Zen, turned themselves in to the police, bearing the legal consequences of civil disobedience. However, they were set free without being arrested or charged.[176] They also urged occupiers to leave and transform the movement into a community campaign, citing concerns for their satety amidst the police's escalation of force in recent crackdowns.[177] Nonetheless, HKFS and Scholarism both continued the occupation. Nightly shopping tours continued in Mong Kok for over a week after the clearance of the occupation site, tying up some 2500 police officers;[178] the minibus company that took out the Mong Kok injunction was in turn accused of having illegally occupying Tung Choi Street for years.[179]

On the morning of 11 December, many protesters had left the Admiralty site before crews of the bus company that had applied for the Admiralty injunction dismantled roadblocks without resistance. Afterwards, the police set a deadline for protesters to leave the occupied areas and cordoned off the zone.[180] 209 protesters declined to leave and were arrested,[181][182][183] including several pan-democratic legislators and members of HKFS and Scholarism.[184] Meanwhile, the police set the bridge access to Citic Tower and Central Government Office only allowing media to access. The Independent Police Complaints Council was present to monitor the area for any "excessive use of force" along with fifty professors[185]

On 15 December, police cleared protesters and their camps at Causeway Bay with essentially no resistance, bringing the protests to an end.[186][187]

Triad involvement and protester recruitment allegations

Anti-Occupy protesters in Causeway Bay, 12 October

The BBC showed video footage from a Hong Kong TV network which appeared to show 'anti-Occupy protesters' being hired and transported to an Occupy protest site. The 'protesters', many of whom were initially unaware of what they were being paid to do, were secretly filmed on the bus being handed money by the organiser. Anonymous police sources informed the BBC Newsnight investigation that "back-up was strangely unforthcoming" to scenes of violence. The South China Morning Post also reported claims that people from poor districts were being offered up to HK$800 per day, via WhatsApp messaging, to participate in anti-Occupy riots.[57][188]

The HK police has stated that up to 200 gangsters from two major triads may have infiltrated the camps of Occupy Central supporters, although their exact motives are as yet unknown. A police officer explained the police could not arrest the triad gangsters there "if they do nothing more than singing songs for democracy".[189] A 2013 editorial in the Taipei Times of Taiwan described the pro-Beijing "grass-roots" organisations in Hong Kong: "Since Leung has been in office, three organizations – Voice of Loving Hong Kong, Caring Hong Kong Power and the Hong Kong Youth Care Association – have appeared on the scene and have been playing the role of Leung's hired "thugs", using Cultural Revolution-style language and methods to oppose Hong Kong's pan-democratic parties and groups."[190] Both Apple Daily and the Taiwan Central News Agency, as well as some pan-democrat legislators in Hong Kong, have named the Ministry of State Security and Ministry of Public Security as being responsible for the attacks.[191][192][193]

Legislative Council member James To alleged that "The police is happy to let the triad elements to threaten the students, at least for several hours, to see whether they would disperse or not." He added, "Someone, with political motive, is utilising the triad to clear the crowd, so as to help the government to advance their cause."[194] Amnesty International condemned the police for "[failing] in their duty to protect protesters from attacks" and stating that women were attacked, threatened, and sexually assaulted while police watched and did nothing.[57] Commander Paul Edmiston of the police admitted officers had been working long hours and had received heavy criticism. Responding to accusations that police chose not to protect the protesters, he said: "No matter what we do, we're criticized for doing too little or too much. We can't win."[64] An analysis in Harbour Times suggested that businesses that pay protection money to Triads in the neighbourhood stood to be affected by an occupation.[58] The journal criticised police response as being at first disorganised and slow onto the scene, but observed that its handling was within operating norms in triad-heavy neighbourhoods although it was affected by low levels of mutual trust, suspicion.[58]

Impact

Effects on business and transport

Traffic being diverted off Connaught Road in Central on 30 September

Surface traffic between Central and Admiralty, Causeway Bay, as well as in Mong Kok, was seriously affected by the blockades, with traffic jams stretching for miles on Hong Kong Island and across Victoria Harbour.[195][196] Major tailbacks were reported on Queensway, Gloucester Road and Connaught Road, which are feeder roads to the blockaded route in Admiralty.[50] Whilst in excess of 100 bus or tram routes have been suspended or re-routed,[197] queues for underground trains in the Admiralty district stretched out onto the street at times.[195] The MTR, the city's underground transport operator, has been a beneficiary.[198] The number of passenger trips recorded on two of its lines has increased by 20 percent.[199] Others have opted to walk instead of driving.[200] Taxi drivers have reported a fall in income as they have had to advise passengers to use the MTR when faced with jams, diversions or bloackaded roads.[201] Hong Kong Taxi Owners' Association claimed its members' incomes had declined by 30 percent since the protests started.[202] Levels of PM2.5 particulate matter at the three sites descended to within the recommended safety levels of the World Health Organization.[203][204] An editorial in the South China Morning Post noted that, on 29 September, the air quality in all three of the occupied areas had markedly improved. The health risk posed by airborne pollutants was "low" – it is usually "high" – and there was a steep fall in the concentration of NO2. It said: "without a policy shift, after the demonstrations have ended, we will have to rely on our memories of the protest days for what clean vehicles on our roads mean for air quality".[205]

Nursery, primary and secondary schools within the Central and Western catchment areas were suspended from 29 September onwards. Classes for 25,000 primary students and 30,000 secondary students resumed on 7 October.[206][207][208] Kindergartens and nursery schools resumed operations on 9 October, adding to the traffic burden.[198] The Hong Kong Retail Management Association reported that chain stores takings declined between 30 and 45 percent during the period 1–5 October in Admiralty, Central and Causeway Bay.[209] The media reported that some shops and banks in the protest areas were shuttered.[197]

According to the World Bank, the protests were damaging Hong Kong's economy while China remained largely unaffected.[195] Although the Hang Seng Index fell by 2.59% during the "Golden Week", it recovered and trading volume rose considerably.[210] Shanghai Daily published on 4 October estimated that the protests had cost Hong Kong HK$40 billion ($5.2 billion), with tourism and retail reportedly being hardest hit. However, tourist numbers for the "Golden Week" (beginning 1 October) were 4.83% higher than the previous year, according to the Hong Kong Tourism Board. While substantial losses by retailer were predicted, some stores reported a marked increase in sales.[210] Triad gangs, which had reportedly suffered a 40% decline in revenues, were implicated in the attacks in Mong Kok, where some of the worst violence had occurred.[80][94][211][212][213] Economic effects seemed either to be extremely localised or transient, and in any event much less than the dire predictions of business lobbies. One of the hardest hit may have been the Hong Kong Tramways Company, which reported a decline in revenues of US$1 million.[214][215] An economist said that the future stability will depend on political governance, namely if political issues such as income gaps and political reforms will be addressed.[212]

Effects on Hong Kong society

The protests are causing strong differences of opinion in Hong Kong society, with a "yellow (pro-occupy) vs. blue (anti-occupy)" war being fought, and unfriending on social media, such as Facebook.[216] The media have reported conflict within peer groups over values or what positions may be orthodox, and rifts have formed between mentor–mentees over the extent to which the movement should go. Parents have rowed with their children over their attending protests.[217] Hong Kong people who oppose the Occupy protests do so for a number of different reasons. A significant part of the population, refugees from Communist China in the 1950s and 1960s, lived through the turmoil of the Hong Kong 1967 Leftist riots. Others feel that the protesters are too idealistic, and fear upsetting the PRC leadership and the possibility of another repeat of the crackdown that ended the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.[218] However, the overwhelming reason is that disruption to the lives of ordinary citizens caused by roads blocked, traffic jams, school closures, and financial loss to businesses (including in particular those run by the Triads in Mong Kok).[218] According to some reports, the police actions on the protesters has resulted in a breakdown of citizens' trust in the previously respected police force. The police deny accusations that they failed to act diligently.[57] The media have reported on individuals who have quit their jobs, or students abroad who have rushed home to become a part of history, and one protester saw this as "the best and last opportunity for Hong Kong people's voices to be heard, as Beijing's influence grows increasingly stronger".[60] Police officers have been working 18-hour shifts to the detriment of their family lives.[219] Front line police officers, in addition to working long hours, being attacked and abused on the streets, are under unprecedented stress at home. Psychologists working with police officers in the field report that some feel humiliated as they may have been unfriended on Facebook, and family may blame them for their perceived roles in suppressing the protests.[220][221][222]

In an opinion poll of Hong Kong citizens carried out since 4 October by Hong Kong Polytechnic University, 59% of the 850 people surveyed supported the protesters in their refusal to accept the government plan for the 2017 election. 29% of those questioned, the largest proportion, blamed the violence that had occurred during the demonstrations on the chief executive CY Leung.[219]

Local media coverage

See also: Media of Hong Kong

The media stage at the Admiralty occupy site

Many of Hong Kong's media outlets are owned by local tycoons who have significant business ties in the mainland, so they all adopt self-censorship at some level and have mostly maintained a conservative editorial line in their coverage of the protests.[223] Next Media, being Hong Kong's only openly pro-democracy media conglomerate, has been the target of blockades by anti-Occupy protesters, cyberattacks, and hijacks of their delivery trucks. The uneven spread of viewpoints on traditional media has turned young people to social media for news, which The Guardian has described as making the protests "the best-documented social movement in history, with even its quieter moments generating a maelstrom of status updates, shares and likes."[224] People at protest sites now rely on alternative media whose launches were propelled by the protests, also called "umbrella revolution", or actively covered news from a perspective not found in traditional journals. Even the recently defunct House News resurrected itself, reformatted as The House News Bloggers. Radical viewpoints are catered for at Hong Kong Peanut, and Passion Times – run by Civic Passion.[223]

The prominent local station, TVB, originally broadcast footage of police officers beating a protester on 15 October, but the station experienced internal conflict during the broadcast.[225] The pre-dawn broadcasts soundtrack mentioning "punching and kicking" was re-recorded to say that the officers were "suspected of using excessive force".[226] Secret audio recordings from an internal meeting were uploaded onto YouTube that included the voice of TVB director Keith Yuen Chi-wai asking "On what grounds can we say officers dragged him to a dark corner, and punched and kicked him?"[226] The protester was later named as Civic Party member Ken Tsang, who was also a member of the Election Committee that returned CY Leung as the city's Chief Executive.[225] About 57 journalists expressed their dissatisfaction with the handling of the broadcast. A petition by TVB staff to management protesting the handling of the event was signed by news staff.[225] The list grew to 80+ people including employees from sports, economics and other departments.[227]

Internet security firm CloudFlare said that, like for the attacks on PopVote sponsored by OCLP earlier in the year, the volume of junk traffic aimed at paralysing Apple Daily servers was an unprecedented 500Gbit/s and involved at least five botnets. Servers were bombarded with in excess of 250 million DNS requests per second, equivalent to the average volume of DNS requests for the entire Internet. And where the attacks do not succeed directly, they have caused some internet service providers to pre-emptively block such sites under attack to protect their own servers and lines.[228]

Chinese government and media

Beijing is generally reported as being concerned about similar popular demands for political reform on the mainland that would erode the Communist Party's hold on power.[35] Reuters sources revealed that the decision to offer no concessions was made at a meeting of the National Security Commission of the Communist Party of China chaired by General secretary Xi Jinping in the first week of October. "[We] move back one step and the dam will burst," a source was reported as saying, referring to mainland provinces such as Xinjiang and Tibet making similar demands for democratic elections.[229][230] The New York Times China correspondents say that the strategy for dealing with the crisis in Hong Kong was being planned under supervision from the top-tier national leadership, which was being briefed on a daily basis. According to the report, Hong Kong officials are in meetings behind the scenes with mainland officials in neighbouring Shenzhen, at a resort owned by the central government liaison office.[231] The HKFS, which had been hoping to send a delegation to meet with the leadership in Beijing, was rebuffed by Tung Chee-hwa, vice-chairman of the NPC, whom they asked to help set up the meetings.[232][233]

Xi Jinping stated his support for CY Leung on the 44th day of the occupation, saying the occupation was a "direct challenge not just to the SAR and its governance but also to Beijing". Xi also said that Leung's administration must govern to safeguard the rule of law and maintain social order.[234]

Censorship

On 28 September it emerged that Chinese government authorities had issued the following censorship directive: "All websites must immediately clear away information about Hong Kong students violently assaulting the government and about 'Occupy Central.' Promptly report any issues. Strictly manage interactive channels, and resolutely delete harmful information. This [directive] must be followed precisely."[235][236][237] Censors rapidly deleted messages internet posts with words such as "Hong Kong," "barricades", "Occupy Central" and "umbrella".[238][239] Sections of the CNN reporting from Hong Kong was also disrupted.[238] Most Chinese newspapers have not covered the protests except for editorials critical of the protests and devoid of any context,[238][240] or articles mentioning the negative impact of the occupation.[241] The Chinese website of the BBC was completely blocked after a video showing the violent assault on a protester by police on 15 October hosted on the site went viral.[242] Amnesty International reported that dozens of Chinese people have been arrested for showing support for the protests.[243] Facebook and Twitter are already blocked on the mainland, and now as a result of the sharing of images of the protests, PRC censors have now blocked Instagram.[239][244] However, Reuters noted that searches for "Umbrella Revolution" up to 30 September escaped censors on Sina Weibo but not on Tencent Weibo.[245]

Allegations of foreign interference

Mainland Chinese officials and media have repeatedly alleged that outside forces formented the protests. Li Fei, the first Chinese official to address Hong Kong about the NPCSC decision, accused democracy advocates of being tools for subversion by Western forces who were set at undermining the authority of the Communist Party. Li alleged that they were "sowing confusion" and "misleading society".[35] The People's Daily claimed that organisers of the Hong Kong protests learned their tactics from supporters of the Sunflower Student Movement in Taiwan, having first sought support from the United Kingdom and the United States.[246][247] Scholarism has been labelled as extremists and a pro-Beijing journal in Hong Kong alleged that Joshua Wong had been cultivated by "US forces".[248] In one of numerous editorials condemning the occupation, the People's Daily said "The US may enjoy the sweet taste of interfering in other countries' internal affairs, but on the issue of Hong Kong it stands little chance of overcoming the determination of the Chinese government to maintain stability and prosperity".[249] It alleged that the US National Endowment for Democracy was behind the protests, and that, "according to media reports," a director of the organisation had met with protest leaders.[250] On 15 October, an unnamed Chinese government official stated that "interference certainly exists", citing "the statements and the rhetoric and the behaviour of the outside forces of political figures, of some parliamentarians and individual media".[251] In a televised interview on 19 October, Chief Executive CY Leung repeated Chinese claims about foreign responsibility for the protests, but declined to give details.[249][252]

The US State Department has categorically rejected accusations of interference, calling the charges "an attempt to distract from...the people expressing their desire for universal suffrage."[253] The South China Morning Post characterised claims of foreign interference as "vastly exaggerated",[254] and longtime Hong Kong democracy advocate Martin Lee said such claims were a "'convenient excuse' for Beijing to cover its shame for not granting the territory true democracy as it once promised."[255]

The China Media Project of the University of Hong Kong noted that the phrase "hostile forces" (敌对 势力) – a hardline Stalinist term – has been frequently used in a conspiracy theory alleging foreign sources of instigation.[256] Apart from being used as a straightforward means to avoid blame, analysts said that Chinese claims of foreign involvement, which may be rooted in Marxist ideology, or simply in an authoritarian belief that "spontaneity is impossible", are "a pre-emptive strike making it very difficult for the American and British governments" to support the protests.[22][257]

Law and order

On 1 October, China News Service criticised the protesters for "bringing shame to the rule of law in Hong Kong";[258] the People's Daily said that the Beijing stance on Hong Kong's elections is "unshakeable" and legally valid. Stating that the illegal occupation was hurting Hong Kong, it warned of "unimaginable consequences"[259] Some observers remarked that the editorial was similar to the April 26 Editorial that foreshadowed the suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.[260][261] A state television editorial urged authorities to "deploy police enforcement decisively" and "restore the social order in Hong Kong as soon as possible," and again warned of "unimaginable consequences",[262] and a front page commentary in People's Daily on 3 October repeated that the protests "could lead to deaths and injuries and other grave consequences."[15][263]

By 6 October, official Chinese media outlets called for "all the people to create an anti-Occupy Central atmosphere in the society". The protesters were described as "going against the principle of democracy". A commentary in the China Review News claimed that "the US is now hesitant in its support for the Occupy Central. If those campaign organisers suddenly soften their approach, it will show that their American masters are giving out a different order."[264][265]

Chinese government officials have routinely affirmed the Chinese government's firm support for the chief executive and for the continued "necessary, reasonable and lawful" actions by the police against the illegal protests.[124][251][258]

Other pronouncements

While the Western press noticed the apparent silence of Hong Kong's richest businessmen since the occupation began,[266][267][268] Xinhua News Agency posted an English-language article in the morning of 25 October criticising the absence of condemnation of the occupation from the city's tycoons in response to the protest, but the article was deleted several hours later.[269][270] A replacement article that appeared that evening, in Chinese, stated how tycoons strongly condemned the protest, and quoted a number of them with pre-occupation soundbites reiterating how the occupation would damage Hong Kong's international reputation, disrupt social disorder and cause other harmful problems to society.[269]

Deputy director of China's National People's Congress Internal and Judicial Affairs Committee, Li Shenming, stated: "In today's China, engaging in an election system of one-man-one-vote is bound to quickly lead to turmoil, unrest and even a situation of civil war."[271] The mainland media also contested the protesters demands for democracy by blaming the colonial rulers, saying Britain "gave our Hong Kong compatriots not one single day of it", notwithstanding the fact that de-classified British diplomatic documents indicate that the lack of democracy since at least late 1950s was largely attributable to the refusal of the PRC to allow it.[272]

The Chinese authorities are rumoured to have blacklisted 47 entertainers from Hong Kong who had openly supported the suffragists, and the list made the rounds on social media.[273] Denise Ho, Chapman To and actor Anthony Wong, who are among the highest profile supporters of the movement, were strongly criticised by the official Xinhua News Agency.[274] In response to the possible ban from the Chinese market, Chow Yun-fat, was quoted as saying "I'll just make less, then". Reporting of Chow's riposte was subject to Mainland Chinese internet censors.[275]

Beijing refused to grant a visa to Richard Graham, British member of parliament who had said in a parliamentary debate on Hong Kong that Britain had a duty to uphold the principles of the Sino-British joint declaration. This resulted in the cancellation of a visit by a cross-party parliament group due to visit China, led by Peter Mandelson. Graham had also asserted that "Stability for nations is not, in our eyes, about maintaining the status quo regardless, but about reaching out for greater involvement with the people – in this case, of Hong Kong – allowing them a greater say in choosing their leaders and, above all, trusting in the people".[276]

Chinese dissent

In urging students to set aside their protest, Bao Tong, the former political secretary of CPC general secretary Zhao Ziyang, said he could not predict what the leadership would do.[277] He believed Zhao meant universal suffrage where everyone had the right to vote freely, and not this "special election with Chinese characteristics".[277][278] Bao said today's PRC leaders should respect the principle that HK citizens rule themselves, or Deng Xiaoping's promises to Hong Kong would have been fake.[277][278] Hu Jia co-authored an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, in which he wrote "China has the potential to become an even more relentless, aggressive dictatorship than Russia... Only a strong, unambiguous warning from the US will cause either of those countries to carefully consider the costs of new violent acts of repression. Hong Kong and Ukraine are calling for the rebirth of American global leadership for freedom and democracy.[279]

Amnesty International said that at least 37 mainland Chinese have been detained for supporting Hong Kong protesters in different ways: some posted pictures and messages online, others had been planning to travel to Hong Kong to join protesters. A poetry reading planned for 2 October in Beijing's Songzhuang art colony to support Hong Kong protesters was disrupted, and a total of eight people were detained. A further 60 people have been taken in for questioning by police.[280][281]

Domestic reactions

A double-decker bus in Mong Kok is used as a message board

Political

Former Chief Secretary Anson Chan expressed disappointment at Britain's silence on the matter and urged Britain to assert its legal and moral responsibility towards Hong Kong and not just think about trade opportunities. Chan dismissed China's accusation of foreign interference, saying: "Nobody from outside could possibly stir up this sort of depth of anger and frustration."[282] Former Legco president Rita Fan said "to support the movement, some protesters background have resources that are supported by foreign forces using young people for a cause. To pursue democracy that effects other people's livelihood is a form of democratic dictatorship."[283]

Director of Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor, Law Yuk-kai, was dissatisfied with the unnecessary violence by the police. He said students only broke into the Civic Square to sit-in peacefully with no intentions of destroying government premises.[284] He questioned the mobilisation of riot police while protesters staged no conflict. Also, the overuse of batons was underestimated by the police because the weapon could severely harm protesters.[284] Legislative Council Chairman Jasper Tsang Yok-sing has disagreed that the police were excessively violent, saying they would not misuse pepper spray.[285] and contrary to the claims of other pro-establishment members, Tsang sees little evidence of "foreign forces" at play.[286] Member of Legislative Council Albert Ho of Democratic Party said, "[Attack on protesters] was one of the tactics used by the communists in mainland China from time to time. They use triads or pro-government mobs to try to attack you so the government will not have to assume responsibility."[287]

Former Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa when urging the students to end the occupation, praised their "great sacrifice" in the pursuit of democracy, and said that "the rule of law and obeying the law form the cornerstone of democracy."[288]

On 29 October, chairman of the Financial Services Development Council and Executive Councillor, Laura Cha, created controversy for the government and for HSBC, of which she is a board member, when she said: "African-American slaves were liberated in 1861, but did not get voting rights until 107 years later. So why can't Hong Kong wait for a while?" An online petition called for her to apologise and withdraw her remarks. A spokesman for the Executive Council stated in an e-mail on 31 October that "She did not mean any disrespect and regrets that her comment has caused concerns".[18][289][290][291]

Business sector

The Federation of Hong Kong Industries, whose 3,000 manufacturer members are largely unaffected as manufacturing in Hong Kong has been largely de-localised to the mainland, oppose the protests, due to concerns for the effects on investor confidence.[270] While the business groups have expressed concern at the disruption caused to their members,[292][293] the city's wealthiest individuals have kept a relatively low-profile as they faced the dilemma of losing the patronage of CPC leadership while trying to avoid further escalation with overt condemnations of the movement.[270] On the 19th day, Li Ka-Shing recognised that students' voices had been noted by Beijing, and urged them to go home "to avoid any regret".[294] Li was, however, criticised by Xinhua for not being unambiguous in his opposition for the movement and his support for Leung.[270] Lui Che Woo, the second richest man in Asia, appeared to hold a more pro-Beijing stance by stating that "citizens should be thankful to the police".[295] Lui was opposed to "any activity that has a negative impact on the Hong Kong economy".[270]

International reactions

Main article: Reactions to the 2014 Hong Kong protests

United Nations

On 23 October, the UN Human Rights Committee, which monitors compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, urged China to allow free elections in Hong Kong.[296][297] The committee emphasised specifically that 'universal suffrage' includes the right to stand for office as well as the right to vote. Describing China's actions as "not satisfactory", the committee's chairman Konstantine Vardzelashvili announced that "The main concerns of Committee members were focused on the right to stand for elections without unreasonable restrictions."[24]

A spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry confirmed on the following day that the Covenant, signed by China in 1998, did apply to Hong Kong, but said that, nonetheless, "The covenant is not a measure for Hong Kong's political reform", and that China's policy on Hong Kong's elections had "unshakable legal status and effect". Reuters observed that "It was not immediately clear how, if the covenant applied to Hong Kong, it could have no bearing on its political reform."[25]

States

Leaders of countries, including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Taiwan, Vatican City, United Kingdom, and the United States, supported the protesters' right to protest and their cause of universal suffrage and urged restraint on all sides, with the notable exception of Russia, whose state media claimed that the protests were another West-sponsored colour revolution similar to the Euromaidan.[22][298][299] German president Joachim Gauck, celebrating the 24th anniversary of German reunification, praised the spirit of Hong Kong's suffragists to their own of 24 years ago who overcame their fear of their oppressors;[300] Chancellor Angela Merkel said freedom of speech should remain guaranteed by law in Hong Kong.[301]

British Prime Minister David Cameron expressed deep concern about clashes in Hong Kong and said that he felt an obligation to the former colony.[302][303] Cameron said on 15 October that Britain should stand up for the rights set out in the Anglo-Chinese agreement.[304] The Foreign Office called on Hong Kong to uphold residents' rights to demonstrate, and said that the best way to guarantee these rights is through transition to universal suffrage.[305][306] Former Hong Kong Governor and current Chancellor of the University of Oxford Chris Patten expressed support for the protests[307] and denounced the Iranian-style democratic model for the city.[308] Citing China's obligation to Britain to adhere to the terms of Sino-British Joint Declaration,[309] he urged the British government to put greater pressure on the Chinese state, and to help China and Hong Kong find a solution to the impasse.[310] The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Patten should realise that "times have changed",[311] and that no party had the right to interfere in China's domestic affairs.[312]

British member of parliament and chairman of the Commons Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs, Richard Ottaway, denounced China's declaration that the committee would be refused permission to enter Hong Kong on their planned visit in late December as part of their inquiry into progress of the implementation of the Sino-British Joint Declaration. Ottaway sought confirmation from the China's deputy ambassador after receiving a letter from the central government that his group's visit "would be perceived to be siding with the protesters involved in Occupy Central and other illegal activities", and was told that the group would be turned back.[313]

In Taiwan, the situation in Hong Kong is closely monitored since China aims to reunify the island with a "one country, two systems" model similar to one that is used in Hong Kong.[314] President Ma Ying-jeou expressed concern for the developments in Hong Kong and its future,[315] and said the realisation of universal suffrage will be a win-win scenario for both Hong Kong and mainland China.[316] On 10 October, Taiwan's National Day, President Ma urged China to introduce constitutional democracy, saying "now that the 1.3 billion people on the mainland have become moderately wealthy, they will of course wish to enjoy greater democracy and rule of law. Such a desire has never been a monopoly of the west, but is the right of all humankind."[317] In response to Ma's comments, China's Taiwan Affairs Office said Beijing was "firmly opposed to remarks on China's political system and Hong Kong's political reforms .... Taiwan should refrain from commenting on the issue."[318]

Foreign media

The protests captured the attention of the world and gained extensive global media coverage.[319] Student leader Joshua Wong featured on the cover of Time magazine during the week of his 18th birthday,[320] and the movement was written about, also as a cover story, the following week.[321] While the local pan-democrats and the majority of the Western press supported the protesters' aspirations for universal suffrage,[319] Martin Jacques, writing for The Guardian, argued that the PRC had "overwhelmingly honoured its commitment to the principle of one country, two systems". He believed that the reason for the unrest is "the growing sense of dislocation among a section of Hong Kong's population" since 1997.[322] Tim Summers, in an op-ed for CNN, said that the protests were fuelled by dissatisfaction with the Hong Kong government, but the catalyst was the decision of the NPCSC. Criticising politicians' and the media's interpretation of the agreements and undertakings of the PRC, Summer said "all the Joint Declaration said is that the chief executive will be 'appointed by the central people's government on the basis of the results of elections or consultations to be held locally [in Hong Kong].' Britain's role as co-signatory of that agreement gives it no legal basis for complaint on this particular point, and the lack of democracy for the executive branch before 1997 leaves it little moral high ground either."[323]

Solidarity rallies worldwide

3,000–4,000 people gathered outside Chinese Embassy London to support the protests in Hong Kong on 1 October 2014

Rallies in support of the protests have occurred in over 64 cities worldwide, principally in front of Hong Kong trade missions or Chinese consulates.[324][325][326] The demonstration in front of the Chinese embassy in London attracted 3000 participants.[324] Petitions in Australia and to the White House urging support for the protests have collected more than 500 and 183,000 signatures respectively.[325] In Taipei, locals organised a solidarity protest, where participants were reported to have scuffled with Taiwanese police after crowding a Hong Kong trade office.[325] On 1 October, a gathering in Taipei's Liberty Square drew over 10,000 people in support of the protests.[327] At the East Asian Cup qualifying match against Hong Kong on 16 November, Taiwanese football fans waved yellow umbrellas in a show of support. While the Chinese national anthem played, spectators sang "Boundless Oceans, Vast Skies".[328] In Singapore, hundreds of people participated in a candlelight vigil at Hong Lim Park on 1 October to show support to the Occupy Central protesters.[329]

Aftermath

Once traffic resumed, roadside PM2.5 readings shot back up to levels in excess of WHO recommended safe levels of 25mcg/m2. According to the Clean Air Network, PM2.5 levels at Admiralty stood at 33mcg/m2, an increase of 83% since during the occupation; Causeway Bay measured 31mcg/m2, an increase of 55%, and Mong Kok's reading of 37mcg/m2 represents an increase of 42%.[203][204]

Chief Executive CY Leung said that protesters need to carefully consider what sort of democracy they are pursuing.[330] He welcomed the end of the occupation, saying: "Other than economic losses, I believe the greatest loss Hong Kong society has suffered is the damage to the rule of law by a small group of people... If we just talk about democracy without talking about the rule of law, it's not real democracy but a state of no government".[331] Leung saw his popularity ratings slump to a new low following the occupation protests, down to 39.7 percent, with a net of minus 37%. This was attributed to public perception of Leung's unwillingness to heal the wounds, and his unwarranted shifting of the blame for the wrongs in society onto opponents. Leung also claimed negative effects on the economy without providing evidence, and his assertions were contradicted by official figures.[332]

Commissioner of the Police Andy Tsang confirmed the unprecedented challenges to the police posed by the occupations, and that as at 15 December a total of 955 individuals had been arrested,[330][333] 221 activists had been hurt, and that 130 police officers had received light injuries.[333] At the same time, Tsang anticipated further arrests, pending a 3-month investigation into the occupation movement.[333] On, 19 December 2014, the eve of the 15th anniversary of Macau's handover, authorities in Macau banned journalists covering the arrival of Chinese president Xi Jinping from holding umbrellas in the rain.[334]

The Economic Journal predicts a rout as a result of growing alienation and disaffection with the system and with traditional politics. It criticised the means the government employed to deal with the problem, and said that: "[the SAR government's] legitimacy to govern has been deeply damaged. Officials may be made scapegoats for the mass protests, and the police may have forfeited much of their hard-earned reputation and sound relationship with citizens following charges of brutality and links with triads. The judiciary has also taken a beating after it issued injunctions against the occupation of roads in Mong Kok and Admiralty. This has left many people with the perception that it has colluded with the government and the checks and balances between the two powers are now gone. The government's ill-conceived plan to crack down hard on the protesters under the guise of assisting bailiffs sets a dangerous precedent."[335]

An editorial in The Wall Street Journal said that despite the establishment attempting to portray the occupy movement as a threat to Hong Kong, "it's clear that the real threat to Hong Kong comes from those who bend to Beijing's whims. China and its local proxies ... have mounted a violent march through the institutions that have sustained Hong Kong's stability and prosperity-independent courts, free press, honest law enforcement and more".[336] An editorial in the Washington Post predicted that "Political unrest is likely to become a chronic condition in a place that until now had mostly accepted the authority of the Communist regime since 1997... China's inflexible response to the democracy movement may yield exactly the results it wishes to avoid: an unmanageable political situation in Hong Kong and the spread of the demand for political freedom".[337]

A Guardian editorial wrote: "What China has done in Hong Kong will preserve control but deepen alienation... outside China, where it is seen as yet another indication that compromise and the Chinese communist party are strangers to each other, whether in dealing with non-Han minorities, in territorial issues with neighbours or in relations with other major states." It said that the one country, two systems formula "has been almost completely discredited by events in Hong Kong". It added that "The Chinese are prisoners of another narrative, in which China's rise is a phenomenon benefiting its neighbours as much as itself, in which opponents are seen as a tiny minority manipulated by hostile powers, and in which democracy is a flawed western concept that has no relevance for China".[338]

On Christmas Eve, 250 protesters marched from Southorn Playground to Civic Square. Around 7:00 p.m., 500 "shopping" (referred to as "gau wu" by participants) protesters with yellow banners and umbrellas, gathered in Shantung Street, then Argyle Street and Nathan Road. 10 men and 2 women were arrested with ages ranging from 13 to 76. In Causeway Bay, people hung a yellow banner on the Times Square clocktower. The banner was removed by the police. No arrests were made as the protesters were on private property. A group of students hung a banner on Lennon Wall.[339][340][341][342][343] About 30 people had been arrested.[344]

Protection orders for youth protesters

Police have applied for protection orders for two youths which were arrested during the protests. In Hong Kong, care and protection orders are typically only used in severe cases of juvenile delinquency.[345] These protection orders could mean that the parent can lose custody rights of the child and the child being sent to a children's home. These protection orders were seen as "white terror" deterrence for young people to be involved in protests or as police retribution by parts of the public.

The first incident of this kind occurred on 17 December when it was announced that the police were applying for a protection order for a 14-year-old male, who was one of those arrested during the clearance of Mong Kok. This protection order could result in termination of the parents' custody rights and the teenager facing a curfew, counselling or even being sent to a boys' home and removed from his parents.[346] On 13 January, the child protection order was cancelled by police after the Department of Justice announced that they had no interest in pressing charges against him for contempt of court.[345]

On 29 December, a 14-year-old female was arrested for drawing a flower onto the Lennon Wall on 23 December. Dubbed "Chalk Girl", the child was arrested on suspicion of criminal damage, but was not charged. Instead, police applied for a Child Protection Order, which a judge granted. The CPO resulted in her being sent to a girls' home after a magistrate "deemed it safer". She was taken away from her hearing-impaired father, and could not go to school. The police action created uproar, and resulted in several sympathy chalk-drawing protests at the children's home and at the government offices.[347][348] After Martin Lee successfully appealed her case to the High Court on 31 December, she was allowed to return home. Bail conditions stipulated that she must live with her father, continue her studies and be subject to a curfew from 10 PM to 6 AM, unless she is accompanied by her father, sister or a social worker. Her case was adjourned to 19 January.[349]


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[Jan 11, 2021] "We are all Taiwanese now" stunt is Pompeo's act of petty spite for getting outfoxed in the Hong Kong colour revolution play.

Jan 11, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

LittleWhiteCabbage , Jan 11 2021 15:19 utc | 128

@84:
As sometimes said: don't sweat the small stuff.
This "We are all Taiwanese now" stunt is Pompeo's act of petty spite for getting outfoxed in the Hong Kong colour revolution play.
Empire's useful idiots were let loose to trash the hapless city, fired up by the Western propaganda machinery.
Now Beijing is putting the stock on those pompous minions with the National Security Law, and their foreign masters can't do nuffin' except squeal human rights and apply some nuisance sanctions.
The West fails because it looks at China through ideological lenses and sees Communists, who can fall back on 5000 years of statecraft to push back at interlopers.
Beijing's moves can be likened to two classic strategies.
1. Zhuge Liang fools the enemy to fire all their arrows at straw men, which become ammunition against them.
2. The Empty City strategy. Invaders take over an ostensibly abandoned city, only to be trapped inside.
Global Times is cantankerous and sometimes risible, but even a broken clock is right, twice a day.
So when it says that crossing Beijing's red line on the Taiwan issue is not in the island's best interests, the incoming BiMala administration should take note.

[Aug 16, 2020] Greyzone did well with this expose of foreign meddling in Hong Kong

Aug 16, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

jayc , Aug 16 2020 17:30 utc | 28

Greyzone did well with this expose of foreign meddling in Hong Kong
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/08/08/hong-kong-western-media-yellowfacing-amnesty/

The NGO community has reacted angrily to the exposure, labelling Greyzone a Kremlin and Beijing linked disinfo site, even as the story was confirmed by South China Morning Post. The SCMP was then labelled "pro-communist". Facts are wholly partisan, since 2014.

[Aug 02, 2020] Six HK secessionists fled

Aug 02, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

JC , Aug 2 2020 21:03 utc | 48

Six HK secessionists fled, now wanted in HK. The countries they're hiding had earlier declared withdraw extradition treaties with HK. These six wanted persons and more as time progress believe they are safe wherever countries sheltering them. HK and China members of Interpol...

Let me share with MoA. I watch the old method regimes' changes. Many are uninformed, how the Singapore regime backed by Americunt wiped completely Singapore's oppositions. Do a search Tan Wah Piow and Operation Coldstore. The code name for a covert security operation carried out in Singapore on 2 February 1963. Led to the arrest of 113 people, who were detained without trial under the Preservation of Public Service Security Ordinance (PSSO). The oppositions were never members of Marxism nor commie or CPM (Communist Party of Malaya) more likely the forerunner of Socialism with Chinese Characteristic

The worlds longest detain prisoner was not Nelson Mandela but an unknown Singaporean Dr. Chia Thye Poh detained without trial by Lee Kuan Yew's regime for 32 years, longer than Nelson Mandela SA. Therefore the six secessionists need to rethink what life ahead. China isn't going anywhere and will continue to grow and servicing its citizen. Socialism with Chinese Characteristic.

Nathan Law Kwun-chung 26, living London
Wayne Chan Ka-ku, fled to the Netherlands
Honcques Laus UK to political asylum June. Germany fake reporter
Samuel Chu American citizen & have been for 25 years. Pastor son
Simon Cheng Man-kit (Zheng Wenjie) British consulate, 28, solicit prostitute in Shenzhen and arrested. fled to UK
Ray Wong Toi-yeung 15Sept 93 HEC Higher Education Certificate. Fled asylum Germany in 2018

[Jul 14, 2020] Hong Kong Correctional Services Department: Large number of young people are expected to go to jail in the future

Jul 14, 2020 | www.guancha.cn

the police have so far arrested a total of 9216 people, 1979 people have been or are being dealt with by the judicial process, of which 252 people have to bear the legal consequences. Mr Hu said there were many young people and many students among those arrested, and "we expect a large number of young people to enter the correctional facility in the foreseeable future." "

Mr Hu said the number of teenagers jailed two years after they were released from prison had fallen from 24.2 per cent in 2007 to 9.8 per cent in 2017...

Prisoners wave goodbye to family members Picture source: Hong Kong Report

According to Hong Kong's Wen Report, Hu Yingming ... criticized some people in the community for advocating the use of violence to solve problems and downplay the impact of imprisonment: "In my 30 years of working in the Correctional Services Department, I have never seen anyone with imprisonment as a life goal." Prison is not a paradise, it is not a place for the public to enhance or exercise, it will not add color to the page of life, leaving prison after the head will not have any aura. "

Hu Yingming reminded that imprisonment is only an indelible mark in life, the prison food and clothing and living are very different from the outside...

This article is an exclusive manuscript of the Observer Network and may not be reproduced without authorization.

[Jul 09, 2020] Russia, China keep the 'dragon in the fog' - Indian Punchline

Jul 09, 2020 | indianpunchline.com

Hong Kong has a long history of being the base camp of western intelligence agencies in the Asia-Pacific. Much has been written about the western intelligence agencies' covert operations out of Hong Kong before, during and after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in China.

In the case of Russia, too, western intelligence activities are showing signs of making another determined push for a post-Putin scenario in the Kremlin. The West's calculation is that if Putin were to step down in 2024, he would very soon become a "lame duck". Like in Hong Kong, western intelligence has developed extensive networks within Russia through which it is feasible to fuel unrest if political uncertainties coalesce with social and economic grievances. The Russian counter-intelligence is very well aware of this danger.

Putin has outwitted the western game plan to destabilise Russia. The constitutional amendment allows him to seek another two six-year terms and he intends to keep everyone guessing. Keeping the western adversaries guessing is also what the Chinese security law in Hong Kong hopes to achieve.

The western intelligence operating out of the city henceforth comes under direct scrutiny of Beijing . Recruitment of local agents, planning and mounting operations inside China, or inciting unrest in Hong Kong to weaken China -- such covert operations become far more difficult and risky for the US, British and Australian intelligence. Interestingly, Xi used the expression "external sabotage and intervention" in his conversation with Putin today.

Beijing and Moscow have voiced strong support for each other's moves to strengthen national security. On June 2, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said,

"We note that the national referendum on constitutional amendments, a major event in Russia's political calendar, is going on smoothly. Results released by the Central Elections Commission reflect the Russian people's choice. As Russia's friendly neighbour and comprehensive strategic partner of coordination for a new era, China will always respect the development path independently chosen by the Russian people and support Russia's efforts to realise lasting stability and promote socioeconomic development.

"We stand ready to work together with the Russian side to act on the consensus reached by our heads of state, deepen all-round strategic coordination and mutually-beneficial cooperation in various areas, and bring greater benefits to our two peoples."

On the same day, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in Moscow, "We noted the entry into force of the law on ensuring national security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the PRC on July 1, 2020 by the decision of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress of China.

"In this context, we would like to reaffirm that Russia's position of principle on the situation in Hong Kong remains unchanged. We respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the PRC and consider all issues pertaining to Hong Kong to be China's domestic affair. We are against any attempts by external forces to interfere in relations between the central government and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the PRC."

Cooperation between the Russian and Chinese security agencies in the realm of internal security can only stem from a high level of mutual understanding at the highest level. Significantly, on July 4, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov poured cold water on President Trump's invitation to Putin to attend a G7 summit in the US, calling it a "flawed" idea.

Moscow has any number of legitimate reasons to distance itself from Trump's invite, but what Ryabkov chose was very telling. He said, "The idea of the so-called expanded G7 summit is flawed, because it is unclear to us how the authors of that initiative plan to consider the Chinese factor. Without China, it is just impossible to discuss certain issues in the modern world."

In effect, Rybakov thwarted Washington's move to isolate China. Trump's advisors were naive to estimate that Moscow could be baited to join its containment strategy against China. Ryabkov publicly administered the Kremlin's snub.

[Jun 11, 2020] A Tale of Two Protests- Why the U.S. Ruling Class Loves Hong Kong Protests But Hates the Minneapolis-Led Rebellion - Black Agenda Report

Jun 11, 2020 | www.blackagendareport.com

The protests in Hong Kong are led by an assortment of US-backed proxies who have separation from China as their principle goal.

"In Hong Kong, the US sees not a war for 'democracy' but rather a key battleground for its larger hybrid war against China."

The rebellions in Hong Kong and Minneapolis have received vastly different responses from the U.S. ruling class. In Minneapolis, masses of peoplet took to the streets on May 26th to express their outrage over the police murder of George Floyd and the many Black Americans who have shared a similar fate. The rebellion quickly spread to cities across the country with corporations, police stations, and even the CNN headquarters in Atlanta, GA all facing some form of property destruction. Since June of 2019, Hong Kong protestors have held regular demonstrations to demand "democracy" and autonomy from China. The protests have once again picked up momentum after the National People's Congress, China's highest legislative body, pushed forward new national security legislation that will enforce Article 23 of the Basic Law which prohibits secessionist or separatist political activity.

Protestors in Hong Kong have been treated with honor from the corporate media in stark contrast to the homegrown uprisings occurring in U.S. cities. The New York Times and the rest of the corporate media have parroted Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's alarm that Hong Kong is being usurped by China's central government and losing its Western-style freedoms. A brief scan of CNN , The New York Times , and The Washington Post 's coverage of the Hong Kong protests reads as a sympathetic tragedy of a people under siege from a tyrannical government. The protestors are described as defying "crackdowns" and resisting an unjust authority. Of course, none of these outlets have taken much time to investigate exactly what the Hong Kong protests seek to achieve.

"Protestors in Hong Kong have been treated with honor from the corporate media in stark contrast to the homegrown uprisings."

Behind demands for universal suffrage and amnesty for detained protestors lies an agenda that works quite well for the United States and its imperial allies. The protests in Hong Kong are led by an assortment of U.S.-backed proxies who have separation from China as their principle goal. One of the biggest donors of the protests, Jimmy Lai, is called the Rupert Murdoch of Asia and owns a large tabloid media corporation, Apple Daily . In 2012, Lai's publication likened pregnant Chinese women to "locusts" invading Hong Kong . Lai poured millions of his own dollars into the 2014 precursor to the current unrest otherwise known as the "Occupy Central" protests. He has repeatedly called for the Trump administration to intervene in Hong Kong and has received a platform in The New York Times and other corporate media outlets to communicate his nativist and rightwing demand for the U.S. to privilege "Hong Kongers" and punish China.

Jimmy Lai is joined by Freedom House award winners Joshua Wong and Martin Lee to round out the most prominent faces of Hong Kong's "pro-democracy" leadership. Martin Lee is the chairperson of Hong Kong's Democratic Party. Lee possesses close ties to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), having won the organization's Democracy Award in 1997. The NED is a non-profit front organization of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and is principally funded by the U.S. Congress. The NED has generously provided tens of millions of U.S. dollars to a coalition of pro-independence organizations. The impact of U.S.-support on the ideological and class character of the Hong Kong protests is not difficult to discern. Protestors regularly wave the regalia of the Union Jack and the American flag as they clamor for the U.S. to "liberate" them from China . The NED-backed unrest in Hong Kong has also received solidarity from members of the neo-Nazi paramilitary organization Azov Battalion , which in 2014 helped engineer the violent overthrow of the government of Ukraine with extensive U.S. support.

"Protestors regularly wave the regalia of the Union Jack and the American flag."

In many ways, the Hong Kong protests have more in common with U.S. police departments than the protestors in the U.S. seeking justice for George Floyd. Hong Kong protestors have used xenophobia and violence against elderly citizens and anyone considered to be sympathetic to mainland China. During weekend protests beginning on May 30th, videos surfaced in cities across the country that showed how U.S. police routinely wield the deadly stick of white supremacy to kill Black Americans such as George Floyd and then run over, shoot, and arrest journalists and activists present at the protests. Hong Kong protestors possess a distinct nativist ideology that aligns with the racist underpinnings of the U.S. national security state. Police departments protect the U.S.' racist corporate order and lobby for policies such as the 1033 program that provides weaponry, coordination, and training directly from the Pentagon. Hong Kong protestors have successfully lobbied U.S. Congress to pass the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019 . The bill allows the U.S. to sanction Chinese leaders and assets accused of getting in the way of the underlying aim of the Hong Kong protests to completely sever the former colony from China under the guise of Western style "democracy."

There is thus no shortage of reasons why the U.S. ruling class loves the protests in Hong Kong but desperately wants to stifle the rebellion against police brutality occurring in the United States. Neoliberal war hawks such as Susan Rice have once again raised the specter of Russian interference and its potential influence over people in the U.S. standing up to police violence. Rightwing elements in the U.S. have accused protestors of being backed by billionaire George Soros . Donald Trump has labeled Antifa a terrorist organization and threatened to unilaterally deploy the U.S. military to crush the protests. The "outside agitators" narrative possesses a long standing racist and anti-communist history in the U.S. that gained prominence when the Communist Party was accused of infiltrating Black American communities to subvert the fascist order of Jim Crow. The real "outside agitators" are the undercover cops, spooks, and white nationalist organizations working to sew chaos within the uprising to justify the criminalization and demonization of the masses in the streets.

"Hong Kong protestors possess a distinct nativist ideology that aligns with the racist underpinnings of the U.S. national security state."

Perhaps no better word can summarize the current situation for U.S. imperialism at this juncture in history than crisis. The U.S. ruling class has thrown its full weight behind the protests in Hong Kong to undermine China. But China's new national security legislation is geared toward curbing the foreign-backed influence of protestors and nothing short of U.S. military intervention can stop China from asserting the right to self-determination over its own territory. The U.S. ruling class' response to the protests over George Floyd's death is filled not only with a natural hatred toward any sign of popular unrest but also with deep confusion. Massive anger over the killing of Floyd has roots in hundreds of years of settler colonial and racist terror and is only buttressed by a pandemic-induced economic crisis worse than the Great Depression. The U.S. ruling class desperately wants to suppress the protests entirely but has been confronted with the prospect that only a nation-wide massacre can do the job. As the Trump administration and its military spooks coordinate with police departments to figure out the most effective means to repress the protests, the corporate media has feigned lukewarm support for "peaceful" demonstrations while condemning any "violence" against private property.

On May 31st, CNN ran a loop of protestors in Philadelphia robbing corporations and burning police vehicles. That same day, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo joined the chorus of condemnations against protestors destroying "their own house." Ruling class hatred toward private property destruction negates the fact that when the U.S. emerged from its war of independence from the Union Jack, Black people were the literal property of the slave owning class. Trillions worth in wealth was stolen from free Black labor to build the U.S.' capitalist infrastructure. A violent, racist state apparatus was erected to maintain this arrangement.

"The U.S. ruling class desperately wants to suppress the protests entirely."

Of course, the U.S. ruling class has always expressed much more concern about the condition of private property and capital than the condition of Black life. History tells us that the U.S. exists on a foundation of a centuries-long racist war to prevent Black freedom. The American road to Ferguson's uprising in 2014, Baltimore's uprising in 2015, and Minnesota's uprising in 2020 was paved with the blood of millions of Black lives that were killed in slave rebellions, Jim Crow lynch mobs, and COINTELPRO's operations to subvert the Black liberation movement. The U.S. remains very much engaged in a racist war against Black America, which explains why the cops, media outlets, and all sections of the ruling order share a similar hatred toward the Minneapolis-led uprising.

In Hong Kong, the U.S. sees not a war for "democracy" but rather a key battleground for its larger hybrid war against China . China has been deemed the biggest threat to the U.S.' economic and military interests abroad just as the specter of Black freedom has always been the biggest threat to U.S. "national security" at home. The NED-backed movement in Hong Kong is not without precedent. The NED has spent billions of U.S. dollars supporting rightwing and terroristic forces in Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Korea to name just a few . In a word, the U.S. ruling class loves any unrest that its soft power apparatus can control and direct toward its own geopolitical aims.

" The U.S. remains very much engaged in a racist war against Black America."

Protests of police brutality offer no such opportunity. In fact, Floyd's death triggered a popular response that only exacerbates the broader crisis of legitimacy facing U.S. imperial hegemony worldwide. China and Iran, often the target of Western criticism for being "authoritarian regimes," could not help but condemn the utter hypocrisy of the United States' human rights agenda. COVID-19 and the economic collapse that followed has further exposed American capitalism to be a system with nothing left to offer workers but austerity and war. China came out of the pandemic with even more reason to be confident about its domestic and international leadership in the face of U.S. decline. White supremacy, economic crisis, and imperial stagnation has created a perfect storm for rebellion and has sown the seeds of uncertainty within the ruling class. What comes next is a question that must be seized by the masses. Anyone who claims to stand for peace, justice, and liberation should suspect foul play when the U.S. ruling class shows love to a protest movement abroad given how this same ruling class treats the genuine outcry of the Black masses and their allies against the mass incarceration regime right here in the belly of the beast.

Danny Haiphong is an activist and journalist in the New York City area. He and Roberto Sirvent are co-authors of the book entitled American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People's History of Fake News--From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror ( Skyhorse Publishing). He can be reached at [email protected], on Twitter @spiritofho , and on Youtube at The Left Lens with Danny Haiphong.

[May 27, 2020] CCP Mouthpiece Slams Habitual Liar Pompeo, Says US 'Incapable' Of Judging Hong Kong's Autonomy

May 27, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

CCP Mouthpiece Slams "Habitual Liar" Pompeo, Says US 'Incapable' Of Judging Hong Kong's Autonomy by Tyler Durden Wed, 05/27/2020 - 14:33 Update (1430ET): One of the most visible english-language mouthpieces for the Communist Party has just weighed in on Secretary Pompeo's decision. Global Times editor Hu Xijin accused Pompeo of being a habitual liar, and insisted it was not up to the US Congress to decide whether Hong Kong is "autonomous".

Whether China's Hong Kong is autonomous, how could it possibly be up to the US to define? Plus, it has a habitually lying Secretary of State who can tell the US Congress what Hong Kong national security law is before it's even enacted. pic.twitter.com/JI1QLJNn6V

-- Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) May 27, 2020

We imagine we'll be hearing more from the Foreign Ministry in a few hours.

* * *

In what appears to be a preview of the at-this-point inevitable White House decision to strip Hong Kong of its preferred trading status over the new National Security law imposed by Beijing, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted on Wednesday that he has "reported to Congress that Hong Kong is no longer autonomous from China."

Congress now has the power to strip Hong Kong of its "special status" under the United States-Hong Kong Policy Act of 1992, which has allowed for the city-state to be treated more favorably than the rest of China by the US.

The status is part of what's allowed Hong Kong to develop as a 'gateway to the West', a key part of its appeal as an international city. Without the US 'special status', HK might lose its international cachet as well, and eventually become just another Chinese city.

Indeed, without such easy access to the global economy, Hong Kong will become just an extension of Shenzen, which lies just across the border on the mainland.

Today, I reported to Congress that Hong Kong is no longer autonomous from China, given facts on the ground. The United States stands with the people of Hong Kong.

-- Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) May 27, 2020

In a story published just minutes before Pompeo's tweet, the Washington Post explains that "a US law passed last year requires the secretary of state to certify - as part of an annual report to Congress - whether Hong Kong remains 'sufficiently autonomous' from Beijing to justify its unique treatment. That includes assessing the degree to which Hong Kong's autonomy had been eroded by the government of China. (Hong Kong is part of China but has a different legal and economic system, a holdover from its time as a British colony.) The law also provides for sanctions against officials deemed responsible for human rights abuses or undermining the city's autonomy. Such sanctions were also said to be under consideration at the White House in the wake of the Chinese government's decision in May to impose new national security laws on the city."

Stocks have shown a surprising degree of resilience, though the offshore yuan - a key barometer of China-related risks - skidded lower.

Aside from the fact that the decision - which was widely anticipated - marks another milestone in the deterioration in Washington-Beijing relations, as police in HK have already begun arresting protesters brave enough to take the streets in the face of an unprecedented police crackdown, it also jeopardizes nearly $40 billion in bilateral trade, as WaPo explains.

"Longer term, people might have a second thought about raising money or doing business in Hong Kong," said Kevin Lai, chief economist for Asia excluding Japan at Daiwa Capital Markets. Another expert described revoking HK's special status as "the nuclear option" for the US, and "the beginning of the death of Hong Kong as we know it".

For the last day or so, the editor of China's Global Times has been taunting the US in a series of tweets, daring it to use its navy and come save the protesting Hong Kongers, some of whom have written messages begging Trump to interfere.

Will you really send US troops to land on Hong Kong? If you don't', your "powerful" response is nothing but bluffing, isn't it? Canceling Hong Kong's separate customs territory status is not "powerful," and China has long been prepared for that. pic.twitter.com/WhMNCP5HAs

-- Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) May 27, 2020

Senior administration officials have insisted that this likely won't be the end of Trump's aggression toward China. Earlier on Wednesday, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who leads the department in charge of Washington's crackdown on Huawei, said the president has more in store.

While there's no question rescinding HK's special status will be interpreted as another economy attack by Washington. But there's something else even more alarming possibly lying in wait: The law passed last year in the US also requires the president to freeze US-based assets and bar entry to anyone who helps China repress Hong Kong.

It's this possibility - which we could hear more about in the coming days - that should really stick in investors' minds.

[May 23, 2020] A commentator in Taiwan said that the US consulate in Hong Kong has more than 2000 staff. If true, this number is astounding, and probably has nothing comparable in other US foreign missions.

May 23, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

occupatio , May 23 2020 3:23 utc | 58

A commentator in Taiwan said that the US consulate in Hong Kong has more than 2000 staff. If true, this number is astounding, and probably has nothing comparable in other US foreign missions. These officials can't all be processing visas, could they, haha. Regime-change workers, spies and so-called diplomats.

[May 23, 2020] China's Move In Hong Kong Illustrates The End Of U.S. Superiority

That does not mean the end of the USA superiority. That is an action of china which can be called "better late then never". What it means that the fight with China moves from trade war into Cold war. And the USA is pretty tncous in enforcing COCOM like measures against China, with corresponding for China consequences.
Notable quotes:
"... under the Trump administration the U.S. has introduced more and more measures to shackle China's development. The Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act passed last year by the U.S. Congress demands that the U.S. government reports on Hong Kong and punishes those who it deems to be human right violators. The sanctions against Chinese companies and especially Huawei, recently expanded to a total economic blockade of 5G chip deliveries to that company, demonstrate that the U.S. will do anything it can to hinder China's economic success. ..."
"... The 'Cold War 2.0' the U.S. launched against China will now see significant counter moves. ..."
"... Under the new law the U.S. will have to stop its financing of student organization, anti-government unions and media in Hong Kong. The opposition parties will no longer be allowed to have relations with U.S. influence operations. ..."
"... No U.S. action can prevent China's government from securing its realm. Hong Kong is a Chinese city where China's laws, not U.S. dollars, are supreme. ..."
"... The U.S. seems to believe it can win a cold war with China. ..."
"... When the U.S. prohibits companies which use U.S. software or machines to design chips and make they sell to China then those companies will seek to buy such software and machines elsewhere. When the U.S. tries to hinder China's access to computer chips, China will build its own chip industry. Ten years from now it will be the U.S. which will have lost access to the then most modern ones as all of those will come from China. ..."
"... In his 2003 book After the Empire Emmanuel Todd described why the U.S. was moving towards the loss of its superpower status ..."
"... The Covid-19 crisis has laid all this bare for everyone to see. Will the U.S., as Todd predicted, now have to give up its superpower status? Or will it start a big war against China to divert the attention elsewhere and to prove its presumed superiority? ..."
"... Of the existing 30 or so high-tech productive chains, China only enjoys superiority at 2 or 3 (see 6:48). It is still greatly dependent on the West to development and still is a developing country. ..."
May 22, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Kurt Zumdieck , May 22 2020 18:24 utc | 4

Blaming China for the Covid-19 pandemic is false . But the U.S. will continue to do so as a part of its larger anti-China strategy.

As the U.S. is busy to counter the epidemic at home China has already defeated it within its borders. It now uses the moment to remove an issue the U.S. has long used to harass it. Hong Kong will finally be liberated from its U.S. supported racists disguised as liberals .

In late 1984 Britain and China signed a formal agreement which approved the 1997 release of Britain's colony Hong Kong to China. Britain had to agree to the pact because it had lost the capability to defend the colony. The Sino British Joint Declaration stipulated that China would create a formal law that would allow Hong Kong to largely govern itself.

The ' Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ' is the de facto constitution of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. But it is a national law of China adopted by the Chinese National People's Congress in 1990 and introduced in Hong Kong in 1997 after the British rule ran out. If necessary the law can be changed.

Chapter II of the Basic Law regulates the relationship between the Central Authorities and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Article 23 of the Basic Law stipulated that Hong Kong will have to implement certain measures for internal security:

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall enact laws on its own to prohibit any act of treason, secession, sedition, subversion against the Central People's Government , or theft of state secrets, to prohibit foreign political organizations or bodies from conducting political activities in the Region , and to prohibit political organizations or bodies of the Region from establishing ties with foreign political organizations or bodies .

Hong Kong has failed to create any of the laws demanded by Article 23. Each time its government tried to even partially implement such laws, in 2003, 2014 and 2019, protests and large scale riots in the streets of Hong Kong prevented it.

China was always concerned about the foreign directed unrest in Hong Kong but it did not press the issue while it was still depending on Hong Kong for access to money and markets.

In the year 2000 Hong Kong's GDP stood at $171 billion while China's was just 7 times larger at $1.200 billion. Last year Hong Kong's GDP had nearly doubled to $365 billion. But China's GDP had grown more than tenfold to $14,200 billion, nearly 40 times larger than Hong Kong's. Expressed in purchase power parity the divergence is even bigger. As an economic outlet for China Hong Kong has lost its importance.

Another factor that held China back from deeper meddling in Hong Kong was its concern about negative consequences from the U.S. and Britain. But under the Trump administration the U.S. has introduced more and more measures to shackle China's development. The Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act passed last year by the U.S. Congress demands that the U.S. government reports on Hong Kong and punishes those who it deems to be human right violators. The sanctions against Chinese companies and especially Huawei, recently expanded to a total economic blockade of 5G chip deliveries to that company, demonstrate that the U.S. will do anything it can to hinder China's economic success.

The Obama administration's 'pivot to Asia' was already a somewhat disguised move against China. The Trump administration's National Defense Strategy openly declared China a "strategic competitor using predatory economics to intimidate its neighbors while militarizing features in the South China Sea".

The U.S. Marine Corps is being reconfigured into specialized units designed to blockade China's access to the sea :

Thus, small Marine forces would deploy around the islands of the first island chain and the South China Sea, each element having the ability to contest the surrounding air and naval space using anti-air and antiship missiles. Collectively, these forces would attrite Chinese forces, inhibit them from moving outward, and ultimately, as part of a joint campaign, squeeze them back to the Chinese homeland.
bigger

The 'Cold War 2.0' the U.S. launched against China will now see significant counter moves.

Last year's violent riots in Hong Kong , cheered on by the borg in Washington DC, have demonstrated that the development in Hong Kong is on a bad trajectory that may endanger China. There is no longer a reason for China to hold back on countering the nonsense. Hong Kong's economy is no longer relevant. U.S. sanctions are coming independent of what China does or does not do in Hong Kong. The U.S. military designs are now an obvious threat.

As the laws that Hong Kong was supposed to implement are not forthcoming, China will now create and implement them itself :

The central government is to table a resolution on Friday to enable the apex of its top legislative body, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), to craft and pass a new national security law tailor-made for Hong Kong, it announced late on Thursday.

Sources earlier told the Post the new law would proscribe secessionist and subversive activity as well as foreign interference and terrorism in the city -- all developments that had been troubling Beijing for some time, but most pressingly over the past year of increasingly violent anti-government protests.
...
According to a mainland source familiar with Hong Kong affairs, Beijing had come to the conclusion that it was impossible for the city's Legislative Council to pass a national security law to enact Article 23 of the city's Basic Law given the political climate. This was why it was turning to the NPC to take on the responsibility.

On May 28 the NPC will vote on a resolution asking its Standing Committee to write the relevant law for Hong Kong. It is likely to be enacted by promulgation at the end of June. The law will become part of Annex III of the Basic Law which lists "National Laws to be Applied in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region".

Under the new law the U.S. will have to stop its financing of student organization, anti-government unions and media in Hong Kong. The opposition parties will no longer be allowed to have relations with U.S. influence operations.

The U.S. State Department promptly condemned the step :

Hong Kong has flourished as a bastion of liberty. The United States strongly urges Beijing to reconsider its disastrous proposal, abide by its international obligations, and respect Hong Kong's high degree of autonomy, democratic institutions, and civil liberties, which are key to preserving its special status under U.S. law. Any decision impinging on Hong Kong's autonomy and freedoms as guaranteed under the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Basic Law would inevitably impact our assessment of One Country, Two Systems and the status of the territory.

We stand with the people of Hong Kong.

It is not (yet?) The Coming War On China (video) but some hapless huffing and puffing that is strong on rhetoric but has little effect. No U.S. action can prevent China's government from securing its realm. Hong Kong is a Chinese city where China's laws, not U.S. dollars, are supreme.

The U.S. seems to believe it can win a cold war with China. But that understanding is wrong.

On the economic front it is not the U.S. that is winning by decoupling from China but Asia that is decoupling from the U.S. :

Since the US-China tech war began in April 2018 with Washington's ban on chip exports to China's ZTE Corporation, "de-Americanization of supply chains" has been the buzzword in the semiconductor industry.

Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia purchased about 50% more Chinese products in April 2020 than they did in the year-earlier month. Japan and Korea showed 20% gains. Exports to the US rose year-on-year, but from a very low 2019 base.

China's imports from Asia also rose sharply.

When the U.S. prohibits companies which use U.S. software or machines to design chips and make they sell to China then those companies will seek to buy such software and machines elsewhere. When the U.S. tries to hinder China's access to computer chips, China will build its own chip industry. Ten years from now it will be the U.S. which will have lost access to the then most modern ones as all of those will come from China. Already today it is China that dominates global trade .

The chaotic way in which the U.S. handles its Covid crisis is widely observed abroad. Those who see clearly recognized that it is now China, not the U.S., that is the responsible superpower . The U.S. is overwhelmed and will continue to be so for a long time:

This is why I don't see the talk about a possible "Cold War 2.0" as meaningful or relevant. If there were to be any sort of "cold war" between the United States and China, then U.S. policymakers would still be able credibly to start planning how to manage this complex relationship with China . But in reality, the options for "managing" the core of this relationship are pitifully few, since the central task of whatever U.S. leadership emerges from this Covid nightmare will be to manage the precipitous collapse of the globe-circling empire the United States has sat atop of since 1945.
...
So here in Washington in Spring of 2020, I say, Let 'em huff and puff with their new flatulations of childish Sinophobia. Let them threaten this or that version of a new "Cold War". Let them compete in elections -- if these are to be held -- on versions of "Who can be tougher on China." But the cold reality shows that, as Banquo said, "It is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

In his 2003 book After the Empire Emmanuel Todd described why the U.S. was moving towards the loss of its superpower status :

Todd calmly and straightforwardly takes stock of many negative trends, including America's weakened commitment to the socio-economic integration of African Americans, a bulimic economy that increasingly relies on smoke and mirrors and the goodwill of foreign investors, and a foreign policy that squanders the country's reserves of "soft power" while its militaristic arsonist-fireman behavior is met with increasing resistance.

The Covid-19 crisis has laid all this bare for everyone to see. Will the U.S., as Todd predicted, now have to give up its superpower status? Or will it start a big war against China to divert the attention elsewhere and to prove its presumed superiority?

Posted by b on May 22, 2020 at 17:41 UTC | Permalink

If Washington lured the Soviet Union into it's demise in Afghanistan, which left that minor empire in shambles - socially, militarily, economically - it was the nuclear conflagration at Chernobyl that put the corpse in the ground.....

(Watch the GREAT HBO five-part tragedy on it and you will see that the brutally heroic response of the Soviets, that saved the Western World at least temporarily, but is the portrait of self-sacrifice)

What was lost in the Soviets fumbling immediate post-explosion cover-up was the trust of their Eastern European satellite countries. That doomed that empire. So much military might was given up in Afghanistan, then on Chernobyl, it was not clear if the Soviets had the wherewithal to put down the rebellions that spread from Czechoslovakia to East Germany and beyond.

Covid-19 will do the same to the American Empire.

As its own infrastructure has been laid waste by the COLLASSAL MONEY PIT that is the Pentagon, its flagrant use of the most valuable energy commodity, oil, to maintain some 4000 bases worldwide, this rickety over-extended upside down version of old Anglo-Dutch trading empires, will finally collapse.

Loss of trust by the many craven satellites, in America's fractured response, to Covid-19 will put the final nail in its coffin.

A hot-shooting War may come next, but the empire


norecovery , May 22 2020 18:36 utc | 5

The U.S. and its vassals will use every dirty trick in the book even while shooting themselves in the foot, as they have demonstrated in the past (and presently). Short of starting a nuclear war, the level of moral turpitude could not be any lower.
jayc , May 22 2020 18:36 utc | 6
That the pro-USA bloc in HK has to complain of supposed violations of the non-binding aspirational 1984 Joint Declaration shows their position is one of complaint not dialogue.

As early as last May, protesters interviewed by international media were pleading for the US to enact the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act.

They got their wish last autumn, but now they get the blowback from that decision. The pro-USA bloc is now openly discussing a new strategy of rising like a phoenix from the ashes of the temper tantrum they will stage in response. The hysteria meter will rise to 10.

Nick , May 22 2020 18:38 utc | 8
"we stand with the people of Hong Kong".

My god, the cringe-inducing arrogance of the Washington regime is something else! Imagine after Hurricane Maria and the subsequently dismal aid effort that devastated Puerto Rico, the Chinese issued a statement lambasting the US response and saying "we stand with the people of Puerto Rico".

Disgusting regime.

Ou Si (區司) , May 22 2020 18:57 utc | 10
The new law only prohibits organized protest movements funded from abroad (Us of north A or G-Britain, for instance), and not those protests paid for by tax and corruption refugees from Mainland China-- nor those from Táiwan that adhere to the unity of the Chinese state.
Ou Si (區司) , May 22 2020 19:00 utc | 11
Laws like this one also exist in Finland, Norway and Iceland to prohibit foreign electioneering interferences,
Jackrabbit , May 22 2020 19:05 utc | 12
I dunno.

Seems to me that Chinese dominion of HK has long been in the cards. Not sure that the Chinese moves signal anything more than the obvious: USA/EMPIRE desire to stomp on Chinese ambitions.

Kissinger laid out the plan in 2014 in his WSJ Op-Ed: Henry Kissinger on the Assembly of a New World Order . Even though I repeatedly refer back to Kissinger's Op-Ed, few really seem to 'get it'. USA Deep State are not the complete idiots that some want to make them seem.

Start a war with China? Not likely any time soon.

USA/EMPIRE have got what it wanted from HK, didn't they? They used HK to antagonize China and for anti-China propaganda. China's looming "crackdown" on UK will get lots of attention in the West, as USA economic sanctions on multiple countries are largely ignored and Assange rots in prison with nary a word from the press.

IMO The real test of USA/Empire is coming soon in the Caribbean. Will USA 'blink' and allow Iran to deliver gas to Venezuela?

!!

Babyl-on , May 22 2020 19:53 utc | 19
We are dealing with the same group, the descendants of the men who dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki not to end WWII but to show the USSR and the world that the Western Empire had the world at its feet.

The idea that this group will not use nuclear weapons again is foolish.

I don't know why people keep using the irrelevant term "cold war" when the US is engaged in hybrid warfare throughout the globe and there is nothing cold about it.

Jen , May 22 2020 20:32 utc | 24
As Ou Si @ 11 states, other nations have similar laws prohibiting foreign influence through the use of non-government organisations posing as charities or religious institutions via embassies and consulates. Moreover as in the case of Russia (I believe, but people can correct me if I'm wrong), the law that prohibits such activity is based on the equivalent US law that apply to foreign organisations on US soil.

In the not so distant future, we can expect to see truckloads of US and UK consulate staff being kicked out of HK and religious and other various "humanitarian" and "cultural" organisations in HK having to pack their bags and go.

Where they will all relocate though is another worry.

Guy THORNTON , May 22 2020 20:36 utc | 25
But the cold reality shows that, as Banquo said, “It is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Macbeth's words, not Banquo's.

As usual, a nicely measured article, thank you.

james , May 22 2020 20:41 utc | 26
ot but related... vancouver is witnessing a greater number of attacks on asian people at present... it seems the 'hate china' memo is working itself thru the msm system with these kinds of results... when i have an article to go with this, i will share...
William Gruff , May 22 2020 20:49 utc | 27
The US is already at war with China, and will escalate from hybrid/economic war to hot war eventually because the US believes it has no alternative. Giving up global hegemony and yielding to the rising power is not perceived as a viable option. Allowing China's rise will lead to the destruction of the Empire, and America will not allow that without using the best tools of imperialism it has left, which is its military.

The Chinese need to understand this, and I believe they do understand it, but they need to accurately grasp how the US will respond to the shooting conflict when it starts. The US will escalate the violence to stay at least one level more brutal than their adversary. If the Chinese shoot at and damage an American ship, then the Americans will respond with ten times the force and sink a Chinese ship. If the Chinese sink an American ship, then the Americans will (try to) sink every Chinese ship.

The point here is that the Chinese cannot entertain the illusion that they can just give America a light military slap and the Americans will reconsider their imperialist behavior. There is precisely 0% chance of that working. When the Chinese do take action it has to be big and decisive. If the Chinese want any chance of escaping the Thucydides Trap without all-out war, then they must punch their way out with enough "Shock & Awe™" to disrupt America's otherwise inevitable escalation.

Keep in mind that the United States will use atomic weapons to defend its hegemony if allowed to escalate to that level. The only way to prevent that is to leapfrog past all of the levels of escalation that America is prepared for at the given moment and in the process stun America into inability to respond. China certainly has the means to accomplish this, but they cannot be timid about it.

vk , May 22 2020 21:02 utc | 28
China is still in great danger. Of the existing 30 or so high-tech productive chains, China only enjoys superiority at 2 or 3 (see 6:48).

It is still greatly dependent on the West to development and still is a developing country.

So, yes, the West still has a realistic chance of destroying China and inaugurating a new cycle of capitalist prosperity.

What happens with the "decoupling"/"Pivot to Asia" is that, in the West, there's a scatological theory [go to 10th paragraph] - of Keynesian origin - that socialism can only play "catch up" with capitalism, but never surpass it when a "toyotist phase" of technological innovation comes (this is obviously based on the USSR's case). This theory states that, if there's innovation in socialism, it is residual and by accident, and that only in capitalism is significant technological advancement possible. From this, they posit that, if China is blocked out of Western IP, it will soon "go back to its place" - which is probably to Brazil or India level.

If China will be able to get out of the "Toyotist Trap" that destroyed the USSR, only time will tell. Regardless, decoupling is clearly not working, and China is not showing any signs so far of slowing down. Hence Trump is now embracing a more direct approach.

As for the USA, I've put my big picture opinion about it some days ago, so I won't repeat myself. Here, it suffices to say that, yes, I believe the USA can continue to survive as an empire - even if, worst case scenario, in a "byzantine" form. To its favor, it has: 1) the third largest world population 2) huge territory, with excellent proportion of high-quality arable land (35%), that basically guarantees food security indefinitely (for comparison, the USSR only had 10% of arable land, and of worse quality) 3) two coasts, to the two main Oceans (Pacific and Atlantic), plus a direct exit to the Arctic (Alaska and, de facto, Greenland and Canada) 4) excellent, very defensive territory, protected by both oceans (sea-to-sea), bordered only by two very feeble neighbors (Mexico and Canada) that can be easily absorbed if the situation asks to 4) still the financial superpower 5) still a robust "real" economy - specially if compared to the micro-nations of Western Europe and East-Asia 6) a big fucking Navy, which gives it thalassocratic power.

I don't see the USA losing its territorial integrity anytime soon. There are separatist movements in places like Texas and, more recently, the Western Coast. Most of them exist only for fiscal reasons and are not taken seriously by anyone else. The Star-and-Stripes is still a very strong ideal to the average American, and nobody takes the idea of territory loss for real. If that happens, though, it would change my equation on the survival of the American Empire completely.

As for Hong Kong. I watched a video by the chief of the PLA last year (unfortunately, I watched it on Twitter and don't have the link with me anymore). He was very clear: Hong Kong does not present an existential threat to China. The greatest existential threat to China are, by far, Xinjiang and Tibet, followed by Taiwan and the South China Sea. Hong Kong is a distant fourth place.

Those liberal clowns were never close.

Scotch Bingeinton , May 22 2020 21:06 utc | 29
Much appreciated article, thanks for that! I know nothing about China and Hong Kong, so I'm much obliged for your analysis.

Seems really like the thing to do for the Chinese, not to meddle too much in the city's internal affairs, but make sure that hostile powers can't meddle there either. When those protests slash riots came up, I was racking my brain about why the Chinese would put up with any festering US consulate in Hong Kong. Just throw those "diplomats" out on whatever thin pretext. That's also what Venezuela should have done long ago, and Syria too, back in 2011 when that certified creep Robert Stephen Ford was hopping from couch to couch, inciting civil war and probably looking to get laid by impressionable Arab guys as well. They could have saved themselves a lot of trouble by just 'neutralising' Jeff-Man Feltman over in Lebanon, too, before said Feltman managed to neutralise his host Rafic Hariri.

Jen , May 22 2020 21:55 utc | 33
VK @ 28:

One problem with your scenario is that the US navy may be over-extended in parts of the world where all the enemy has to do is to cut off supply lines to battleship groups and then those ships would be completey helpless. US warships in the Persian Gulf with the Strait of Hormuz sealed off by Iran come to mind.

Incidents involving US naval ship collisions with slow-moving oil tankers in SE Asian waters and some other parts of of the the world, resulting in the loss of sailors, hardly instill the notion that the US is a mighty thalassocratic force.

It's my understanding also that Russia, China and maybe some other countries have invested hugely in long-range missiles capable of hitting US coastal cities and areas where the bulk of the US population lives.

And if long-range missiles don't put paid to the notion that projecting power through sending naval warships all over the planet works, maybe the fact that many of these ships are sitting ducks for COVID-19 infection clusters might, where the US public is concerned.

vk , May 22 2020 22:16 utc | 34
@ Posted by: Jen | May 22 2020 21:55 utc | 33

I agree the new anti-ship missile technology may have changed the rules of naval warfare.

However, it's important to highlight that, contrary to the US Army, the USN has a stellar record. It fought wonderfully against the Japanese Empire in 1941-1945, and successfully converted both the Pacific and the Atlantic into "American lakes" for the next 75 years. All the Americans have nowadays it owes its Navy.

But you may be right. Maybe the USN is also susceptible to degeneration.

Kadath , May 22 2020 22:53 utc | 37
Re:34 VK,

The US Navy has had some pretty serious lapses in the past decade, the multiple collisions with cargo ships and the failed Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) design. Putting aside the unproven allegations that the Chinese or the Russians somehow "spooled" the GPS of the ships to cause the collisions the fact the US ships didn't have lookouts posted means they either got lazy or they are so understaffed they cut vital roles they felted were better off being automated. Also, I seem to recall that the US navy reduced their offshore training program for their officers a few years ago (meaning their newest officers are learning on the fly at sea). So i'm not sure if they've avoided the problems of a bloated military

Richard Steven Hack , May 22 2020 23:51 utc | 39
Posted by: vk | May 22 2020 21:02 utc | 28

Of the existing 30 or so high-tech productive chains, China only enjoys superiority at 2 or 3 (see 6:48). It is still greatly dependent on the West to development and still is a developing country.

Based on what I've read, China is on a fast track to develop technology on their own. In addition, technology development is world-wide these days. What China can not develop itself - quickly enough, time is the only real problem - it can buy with its economic power.

"if China is blocked out of Western IP, it will soon "go back to its place" - which is probably to Brazil or India level."

Ah, but that's where hackers come in. China can *not* be blocked out of Western IP. First, as I said, China can *buy* it. Unless there is a general prohibition across the entire Western world, and by extension sanctions against any other nation from selling to China - which is an unenforceable policy, as Iran has shown - China can buy what it doesn't have and then reverse-engineer it. Russia will sell it if no one else will.

Second, China can continue to simply acquire technology through industrial espionage. Every country and every industry engages in this sort of thing. Ever watch the movie "Duplicity"? That shit actually happens. I read about industrial espionage years ago and it's only gotten fancier since the old days of paper files. I would be happy to breach any US or EU industrial sector and sell what I find to the Chinese, the Malaysians or anyone else interested. It's called "leveling the playing field" and that is advantageous for everyone. If the US industrial sector employees can't keep up, that's their problem. No one is guaranteed a job for life - and shouldn't be.

"1) the third largest world population"

Which is mostly engaged in unproductive activities like finance, law, etc. I've read that if you visit the main US universities teaching science and technology, who are the students? Chinese. Indians. Not Americans. Americans only want to "make money" in law and finance, not "make things."

"2) huge territory, with excellent proportion of high-quality arable land (35%), that basically guarantees food security indefinitely"

In military terms, given current military technology, territory doesn't matter. China has enough nuclear missiles to destroy the 50 Major Metropolitan Areas in this country. Losing 100-200 millions citizens kinda puts a damper on US productivity. Losing the same number in China merely means more for the rest.

"3) two coasts, to the two main Oceans (Pacific and Atlantic)"

Which submarines can make irrelevant. Good for economic matters - *if* your economy can continue competing. China has one coast - but its Belt and Road Initiative gives it economic clout on the back-end and the front-end. I don't see the US successfully countering that Initiative.

"4) excellent, very defensive territory, protected by both oceans (sea-to-sea)"

Which only means the US can't be "invaded". That's WWI and WWII thinking the US is mired in. Today, you destroy an opponent's military and, if necessary, his civilian population, or at least its ability to "project" force against you. You don't "invade" unless it's some weak Third World country. And if the US can't "project" its power via its navy or air force, having a lot of territory doesn't mean much. This is where Russia is right now. Very defensible but limited in force projection (but getting better fast.) The problem for the US is China and Russia are developing military technology that can prevent US force projection around *their* borders.

"bordered only by two very feeble neighbors (Mexico and Canada) that can be easily absorbed if the situation asks"

LOL I can just see the US "absorbing" Mexico. Canada, maybe - they're allies anyway. Mexico, not so much. You want a "quagmire", send the US troops to take on the Mexican drug gangs. They aren't Pancho Villa.

"4) still the financial superpower"

Uhm, what part of "Depression" did you miss? And even if that doesn't happen now, continued financial success is unlikely. Like pandemics, shit happens in economics and monetary policy.

"a big fucking Navy, which gives it thalassocratic power."

That can be sunk in a heartbeat and is virtually a colossal money pit with limited strategic value given current military technology which both China and Russia are as advanced as the US is, if not more so. Plus China is developing its own navy quickly. I read somewhere a description of one Chinese naval shipyard. There were several advanced destroyers being developed. Then the article noted that China has several more large shipyards. That Chinese long coast comes in handy for that sort of thing.

China Now Has More Warships Than the U.S.
But sometimes quantity doesn't trump quality. [My note: But sometimes it does.]
https://tinyurl.com/y7numhef

That's just the first article I found, from a crappy source. There are better analyses, of course.

"I don't see the USA losing its territorial integrity anytime soon. There are separatist movements in places like Texas and, more recently, the Western Coast. Most of them exist only for fiscal reasons and are not taken seriously by anyone else."

I'd agree with that. I hear this "California secession" crap periodically and never believe it. However, for state politicians, the notion of being "President" of your own country versus a "Governor" probably is tempting to these morons. State populations are frequently idiots as well, as the current lockdown response is demonstrating. All in all, though, if there are perceived external military threats, that is likely to make the states prefer to remain under US central control.

[May 22, 2020] What has always been fascinating to me is the irony of the mindset HK protestors

May 22, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Doryphore , May 22 2020 21:30 utc | 31

Good info on this situation, b.

What has always been fascinating to me is the irony of the mindset HK protestors. They have legit grievances about economic injustices but due to their media (which is just an extension of British tabloid conspiracy sites like the Mirror and Sun or neocon Bri rags like the Economist), they wrongly attribute blame to Beijing when they ought to their former British masters.

When they left, they forced China to guarantee that the oligarchs in HK would continue to have full control over land and banking interests. These corrupt servants of the British have continued to jack up housing prices and made it nearly impossible for many to live a comfortable life.

HK has more land than Singapore but the later made it illegal to price gauge rent and made other protections against predatory oligarchs.

Now Singaporeans have very high home ownership and affordable housing while HKers must live like rats.

Due to their colonial brainwashing, the HKers have come to see anti-China conspiracy theories everywhere when their own oligarchs continue to steal from them. Had it not been for the British who forced Beijing into these pro-oligarch deals to ensure handover, Beijing would have done the same for HK what the Singaporean gov did for their population.


J Norwich , May 23 2020 0:43 utc | 50

Posted by: carl | May 22 2020 23:29 utc | 38

How can supporting the independence of Taiwan, or being anti-Communist be racist?

Anyone with first hand knowledge of Hong Kong understands that many Hong Kong Chinese despise "mainlanders" as a people. Their antipathy is to the culture, manners, values and economic power of mainland Chinese. It is not a principled objection to communist ideology or concern for their neighbours in Taiwan.

This should not be taken as a criticism of Hong Kongers. It is just a factual observation. Chinese people in general appear unconcerned by the concept of racism. In my experience, Hong Kongers in particular have no qualms about criticising other races and cultures, and certainly don't see it as immoral. Personally, I don't particularly mind this.

Paora , May 23 2020 1:05 utc | 51
Here's a little story from my teen years in the '90s that taught me everything I needed to know about the mentality of Hong Kongers. When my father's provincial university opened a satellite campus in a wealthy area of my country's largest city, I found myself at a high school with many recent East Asian migrants. Not many Mainlanders yet, mostly Sth Koreans and HK/Taiwan/Singapore Chinese. The HKers tended to be more arrogant than their fellow East Asians, seeing themselves as superior and more 'Western'.

One HK guy decided to differentiate himself by referring to the other East Asians as 'Gooks'. One day in class my quiet Korean friend gave the teacher a note and said in halting English "I need to go see ... orthodontist". On hearing this, our HKer immediately yelled "Is 'dentist' ... not 'dontist' you stupid GOOK!", provoking roars of laughter. Once he realised we were laughing at him, not with him, that was the beginning of the end for his 'Gook' experiment.

A Cynic , May 23 2020 1:22 utc | 52
Kind of ironic to play the racism card here - hard to find any more racist group than Han Chinese!

[Dec 21, 2019] Hong Kong Police Arrest 4 Alleged Financiers Of The Protest Movement

Dec 21, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

On Thursday, police in Hong Kong announced the arrests of several individuals whom they described as leaders of the Hong Kong protests movement. But these individuals (their identities have not been released) were not simply collared out in the street.

Instead, police described the four as leaders of Spark Alliance, a mysterious organization that has been one of the main financiers of the protest movement, including by bailing protesters out of jail and helping to defray their legal fees.

Police seized HK$70 million ($9 million) in bank deposits and personal insurance products from Spark, claiming that the group broke laws about money laundering.

In a response posted to its FB group, Spark blasted the police, accusing them of deliberately trying to cut off one of the most important avenues of financing in the protest movement.

On Thursday evening, police announced the arrests of four people connected with Spark Alliance for suspected money laundering, the first cases brought over financing the demonstrations after six months of protests against China's tightening grip over Hong Kong. Authorities froze HK$70 million of bank deposits and personal insurance products linked to the fund, while also seizing HK$130,000 in cash.

"The police attempted, through false statements, to distort the work of Spark Alliance as money laundering for malicious uses," the group said in a statement on Facebook. " Spark Alliance condemns this kind of defamatory action."

The arrests and seizures, as Bloomberg explains, shed light on the innerworkings of the Hong Kong protest movement. Millions of Americans who have read the news reports about the protests have probably been left wondering how the protesters became so organized.

Well, this is how: Since the beginning of the movement, wealthy working HKers have observed their duty to help those battling it out on the front lines in any way possible. Mostly, they do it through donations to groups that purport to help bail out protesters after they've been arrested, or groups that simply provide food and shelter for the demonstrators, many of whom are teenagers, or in their early 20s.

This division of responsibilities is part of what's allowed the movement to continue on for as long as it has.

But by cracking down on the money, HK police are essentially pulling the rug out from under Hong Kongers facing criminal charges for protest-related activities.

Because Spark Alliance and another, more transparent, fund called the 612 Humanitarian Fund are responsible for financing the protest movement: According to BBG, the two funds account for 70% of the money raised by the protest movement.

The impact of this crackdown is two-fold: not only will protesters counting on these funds to pay their legal fees be left out in the cold, but the renewed police scrutiny could deter some working Hong Kongers who have been supporting the movement with donations.

The crackdown deals a major blow to demonstrators as they face ever-mounting legal bills, with more than 6,000 people arrested since June. Spark Alliance, one of the largest crowd-funding campaigns supporting the protests, plays a crucial behind-the-scenes role - often sending anonymous representatives to bail protesters out of jail in the middle of the night.

The latest arrests risk deterring Hong Kong's professional class from giving more cash, potentially curbing a substantial source of funds that have helped sustain the protests longer than anyone had expected. They also show the limits of the leaderless movement's ability to manage tens of millions of dollars with little oversight outside of a formal financial system.

Funds bankrolling the protests have collectively raised at least HK$254 million ($33 million) since June, with 70% coming from just two groups, Spark Alliance and the 612 Humanitarian Fund, according to a tally based on disclosures from the groups and an analysis of publicly available documents. That figure doesn't reflect all the money raised related to the protests, only the funds Bloomberg News could verify.

Before the arrests, most Hong Kongers didn't know the identities of anyone behind Spark Alliance. Its website and bank accounts (before they were shut down) all forwarded to a Pest Control company.

But Spark proved its reliability early on by helping bail protesters out of jail. But the group has been under scrutiny even before the police got involved. Last month, HSBC shut down the group's account, saying they had detected activity that differed from the stated purpose of the account.

"Spark is probably less transparent but people tend to believe them," said Jason, a protester in his 30s who asked to be identified by his English name. He said he memorized the group's phone number and called the group after he was arrested in August. Seven hours later, two lawyers helped arrange HK$4,000 in bail money.

"Everyone knows the cost to fight for this movement and not everyone can afford lawyer fees," he said. "We need protection."

Over the past few months he's raised half a million dollars for Spark Alliance and other charities through the sale of Hong Kong-themed figurines, including a miniature Carrie Lam and a masked protester. Asked on Thursday night if he would still give the money to Spark Alliance, Jason said he wanted more information on the arrests.

The shadowy nature of some of these organizations has helped the Chinese government portray the protests as having been financed by foreign powers like the US. Of course, these accusations aren't entirely without merit. Beijing threatened sanctions this month against the National Endowment for Democracy, a US-based group which donated $686,000 to various Hong Kong nonprofits in 2019.

Meanwhile, the June 12 fund has already spent roughly a quarter of the money it has raised since June, mostly on legal expenses and bail.

For many of the thousands of protesters who have been arrested, the criminal penalties that they could face without adequate legal representation could land them in prison for years.

Without having the support of knowing their bail will be paid in the event of an arrest, many demonstrators wouldn't be so eager to fight their way past police barricades and take other risks like that.

But many members of the protest movement believe the 612 fund is too stodgy in how it operates. Most see organizations like Spark Alliance as being closer to the true ideals of the movement.

The 612 fund has been chided in online forums for deploying only 24% of the money it raised while asking protesters to first apply for legal aid from the city. Other critics see the 612 fund as part of an older political establishment in Hong Kong that has failed the younger generation of democracy advocates, and they believe Spark Alliance is closer to protesters in the trenches.

"The younger generation doesn't trust in any institutions, not even those that advocate for democracy," said Patrick Poon, a researcher at Amnesty International in Hong Kong. "It's an irrational decision to trust in a group believed to be closer to the people on the ground even if they don't know who is behind the fund."

Ng, a 612 fund trustee, said the group is supported by "members of the public that are incensed by what is being done by police and government."

"The movement is ongoing and we are using the funds for the stated purpose of humanitarian aid," she said. "We don't have any obligation to spend all the money immediately."

Now that police have set their sights on Spark, we imagine a new group will need to come forward and take up the mantle of the protest movement, or risk allowing it to fizzle out.


Stinkbug 1 , 29 minutes ago link

.

I keep wondering why ZH seems to be supporting the HK protestors when that 'color revolution' too seems to be supported by the same elements promoting promoting the overthrow of Trump and the overthrow of the elected government in Bolivia.

CatInTheHat , 1 hour ago link

"Now that police have set their sights on Spark, we imagine a new group will need to come forward and take up the mantle of the protest movement, or risk allowing it to fizzle out."

Aww too bad. Looks like the CIA got their funds seized. No worries Soros will just add more funding

IronForge , 1 hour ago link

Safe to Presume within 6Degrees of Separation to:

CIA, Mi-6, City of London, FED_RESV_Banks, Soros, HSBC, OtherHKGDrugRunners, NED, VoiceOfAmerica, Anglo-Murican_Christians, Falun_Gong.

NiggaPleeze , 1 hour ago link

Spark Alliance - no doubt NED/CIA/other Evil Empire NGO funding of terrorists.

Spark is emblematic of the Evil Empire - start a spark to burn down the house, and subject the entire planet to Evil Empire Totalitarian Tyranny.

May the Evil Empire die and its rulers be punished. Orange Satan to Hell to return home to his ultimate Master.

John Hansen , 2 hours ago link

The Hong Kong pirates have always been into secret societies and forced 'contributions'.

The English pirates had much in common and they worked together well harming the rest of China.

Noob678 , 3 hours ago link

In the six months riots and terrorisms, Hong Kong police did not kill anyone but gathering information and evidence to dismantle foreign meddling in the city. During 7 days of protests against religious discrimination in India the police already killed more than 20 people. IQ does matter.

Hong Kong IQ 108 Vs India IQ 82 :)

schroedingersrat , 2 hours ago link

How many people killed by US bombs or sanctions?

NiggaPleeze , 1 hour ago link

Wonder how many Muslims died in the past one year as victims of ZioNazi and Evil Empire terrorism and mass murder.

100,000s? Yes, it's true, nobody in the world is as violent, evil, malicious and belligerent as the ZioNazis and Evil Empire. Nobody is remotely close. Certainly not China.

skippy dinner , 3 hours ago link

My guess: it is Soros money

Omega_Man , 3 hours ago link

merican agents and zios should be disappeared never to be seen of again.... after a while they will be afraid to send new ones.

Lavrov , 3 hours ago link

Chim Choms are BRUTAL so far 21 CIA clowns have gone MISSING and never HEARD or SEEN.. At least Russia keeps these SPYS and do SWAPS Your agent for mine. TRADE OFF.. Not with CHIM CHOMS God only KNOWS where CIA spys go I can IMAGINE Naturally they are ORGAN donors. Chim choms don't **** around

bill_bly , 2 hours ago link

The CIA spies were probably Chinese nationals recruited by foreign spooks, so they're not going anywhere good.

CatInTheHat , 1 hour ago link

*Joshua Wong*

Incidentally, Greta Tunberg promoted Wong a week ago via Twitter

Makes sense since both are funded by Soros

Noob678 , 3 hours ago link

The arrests and seizures, as Bloomberg explains, shed light on the innerworkings of the Hong Kong protest movement. Millions of Americans who have read the news reports about the protests have probably been left wondering how the protesters became so organized.

Well, this is how: Since the beginning of the movement, wealthy working HKers have observed their duty to help those battling it out on the front lines in any way possible. Mostly, they do it through donations to groups that purport to help bail out protesters after they've been arrested, or groups that simply provide food and shelter for the demonstrators, many of whom are teenagers, or in their early 20s.

Whitewashing for the zionist eh :) US Pays Hong Kong Protesters

Astroturfing is the practice of masking the sponsors of a message or organization (e.g., political, advertising, religious or public relations) to make it appear as though it originates from and is supported by grassroots participants.

adonisdemilo , 4 hours ago link

National Endowment for Democracy rings a bell.

Isn't that somehow connected to George Soros?

Uncle Frank , 4 hours ago link

No.

Wiki -

'The National Endowment for Democracy ( NED ) is a U.S. non-profit soft power organization that was founded in 1983 with the stated goal of promoting democracy abroad. [1] It is funded primarily through an annual allocation from the U.S. Congress in the form of a grant awarded through the United States Information Agency (USIA). It was created by The Democracy Program as a bipartisan, private, non-profit corporation, and in turn acts as a grant-making foundation. [1] In addition to its grants program, NED also supports and houses the Journal of Democracy , the World Movement for Democracy , the International Forum for Democratic Studies , the Reagan–Fascell Fellowship Program , the Network of Democracy Research Institutes , and the Center for International Media Assistance .'

It was co-founded by Ronald Reagan when he was in office.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Endowment_for_Democracy

HowdyDoody , 3 hours ago link

It is a money laundering op for the CIA.

Omega_Man , 4 hours ago link

merican money is made from nothing... this allows for use in other nations to do evil works... best to ban merican dollars others than individuals holding small amounts of it... do not take it for exchange

Noob678 , 4 hours ago link

There will be NO DEAL. China is not going to surrender their financial sovereignty to the zionist bankers again after the communist party kicked them and their puppet (the Nationalist KMT currently settled in Taiwan, China) out in 1949 :)

Told ya :) Still don't get it? Good :)

China is just being nice to Trump and let him save face and give him a ladder to climb down :)

China already started cleaning up operation in Hong Kong by freezing the Zionist terrorist slush fund :P When the funding stop no mercenaries will work for free to destroy Hong Kong. Operation Yellowbird 2 just begins and you'll see them roaming in USA and Taiwan, then appear on CNN, Fox News and all Zionist media as eyewitness to Hong Kong police brutality and how communist China violates human rights :)

Told you so :)

Noob678 , 4 hours ago link

Man who fired live round at police believed to be part of earlier case in which officers seized bombs and firearms linked to Hong Kong protests

A man who fired a live round at officers in Tai Po on Friday night was involved in another case centred on the seizure of bombs and firearms linked to anti-government protests, a police source has said, adding that more suspects could be at large.

The force also warned that an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle seized in a follow-up flat raid was the same model used in the 2017 Las Vegas shooting which killed 58 people, adding that the weapon could cause severe casualties as it had a range of up to 800 metres.

[Dec 21, 2019] Hong Kong Police Arrest Financiers Of The Protest Movement

Dec 21, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

JC , Dec 21 2019 19:22 utc | 9

UPDATE Hong Kong Riots.

Hong Kong Police Arrest 4 Alleged Financiers Of The Protest Movement

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/hong-kong-police-arrest-4-alleged-financiers-protest-movement


Mysterious Bags of Cash Trigger Major Hong Kong Protest Arrests

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mysterious-bags-cash-trigger-major-032653021.html?guccounter=1

[Dec 21, 2019] Mysterious Bags of Cash emerge exactly like in EuroMaydan riots

In case of EuroMaydan cash was delivered by diplomatic mail to Us and other embassies and then to the opposition parities.
Dec 21, 2019 | finance.yahoo.com

(Bloomberg) -- Glancing at bags of cash stuffed to the brim earlier this month, Gary Fan simply wanted someone to remove them from an office in Hong Kong used by his political party.

The former pro-democracy lawmaker had collected HK$2.7 million ($345,000) during an anti-government protest the day before, and was waiting for someone to pick it up from a mysterious group known as Spark Alliance that helps bail protesters out of jail. The next day, a person whom he knew and trusted came to collect the cash, even though Fan says he doesn't know who exactly is behind the group or where the money ends up.

"We just work by an honor system now, trusting them with a good cause," Fan said in a Dec. 11 interview, adding that Spark Alliance has "earned credibility with real work" like getting legal assistance for protesters. Still, he said, "I absolutely agree there should be more disclosure, transparency and accountability when you take money from the public."

On Thursday evening, police announced the arrests of four people connected with Spark Alliance for suspected money laundering, the first cases brought over financing the demonstrations after six months of protests against China's tightening grip over Hong Kong. Authorities froze HK$70 million of bank deposits and personal insurance products linked to the fund, while also seizing HK$130,000 in cash.

"The police attempted, through false statements, to distort the work of Spark Alliance as money laundering for malicious uses," the group said in a statement on Facebook. "Spark Alliance condemns this kind of defamatory action."

​The crackdown deals a major blow to demonstrators as they face ever-mounting legal bills, with more than 6,000 people arrested since June. Spark Alliance, one of the largest crowd-funding campaigns supporting the protests, plays a crucial behind-the-scenes role -- often sending anonymous representatives to bail protesters out of jail in the middle of the night.

The latest arrests risk deterring Hong Kong's professional class from giving more cash, potentially curbing a substantial source of funds that have helped sustain the protests longer than anyone had expected. They also show the limits of the leaderless movement's ability to manage tens of millions of dollars with little oversight outside of a formal financial system.

Funds bankrolling the protests have collectively raised at least HK$254 million ($33 million) since June, with 70% coming from just two groups, Spark Alliance and the 612 Humanitarian Fund, according to a tally based on disclosures from the groups and an analysis of publicly available documents. That figure doesn't reflect all the money raised related to the protests, only the funds Bloomberg News could verify.

The $33 million alone amounts to a third of the money the city has spent in overtime pay to 11,000 police officers since June, and would be able to purchase some 300,000 gas masks. But the largest costs faced by protesters are legal fees that may stretch out for years.

Nearly 1,000 people have been charged for offenses like rioting, which carries a jail sentence of as much as a decade, according to police. The 612 Fund says it can cost up to HK$1.8 million per person for a 60-day legal defense, and many trials last far longer. Some proceedings related to Hong Kong's 2014 Occupy protests are still ongoing.

Among dozens of groups, Spark Alliance is one of the most secretive: Even some donors and lawyers who assist the group say they don't know who runs it, while the bank account listed on its website belongs to a firm that owns a pest control company. A person who picked up Spark Alliance's hotline last week said the number was only for protester requests. The group didn't respond to requests for comment via Facebook, Whatsapp or Telegram.

'We Need Protection'

"Spark is probably less transparent but people tend to believe them," said Jason, a protester in his 30s who asked to be identified by his English name. He said he memorized the group's phone number and called the group after he was arrested in August. Seven hours later, two lawyers helped arrange HK$4,000 in bail money.

"Everyone knows the cost to fight for this movement and not everyone can afford lawyer fees," he said. "We need protection."

[Dec 15, 2019] Hong Kong Police Report Second Bomb Plot Foiled

Dec 15, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

With the Hong Kong protests showing no sign of letting up, a new narrative has emerged; that anti-government activists are " sliding into terrorism with home-made bombs" designed to inflict mass casualties.

On Sunday, Hong Kong police reported that they foiled a second bomb plot in under a week - arresting three men who were allegedly testing home-made devices and chemicals in a secluded area, according to SCMP .


beijing expat , 1 hour ago link

"If this keeps up, China will be virtually forced to shut down the protests - all in the name of fighting terrorism."

well, I had argued all along that the strategy of the incremental escalation of violence, the destruction of public infrastructure, both well documented regime change strategies, were designed to ignite a civil war and force Mainland intervention.

This could then be used as an excuse for the usual embargo tactics. The construction of a remote detonated bomb is highly complex and as you will recall from Islamic terrorism, bomb makers are highly skilled.

For this skill to suddenly materialise in HK suggests intelligence agents at work. Hong Kong has real problems, all economic, but their 5 demands don't call for economic remedies, indeed they call for things that will never happen.

The leaders of the protests, Josh Wong, Deniese Ho and others are trained by NED and other agencies to sow discord in what was otherwise a peaceful community.

There was a BBC documentary on utube about HK activists being trained at the NED/Soros Oslo Freedom forum 2014 but it seems to have been memoryholed in the last few days.

Still... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yXtUje3bsYk&t=327s .

Some people are still talking about it.

anduka , 2 hours ago link

"If this keeps up, China will be virtually forced to shut down the protests..." Total nonsense. At this point if people in HK started blowing themselves up, the only thing to pop in Beijing will be some champagne bottles. If Hong Kong slowly destroys itself, Beijing will just contentedly watch from the sidelines as all that banking business goes to Shanghai, Macao or across the river to Shenzhen.

mervyn , 3 hours ago link

In a related news, neonazi from Ukraine were deported last week, after their press credentials on their visas were revoked.

IronForge , 3 hours ago link

Should have Locked them Up for 3Months.

[Dec 07, 2019] China suspends Hong Kong visits by U.S. military ships, aircraft, sanctions U.S. NGOs

Dec 07, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

anne , December 02, 2019 at 02:11 PM

http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-12/02/c_138600158.htm

December 2, 2019

China suspends Hong Kong visits by U.S. military ships, aircraft, sanctions U.S. NGOs

BEIJING -- The Chinese government has decided to suspend reviewing applications to visit Hong Kong by U.S. military ships and aircraft starting Monday, foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said.

China will also take sanctions against some U.S. non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for their role in the disturbances in Hong Kong, Hua said at a press conference.

The NGOs include the National Endowment for Democracy, National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, International Republican Institute, Human Rights Watch and Freedom House.

A lot of facts and evidence have shown that the aforementioned NGOs supported anti-China rioters in Hong Kong in various ways, abetted their extreme and violent criminal behavior and incited separatist activities for "Hong Kong independence", Hua said, adding that these organizations bear major responsibilities for Hong Kong's chaotic situation and should be sanctioned and pay their price.

The spokesperson said the United States has seriously violated the international law and basic norms governing international relations, and interfered in China's internal affairs by signing the so-called Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019 into law despite China's firm opposition.

"China urges the U.S. to correct its mistake and stop meddling in Hong Kong affairs or interfering in China's other internal affairs by any word and act," Hua said.

China will take further necessary actions in accordance with the development of the situation to firmly defend the stability and prosperity of Hong Kong and safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests, she said.

[Dec 06, 2019] Why Are Ukrainian Neo-Nazis Joining the Hong Kong Protests - Sputnik International

Dec 06, 2019 | sputniknews.com

Prominent Ukrainian neo-Nazi figures have been spotted in the Hong Kong protests just weeks after hosting an "academy of street protest" in Kiev. Leaders of far-right Ukrainian groups that rose to prominence in the 2014 coup d'etat they helped orchestrate, including the Azov Battalion and Right Sektor , have recently traveled to Hong Kong to participate in the anti-Beijing protests there. It's unclear why the groups, sporting the apparel of a far-right hooligan group called "Honor" or "Gonor," have gone to Hong Kong, but the fact that both the 2014 Ukrainian coup and the present protests in Hong Kong have enjoyed extensive support from the CIA-spawned National Endowment for Democracy may give a clue.

"Hong Kong welcomed us as relatives," Serhii Filimonov wrote on Facebook Saturday, sharing a video of himself and other Ukrainian far-right figures in the semi-autonomous Chinese city. Filimonov once headed the Kiev branch of the Azov Civilian Corps, a support group for the ultra-nationalist Azov Battalion that's thinly veiled as a civilian NGO.

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fserhii.filimonov.98%2Fvideos%2F160773771798497%2F&show_text=1&width=560 photos posted the following day include Ihor Maliar, an Azov Battalion veteran who sports a "victory or Valhalla" tattoo across his neck, and Serhii Sternenko, who headed the Odessa section of Right Sektor when it torched the Trade Unions House on May 2, 2014, killing 42 people and injuring hundreds in the street violence before and after. Sternenko also helped found the "People's Lustration" fascist gang, which harassed, beat up and humiliated former officials of the Ukrainian government in the months following the 2014 Euromaidan coup. Sputnik Screenshot Screenshot of a Facebook post by Serhii Filimonov showing "Gonor" members in Hong Kong

Several of the men wear paraphernalia of the far-right "Honor" or "Gonor" so-called youth group founded by Filimonov in 2015, sporting a stylized version of the "trident," a symbol with ancient meaning in Ukraine adopted by ultra-nationalists, as three daggers. Several also have neo-Nazi tattoos, such as swastikas.

Actual swastika tattoos, just in case you were left in any doubt these are actual neo-nazis. pic.twitter.com/z2HqMWNXuO

-- Hong Kong Hermit (@HongKongHermit) December 2, 2019

​The men also posed in front of the wrecked Hong Kong Polytechnic University , where an intense two-week showdown between police and protesters saw more than 1,000 students detained and thousands of weapons seized, including petrol bombs and explosives.

Sputnik Screenshot Serhii Filimonov post showing Ukrainian far-right figures posing in front of Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Early last month, Filimonov, Sternenko and Maliar spoke at an "academy of street protest" in Kiev, the posters of which featured a molotov cocktail emblazoned with the "Gonor" logo.

Sputnik Screenshot Poster for an "academy of street protest" featuring lectures by several Ukrainian far-right figures

A Ukrainian Facebook page that came to the defense of the Gonor crew and their trip Monday afternoon seems to bridge the gap between the two movements. Calling itself the "Free Hong Kong Center," the page posts about the supposed strong links between the Hong Kong and 2014 Ukraine protests, complete with the words "umbrella" and "dignity" on their banner, referencing what demonstrators in Hong Kong called their 2014 protests, seen as a precursor to the present unrest, and by far-right Ukrainians to the 2014 coup.

The Center came to the defense of Gonor on Monday, posting that they are "simple activists" now and "are not connected to any Azov movements any more."

"They assured us they are really against nazism and another kind of alt-right ideology," they posted, dismissing the neo-Nazi imagery as traditional Ukrainian symbols.

Sputnik Screenshot Facebook post by "Free Hong Kong Center" defending "Gonor" members' visit to Hong Kong

It's not clear exactly what these "simple activists" were doing in Hong Kong. However, it's worth noting the extensive groundwork laid for both the 2014 uprising in Ukraine and the 2019 protests in Hong Kong via the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

In the three years before the 2014 coup, the CIA-backed NED sunk $14 million into regime change efforts in Ukraine, and the NED has been cultivating anti-Beijing attitudes in Hong Kong since the mid-1990s, before the territory was returned to Chinese rule by the British Empire.

Whether Filimonov and associates are there at the NED's behest or as simply a bit of protest tourism is anybody's guess.

[Nov 29, 2019] To sum up, Trump has signed another evil law that intervenes in China's domestic affairs and violates the country's sovereignty by using Hong Kong as a stick.

Notable quotes:
"... The Empire has started something it cannot win. I have other thoughts on this but I just dropped by to post this and get back to my entertaining chores, me being the chef and all that. ..."
Nov 29, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

karlof1 , Nov 28 2019 21:22 utc | 48

Just enough time to share this Global Times editorial regarding the gross interference in China's affairs by the Evil Outlaw US Empire's Congress--to cooperate with the Empire is to commit treason :

"In the meantime, the law also threatens to sanction Hongkongers who do not cooperate with the US. This will suppress neutral space for people with different ideas and further tear the city apart. The only way to maintain the solidarity of Hong Kong is to resist US provocation and prevent more people from joining hands with the opposition for fear of US sanctions. Efforts to fight the forces colluding with the US should be stepped up, and the corresponding laws need to be improved. There is no way to allow traitors to prevail and patriots to suffer .

"'One country, two systems' is China's independent constitutional arrangement and US intervention damages its external environment. Hong Kong society should be vigilant. To maintain "one country, two systems," the Chinese mainland and the HKSAR need to work together. Anyone who colludes with external forces to undermine 'one country, two systems' must pay a heavy price ."

Here's a softer op/ed , although it has a Confucian bite at its end:

"To sum up, Trump has signed another evil law that intervenes in China's domestic affairs and violates the country's sovereignty by using Hong Kong as a stick. However, in deciding how to use the stick and whether it will take the US where it wishes, Washington has to think carefully because the move would probably backfire ." [All Emphasis Mine]

The Empire has started something it cannot win. I have other thoughts on this but I just dropped by to post this and get back to my entertaining chores, me being the chef and all that.

Happy T-Day, and may Peace at some point finally prevail and come to Rule this and all other days.

[Nov 28, 2019] Hong Kong ensnared in the West's color revolution

Nov 28, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Colin , Nov 28 2019 17:55 utc | 29

Here's a very nice roundup of the Hong Kong protests, with some helpful discussion of the recent elections: Hong Kong ensnared in the West's color revolution hot box

[Nov 28, 2019] Will protest destroy Hong Kong financial industry.

Nov 28, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

psychohistorian , Nov 28 2019 20:08 utc | 41

@ jayc # 34 who wrote
"
The effective elements of the blunt stick the HKHRDA represents will inevitably weaken if not destroy HK's position as a financial hub, a fact which the protest leaders seem not to have gamed out. Or maybe they have.
"
Exactly! I think destroy is closer to the truth. China does not want profit forced in the middle of their financial dealings with the outside world and there is little or no value that HK can add to the equation.

As jared adds in comment #40 above
"
The financial industry is generally a con game built on managing perception and after all its all about the money when we strip away the facade.
"
The lie that private finance masturbation for profit adds anything to the GDP of the world is getting closer to being obvious to many. If anything it can be shown that profit subtracts value that could/should be provided as a public utility by government.

[Nov 28, 2019] Futures Tumble After Trump Signs Bill Backing Hong Kong Protesters, Defying China

So in due course the trade war was replaced by the full scale cold war.
Notable quotes:
"... Needless to say, no differences will be "settled amicably" and now China will have no choice but to retaliate, aggressively straining relations with the US, and further complicating Trump's effort to wind down his nearly two-year old trade war with Beijing. ..."
"... The legislation, S. 1838, which was passed virtually unanimously in both chambers, requires annual reviews of Hong Kong's special trade status under American law and will allow Washington to suspend said status in case the city does not retain a sufficient degree of autonomy under the "one country, two systems" framework. The bill also sanctions any officials deemed responsible for human rights abuses or undermining the city's autonomy. ..."
"... The House cleared the bill 417-1 on Nov. 20 after the Senate passed it without opposition, veto-proof majorities that left Trump with little choice but to acquiesce, or else suffer bruising fallout from his own party. the GOP. ..."
"... In accordance with the law, the Commerce Department will have 180 days to produce a report examining whether the Chinese government has tried use Hong Kong's special trading status to import advanced "dual use" technologies in violation of US export control laws. Dual use technologies are those that can have commercial and military applications. ..."
"... The new law directs the US secretary of state to "clearly inform the government of the People's Republic of China that the use of media outlets to spread disinformation or to intimidate and threaten its perceived enemies in Hong Kong or in other countries is unacceptable." ..."
"... The state department should take any such activity "into consideration when granting visas for travel and work in the United States to journalists from the People's Republic of China who are affiliated with any such media organizations", the law says. ..."
"... Yes I think getting the western financial institutions out of HK is the plan. I'm sure they appreciate the US doing this for them, but of course they could never admit that. ..."
Nov 27, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Less than an hour after Trump once again paraded with yet another all-time high in the S&P...

... and on day 510 of the trade war, it appears the president was confident enough that a collapse in trade talks won't drag stocks too far lower, and moments after futures reopened at 6pm, the White House said that Trump had signed the Hong Kong bill backing pro-democracy protesters, defying China and making sure that every trader's Thanksgiving holiday was just ruined.

In a late Wednesday statement from the White House, Trump said that:

I signed these bills out of respect for President Xi, China, and the people of Hong Kong. They are being enacted in the hope that Leaders and Representatives of China and Hong Kong will be able to amicably settle their differences leading to long term peace and prosperity for all.

Needless to say, no differences will be "settled amicably" and now China will have no choice but to retaliate, aggressively straining relations with the US, and further complicating Trump's effort to wind down his nearly two-year old trade war with Beijing.

Trump's signing of the bill comes during a period of unprecedented unrest in Hong Kong, where anti-government protests sparked by a now-shelved extradition bill proposal have ballooned into broader calls for democratic reform and police accountability.

"The Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act reaffirms and amends the United States-Hong Kong Policy Act of 1992, specifies United States policy towards Hong Kong and directs assessment of the political developments in Hong Kong," the White House said in a statement. "Certain provisions of the act would interfere with the exercise of the president's constitutional authority to state the foreign policy of the United States."

The legislation, S. 1838, which was passed virtually unanimously in both chambers, requires annual reviews of Hong Kong's special trade status under American law and will allow Washington to suspend said status in case the city does not retain a sufficient degree of autonomy under the "one country, two systems" framework. The bill also sanctions any officials deemed responsible for human rights abuses or undermining the city's autonomy.

The House cleared the bill 417-1 on Nov. 20 after the Senate passed it without opposition, veto-proof majorities that left Trump with little choice but to acquiesce, or else suffer bruising fallout from his own party. the GOP.

Trump also signed into law the PROTECT Hong Kong act, which will prohibit the sale of US-made munitions such as tear gas and rubber bullets to the city's authorities.

While many members of Congress in both parties have voiced strong support for protesters demanding more autonomy for the city, Trump had stayed largely silent, even as the demonstrations have been met by rising police violence.

Until now.

The bill's author, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, said that with the legislation's enactment, the US now had "new and meaningful tools to deter further influence and interference from Beijing into Hong Kong's internal affairs."

In accordance with the law, the Commerce Department will have 180 days to produce a report examining whether the Chinese government has tried use Hong Kong's special trading status to import advanced "dual use" technologies in violation of US export control laws. Dual use technologies are those that can have commercial and military applications.

One other less discussed but notable provision of the Hong Kong Human Rights Act targets media outlets affiliated with China's government. The new law directs the US secretary of state to "clearly inform the government of the People's Republic of China that the use of media outlets to spread disinformation or to intimidate and threaten its perceived enemies in Hong Kong or in other countries is unacceptable."

The state department should take any such activity "into consideration when granting visas for travel and work in the United States to journalists from the People's Republic of China who are affiliated with any such media organizations", the law says.

* * *

In the days leading up to Trump's signature, China's foreign ministry had urged Trump to prevent the legislation from becoming law, warning the Americans not to underestimate China's determination to defend its "sovereignty, security and development interests."

"If the U.S. insists on going down this wrong path, China will take strong countermeasures, " said China's foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang at a briefing Thursday in Beijing. On Monday, China's Vice Foreign Minister Zheng Zeguang summoned the U.S. ambassador, Terry Branstad to express "strong opposition" to what the country's government considers American interference in the protests, including the legislation, according to statement. The new U.S. law comes just as Washington and Beijing showed signs of working toward "phase-one" of deal to ease the trade war. Trump would like the agreement finished in order to ease economic uncertainty for his re-election campaign in 2020, and has floated the possibility of signing the deal in a farm state as an acknowledgment of the constituency that's borne the brunt of retaliatory Chinese tariffs.

Last week China's Vice Premier and chief trade negotiator Liu He said before a speech at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Beijing, that he was "cautiously optimistic" about reaching the phase one accord. He will now have no choice but to amend his statement.

In anticipation of a stern Chinese rebuke, US equity futures tumbled, wiping out most of the previous day's gains... Still, the generally modest pullback - the S&P was around 2,940 when Trump announced the Phase 1 deal on Oct 11 - suggests that despite Trump's signature, markets expect a Chinese deal to still come through. That may be an aggressive and overly "hopeful" assumption, especially now that China now longer has a carte blanche to do whatever it wants in Hong Kong, especially in the aftermath of this weekend's landslide victory for the pro-Democracy camp which won in 17 of the city's 18 districts.

"Following last weekend's historic elections in Hong Kong that included record turnout, this new law could not be more timely in showing strong US support for Hongkongers' long-cherished freedoms," said Rubio


The Palmetto Cynic , 1 hour ago link

Trade wars are good and easy to win. LOL.

Gonzogal , 32 minutes ago link

This is another attempt by the US to stop BRICS. They care NOTHING about HK, only its usefulness in the US war on Chinas growing importance in world trade.

Fascal Rascal upended , 27 minutes ago link

**** trading with communists.

lift foot, aim, pull trigger.

but no no no... trading with communists brings jobs to sell cheap crap. oh what was I thinking.... cheap crap, jobs, and the richest of the rich get richer... my bad.
it ain’t like the commies are going to use the money to build up their military..

silly me.

sentido kumon , 41 minutes ago link

Of course the obvious solution is to just let people choose whatever or whomever they want to associate with and be respected and left alone for their choice.

But no. We all have to live and abide by the wishes of other people bcuz of "unity" and ****.

This non sense is really getting tiresome.

Gonzogal , 51 minutes ago link

This criticism from a country that just this week renewed the "Patriot Act" that has taken away Americans rights and increased spying on US citizens.

The US should get its OWN house in order BEFORE moves against countries that do the SAME THING THE US DOES!

The world is sick of this hypocracy!

Helg Saracen , 1 hour ago link

Eh guys, you still do not understand that all this (not only China and Hong Kong) is a very big "elite" performance for ordinary people to keep you (the rest of the boobies) in subjection. It's like in boxing - contractual fights. Do you think world "elites" benefit from peace and order? You are mistaken - these guys have the world as death (the death of their Power and their Control). An example from the history of Europe - in the 18-19 and early 20th century, Europe only did what it fought. But the funny thing is that the monarchs (the real owners of Europe) were relatives among themselves. The First World War was popularly called “The War of Three Cousins” (English monarch, German Kaiser and Russian emperor). But the Europeans paid for the dismantling of relatives. Now the "monarchs" are bankers and your position has not changed, you changed only the owners after 1918.

He–Mene Mox Mox , 1 hour ago link

Problem with Hong Kong is, it is dependent on China to survive. That is not only true for the most basic neccessities, but also as a port for international trade. However, in the last 25 years, Shenzhen and Guangzhou have built up their own trade hubs, which has pulled trade away from being concentrated in Hong Kong, and consequently more dependent on China. Our ideas of Hong Kong remaining an independent island nation isn't going to work for three reasons:

1. Without being a doorway to China, there is no other reason for its existence.

2. Hong Kong is indeed Chinese sovereign territory, that was taken away from it to be made into a trade colony by the British in 1841, under the Treaty of Nanking. The British gave up Hong Kong in 1997, under the 1984 signed Sino-British Joint Declaration, in which Britain agreed to return not only the New Territories but also Kowloon and Hong Kong itself. China promised to implement a "One Country, Two Systems" regime, under which for fifty years Hong Kong citizens could continue to practice capitalism and political freedoms forbidden on the mainland. So, when the year 2047 comes around, Hong Kong will be fully absorbed and integrated in a One Country, One system Chinese regime. In otherwords, Hong Kong's fate was already sealed in 1984, and there is nothing America can legally do about it.

3. Hong Kong still needs the basic neccessities from China to survive. Don't count on either the British or the Americans to provide it.

Dzerzhhinsky , 1 hour ago link

Yes I think getting the western financial institutions out of HK is the plan. I'm sure they appreciate the US doing this for them, but of course they could never admit that.

[Nov 25, 2019] Why The Hong Kong Riots Are Coming To An End

Notable quotes:
"... The "marginal violence" campaign of the "pro-democratic" students has failed to win more support for them. Regular Hongkongers are increasingly willing to take a stand against further provocations: ..."
"... Ten days ago the core of the black clad rioters began to paralyze Hong Kong's traffic during regular workdays. They ransacked nearly every metro stations and barricaded large thoroughfares and tunnels. Schools were closed, businesses and workers were severely harmed. ..."
"... One 70 year old street cleaner was killed when he was hit by a stone thrown by the rioters against civilians who tried to remove a barricade. A 57 year old man was drenched with gasoline and set alight after he verbally disagreed with the rioter's ransacking of a metro station. A policeman was shot with an arrow. ..."
"... Last Sunday the police surrounded the PolyU and let no one leave. Those who wanted out were either arrested or, when under 18, identified and handed to their parents. There were several violent battles when the rioters attempted to break through the police cordon but only a few escaped. ..."
"... Today there are still some 30 rioter holed up in a PolyU building. The police are waiting them out. They said that they had made more than a thousand arrests. The university is ransacked and there was significant battle damage . The rioters again left thousands of Molotov cocktails and other weapons behind. ..."
"... Had China moved troops to Hong Kong, or allowed more force to be used against the protesters, the U.S. would have used that to press its allies to put strong sanctions on China. The protesters' violence was designed to achieve that outcome. The plan was part of the larger U.S. strategy of decoupling from China . ..."
"... Here's a handy piece of advice for non-American nations around the world: Whenever some American starts running its mouth about crusading for Freedom, Democracy, Human Rights, or similar propaganda slogans, get ready to defend your nation. These slogans are merely the American version of the White Man's Burden and Western Civilizing Mission. ..."
"... The U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Pakistan have cost American taxpayers $6.4 trillion since they began in 2001. That total is $2 trillion more than all federal government spending during the recently completed fiscal year. The report, from Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs at Brown University, also finds that more than 801,000 people have died as a direct result of fighting. ..."
"... The Grayzone piece linked above misses the real man behind the lobbying. Andrew Duncan who is a main sponsor of Senator Marco Rubio who is the main promoter on the hill for "activist" and U.S. darling Joshua Wong. Duncan is also one of the producers (financiers) of a film about Wong. ..."
"... In Hong Kong, it looks like university students were enthused to join in. ..."
"... The cognitive dissonance has been overwhelming these past months. "Pro-democracy protesters" who use black bloc tactics of arson and vandalism ..."
"... . Add a dollop of uninformed virtue-signalling from the usual clueless western cheerleaders, and it has been a festival of delusion which somehow ends with the image of a petrol-bomb-wielding black bloc protester as the new face of "freedom" (as seen on twitter). ..."
"... Recall that early media reports said there were 1.7 million protesters "according to the organiser's estimates". Once you remember that, then every time you hear millions is a hint to look up the Police estimate (150k) and estimates of maximum numbers in space available - also 150k or thereabouts. ..."
"... People whose ultimate goal is a comfortable life in a the USA which best meets their needs without necessarily concerning themselves with the needs of everybody else, are incredibly vulnerable once arrested. ..."
"... Usually it takes a few years before a resistance movement becomes too infiltrated to fulfill its objectives (eg the IRA), if the PRC has managed to do this to a movement which initially had so much popular support, within the space of a couple of months, this a massive win. ..."
"... I can only try to imagine what the Chinese police do to the Filipino mercenaries who make up the core of the US sponsored "protesters" with Molotovs when they catch them. ..."
"... The Chinese are not really as smart as we thought, are they, or such riots would have never happened (where were the parents of all these kids used by the US organizers?). But credit goes to the smart Chinese leadership for sitting out all the violence of the US-sponsored "peaceful protests" and thus preventing the organizers from involving the rest of the West in the war on China. The organizers will not give up, will try another day another way. ..."
"... Many young Chinese rioters burned their own jobs with their Molotovs , the typical achievement of the professional ideologues - getting the young people to do damaging things to themselves. ..."
"... Considering the now ridiculously low, and increasingly lower, share of Hong Kong in China's economy, wrecking Hong Kong economy like it just happened was a Pyrrhic move from the protesters. Hurting HK's economy doesn't hurt China much, actually, it might just boost a little bit more mainland China and weaken the independent-minded HK a bit more. ..."
"... It's funny, in a silly kind of way, that the US Congress has decided to "own" the Hong Kong riots by recognising them as 'legitimate'. The protesters shot themselves in the foot when they rejected Carrie Lam's offer to convene a summit at which protest reps and HK Govt reps could negotiate their differences - without pre-conditions. ..."
"... hong kong is just a small piece of the puzzle, a tiny bit of the apple in the big strudel which is the US hurry hurry rush, particularly since obama and clinton, to 'pivot to Asia' and try to 'contain' once again a rising superpower, China. ..."
Nov 25, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

The U.S. sponsored riots in Hong Kong are mostly over. They were sustained much longer than we had expected .

The "marginal violence" campaign of the "pro-democratic" students has failed to win more support for them. Regular Hongkongers are increasingly willing to take a stand against further provocations:

Demonstrators gathered at about 12.30pm on a bridge outside Exchange Square, which houses Hong Kong's stock exchange in the city's financial heartland, in another round of lunchtime protests that have been staged most days over the past two weeks.

Scuffles broke out after a pro-police group of about 50 people showed up about an hour later, but police arrived soon after to clear the area.

During at least two altercations between some members of each group, an anti-government contingent yelled "go back to China" at their adversaries, and one of their number kicked a woman walking towards the smaller group.

Ten days ago the core of the black clad rioters began to paralyze Hong Kong's traffic during regular workdays. They ransacked nearly every metro stations and barricaded large thoroughfares and tunnels. Schools were closed, businesses and workers were severely harmed.

One 70 year old street cleaner was killed when he was hit by a stone thrown by the rioters against civilians who tried to remove a barricade. A 57 year old man was drenched with gasoline and set alight after he verbally disagreed with the rioter's ransacking of a metro station. A policeman was shot with an arrow.

The rioters occupied the Chinese University and the Polytechnic University (PolyU) which are next to large streets and the important Cross-Harbor-Tunnel. Using the universities as logistic bases and fortifications they managed to keep many roads closed throughout day and night. After some negotiations with the president of the Chinese University the rioters evacuated from there while leaving some 8,000 petrol bombs behind . They concentrated in the PolyU next to the Cross-Harbor-Tunnel.

That was a mistake .

Last Sunday the police surrounded the PolyU and let no one leave. Those who wanted out were either arrested or, when under 18, identified and handed to their parents. There were several violent battles when the rioters attempted to break through the police cordon but only a few escaped.

After a few days most of those inside PolyU surrendered to the police.

Today there are still some 30 rioter holed up in a PolyU building. The police are waiting them out. They said that they had made more than a thousand arrests. The university is ransacked and there was significant battle damage . The rioters again left thousands of Molotov cocktails and other weapons behind.

The blockage of the city traffic and the increasing damage caused by rioter vandalism has alienated even those who earlier supported them. As the police now have most of the core rioters under arrest there is little chance that such violent protests will continue.

On Sunday there will be citywide district council elections in Hong Kong. China had pushed for the elections to go forward under all circumstances. Riot police will guard all polling stations.

Weeks ago the "pro-dem" candidates, who supported the rioters, were still poised to win more seats than they had held before the protests. But they now fear that the general public will punish them for the mayhem they have caused and will choose establishment candidates :

Chinese University political scientist Ivan Choy Chi-keung said while the turnout could set another record, the overall situation was more unpredictable than before.

"The pan-democrats could have won a landslide victory if the elections had been held in the summer, when the protests erupted," Choy said. "But after the recent clashes at two universities, undecided voters may be worried about public order and be discouraged from voting.

He was referring to fiery battles protesters fought with police outside Chinese University on November 12, followed by more confrontations outside Polytechnic University last week.

"It will be difficult for the camp to win more than half of the seats, as some originally envisaged," Choy said.

The Hong Kong government has conceded none of the protesters' "five demands". The only thing that the protesters have won is the passing of legislation by the U.S. Congress :

The House of Representatives on Wednesday followed the lead of the Senate in overwhelmingly approving two pieces of legislation: The Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which requires the president to annually review the favourable trading status that the US gives to Hong Kong, threatening to revoke it and impose penalties against officials if freedoms are determined to have been quashed; and the Protect Hong Kong Act, which will block the sale of tear gas and other policing items.

The former, although largely symbolic, could alter Washington's relationship with Hong Kong and Beijing.

US President Donald Trump has a straightforward choice on legislation passed on to him by the United States Congress supporting the protests that have engulfed Hong Kong – approve or veto. Coming amid tough bargaining on his trade war with China, he may be tempted to make his decision part of the negotiations.
...
But Beijing sees such measures as striking at the heart of Chinese sovereignty. Radical protesters could be spurred to greater violence. Unspecified countermeasures are promised should Trump give his approval.
...
But the trade war, violence and legislation have damaged business sentiment in Hong Kong. Approval or not, pessimism and uncertainty have already been deepened. There can be no winners.

Trump wants the trade deal with China and will therefore likely veto the bill :

Speaking on the "Fox & Friends" morning program, the president said that he was balancing competing priorities in the U.S.-China relationship.

"We have to stand with Hong Kong, but I'm also standing with President Xi [Jinping], he's a friend of mine. He's an incredible guy, but we have to stand I'd like to see them work it out, okay?" the president said. "I stand with freedom, I stand with all of the things that I want to do, but we are also in the process of making one of the largest trade deals in history. And if we could do that, it would be great."

A veto would only have a temporary impact as the law has passed the House and Senate by veto proof majorities.

The idea behind the protests and the rioters In Hong Kong was all along to provoke another Tian An Men incident . This has been quite obvious since the start of the protest. It now gets publicly acknowledged:

BBC Newsnight @BBCNewsnight - 11:00 UTC · Nov 19, 2019

"Some of the protesters seem to have an objective to provoke a military confrontation with China. They seem to want a Tiananmen Square outcome as success."

Fmr Foreign Sec @Jeremy_Hunt says he is "concerned with the tactics" with some of #HongKong's protesters

Had China moved troops to Hong Kong, or allowed more force to be used against the protesters, the U.S. would have used that to press its allies to put strong sanctions on China. The protesters' violence was designed to achieve that outcome. The plan was part of the larger U.S. strategy of decoupling from China .

The plan failed because China was too smart to give the U.S. what it wanted. Now it is Trump who is under pressure. He needs the trade deal with China because the current trade war is doing harm to the U.S. economy and endangers his reelection.

Which is probably the real reason why the protests have died down.

Posted by b on November 22, 2019 at 19:02 UTC | Permalink


AK74 , Nov 23 2019 6:48 utc | 61
Here's a handy piece of advice for non-American nations around the world: Whenever some American starts running its mouth about crusading for Freedom, Democracy, Human Rights, or similar propaganda slogans, get ready to defend your nation. These slogans are merely the American version of the White Man's Burden and Western Civilizing Mission.

They are a clear and present threat that the American predator is slouching towards you.

Jen , Nov 22 2019 19:49 utc | 8

Interesting that in The Atlantic magazine article B links to (at "That was a mistake"), the writer Suzanne Sataline followed a rioter all the way through PolyU without saying why she had to do so. Had she been found by police, she would surely have been arrested and charged with assisting in terrorist-styled activities.

Next time The Atlantic sends her on an overseas assignment, perhaps somewhere in the Middle East, Africa or Latin America, she might not be so lucky. Somehow the fate of Marie Colvin in Syria or Lebanon comes to mind. I would not be surprised though if Sataline has never heard of Colvin.

james , Nov 22 2019 19:51 utc | 9
@4 nathan and @ 7 clue... thanks... i did read confessions of an economic hitman which goes into similar terrain..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit_Man

Mao , Nov 22 2019 19:59 utc | 10
The U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Pakistan have cost American taxpayers $6.4 trillion since they began in 2001. That total is $2 trillion more than all federal government spending during the recently completed fiscal year. The report, from Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs at Brown University, also finds that more than 801,000 people have died as a direct result of fighting.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/20/us-spent-6point4-trillion-on-middle-east-wars-since-2001-study.html

Mao , Nov 22 2019 20:04 utc | 11
"I think China needs to stop interfering in the internal affairs of the United States because our treatment of Hong Kong is an internal matter," says @MarcoRubio.

https://twitter.com/SquawkCNBC/status/1197511188092985345

b , Nov 22 2019 20:17 utc | 12
Hong Kong's opposition unites with Washington hardliners to 'preserve the US's own political and economic interests'
While claiming to fight for "self-determination," Hong Kong opposition leaders are collaborating with regime-change neoconservatives in Washington to "preserve the US's own political and economic interests." A new DC lobbying front has become their base of operations.

The Grayzone piece linked above misses the real man behind the lobbying. Andrew Duncan who is a main sponsor of Senator Marco Rubio who is the main promoter on the hill for "activist" and U.S. darling Joshua Wong. Duncan is also one of the producers (financiers) of a film about Wong.

Watchdog group files complaint in shadowy gift to super PAC aiding Marco Rubio

An election watchdog organization filed a complaint Friday with the Federal Election Commission over a $500,000 donation to a super political action committee aiding Marco Rubio from a mystery firm headed by a New York investor.
...
The complaint from the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, seeks an investigation into IGX LLC for masking the donation and to determine whether the Conservative Solutions PAC was aware of the origins of the contribution. The actual donor, Andrew Duncan, of Brooklyn, New York, acknowledged to the Associated Press earlier this month that he had routed his contribution through IGX, a business entity registered last year in Delaware.
Laguerre , Nov 22 2019 21:07 utc | 17
If the violence in the demonstrations is being pushed by the US, as suggested by b (and I agree), it doesn't matter very much how popular the demos are. Apart from the need not to look absurdly out of tune.

This is not the first time that I've compared the Hong Kong demos to the Gilets Jaunes in France. The model is identical. Groups separate from the popular demonstrations commit violence; no-one knows who they are. Black-masked unknown individuals.

In Hong Kong, it looks like university students were enthused to join in.

In Paris we had it again last Saturday, but it won't last, as most of the Gilets Jaunes are against the violence. We ran into a group that night; they didn't seem very violent, more like copycats. Their more violent fellows had just destroyed a war monument.

The French always deny that it could be a foreign intervention, but it's so similar to what has happened in Hong Kong.

Jackrabbit , Nov 22 2019 21:13 utc | 18
b @12

Insightful. Thanks!

jayc , Nov 22 2019 21:14 utc | 19
The cognitive dissonance has been overwhelming these past months. "Pro-democracy protesters" who use black bloc tactics of arson and vandalism.

"Students yearning for freedom" who organize Molotov cocktail factories. Complaints of excessive "police brutality" when by objective international standards the police were remarkably constrained. "Hong Kong is a repressive police state" says Joshua Wong, and yet it is consistently near the top of the list in the Cato Institute world freedom index.

The protesters are "fighting for democracy" even though Hong Kong is democratic, and demand a "universal suffrage" that in practice very few jurisdictions, least of all their beloved US/UK, enjoy. Add a dollop of uninformed virtue-signalling from the usual clueless western cheerleaders, and it has been a festival of delusion which somehow ends with the image of a petrol-bomb-wielding black bloc protester as the new face of "freedom" (as seen on twitter).

Jackrabbit , Nov 22 2019 21:19 utc | 21
Laguerre @17: so similar ... violent

I disagree. Gillets Jaunes protest are throughout the country. And GJ are not trying to maintain any sort of special status like HK protesters. GJ have not been violent. Its those that are trying to discredit the GJ that are violent.!!

d dan , Nov 22 2019 21:52 utc | 26
The author (b) writes: "Had China moved troops to Hong Kong, or allowed more force to be used against the protesters, the U.S. would have used that to press its allies to put strong sanctions on China."

Ironically, China already moved its troops to the street of Hong Kong this week - to help to clean the street and repair the damages done by the rioters! I know it is anti-climax, and a big let down for all the Chinese haters like Marco Rubio, Nancy Pelosi, Peter Navarro, Steve Bannon and many others.

Michael Droy , Nov 22 2019 22:17 utc | 29
Excellent as per usual.

The funny thing is that a little bit of effort and the whole thing becomes apparent even through the traditional media reports. Recall that early media reports said there were 1.7 million protesters "according to the organiser's estimates". Once you remember that, then every time you hear millions is a hint to look up the Police estimate (150k) and estimates of maximum numbers in space available - also 150k or thereabouts.

More stories hint of high protester numbers but don't mention numbers -- so check the accompanying pictures and videos - we a few thousand (ie well down on ever factual early numbers) and more recently just a few hundred. Police violence - yet every picture or video show large numbers of police acting very very peaceably (compare Paris). HK democracy - yet all the pictures recently have been exclusively of masked blackshirts and if you dig deep most of the violence has been blackshirt on passers by.

There must be picture editors who are stunned by the reports they run. And obviously the story they are all looking for is the China overreaction that was never going to happen.

The whole thing runs in parallel with the obvious Ujghur 1 million in prison lie (it would be equivalent to every male aged 16-29) where the only witnesses to speak to western journalists have been fed to the press in Istanbul. We all know that Chinese muslims in Istanbul are going to or already in ISIS. James Le Mesurier doing a little extra press feeding in his spare time.

nietzsche1510 , Nov 22 2019 23:15 utc | 33
in 1997, the year Great Britain consumed her concession of Hong Kong, the colony, now mainland proper, was counting for 40% of China´s GDP. today hardly 2%. a major factor of the unrest.
Godfree Roberts , Nov 22 2019 23:23 utc | 34
"They seem to want a Tiananmen Square outcome as success."

The Tiananmen Square outcome was–media accounts to the contrary –- that the kids all left the square safely by 7:20 am, just as all the HK demonstrators are unharmed.

There was a riot led by professional thugs elsewhere in Beijing, in Chang'An Avenue, but that was a different matter entirely and one with an interesting sequel. The leader of that riot was exfiltrated to the UK by MI6 and subsequently convicted of robbing and murdering an elderly Londoner. Sweet.

brian , Nov 22 2019 23:40 utc | 35
' 44 year old man was drenched with gasoline '

he is 57: 'Lee Chi-cheung, 57, was left fighting for his life after the attack, which occurred on November 11 after a dispute with a group of masked people who had vandalised an MTR station in Ma On Shan in Hong Kong's New Territories.; https://www.asiaone.com/asia/wife-hong-kong-man-who-was-set-fire-tells-heartbreak

A User , Nov 22 2019 23:40 utc | 36
The decision to crowd hundreds of members of the hard core into a siege situation at PolyU is more than a mistake it will be catastrophic for a movement which is largely peopled by members of the bourgeoisie. Although if it follows the form of many other similar resistance efforts it is likely that any proletariat members participating found themselves on the front lines during confrontation because they had the balls to be there once push came to a crack on the melon with a baton.

People whose ultimate goal is a comfortable life in a the USA which best meets their needs without necessarily concerning themselves with the needs of everybody else, are incredibly vulnerable once arrested.

The best outcome for PRC will be a situation where they have intelligence of what moves resistance may be planning in the future, combined with some ability to control the resistance.

Now that the most violent of the protesters have stuffed themselves into one spot in a way that makes being arrested as they leave the scene they vandalised a reasonable act by police in the eyes of Hongkong citizens and, for that matter, the world, we can be certain many of the arrestees will be 'turned' by the police and intelligence services.

As for that essential ingredient of any resistance movement, solidarity, the atlantic article b linked to denigrates many of those still stuck inside PolyU as "well-meaning, unlucky naifs who didn't know the geography and didn't have the guile or foresight to negotiate, bargain, lie, or sneak their way out." that elitist summation of the courageous is likely to have been engendered in the writer by her sources (prolly introduced by amerikan 'friends') who did escape.

Smart proletarian fighters abandoned inside PolyU and desperate bourgeois resisters now facing the disappointment of their families caused by the realisation that their actions have made their future prospects a lot grimmer will cause many to rationalise that they were betrayed & led up the garden path by a selfish leadership. In those circs helping the police is less a betrayal than a reasonable reaction to movement indifference towards them, they will decide.

Perhaps this was a definite police strategy from the start, utilizing some of the vandals already arrested at earlier riots. That would mean that some of the escapees were not solely agents of usuk, some were permitted to escape by the police so they wouldn't have to explain away yet another arrest to their comrades.

Usually it takes a few years before a resistance movement becomes too infiltrated to fulfill its objectives (eg the IRA), if the PRC has managed to do this to a movement which initially had so much popular support, within the space of a couple of months, this a massive win.

Tom , Nov 23 2019 0:37 utc | 40

See Jeff. J. Brown, Confucius, Laozi and Buddha are humbly winning against the imperial West, in troubled Hong Kong. , posted at China Rising back in July. He resides in HK, speaks Chinese, and apparently got it exactly right.

Posted by: Tom | Nov 23 2019 0:37 utc | 40

Kiza , Nov 23 2019 0:50 utc | 41
I can only try to imagine what the Chinese police do to the Filipino mercenaries who make up the core of the US sponsored "protesters" with Molotovs when they catch them. I can certainly understand why they are desperately trying to escape through the sewer pipes of the University etc. Even the dumbest Hong-Kongers have finally cottoned it that they are the big losers of this "democratic revolution".

The Chinese are not really as smart as we thought, are they, or such riots would have never happened (where were the parents of all these kids used by the US organizers?). But credit goes to the smart Chinese leadership for sitting out all the violence of the US-sponsored "peaceful protests" and thus preventing the organizers from involving the rest of the West in the war on China. The organizers will not give up, will try another day another way.

But the Chinese authorities must study the Russian experience with prevention , to avoid the huge economic losses. This is a big but Pyrrhic Chinese victory over US. The Return on Investment to the riot organizers was not too bad, for couple tens of million dollars they set back the Hong Kong economy by billions and 5-10 years.

Many young Chinese rioters burned their own jobs with their Molotovs , the typical achievement of the professional ideologues - getting the young people to do damaging things to themselves.

psychohistorian , Nov 23 2019 2:07 utc | 44
@ Kiza in #39 who wrote
"
This is a big but Pyrrhic Chinese victory over US. The Return on Investment to the riot organizers was not too bad, for couple tens of million dollars they set back the Hong Kong economy by billions and 5-10 years. Many young Chinese rioters burned their own jobs with their Molotovs, the typical achievement of the professional ideologues - getting the young people to do damaging things to themselves.
"
Thanks for your thoughts. China has won in two ways, IMO
1. It will speed the reintegration of HK into the China political economy because it further destroyed the HK of British rule.
2. It is a wake up call to Taiwan about their reliance on and fealty to the West....what benefits are there and at what cost?
Clueless Joe , Nov 23 2019 2:15 utc | 45
I agree with Psychohistorian. Considering the now ridiculously low, and increasingly lower, share of Hong Kong in China's economy, wrecking Hong Kong economy like it just happened was a Pyrrhic move from the protesters. Hurting HK's economy doesn't hurt China much, actually, it might just boost a little bit more mainland China and weaken the independent-minded HK a bit more.

As long as the situation ends up returning to normal and things stay quiet afterwards, I would nearly wonder if some Chinese agents didn't help create that mess in Hong Kong, because Beijing surely doesn't need a booming HK with special status anymore.

William Kierath , Nov 23 2019 3:08 utc | 49
I think your reasoning is far too complex, and I here in Australia, (a Serial Email-er to the National Broadcaster "The ABC") emailed some months ago my impression the Government in Beijing would sit on its hands and watch the show across the moat from Shenzhen 35 Klms away, which it sees as the replacement for Hong Kong?

I don't think the Chinese have forgotten the Opium Wars and the arrogance of the Poms which occupied Hong Kong from 1841 to 1997 with a short intermission in which the Japs took residence. So I believe they just watched Hong Kong destroy itself, and didn't care who was behind it and as a result would be in a far more powerful position when they expose the British and the US for their part in this exercise.

There never was going to be a Tienanmen event as I predicted several months ago about which the idiots in the ABC salivated and all sorts of stuff was written about the impending "Invasion" of the "Democratic" Island where these over indulged brats had their Hissy-Fit.

Hong Kong never in its History has ever had "Democracy" as it was a servile "Stateless Outpost" dictated by Buckingham Palace via the "Foreign Office" and the Resident Governor!
<<<<<<<<<<<< So suck it up! >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Ma Laoshi , Nov 23 2019 3:48 utc | 50
I feel these terms "pro-dem" and "pan-democratic" in HK politics should not be allowed to stand uncontested. Sure, the government in mainland China is not democratic (refreshingly, at least it doesn't pretend to be).

But the Beijing-friendly parties in Hong Kong contest the local elections under exactly the same (flawed) rules as every other party; so it seems to me they're all equally democratic. Rather, the pan-dem (pandemic?!) bloc in Hong Kong is pro-American -- that's the real difference.

It's already long, long ago that I noticed the same sleight of hand in Serbia, where MSM conflated "democratic" with "pro-EU".

Hoarsewhisperer , Nov 23 2019 3:54 utc | 51
It's funny, in a silly kind of way, that the US Congress has decided to "own" the Hong Kong riots by recognising them as 'legitimate'. The protesters shot themselves in the foot when they rejected Carrie Lam's offer to convene a summit at which protest reps and HK Govt reps could negotiate their differences - without pre-conditions.

She subsequently sounded the plot's death knell the day she announced that her government won't recognise ANY of the protesters' infantile supplementary demands and declared violent masked protesters to be illegal and illegitimate.
...
A week or so ago ABC.net.au's reporter in Hong Kong said that the protests were confined to a very small area representing Hong Kong's "financial heartland." He stated that two blocks from the Media Circus/protests it's business-as-usual in the rest of Hong Kong. I haven't heard this claim made by any other MSM 'news' source...

Peter AU1 , Nov 23 2019 4:16 utc | 52
Earlier I thought China was too soft on the rioters but they have played it well. Like Russia separated moderate rebels from jihadis in Syria, China separated the regime change rioters from the genuine protestors in Hong Kong.
Piotr Berman , Nov 23 2019 4:44 utc | 54
"Hong Kong is a repressive police state" says Joshua Wong, and yet it is consistently near the top of the list in the Cato Institute world freedom index.

Posted by: jayc | Nov 22 2019 21:14 utc | 19

In the past, I thought that Hong Kong was dominated by a narrow rich oligarchy with rules that kept the input from hoi-polloi to the minimum, which meant low taxes for business and the rich etc. From the point of view of Cato Institute it is the definition of paradise, but the life in paradise may have its discontent.

Compare with Chile that has exemplary record of "property rights" since Pinochet era with a constitution that makes it very hard to change, and yet, the locals are not happy and neither Russian nor Bolivarian agitators were identfied.

Or Colombia, another shiny bastion of democracy, allowing very wide spectrum of relationship between bosses and workers (assassinations of uppity organizers included). I would be curious if systematic and widespread murder in the defense of freedom merits downgrading in Cato Institute world freedom index.

Den Lille Abe , Nov 23 2019 6:13 utc | 57
I agree completely with what many other commenters have written, the whole rigmarole was just an US attempt to instigate a "Colour Revolution". Modus Operandi fits perfectly with what has been done in many other places. It is about time the US tastes its own soup....And we dont even have to supply them weapons, they have got plenty
psychohistorian , Nov 23 2019 6:51 utc | 62
One last response to King Lear is the link to the posting containing the quote I provided above from Xinhuanet

I suggest you go look at the picture of the delegates to this meeting and tell us here at MoA that all of them are deluded about the path China is on.

http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-11/23/c_138576426.htm

And only you know the real picture of the geo-political world, right?.....grin

uncle tungsten , Nov 23 2019 7:59 utc | 67
Clueless Joe #43
As long as the situation ends up returning to normal and things stay quiet afterwards, I would nearly wonder if some Chinese agents didn't help create that mess in Hong Kong, because Beijing surely doesn't need a booming HK with special status anymore.

Yep, and I would think that the Chinese leadership took exactly that calculated risk to neutralise the HK status and snuff out some fifth column saboteurs. Beats disappearing them and all that untidy stuff.

As for any comparison with the Gillet Jaunes by other contributors, I do not see that at all. I agree people are in the streets but the GJ are in solidarity with their fellow citizens whereas the HK rioters are murderous thugs pissing on their fellows. The role of the police forces are entirely opposite with the HK police exercising phenomenal constraint. The HK rioters could learn something if they followed the Maoist history of struggle or even the history of the west. Losers and creatures of the USUK private finance fascisti.

Joost , Nov 23 2019 8:50 utc | 70
I wonder if this PolyU seige was meant to be some sort of Odessa style Tienanmen event. I mean, what can you do with 8000 molotov cocktails without getting roasted in the process? Common sense prevailed on both sides.

Rioters who left the scene and surrendered just chickened out. They love a good riot but did not sign up to get themselves identified by their dental records. It would not even surprise me if there were any snipers out there waiting to shoot protesters running for their lives fleeing a burning building. MSM would have a field day.

When that failed, Trump being Trump claimed credit ( Psychohistorian #55)

A User , Nov 23 2019 9:10 utc | 71
Peterau@ Posted by: Peter AU1 | Nov 23 2019 7:34 utc | 67

Fair enough chap; I rarely click on linked nyms because they tend to reveal blatant agendas which are most often a disappointment.
Without getting into a serious debate about it, I have come to the conclusion that when Xi runs the Zhou Enlai 'completely uninterested in intervention' line which he has been sticking to since the kick-off off the latest attempt by usuk to take advantage of the people of Hongkong (despite anyone who can think, asking themselves that if the englanders really cared that much about their Honkers subjects, WTF didn't they give 'em all brit passports when they were asked to), he seems least credible.

This is a bloke who runs a line much closer to the old school, 'rich do what rich do', line that his parents promulgated, than he ever has to either Zhou's or Mao's unapologetic socialism stance - (although it must be emphasized that there is a vast difference in both means and goals between the act which wealthy Chinese merchants in China pulled and the sociopathic, anti-humanist line that modern usury based capitalism spruiks) unfortunately neither advocate for the humanist, everybody deserves a fair shake of the stick mantra, which is the only line that can possibly lead to the continuing existence of human beings.

michaelj72 , Nov 23 2019 9:29 utc | 73
hong kong is just a small piece of the puzzle, a tiny bit of the apple in the big strudel which is the US hurry hurry rush, particularly since obama and clinton, to 'pivot to Asia' and try to 'contain' once again a rising superpower, China.

china is pretty clearly the new next up and coming world empire, (anyone really see any other competition against the US? and don't count on europe to offer much resistance to much of anything that the US wants/demands either, though there are notable exceptions, like Nord Stream)

peter lee/chinahand tells me something I didn't yet know, about the china chicken hawks:

https://twitter.com/chinahand/status/1198018591548989441

"....donnie came into office w/ aspirations as a china dealmaker/korea peacemaker. but his political weakness forced him to pivot to milsec his best base of support. & the China hawks took over literally every lever of policy. From Schriver at the Pentagon to Pottinger at the NSC to the purge of Thornton at State. Now that China hawks run the policy apparatus, China threat is entrenched as the Beltway consensus and the indispensable political accessory for Dems & GOP alike, Donnie's outlived his usefulness...."

so while the US has wasted at least $6 trillion since 2001 on a futile and endless series of north african/middle eastern wars of aggression (and blowing lots of things up, just like in those hollywood movies), China and built and built and invested its trillions in productivity. Hong kong is important in the chess game, but really just as a sideshow and irritant

Mark T , Nov 23 2019 11:55 utc | 77
The problem for the US has been that unlike previous trade competitors, Japan, Korea and Germany, there is no standing UIS army in China, so they don't have to do as they are told. Now even though HK has shrunk from 25% of Chinese GDP at handover to less than 3% now, it remains strategically important, especially as China builds out its capital markets.

As such, threatening the separate economic status of HK is a pretty powerful stick which the Neo cons have just given themselves. In my opinion it is no coincidence that what began as a peaceful protest over the extradition treaty (whipped up by the tycoons and the triads who have most to lose) turned into an antifa style textbook color revolution immediately after Rubio et al had launched the bill in the summer. Given that prior to two weeks ago most members of the House would have struggled to find Hong Kong on a map it was mightily helpful that the protesters decided to 'spontaneously" switch to telegenic firebombs and tactics to ensure 24/7 news coverage on C(IA)NN in the days leading up to the vote.

The WP and NYT as well as the FT and Economist all did their bit of course, as did all the breathless 'embedded reporters'. Result, the US has just awarded itself the right to meddle in the political affairs of Hong Kong including specifically setting a timetable for universal suffrage on the LegCo. This is technically not a big deal as the people of HK were supposed to get that in 2015, but, (and get this) the so called pro democracy purists refused to accept it unless they also got the right to both nominate and select the chief executive as well, something that was not being offered. Bottom line, tycoons have what they want, the State Department has what it wants and while the Taiwanese would like to keep the pot boiling for their elections in January, most of the vested interests are done now so the propaganda machine can move on.

SteveK9 , Nov 23 2019 14:26 utc | 81
Here are some interesting takes on the origins of the HK protests: This has an unfortunate title. It has nothing to do with Africans. It is referring to the fact that there are always locals that benefit from being part of a colony.

http://www.unz.com/ishamir/house-niggers-mutiny/ These are focused on the very human response to a loss in status, as well as the problems of living in a economic entity controlled by oligarchs.

http://www.unz.com/avltchek/some-in-hong-kong-feel-frustrated-as-their-city-is-losing-to-mainland-china/

https://spandrell.com/2019/08/25/hong-kong-and-the-perils-of-nativism/

vk , Nov 23 2019 16:27 utc | 84
@ Posted by: Bardi | Nov 23 2019 15:21 utc | 82

The spirit of the "One country, two systems" deal is that HK should remain capitalist until 2047. It is possible for a capitalist society to also be a dictatorship (Fascist Italy, Third Reich, the military dictatorships of Latin America of the 1950s-1980s, Thailand etc. etc.), so, even if Beijing deprives the people of HK (which is a city, not a country) of directly choosing its leadership, the 1C2S social contract remains intact.

Capitalism doesn't equal democracy.

--//--

Posted by: Ts'yew T'aw-Loh | Nov 23 2019 14:01 utc | 80

Well, if that's the brilliant conclusion this "Zhōu Shùrén" came after carefully analysing 3,000+ years of Chinese History, then he's wrong.

S , Nov 23 2019 16:40 utc | 85
@vk #84: You should familiarize yourself with who Lu Xun is.
vk , Nov 23 2019 16:51 utc | 86
@ Posted by: S | Nov 23 2019 16:40 utc | 85

Lu Xun grew up (and died) during the "Century of Shame". That period was exceptional, not the rule, in Chinese history. In that context, I understand his stance. But that's definitely not what China is today.

Sure you could teach his works to the people of HK, but they could as easily interpret his opus on the reverse: that the HK are the new "Chinese", and thus must liberate themselves from the "other" -- Beijing. So, I don't know what lessons, beyond the specific historical period the writer lived in, you could take in modern geopolitics.

If you want not only to understand the social world, but to change it in a scientific, rational way, Marxism is the only way to go nowadays.

bevin , Nov 23 2019 17:10 utc | 87
..As for any comparison with the Gillet Jaunes by other contributors, I do not see that at all. I agree people are in the streets but the GJ are in solidarity with their fellow citizens whereas the HK rioters are murderous thugs pissing on their fellows. The role of the police forces are entirely opposite with the HK police exercising phenomenal constraint.
Uncle Tungsten @67
I agree there aren't many who view the GJ in that way, but one of them, a regular visitor with good info from the Middle East, is so invested with Macron, and always has been, that he refuses to see that the GJ are exactly what they seem to be- a genuine grassroots provincial movement with conservative attitudes. By which I mean that they want to conserve the welfare state features that have made France a relatively civilised society. Macron, on the other hand, is a gung ho market reformer who can't wait to smash the unions, privatise the railways, restore the profit motive to the healthcare system and generally make the rich happy. Macron is a groupy of and an eager collaborator with the oligarchs. In fact he is, as the behaviour of his police forces and the relentless force used against demonstrators confirms, an authoritarian in the French tradition which gave rise to fascism and a conscious inheritor of the mantle of Petain and those who collaborated with the Nazis to preserve 'order and hierarchy.' The last French election was a contest between two schools of fascist and Macron won.
snake , Nov 23 2019 18:26 utc | 89
claims UAW and Israel behind Iraq protests Humm Is there a central "start a protest, riot or invasion task group somewhere .. Where are these fake or overtaken protest and coup-de-riot plots planned? Where is the play book? Who funds them and why? Is it possible these RIPOFFs are private interest planned, state funded and private contractor executed? Who writes the reports about them..
Who studies them (what schools what people in those schools teaches this kind of stuff). How can copies of reports about riots, protests and invasions that were planned by outsider third parties be obtained.. ??

Studying reported results by those who planned the protest or the riot, invasion or whatever would or could reveal the methods and give strong indicators about the true source of each new riot, invasion, protest or false flag [RIPOFF]

Where do they start.. (seems like the young people mostly..) but I do not know
How long does it take to get a riot or protest organized ?
How much money does it take to get a riot or protest organized?
How many experts does it take to get the riot or protest organized?
did the same people that planned the riots in Hong Kong also plan the riots or protests in Iraq and Lebanon/

psychohistorian , Nov 23 2019 19:06 utc | 93
More about China calling out the US for meddling from Reuters this morning

"
BEIJING (Reuters) - The United States is the world's biggest source of instability and its politicians are going around the world baselessly smearing China, the Chinese government's top diplomat said on Saturday in a stinging attack at a G20 meeting in Japan.

Meeting Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok on the sidelines of a G20 foreign ministers meeting in the Japanese city of Nagoya, Chinese State Councillor Wang Yi did not hold back in his criticism of the United States.

"The United States is broadly engaged in unilateralism and protectionism, and is damaging multilateralism and the multilateral trading system. It has already become the world's biggest destabilizing factor," China's Foreign Ministry cited Wang as saying.
The United States has, for political purposes, used the machine of state to suppress legitimate Chinese businesses and has groundlessly laid charges against them, which is an act of bullying, he added.

"Certain U.S. politicians have smeared China everywhere in the world, but have not produced any evidence."

The United States has also used its domestic law to "crudely interfere" in China's internal affairs, trying to damage "one country, two systems" and Hong Kong's stability and prosperity, he added.

"

Goldie , Nov 24 2019 4:22 utc | 99
Foreigner in Hong Kong has had enough of the rioters.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1194486618633035776

[Nov 22, 2019] When they passed the "Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019" by unanimous consent, the U.S. Senate essentially doused our relationship with China with kerosene and set it on fire

Nov 22, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

blues , Nov 20 2019 22:49 utc | 17

Well...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ //
Zero Hedge: US Relations With China Were Just Destroyed, And Nothing Will Ever Be The Same Again

When they passed the "Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019" by unanimous consent, the U.S. Senate essentially doused our relationship with China with kerosene and set it on fire. The following comes from Zero Hedge


In a widely anticipated move, just after 6pm ET on Tuesday, the Senate unanimously passed a bipartisan bill, S.1838, showing support for pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong by requiring an annual review of whether the city is sufficiently autonomous from Beijing to justify its special trading status. In doing so, the Senate has delivered a warning to China against a violent suppression of the demonstrations, a stark contrast to President Donald Trump's near-silence on the issue, the result of a behind the scenes agreement whereby China would allow the S&P to rise indefinitely as long as Trump kept his mouth shut.
// ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

=/ As Bloomberg notes, the House unanimously passed a similar bill last month, but slight differences mean both chambers still have to pass the same version before sending it to the president. /=

Sending it to the president, huh?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ //
[My own comment]

15 hours ago [near midnight last night] I said:

I think there is some possibility that the Chinese government will announce something rather drastic in about seven hours. All cargo ships and planes will turn around 180 and head back to China. Wal-Mart will close. Amazon will go dark.

It's possible.
// ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So... When the congressional fools send this unanimous bill(!) to Trump, will he sign it. If he does, does the US economy collapse instantly? If he doesn't do they impeach him?

Or... Does he not sign it, then they immediately override, then the economy collapses utterly while they are busy trying to impeach him?

What are they thinking???


Robert Snefjella , Nov 21 2019 1:37 utc | 37

Posted by: blues | Nov 20 2019 22:49 utc | 17

Re the unanimous vote by US Senate - "Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019".

As you noted this seems to put Trump into a real bind re ongoing trade agreement soap opera with China. Damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.

The American political establishment has made any trade deal with China more unlikely. Which probably removes a trade deal with China from Trump's list of accomplishments in the 2020 elections.
Thus the "Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019" would seem to be directed against Trump.

But how really desperate is Trump for a trade deal with China? In trying to re-industrialize the United States, maybe not so much.

And now he can blame the political establishment for American economic problems related to the lack of a China trade deal.

Antoinetta III , Nov 21 2019 2:22 utc | 38
Casey @ 13

I don't think this would work as Trump would reject the trade. He would love to see the Democrats' slime and corruption trotted out in public. Meanwhile he is basically immunized from anything that may come out of a Senate trial as he has already been trashed to a saturation point.

And, since after three years of this BS they still haven't come up with any real evidence against Trump, he would have little to worry about.

The Democrats have far more to lose than Trump; his attitude towards a Senate trial would likely be: "Bring it on. Make my day, assholes."

Antoinetta III

Copeland , Nov 21 2019 2:36 utc | 39
The idealization of Trump that pictures him as some kind of silver bullet that could penetrate the heart of corruption is a bizaare fantasy. It stands at odds with the reality of the man. A crook he is at the very least. But it is what the two Parties agree upon, the criminality in which they find common cause, that is the most horrifying thing.

From truthdig : House Democrats Hand Trump 'Authoritarian' Surveillance Powers . And RT reports that this includes a couple of remarkable dems, the idealistic newcomers we hear so much about. It will be a long time before we are rid of the succubus of blanket surveillance. The grotesque empire is to be held together at all cost.

Ralph Nader: We Have a Congress of Cowards

[Oct 10, 2019] Apple removes app that Hong Kong protesters used to track police movements after it used for vandalism, attacks on officers

Notable quotes:
"... "The app displays police locations and we have verified with the Hong Kong Cybersecurity and Technology Crime Bureau that the app has been used to target and ambush police, threaten public safety, and criminals have used it to victimize residents in areas where they know there is no law enforcement," the company said in a statement. ..."
Oct 10, 2019 | www.rt.com

The maker of the iPhone has removed an app that allowed rioters in Hong Kong track where police are located after reports that it was used to ambush officers and vandalize communities where law enforcement was not present. Following the suit of other companies taking sides in ongoing tensions in China's autonomous city, Apple allowed HKmap.live to appear in its app store. The 'noble' goal of helping rioters praised in the media has brought the opposite result.

"The app displays police locations and we have verified with the Hong Kong Cybersecurity and Technology Crime Bureau that the app has been used to target and ambush police, threaten public safety, and criminals have used it to victimize residents in areas where they know there is no law enforcement," the company said in a statement.

[Oct 10, 2019] Why is Apple guiding Hong Kong thugs US corporations face choice between virtue-signaling and business by Helen Buyniski

Notable quotes:
"... "Is Apple guiding Hong Kong thugs?" the Chinese People's Daily newspaper wondered in an op-ed published on Wednesday. Beijing tore into the trillion-dollar company for offering HKmap.live, a map app that allows users to report and track police activity, warning the app "facilitates illegal behavior" and that Apple is hurting its reputation among Chinese consumers by "mixing business with politics and commercial activity with illegal activities." " ..."
"... This recklessness will cause much trouble for Apple ," the People's Daily declared, advising the tech firm to " think deeply ." ..."
"... Hong Kong's cheerleaders are rapidly finding out they may have bitten off more than they can chew. It's rarely a good idea, as a global business, to alienate 1.4 billion people living in the world's second-largest economy. ..."
"... More importantly, most Americans don't want a side of politics when they buy a smartphone or go to a basketball game. ..."
Oct 10, 2019 | www.rt.com

Beijing is angry at Apple for allowing a police-tracking map used by Hong Kong protesters in its App Store. Pressure grows on US companies doing business in China to take a side, as virtue-signaling clashes with serving customers. "Is Apple guiding Hong Kong thugs?" the Chinese People's Daily newspaper wondered in an op-ed published on Wednesday. Beijing tore into the trillion-dollar company for offering HKmap.live, a map app that allows users to report and track police activity, warning the app "facilitates illegal behavior" and that Apple is hurting its reputation among Chinese consumers by "mixing business with politics and commercial activity with illegal activities." "

This recklessness will cause much trouble for Apple ," the People's Daily declared, advising the tech firm to " think deeply ."

The majority of Apple's products are manufactured in China, and those that aren't are assembled in Texas from Chinese parts. China is the second-largest market for Apple products, and CEO Tim Cook expects it will soon overtake the US as number one.

According to HKmap.live's developers, Apple initially rejected the app during a reviewing process, but reconsidered following an appeal. It allows users to report not only the locations and movement of police, but also the use of tear gas and other protester-specific features. The protests, which began in May over a now-shelved extradition bill, have grown quite violent, with some rioters turning on ordinary citizens who merely express solidarity with the mainland.

It's not as if Apple has a track record of defying China's wishes – the company does not include the Taiwan flag emoji on its Chinese devices, and this week has gone further by hiding the flag from users in Hong Kong and Macau. China does not recognize Taiwan as a separate country.

In the latest version of iOS, users in Hong Kong no longer have access to the Taiwan flag () on the emoji keyboard https://t.co/EDnlSsFyYF pic.twitter.com/DbvFR0O8By

-- Emojipedia (@Emojipedia) October 7, 2019

Nor do people look to Apple as their moral guiding light. The Foxconn factories used by the company in China have become infamous after a wave of worker suicides, so much that Apple had "suicide nets" installed to stop the employees from jumping to their deaths.

So where did this sudden urge to stand up for rioters that have become the darlings of the West come from? Apple joins a lengthening list of American corporate entities – including the makers of adult cartoon 'South Park', the manager of NBA team the Houston Rockets, and Vans shoes – who've piled on China following the outbreak of the protests during the summer.

Virtue-signaling is almost expected of American companies in the Trump era. Celebrities who don't speak out against the president are assumed to be secretly harboring pro-Trump sympathies, for example. China probably seems like an easier target than the president – Beijing is halfway around the world and currently embroiled in a trade war with the US.

Hong Kong's cheerleaders are rapidly finding out they may have bitten off more than they can chew. It's rarely a good idea, as a global business, to alienate 1.4 billion people living in the world's second-largest economy. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, who initially spoke up for Rockets manager Daryl Morey's "freedom of expression" after he tweeted in support of the protests, has modified his statement to include understanding that there are "consequences" to such freedoms and is scrambling to reach an understanding with China after the nation's largest state-run TV station dropped NBA games in retaliation.

Look for Apple to do something similar if the government controlling its manufacturing and its second-largest market decides to punish its insolence.

More importantly, most Americans don't want a side of politics when they buy a smartphone or go to a basketball game. The vast majority of consumers – those who aren't on Twitter shrieking over the latest revelation that a CEO attended a Trump fundraiser – are not interested in a company's ability to virtue signal. They want a product that works, not one that tells them what to think.

By Helen Buyniski , RT

[Oct 10, 2019] Glorifying rioters China blasts France and EU for hypocrisy after they call for restraint in Hong Kong

Any opposition to the government now quickly became a tool of geopolitical struggle
Oct 10, 2019 | www.rt.com

China’s embassy in France has slammed the country’s reaction to protests in Hong Kong, calling it hypocritical and arguing France should show empathy as China did when Paris was trying to cope with Yellow Vests.

The diplomatic mission was commenting on a statement issued by the European Union, and swiftly repeated by the French Foreign Ministry last week, after Hong Kong police used live ammunition against a protester in self-defense for the first time in four months of demonstrations.

[Oct 09, 2019] Instruments of democracy Hong Kong police raid protesters, seize body armor, petrol bomb materials (PHOTOS) -- RT World News

Oct 09, 2019 | www.rt.com

Hong Kong police have seized weapons, armor and materials used to create Molotov cocktails, which they said belonged to radical groups among the protesters labeled 'pro-democracy' by western media. According to the police, on Monday and Tuesday they targeted 48 locations throughout the city that they suspected were connected with violent protesters, who have been waging street battles against the police force for several months.

The police arrested 51 people, including seven women, who were aged between 15 and 44, and charged them with various crimes related to the rioting.

... ... ...

The authorities published photos of the items they discovered during the raid, which include several suits of body armor, various melee weapons as well as chemicals and glass bottles used in the manufacturing of petrol bombs – a weapon routinely deployed by the protesters to cause chaos in Hong Kong.

... ... ...

Mass anti-government protests first gripped the Chinese city in March, when thousands took to the streets to protest an extradition bill that they deemed an attack on Hong Kong's autonomy under the so-called "one country, two systems" arrangement. The bill has since been revoked, but the protest movement's demands have continued to grow and it has become more violent in its approach.

... ... ...

Peaceful protest demonstrations in Hong Kong, which have been the prime focus for Western media coverage, take place against the backdrop of vandalism, harassment of businesses deemed loyal to the central government and outright rioting.

[Oct 03, 2019] Beijing is convinced that Hong Kong's elites and a substantial part of the public do not support the demonstrators and that what truly ails the territory are economic problems rather than political ones -- in particular, a combination of stagnant incomes and rising rents.

Oct 03, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

Joe , October 02, 2019 at 09:07 AM

'This time is different', says Xi.
This is a safe site.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2019-09-30/how-china-sees-hong-kong-crisis

..according to two Chinese scholars who have connections to regime insiders and who requested anonymity to discuss the thinking of policymakers in Beijing, China's response has been rooted not in anxiety but in confidence.

Beijing is convinced that Hong Kong's elites and a substantial part of the public do not support the demonstrators and that what truly ails the territory are economic problems rather than political ones -- in particular, a combination of stagnant incomes and rising rents. Beijing also believes that, despite the appearance of disorder, its grip on Hong Kong society remains firm. The Chinese Communist Party has long cultivated the territory's business elites (the so-called tycoons) by offering them favorable economic access to the mainland. The party also maintains a long-standing loyal cadre of underground members in the territory. And China has forged ties with the Hong Kong labor movement and some sections of its criminal underground. Finally, Beijing believes that many ordinary citizens are fearful of change and tired of the disruption caused by the demonstrations.

Beijing therefore thinks that its local allies will stand firm and that the demonstrations will gradually lose public support and eventually die out. As the demonstrations shrink, some frustrated activists will engage in further violence, and that in turn will accelerate the movement's decline. Meanwhile, Beijing is turning its attention to economic development projects that it believes will address some of the underlying grievances that led many people to take to the streets in the first place.

This view of the situation is held by those at the very top of the regime in Beijing, as evidenced by recent remarks made by Chinese President Xi Jinping, some of which have not been previously reported. In a speech Xi delivered in early September to a new class of rising political stars at the Central Party School in Beijing, he rejected the suggestion of some officials that China should declare a state of emergency in Hong Kong and send in the People's Liberation Army. "That would be going down a political road of no return," Xi said. "The central government will exercise the most patience and restraint and allow the [regional government] and the local police force to resolve the crisis." In separate remarks that Xi made around the same time, he spelled out what he sees as the proper way to proceed: "Economic development is the only golden key to resolving all sorts of problems facing Hong Kong today."

ONE COUNTRY, TWO SYSTEMS, MANY QUESTIONS
Chinese decision-makers are hardly surprised that Hong Kong is chafing under their rule. Beijing believes it has treated Hong Kong with a light hand and has supported the territory's economy in many ways, especially by granting it special access to the mainland's stocks and currency markets, exempting it from the taxes and fees that other Chinese provinces and municipalities pay the central government, and guaranteeing a reliable supply of water, electricity, gas, and food. Even so, Beijing considers disaffection among Hong Kong's residents a natural outgrowth of the territory's colonial British past and also a result of the continuing influence of Western values. Indeed, during the 1984 negotiations between China and the United Kingdom over Hong Kong's future, the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping suggested following the approach of "one country, two systems" for 50 years precisely to give people in Hong Kong plenty of time to get used to the Chinese political system.

But "one country, two systems" was never intended to result in Hong Kong spinning out of China's control. Under the Basic Law that China crafted as Hong Kong's "mini-constitution," Beijing retained the right to prevent any challenge to what it considered its core security interests. The law empowered Beijing to determine if and when Hong Kongers could directly elect the territory's leadership, allowed Beijing to veto laws passed by the Hong Kong Legislative Council, and granted China the right to make final interpretations of the Basic Law. And there would be no question about who had a monopoly of force. During the negotiations with the United Kingdom, Deng publicly rebuked a top Chinese defense official -- General Geng Biao, who at the time was a patron of a rising young official named Xi Jinping -- for suggesting that there might not be any need to put troops in Hong Kong. Deng insisted that a Chinese garrison was necessary to symbolize Chinese sovereignty.

Statements made by U.S. politicians in support of the recent demonstrations only confirm Beijing's belief that Washington seeks to inflame radical sentiments in Hong Kong.
At first, Hong Kongers seemed to accept their new role as citizens of a rising China. In 1997, in a tracking poll of Hong Kong residents regularly conducted by researchers at the University of Hong Kong, 47 percent of respondents identified themselves as "proud" citizens of China. But things went downhill from there. In 2012, the Hong Kong government tried to introduce "patriotic education" in elementary and middle schools, but the proposed curriculum ran into a storm of local opposition and had to be withdrawn. In 2014, the 79-day Umbrella Movement brought hundreds of thousands of citizens into the streets to protest Beijing's refusal to allow direct elections for the chief executive. And as authoritarianism has intensified under Xi's rule, events such as the 2015 kidnapping of five Hong Kong–based publishers to stand trial in the mainland further soured Hong Kong opinion. By this past June, only 27 percent of respondents to the tracking poll described themselves as "proud" to be citizens of China. This year's demonstrations started as a protest against a proposed law that would have allowed Hong Kongers suspected of criminal wrongdoing to be extradited to the mainland but then developed into a broad-based expression of discontent over the lack of democratic accountability, police brutality, and, most fundamentally, what was perceived as a mainland assault on Hong Kong's unique identity.

Still, Chinese leaders do not blame themselves for these shifts in public opinion. Rather, they believe that Western powers, especially the United States, have sought to drive a wedge between Hong Kong and the mainland. Statements made by U.S. politicians in support of the recent demonstrations only confirm Beijing's belief that Washington seeks to inflame radical sentiments in Hong Kong. As Xi explained in his speech in September:
---

The Communist party conveniently discovered truth when Xi cam to power.

I doubt it, I think a thousand year history of this stuff is playing out and it has nothing to do with East vs West. I think Xi faces this stuff in many provinces, though not as bad. Xi is deliberately playing the 'This time is different', and old Commie trick.

anne -> Joe... , October 02, 2019 at 09:32 AM
'This time is different', says --.

-- is deliberately playing the 'This time is different', and old Commie trick.

[ The supposed quote is false, of course.

A thoroughly racist comment, but the sneering use of the term "Commie" is intended to mask the racism. ]

[Sep 28, 2019] Media biased Hong Kong reporting

Foreign new coverage in modern western societies is controlled by intelligence agencies. There are no exceptions.
Notable quotes:
"... At this stage, any one who still believes in the western propaganda about China is simply too brain-washed and not too smart for any cure. Excuse me, I should say "too dumb for any cure". ..."
"... For example, Nathan Rich's recent video shows how media biased reporting of Hong Kong compare with Ukraine riots. The contrast can't be anymore stark: ..."
"... All these so-called anti communist slant against countries, I suspect, have its origins in the Vatican. People seem to forget that they should bear false witness https://www.youtube.com/embed/yUGPIeE9kMc?feature=oembed ..."
Sep 28, 2019 | www.unz.com

nsa , says: September 28, 2019 at 11:17 am GMT

@d dan " ..media biased Hong Kong reporting ."
How would American cops react to punks tossing Molotov Cocktails at them? Arson is a felony but there would be no need for a trial just a coroner.
d dan , says: September 27, 2019 at 4:12 pm GMT
@Godfree Roberts "The weird result of this enormous, expensive effort is that, while we were busy lying to ourselves about China "

At this stage, any one who still believes in the western propaganda about China is simply too brain-washed and not too smart for any cure. Excuse me, I should say "too dumb for any cure".

For example, Nathan Rich's recent video shows how media biased reporting of Hong Kong compare with Ukraine riots. The contrast can't be anymore stark:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/-2Rr8hZK2aQ?feature=oembed

Godfree Roberts , says: September 27, 2019 at 10:57 pm GMT
@Tusk "Radio Free Asia reports .". RFA is a US Government propaganda outlet. 100% WMD, 24×7.
Ber , says: September 28, 2019 at 2:19 am GMT
@Godfree Roberts Here is a good analysis of how the main stream media (MSM) gang up to give propaganda, and how I wish they have objective comments about China or any country they do not like.

All these so-called anti communist slant against countries, I suspect, have its origins in the Vatican. People seem to forget that they should bear false witness

https://www.youtube.com/embed/yUGPIeE9kMc?feature=oembed

[Sep 24, 2019] Wong also urged Taiwan's government to let Hong Kong protesters seek political asylum

This is a standard play in any color revolution. Possibility of emigrate is hanging like a carrot to make protest more numerous and more violent. Kind of the reward for foot solves (who are often students and have illusions as for their ability to move up the food chain after the emigration) for their participation in the in color revolution.
The role of Taiwanese security agencies in riots still needs to be investigated... Hong Cong protest changes the result of presidential elections in Taiwan and that probably was their main role, as attempt to undermine sovereignty of China over Hong Cong in the long run are doomed to be a failure. Taiwan now has renewed geopolitical importance for the USA and efforts to distance it from China will multiply. So the main price might be the result of Taiwan presidential elections.
In this case protesters were just pawns in a larger game.
Notable quotes:
"... the United States is waging a campaign to force China into a corner and inflict major geopolitical defeats. ..."
"... The United States already is entangled in the dispute over Taiwan’s political status. Under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, Washington made a commitment to provide Taipei with “defensive” weaponry and to regard any coercive moves by Beijing as a threat to the peace of East Asia. Under the Trump administration, U.S. policy has become even more supportive of Taiwan’s de facto independence. American officials complained about the decision of the Solomon Islands to recognize Beijing instead of Taipei and threatened to reconsider aid to that country. ..."
"... Even more significant, for the first time since Washington severed formal diplomatic ties with Taipei and switched them to Beijing in 1979, high-level U.S. security officials, including former national security adviser John Bolton, have met with their Taiwanese counterparts . The Trump administration has also approved an $8 billion arms sale that includes F-16 fighters . Beijing protests all U.S. weapons sales to Taipei, but the reaction this time seems especially angry. ..."
"... o doubt that swaying the upcoming Taiwan election was one of the goals of the "protest" apparatus and its backers. Tsai was looking weak until the "protests." ... ..."
"... sub-title: and especially avoid any manifestations of meddling. Not sure how that can be accomplished, my understanding is that NED et al are up to their eyeballs in meddling, taxpayer funded, and Chinese govt is well aware of that. ..."
"... "Chinese leaders also suspect that the United States is fomenting much of the trouble in Hong Kong. It is tempting to dismiss such accusations as nothing more than typical propaganda and scapegoating on the part of a beleaguered communist regime." ..."
"... Well, thank goodness one of the articles Mr. Carpenter linked to mentioned the U.S. government's National Endowment for Democracy, which distributed over $400,000 to three groups in Hong Kong last year. ..."
Sep 23, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com
“We hope that before Communist China’s National Day on Oct. 1, our friends in Taiwan can express their support for Hong Kong through street protests,” Wong said at a news conference on September 3. "A lot of people in the past have said 'today Hong Kong and tomorrow Taiwan.' But I think the most ideal thing we'd say is 'Taiwan today, tomorrow Hong Kong.' Hong Kong can be like Taiwan, a place for freedom and democracy." Advertisement

Such sentiments by themselves are enough to enrage Beijing. But Wong also urged Taiwan's government to let Hong Kong protesters seek political asylum. Worse from Beijing's standpoint, he made those statements not in Hong Kong or some neutral location, but in Taipei following meetings with Taiwan's governing, pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Communist Chinese leaders are likely to interpret such a venue as further evidence of a Hong Kong-Taiwanese political alliance against the People's Republic of China (PRC).

Beijing’s persistent attempts to undermine Hong Kong’s political autonomy under its “one county, two systems” arrangement has caused Taiwanese attitudes to turn emphatically against such a formula for their island. Most Taiwanese were never enthusiastic about that proposal, but the proposed Hong Kong extradition law (just now withdrawn) that would have enabled Chinese authorities to try Hong Kong-based political dissidents in mainland courts has soured Taiwanese public opinion even more. A poll that Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council published in late July found that 88.7 percent of respondents rejected one country, two systems, up from 75.4 per cent in a January survey.

The Hong Kong democracy campaign is strengthening hardline, anti-PRC factions in Taiwan. Incumbent President Tsai appeared to be in deep political trouble earlier this year. Taiwan’s continuing economic malaise had undermined her presidency, and the DPP suffered huge losses in November 2018 local elections. Indeed, the losses were so severe that Tsai had to quit her post as party chair. She also faced a strong primary challenge for the DPP’s presidential nomination from her onetime prime minister, James Lai.

But Tsai has shrewdly exploited public anger at Beijing’s crude attempts to undermine Hong Kong’s autonomy to rebuild her domestic political support. “As long as I am here, I will stand firm to defend Taiwan’s sovereignty,” Tsai pledged in July. “As long as I am here, you would not have to fear, because we will not become another Hong Kong.” That message resonated with voters, and not only did she defeat Lai, but her fortunes against the opposition Kuomintang Party in the upcoming general election appear far more favorable than they did a few months ago.

Is America Prodding Taiwan Towards Conflict With China? How China Weaponizes Mass Migration Against Hong Kong

The Hong Kong developments have created a political nightmare for the Kuomintang. The party’s nominee, Han Kuo-yu, the maverick populist mayor of Kaohsiung, had long advocated closer relations with the mainland. To that end, he sought to resume the policy that the last Kuomintang president, Ma Jing-jeou, pursued from 2008 to 2016. Earlier this year, Han visited China and had cordial meetings with Communist Party officials. He has always seemed highly favorable to the PRC’s one country, two systems arrangement for Taiwan as well as Hong Kong. Both the Chinese government and pro-Beijing media outlets in Taiwan (the so-called red media) were decidedly enthusiastic about Han’s candidacy against more moderate opponents in the Kuomintang Party’s primary election this summer.

But the popularity of the Hong Kong pro-democracy demonstrations among Taiwanese voters has thrown Han on the defensive, and he is beating a very fast retreat from his previous position. In a desperate attempt to rebut allegations that he would embrace an appeasement policy toward Beijing, Han even asserted that, if he is elected president, Taiwan would only accept China’s one country, two systems proposal “over my dead body.” It is not clear how credible his eleventh-hour political transformation is with Taiwanese voters.

Chinese leaders also suspect that the United States is fomenting much of the trouble in Hong Kong.

... ... ...

As much as Americans are understandably pleased with the democratic factions in Hong Kong and Taiwan, Washington must temper its enthusiasm—and especially avoid any manifestations of meddling. We must not give PRC leaders reason to believe that the United States is waging a campaign to force China into a corner and inflict major geopolitical defeats. Caution in both capitals is imperative. The next few months, perhaps even the next few weeks, may determine whether East Asia remains at peace.

The United States already is entangled in the dispute over Taiwan’s political status. Under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, Washington made a commitment to provide Taipei with “defensive” weaponry and to regard any coercive moves by Beijing as a threat to the peace of East Asia. Under the Trump administration, U.S. policy has become even more supportive of Taiwan’s de facto independence. American officials complained about the decision of the Solomon Islands to recognize Beijing instead of Taipei and threatened to reconsider aid to that country.

Even more significant, for the first time since Washington severed formal diplomatic ties with Taipei and switched them to Beijing in 1979, high-level U.S. security officials, including former national security adviser John Bolton, have met with their Taiwanese counterparts . The Trump administration has also approved an $8 billion arms sale that includes F-16 fighters . Beijing protests all U.S. weapons sales to Taipei, but the reaction this time seems especially angry.

Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in security studies at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor at , is the author of 13 books, including his latest, Gullible Superpower: U.S. Support for Bogus Foreign Democratic Movements , and more than 800 articles on international affairs.


tweets21 9 hours ago

US foreign policy has never been our strong suit. We change government every 4 years or 8, meaning the State Department has a lot of turnover and is politically influenced to the political doctrine in vogue, for any elected party. My personal best current day example is North Korea. NK fears if they sign on with the US, their leaders fate will follow that of Saddam and Gaddafi. Friends one day , next we turn on them. Even invade.

Reality is we have zero influence with Beijing, or Moscow. China has their hands full for sure consuming Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

Steve Smith 4 hours ago
Wow---so Ted Galen Carpenter is going full propagandist now. N o doubt that swaying the upcoming Taiwan election was one of the goals of the "protest" apparatus and its backers. Tsai was looking weak until the "protests." ...
Taras77 3 hours ago
sub-title: and especially avoid any manifestations of meddling. Not sure how that can be accomplished, my understanding is that NED et al are up to their eyeballs in meddling, taxpayer funded, and Chinese govt is well aware of that.
May Loo an hour ago
The mainland Chinese government expects acquiescence to its one China policy. Too bad Hong Kong's Chinese people and the Taiwanese already have their own identities. Not.
cka2nd an hour ago
"Chinese leaders also suspect that the United States is fomenting much of the trouble in Hong Kong. It is tempting to dismiss such accusations as nothing more than typical propaganda and scapegoating on the part of a beleaguered communist regime."

Well, thank goodness one of the articles Mr. Carpenter linked to mentioned the U.S. government's National Endowment for Democracy, which distributed over $400,000 to three groups in Hong Kong last year. Said agency was the subject of an article here at TAC only a year or so ago, which can be found at https://www.theamericancons... .

Readers of this report might find it of worth, and might consider the other countries in which the NED "promotes" "democracy."

[Sep 18, 2019] Unhinged Neocon Ogress Applebaum on Board of NGO Stoking Hong Kong Unrest by Tony Cartalucci

Sep 10, 2019 | russia-insider.com

( Tony Cartalucci - NEO ) - The US continues to deny any involvement in ongoing unrest in China's special administrative region of Hong Kong.

However, even a casual look at US headlines or comments made by US politicians makes it clear the unrest not only suits US interests, but is spurred on almost exclusively by them.

The paradoxical duality of nearly open support of the unrest and denial of that support has led to headlines like the South China Morning Post's, " Mike Pompeo rebukes China's 'ludicrous' claim US is behind Hong Kong protests ." The article claims:

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said it is "ludicrous" for China to claim the United States is behind the escalating protests in Hong Kong.
Pompeo rebuked Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying, who had claimed violent clashes in the city prompted by opposition to the Hong Kong government's controversial extradition bill were "the work of the US".

However, even US policymakers have all but admitted that the US is funnelling millions of dollars into Hong Kong specifically to support "programs" there. The Hudson Institute in an article titled, " China Tries to Blame US for Hong Kong Protests ," would admit:

A Chinese state-run newspaper's claim that the United States is helping pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong is only partially inaccurate, a top foreign policy expert said Monday.

Michael Pillsbury, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told Fox News National Security Analyst KT McFarland the U.S. holds some influence over political matters in the region.

The article would then quote Pillsbury as saying:

We have a large consulate there that's in charge of taking care of the Hong Kong Policy Act passed by Congress to insure democracy in Hong Kong, and we have also funded millions of dollars of programs through the National Endowment for Democracy [NED] so in that sense the Chinese accusation is not totally false.

A visit to the NED's website reveals an entire section of declared funding for Hong Kong specifically. The wording for program titles and their descriptions is intentionally ambiguous to give those like US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo plausible deniability.

However, deeper research reveals NED recipients are literally leading the protests.

The South China Morning Post in its article, " Hong Kong protests: heavy jail sentences for rioting will not solve city's political crisis, former Civil Human Rights Front convenor says ," would report:

Johnson Yeung Ching-yin, from the Civil Human Rights Front, was among 49 people arrested during Sunday's protest – deemed illegal as it had not received police approval – in Central and Western district on Hong Kong Island.

The article would omit mention of Johnson Yeung Ching-yin's status as an NED fellow. His profile is - at the time of this writing - still accessible on the NED's official website , and the supposed NGO he works for in turn works hand-in-hand with US and UK-based fronts involved in supporting Hong Kong's current unrest and a much wider anti-Beijing political agenda.

Johnson Yeung Ching-yin also co-authored an op-ed in the Washington Post with Joshua Wong titled, " As you read this, Hong Kong has locked one of us away ."

[Sep 16, 2019] Hong cong rightwing 'protesters' are extremely aggressive. Looks like they try to score the points for emigratin to Taiwan.

Sep 16, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

jayc , Sep 15 2019 19:04 utc | 24

SCMP Hong Kong @SCMPHongKong - 13:47 UTC · Sep 15, 2019
A video going viral online shows a middle-aged man being beaten up by protesters this afternoon. He was later found lying injured at Gloucester Road. Paramedics treated him; he was conscious vid

There were several such incidents today. These rightwing 'protesters' are extremely aggressive. The true utility of the HK protests was articulated by former US envoy to HK and Taiwan Stephen Young in the Asia TImes this week, declaring that the "one country, two systems" framework was now "dead" since "Beijing has reneged on its pledges to introduce local autonomy and democracy to Hong Kong." He claims it is already too late for HK - "But the lesson for Taiwan's 23 million citizens is different. Build your defences, solidify your relations with your essential security partner, America, and make it clear you will fight for your freedom."

This is an incorrect and self-serving analysis. China has not reneged on any pledges or undermined the Basic Law, despite claims to the contrary. Much like "Russian aggression" became a key narrative thread in Ukraine despite little actual evidence of such aggression, the alleged "brutal authoritarian" activity on behalf of the Chinese government will continue as "the" story in Hong Kong even if it hasn't actually happened.

A big provocation has been promised by the protesters to spoil the October 1 celebration of 70 years of PRC. Then focus will switch to Taiwan and its election in January. The Americans hope the nationalist anti-PRC forces win, helped by the hysteria generated over HK, and then the program of militarizing the island to serve as a fount of tension in the region will begin in earnest with an explicit rejection of Taiwan's status as a part of China.

arby , Sep 15 2019 20:02 utc | 28

Jaye @24

IMO the Honk Kong thing is backfiring a bit on the empire.
These very loud calls for Trump and England to come to their aid and liberate them is not what the evil empire had in mind.

[Sep 12, 2019] If Wishes Were Horses: Nina Khrushcheva's Regime-Change Dream.

Notable quotes:
"... A kreakl is a Russian liberal, often the child or grandchild of Soviet-era intellectuals who believed they knew better than anyone else how the country should be run. ..."
"... "Continuing street protests in Hong Kong and Moscow have no doubt spooked the authoritarian duo of Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Moscow protests, the largest in many years, must be keeping Mr. Putin up at night, or they wouldn't be dispersed with such unabated brutality." ..."
"... "This loss of nuclear competence is being cited by nuclear and national security experts in both the U.S. and in Europe's nuclear weapons states as a threat to their military nuclear programs. The White House cited this nuclear nexus in a May memo instructing Rick Perry, the Secretary of Energy, to force utilities to buy power from unprofitable nuclear and coal plants. The memo states that the "entire US nuclear enterprise" including nuclear weapons and naval propulsion, "depends on a robust civilian nuclear industry." ..."
Sep 12, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

Nina Khrushcheva is a kreakl. We use that word here a lot, and perhaps not all the readers know what it means. It is a portmanteau of "Creative Class", but makes use of the letter 'k', because the letter 'c' in Russian has a soft 's' sound, so we use the hard 'k'. The Creative Class, or so they styled themselves, were the intelligentsia of Soviet times; the free-thinking liberals who were convinced Russia's best course lay in accommodating the west no matter its demands, in hope that it would then bless Russia with its secrets for prosperity and all the fruits of the American Dream.

A kreakl is a Russian liberal, often the child or grandchild of Soviet-era intellectuals who believed they knew better than anyone else how the country should be run. They express their disapproval of the current government in the most contemptuous way, interpret its defense of family values as homophobia, and consider its leadership – uniformly described by the west as 'authoritarian' – to be stifling their freedom. My position is that their often privileged upbringing insulates them from appreciating the value of hard work, and lets them sneer at patriotism, as they often consider themselves global citizens with a worldly grasp of foreign affairs far greater that of their groveling, sweaty countrymen. Their university educations allow them to rub shoulders with other pampered scions of post-Soviet affluence, and even worse are those who are sent abroad to attend western universities, where they internalize the notion that everyone in America and the UK lives like Skip and Buffy and their other college friends.

Not everyone who attends university or college turns out a snobbish brat, of course, and in Russia, at least, not everyone who gets the benefit of a superior education comes from wealth. A significant number are on scholarships, as both my nieces were. Some western students are in university or college on scholarships as well, and there are a good many in both places who are higher-education students because it was their parents dream that they would be, and they saved all their lives to make it happen.

But many of the Russian loudmouths are those who learned at their daddy's knee that he coulda been a contendah, if only the money-grubbing, soulless monsters in the government hadn't kept him down – could have been wealthy if it were not for the money pit of communism, could have taken a leadership role which would have moved the country forward had the leader who usurped power not filled all the seats with his cronies and sycophants.

Khrushcheva is somewhat an exception to the rule there, because her grandpa actually was the leader of the Soviet Union – First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev. It was he who oversaw the transfer of Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954, the same year the Soviet Union applied to join NATO . Some references consider Khrushchev her grandfather, and some her great-grandfather; it's complicated. Julia – Khrushcheva's mother – was the daughter of Leonid, who was a fighter pilot in World War II and the son of Khrushchev. When he was shot down in the war and did not return, Khrushchev adopted Julia. Nina Khrushcheva is therefore his biological great-granddaughter, but his adoptive granddaughter.

Now, she's Professor of International Affairs at The New School, New York, USA, and a Senior Fellow of the World Policy Institute, New York. As you might imagine, The New School is a hotbed of liberal intellectualism; as its Wiki entry announces, " dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for progressive thinkers". So let's see what a liberal and progressive thinker thinks about the current state of affairs vis-a-vis Russia and China, and their western opponents.

You sort of get an early feel for it from the title: " Putin and Xi are Gambling with their Countries' Futures ". I sort of suspected, even before I read it, that it was not going to be a story about what a great job Putin and Xi are doing as leaders of their respective countries.

Just before we get into that a little deeper – what is the purpose of an 'Opinion' section in a newspaper? If it was 'Facts', then it would be news, because the reporter could substantiate it. As I best understand it, people read newspapers to learn about news – things that happened, to who, and where, when and why, documented by someone who either saw them happen, interviewed someone who did, or otherwise has researched the issue. 'Opinion' sections, then, allow partisans for various philosophies to present their conclusions as if they were facts, or to introduce disputed incidents from a standpoint which implies they are resolved and that the author's view represents fact.

Well, hey; here's an example, in the first paragraph – "Continuing street protests in Hong Kong and Moscow have no doubt spooked the authoritarian duo of Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Moscow protests, the largest in many years, must be keeping Mr. Putin up at night, or they wouldn't be dispersed with such unabated brutality."

I suppose they have their fingers on the world's pulse at The New School, but I haven't seen any indication at all, anywhere, that either Mr. Putin or Mr. Xi are 'spooked' about anything. The protests in Hong Kong appear to be instigated at the urging of the USA – as usual – with reports that the protesters are receiving western funding , and photographs showing protest leaders apparently meeting with the US Consul-General . Nonetheless, despite the aggressive violence displayed by the protesters, who are certainly not peaceful, the issue seems to be mostly confined to Hong Kong, and there have been no indications I have seen that Beijing is 'spooked' about it at all. In fact, the position of the Chinese government seems fairly reasonable – it does not want to see Chinese criminals escape justice by fleeing to Hong Kong.

As to whether either protests are representative of a large number of people, it is difficult to say: organizers of the Hong Kong protests claim almost 2 million, while the police – responsible for crowd control – say there were no more than a tenth of that number. And if the Moscow protests really were the largest in years, those hoping to see Putin overthrown might want to keep quiet about that; organizers claim about 50,000 people, and organizers usually overestimate the crowd for their own reasons. Moscow is a city of over 13 million just within the city limits. So the massive crowd represents less than half of one percent of the city's population. Polling of the protest crowd suggested more than half of them were from outside Moscow, where who is on the city council is no concern of theirs, since they cannot vote. And in an echo of the iconic Tahrir Square protests, an element of the 'Arab Spring' – probably the first mass demonstrations managed by social media – the Moscow protests appear to be managed and directed via social media links, where it is possible to exercise disproportionate influence on a targeted crowd of restless youth who have little or no personal investment in the country, and just want to be part of what's cool.

Let's move on. According to Khrushcheva, the protests are 'being dispersed with unabated brutality'. That so? Show me. Bear in mind that all these protests are unauthorized, and those participating in them are breaking the law and in breach of the public peace. Flash violence is an objective of the demonstrations, because otherwise their numbers are insignificant, and if they play it by the book nobody pays them any mind. I've seen loads of pictures of the protesters in Moscow being hauled away to the paddywagons, and nobody is bloody or has their clothing ripped. Here are some examples (thanks, Moscow Exile).

https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2019/08/03/16/Moscow-protests-15.jpg https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2019/08/03/16/Moscow-protests-12.jpg https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2019/08/03/16/Moscow-protests-4.jpg

None of those adolescents looks old enough to vote. A video clip of a Chinese policeman using his beanbag gun to disperse protesters has been edited to omit the part where he was swarmed by protesters who were punching him. No citizens who are in high dudgeon at what they are being told is 'unabated brutality' would tolerate unauthorized protests by young hooligans in their own towns for a second, and would scorn any suggestion that they are pursuing noble goals such as freedom and democracy. Fellow demonstrators in these photos seem far more interested in capturing every bit of the action on their phones than in assisting their captured co-demonstrators.

By way of contrast, check out this clip of US police officers in New Jersey arresting a young woman on the beach because there was alcohol – apparently unopened – on the same beach blanket, which she claimed belonged to her aunt. A pretty small-potatoes issue, you would think, compared with the fearless defense of freedom and democracy. Yet the police officers, viewed here on their own body cameras, throw her to the ground and punch her in front of her child although she is obviously not drunk and their breathalyzer test does not register any alcohol on her breath. Bystanders gratuitously and repeatedly advise her, "Stop resisting". People who complain about the way the girl is being handled are told, "Back off, or you'll be locked up, too". For what? Which of these looks like a police state, to you? Nina Lvovna? I'm talking to you.

The demonstrations, we are told, are a poignant sign of Putin's declining popularity. Yes, poor old chap. In fact, Putin's approval rating in 2019 was 64%; it was 70% in 2000, nearly 20 years ago. Just for info, Donald Trump, the Leader Of The Free World, had an approval rating with his own voters of 44% in 2018, and Macron was even worse at 26%. I guess a little Macron goes a long way – his current approval rating is only 28%. His fortunes have not improved much, you might say. Boris Johnson has not yet even properly taken the reins in the UK, but his people do not appear optimistic; about 35% speculate he is or will be a capable leader , while only 23% rate him more honest than most politicians. Enjoy those, BoJo; they represent a zenith born of unreasonable hope – The Economist describes these ratings as 'surprisingly high'. In 2018, the Netherlands' Mark Rutte had only 10% approval – and that was the highest of the ministers – while 34% disapproved. Apparently about half just didn't care.

Look; Khrushcheva is talking out her ass. There just is no way to sugar-coat it. In 2015, Vladimir Putin was the most popular leader in the world with national voters. I daresay he is now, as well; with the state of the world, I find it hard to imagine any other leader has an approval rating higher than 64%. But feel free to look. Polling agencies carefully parse their questions so as to push the results in the direction they'd like to see, but when the question is reduced to a basic "Do you trust Putin? Yes or No?", his approval rating goes higher than it is right now. Please note, that's the reference supplied by Khrushcheva to substantiate her statement that fewer and fewer Russians now conflate their nation with its leader.

I don't personally recall Putin ever saying he hoped Trump would improve relations with Russia, although it would not be an unreasonable wish had he said it. I think he was probably glad Hillary Clinton did not win, considering her shrill Russophobic rhetoric and fondness for military solutions to all problems, but Khrushcheva makes him sound like a doddering old fool who barely knows what century he is living in. I think Russia always hoped for better relations with America, because when any country's relations with America are very bad, that country would be wise to prepare for war. Because that's how America solves its problems with other countries. Washington already had a go at strangling Russia economically, and it failed spectacularly, and we're getting down to the bottom of the toolbox.

Next, Khrushcheva informs us that Russia is in as weak a position to defeat the USA in a nuclear war as it was when it was the USSR. That's true, in a roundabout way. For one, there would be no victors or defeated in a nuclear war. It would quickly escalate to a full-on exchange, and much of the planet would become uninhabitable. For another, Russia was always in a pretty good position to wax America's ass in a nuclear exchange and it still is. Russia still has about 6,800 nuclear weapons to the USA's 6,500 , and has continued to modernize and update its nuclear arsenal through the years. A Russian strike would be concentrated on a country about a third its size. If I were a betting man, I wouldn't like those odds. Mind you, if I were a free-thinking liberal professor who did not have a clue what I was talking about, I would laugh at the odds – ignorance seasoned with a superiority complex tends to make you act that way. Just as well that betting men mostly run the world, and not jackhole liberal professors.

The recent explosion at what was believed to be development of a new nuclear weapon in Russia is assessed by Khrushcheva to be a clear sign of incompetence, which is quite a diagnosis considering no investigation has even started yet. Somehow she missed the dramatic explosion of Elon Musk's SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, together with its multi-million-dollar satellite payload, back in 2016. Oh, never mind – Musk quickly explained that it was 'an anomaly'. Well, that clears it all up. Must have; the US government has continued to throw money at Musk as if he were embarrassingly naked or something, and nobody seems prepared to suggest it was incompetent. While we're on that subject, the whole reason SpaceX even exists is because the USA continues to use Russian RD-180 rockets developed in the 1960s to launch its satellites and space packages into orbit, because it doesn't have anything better. I'd be careful where I tossed that 'incompetent' word around. Cheer up, though the news isn't all bad: just a bit more than a year ago, the most advanced commercial reactor designs from Europe and the United States just delivered their first megawatt-hours of electricity within one day of each other. Oh, wait. It is bad news. Because that took place in China . You know, that place where Xi in his unabated brutality is trampling upon the fair face of democracy. In fact, according to nuclear energy consultant Mycle Schneider, principal author of the annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report, "The Chinese have a very large workforce that they move from one project to another, so their skills are actually getting better, whereas European and North American companies haven't completed reactors in decades".

Is that bad? Gee; it might be. "This loss of nuclear competence is being cited by nuclear and national security experts in both the U.S. and in Europe's nuclear weapons states as a threat to their military nuclear programs. The White House cited this nuclear nexus in a May memo instructing Rick Perry, the Secretary of Energy, to force utilities to buy power from unprofitable nuclear and coal plants. The memo states that the "entire US nuclear enterprise" including nuclear weapons and naval propulsion, "depends on a robust civilian nuclear industry." You see, Ninushka, competence in nuclear weapons is directly related to competence in nuclear engineering as a whole.

I hope she knows more about Russia than she does about China – in a single paragraph she has the Chinese government threatening to send in the army to crush protests, and standing aside while thugs beat up protesters – and both are bad. And of course, this threatened action/inaction had to have been sanctioned by Xi's government. Why? Well, because everyone in Hong Kong knows it. Much of the rest of her reasoning – free thinking, I guess I should call it – on China is what Xi 'might be contemplating' or 'could be considering'. Supported by nothing, apparently, except the liberal free-thinker's gift of clairvoyance.

Hong Kong was always Chinese. The Qing dynasty ceded it to the British Empire in the Treaty of Nanjing, and it became a British Crown Colony. Britain was back for Kowloon in 1860, and leased what came to be known as The New Territories for 99 years, ending in 1997. Time's up. The people of Hong Kong are Chinese; it's not like they are some different and precious race that China aims to extinguish. I was there a decade after it returned to Chinese control, and it was largely independent; it had its own flag, the British street names were retained, and you can probably still stop on Gloucester Road and buy a Jaguar, if you have that kind of money. To a very large degree, China left it alone and minded its own business, but like I said; it's Chinese. These ridiculous western attempts to split it off and make an independent nation of it are only making trouble for the people of Hong Kong and, as usual, appeal mostly to students who have never run anything much bigger than a bake sale, and 'free-thinking liberals'.

The New Kremlin Stooge

China is not 'isolated diplomatically'. Beijing is host city to 167 foreign embassies . There are only 10 more in Washington, which considers itself the Center of the Universe. Lately China has been spreading itself a little, muscling into Latin America , right in Uncle Sam's backyard. Foreign Direct Investment into China increased 3.6 percent year-on-year to $78.8 billion USD in January-July 2019, and has increased steadily since that time, when it fell dramatically owing to Trump's trade war. That has proved far more disastrous to the USA than to China, which is rapidly sourcing its imports from other suppliers and establishing new trading relationships which exclude the United States, probably for the long term. "China is isolated diplomatically" is precisely the sort of inane bibble-babble liberal free-thinkers tell each other because they want to believe it is true. It is not. Similarly – and, I would have thought, obviously – China is also not 'increasingly regarded as an international pariah'. That's another place she's thinking of.

There is nothing Russia or China could do to please the United States and its increasingly lunatic governing administration, short of plucking out its eye and offering it for a bauble, like Benton Wolf in The Age of Miracles. The type of 'reforms' demanded by the US State Department suggest its current state is delusion, since they are patently designed to weaken the government and empower dissident groups – is that the essence of democracy? It sure as fuck is not. You can kind of tell by the way Washington pounces on its own dissident groups like Mike Pompeo on a jelly roll; the FBI investigated the Occupy Wall Street movement as a terrorist threat. Russia got a prescient preview of the kind of treatment it could expect from the west when it applied to join NATO, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post. The acceptance of the Soviet Union "would be incompatible with its democratic and defensive aims."

So as most ordinary thinkers could have told you would happen, America's hold-my-beer-and-watch-this hillbilly moves to split Russia and China apart have succeeded in driving them closer together; the world's manufacturing and commercial giant and a major energy producer – a great mix, unless you are the enemy. The rest of the world is kind of watching America with its pants around its ankles, wondering what it will do next. It failed to wreck the Russian economy, failed to depose and replace Bashar al-Assad in Syria, failed to depose and replace Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, and it will fail to prevent a Sino-Russian axis which will reshape global trade to its own advantage at the expense of America. Because whenever it has an opportunity to seize upon a lucid moment, to turn away from its destructive course, it chooses instead to bullshit itself some more. To whisper what it wishes were true into its own ear.

And if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

[Sep 12, 2019] The comments to WSWS article on HK are **well worth** reading

Sep 12, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

NOrthern Star September 9, 2019 at 3:59 pm

HK article gets at the nascent conflicting conflagrations wrt objectives .what is to be cast into the fire and what is to be taken as a new HK socioeconomic script.
The comments are **well worth** reading ,some of which mirror comments on HK by Stooges.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/09/09/pers-s09.html

[Sep 12, 2019] Carrie Lam chose to play it like Yanukovych, and to give the protesters what they asked for.

Sep 12, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

Jen September 6, 2019 at 3:40 am

If Carrie Lam had half a brain, she could always threaten to bring back the extradition bill with a new provision that people who damage essential infrastructure like railway lines and roads, and who target police with rocks, laser beams and grenades shot from portable grenade launchers will be extradited to Beijing to stand trial for their misdeeds, if the protesters keep changing and ramping up their demands.
Mark Chapman September 6, 2019 at 2:57 pm
Carrie Lam chose to play it like Yanukovych, and to give the protesters what they asked for. That resulted in Yanukovych running for his life, and Lam might well find herself in the same situation if the police don't get a handle on the hoodlums that are smashing the place up and hurling stones and Molotov cocktails. Appeasing protesters only makes them feel empowered, and that empowerment causes them to wonder why they should be satisfied with only what they originally demanded. That's a natural effect, and this is not a natural protest, but a destabilization effort instigated and nurtured by foreign interests. So the protesters' demands are just going to grow and grow, because the goal is either a violent clash with the police or complete government capitulation. China is not going to let the latter happen.

Lam has said already that there will be no negotiation with groups that destroy public property, but protesters have vowed not to give an inch. The ball is in Lam's court, and if she does not harden up and present a credible defense, she will be removed either by China or by the protesters. Hong Kong is not going to become a democratic independent country – China is not going to let it be snatched away under their noses. Firm action right now might be able to get the situation under control with a minimum of violence, but if it goes on much longer, people are going to be killed And there is zero the west could do to stop it, as it is a domestic Chinese matter, so their continued egging on of the protesters shows how little it cares for their lives.

[Sep 12, 2019] Full 10-minute video of middle-aged and elderly commuters fighting with protesters, the incident that led to the Prince Edward MTR station staff calling in police over the August / September weekend to subdue and arrest protesters, some of whom attempted to evade arrest by changing clothes:

Sep 12, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

Jen September 3, 2019 at 6:26 pm

WSWS,org's reporting on the Hong Kong protests has been dismal and ideologically biased. To my knowledge, the protesters' demands have never covered working conditions, housing conditions and the tremendous social inequalities (said to be the highest in the world). They have never covered the state of a tax haven economy used and abused by billionaires in mainland China to minimise their tax obligations to Beijing or to send money to other overseas tax havens through registering their offspring or other people as Hong Kong residents, resulting in money being poured into property speculation which itself has led to sky-high property prices and the inability of ordinary people to afford to buy or rent homes of a suitable space at reasonable prices.

The protesters' initial demands were to withdraw the extradition bill, to force Carrie Lam to resign as Chief Executive and to force her government to investigate what they claimed was police violence – in spite of the fact that most of the violence and sabotage (which has now extended to fighting with commuters and throwing things at them, vandalising MTR stations and throwing rocks and objects onto train lines) has been committed by protesters themselves – and (as if as a last thought) demanding universal suffrage.

Photos and videos of protesters throwing rods onto a train line, and damaging ticket machines at MTR stations:
https://mothership.sg/2019/09/hong-kong-protesters-train-tracks/

Full 10-minute video of middle-aged and elderly commuters fighting with protesters, the incident that led to the Prince Edward MTR station staff calling in police over the August / September weekend to subdue and arrest protesters, some of whom attempted to evade arrest by changing clothes:

Northern Star September 4, 2019 at 2:46 pm
Yes You are correct in that wsws appears to be not on its game in its analysis of the HK situation,as was noted in some of the comments to the article. Addressing fundamental economic disparities in HK does not seem to feature in the agenda of the protesters.

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/community/article/2120366/poverty-hong-kong-hits-7-year-high-one-five-people
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-19/one-in-five-people-in-hong-kong-were-living-in-poverty

As you know,Lam has done a volte-face on the extradition bill:
https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/04/asia/hong-kong-carrie-lam-extradition-bill-intl-hnk/index.html

But it's not clear if that in itself will extinguish the protesters' fires of various complaints.

I've yet to see a cogent analysis of the dynamic interplay-with the potential for lethal conflict- between:

The HK protesters
The Super elite HK billionaires
The Super elite mainland billionaire class
The mainland population as a whole

Mark Chapman September 4, 2019 at 5:06 pm
Can't wait to see the Chinese headline: "Safe in Hong Kong, Chinese Accused Murderer Wei Tu Lukky says, 'Thanks for the Democracy, Students!" Of course you'll never see it, because no western paper would ever print it. As far as the west is concerned, it really is all about freedom and democracy. Like no such things as extradition treaties exist between democracies. Canada and the United States have an extradition treaty – aren't they democracies? Aren't they free?

https://internationalextraditionblog.com/2011/04/12/canada-extradition-treaty-with-the-united-states/

What it boils down to is that westerners like Bill Browder do not want to be snatched when they are passing through Hong Kong International Airport, and extradited to China. Westerners do not particularly care otherwise about the rule of law in China, but the usual troublemakers sense an opportunity to destabilize and create a problem for China. If China soft-pedals it, as they have done, it quickly gets out of hand to the point where they are dealing with rioters rather than protesters, smashing and destroying in an orgy of violence. Had they cracked down hard in the beginning and kicked out all western journalists reporting on the issue, the 'protests' would have been strangled in the cradle, and while the west would have gotten a little mileage out of the brutal Chinese authoritarianism, it would have been nowhere near as bad as it is now.

The 'student leaders' of the 'protests', Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow, are 22. I suppose there might be a place somewhere in which 22-year-olds don't feel like they know everything, but I've never heard of it. With political unit chief of the US Consulate Julie Eadeh stroking them and telling them she's never seen anyone so brave, they can barely keep the grins off their faces and fancy they really are somebody important. Lam did indeed flip on the extradition issue, but it's too late for that now. She is going to learn the Yanukovych lesson all over again – appeasing protesters, especially when it is part of a destabilization program, only leads to more demands and more protests.

The Chinese government perhaps thought to go slow and not give the western media any money shots to make a big issue of. That might have worked, if this was a genuine one-issue protest. But it isn't – as i just pointed out, extradition treaties have nothing to do with democracy and freedom, and if a bunch of students think they are going to have their own country to play Independence Doctor in, they have a big surprise coming. Remember when Poroshenko was justified in doing whatever he wanted, including taking students right out of the university parking lot and putting them on a bus to Army training, because he was 'protecting his country'? Well, the Chinese government sees itself as having the same rights where a small group of students is causing a major problem, and is blatantly violating public order in an attempt to win western approbation; it is plainly not legal to throw stones and gas bombs at the police and smash up public infrastructure.

You can't give people whatever they want when they are acting like hooligans – it only makes them think of more things they want. And that's just what is happening here. If they are not very careful, the entire Lam government is going to be replaced overnight with hardliners, and then heads will roll.

Jen September 4, 2019 at 9:36 pm
Withdrawing the extradition bill is an easy move because Lam can always reintroduce it later (perhaps in a changed form) though perhaps when that happens, the guy who killed his pregnant girlfriend in Taiwan on St Valentine's Day in 2018, and used all her bank cards to clear his own debts will have already gone free and for all we know have left Hong Kong.

Also by withdrawing the bill, Lam takes some of the wind out of the sails of the protest movement. If the protesters are not happy over the withdrawal and ratchet up their demands that Lam and her entire government resign, then Beijing knows this is a Color Revolution protest movement and might start to press Hong Kong to expel British and American consular staff stationed in the territory and shut down British and American NGOs and think-tanks using whatever the laws of Hong Kong permit Lam to use against them. Lam may not be able to stop the protests from escalating but she can slow them down by cutting off their funding, advice and support.

[Sep 12, 2019] Only neoliberal governments can crush protests with absolute impunity

Sep 12, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

Mark Chapman September 2, 2019 at 12:06 pm

Yes, it's curious that western governments are justified in using whatever force they feel is necessary to put down anti-government protests, or just to keep order in general – reports abound of ordinary people not doing anything wrong meeting up with a mean cop who decides to slam them around a little in the process of establishing their identity, and the aversion of the American police to bystanders filming them is well-known. But in certain countries – and sometimes just certain governments in those countries – dispersal of protesters or those posing as peaceful protesters is always 'brutal'. So it is in Hong Kong, where 'pro-democracy protesters' – which is a label used to justify pretty much any behavior – throw stones and gas bombs at police and destroy public property (rioting by another, more palatable name). Nothing Saakashvili did to put down protests was ever described by western media as 'brutal' in my recollection.

[Sep 11, 2019] Hong Kong protesters cozy up to US, ask to 'liberate' city amid ongoing violence (VIDEOS) -- RT World News

Images removed...
Notable quotes:
"... Footage from the city also documented flagrant acts of vandalism targeting the infrastructure and public transportation. In one video, a staircase was spray-painted with an inspiring message, "fight for freedom," accompanied by a swastika. ..."
"... The protesters – many of them masked and armed with metal rods and clubs – also erected street barricades, which were then set ablaze. Police used tear gas to disperse the unruly crowds. ..."
"... Videos – not always publicized by the mainstream media – also show aftermath of vandalism as anti-government unrest enters its 14th week. ..."
"... Beijing has repeatedly accused Washington of fueling the political turmoil, a claim that became more difficult to refute after a senior American diplomat was seen meeting with protest leaders. ..."
"... With their direct appeal to Trump, it appears that many of the protesters are not interested in negotiating directly with the government. Hong Kong had already officially withdrawn the controversial extradition bill with China that sparked the unrest. ..."
Sep 11, 2019 | www.rt.com

Hong Kong protesters rallied in their thousands and clashed with police in fresh unrest. They even called on Washington to "liberate" them from Chinese rule, suggesting some may now view the US as their patron. Thousands of demonstrators marched to the US Consulate in Hong Kong on Sunday, in what they said was an appeal to President Donald Trump to intervene in the weeks-long political turmoil. Videos of the rally show protesters waving American flags as they sing the US national anthem and play 'The Star Spangled Banner' through the speakers on their phones.

© Courtesy Andre Vltchek

People also carried banners, urging Trump to "liberate" Hong Kong. American lawmakers are currently mulling the so-called 'Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act'. The legislation would require Washington to annually assess Hong Kong's level of autonomy from Beijing and react with economic countermeasures if self-rule is compromised.

//www.youtube.com/embed/fugZvuyR9GU

Some signs of protest used to drum up support for the cause have raised questions about the factual accuracy of the messaging. According to the Global Times, a banner attached to an overpass erroneously claimed that "China owes America $1 trillion."

#HK radical protesters fail to get the facts right on a banner which states that "China owes US$1 trillion." Here is a free lesson: As of May, the US owes China about $1.11 trillion, not the other way round. #香港 pic.twitter.com/hky6WCDJqA

-- Global Times (@globaltimesnews) September 8, 2019

Footage from the city also documented flagrant acts of vandalism targeting the infrastructure and public transportation. In one video, a staircase was spray-painted with an inspiring message, "fight for freedom," accompanied by a swastika.

© Courtesy Andre Vltchek

The protesters – many of them masked and armed with metal rods and clubs – also erected street barricades, which were then set ablaze. Police used tear gas to disperse the unruly crowds.

© Courtesy Andre Vltchek

Videos – not always publicized by the mainstream media – also show aftermath of vandalism as anti-government unrest enters its 14th week.

© Courtesy Andre Vltchek

Beijing has repeatedly accused Washington of fueling the political turmoil, a claim that became more difficult to refute after a senior American diplomat was seen meeting with protest leaders.

With their direct appeal to Trump, it appears that many of the protesters are not interested in negotiating directly with the government. Hong Kong had already officially withdrawn the controversial extradition bill with China that sparked the unrest.

Also on rt.com

[Sep 11, 2019] Color revolutionaries of the world, unite! Hong Kong protest leader pictured with White Helmets boss -- RT World News

Sep 11, 2019 | www.rt.com

Hong Kong protest figurehead Joshua Wong, who has been rocking up to 'pro-democracy' meetings with various Western officials in recent weeks, has been spotted hanging out with the chairman of the White Helmets in Berlin. Wong attended the 'Bild 100' summer party in Berlin this week, where he seems to have bumped into White Helmets boss Raed Al Saleh. That's a tad awkward, since the Syrian first-responders group operates solely in areas controlled by anti-government fighters and has been heavily suspected of links to Al Qaeda and US-sponsored jihadist militias – a fact that did not go unnoticed on Twitter.

To prove that he's not a pawn of the US intelligence ... Joshua Wong met with Al Qaeda's medic team, the White Helmets. 😀 My God, what a stupid world we live in #HongKongProtests #StandWithHongKong https://t.co/M9DkVgdctc

-- Economics Geopolitics Tech (@EconGeopolTech) September 10, 2019

The White Helmets is a dead giveaway that this is a Propaganda Construct.

-- Martin Larner (@MartinLarner) September 10, 2019

There was another familiar face in the snaps, too: Mayor of Kiev Vitaly Klitschko, who was, for a time, himself a Western favorite when Ukraine was in Washington's regime-change crosshairs.

Can't make this up #CIA #NED mascott Joshua Wong in Berlin next to Klitschko 😂🤦‍♂️🤪 https://t.co/EAWZqt6uRX

-- amin dada (@kambrone64) September 9, 2019

But Wong has had some questionable high-level meetings, too. He also met German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas at the event – with that tete-a-tete quickly slammed by Beijing.

These meetings come on the heels of photos showing Wong speaking to Julie Eadeh, an official from the US consulate general in Hong Kong, which raised more suspicions that Washington had a hand in the recent violent anti-China protests

[Sep 11, 2019] Beijing Has Proof Of Foreign Intervention In HK Unrest, Summons German Ambassador

Notable quotes:
"... Watch for persons disguised as Red Chinese troops attacking the local Hong Kong radio station. ..."
"... A lot of countries are getting involved. Last Sunday there were many protesters who didn't even speak Cantonese! They were Mandarin speakers from Taiwan and when the crowd shouted to "Run away" (from the approaching police) they just stood and looked confused. Obviously the western MSM hasn't bothered to mention the point. They want you to think it is still HK students. BS!! ..."
"... German government is actually working for US and CIA. Nevermind the fact that German elites are supporting EU breaking away from USA and detest Trump. ..."
"... Your dislike of China blinds you to simple facts like Germany is a vassal of usa that is still under ww2 military occupation . Small domestic differences are allowed in all politics to give the illusion of choice. But tyranny gets a vote everytime. Democracy is a buzzword that died a long time ago in all countries. ..."
"... German government is actually working for US and CIA ..."
Sep 11, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Beijing and other as critics of Joshua Wong have alleged he's being used as a foreign agent to do the West's bidding in Hong Kong.


Herodotus , 20 minutes ago link

Watch for persons disguised as Red Chinese troops attacking the local Hong Kong radio station.

NA X-15 , 18 minutes ago link

Only it will be the PLA - they don't allow imposters. Nazi Wehrmacht historical reference noticed....

EuroPox , 19 minutes ago link

A lot of countries are getting involved. Last Sunday there were many protesters who didn't even speak Cantonese! They were Mandarin speakers from Taiwan and when the crowd shouted to "Run away" (from the approaching police) they just stood and looked confused. Obviously the western MSM hasn't bothered to mention the point. They want you to think it is still HK students. BS!!

bismillah , 23 minutes ago link

All one needs to do is look at the fake protesters, the signs, the violent behaviors, the top leaders' contacts in the US consulate, the White Hats, and elsewhere, and it is clear and obvious who leads, funds and directs the destructive rioting scum bags.

The PRC needs to close the US and all EU consulates, terminate the HK-SAR, bring in a hundred thousand tough well-disciplined PLA soldiers who will in an hour put a stop to this US-directed garbage.

BritBob , 29 minutes ago link

Foreign Intervention in Democracy

China insisted that Hong Kong be removed from the UN's list of territories that needed to be decolonised prior to hand-over by the UK. Now China along with Russia, Cuba, Syria and Iran are members of the UN decolonisation committee that is meant to assist territories to decolonise. How strange democracy is.

The militant, unconstitutional and ineffective committee.

Falklands – UN C24 Committee (2 pgs):

https://www.academia.edu/11274445/Falklands_-_UN_C24_Committe e

Thebighouse , 32 minutes ago link

God Bless Freedom. God Bless Hong Kong.

onewayticket2 , 37 minutes ago link

Joseph Misfud and Agent Steele could not be reached for comment

Heavenstorm , 40 minutes ago link

So according to the irrational narrative of the China Media now, German government is actually working for US and CIA. Nevermind the fact that German elites are supporting EU breaking away from USA and detest Trump.

The Chinese Journalists must have received detailed fake news training from CNN and NBC

pablozz , 31 minutes ago link

Your dislike of China blinds you to simple facts like Germany is a vassal of usa that is still under ww2 military occupation . Small domestic differences are allowed in all politics to give the illusion of choice. But tyranny gets a vote everytime. Democracy is a buzzword that died a long time ago in all countries.

inhibi , 26 minutes ago link

Your love of China blinds you to the facts that EU and US are bastions of freedom, and not every single incident is a ******* conspiracy of the US and EU.

Also, I think you need to look up the word 'vassal'. Wrong time period & context.

kowalli , 26 minutes ago link

German government is actually working for US and CIA

[Sep 10, 2019] China, Hong Kong and Taiwan - Frank Ching - Sic Semper Tyrannis

Notable quotes:
"... The reaction to what's going on in Hong Kong that I've seen, amongst the educated Taiwanese classes, is that most are horrified by it, perceiving it as a spasm of nihilist, ignorant Hong Kong youth manipulated by cynical outside forces. ..."
"... If the US intelligence agencies believe that Taiwan will throw in support for Hong Kong following a protest like this, it should think again. People in Taiwan have become far more skeptical of the US-Taiwan relationship, since the Sunflower Movement. ..."
"... In Hong Kong the U.S. is making the usual mistake of betting on the extreme rightwing, libertarians and fascists. ..."
"... The rioting students have already lost much of the wider support they had at the beginning of this operations. They will soon be seen as the nihilist idiots who only care about themselves that they truly are. The people of Hong Kong who care about Hong Kong will fight them down. ..."
"... I disagree with your characterization of the rioting students as nihilist idiots. Many probably believe (with justification) that the liberties they currently enjoy are at stake if HK's system of self-governance is eroded away to nothing. However, you raise a good point about the Chinese leadership being provoked into another Tiananmen. The PNAC crowd must be frustrated with the widespread public perception of China as *just* a manipulative trade competitor/pseudo adversary. A very public bloodbath in HK is just what they need to promote China to Axis of Evil status. ..."
"... Most Chinese, I expect, just want to get on with their lives rather than agitate about the CCP. ..."
Sep 10, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Pacifica Advocate , 09 September 2019 at 11:01 AM

The reaction to what's going on in Hong Kong that I've seen, amongst the educated Taiwanese classes, is that most are horrified by it, perceiving it as a spasm of nihilist, ignorant Hong Kong youth manipulated by cynical outside forces.

Remember that support for Tsai Yingwen & her coalition remains somewhere in the 20 to 30% range--that is, very much near the same range that Chen Shuibian was afflicted with, before he was prosecuted and sent off to prison for corruption.

If the US intelligence agencies believe that Taiwan will throw in support for Hong Kong following a protest like this, it should think again. People in Taiwan have become far more skeptical of the US-Taiwan relationship, since the Sunflower Movement.

Yes--there will be a period of chaos, as the majority slowly explains to the unruly outliers that no, their ideas are not useful. Yes, as in Hong Kong, that period may last a period that US/uk authorities may find untenable.

But no: none of this will result in a China-NATO war. None of this will result in a hard, black line running between the Koreas, Taiwan, and Japan. None of this will stop the Philippines from continuing their gravitation westward ("Eastward", for you Euroyanks.)

Taiwan, I predict, will be the second-to-last stalwart holdout against US hegemony in East Asia--with Japan being the last.

blue peacock said in reply to Pacifica Advocate... , 09 September 2019 at 07:59 PM
I get a different perspective from Taiwanese business people who I speak with regularly. They are uniform in their disgust and fear of CCP. What they seem most concerned about is that the US will abandon them when push comes to shove.

They are watching what's happening in HK with much interest and are privately very sympathetic to the aims of the people of HK to be independent of CCP rule.

different clue , 09 September 2019 at 01:46 PM
I will guess that you are living in Taiwan, otherwise how would you be able to see the reaction among the educated Taiwanese classes?

I would have to read up on the names of the people and movements you have given us before I could know anything about them.

I had not heard, way back here in Great Lakestan, that US intelligence agencies were thinking about whether Taiwan would "support" Hong Kong or not, though I suppose the US intelligence agencies try to think about every possible thing. It seems more likely to me that the agencies would be thinking about how Taiwan does or does not plan to welcome the ChiCom regime when it looks their way and says " okay, you're next".

So, the "majority" will explain to the unruly outliers how useless their ideas are? In what sense is a pack of ChiCom Regime-Lords a "majority"? A "majority" of what or whom?

I hope you are correct that there will be no China-NATO war. American hegemony is fading and I hope the slow fade-out leaves America intact as a free country. I hope America can break free from the International Forcey-Free-TradeRape system.

Yes, as one hegemony fades away . . . another rises. Since Taiwan is largely Han-majority, I believe, I suppose Taiwan will fare better under Great Han Lebensraumist ChiCom rule than Tibet or Sinjiang or Inner Mongolia or or or . . .

And maybe Taiwan will find Chinese hegemony more enjoyable than the American kind. And aren't you the lucky lad? You may get to find out within your own lifetime.

As Angel-Eyes said to the Colonel with gangrene: " I wish you luck."

b , 09 September 2019 at 03:08 PM
Come on Pat.

You predicted the immediate introduction of Chinese troops in Hong Kong how many month back? Where are they?

China does not care about Hong Kong. It will not be provoked into another NED/CIA arranged Tianamen.

In Hong Kong the U.S. is making the usual mistake of betting on the extreme rightwing, libertarians and fascists.

The rioting students have already lost much of the wider support they had at the beginning of this operations. They will soon be seen as the nihilist idiots who only care about themselves that they truly are. The people of Hong Kong who care about Hong Kong will fight them down.

blue peacock said in reply to b ... , 09 September 2019 at 08:02 PM
"..betting on the extreme rightwing, libertarians and fascists."

Ha! Ha! Everyone that is not Communist.

Amir -> blue peacock... , 10 September 2019 at 09:14 AM
There is alas a consistency in our ruling elite's modus operandi: just look at DC's support for Taliban, liver-eating Al Nusra (Al Qaeda) in Syria, slave-trader Jihadists in Libya & above all, genocidal Salafists in Yemen, Boston-marathon-bombing Chechens & above all Saudi terror-financing Clown Prince ⚙️Mohammad Bone Saw⚙️: it is telling that you are more concerned about a dead ideology as opposed to an expanding current dangerous movement.
Barbara Ann said in reply to b ... , 10 September 2019 at 09:41 AM
b

I disagree with your characterization of the rioting students as nihilist idiots. Many probably believe (with justification) that the liberties they currently enjoy are at stake if HK's system of self-governance is eroded away to nothing. However, you raise a good point about the Chinese leadership being provoked into another Tiananmen. The PNAC crowd must be frustrated with the widespread public perception of China as *just* a manipulative trade competitor/pseudo adversary. A very public bloodbath in HK is just what they need to promote China to Axis of Evil status.

Mr Wong and his comrades would be well advised to treat support from an American administration still full of neocons with a great deal of suspicion. I don't doubt that people like Bolton would willingly goad them into escalating the confrontation until the PLA is forced to crush them. They may do so anyway. But if the risk of contagion is low an example can be made of HK without violence. If major disruption continues businesses will be forced to relocate. HK could simply be allowed to rot as this happens, pour encourager les autres.

turcopolier , 09 September 2019 at 03:52 PM
b

I did not. Chinese troops were massing on the HK border in August. There was a general strike and that was a possible flash point. I predicted that China would inevitably crush the rebellion in Hong Kong. I stand by that. Your anti-Americanism is showing again,

fredw , 09 September 2019 at 05:22 PM
"China does not care about Hong Kong."

Obviously they do care. As the quoted article noted, they are the ones who provoked this situation. Students (and others) did not just rush out into the streets on a whim. They have not endured police state violence and arrests in pursuit of being "nihilist idiots".

Their chances seem slim. The question that I don't see asked or answered is "Why hasn't this been put down already?" That seems the only plausible end to it. The Chinese government certainly has the capability.

Holding back is not an effect of any strictness about rules or morals. Not having done it can only mean that they see costs or dangers that they are not (yet) willing to face.

Personally I think that the (the government) and powerful people with China derive a LOT of money and power from the perception of Hong Kong as a rule-of-law environment. But I have seen very little discussion of the motives for holding off. The costs of holding off are obvious. The reasons for doing so must be massive.

walrus , 09 September 2019 at 06:07 PM
There are indications elsewhere on the web that China will try and quarantine HK and let it slowly die. Provided this can be achieved there is no need for military action. As for overseas chinese attitudes, I didn't see any support for HK when I was in Singapore last month and demonstrations by Chinese students in Australia seem to be neatly divided into pro and anti HK camps. Most Chinese, I expect, just want to get on with their lives rather than agitate about the CCP.

[Sep 10, 2019] It s all about Gene Sharp and seeping neoliberal regime change using Western logistical support, money, NGO and intelligence agencies and MSM as the leverage

Highly recommended!
What democracy they are talking about? Democracy for whom? This Harvard political prostitutes are talking about democracy for oligarchs which was the nest result of EuroMaydan and the ability of Western companies to buy assets for pennies on the dollar without the control of national government like happen in xUSSR space after dissolution of the USSR, which in retrospect can be classified as a color revolution too, supported by financial injection, logistical support and propaganda campaign in major Western MSM.
What Harvard honchos probably does not understand or does not wish to understand is that neoliberalism as a social system lost its attraction and is in irreversible decline. The ideology of neoliberalism collapsed much like Bolsheviks' ideology. As Politician like Joe Boden which still preach neoliberalism are widely viewed as corrupt or senile (or both) hypocrites.
The "Collective West" still demonstrates formidable intelligence agencies skills (especially the USA and GB), but the key question is: "What they are fighting for?"
They are fighting for neoliberalism which is a lost case. Which looks like KGB successes after WWIII. They won many battles and lost the Cold war.
Not that Bolsheviks in the USSR was healthy or vibrant. Economics was a deep stagnation, alcoholism among working class was rampant, the standard of living of the majority of population slides each year, much like is the case with neoliberalism after, say, 1991. Hidden unemployment in the USSR was high -- at least in high teens if not higher. Like in the USA now good jobs were almost impossible to obtain without "extra help". Medical services while free were dismal, especially dental -- which were horrible. Hospitals were poor as church rats as most money went to MIC. Actually, like in the USA now, MIC helped to strangulate the economy and contributed to the collapse. It was co a corrupt and decaying , led by completely degenerated leadership. To put the person of the level of Gorbachov level of political talent lead such a huge and complex country was an obvious suicide.
But the facts speak for themselves: what people usually get as the result of any color revolution is the typical for any county which lost the war: dramatic drop of the standard of living due to economic rape of the country.
While far form being perfect the Chinese regime at least managed to lift the standard of living of the majority of the population and provide employment. After regime change China will experience the same economic rape as the USSR under Yeltsin regime. So in no way Hong Cong revolution can be viewed a progressive phenomenon despite all the warts of neoliberalism with Chenese characteristics in mainland China (actually this is a variant of NEP that Gorbachov tried to implement in the USSR, but was to politically incompetent to succeed)
Aug 31, 2019 | Chris Fraser @ChrisFraser_HKU • Aug 27 \z

Replying to @edennnnnn_ @AMFChina @lihkg_forum

A related resource that deserves wide circulation:

Why nonviolent resistance beats violent force in effecting social, political change – Harvard Gazette

CHENOWETH: I think it really boils down to four different things. The first is a large and diverse participation that's sustained.

The second thing is that [the movement] needs to elicit loyalty shifts among security forces in particular, but also other elites. Security forces are important because they ultimately are the agents of repression, and their actions largely decide how violent the confrontation with -- and reaction to -- the nonviolent campaign is going to be in the end. But there are other security elites, economic and business elites, state media. There are lots of different pillars that support the status quo, and if they can be disrupted or coerced into noncooperation, then that's a decisive factor.

The third thing is that the campaigns need to be able to have more than just protests; there needs to be a lot of variation in the methods they use.

The fourth thing is that when campaigns are repressed -- which is basically inevitable for those calling for major changes -- they don't either descend into chaos or opt for using violence themselves. If campaigns allow their repression to throw the movement into total disarray or they use it as a pretext to militarize their campaign, then they're essentially co-signing what the regime wants -- for the resisters to play on its own playing field. And they're probably going to get totally crushed.

Wai Sing-Rin @waisingrin • Aug 27

Replying to @ChrisFraser_HKU @edennnnnn_ and 2 others

Anyone who watched the lone frontliner (w translator) sees the frontliners are headed for disaster. They're fighting just to fight with no plans nor objectives.
They see themselves as heroes protecting the HK they love. No doubt their sincerity, but there are 300 of them left.

[Sep 09, 2019] Hong Cong and Maydan: the more the merrier

Notable quotes:
"... Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong rearrested based on bail violations, which supporters claim represents political persecution. After being released on bail last week, Wong published an op-ed in the New York Times declaring the protests as the "front line" in a hybrid war vs the PRC, and travelled to Taiwan where he urged the government there to join forces with HK activists in open conflict against Beijing. In both forums, Wong hinted a major provocation was in the works to disrupt the October 1st celebration of the PRC's 70th anniversary. ..."
"... That is, just as the Maidan protesters, knowingly or not, demanded that the IMF impose an austerity program on them, the Hong Kong protesters demand sanctions and the withdrawal of preferential trading deals. The Maidan protests have been deliberately seeded as a correlating event to the HK protests, with numerous public screenings in HK of the contentious "Winter On Fire" documentary. This comparison first appeared in online journals such as Quartz many weeks ago, and appears to be one of the originating "memes" promoted by the PR people working behind the scenes. ..."
"... Wow those hongkong protesters are not even shy about their call for regime change by Trump against China/Hongkong ..."
Sep 09, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

robjira , Sep 8 2019 18:20 utc | 35


I saw this on Muslim Brotherhood Media I mean Qatari State Media I mean al Jazeera re: Hong Kong and thought to myself, "these scumbags can't really mean to try the same sheise they pulled in Ukraine...?" Like that has turned out to be such a resounding success...

The sooner the 50 states secede from that cesspool in Maryland and try something different, the better.

I agree, b; the panic amongst US military planners is indeed setting in; all the resources wasted in developing dubious-quality weapons systems has been made plain for all the world to see with the rapid (and highly cost-effective) counter-measures both Russia and China (and now Iran) have been able to put into serial production (pretty sure this ain't an RC video)

jayc , Sep 8 2019 20:00 utc | 40

Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong rearrested based on bail violations, which supporters claim represents political persecution. After being released on bail last week, Wong published an op-ed in the New York Times declaring the protests as the "front line" in a hybrid war vs the PRC, and travelled to Taiwan where he urged the government there to join forces with HK activists in open conflict against Beijing. In both forums, Wong hinted a major provocation was in the works to disrupt the October 1st celebration of the PRC's 70th anniversary.

Meanwhile, "thousands of people converged at a park in central Hong Kong, chanting 'Resist Beijing, Liberate Hong Kong.' Many of them, clad in black shirts and wearing masks, waved American flags and carried posters that read 'President Trump, please liberate Hong Kong Protesters urged Washington to pass a bill, known as the Hong Kong Democratic and Human Rights Act, to support their cause. The bill proposes sanctions against Hong Kong and Chinese officials found to suppress democracy and human rights in the city, and could also affect Hong Kong's preferential trade status with the U.S."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/hong-kong-protests-us-embassy-1.5275142

That is, just as the Maidan protesters, knowingly or not, demanded that the IMF impose an austerity program on them, the Hong Kong protesters demand sanctions and the withdrawal of preferential trading deals. The Maidan protests have been deliberately seeded as a correlating event to the HK protests, with numerous public screenings in HK of the contentious "Winter On Fire" documentary. This comparison first appeared in online journals such as Quartz many weeks ago, and appears to be one of the originating "memes" promoted by the PR people working behind the scenes.

AuGold , Sep 8 2019 21:01 utc | 46 Zanon , Sep 8 2019 21:04 utc | 47
Wow those hongkong protesters are not even shy about their call for regime change by Trump against China/Hongkong:

Hong Kong protesters cozy up to US, ask to 'liberate' city amid ongoing violence (VIDEOS)
https://www.rt.com/news/468361-us-hong-kong-protesters-meddling/

Scary with such ignorant people.

dh , Sep 8 2019 21:14 utc | 48
@47 What do they expect Donald to do? Send in the 6th Fleet?

No Union Jacks being waved this week. I guess they've given up on Britain.

[Sep 08, 2019] Behind Hong Kong's chaos lie deep-seated social problems

Sep 08, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

anne , September 07, 2019 at 09:00 AM

http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-09/07/c_138374167.htm

September 7, 2019

Behind Hong Kong's chaos lie deep-seated social problems
"Seclusion brings no development opportunity for Hong Kong," said economist Lau Pui-King. "Some youngsters don't understand that Hong Kong would be even worse if it is secluded from the Chinese mainland."
"To come out of the current economic difficulty, Hong Kong needs to be linked with the Chinese mainland much closer and more effectively," she said.

HONG KONG -- Kwong loves the pure adrenaline rush he gets when he takes his motorcycle out on the weekends to light up his lackluster life.

The 35-year-old lives with his parents in an old and cramped apartment in the New Territories of Hong Kong. He has a girlfriend but is hesitant to get married and start a family.

"The rent is so high, and there is no way I can afford an apartment," said Kwong, who earns 15,000 HK dollars (1,950 U.S. dollars) a month. Renting a 30-square meter one-bedroom apartment would cost him about two-thirds of his salary.

"Future? I don't think much about it, just passing each day as it is," he said.

Kwong's words reflect the grievances among many people in Hong Kong, particularly the young. Many vented their discontent in prolonged streets protests that have rocked Hong Kong since June.

The demonstrations, which started over two planned amendments to Hong Kong's ordinances concerning fugitive offenders, widened and turned violent over the past months.

"After more than two months of social unrest, it is obvious to many that discontentment extends far beyond the bill," said Carrie Lam, chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), referring to the now-withdrawn amendments.

To Lam, the discontent covers political, economic and social issues, including the often-mentioned problems relating to housing and land supply, income distribution, social justice and mobility and opportunities, for the public to be fully engaged in the HKSAR government's decision-making.

"We can discuss all these issues in our new dialogue platform," she said.

UNAFFORDABLE HOUSES

For nine straight years, housing in Hong Kong has been ranked as the least affordable in the world. Homes in the city got further out of reach for most residents, according to Demographia, an urban planning policy consultancy. The city's median property price climbed to 7.16 million HK dollars in 2019, or 20.9 times the median household income in 2018, up from 19.4 times from a year earlier.

In the latest case of house transaction, an apartment of 353 square feet (about 33 square meters) at Mong Kok in central Kowloon was sold at 5.2 million HK dollars in September, according to the registered data from Centaline Property Agency Limited.

For those fortunate enough to have bought an apartment, many have to spend a large part of their monthly income on a mortgage. For those who have not bought any property yet, it is common to spend more than 10,000 HK dollars in rent, while saving every penny up for a multi-million HK dollar down payment.

From 2004 to 2018, the property price increased by 4.4 fold, while income stagnated, statistics show. From 2008 to 2017, average real wage growth in Hong Kong was merely 0.1 percent, according to a global wage report by the International Labor Organization. Homeownership dropped from 53 percent to 48.9 percent from 2003 to 2018.

Efforts of the HKSAR government to increase land supply to stem home prices from soaring also went futile amid endless quarrels. Of Hong Kong's total 1,100 square kilometers of land area, only 24.3 percent has been developed, with land for residential use accounting for a mere 6.9 percent, according to data from the HKSAR government.

Social worker Jack Wong, 29, lives in an apartment bought by his parents. "I'm lucky. Most of my friends still have to share apartments with their parents. My cousin has been married for seven years, but he is still saving for his down payment, so he has to live at his parents' house," he said.

"The older generation changed from having nothing to having something. We, the younger generation, thought we had something, but it turns out we have nothing," he said.

MIDDLE CLASS' ANXIETY

While young people complain about having few opportunities for upward mobility, Hong Kong's middle class, which should have long been stalwarts of the society, are under great economic pressure and in fear of falling behind.

It is not easy to be middle class in Hong Kong, one of the world's most expensive cities. To join the rank, a household needs to earn at least 55,000 HK dollars, or 7,000 U.S. dollars, a month, according to Paul Yip Siu-fai, a senior lecturer at the University of Hong Kong. About 10 percent of the households in the city are up to the rank.

Earning that much can be counted as rich in many parts of the world. But in Hong Kong, the money is still tight if you have a child to raise and elderly to support.

Housing is the biggest burden for the average middle-class resident. The cost of having a child is another headache in Hong Kong, where pricey extra-curricular activities and private tutoring are considered necessary to win in the fierce competition.

Fears of descending to the low-income group are real for the middle class. Many think they belong to the middle class only in education and cultural identity, but their living conditions are not much better than the impoverished, said Anthony Cheung Bing-leung, former secretary for transport and housing of the HKSAR government.

Civil servants and teachers, who earn much more than the average income, are traditionally considered middle class. But Cheung found out in a survey that many of them could not afford to have their own apartment, with some even living in the narrow rooms of partitioned apartments.

"We don't belong to the low-income group, but we could just rent an apartment now," said Lee, a teacher at a secondary school in Hong Kong.

Lee and her husband earned nearly 1.3 million HK dollars a year, but a 50-square meter apartment is the best they could rent now for a five-member family. She preferred not to give her full name as she feels her situation is embarrassing.

"We want to save more money to buy a house near prestigious elementary schools for our kids," Lee said. "If our kids can't go to a good school, it'll be very tough in the future."

CHANGING ECONOMIC STRUCTURE

In the 1970s, nearly half of Hong Kong's labor force were industrial workers when manufacturing thrived in Hong Kong. During the 1980s, Hong Kong's finance, shipping, trade and logistics and service industries started to boom.

Since then, the economic landscape began to change amid subsequent industrial upgrading.

Due to the hollowing out of the manufacturing industry, the wealth gap in Hong Kong widened and the class division worsened. Despite the prosperity of finance, trade and tourism in recent years, more than 1.37 million people are living below the poverty line in Hong Kong, home to more than 7 million.

Working career options are now limited, leaving little hope for the youngsters to move up the social ranks.

As a result, Hong Kong's social class has largely been solidified in the 21st century, with the richest people dominated by property developers and their families.

The Gini coefficient, which measures the inequality of income distribution, reached a new high of 0.539 in 2016, far above the warning level of 0.4, according to data by the HKSAR government's Census and Statistics Department. The greater the number toward one, the more unequal in income distribution.

Though the HKSAR government tried to narrow the wealth gap, many people in Hong Kong said they are not sharing the fruits of economic prosperity, the young and those low-income groups in particular.

STAGNATING POLITICAL BARRIERS

What makes the deep-seated problems in Hong Kong such a hard nut to crack? The reason is complicated, according to observers, partly due to the containment in the current political structure that leads to governance difficulty, partly due to a doctrinaire implementation of the principle of "small government, big market," or laissez faire, and most importantly due to the opposition's "say no for none's sake" that stirs political confrontation and sends Hong Kong into a dilemma of discussions without decisions, or making decisions without execution.

Over the past 22 years, the successive HKSAR governments have tried many times to tackle these problems by rolling out affordable housing programs and narrowing the rich-poor gap.

For example, to make houses more affordable, Tung Chee-hwa, the first HKSAR chief executive, proposed in 1997 to build at least 85,000 flats every year in the public and private sectors, raise the homeownership rate to 70 percent in 10 years and reduce the average waiting time for public rental housing to three years.

Such plans, however, went aborted as home prices plunged in Hong Kong amid the Asian financial crisis in 1998.

"Since Hong Kong's return, many economic and livelihood issues would not be as politicized as they are now, should the HKSAR government have introduced more policies and better social security arrangements to address those problems," said Tian Feilong, a law expert of the "one country, two systems" center with the Beijing-based Beihang University.

To carry out major policies or push forward major bills, the HKSAR government needs to garner the support of two-thirds majority at the Legislative Council (LegCo).

The HKSAR government's previous motions, be it economic policies or fiscal appropriations, were impeded by the opposition time and again at the LegCo, regardless of the interests of the majority of Hong Kong residents and the long-term development of the society.

The HKSAR government sought in 2012 to establish the Innovation and Technology Bureau to ride the global wave of innovative startups, diversify its economic structure and bring more opportunities for young people. Such efforts, however, were obstructed by the opposition at the LegCo in defiance of repeated calls by the public. After three years, the proposal to create the bureau was finally passed by the LegCo.

In another case, a Hong Kong resident, incited by the opposition, appealed in 2010 for a judicial review of the construction plan of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge. Though the HKSAR government won the lawsuit after more than a year of court proceedings, 6.5 billion HK dollars of taxpayers' money had been wasted in the increased construction costs of the bridge's Hong Kong section due to the delay.

As time passed, problems remained unsolved, so did public discontent.

Repeated political bickering stalled Hong Kong's social progress amid the sparring, and the opposition created a false target and blamed the Chinese mainland for those deep-seated problems.

Lau Pui-King, an economist in Hong Kong, snubbed the opposition's resistance of or even antagonism to the Chinese mainland, saying such thinking of secluding Hong Kong from the entire country could end nowhere but push the city down an abyss.

"Seclusion brings no development opportunity for Hong Kong," Lau said. "Some youngsters don't understand that Hong Kong would be even worse if it is secluded from the Chinese mainland."

"To come out of the current economic difficulty, Hong Kong needs to be linked with the Chinese mainland much closer and more effectively," she said.

Plp -> anne... , September 07, 2019 at 09:27 AM
Thank you

The protesters class profiles ?

Are they college kids like in Venezuela?

Problems may not be well represented by
The profiles of the protesters

IS there a large wage class base of active or at least tacit support

Plp -> Plp... , September 07, 2019 at 09:37 AM
Public housing built and contracted as lease to buy deals

And a George tax funding system

Wage labor factories are going or gone
But starter jobs need to pay well and remain plentiful

Build build build

Make hong kong like Copenhagen

Plp -> Plp... , September 07, 2019 at 09:53 AM
Modern tax and transfer payment systems

Are not remedies uncle milty recommended for his beloved city state
De facto capitalist class dictatorships

[Sep 08, 2019] Hands Off Hong Kong. The Cry That Seldom Is Heard

Notable quotes:
"... First, Fu Guohao , a reporter for the Chinese mainland newspaper, Global Times , was attacked, bound and beaten by protesters during their takeover of the Hong Kong International Airport. When police and rescuers tried to free him, the protesters blocked them and also attempted to block the ambulance that eventually bore him off to the hospital. The photos and videos of this ugly sequence were seen by netizens across the globe even though given scant attention in Western media. Where were the stalwart defenders of the press in the US as this happened? As one example, DemocracyNow! (DN!) was completely silent as was the rest of the U.S. mainstream media. ..."
"... And that photo with the protest leaders is just a snap shot of the ample evidence of the hand of the U.S. government and its subsidiaries in the Hong Kong events. Perhaps the best documentation of the U.S. "black hand" is to be found in Dan Cohen's superb article of August 17 in The Greyzone entitled, "Behind a made-for-TV Hong Kong protest narrative, Washington is backing nativism and mob violence." ..."
"... On both sides anti-interventionism takes an especially hard hit when it comes to major competitors of the US, powers that could actually stand in the way of US global hegemony, like Russia or China. In fact on its August 12 program, DN! managed a story taking a swipe at Russia right next to the one on Hong Kong – and DN! was in the forefront of advancing the now debunked and disgraced Russiagate Conspiracy Theory. ..."
Sep 05, 2019 | www.antiwar.com

Through the summer the world has watched as protests shook Hong Kong. As early as April they began as peaceful demonstrations which peaked in early June, with hundreds of thousands, in protest of an extradition bill. That bill would have allowed Hong Kong, a Special Administrative Region of China, to return criminals to Taiwan, mainland China or Macau for crimes committed there – after approval by multiple layers of the Hong Kong judiciary. In the wake of those enormous nonviolent demonstrations, Carrie Lam, CEO of Hong Kong, "suspended" consideration of the extradition bill, a face-saving ploy. To make sure she was understood, she declared it "dead." The large rallies, an undeniable expression of the peaceful will of a large segment of the Hong Kong population had won an impressive victory. The unpopular extradition bill was slain.

But that was not the end of the story. A smaller segment continued the protests. (The Hong Kong police at one point estimated 4,000 hard core protesters.) They pressed on with other demands, beginning with a demand that the bill be "withdrawn," not simply "suspended." To this writer death by "suspension" is every bit as terminal as death by "withdrawal." As this piece is sent to press, news comes that Corrie Lam has now formally withdrawn the bill .

As the summer passed, two iconic photos presented us with two human faces that captured two crucial features of the ongoing protests; they were not shown widely in the West.

First, Fu Guohao , a reporter for the Chinese mainland newspaper, Global Times , was attacked, bound and beaten by protesters during their takeover of the Hong Kong International Airport. When police and rescuers tried to free him, the protesters blocked them and also attempted to block the ambulance that eventually bore him off to the hospital. The photos and videos of this ugly sequence were seen by netizens across the globe even though given scant attention in Western media. Where were the stalwart defenders of the press in the US as this happened? As one example, DemocracyNow! (DN!) was completely silent as was the rest of the U.S. mainstream media.

Fu's beating came after many weeks when the protesters threw up barriers to stop traffic; blocked closure of subway doors, in defiance of commuters and police, to shut down mass transit; sacked and vandalized the HK legislature building; assaulted bystanders who disagreed with them; attacked the police with Molotov cocktails; and stormed and defaced police stations. Fu's ordeal and all these actions shown in photos on Hong Kong's South China Morning Post, a paper leaning to the side of protesters, gave the lie to the image of these "democracy activists" as young Ghandis of East Asia. (The South China Morning Post is based in Hong Kong and its readership is concentrated there so it has to have some reasonable fidelity in reporting events; otherwise it loses credibility – and circulation. Similarly, much as the New York Times abhorred Occupy Wall Street, it could not fail to report on it.)

Which brings us to the second photo, much more important to U.S. citizens, that of a "Political Counselor" at the U.S. Consulate General in Hong Kong who in August was pictured meeting with, Joshua Long and Nathan Law, at a hotel there. The official was formerly a State Dept functionary in the Middle East – in Jerusalem, Riyadh, Beirut, Baghdad and Doha, certainly not an area lacking in imperial intrigues and regime change ops. That photo graphically contradicted the contention that there is no US "black hand," as China calls it, in the Hong Kong riots. In fact, here the "black hand" was caught red-handed, leading Chen Weihua, a very perceptive China Daily columnist, to tweet the picture with the comment: "This is very very embarrassing. a US diplomat in Hong Kong, was caught meeting HK protest leaders. It would be hard to imagine the US reaction if a Chinese diplomat were meeting leaders of Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter or Never Trump protesters."

And that photo with the protest leaders is just a snap shot of the ample evidence of the hand of the U.S. government and its subsidiaries in the Hong Kong events. Perhaps the best documentation of the U.S. "black hand" is to be found in Dan Cohen's superb article of August 17 in The Greyzone entitled, "Behind a made-for-TV Hong Kong protest narrative, Washington is backing nativism and mob violence." The article by Cohen deserves careful reading; it leaves little doubt that there is a very deep involvement of the US in the Hong Kong riots. Of special interest is the detailed role and funding , amounting to over $1.3 million, in Hong Kong alone in recent years, of the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy (NED), ever on the prowl for new regime change opportunities.

Perhaps most important, the leaders of the "leaderless" protests have met with major US political figures such as John Bolton, Vice President Pence, Secretary Pompeo, Senator Marco Rubio, Democratic Rep. Eliot Engel, Nancy Pelosi and others, all of whom have heartily endorsed their efforts. This is not to deny that the protests were home grown at the outset in response to what was widely perceived as a legitimate grievance. But it would be equally absurd to deny that the U.S. is fishing in troubled Hong Kong waters to advance its anti-China crusade and regime change ambitions.

That said, where is the U.S. peace movement on the question of Hong Kong?

Let us be clear. One can sympathize with the demand of many citizens of Hong Kong to end the extradition bill or even the other four demands: an inquiry into police handling of their protests; the retraction of a government characterization of the demonstrations as riots; an amnesty for arrested protesters; and universal suffrage. (The first three all grow out of violence of the protests, be it noted.) But that is the business of the citizens of Hong Kong and all the rest of China. It is not the business of the U.S. government. Peace activists in the US should be hard at work documenting and denouncing the US government's meddling in Hong Kong, which could set us on the road to war with China, potentially a nuclear war. And that is a mission for which we in the U.S. are uniquely suited since, at least in theory, we have some control over our government.

So, we should expect to hear the cry, "US Government, Hands Off Hong Kong"? Sadly, with a few principled exceptions it is nowhere to be heard on either the left or right.

Let's take DemocracyNow! (DN!) as one example, a prominent one on the "progressive" end of the spectrum. From April through August 28, there have been 25 brief accounts ("headlines" as DN! calls them, each amounting to a few paragraphs) of the events in Hong Kong and 4 features, longer supposedly analytic pieces, on the same topic. Transcripts of the four features are here , here , here and here . There is not a single mention of possible US involvement or the meetings of the various leaders of the protest movement with Pompeo, Bolton, Pence, or the "Political Counselor" of the US Hong Kong consulate.

And this silence on US meddling is true not only of most progressive commentators but also most conservatives.

On the Left when someone cries "Democracy," many forget all their pro-peace sentiment. And similarly on the Right when someone cries "Communism," anti-interventionism too often goes down the tubes. Forgotten is John Quincy Adams's 1823 dictum, endlessly quoted but little honored, "We do not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy." Where does this lapse on the part of activists come from? Is it a deep-seated loyalty to Empire, the result of endless indoctrination? Is it U.S. Exceptionalism, ingrained to the point of unconsciousness? Or is it at bottom a question of who the paymasters are?

On both sides anti-interventionism takes an especially hard hit when it comes to major competitors of the US, powers that could actually stand in the way of US global hegemony, like Russia or China. In fact on its August 12 program, DN! managed a story taking a swipe at Russia right next to the one on Hong Kong – and DN! was in the forefront of advancing the now debunked and disgraced Russiagate Conspiracy Theory. In contrast, the anti-interventionist movement is front and center when it comes to weaker nations, for example Venezuela – and quite properly so. But when one puts this advocacy for weaker nations together with the New Cold War stance on China and Russia, one must ask what is going on here. Does it betoken a sort of imperial paternalism on the part of DN and like-minded outlets? It certainly gains DN!, and others like it, considerable credibility among anti-interventionists which can help win them to a position in favor of DN!'s New Cold War stance. And the masters of Empire certainly understand how valuable such credibility can be at crucial moments when support for their adventures is needed from every quarter.

Fortunately, there are a handful of exceptions to this New Cold War attitude. For example, on the left Popular Resistance has provided a view of the events in Hong Kong and a superb interview with K.J. Noh that go beyond the line of the State Department, the mainstream media and DN! And on the libertarian Right there is the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity and the work of its Executive Director Dan McAdams.

We would all do well to follow the example of these organizations in rejecting a New Cold War mentality which is extremely dangerous, perhaps fatally so. A good beginning for us in the U.S. is to demand of our government, "Hands Off Hong Kong."

John V. Walsh can be reached at [email protected].

[Sep 08, 2019] Hong Kong while having a high per capita income level is highly inequitable in income with economic tensions accentuated by a British-country-style property system.

Notable quotes:
"... Hong Kong while having a high per capita income level is highly inequitable in income with economic tensions accentuated by a British-country-style property system. ..."
"... The parallels in Hong Kong property prices, with those of Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are striking. Singapore has a completely different and relatively equitable property system, so too does neighboring Shenzhen. ..."
"... "The Gini coefficient, which measures the inequality of income distribution, reached a new high of 0.539 in 2016, far above the warning level of 0.4" Pot meet kettle. ..."
"... "China's Gini Coefficient data was reported at 0.467 NA in Dec 2017. This records an increase from the previous number of 0.465 NA for Dec 2016. China's Gini Coefficient data is updated yearly, averaging 0.477 NA from Dec 2003 to 2017, with 15 observations." ..."
"... With a GINI co-efficient of about 0.4, the US has nothing to cheer about. But why not demonize China instead of addressing our own problems first? ..."
Sep 08, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

anne -> anne... , September 07, 2019 at 09:47 AM

Hong Kong is essentially self-governing, administered in much the same way as during the later period of British colonial control. Hong Kong is part of China but completely unlike a Beijing or Shanghai or Shenzhen in terms of governance. Hong Kong while having a high per capita income level is highly inequitable in income with economic tensions accentuated by a British-country-style property system.

The parallels in Hong Kong property prices, with those of Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are striking. Singapore has a completely different and relatively equitable property system, so too does neighboring Shenzhen.

anne -> anne... , September 07, 2019 at 09:49 AM
anne -> anne... , September 07, 2019 at 09:53 AM

[ Notice the stark differences in favor of Shanghai and mainland China. ]

EMichael -> anne... , September 07, 2019 at 10:12 AM
Chinese Communist Party propaganda from the usual source. Yep, Hong Kong has its problems. Control by the CCP will not help them one bit.

"The Gini coefficient, which measures the inequality of income distribution, reached a new high of 0.539 in 2016, far above the warning level of 0.4" Pot meet kettle.

"China's Gini Coefficient data was reported at 0.467 NA in Dec 2017. This records an increase from the previous number of 0.465 NA for Dec 2016. China's Gini Coefficient data is updated yearly, averaging 0.477 NA from Dec 2003 to 2017, with 15 observations."

https://www.ceicdata.com/en/china/resident-income-distribution/gini-coefficient

JohnH -> EMichael... , September 07, 2019 at 01:22 PM
With a GINI co-efficient of about 0.4, the US has nothing to cheer about. But why not demonize China instead of addressing our own problems first?
Plp -> anne... , September 07, 2019 at 10:19 AM
Urban housing is a nightmare where ever. Population density is uncontrolled and lot owners can restrict new housing developments

...The crisis just builds

[Sep 02, 2019] Hong Kong and the Audacity of the U.S. Part of a Destabilization War with China - Global ResearchGlobal Research - Centre for

Sep 02, 2019 | www.globalresearch.ca

Hong Kong and the Audacity of the U.S. Part of a "Destabilization War" with China By Peter Koenig Global Research, August 26, 2019 Region: Asia Theme: Intelligence

People often ask and hint at the similarities between the Hong Kong protests and the French Yellow Vests. The former started on 31 March and are approaching their 19 th week – the Yellow Vests (YV) have celebrated last weekend their 40 th week of protests. As of recently some voices of Macron-infiltrates into the YV movement – or Fifth Columnists – have suggested that the YVs may support the Hong Kong protesters in solidarity for freedom .

Well, that didn't go down well with the highly educated and well informed YV. Many of them actually felt insulted by the Macronites – ' for whom does this guy [Macron] take us? ' – And right they are. There is not a shred of comparison between the two movements, except that they are protests – but for widely different reasons, and serving widely different agendas. The YV can in no way be associated with the Hong Kong "protests" – which are equal to US funded Color Revolutions.

We, the YV leaders said, are fighting against an ever more totalitarian French government that is ever more stealing our legitimate income in the form of all sorts of taxes and keeps a minimum wage on which ever-more French families cannot survive. Life is unaffordable on a regular workers pension. The Macron Government is creating poverty, by shifting the financial resources – the few that are left, from the bottom to the top. – That's what we are fighting and protesting against. We want a fundamental change in the French economic structure and the French leadership. You see, all of this has nothing to do with the Washington funded Hong Protests that are directed on Washington's behalf by Hong Kongers against the Government of Mainland China.

It couldn't be clearer. The French Yellow Vests know what they are fighting for. The Hong Kong protesters, most of them, follow a few leaders under false pretenses against their country, against Beijing. Granted, many of the protesters are pro-westerners, they sing the US National Anthem, and wave the British flag – the flag of their former colonialists.

Actually, funding to destabilize Hong Kong in the future has already started at the latest in 1994, 3 years before the official Handover of Hong Kong by the UK to the Beijing Government. Way before the official date of returning Hong Kong in 1997 to the Peoples Republic of China (PRC), the US built up a network of Fifth Columnists in Hong Kong.

Washington pours millions into creating unrest in Hong Kong, similarly as in Ukraine, when the US State Department financed the preparation of the 2014 coup at least 5 years ahead at the tune of US$ 5 billion, according to Victoria Nuland's, Deputy Secretary of State, own admission, directly and through NED, the National Endowment for Democracy, an "NGO" which it isn't. It is rather the extended or soft arm of the CIA, receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from the State Department for their 'regime changing' activities around the globe.

In 1991, The Washington Post quoted a NED founder, Allen Weinstein , as saying

"a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA" .

Couldn't have been said better. We see the results all over the world.

Precisely this has happened in Hong Kong and is going on until this day – and probably way beyond. The US will not let go. Especially now that most people who have at least a limited understanding on how these western manipulations work, comprehend and see for themselves who is sowing the unrests. Take the 22-year-old student and western hero of the 2014 Umbrella Revolution, Joshua Wong , trained programmed and funded by the US State Department / NED / CIA. He is again a main player in the current protest movement. Wong is the on-the-ground boy for the local media tycoon, Jimmy Lai , who has spent millions of his own money in the 2014 "Occupy Central" protests (Umbrella Revolution).

The oligarch uses his funds widely to finance protest leaders and protest groups. He also created his own National Party, with significant xenophobic connotations. Yet Mr. Lai is very close to the Trump Administration and met, along with many of his protest leaders, with the US envoy in Hong Kong, as well as with National Security Advisor John Bolton – and other US officials. On July 8, Mr. Jimmy Lai met US Vice President Mike Pence at the White House.

What Is Happening in Hong Kong?

Lai has full support of the US Government to fire-on and promote these protest groups. Yet, if asked, the protesters have no precise plan or strategy of what they want. The island is largely divided. By far not all protesters want to separate from the mainland. They feel Chinese and express their disgust with Jimmy Lai's radical anti-Beijing propaganda. They call him a traitor.

Mr. Lai was born in 1948 in mainland China, in an impoverished family in Canton. He was educated to fifth grade level and smuggled to Hong Kong in a small boat at age 13. In HK he worked as a child laborer in a garment factory at about the equivalent of US$ 8 per month. In 1975 he bought a bankrupt garment factory for a pittance and created Giordano, producing sweaters and other clothing for mostly US clients, like J.C. Penny, Montgomery Ward and others. Mr. Lai today is openly criticized even by his own people as a conspirator behind the violence of the HK riots, or protests, as he prefers to call them.

The protests started with a 'controversial' extradition law – which, by the way, exists between most States in the United States, as well as between nations in Europe and to a large extent internationally. Therefore, this is nothing unusual. Yet, its importance was blown out of proportion by the western media and by Mr. Lai's own local media to distort the picture. A minority, of course, would like their full independence from China which is totally against the agreement signed between the UK and Beijing at the so-called 1997 Handover.

A few days ago, the US sent a couple of war ships into China waters at Hong Kong. They had the audacity to ask Beijing to grant them the right to dock at Hong Kong harbor. Beijing, of course, refused and warned Washington – do not meddle in our internal affairs. Of course, Washington has no intention to heed China's advice – they never do. They have been inoculated with the view that the exceptional nation calls the shots. Always. Nobody else should even dare to contradict them. Period.

On July 3, The China Daily pointedly reported

"The ideologues in Western governments never cease in their efforts to engineer unrest against governments that are not to their liking, even though their actions have caused misery and chaos in country after country in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Now they are trying the same trick in China."

The US tactics in Hong Kong, may be combined with Trump's trade war, with the Pentagon's greater presence – mainly new military bases and navy presence in the Indo-Pacific region – Obama's (in)famous Pivot to Asia which prompted Obama to order 60% of the US Navy fleet to the South China Sea.

All of this and more are part of a destabilization war with China. Washington is afraid of China's rising economic power in the world, of China's monetary system, that is based on economic output and on gold, not fiat money like the US Dollar and the Euro and other currencies following the western turbo-capitalist system; and Washington is afraid of losing its dollar hegemony, as the Chinese yuan is gradually taking over the dollar's role as world reserve currency.

Hong Kong was basically stolen by the Brits in 1842 at the heights of the Opium Wars. Under pressure of the British military might, China ceded Hong Kong under the Treaty of Nanking, signed on 29 August 1842. Hong Kong became, thus, a Crown Colony of the British Empire. In 1898, Hong Kong's Governor Chris Patten and Prince Charles agreed on a 99-year lease and pledged to return Hong Kong to China in 1997.

After 155 years of British colonial oppression of the people of Hong Kong, it was time to normalize the status of Hong Kong as what it always should have been, namely an integral territory of China. The "One Country, Two Systems" agreement of 1997, returned Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China, but the parties agreed to leave the capitalist system in place for 50 years. The agreement also stipulated that all intervention and colonial claims on Hong Kong were supposed to end. Full sovereignty was to return to China. What's happening now – US-UK fomented riots to seek independence of the island, is in total disregard of the 1997 Handover Treaty.

The US inspired and funded protests are destined to challenge the HK-China sovereignty clause, by mobilizing public opinion that wants full "freedom" – i.e. independence from China.

The 50 years of the usual abusive capitalist continuation, would allow the imperialist US and UK to maintain economic control over Hong Kong and thereby exert economic influence over the PRC. How wrong they were! – In 1997 Hong Kong's GDP constituted 27% of the PRC's GDP – today that proportion shrunk to a mere 3%. China's rapidly growing level of development, especially the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which the west chose to literally ignore until about a year ago, has become a vital threat to the US corporate world.

What the US and UK – and the rest of the West – is particularly interested in is HK's special banking position in the world. Through Singapore and Hong Kong, Wall Street and key European banks, in cohorts with their not so 'ethically-clean' and often fraudulent HSBC partner, pretend to control and influence Asian economics – and especially attempt to prevent China to take over the Asian financial markets. Hong Kong has the most liberal banking laws, possibly worldwide, where illegal money transactions, money laundering, shady investments in the billions can be carried out and nobody watches. Maintaining HK as long as possible with this special nation status and wielding influence and control over PRC's financial markets is one of the western goals.

But little does the West understand that China and other eastern countries, plus Russia, India, Pakistan, have already largely detached, or are in the process of detaching from the dollar economy and are members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Let's face it, the SCO comprises about half of the world's population and controls about one third of the globe's economic output.

Therefore, the SCO members do no longer depend on the western financial markets and monetary manipulations. In fact, Shanghai has in the last decades grown to become China's financial hub with way more importance for China than Hong Kong. So, it is very unlikely that China will crack down on Hong Kong for the protests. There is too much political capital to be lost by interfering. The West and Hong Kong protesters may as well riot themselves into rot.

But if China gets tired of these incessant western provocations and really wants to put an end to them, the PRC could take over Hong Kong in less than 48 hours, abridge the 50 years of western capitalism and make HK a full-fledged province of China, no privileges, no special status, just a part of sovereign China. End of story.

*

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This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21 st Century; TeleSUR; The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance . He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

[Sep 02, 2019] Magnitsky act for Hong Cong is in the works

Sep 02, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

"We also explained in detail to the US lawmakers the kind of massive arrests and excessive use of force by our police force, which resulted in the apprehension of a large number of innocent civilians and left quite a number of protesters severely injured.

We also talked about the inhumane treatment to which some of the arrested protesters were allegedly subjected and the "white terror" imposed by the central government on certain business corporations such as Cathay Pacific Airways, where a number of employees, including pilots and a flight attendant, were sacked over incidents related to the anti-extradition bill protests.

Both Republican and Democratic members of the US Congress are pushing for the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act.

One of the most important provisions of the bill is that HKSAR government officials who are found suppressing Hong Kong's democracy, human rights or citizens' freedoms could have their assets in the US frozen and be denied entry to the US.

We agree that the passage of the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act through the US Congress will help in our citizens' fight for democracy and in defending our human rights and freedoms." Dennis Kwok

--------------

"Give me liberty or give me death?" This sounds like that sentiment.

Would such an Act do anything material for Hong Kong? Probably not. Trump says that he hopes the CCP will settle the HK matter in a "humane way." IOW he doesn't intend to do anything except use the HK crisis as leverage in his extended bargaining with China.

OTOH, this Act would do a lot for the conscience of the people of the US. We need to do something that is actually selfless since we seem to have lost the knack for standing up for the "little people" in places like Yemen and Palestine against Communist tyranny.

If such an Act were passed (probably over Trump's opposition) or maybe not since he claims to not give a damn about trade with China, then Canada should follow our lead in this. British Columbia is packed full of mainland Chinese who have stashed their wealth there and who look forward to taking refuge in Victoria and/or Vancouver.

Palmerston, that mean old bastard, said that countries do not have friends. They merely have interests. Well, maybe so, but I would say that such an Act would be in our long term spiritual interest. pl

http://www.ejinsight.com/20190902-the-hong-kong-human-rights-and-democracy-act/

Posted at 11:52 AM in China , Chinagate , Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (21)


Babak Makkinejad ,

Col. Lang

This is another poorly thought piece of legislation from that strategy-free zone called Washington DC.

How far will US go in her containment efforts against China? And to what end, a struggle to be waged for hundreds of years?

robt willmann , 02 September 2019 at 01:54 PM
The Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019 has been introduced in the U.S. House and Senate.

In the House it is H.R.3289--

https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/3289/text

https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/3289/all-actions

In the Senate it is S.1838--

https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/1838/text

https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/1838/all-actions

Fred -> robt willmann... , 02 September 2019 at 02:49 PM
robt,

Thanks for posting the link to the text, it is an interesting piece of legislation.

"an assessment of whether sensitive dual-use items subject to the export control laws of the United States are being --

(A) transshipped through Hong Kong; and (B) used to develop -- (i) the Sharp Eyes, Skynet, Integrated Joint Operations Platform, or other systems of mass surveillance and predictive policing"

As a related topic shouldn't the Congress also look into which US Tech companies are aiding China in the development of systems of "mass surveillance and predictive policing"?

Babak Makkinejad -> turcopolier ... , 02 September 2019 at 03:02 PM
What is the ultimate goal of US policy of Containing China? I fail to see anything in here except opposition to another hyperpower. In my opinion, Democracy and Freedom in China is centuries into the future, if at all. There could a revival of the ideas of Legalists in a few decades but barring that, Democratic China is a pipedream, both for Containment Strategists as well as for Chinese political activists and reformers and thinkers. A very sad case of the Persistence of a rather brutal past. (And I no longer see protection of US jobs as its core purpose.)

I consider CPC as the Red Emperor: no ideology there just organized power structure to run that country, whose economy is supported by 300 million pigs – only an Act of Divine Intervention, a Miracle, could cause the Chinese to become Muslims, let alone Shia.

If I am correct in my surmise, then the most productive way forward would be to learn to live with an un-free, un-just, and un-democratic, and cunning China for many more decades. But then that would be just like living with Saudi Arabia and her friends in Southern Persian Gulf. No country or combinations of countries, in the West, can hope to dominate China at acceptable costs. That is why Kwak's ideas are stupid.

Jack said in reply to Babak Makkinejad... , 02 September 2019 at 06:28 PM
US policy should not be to "Contain China". It should be to destroy the totalitarian CCP.
CK , 02 September 2019 at 02:36 PM
But Yemen is supposedly an existential threat to the USA's good friend KSA, surely the KSA is not communist? ( not all that much of a friend either unless one considers parasites to be friends )
And Palestine is supposedly an existential threat to the USA's great friend Israel. Israel is surely not a communist nation. ( also not that much of a friend unless one considers the Johnathan Pollard types to be friends.)
Russia stopped being communist the instant that most successful agent in place Gorbachev handed over control to Yeltsin, and The PRC has most successfully become a rapacious capitalist nation once Mao and Mrs. departed this mortal coil.
And even DPRNK is easing away from communism thanks to the great admiration the leader there has for the leader here.
I do not see an interest for the USA in sticking its nose into yet another nations family disagreement. But then I haven't seen much value accruing to the USA in its continual intrusion into other folks' affairs since 1881.
Fred , 02 September 2019 at 02:51 PM
Col.,

I agree. Though what Trump is going to do is unpredictable. It would sure be the right thing for the Republic to make such a gesture. It won't hurt him either politically nor in his trade negotiations with China.

Pwalden , 02 September 2019 at 03:09 PM
Maybe the democratically-elected U.S.government should concern itself more with the long-term, or even short-term, material interests of its own people, many of whom are apparently sinking beneath the waves of debt, ill health, addiction and general decline in life expectancy and life chances.

While any U.S. denunciation of the Chinese government over events in Hong Kong is unlikely to affect outcomes there, it will no doubt worsen US-China relations. But that is a feature, not a bug.

Of course, as you say, such a denunciation could be an important distraction to cheer up Americans and to reinforce the Enlightenment myth that Anglo-American values are universal despite plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Thirdeye , 02 September 2019 at 04:29 PM
British Columbia is packed full of mainland Chinese who have stashed their wealth there and who look forward to taking refuge in Victoria and/or Vancouver.
Indeed, and it causes a lot of resentment towards Chinese that is similar to that towards the mainlanders in Hong Kong. The wealth-parking and haven-seeking in both places has driven asset inflation that has affected the locals badly, with the exception of a fortunate few. This has happened at the same time that HK has lost one of its engines of true economic growth, its formerly indispensable role as a trade and financial portal for China. The HK protests seem driven mainly by unfocused resentment of all things mainland and lacking in coherent goals. HK's lack of an extradition treaty with the mainland is one incentive for wealthy mainlanders, especially those who might have been shady in acquiring their wealth, to seek a haven in HK.
Jack , 02 September 2019 at 05:07 PM
Sir

I agree with you.

IMO, CCP is going to crackdown violently on the people of HK who are the modern equivalent of Patrick Henry. This is an example of their resolve. Volunteer drivers rescuing trapped protestors.

https://twitter.com/demosisto/status/1168198855529156608?s=21

The US Congress needs to stand with the good people of HK in their hour of need. There should be consequences for CCP violence. Sanctions on the CCP politburo who have much of their wealth stashed in the west should be an immediate response. The other should be ending US investment in CCP linked entities and preventing the listing of Chinese companies on US exchanges unless they fully comply with accounting and transparency standards that are required of US companies. The US Congress should also recognize Taiwan as an independent country as CCP has reneged on "One Country Two Systems". There can be no "deal" with CCP any longer as they have time and again thumbed their noses before the ink has even dried in their previous agreements including their inclusion in WTO. The time has come to destroy the authoritarian CCP and enable the Chinese people to determine their own destiny.

Former communist countries get the nature of the CCP. IMO, this time the global response to CCP violence will not be benign. CCP cash will not be able to easily buy public opinion this time despite the propaganda of the fifth column.

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3025417/chinese-ambassador-summoned-lithuania-over-deplorable

Trump must know that a strong dollar is the worst situation for CCP with trillions in dollar liabilities. There are reports that some Chinese cities are now rationing meat as pork prices rocket up.

https://twitter.com/baldingsworld/status/1168595734712602625?s=21

When my grandkids say they are scrutinizing all products they purchase to make sure they're not Made in China, I know that sentiment is changing at the margin.

turcopolier , 02 September 2019 at 05:47 PM
pwalden

"the long-term, or even short-term, material interests of its own people, many of whom are apparently sinking beneath the waves of debt, ill health, addiction and general decline in life expectancy and life chances." marxist agitprop. You should move to the peoples' paradise and then you can stand in line at COSTCO stores.

turcopolier , 02 September 2019 at 05:49 PM
Babak

Incredible! Does this attitude have anything to do with US policy toward Iran?

turcopolier , 02 September 2019 at 05:53 PM
babak

Ah, I was rightt. This is about Iran for you.

turcopolier , 02 September 2019 at 05:57 PM
Babak

I can understand why you don't care about TROM. Humans have no inalienable rights in Iran. Onle god has thr Right and it is for men to obey the Khawza to seek salvation.

JJackson , 02 September 2019 at 07:13 PM
pl
Yemen and Palestine against Communist tyranny?
I was not aware that Israel or the Gulfies were Communists.
turcopolier , 02 September 2019 at 07:23 PM
jjackson

What an anti-colonial snob you are! Try not to be overcome by your post-colonial angst. Tyranny is tyranny, whether it be that of Britain, the asshole salafists or the communists.

[Sep 02, 2019] America's Hybrid War against China has Entered a New Phase - Global ResearchGlobal Research - Centre for Research on Globaliz

Sep 02, 2019 | www.globalresearch.ca

America's "Hybrid War" against China has Entered a New Phase China and the Zombies of the Past By Christopher Black Global Research, August 15, 2019 New Eastern Outlook 14 August 2019 Region: Asia , USA Theme: Intelligence , Media Disinformation , US NATO War Agenda

The hybrid war, being conducted against China by the United States and its gaggle of puppet states from the UK to Canada to Australia, has entered a new phase.

The first stage involved the massive shift of US air and naval forces to the Pacific and constant provocations against China in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait.

The second stage was the creation of disinformation about China's treatment of minority groups, especially in Tibet and west China.

That this propaganda campaign has been carried out by nations such as the US, Canada and Australia who have the worst human rights records in the world with respect to their indigenous peoples, subjected to centuries of cultural and physical genocide by those governments, and who refuse to protect their minority peoples from physical attacks and discrimination despite their human rights laws, shocks the conscience of any objective observer.

But not content with that, the propaganda was extended to China's economic development, its international trade, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, its Silk and Belt Road Initiative, its development bank, and other facilities and trade initiatives, through which China is accused of trying to control the world; an accusation made by the very nation that threatens economic embargo or worse, nuclear annihilation, to anyone, friend or foe, who resists its attempt to control the world.

The fourth phase is the US attempt to degrade the Chinese economy with punitive "tariffs," essentially an embargo on Chinese goods. That the objective is not better trade deals but to bring China to its knees is the fact that the negative effect of these tariffs on American consumers, farmers and manufacturers is considered secondary to the principal objective.

Last year it moved to a fifth phase, t he kidnapping and illegal detention of Meng Wanzhou, the Chief Financial Officer of China's leading technology company Huawei, in synchronicity with a massive campaign by the USA to force its puppets to drop any dealings with that company. Meng Wanzhou is still held against her will in Canada on US orders. Chinese have been harassed in the US, Australia and Canada.

The latest phase in this hybrid warfare is the insurrection being provoked by the US, UK, Canada and the rest in Hong Kong, using tactics designed to provoke China into suppressing the rioters with force to amplify the anti-Chinese propaganda, or pushing the "protestors" into declaring Hong Kong independent of China and then using force to support them.

Mitch McConnell , an important US senator implicitly threatened just such a scenario in a statement on August 12th stating that the US is warning China not to block the protests and that if they are suppressed trouble will follow. In other words the US is claiming that it will protect the thugs in black shirts, the shirts of fascists. This new phase is very dangerous, as the Chinese government has time and again stated, and has to be handled with intelligence and the strength of the Chinese people.

There is now abundant evidence that the UK and US are the black hand behind the events in Hong Kong. When the Hong Kong Bar association joined in the protests the west claimed that even the lawyers were supporting the protests in an attempt to bring justice to the people. But the leaders of that association are all either UK lawyers or members of law firms based in London, such as Jimmy Chan , head of the so-called Human Civil Rights Front, formed in 2002 with the objective of breaking Honk Kong away from China, such as Kevin Lam , a partner in another London based law firm, and Steve Kwok and Alvin Yeung , members of the anti-China Civic Party who are going to meet with US officials next week.

Taunting the Dragon: Background to US-China Trade War and Hong Kong Protests

Kwok has called for the independence of Hong Kong in other visits, some sponsored by the US National Security Council and has called for the US to invoke its Hong Kong Policy Act, which, among other things mandates the US president to issue an order suspending its treatment of Hong Kong as a separate territory in trade matters. The effect of this would be to damage China's overall trade since a lot of its revenue comes through Hong Kong. The president can invoke the Act if it decides that Hong Kong "is not sufficiently autonomous to justify it being treated separately from China."

In tandem with Kwok's call for the use of that Act, US Senator Ted Cruz has filed a Bill titled the Hong Kong Revaluation Act requiring the president to report on "how China exploits Hong Kong to circumvent the laws of the United States."

But it seems the anti-Chinese propaganda campaign is not having the effect they hoped. The New York Times ran a piece on August 13 stating, "China is waging a disinformation war against the protestors." Embarrassed by US consular officials being caught red-handed meeting with protest leaders in a hotel in Hong Kong last week and blatant statements of support for the protestors from the US, Canada and UK as well attempts to treat Hong Kong as an independent state, the US intelligence services have now been forced to try to counter China's accounts of the facts by declaring anything China says as disinformation.

The US and UK objectives are revealed in this statement from the article,

"Hong Kong, which Britain returned to Chinese rule in 1997, remains outside China's firewall, and thus is sitting along one of the world's most profound online divides. Preserving the city's freedom to live without the mainland's controls has become one of the causes now motivating the protests."

This statement flies in the face of the Basic Law, expressing the agreement between the UK and China when the UK finally agreed to leave Hong Kong. We need to be aware of what the Basic Law says. Promulgated in April 4 1990 but put into effect on July 1, 1997, the date of the hand over of the territory to China, the Preamble states:

"Hong Kong has been part of the territory of China since ancient times; it was occupied by Britain after the Opium War in 1840. On 19 December 1984, the Chinese and British Governments signed the Joint Declaration on the Question of Hong Kong, affirming that the Government of the People's Republic of China will resume the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong with effect from 1 July 1997, thus fulfilling the long-cherished common aspiration of the Chinese people for the recovery of Hong Kong.

Upholding national unity and territorial integrity, maintaining the prosperity and stability of Hong Kong, and taking account of its history and realities, the People's Republic of China has decided that upon China's resumption of the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong, a Hong Kong Special Administrative Region will be established in accordance with the provisions of Article 31 of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China, and that under the principle of "one country, two systems", the socialist system and policies will not be practised in Hong Kong. The basic policies of the People's Republic of China regarding Hong Kong have been elaborated by the Chinese Government in the Sino-British Joint Declaration.

In accordance with the Constitution of the People's Republic of China, the National People's Congress hereby enacts the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, prescribing the systems to be practised in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, in order to ensure the implementation of the basic policies of the People's Republic of China regarding Hong Kong."

Hong Kong is a part of China. That is the essential fact set out in the Basic Law agreed to by the UK as well as China. It is an administrative region of China. It is not an independent state and never was when Britain seized it through force and occupied it.

So the claim that the protestors are trying to preserve something that never existed, freedom from China's control, since Hong Kong is subject to China's control, is bogus. The fact that China permitted Hong Kong to retain its capitalist system confirms this. The fact that China can impose socialism 50 years after or sooner if certain conditions are met, also confirms this.

The pretexts for the riots, the first being a proposed extradition law between the mainland and Hong Kong which is similar to those that exist between provinces in Canada and states in the USA, the second being the claim that China's insistence on its sovereignty over the territory somehow overrides the limited autonomy granted Hong Kong and threatens that autonomy, are without any foundation.

One could easily split Canada into pieces based on such bogus arguments or again split up the USA, or even the UK as London sees its rule of Ireland, Wales and Scotland being challenged by nationalist groups. And we know very well what violent protests will bring in swift suppression of such forces if the central governments feel threatened, especially by the violence we see used by the black shirts in Hong Kong. We saw what happened in Spain when the Catalans attempted to split from Spain. The leaders of the movement are now in exile. We saw what the US is capable of against demonstrators when it shot them down at Kent State when students were demonstrating peacefully. These things are not forgotten. We know how the British will react to renewed attempts for a united Ireland.

China is facing attacks on several fronts at once and it will require wisdom, endurance and the strength of the Chinese people to defend their revolution and rid themselves of colonial and imperialist domination, once and for all. T hose who carry British and American flags in the protests in Hong Kong, reveal who they are. They are not the future of China. They are the living embodiment of a dead history and dead ideas, zombies of the past.

*

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Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel " Beneath the Clouds . He writes essays on international law, politics and world events, especially for the online magazine "New Eastern Outlook." He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from NEO

[Aug 31, 2019] Hong Cong protester cleraly are adopting Maydan tacktics of escalation of protests: the next step in confrontation (petrol bombs) is so predictable

Where is Nuland when people need her? It is interesting that the USA neoliberals (with help of other Western neoliberal countries) now poisons all protests against government and as such help to de-legitimize them completely and irrevocably by pointing them as CIA/NED stooges.
As China government is to a large extent neoliberal too grievances are easy to amplify and exploit.
As soon as money start flowing to protesters from the US government, NGO and/or controlled oligarchs the protest stops to be a legitimate and became part of the color revolution efforts.
That's a very sad situation.
Notable quotes:
"... Violent protesters continue to throw corrosives and petrol bombs on Central Government Complex, Legislative Council Complex and Police Headquarters," said the police in a statement. "Such acts pose a serious threat to everyone at the scene and breach public peace. ..."
"... Tens of thousands participated in an unauthorized demonstration - many of whom threw objects and gasoline bombs over barriers at the government's headquarters. After initially retreating in response to the crowd control measures, protesters returned to a nearby suburb and set fire to a wall on Hennessy Road in the city's Wan Chai district. this fire has gotten much bigger after 20 minutes. the street is full of dark smoke. ..."
"... Protesters asked US President Donald Trump to take action and help the activists, who originally took to the streets to protest a controversial extradition bill which would have allowed China to bring suspects to the mainland to face trial in PRC courts. ..."
"... It appears the protesters want the military to enter so they can play the martyrs for the cameras. Hong Kong was under colonial rule for years! I guess the Rothschild family wants it back if asking Trump (a Rothschild stooge) to get involved! ..."
"... Fighting against the state is great, in theory, but not if you just want to replace the current power structure with a democracy or some other government. There's no point then. You're just replacing one mafia with another. ..."
"... Yes, most "adults" are still children who believe in the silly fantasy that there is such a thing as a legitimate ruling class. Nothing changes until a critical mass drops the superstition. ..."
"... I wouldn't be surprised if intelligence assets were over there convincing some of these people that this was a possibility. They are always spreading discord around the world. If you're the big guy in the room and you want to instigate a fight, tell the angry little guy you've got his back. ..."
"... I will never understand the logic of venting anger on inanimate objects like walls and buildings. If you're going to do it, do it properly and bring the real masters to heel, it'll never work simply destroying someone's car and bending the odd lamppost. They're probably tucked up in their fortress laughing and waiting for it to cool down so they can return to business as usual. ..."
"... They are getting international news coverage and breaking the information blockade of media. Do you get it now? ..."
"... They want absolutely that China intervene, it's why It's getting heavier. ..."
"... And then what? What's the end game? There is only one-way this can play out that I can see. Violent suppression and mass arrests. It will all be done 'officially' under the facade of Hong Kong authority, so technically no 'foul' ..."
Aug 31, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Tens of thousands participated in an unauthorized demonstration - many of whom threw objects and gasoline bombs over barriers at the government's headquarters. After initially retreating in response to the crowd control measures, protesters returned to a nearby suburb and set fire to a wall on Hennessy Road in the city's Wan Chai district.

While others marched back and forth elsewhere in the city, a large crowd wearing helmets and gas masks gathered outside the city government building . Some approached barriers that had been set up to keep protesters away and appeared to throw objects at the police on the other side. Others shone laser lights at the officers.

Police fired tear gas from the other side of the barriers, then brought out a water cannon truck that fired regular water and then colored water at the protesters , staining them and nearby journalists and leaving blue puddles in the street. - AP

Several people were arrested and tossed into police vans.

" Violent protesters continue to throw corrosives and petrol bombs on Central Government Complex, Legislative Council Complex and Police Headquarters," said the police in a statement. "Such acts pose a serious threat to everyone at the scene and breach public peace. " Protesters in Hong Kong returned to the streets in what Bloomberg has called "one of the city's most violent days in its 13th weekend of social unrest," after several top organizers were arrested, including Joshua Wong, Agnes Chow and Andy Chan. Hong Kong police fired tear gas and sprayed protesters with blue dye from pepper-spray filled water cannons, while charging other protesters with shields and batons.

Water cannons fired blue dye pic.twitter.com/U8YAR1PsrQ -- Tiffany May (@nytmay) August 31, 2019

Tens of thousands participated in an unauthorized demonstration - many of whom threw objects and gasoline bombs over barriers at the government's headquarters. After initially retreating in response to the crowd control measures, protesters returned to a nearby suburb and set fire to a wall on Hennessy Road in the city's Wan Chai district. this fire has gotten much bigger after 20 minutes. the street is full of dark smoke.

#hongkongprotests#HongKong Clashes Escalate as Water Cannons, Firebombs Are Used https://t.co/JtIZo9EhGJ @bpolitics pic.twitter.com/pxdhcV0iRc -- Fion Li (@fion_li)

... ... ...

Protesters asked US President Donald Trump to take action and help the activists, who originally took to the streets to protest a controversial extradition bill which would have allowed China to bring suspects to the mainland to face trial in PRC courts.


pmc , 2 minutes ago link

It appears the protesters want the military to enter so they can play the martyrs for the cameras. Hong Kong was under colonial rule for years! I guess the Rothschild family wants it back if asking Trump (a Rothschild stooge) to get involved!

American Dissident , 12 minutes ago link

If this crosses the bridge, then it gets real. If its limited to HK, it goes nowhere. The PLA will eventually uncover the CIA perps.

And execute them.

HillaryOdor , 16 minutes ago link

Fighting against the state is great, in theory, but not if you just want to replace the current power structure with a democracy or some other government. There's no point then. You're just replacing one mafia with another.

In practice, fighting the state is almost never useful because there are never enough people who believe in a free society. The state always wins in the end. The prudent thing is to do nothing and live life the best you can.

Fiat Burner , 6 minutes ago link

Yes, most "adults" are still children who believe in the silly fantasy that there is such a thing as a legitimate ruling class. Nothing changes until a critical mass drops the superstition.

Mah_Authoritah , 16 minutes ago link

I didn't realize some of these people are sycophantic Trump worshippers...

I get sick of seeing people look to someone else to save them.

HillaryOdor , 15 minutes ago link

I wouldn't be surprised if intelligence assets were over there convincing some of these people that this was a possibility. They are always spreading discord around the world. If you're the big guy in the room and you want to instigate a fight, tell the angry little guy you've got his back.

ExPat2018 , 24 minutes ago link

According to Americans, gooks don't care about human life.

Thats why they like carpet bombing them with B-52's

bladescott , 19 minutes ago link

You are a special kind of *******... grotesque.

Mah_Authoritah , 17 minutes ago link

A million dead Iraqi's, but no WMD's.

How's that for grotesque?

Brazen Heist II , 14 minutes ago link

Hans Blix is still on the case!

vasilievich , 23 minutes ago link

I was living in Moscow as the Soviet Union was collapsing. The military and the millitarized police went over to the side of the protestors and rebels, and that was decisive. There was some violence and some people were killed, but not nearly as much and as many as there might have been.

One technical note: Never approach armored vehicles with objects in your hands - not even bouquets of flowers. Tanker crews look upon these objects with extreme suspicion. People in Moscow were shot and killed because they offered bouquets to tankers.

Transmedia001 , 31 minutes ago link

... and in mainland China pork prices are skyrocketing, subsidized food prices are rising, 30% of the water is undrinkable, air in all major Chinese cities is unsafe to breathe even by 3rd world standards, and China has stopped reporting the number of protest daily across the country now that it is over 1000 a day.

Hong Kong is the distraction of a dynasty that is quickly collapsing. And let's not forget the trade war, the loss of American companies and the CCP's desperate attempt to keep their intelligence agency Huawei in control 5G. China is collapsing. It's a great show to witness.

Pliskin , 20 minutes ago link

And those protest leaders that were arrested a couple of days ago are in China having their organs harvested,this is a FACT,because I read it here in the comments section a few days ago. Just like I've now read YOUR post,so it must be FACT!

Oh....wait...

'after several top organizers were arrested and then released, including Joshua Wong, Agnes Chow and Andy Chan. '

bloostar , 37 minutes ago link

I will never understand the logic of venting anger on inanimate objects like walls and buildings. If you're going to do it, do it properly and bring the real masters to heel, it'll never work simply destroying someone's car and bending the odd lamppost. They're probably tucked up in their fortress laughing and waiting for it to cool down so they can return to business as usual.

Transmedia001 , 25 minutes ago link

They are getting international news coverage and breaking the information blockade of media. Do you get it now?

JeanTrejean , 40 minutes ago link

They want absolutely that China intervene, it's why It's getting heavier.

quesnay , 25 minutes ago link

And then what? What's the end game? There is only one-way this can play out that I can see. Violent suppression and mass arrests. It will all be done 'officially' under the facade of Hong Kong authority, so technically no 'foul'

HoyeruNew , 41 minutes ago link

so, when was the last time ZH reported on the yellow vests riots?

107cicero , 39 minutes ago link

Don't want to piss off their Anglo/Zionist paymasters.

caconhma , 46 minutes ago link

<Protesters in Hong Kong returned to the streets in what Bloomberg has called " one of the city's most violent days in its 13th weekend of social unrest," after several top organizers were arrested and then released, including Joshua Wong, Agnes Chow and Andy Chan. >

A terrible blunder by Xi. If the Tsarist government in 1905 executed all arrested Bolshevik leaders (Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, etc.,), there would not be any Bolshevik takeover of Russia in 1917 and the Russian civilization would be still alive today. The world only understands strength and any weakness is not forgiven.

steverino999 , 45 minutes ago link

On a more important note -

Donald Trump will be remembered as a humorous yet sad 4-year blip in the history of America, where the People regrettably admit that this "entertainment age" was responsible for their lack of judgement in 2016, and they learned that they shouldn't play games with something as important to our country's honor and integrity as the office of the Presidency. Fool me twice, shame on me.....

https://i.imgflip.com/1mey9n.jpg

ohm , 38 minutes ago link

something as important to our country's honor and integrity as the office of the Presidency

Honor and integrity in the presidency? Since when?

[Aug 31, 2019] Clever Tactics "Add Oil" to Hong Kong Protests (and not "Hidden Hands" by Lambert Strether

Notable quotes:
"... So, a well-meaning Westerner suggests Gene Sharp's well-known 198 Methods of Non-Violent Action to a HKer, who politely informs him that Sharp's work is already available in Chinese ..."
"... You don't have to wait for your CIA handler to vouchsafe The Sacred Texts. Very sophisticated and tested protest tactics are all available on the Internet, if you research the media coverage of Tahrir Square, los indignados in Spain, the state capital occupations in the United States, Occupy proper, the Carré Rouge in Quebec, and many, many other examples (including the Umbrella movement organic to Hong Kong). It's not all Maidan -- which is on the Internet too, and I don't regard it was useful to forcefit all protests into that model. ..."
"... If they have factories in China now, and they are the invisible hands, I think they (and their factories) would be in trouble already, as in 'now,' and they don't have to worry about being extradited in the future. ..."
"... Me neither. That's a concern. However, there is the idea that "you taught me" that non-violence doesn't work (in 2014), "you" being the Chinese government. There is also the idea that the Mainland is no more agreement-capable than the United States," since they have no intention of adhering to the Basic Law on matters like universal suffrage . If the attitude among a great mass of the protestors is that they have nothing to lose, some sort of Masada-like scenario seems likely. ..."
"... And exactly whose interests would that serve? The interests of the students? The interests of Hong Kong generally? Answering that question will begin to take you down the rabbit hole. ..."
"... Now, it is true that "color revolution" in strong form seems to have lost some credibility, and that, if I may characterize the discourse collectively, we see a strategic retreat to formulations like "I'm sure the protestors have legitimacy," but they're still "manipulated," because, by gawd, that's what the US does. ..."
"... And then we get NGOs (been around for years) and Jimmy Lai (been around for years). Constants, that is, where the protests are a variable (which is why the heavy-breathing GrayZone post about xenohobia doesn't impress me all that much). ..."
"... So will this protest end the way Occupy ended here in "democratic" USA? One has to suspect the secessionist aim that is one of the apparent motives will not be rewarded. ..."
"... US funding and influence was quite well-attested then, for those who were paying attention. Oddly, or not, there seems to be no Victoria Nuland-equivalent for HK. One could argue, of course, that there's an invisible Nuland, but Occam's Razor eliminates that. I never followed Ukraine closely, I admit, partly because Ukraine is fabulously corrupt, and partly because (like Syria) it seemed impossible to separate fact from fiction on the ground. (The only rooting interest I have in Ukraine is their wonderful enormous airplanes.) I think for HK we have a lot more well-attested information. That's what the post is about, in fact. ..."
"... There is video of HKers using 3-person surgical tubing catapults to return to sender tear gas cannisters. I've seen pranksters use these "slingshots" to lob water balloons into unsuspecting civilians, but they are much better suited to return cannisters to the police. ..."
"... I know enough about HK to be a little suspicious of the motives of *some* protestors, but I'm in awe of their inventiveness and raw courage. And believe me, to protest publicly in HK/China requires real physical courage that is not required anywhere in the west, anyone who thinks otherwise is entirely clueless about the nature of the Chinese government and what it is capable of. ..."
"... The fact that neo-con elements in the US are happy about the protests is entirely irrelevant, it really is. Its like saying that when RT had approving articles about Occupy or Black Lives Matter that this proves the Russians were behind it. It really is that stupid and US centric an opinion. ..."
"... But here's the rub. Can you imagine what would happen if this all happened in a western country? Imagine this happening in New York for example. Actually we don't. The authorities came down on the Occupy Wall Street movement like a ton of bricks so we had a taste of what would happen. ..."
"... I am not saying that the Chinese government is right but I can understand their position here. They give Hong Kong a 'special deal' and the rest of China will want their own special deals. ..."
"... Just like the Chinese elites, the U.S. elites don't want to deal with the citizenry, and protest is something that shocks them. ..."
"... What really makes most HK skeptics suspicious is the way the media and the political establishment in the West are constantly slathering the students there with pure, unadulturated praise, while lambasting us skeptics as 'conspiracy theorists'. So comparisons of HK to Maidan are indeed apt. And please contrast the media's treatment of this protest with their (non-)treatment of the gilets jaunes movement in France. On that rare occasion when the MSM did deign to mention the gilets jaunes , they always faithfully accused them of 'racism' and 'anti-semitism'. But note how the HK protesters get pass for using Pepe the Frog as their symbol! ..."
"... The idea of protest is to disrupt the system and generally gum up the works, raising the costs of the offending campaign, hopefully to the point where the material and reputational damage makes the whole thing no longer worth pursuing. This is the end game. ..."
"... To paraphrase Noam Chomsky: Elites want a smoothly-running system of oppression. There is no reason to give them this gift. ..."
"... In general, the techniques described here seem unreliable and dangerous if masking your identity from surveillance is vital. The idea that you are going to identify and precisely target every video camera that can see you, 100% of the time, esp. in a moving and rapidly changing environment, seems extremely naive. Video cameras are small, cheap, inconspicuous, and easy to disguise. All that's needed by the opponent is a single video frame that shows your face clearly. ..."
Aug 30, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Let me start out with a sidebar on "add oil" (加油), which you see all over the coverage of the Hong Kong protests: It originated, says the OED , as a cheer at the Macau Grand Prix in the 1960s, meaning "step on the gas" (which is good to know, because I thought that the underlying metaphor was adding cooking oil to a wok preparatory to frying). It translates roughly to " go for it !" Here, an apartment block encourages the protesters by chanting it:

Interestingly, "add oil!" was also used as a cheer by the 2014 Umbrella movement , which should tell you that Hong Kong has considerable experience in running a protest.

Sidebar completed, this post will have a simple thesis: The people of Hong Kong have considerable experience in running protests, and we don't need to multiply invisible entities ("hidden hands") to give an account of what they're doing. For example, it's not necessary to postulate that the participants in the 2019 Hong Kong anti-extradition bill protests consulted CIA handlers on tactics; their tactics are often available, in open source , on the Internet; other tactics are based on Hong Kong material culture , things and situations that come readily to hand and can be adapted by creative people (which the protesters clearly are).

I started thinking about this post when I read this tweet:

Andreas Fulda ‏ @ AMFChina Aug 27 More Copy link to Tweet Embed Tweet

Wow, amazing! This campaign is on fire I was wondering if someone could volunteer and translate the attached 198 methods of nonviolent action into Cantonese? It would be great to share a Cantonese version with @ lihkg_forum Link below is safe! https://www. aeinstein.org/nonviolentacti on/198-methods-of-nonviolent-action/ pic.twitter.com/4kh6ORUnai

So, a well-meaning Westerner suggests Gene Sharp's well-known 198 Methods of Non-Violent Action to a HKer, who politely informs him that Sharp's work is already available in Chinese .

Clearly, #genesharptaughtme is alive and well! (In fact, I remember Black Lives Matter using the same hashtag.)

I am well-aware of Gene Sharp's equivocal role as a defense intellectual -- in strong form, the Godfather of "color revolutions" -- but at this point Sharp's influence is attenuated. Out here in reality, information on non-violent strategy and tactics has gone global, like everything else.

You don't have to wait for your CIA handler to vouchsafe The Sacred Texts. Very sophisticated and tested protest tactics are all available on the Internet, if you research the media coverage of Tahrir Square, los indignados in Spain, the state capital occupations in the United States, Occupy proper, the Carré Rouge in Quebec, and many, many other examples (including the Umbrella movement organic to Hong Kong). It's not all Maidan -- which is on the Internet too, and I don't regard it was useful to forcefit all protests into that model.

So, I'm going to go through a few of the tactics used in the 2019 Hong Kong protests: Umbrellas, Laser Pointers, Lennon Walls, and a Human Chain. For each tactic, I will throw it into the open source bucket, or the material culture bucket; in either case, there need be no "hidden hand." Also, I find protest tactics fascinating in and of themselves; I think a movement is healthy if its tactics are creative, and when they are so no longer, the movement has not long to live. (For example, Black Lives Matter started to disintegrate as a national movement when the college die-ins stopped (and when the liberal Democrats co-opted it by elevating Deray.) To the tactics!

Umbrellas

Umbrellas were already a symbol of protest in Hong Kong, from the Umbrella Movement of 2014. Here we see umbrellas being used to shield protestors from surveillance cameras (although they can also be used as shields against kinetic effects).

In concept, the testudo (tortoise) formation dates to Roman times:

One can indeed see that Maidan protestors using literal shields:

However, I would classify umbrella tactics as deriving from Hong Kong's material culture ; Hong Kong is sub-tropical ; there are typhoons; there is rain, fog, drizzle; and there is also the sun. Massed umbrellas scale easily from the tens to the hundreds; they create a splendid visual effect en masse ; and they are available in any corner shop. So, it is not necessary to postulate an entity translating Maidan's heavy medieval shields to Hong Kong umbrellas; the protestors would have worked out the uses of umbrellas themselves, adapting the tools that come to hand to the existing conditions.

Laser Pointers

Hong Kong, under Mainland influence, is increasingly a surveillance state; it makes sense that HKers would give considerable thought to surveillance, and how to avoid it, in the normal course of events. How much more so protestors:

I would classify the laser pointers tactic open source , since that's how I found out that yes, laser poinerns can knock out surveillance cameras . Again, there's no need to postulate that some unknown entity gave the protesters the idea; anybody with a little creativity and some research skills could come up with it, given the proper incentives (like being arrested, say).

Lennon Walls

Here is a Lennon Wall ("you may say I'm a dreamer") in Hong Kong: Lennon Walls originated in Prague after John Lennon's murder in 1980 : ( The 2014 Umbrella movement also used them .) But these are Lennon Walls with Chinese characteristics:

The idea that one may "post" anything has been actualized with Post-It Notes, giving HK walls a digital, pixelated look:

And the authorities have just begun to tear them down: Reminds me of the NYPD bulldozing the Zucotti Park library, sadly.

I would classify Lennon Walls in both categories: They originated, conceptually, in Prague (so open source ) but they are well adapted for massed protest in the material culture of Hong Kong. (Like massed umbrellas, massed PostIt notes scale easily from the tens to the thousands; they create a splendid visual effect en masse ; and they are available in any corner shop.)

Human Chain

Here is a poster publicizing "the Hong Kong Way," a human chain across Hong Kong: Here is the beautiful result:

I would classify "the Hong Kong Way" as open source , since the idea originated from " the Baltic Way ," where some two million people joined hands to form a human chain across the three Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania

Conclusion

Just to tweak the "It's a color revolution!" crowd, here's an image of HKers watching a movie about Maidan:

I hope I have persuaded you that (a) this Maidan movie is open source "; knowledge of Maidan as a worthy object of study, that (b) by Occam's Razor, it doesn't take a CIA handler to tell this to HKers, and that (c) if the HKers end up building catapults , they will be adapted to Hong Kong's material culture (i.e., probably not medieval in appearance or structure).[1]

NOTES

[1] The HKers may also be sending a message to the authorities: If Maidan is what you want, bring it!



TooSoonOld , , August 30, 2019 at 5:40 pm

Maciej Cegłowski has written a first-hand account that helped me understand some of the tactics the protesters employ. I see he's written a follow-on piece, too.
https://idlewords.com/2019/08/a_walk_in_hong_kong.htm

MyLessThanPrimeBeef , , August 30, 2019 at 6:46 pm

Another claim is that rich Hong Kongers are behind the protests, fearing extradition.

If they have factories in China now, and they are the invisible hands, I think they (and their factories) would be in trouble already, as in 'now,' and they don't have to worry about being extradited in the future.

I'm doubtful of that claim as well.

PlutoniumKun , , August 31, 2019 at 4:40 am

I've read that claim too, and for the reasons you state and others it doesn't pass the smell test, its simply not credible.

pjay , , August 30, 2019 at 8:11 pm

Ok. I really did not want to post any more comments on Hong Kong, or China for that matter, here at NC. But I am genuinely puzzled, and I have to say concerned, about the way this issue has been framed here. One does not have to accept the argument that *either* (1) the protests are completely spontaneous and genuine; *or* (2) the protests are mainly the product of CIA manipulation of otherwise clueless dupes (a whole lot of them apparently!). This is a false dichotomy. None of the critics of the mainstream Hong Kong narrative that I am familiar with take a position any where close to (2). It is a straw-man position if applied to most reputable "skeptics."

Rather, the argument I have seen most often among these skeptics (including some commenters here) is that, while the protests *were* authentic and directed at real issues of concern to protesters, there have also been efforts on the part of Western agents to manipulate this situation. This included support of particular, strategically significant leaders and groups and, of course, control of the Western media narrative. We have pictures and stories in even the mainstream press of US officials and representatives of western NGOs meeting with such individuals. Hell, we have US politicians bragging about it. These connections are pretty clear, whether or not HKers can find Gene Sharp's work on the internet.

https://thegrayzone.com/2019/08/17/hong-kong-protest-washington-nativism-violence/

I have no doubt that many HKers are opposed to mainland rule, so China hands here need not lecture me condescendingly on that issue. On the other hand, I have no doubt that Chinese officials are justified in suspecting covert action by the CIA to stir things up even more (though a lot of the activity is actually pretty overt). Looking at the postwar actions of the US and its allies all over the world, including China in the past, they would have to be idiots not to. And they are not idiots.

RubyDog , , August 30, 2019 at 8:56 pm

Good post. As usual, reality is far more complex and not reducible to simplistic either/or narratives. Protest, rebellion, and unrest are endemic in Chinese (and world) history. In a globalized and interconnected modern world, of course there is widespread awareness and cross fertilization of movements. The "West" did not start this fire, though no doubt they are doing some fanning of the flames.

What worries me is that I do not understand the endgame of the protesters. If you are facing a power far greater than your own, guerilla tactics are in order, but you have to know when to declare victory and back off for awhile. They seem to want to keep pushing and pushing until another Tienanmen may become inevitable.

Anon , , August 30, 2019 at 11:02 pm

The HK protesters recognize that they have enough bodies to literally bring parts of the city to a halt. Soon the authorities will realize that they don't have enough police to maintain order and some sort of compromise will be in order.

Imagine if 200 cars stopped on an LA freeway. Traffic would be halted for hours before enough tow trucks could be put in service. Bodies in the street (cars on the freeway) can be enough to stop "business as usual".

Lambert Strether Post author , , August 31, 2019 at 3:03 am

> I do not understand the endgame of the protesters

Me neither. That's a concern. However, there is the idea that "you taught me" that non-violence doesn't work (in 2014), "you" being the Chinese government. There is also the idea that the Mainland is no more agreement-capable than the United States," since they have no intention of adhering to the Basic Law on matters like universal suffrage . If the attitude among a great mass of the protestors is that they have nothing to lose, some sort of Masada-like scenario seems likely.

As for the rest of the comment, meh. It's simultaneously an initial withdrawal of the debunked "color revolution" theory, and a mushy reformulation of same in different terms ("no doubt that Chinese officials are justified in suspecting covert action by the CIA"). Either you believe that the Hong Kong protests are organic in origin and execution, or you don't. See my comment here .

Harry , , August 31, 2019 at 6:05 am

My sympathy for the HK protesters is somewhat impaired by their antipathy for mainlanders and mainlander immigration to HK. Its worth reading Carl Zha on Tiananmen. I thought i knew what happened in Tiananmen, but it turned out i didn't.

Lambert Strether Post author , , August 31, 2019 at 6:10 am

I'm a bit leery of Chongqing native Carl Zha and his sudden elevation. Let's remember that the Mainland is just as sophisticated in its information campaigns as the US. For example, a claim that he has revealed what really happened, as we say, at Tien An Man, without an explanation what his views are is a red flag to me. (In the worse case scenario, disinformation is infesting the NC comments section.) No, I'm not going to "just listen to the YouTube" because I don't have time to devote to it, as opposed to reading a transcript quickly.

Also, weird flex on "immigration."

PlutoniumKun , , August 31, 2019 at 8:52 am

I've just come across Zha once or twice and I certainly would not consider him a reliable source. The 'official' narrative around Tiannanman in China (as taught to Chinese people) has changed more than once, his seems to match the current version. This doesn't mean he is lying or wrong, I'm just suspicious about anyone who claims to know the 'truth' about such a chaotic and charged event, and some of the things he has written is simply not a reflection of what Chinese people I know think about it.

Its worth pointing out of course that almost all the evidence suggests that the Chinese intelligence penetration of the US has been far more competent than vice versa. The narrative that somehow the CIA was behind Tiananmen (which even MoA has pushed) and the current protests simply strains all credulity. There is no doubt they would provide any help they could to anti-government movements within China, but there is no evidence that they've done anything more than promote a few fringe dissidents.

harry , , August 31, 2019 at 11:56 am

Zha (to my recollection) did not suggest the CIA was behind Tiananmen. He did suggest that the amount of violence and the cause of the violence was not as reported in the West. There was little corroboration though. That said, he had quite an interesting take on the lone man with shopping bag stopping tank column. Perhaps it is common knowledge but he suggested that event took place on the day after Tiananmen, when the tanks were trying to head back to base. Just cos he said that don't make it true of course. But it did make me ask how i know what i think i know.

Harry , , August 31, 2019 at 12:11 pm

I apologize for not outlining his views. I thought it better to just suggest him as a possible reference and allow people to come to their own conclusions. I came across him cos I follow Mark Ames on twitter. I know of Ames cos I spent time in Moscow in the 90s. So I considered it a good recommendation -- but hardly foolproof. Zha suggests that students in Tienamin set a bus on fire in the square (of heavenly peace?) which unfortunately contained a number of PLA soldiers who were burned alive. I have no way of knowing whether this account is true. However he also suggested the iconic man in front of tank column took place on the following day. Which was news to me, and seemed quite plausible when you consider the interaction. But I have no reason to believe this anymore than I should believe the BBC or CNN. Its just that where I have listened to the BBC on subjects I am personally familiar with, they have occasionally been rather "economical" with inconvenient truths. Mr Zha has the advantage of Ames recommendation, a clean slate, and an interesting but unproven assertion.

His take on HK protests is that they have become rather violent, with the aim being to prompt a violent response from the Chinese authorities.

HKers appear to view themselves as distinct from mainlanders, and do not seem to welcome mainland immigration. Fascinating to see british colonial flags brandished when telling Mandarin speakers to "go home". But even here I am relying on the translations applied by the makers of the videos. I dont speak Cantonese or Mandarin.

Seamus Padraig , , August 31, 2019 at 7:19 am

They seem to want to keep pushing and pushing until another Tienanmen may become inevitable.

And exactly whose interests would that serve? The interests of the students? The interests of Hong Kong generally? Answering that question will begin to take you down the rabbit hole.

Plenue , , August 30, 2019 at 9:28 pm

(2) seems to be Olga's position. She's repeatedly demonstrated a disregard for 'gullible youth'.

Lambert Strether Post author , , August 31, 2019 at 2:54 am

> But I am genuinely puzzled, and I have to say concerned, about the way this issue has been framed here. One does not have to accept the argument that *either* (1) the protests are completely spontaneous and genuine; *or* (2) the protests are mainly the product of CIA manipulation of otherwise clueless dupes (a whole lot of them apparently!). This is a false dichotomy. None of the critics of the mainstream Hong Kong narrative that I am familiar with take a position any where close to (2). It is a straw-man position if applied to most reputable "skeptics."

Nonsense. If you say that the HK protests were a "color revolution," which was the original claim ( following Moon of Alabama here , with the most frequent analogy being Ukraine, #2 ("clueless dupes") is exactly what you're saying.

So, I'm not "straw manning" at all, but replying directly to a criticism expressed here. Please follow the site more closely before you mischaracterize what I wrote.

Now, it is true that "color revolution" in strong form seems to have lost some credibility, and that, if I may characterize the discourse collectively, we see a strategic retreat to formulations like "I'm sure the protestors have legitimacy," but they're still "manipulated," because, by gawd, that's what the US does.

And then we get NGOs (been around for years) and Jimmy Lai (been around for years). Constants, that is, where the protests are a variable (which is why the heavy-breathing GrayZone post about xenohobia doesn't impress me all that much).

The formulation employed in your comment is even weaker:

there have also been efforts on the part of Western agents to manipulate this situation. This included support of particular, strategically significant leaders and groups and, of course, control of the Western media narrative.

I don't know what "efforts by" even means. (I mean, there were "efforts by" various odd Russians to meet with Trump, but no hotel was build, and so, so what?) Nor do I think that editorials in the Times have the slightest influence either on the Hong Kong protestors or the Mainland. I can't imagine why anybody would take them seriously.

What I am here to say is that the HK protests are organic to HK. They are organized and directed by HKers, many of whom have a lot of experience protesting. There is no need to multiply entities -- whether in strong form the CIA or in very weak form "the connections are pretty clear" -- to give an account of them. Now, as I said here, I'm sure Five Eyes are "sniffing around." Probably Taipei, Japan, Indonesia, even the French and the Dutch; anyone with an interest in events in the South China Sea. But IMNSHO the protestors have full agency . (It's also hard to avoid that there's a whiff of colonialism here, too: How is it possible that mere Chinese people could achieve such things without Western help?

And so, like clockwork -- I've noticed this in other comments that start out with the weak form of "manipulation" and end up with the strong form of "control" -- we come right back to that claim!

On the other hand, I have no doubt that Chinese officials are justified in suspecting covert action by the CIA to stir things up even more (though a lot of the activity is actually pretty overt)

(So "overt" that you can't even link to whatever the activity might be. Fine.) First, we come back to the Mandy Rice-Davies rule: They would say that, wouldn't they? Second, so I wasn't straw-manning at all, then, was I? Third, after I went to the trouble of applying Occam's Razor to your claims, you just repeat them!

NOTE * "We have pictures and stories in even the mainstream press of US officials and representatives of western NGOs meeting with such individuals." The picture is in a hotel ffs. Pretty low level of operational security, if you ask me.

Carolinian , , August 30, 2019 at 8:37 pm

So will this protest end the way Occupy ended here in "democratic" USA? One has to suspect the secessionist aim that is one of the apparent motives will not be rewarded.

RBHoughton , , August 30, 2019 at 8:49 pm

This is frankly quite superficial but, if anyone has 30 minutes spare, they can learn the history behind today's Hong Kong riots here :

https://youtu.be/17f9yoorTu8

Lambert Strether Post author , , August 31, 2019 at 3:26 am

I've often inveighed against YouTube links that don't summarize the content. In this case, those interested in "connecting the dots" and following the money might be interested to know that the videocaster, Sarah Flounders, is a member of the Secretariat of Workers World Party :

The Workers World Party (WWP) is a revolutionary Marxist -- Leninist political party in the United States founded in 1959 by a group led by Sam Marcy of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Marcy and his followers split from the SWP in 1958 over a series of long-standing differences, among them their support for Henry A. Wallace's Progressive Party in 1948, the positive view they held of the Chinese Revolution led by Mao Zedong and their defense of the 1956 Soviet intervention in Hungary, all of which the SWP opposed.

I don't know what the Chinese word for "tankies" is, or even if there is one, but we seem to have one such here. Here from their newspaper, Workers World, an article originally written in 1993, reprinted in 2019 :

Immediately before and during the Tienanmen Square days, China appeared to be in danger of disintegrating into warlordism. This was overcome and the decentralizing process that threatened to emerge was eliminated. That was a victory of socialism.

The question of how far the Chinese government can go with the capitalist reforms will certainly be up for review, notwithstanding a constitutional provision meant to make the reforms a permanent feature in Chinese society.

One fact has certainly emerged: the millions who left the rural areas for the great cities of China and were absorbed into the proletariat have given the Chinese government and Communist Party the opportunity to strengthen the socialist character of the state. The growth of the proletariat is the objective factor most needed for the building of socialism.

I don't think its surprising that Flounders and the WWP would retail the mainland line.

The Rev Kev , , August 30, 2019 at 9:56 pm

I guess that this comes about seeing what happened to all the young people who supported the Ukrainian "revolution" for a free, just society. Twice! How did that work out for them? How is the Ukraine going these days? What did they say when they found out that that so-called "revolution" last time had a $5 billion 'Made-in-the-USA' sticker on it? Conspiracy theory at the time. Recorded fact now.

Lambert Strether Post author , , August 31, 2019 at 6:24 am

> Conspiracy theory at the time. Recorded fact now.

Not so. US funding and influence was quite well-attested then, for those who were paying attention. Oddly, or not, there seems to be no Victoria Nuland-equivalent for HK. One could argue, of course, that there's an invisible Nuland, but Occam's Razor eliminates that. I never followed Ukraine closely, I admit, partly because Ukraine is fabulously corrupt, and partly because (like Syria) it seemed impossible to separate fact from fiction on the ground. (The only rooting interest I have in Ukraine is their wonderful enormous airplanes.) I think for HK we have a lot more well-attested information. That's what the post is about, in fact.

John A , , August 31, 2019 at 7:47 am

Re similarities or otherwise with Kiev, we will have to wait and see if there is any sniper crowd killings in HK as with the 'Heavenly Hundred' in Kiev. At the time, the shootings were blamed on the government, but compelling evidence since points to US backed snipers from Georgia.

Harry , , August 31, 2019 at 12:23 pm

Compelling might be pushing a point. There is certainly evidence, and some of it is quite persuasive. However I dont consider some Georgians snipers on Italian tv compelling evidence.

Anon , , August 30, 2019 at 10:54 pm

RE: Catapult

There is video of HKers using 3-person surgical tubing catapults to return to sender tear gas cannisters. I've seen pranksters use these "slingshots" to lob water balloons into unsuspecting civilians, but they are much better suited to return cannisters to the police.

I did a brief search on the Internet for some video but couldn't find it.

Anon , , August 30, 2019 at 11:08 pm

okay, here's a link:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7319925/Demonstrators-use-slingshots-hurl-rocks-police-station-Hong-Kong.html

Lambert Strether Post author , , August 31, 2019 at 6:39 am

The Maidan catapult had its own Twitter account. Here's what it looked like:

I doubt very much that a catapult designed by HKers would look like this; it is not constructed of materials that come readily to hand. (And perhaps massed slingshots would be more effective anyhow.)

(I can't read any languages written in Cyrillic, so I defer to any readers who can on my interpretation.)

VietnamVet , , August 30, 2019 at 11:30 pm

Endless wars. Smoke filled skies. Hurricanes, drought, flooding. No purpose in life. Incarceration, surveillance and insurmountable debt. Arrogant incompetence.

Change is coming. People need hope. A movement will be born.
"Bring it on" -- "Pa'lante" in Spanish.

Hurray For The Riff Raff -- Pa'lante

"And do my time, and be something
Well I just wanna prove my worth --
On the planet Earth, and be, something"

"To all who had to hide, I say, iPa'lante!
To all who lost their pride, I say, ¡Pa'lante!
To all who had to survive, I say, ¡Pa'lante!"

"To my brothers, and my sisters, I say, ¡Pa'lante!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LilVDjLaZSE

Lambert Strether Post author , , August 31, 2019 at 3:11 am

So "Pa'lante" is how you say "add oil" in Spanish!

Alex morfesis , , August 31, 2019 at 11:52 am

Para Alante. Pa'lante for forward/move forward/go forward/go to the front/continue/keep pushing forward/don't stop

Different Spanish interpretations depending on which blend of the language your ears become attuned to .mine flow from cuban, with a twist of Puerto Rican/Newrican, a dabble of dominican, some mexican icing and a little Columbian sprinkles on top

PlutoniumKun , , August 31, 2019 at 4:36 am

Thank you for this Lambert. Perhaps its my perspective of coming from a small country, but I find the anti-HK protestor comments I see here and elsewhere baffling coming from supposed progressives. Sometimes, really, its not all about the US, or even US Imperialism.

I know enough about HK to be a little suspicious of the motives of *some* protestors, but I'm in awe of their inventiveness and raw courage. And believe me, to protest publicly in HK/China requires real physical courage that is not required anywhere in the west, anyone who thinks otherwise is entirely clueless about the nature of the Chinese government and what it is capable of.

The fact that neo-con elements in the US are happy about the protests is entirely irrelevant, it really is. Its like saying that when RT had approving articles about Occupy or Black Lives Matter that this proves the Russians were behind it. It really is that stupid and US centric an opinion.

As to the questions about the endgame, I really don't know, and I suspect the protestors don't know either. My own opinion is that this is as much a nationalist movement as a political one. Many HKers see themselves as a nation with one foot in the east and one in the west and want to preserve this status, but nobody has to my knowledge articulated how they can achieve this. Many of them have a romantic notion of what western 'freedoms' mean, but not quite as romantic as people think, as so many HKers have lived in the US or UK or elsewhere and are not entirely politically naive. But they sure as hell know they do not want to live in an autocratic State led by Beijing, and they are perfectly entitled to that view.

The Rev Kev , , August 31, 2019 at 5:03 am

Your last part of your comment makes the protestors sound like the Brexiteers of the Far Fast. People who want radical change but are uncertain how to go about it and with no clear aim in mind. They may not want to live in an autocratic State led by Beijing but according to the map that I use, Hong Kong is within the borders of China. They are not going to get independence and they cannot go back to the way things were so they had better sort out what it is they want their relationship to Beijing to be before it is decided for them.

PlutoniumKun , , August 31, 2019 at 5:18 am

And thats exactly what they are doing. What are they supposed to do, just let their appointed leaders decide for them?

The Rev Kev , , August 31, 2019 at 5:33 am

No. But their five demands don't sound like a winning combination. It doesn't make them sound even serious about full-fledged change-

1-The complete withdrawal of the proposed extradition bill
2-The government to withdraw the use of the word "riot" in relation to protests
3-The unconditional release of arrested protesters and charges against them dropped
4-An independent inquiry into police behaviour
5-Implementation of genuine universal suffrage

Lambert Strether Post author , , August 31, 2019 at 6:04 am

> 5-Implementation of genuine universal suffrage

That's a demand that Mainland China adhere to the Basic Law that transferred Hong Kong from British sovereignty to PRC sovereignty. What's unserious about that?

The Rev Kev , , August 31, 2019 at 6:20 am

Agreed about that last demand but it is the outlier on that list. Demands 2, 3 and 4 sound like they are trying to 'prepare the battlefield' for the next series of protests by undermining the ability of the Hong Kong Police to do their work. Demand 1 is just fulfilling the casus belli for this series of protests.

Lambert Strether Post author , , August 31, 2019 at 6:30 am

> 'prepare the battlefield' for the next series of protests by undermining the ability of the Hong Kong Police to do their work

In what sense is that not serious? (I'll say again that I think the HKers want what they think is liberal democracy as the US/UK may once be said to have had it this is not a proletarian revolution. Hence, the presence of billionaire Lai is unproblematic, despite heavy breathing at Grey Zone.)

In what sense is asking for one's first demand not serious? Is it more serious to write it off?

The Rev Kev , , August 31, 2019 at 6:57 am

I realize that this is not a popular line of thought but I believe that you do have to consider all aspects of such a big event to be fair. I mean, even Paul Joseph Watson came out with a video supporting the protests-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVu9b6mcWos

But here's the rub. Can you imagine what would happen if this all happened in a western country? Imagine this happening in New York for example. Actually we don't. The authorities came down on the Occupy Wall Street movement like a ton of bricks so we had a taste of what would happen.

I am not saying that the Chinese government is right but I can understand their position here. They give Hong Kong a 'special deal' and the rest of China will want their own special deals.

PlutoniumKun , , August 31, 2019 at 8:09 am

Hong Kong already has its own special deal, 'one nation, two systems' is the official slogan from Beijing. Its Beijing that is backing away from this, not the protestors.

The Rev Kev , , August 31, 2019 at 8:53 am

That's right. A 50-year deal and China was not in much of a position to do a lot about it. Times change and I guess that the Chinese feel that it is time to redress the wrongs of the past according to their lights. I wonder if Macau has the same issues.

Carolinian , , August 31, 2019 at 9:16 am

So if China is, as accused, reneging on the "two systems" then where are the protestors on the "one nation"? To some of us it appears that these young people simply don't want to be a part of China. If true then that's an aim that goes far beyond mere reform.

And the reason USG involvement matters is that some of us don't believe the US should be meddling in other countries -- even ones as unfree as China. The protestors could reassure about the purity of their aims by renouncing US support or the sanctions that some Republicans in Congress are threatening rather than waving US and British flags.

PlutoniumKun , , August 31, 2019 at 9:41 am

A 50-year deal and China was not in much of a position to do a lot about it.

Where on earth did you get that idea? It was actually China's idea, promoted by Deng Xiaoping -- part of their strategy to woo Taiwan and ease the concerns of their neighbours. Plus, it made perfect sense for them economically.

Lambert Strether Post author , , August 31, 2019 at 6:06 am

> The fact that neo-con elements in the US are happy about the protests is entirely irrelevant, it really is. Its like saying that when RT had approving articles about Occupy or Black Lives Matter that this proves the Russians were behind it. It really is that stupid and US centric an opinion.

The NYT wrote some editorials! ZOMG!!!!!

DJG , , August 31, 2019 at 10:57 am

PK: Thanks. You mention coming from a small country, and I think it would benefit all U.S. peeps here to adjust their perspectives accordingly. Good advice.

Second is dispelling the typical "Don't know much about history" attitude in the U S of A. I notice how Lambert Strether ties together several recent organic protest movements. (Should we also throw in Iranian protests after the presidential election in 2009, Taksim protests in Istanbul, and Greek protests against austerity? All of which were organic and fit these models -- the chants from the apartment building remind me of the videos of call and response at night in Iranian cities during those protests.)

Americans like to act as if every event is brand new. And the "don't know much about about history" attitude means being "nonjudgmental" -- which means having no control to assess facts and not much concern for critical thinking.

One question to be asked here would be: How can protest in the U S of A be raised to the HK or Taksim level of disruption?

Just like the Chinese elites, the U.S. elites don't want to deal with the citizenry, and protest is something that shocks them.

And the endgame? The endgame is protest. What comes next? We may be in an era where more protest is needed. Time to study again the disruptions of 1848?

Harry , , August 31, 2019 at 6:53 am

https://twitter.com/joshuawongcf/status/1167480860804710400?s=19

Seamus Padraig , , August 31, 2019 at 7:29 am

What really makes most HK skeptics suspicious is the way the media and the political establishment in the West are constantly slathering the students there with pure, unadulturated praise, while lambasting us skeptics as 'conspiracy theorists'. So comparisons of HK to Maidan are indeed apt. And please contrast the media's treatment of this protest with their (non-)treatment of the gilets jaunes movement in France. On that rare occasion when the MSM did deign to mention the gilets jaunes , they always faithfully accused them of 'racism' and 'anti-semitism'. But note how the HK protesters get pass for using Pepe the Frog as their symbol!

Whom the media cover and how they cover them will always tell you a lot about who is really behind a protest movement and who really stands to benefit from it.

Seamus Padraig , , August 31, 2019 at 7:34 am

Let me start out with a sidebar on "add oil" (加油), which you see all over the coverage of the Hong Kong protests: It originated, says the OED, as a cheer at the Macau Grand Prix in the 1960s, meaning "step on the gas" (which is good to know, because I thought that the underlying metaphor was adding cooking oil to a wok preparatory to frying). It translates roughly to "go for it!"

I have noticed that Germans often the phrase Gas geben (to floor it, to accelerate) with roughly the same colloquial meaning of 'to get a move on'.

XXYY , , August 31, 2019 at 10:42 am

I do not understand the endgame of the protesters.

The idea of protest is to disrupt the system and generally gum up the works, raising the costs of the offending campaign, hopefully to the point where the material and reputational damage makes the whole thing no longer worth pursuing. This is the end game.

To paraphrase Noam Chomsky: Elites want a smoothly-running system of oppression. There is no reason to give them this gift.

DJG , , August 31, 2019 at 10:59 am

XXYY: Yes. And there were a few essays recently about disobedience. The question isn't why people disobey. The true question is: Why is the mass of citizens so obedient?

XXYY , , August 31, 2019 at 11:23 am

During the Occupy protests one continually heard this question: What do they want?!?!

Leaving aside the fact that a group of 5000 people carrying large signs generally makes answering this question pretty easy, there seemed to be a limited ability to grasp the idea that protest is in fact an end .

I think we have somehow been seduced or indoctrinated with the idea that if you do A, it must be strictly in service of getting B. Often the motivations are just inchoate rage or anger, and often the intention is just to call attention to something or just f*ck sh*t up!

As we saw with Occupy, a major turning point in US history and society and the origin of much that was to come, it's fine to just trust the universe to helpfully spin your actions in ways your never could have predicted.

cbu , , August 31, 2019 at 10:55 am

The protest will end with the Hong Kong government invoking the Emergency Regulations Ordinance.

John k , , August 31, 2019 at 1:03 pm

To what end? That doesn't boost the number of cops. China brings in the tanks? That maybe ends hk usefulness to China as offshore financial center and certainly ends rapprochement with Taiwan.

IMO China's instinct for heavy handed response has led them to a series of mistakes. Perhaps the trade war has them on edge.

XXYY , , August 31, 2019 at 11:11 am

Re: https://www.wikihow.com/Blind-a-Surveillance-Camera

In general, the techniques described here seem unreliable and dangerous if masking your identity from surveillance is vital. The idea that you are going to identify and precisely target every video camera that can see you, 100% of the time, esp. in a moving and rapidly changing environment, seems extremely naive. Video cameras are small, cheap, inconspicuous, and easy to disguise. All that's needed by the opponent is a single video frame that shows your face clearly.

A much better approach to work on seems like trying to obscure your own identifying features. Obviously people are doing this with masks, hoods, goggles, hard hats, umbrellas, and everything else.

One thing I haven't seen too much about is strategies specifically intended to defeat facial recognition technology. AI-based recognizers seem to be extremely brittle; small and even undetectable modifications to the source data seem to be able to throw them off completely (e.g. https://mashable.com/2017/11/02/mit-researchers-fool-google-ai-program/ ). One can imagine these approaches being deployed deliberately as camoflauge or a "disguise". Obviously the problem would be finding robust techniques.

[Aug 28, 2019] an interesting pair of comments by frequent fliers:

Aug 28, 2019 | www.flyertalk.com

I'm a visitor, but spending about 100 nights a year in Hong Kong in 2019. This includes some time during the initial protests in June, some time in July, and all of August until now. I think there's a big misconception about how much this affects daily life. To be honest, apart from having a hotel shuttle bus that was stuck in traffic in mid June, I didn't really experience any negative impacts of the protests. I walk around 10 miles a day, and it is very rare to see any protesters. One of my friends lives two blocks from the Chinese liaison office, and he's had tear gassing on three days since mid June. I walked through a couple of riot police staging areas, but they're very friendly and left me alone. I also saw some graffiti. But in day-to-day life, the impact of the protests is zero.

In fact, visiting Hong Kong is much more enjoyable than usual, because there are virtually no mainland tourists. You can visit TST Promenade, which normally has dozens of buses spewing out thousands of visitors, and right now, you're practically the only person there. Equally important, hotels have crazy prices around 30 to 50% off the usual low season pricing. HK$1100 for Hyatt TST or HK$750 for the new Marriott Ocean Park. Insane deals!

Now, of course, if you for some reason get impacted by any airport closure and you have to be at an important event, that truly sucks. So perhaps don't fly through Hong Kong if you're on the way to interview for an amazing job offer. But for tourists, it's an ideal time to visit.

As far as safety is concerned, if you're from the US or Europe, unless you live in the most sheltered and safest environments, Hong Kong -even with the protests- will be much better than what you're used to.

...

From a local's perspective, the protests force an occasional work-at-home day, but so far everything has been business as usual. There seem to be less mainland tourists, so the crowded areas tend to be more manageable now. The violence and tear gas tend to start flying off at night, and there is usually a decent period of time before the raids come for tourists to escape. Avoid hanging around police stations as they are the main target of protesters, accusing the police for brutality and using excessive force.

I do think visiting one of these peaceful rallies/protests or reading through one of the many Lennon Walls around the city would be an interesting highlight for a tourist.

Do leave some time for your flight out though, in light of increased security measures for departures these days.

[Aug 27, 2019] House Niggers Mutiny by Israel Shamir

Highly recommended!
Aug 27, 2019 | www.unz.com

Slavery had some good aspects for those chaps who had it rather good. A colonial setup is the next best thing to slavery, and it also holds its attraction for people who knew how to place themselves just below the sahibs and above the run-of-the-mill natives. The Hong Kong revolt is the mutiny of wannabe house niggers who feel that the gap between them and the natives is rapidly vanishing. Once, a HK resident was head and shoulders above the miserable mainland coolies; he spoke English, he had smart devices, he had his place in the tentacle sucking wealth out of the mainland, and some of that wealth stuck to his sweaty hands. But now he has no advantage compared to the people of Shanghai or Beijing. There is huge swelling of wealth in the big cities of Red China. The Chinese dress well, travel abroad, and they do not need HK mediation for dealing with the West. Beijing had offered HK a fair deal of [relative] equality; nothing would be taken from them, but the shrinking gap is not only unavoidable, but desirable, too.

However, HK had been the imperial bridgehead in China for too long. Its people were complicit, nay, willing partners in every Western crime against China, beginning with dumping opium and sucking out Chinese wealth. Millions of opium addicts, of ruined families and households nearly destroyed the Middle Kingdom, and each of them added to HK prosperity. The blood, sweat and labour of all China abundantly supplied the island. HK was the first of the Treaty Ports, and the last to return home. Its populace was not thoroughly detoxed; they weren't ideologically prepared for a new life as equals.

Chairman Mao harboured hard suspicions against comprador cities, the cities and the people who prospered due to their collaboration with the imperialist enemy. He cleansed them with communist and patriotic re-education; recalcitrant compradors were sent to help peasants in far-away villages in order to reconnect with the people. Mao's successors had a strong if misplaced belief in Chinese nationalism as a universal remedy; they thought the Chinese of HK, Macau and Taiwan would join them the moment the colonial yoke failed. This was an over-optimistic assessment. The imperialist forces didn't give up on their former house slaves, and the moment they needed to activate them against independent China they knew where to look.

Their time came as the trade conflict between the US and China warmed up. The secret government of the West aka Deep State came to the conclusion that China is getting way too big for its boots. It is not satisfied with making cheap gadgets for Walmart customers. It is producing state-of-art devices that compete with American goods and, what's worse, their devices are not accessible for NSA surveillance. The Chinese company Huawei came under attack; sanctions and custom duties followed in train. When the Yuan eased under the strain, the Chinese were accused of manipulating their currency. It is a strong charge: when Japan was attacked by the West in the 1990s and the Yen had eased as expected, this claim forced Tokyo to keep the Yen high and take Japan into a twenty-year-long slump. But China did not retreat.

Then the supreme power unleashed its well-practiced weapon: they turned to foment unrest in China and gave it a lot of space in the media. At first, they played up the fate of the Uygur Islamists, but it had little success. The Uygur are not numerous, they are not even a majority in their traditional area; their influence in China is limited. Despite headlines in the liberal Western media proclaiming that millions of Uygur are locked up in concentration camps, the impact was nil. No important Muslim state took up this cause.

The anniversary of Tiananmen came (in beginning of June) and went without a hitch. For good reason: the alleged 'massacre' is a myth, as the Chinese always knew and we know now for certain thanks to publication of a relevant US Embassy cable by Wikileaks. There were no thousands of students flattened by tanks. A very few died fighting the army, but China had evaded the bitter fate of the USSR. In China proper the event had been almost forgotten. A few participants retell of their experiences to Western audiences, but the desired turmoil did not materialise.

And then came the time for HK. It is an autonomous part of China; it had not been re-educated; there are enough people who remember the good days of colonial slavery. The actual spark for the mutiny, the planned extradition treaty, was exceedingly weak. For the last decade, HK became the chosen place of refuge for mainland criminals, for HK had extradition treaties with the US and Britain, but not with the mainland. This had to be remedied.

[The extradition treaty had played an important role in the Snowden case. An ex-CIA spy Edward Snowden decided to reveal to the world the extent of the NSA surveillance we all are subjects of. He chose the Guardian newspaper for his revelations, probably because of the Wikileaks precedent. When he gave an extended interview to the Guardian in HK, his identity had been revealed. The arrival of the US extradition request was imminent. The Chinese authorities told Snowden that they would have to send him to a US jail, to torture and death; that the extradition treaty left them no option in his case. Only the fast footwork of Julian Assange's brave assistant Sarah Harrison prevented this grim finale and delivered Snowden to safe Moscow.]

ORDER IT NOW

While HK authorities were obliged to extradite Snowden, they weren't and couldn't extradite numerous criminals from the mainland. This was an obvious wrong that had to be urgently corrected, in the face of rising tension. And then the sleeping agents of the West woke up and activated their networks. They had practically unlimited funds, not only from the West, but also from the criminals who weren't particularly impecunious and were afraid of extradition. After the demonstrations started, the Western media gave them maximum coverage, magnifying and encouraging the mutineers.

Hundreds of articles, leading stories and editorials in important newspapers cheered and encouraged the HK rebels. The People's War Is Coming in Hong Kong , editorialised the New York Times today. An amazing fact (that is if you are a fresh arrival from Mars): the same newspaper and its numerous sisters paid no attention to the real People's War raging in France, where the Gilets Jaunes have continued to fight for forty weeks against the austerity-imposing Macron regime. 11 people were killed and 2,500 injured in France, but the Western media just mumbled about the GJ antisemitism. Nothing new, indeed. The same media did not notice the one-million-strong demonstration against the US war on Iraq, paid little attention to Occupy Wall Street, disregarded protests against US wars and interventions. One hundred thousand people marching in New York would get no coverage if their purpose did not agree with the desires of the Real Government; and alternatively, three thousand protesters in Moscow with its 12 million population would be presented as the voice of the people challenging Vlad the Tyrant.

In its peculiar way, the media fulfills its purpose of keeping us informed. If mainstream media reports on something, it usually lies; but if media keeps mum, you can bet it is important and you are not encouraged to learn of it. It is especially true in case of popular protests. How do you know they are lying? – Their lips are moving.

The biggest lie is calling the HK rebels marching under the Union Jack, "pro-democracy". These guys wish to restore colonial rule, to be governed by their strict but fair round-eyed overlords. It could be a bad or a good idea, but democracy it ain't. The second biggest lie is the slogan Make Hong Kong Great Britain Again.

Hong Kong was never a part of Great Britain. This was never on offer, so it can't become that again. Even the most adventure- and diversity-prone British politician won't make seven million Chinese in a far-away territory British citizens with full rights, members of an imperfect but real British democracy. HK was a colony; this is what the marchers aspire to, to make HK colony again.

With all these differences taken into account, this is as true for Moscow demos as well. Moscow protesters dream of a Russia occupied by NATO forces, not of democracy. They believe that they, pro-Western, educated, entrepreneurial, would form the comprador class and prosper at the expense of hoi polloi. Mercifully, they aren't plentiful: the Russians already tried to live under benign Western occupation between 1991 and 2000, when the IMF directed their finances and American advisers from Harvard ran the state machinery. Smart and ruthless Jews like Bill Browder , Boris Berezovsky, Roman Abramovich made their fortunes, but Russia was ruined and its people were reduced to poverty.

Not many Russians would like to return to the Roaring Nineties, but some would. It is a matter for the majority to prevent this aspiring minority to achieve its aspirations. Those who can't take it will flee to Israel, as young Mr Yablonsky who discovered his Jewish roots after two nights of police detention. He landed in jail for violently fighting erection of a church in his town.

The Chinese will likewise sort out their HK affliction. It can be done if the government does not promise to restrict its counteractions to painless and bloodless measures. Only the real and imminent threat of painful and bloody suppression can make such measures unnecessary. Likewise, only the imminent threat of no-deal Brexit could bring some sense into the stubborn heads of the EU leaders. A state that is not ready to use force will necessarily fail, as did the Ukrainian state under Mr Yanukowych in 2014. Blood will be shed and the state will be ruined, if its rulers are too squeamish to stop the rebellion.

We can distinguish a real people's rising and foreign-inspired interventions on behalf of the compradors. The first one will be silenced while the second will be glorified by the New York Times. It is that simple.

I would not worry overmuch for China. The Chinese leaders knew how to deal with Tiananmen, they knew how to deal with minority unrest, without unnecessary cruelty and without hesitation and prevarication. They weren't dilly-dallying when the US tried to send to HK its warships , but flatly denied them the pleasure. They will overcome.

You may read Israel Shamir on China here http://www.unz.com/ishamir/yeti-riots/


Priss Factor , says: Website August 22, 2019 at 4:39 pm GMT

China should do a 'Kashmir' on Hong Kong. Open it fully to all the Chinese. Let Chinese go there and march against Hong Kong snobs and wanna-be-whites.

That said, let's cut the Anglos some slack. Brit empire did lots of bad things but also lots of good things. While HK was set up as colonial outpost and cooperated in terrible opium trade, it was also a center of innovation and change that introduced all of China to new ideas. Also, the trajectory of Chinese history since the 80s shows that it had much to learn from Hong Kong and Singapore. Maoism was a disaster, and it also spawned Khmer Rouge that was worse than French imperialism(that wasn't so bad). Also, back then, it was obvious that the West was indeed far freer and saner than communist China. HK and Singapore set the template for big China to follow.

But that was then, this is now. West is free? UK imprisons people for tweets. The West is sane? France and UK welcome African invaders while banning people like Jared Taylor who stand for survival of the West. Also, the West, under Jewish power, has moved into neo-imperialist mode against Russia, Iran, and Middle East. And US media are not free. It is controlled by Zionist oligarchs who impose a certain narrative, even utterly bogus ones like Russia Collusion while working with other monopoly capitalists to shut down alternative news sites.
And when globo-homo-mania is the highest 'spiritual' expression of the current West, it is now crazy land.

This is why China must now crush Hong Kong. Don't send in the tanks. Just open the gates and send 10 million mainlanders to march down the streets accusing HK snobs of being comprador a-holes. That will do the trick. Turn Hong Kong into No-Bull House.

And what happened to Taiwan under globo-homo regime? It has 'gay marriage'. Chinese need to go there and use maximum force to wipe out the decadent scum.

Some in the West complain about China's social credit system, and I agree it's bad, but we got the same shit here. Ask Laura Loomer and Jared Taylor. 1/4 of corporations will not hire people based on their support of Trump. Also, Chinese term for people with bad social credit is mild compared to what Jewish elites call dissident Americans: 'deplorables', 'white supremacist scum', 'white trash', 'neo nazi', etc. It's all very ironic since globalist Jews are the new nazis who spread wars for Israel to destroy millions of lives.

Ronnie , says: August 22, 2019 at 7:07 pm GMT
I saw Bannon on TV recently around the time of the Tiananmen anniversary. He said that 75,000 people were killed in the Tiananmen incident. This tells you something about his lack of sophistication or credibility. I was a Visiting Professor at the Peking Union Medical College in 1989 and I always assumed that the numbers of dead and injured were greatly exaggerated. I asked many fellow Professors and students in Beijing for their opinions over the years. Many of these were working in the local hospitals at the time. On average the response to me was between 300-500 dead and injured. I have never had any reason to question this estimate. The Wikileaks memo confirms this.
Ron Unz , says: August 22, 2019 at 7:50 pm GMT
@Ronnie

I saw Bannon on TV recently around the time of the Tiananmen anniversary. He said that 75,000 people were killed in the Tiananmen incident. This tells you something about his lack of sophistication or credibility.

Actually, the dishonesty or incompetence of our MSM is *vastly* greater than you're making it out to be.

Over twenty years ago, the Beijing bureau chief of the Washington Post published a long piece in the Columbia Journalism Review publicly admitted that the supposed "Tiananmen Square Massacre" was just a media hoax/error, and that the claims of the PRC government were probably correct:

https://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_myth_of_tiananmen.php

Under the circumstances, it's difficult to believe that most MSM journalists interested in the subject aren't well aware of the truth, and I've noticed that they usually choose their words very carefully to avoid outright lies, but still implying something that is totally incorrect. I'd assume that these implied falsehoods are then wildly exaggerated by ignorant demagogues such as Bannon.

It's really astonishing that our MSM still continues to promote this "Big Lie" more than two decades after the CJR admission ran.

Everyone knows that large numbers of people, including some PRC soldiers, were killed or injured in the violent urban riots elsewhere in Beijing. I think the official death toll claimed by the PRC government at the time was something like 300 killed, which seems pretty plausible to me.

Carlton Meyer , says: Website August 22, 2019 at 7:59 pm GMT
Few Americans are aware of the history of American imperialism in China, with the Yangtze patrols, opium trading, and treaty ports.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/sKgrb0oggfE?feature=oembed

getaclue , says: August 22, 2019 at 11:15 pm GMT
So if I'm reading this article right–Communist China so gooooood– how about those 65,000,000 Mao and his "Leaders" er, basically sort of er, murdered? Lets hear what they have to say about the great China "leaders"? Oh yeah, we can't they killed them . Is this the take away quote from Mr. Shamir?: "I would not worry overmuch for China. The Chinese leaders knew how to deal with Tiananmen, they knew how to deal with minority unrest, without unnecessary cruelty and without hesitation and prevarication." Yes, they do know "how to deal with minority unrest" historically–65,000, 000 corpses is some real "dealing" -- no "unnecessary cruelty"? (I also read recently of the sexual torture of Falun Gong practitioners–brutal gang rapes and with instruments of torture–this is recent and well, happening now I read– Is this also how to deal with "minority unrest"–Do we cheer on China for this too? No "unnecessary cruelty" at work here either? I mean you could point out that yes, there is definitely some of the Colonial backlash he cites as to Hong Kong at work without praising how great China is at "dealing with minorites" I think, that would have played a bit better, to me anyway . https://www.heritage.org/asia/commentary/the-legacy-mao-zedong-mass-murder
https://www.theepochtimes.com/sexual-torture-of-detained-falun-dafa-adherents-rampant-rights-lawyer_2807772.html
Daemon , says: August 23, 2019 at 1:46 am GMT
@peterAUS China doesn't have to be good. It just doesnt have to be evil like your side.
That's all there is to it.
Dutch Boy , says: August 23, 2019 at 3:23 am GMT
Interviews of actual Hong Kongers suggest that their principal objection to extradition is that residents of HK would then be subject to People's Courts rather than to the British style courts of HK with all the legal trappings of the Foreign Devils (presumption of innocence, rules of evidence, no hearsay, no secret trials, no anonymous accusers – all that folderol).
Corvinus , says: August 23, 2019 at 5:02 am GMT
@Hippopotamusdrome "Slavery had some good aspects for those chaps "

No. They lost their freedom.

"a HK resident was head and shoulders above the miserable mainland coolies"

According to Who/Whom?

"the cities and the people who prospered due to their collaboration with the imperialist"

It was the imperialist who prospered.

"These guys wish to restore colonial rule"

No, they want to restore home rule.

"this is what the marchers aspire to, to make HK colony again"

No, they want to be free from the shackles of China.

Jason Liu , says: August 23, 2019 at 6:04 am GMT
@getaclue China's not a communist country except in name. The Epoch Times is a Falun Gong mouthpiece that makes stuff up. I don't support Mao but he is irrelevant today.
Jason Liu , says: August 23, 2019 at 6:14 am GMT
The reasons you list might motivate some of the protesters, but it can't be responsible for this many of them. There IS a homegrown problem here and China would be foolish to ignore it.

The protester's motivations and their implications, as I see it:

1. Loss of prestige – Irrelevant, they'll get used to it

2. Colonial nostalgia – Dead end, open to mockery

3. Housing/economic issues – Manageable with subsidies and regulations, but HK will have to give up some autonomy

4. Regional tribalism/xenophobia – Manageable, not unique to HK

5. US intervention – Dangerous but manageable with better PR & soft power

6. Genuine belief in liberal democracy – Very dangerous, will cause national decline similar to the West

Half-Jap , says: August 23, 2019 at 6:49 am GMT
@Brabantian They are the ideal rat traps.
Even if Wikileaks wasn't a set-up, undoubtably they would be under close surveillance and/or be infiltrated and compromised.
Snowden has been suspect in my mind when he purportedly left so much info to just one journalist belonging to a sketchy outfit, and only a trickle of info came forth, while he's celebrated all over. Many of us already knew about such program from good people like William Binney.
As you say, there are real whisleblowers, and they are ignored, jailed or dead.
Vedic Hyperborean , says: August 23, 2019 at 7:36 am GMT
Goddamn Israel, this is an excellent piece of writing. You hit every nail on the head when it comes to explaining why the troublemakers in Hong Kong are a bunch of useful idiots being used by imperialist powers. These bastards really are house niggers, the kind of people who would side with a distant foreign power over their own countrymen. Hats off to you good sir, thank you for your clarity of thought.
Digital Samizdat , says: August 23, 2019 at 9:21 am GMT
@Commentator Mike Exactly. The Chinese use the deep state to keep order and suppress crime; Washington uses it to spread disorder (Antifa) and protect crime (BLM). There is a difference, you see!
Realist , says: August 23, 2019 at 9:28 am GMT
@Jason Liu

Genuine belief in liberal democracy – Very dangerous, will cause national decline similar to the West

That is for sure.

xvart , says: August 23, 2019 at 9:58 am GMT
I see no real difference between the English colonies and the previous Chinese colonies in Asia this would be "the pot calling the kettle black", just the usual hypocrisy of state actors.

The local HK people who live on the edge of these power structures are not the seeming profiteers of any of this they exist in frameworks they can neither control nor escape escape from so blaming them for being in a place not of their choosing is being disingenuous.

All I read is someone blaming children for the sins of the father.

The Alarmist , says: August 23, 2019 at 12:53 pm GMT
@Ron Unz

It's really astonishing that our MSM still continues to promote this "Big Lie" more than two decades after the CJR admission ran.

No, it is not astonishing. Your homework for tonight is to re-read chapter five of The Iron Curtain Over America

Anon [367] Disclaimer , says: August 25, 2019 at 11:00 am GMT
On HK riots, there are some interesting writers giving some insight into US gov, CIA, UK gov, MI6, Canada, Germany involvement in collabration with treason HKies.

https://www.quora.com/profile/Robin-Daverman

https://www.quora.com/profile/Jamie-Wang-45

https://www.quora.com/profile/Roy-Tong-10

Our China expert, Godfree Roberts.
https://www.quora.com/profile/Godfree-Roberts

The ZUS has started to purge & shut down pro-China-Russia Truth teller in FB, tweeters, Google,

Those can read HKies Cantonese writing, here's one site where these HK rioters recruit, organize & discuss where to meet, how to attack police, activities, and payment.
https://lihkg.com/category/1?order=now

This is the truth of white shirt(local residents West called mobsters) vs black shirt(rioters West called peaceful protestors). The residents of Yuan Lan district demanded the rioters not to mess up their place. The black shirt challenge white shirt for fight by spraying fire host and hurling vulgarity, ended get beaten up.

But West never show the whole video.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/uxNowgZ9a1I?feature=oembed

Any way, I was permanent banned from Quora, FB, even I am not related to China, just because I exposed some of ZUS-India axis evils & lies with evidences in other topics. Censorship is fully in placed.

Bardon Kaldian , says: August 25, 2019 at 1:07 pm GMT

HK was a colony; this is what the marchers aspire to, to make HK colony again.

I haven't followed this closely, but – why? Why would so many Chinese want that? I understand a couple of tycoons, but why would ethnic Chinese want a foreign rule?

Perhaps they- just speculating – don't care about full democracy, but are scared of China's Big Brother policy of complete surveillance & a zombie slavery society. No one with a functioning mind- and the Chinese, whatever one thinks of their hyper-nationalism & a streak of robotic- groupthink- conformist culture – wants to live in a chaos; but also, no one wants to live in a dystopian nightmare which is the fundamental social project of the new China.

peterAUS , says: August 25, 2019 at 8:57 pm GMT
The latest, apaprently, from The Mouth (Sauron .):

.Four police officers were filmed drawing their guns after demonstrators were seen chasing them with metal pipes .

.senior police officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said this week that officers had been targeted and exposed online even while there was temporary peace on the streets. The police said officers' personal data, contact information, home addresses, and more had been shared online, and accused protesters of threatening officers' families .

Is anyone there thinking that as soon as they "neutralize" the LOCAL police force SOMETHING else will come into the fray?
Probably not. Feels good.

This time it won't be Communist era conscripts of the regular Army.

I'd say good luck to those protesters but really can't. Wouldn't make any sense.

Chinaman , says: August 25, 2019 at 10:31 pm GMT

A state that is not ready to use force will necessarily fail, as did the Ukrainian state under Mr Yanukowych in 2014. Blood will be shed and the state will be ruined, if its rulers are too squeamish to stop the rebellion.

Thank you, Me Shamir.

Your analogy of the house nigger is spot on and a accurate portrayal of the slave mentality held by these protestors. It is the epitome of shamelessness and insanity to beg to be enslaved. As a Hker, I am happy to say none of the people I associate with support the protestors and these British house niggers are the filth of HK society.

You are absolutely right to point out a state that is not ready to use force will fail and I think the situation have reached a critical point where some blood must be shed and some examples to be made. There is a Chinese saying " People don't cry until they see the coffin." Time to bring it on.

I never understood Mao and why he had to kill all those millions of people, I do now

Wally , says: August 26, 2019 at 5:13 am GMT
@Corvinus said:
"No, they want to be free from the shackles of China."

HK was taken from China, China has the right to take it back.

Richard B , says: August 26, 2019 at 6:25 am GMT
@The Alarmist "No, it is not astonishing. Your homework for tonight is to re-read chapter five of The Iron Curtain Over America"

One of the must reads in The TUR library.

Richard B , says: August 26, 2019 at 6:30 am GMT
@Brabantian Spot on!

You know who the hostile elite really fears?

People they frame and jail, or kill.

Like Schaeffer Cox and LaVoy.

TKK , says: August 26, 2019 at 7:21 am GMT
The protests are also driven by personal autonomy desires.

Look at the micro level. My sister teaches English in Chengdu. Google, Gmail, You Tube, What's App and Facebook are all blocked in China.

You have to download a VPN before you land to use any of these sites.

Everything online in China is done by WeChat. *Everything* . From video calls to pay your utilities to banking. It's an open joke that WeChat is heavily monitored by the Party. It's the meat of your social credit score- WeChat data.

However, in HK, there are servers where you can hop on FB, Google products and the like.

HK has a more laisse faire vibe that huge enormous China. If you have never been, that point can't be overstated. To make blanket statements about anything in China is misleading.

Because China is another planet. HK was/ is a cosmopolitan outpost that had its own identity- It does not want to be swallowed up by clodhopper spitting burping mainlanders completely.

Bardon Kaldian , says: August 26, 2019 at 8:29 am GMT
Most comments are idiotic (as is the article). True, Western players certainly have fomented much of this; true, many (most?) protesters are violent & obnoxius; true, Chinese national identity planners want to unify, step by step, all mainland (and not only them) Han Chinese under one rule, fearing of some disintegration in the future.

But, having in mind what kind of society mainland China was & has become, Wittfogel's remark on oriental despotism becomes pertinent .

The good citizens of classical Greece drew strength from the determination of two of their countrymen, Sperthias and Bulis, to resist the lure of total power. On their way to Suza, the Spartan envoys were met by Hydarnes, a high Persian official, who offered to make them mighty in their homeland, if only they would attach themselves to the Great King, his despotic master. To the benefit of Greece-and to the benefit of all free men-Herodotus has preserved their answer. "Hydarnes," they said, "thou art a one-sided counselor. Thou hast experience of half the matter; but the other half is beyond thy knowledge. A slave's life thou understandest; but, never having tasted liberty, thou canst not tell whether it be sweet or no. Ah! hadst thou known what freedom is, thou wouldst have bidden us fight for it, not with the spear only. but with the battle-axe."

George , says: August 26, 2019 at 11:09 am GMT
"Once, a HK resident was head and shoulders above the miserable mainland coolies; he spoke English, he had smart devices, he had his place in the tentacle sucking wealth out of the mainland, and some of that wealth stuck to his sweaty hands."

HK is having trouble competing with it's closest peer competitor Singapore. Some of the reason for that is a legal framework that disadvantages HK. The basis of HK real estate market attractiveness over other locations in China and the world is a legal framework separate from China. While the extraction treaty seems reasonable at first, remember HK's extradition treaties have to compete with Singaporean, Taiwanese, and Australian extradition treaties. A curiosity of the extradition treaty is HK is already in China, so why the need to extradite people to somewhere else in China?

China might or might not be able to industrialize its economy through central planning. But one industry they have not been able to centrally plan is movies and entertainment. How is it that in the past with nothing HK had a top tier movie industry, Bruce Lee, but now seems to have nothing.

IMO, mainland Chinese authorities just don't understand the HK economy and are mostly chosing policies they consider convenient.

Jake , says: August 26, 2019 at 11:41 am GMT
"Smart and ruthless Jews like Bill Browder, Boris Berezovsky, Roman Abramovich made their fortunes, but Russia was ruined and its people were reduced to poverty."

That is the way the WASP Empire, the Anglo-Zionist Empire, provides freedom.

Send your money to VDARE so it can call for more WASP Empire – which the WASP and Jewish Elites will fill with as many non-whites as they can entice in order to smash the white trash down forever, so that even more Jews become multi-billionaires. And we all can delight in speaking English, the language of international Jewry since WW2.

onebornfree , says: Website August 26, 2019 at 11:46 am GMT
@Wally "HK was taken from China, China has the right to take it back."

Yes, but not until 2047, apparently:

"One country, two systems" is a constitutional principle formulated by Deng Xiaoping, the Paramount Leader of the People's Republic of China (PRC), for the reunification of China during the early 1980s. He suggested that there would be only one China, but distinct Chinese regions such as Hong Kong and Macau could retain their own economic and administrative systems, while the rest of the PRC (or "Mainland China") uses the socialism with Chinese characteristics system. Under the principle, each of the two regions could continue to have its own governmental system, legal, economic and financial affairs, including trade relations with foreign countries, all of which are independent from those of the Mainland ."

" .Hong Kong was a colony of the United Kingdom, ruled by a governor appointed by the monarchy of the United Kingdom, for 156 years from 1841 (except for four years of Japanese occupation during WWII) until 1997, when it was returned to Chinese sovereignty. China agreed to accept some conditions, as is stipulated in the Sino-British Joint Declaration, such as the drafting and adoption of Hong Kong's "mini-constitution" Basic Law before its return. The Hong Kong Basic Law ensured that Hong Kong will retain its capitalist economic system and own currency (the Hong Kong Dollar), legal system, legislative system, and people's rights and freedom for fifty years, as a special administrative region (SAR) of China for 50 years. Set to expire in 2047, the current arrangement has permitted Hong Kong to function as its own entity under the name "Hong Kong, China" in many international settings ."

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_country,_two_systems

Its, "interesting" that[ unless I somehow missed it], this important detail was completely omitted from this very poorly written article, and from [at least] the first 56 comments in the thread.

Regards, onebornfree

Ghan-buri-Ghan , says: August 26, 2019 at 12:57 pm GMT
From the comments so far, I notice that the usual Zionist, pro-Jewish, pro-Israeli crew around here (PeterAUS, Corvinus, Bardon Kaldian, TKK) also all happen to be virulently anti-China.

Quite an interesting correlation. It seems to suggest something

Rurik , says: August 26, 2019 at 2:04 pm GMT

We can distinguish a real people's rising and foreign-inspired interventions on behalf of the compradors. The first one will be silenced while the second will be glorified by the New York Times. It is that simple.

Well put Sir.

And spot on true.

It is really the perfect metric for understanding the underlying motivations and relative merit, (or lack there of) for any geopolitical event or movement.

Should the people of Crimea be able to determine their own destiny?

Just look to the NYT to understand the nuances of that region and conflict. If they say Crimea is foundering under Russian tyranny, then you can be 100% certain the opposite is the truth.

Did the US foment democracy in (Yats is the guy) Ukraine? Read the NYT, and it all gets spelled out. Assad's chemical attacks, moderate rebels.. From MH17 to 'Russian aggression', you can find 'all the truth that's fit to print'. Only inversed.

Hong Kong, Donbas, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Charlottesville, Yellow Vests, Gaza, Russian hacking and collusion.. and on and on and on. It's an invaluable tool for understanding our times and the motivations and principles (or lack there of) being brought to bear.

And as you mention, for the really salient things, (like serial aggressive wars based on lies, treasonous atrocities writ large, and assorted war crimes, DNC corruption, GOP corruption, et al ad nauseam), one must listen to the crickets, who speak thunderously of these things, with their telling silence.

Rampant white supremacists shooting people right and left, are bull-horned by the screeching -silence over every POC who's a mass-shooter'.

By carefully not reporting some things, and outright lies and distortions with others, the NYT has become an invaluable tool for glimmering the ((moral abomination)) of our times.

We should all be very grateful for their solid and predictable efforts.

Wally , says: August 26, 2019 at 2:08 pm GMT
@onebornfree So what?

– That agreement does not give complete independence & sovereignty to HK.
– That agreement does not allow rioters to engage in destructive, disruptive, violent actions.
– That agreement mandates that the HK administration maintain order, which heretofore they have not.
– Therefore that agreement has been violated, invalidated by the HK administration.

China has the right & responsibility to maintain order in HK. HK is theirs, they are rightfully taking it back.

[Aug 26, 2019] CONFIRMED: YouTube Censors Anti-Protest Channels in Bid to Bolster New Color Revolution in Hong Kong, China

Aug 26, 2019 | 21stcenturywire.com

This week, Silicon Valley giant YouTube has taken a string out of China's bow by deplatforming some 210 channels for posting content criticizing the recent Hong Kong protests, claiming that channels were somehow " sowing political discord " on behalf of the Chinese government.

The Google subsidiary accused the channels of acting "in a coordinated manner." Their move was the most recent in a clear pattern of censorship, along with social media giants Facebook and Twitter who recently censored pro-Chinese accounts in a move critics have called 'arbitrary' censorship.

SEE ALSO: Google Insider Gives 950 Pages of Documents to DOJ

In a blog post this past Thursday, Google threat analyst Shane Huntley said," Channels in this network behaved in a coordinated manner while uploading videos related to the ongoing protests in Hong Kong. "

Huntley added that Google's supposed " discovery " was somehow "consistent with recent observations and actions related to China announced by Facebook and Twitter."

The hypocrisy of the Silicon Valley firms is breathtaking nonetheless. Even the Washington Post was forced to point out that in accusing China of disinformation, Twitter and Facebook take on an authoritarian role they've always sought to reject:

"The move underscored the awkward and largely uncharted territory the companies have attempted to navigate in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election in the United States, where Facebook and Twitter faced furious public and political pressure to stem the tide of disinformation on their platforms. Once vehemently opposed to being seen as "arbiters of truth," both have since built major operations to detect and dismantle forms of online manipulation -- even if it means angering important global actors such as the Chinese government."

Twitter and Facebook are also using the same tactics to selectively shut down established writers who use pen names, including one of the most prolific bloggers specializing in foreign affairs over the last decade, Tony Cartalucci , who was deplatformed for exposing US-backed unrest and 'color revolutions' in countries like Thailand, China, Syria and elsewhere. He remarked after the fact:

"Tony Cartalucci is my pen name and a form of anonyminity – it is not a "fictitious persona." I write in a country where US-backed political agitators – referred to as "democracy activists" in the Reuters article – regularly use deadly violence against their opponents. And if writing under a pen name or anonymously is grounds for expulsion from both Facebook and Twitter, what is The Economist still doing on either platform? The Economist's articles are all admittedly written anonymously ."

Regarding the Hong Kong controversy, Google claims that it knows the Chinese state was attempting to "influence" public opinion against the protesters because of the " use of VPNs " as well as " other methods of disguise. " In actuality, nearly all Chinese internet users who seek any outside news or international perspectives regularly use some form of VPN masking to bypass various information firewalls. The same in the Middle East, and even in Europe, as US regulators continue to force a gradual balkanization of the internet based on global regions.

The issue of US-based digital monopoly firms attempting to manage online discourse globally – is officially a global problem now. As Chinese officials have rightly pointed out: there is no more ambiguity on the issue, as the US is using its overwhelming ownership of internet platforms to fix marketplace of ideas in favor of is own policies – including regime change. Even The Post spells it out clearly:

"There is no international consensus over what qualifies as permissible speech -- or permissible tactics in spreading that speech, whether it comes from government operatives or anybody else."

READ MORE GOOGLE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Google Files

SUPPORT OUR MEDIA PLATFORM – BECOME A MEMBER @ 21WIRE.TV

[Aug 26, 2019] Joshua Wong is right in more ways than he compares the situation with 2014 Maidan riots in Ukraine

The same sponsors (a mixture of foreign NGO and embassies and local disgruntled oligarchs), the same attempt to exploit real population grievances, the same methods with militant protestors training probably by the same instructors or at least the same books, just different people and difference sources for forming the fifth column. The role of students in Hong Cong is more prominant. In EuroMaydant that most violent part of protestors were football hooligans and western Ukrainian militia consisting mostly of neo-Nazi elements ready to commit crimes.
Notable quotes:
"... Joshua Wong, one of the U.S. coddled students, compares the situation with 2014 Maidan riots in Ukraine. He is right in more ways than he says. ..."
Aug 25, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

jo6pac , Aug 25 2019 15:55 utc | 12

Joshua Wong, one of the U.S. coddled students, compares the situation with 2014 Maidan riots in Ukraine. He is right in more ways than he says.

[Aug 26, 2019] What The Hell Is Happening In Hong Kong

Aug 26, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

So is there any evidence that the Hong Kong protests are controlled or being directed by the United States or its NGO community that has created so many color revolutions across the world? The short answer is yes.

For instance, one of the recognized leaders of the protest movement is Joshua Wong, who is a leader and secretary-general of the "Demosisto" party. Wong has consistently denied any links to the United States and its NGO apparatus. However, Wong actually traveled to Washington DC in 2015, after the conclusion of the Hong Kong Umbrella Revolution to receive an award given to him from Freedom House, a subsidiary of the National Endowment for Democracy. Demosisto has been linked with the National Endowment for Democracy as well.

For those that may be unaware, the NED is an arm of the US State Department designed to sow discord in target countries resulting in the overthrow, replacement, or extraction of concessions from governments of target countries.

Indeed, Jonathan Mowat adds to the recent historical understanding of the controlled-coup and color revolutions in his article, " The New Gladio In Action: 'Swarming Adolescents,' " also focusing on the players and the methods of deployment. Mowat writes,

Much of the coup apparatus is the same that was used in the overthrow of President Fernando Marcos of the Philippines in 1986, the Tiananmen Square destabilization in 1989, and Vaclav Havel's "Velvet revolution" in Czechoslovakia in 1989. As in these early operations, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and its primary arms, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) and International Republican Institute (IRI), played a central role. The NED was established by the Reagan Administration in 1983, to do overtly what the CIA had done covertly, in the words of one its legislative drafters, Allen Weinstein. The Cold War propaganda and operations center, Freedom House, now chaired by former CIA director James Woolsey, has also been involved, as were billionaire George Soros' foundations, whose donations always dovetail those of the NED.

Nathan Law, another leader of the Hong Kong protests and rock star of the Umbrella Revolution, is also closely connected to the National Endowment for Democracy. On the NED website, "World Movement for Democracy," in a post entitled " Democracy Courage Tribute Award Presentation, " where the organization mentions an award it presented to Law. In the article, it states,

The Umbrella Movement's bold call in the fall of 2014 for a free and fair election process to select the city's leaders brought thousands into the streets to dem­onstrate peacefully. The images from these protests have motivated Chinese democracy activists on the mainland and resulted in solidarity between longtime champions of democracy in Hong Kong and a new gen­eration of Hong Kong youth seeking to improve their city. The Hong Kong democracy movement will face further obstacles in the years to come, and their ide­alism and bravery will need to be supported as they work for democratic representation in Hong Kong.

Interestingly enough, Joshua Wong has shown up to express "solidarity" with other protest movements engineered by the United States and its NGO apparatus, particularly in Thailand where Western NGOs and the US State Department are controlling both the protest movement and the former government.

For a short overview of how such operations work, watch the video below, a BBC report on the Oslo Freedom Forum which shows some of the leaders of today's Hong Kong protests as well as leaders of the Umbrella Revolution and other global "protest movements" being trained by the US State Department/NGO apparatus in 2013.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/JIjVBUwpri8

Also see my previous articles on the topic linked below:

Notably, these protests are receiving heavy media coverage as well as the ever-present logo (umbrellas), both hallmarks of color revolutions and social media giants Twitter and Facebook have accused China of spreading disinformation via their accounts and have been removing or blocking pro-China accounts indicating that someone in the halls of power in the West would like to see the protests continue.

So Why Does The US Support The Protests?

The United States State Department and its subsidiary color revolution apparatus does not support protest movements because it supports right and freedom for people in other countries. After all, the US government as a whole does not support rights and freedom for its own people. So, in full knowledge that the US government does support the Hong Kong protesters, the question then arises, "Why?"

There are at least three reasons why the US is supporting the Hong Kong protest movement, none of which involve the rights of Hong Kongers. First, with China set to fully acquire Hong Kong in 2047 and growing integration between Hong Kong and China over the next three decades, the United States does not want to see China grow any stronger as an economic, military, or diplomatic powerhouse. The full return of Hong Kong to China would further Chinese growth in all three of these areas.

Second, the United States benefits from a weaker Chinese government and one that is not able to fully impose control on every citizen within its borders. This is why the US has funded destabilization movements all across China, many with real concerns, as well as terrorist attacks in areas where China is planning to develop in the third world.

Lastly, Hong Kong currently acts as a tax haven for Western corporations and as a dumping ground for wealth that needs to avoid taxation. Chinese control may very well threaten that wealth, particularly in light of the fact that the Trump administration is moving forward on an apparent plan to put the United States on a more fair footing with China in terms of international trade through tariffs and increased worker protections.

Geopolitical Concerns

In short, by maintaining Hong Kong as-is, the United States would maintain an outpost alongside China's borders. However, China not only views Hong Kong as physical territory and financial wealth, it understands that, in a trade or real war with the United States, Hong Kong can be used to not only physically position military forces but it can also be used to economically loot the mainland.

It should be noted that China has never given up on the re-absorbing Taiwan and Hong Kong, even threatening to do so with military force if necessary.

Do The Protesters Have Legitimate Concerns?

While the United States may be funding and directing many of the protest leaders in Hong Kong, the fact remains that the protesters themselves as well as the many people who support them have legitimate reasons to be protesting. Indeed, in the case of Hong Kong, it appears that the nefarious American desire to weaken China and protect its corporate tax haven have intersected with the very real need of Hong Kongers to preserve what's left of the liberty they have.

In order to understand this, it is necessary to understand that there is a plethora of opinions on the Hong Kong issue within Hong Kong itself. First, it seems the dividing line of opinions often centers around age, heritage, and geopolitics. From reading mainstream reports and watching a number of videos, it is apparent that the majority of protesters are young, even university-educated people who have lived their lives in Hong Kong while the counter protesters seem to be older, with a stronger heritage link to China. This older generation should not be conflated with oldest, however, as it appears that many are from the "baby boomer" era more-so than the elderly generation before it. That being said, age is not a clear cut line of difference, however, with a number of younger and older people choosing to support opposite sides. Like any protest movement, the majority of the people of Hong Kong can be found going about their everyday business, teetering on the edges of any engagement whatsoever.

One such reason that the oldest and the youngest protesters seem to intersect, however, is, in the case of the oldest, a memory of what life was like in neighboring China before the Cultural Revolution and the ability to watch that way of life change for the worst and eventually horrific. The youngest members of the "anti-China" crowd may be viewing the issue similarly for the completely opposite reason, precisely the fact that they grew up in a time knowing nothing but freedoms their neighbors could scarcely dream of.

It is also important to point out the cultural difference in Hong Kong, which is essentially Chinese culture at heart, but one that has embraced capitalism and has experienced rights that mainland Chinese people can only dream of. Based on Common Law, this includes the right to freedom of speech. As the Financial Times wrote in 2018 ,

For more than two decades, citizens and residents in the former British colony of Hong Kong have enjoyed a wide range of freedoms and legal protections unthinkable in any other part of the People's Republic of China. These protections, guaranteed by the territory's tradition of judicial independence, are the bedrock of the city's extraordinary success as a regional entrepôt. It is precisely because of these legal safeguards that many international companies, including most global media organisations, have chosen to base their regional headquarters in Hong Kong.

As mentioned earlier, one reason the "lease" of Hong Kong was pushed back for so long a time (to be fully realized in 2047) is because it would erase an entire generation of people who remembered what such little freedom was like compared to the zero freedom afforded by China. However, what was perhaps unintended was a birth of an entire generation of people who only knew that freedom and are not as keen to give it away as others may have been. This is one reason you can see young people in the streets with signs supporting freedom of speech and even calling for the right to own and bear arms. In other words. you are able to see so many people who have been denied rights Americans take for granted or are under threat of losing even more of their rights desperately trying to gain or retain them, all while many Americans march in the streets to have those same rights taken away. Clearly, it is true that freedom is treasured the most when it is lost.

This threat of Chinese takeover is very real. With its brutal authoritarian methods of control, social credit systems , slave labor economy, and polluted food supply, many young Hong Kongers are rightfully terrified of what "one country, one system" will mean for them. China is a communist nightmare, no matter how much Western leftists would like to portray otherwise.

Nowhere is there more clear an example of "Western" arrogance than a widely-circulated video where an angry Australian lectures young Hong Kong protesters on how much "better everything is gonna be" when China takes over both Hong Kong and Taiwan. Coming from a country with virtually no rights and doing business in another, it may be par for the course for him. But there is something incredibly irritating to watch his denial of these protesters' legitimate concerns and his lecturing on the part of the authoritarian regime that will soon be in power.

This (the threat of quickly descending into the clutches of Chinese authoritarians) is the very real concern the Western NGOs have seized upon in order to foster social unrest in Hong Kong.

Violence – Violent Counter Protests

There have been numerous videos depicting violence coming from both sides of the isle. On one hand, violence on the Hong Kong side has been blamed on anarchists, often a typical method of specific types of anarchists as well as police false flagging in order to justify a crackdown. Other videos have surfaced showing protesters beating "journalists" and those who disagree with them. The justification given by the protesters were that the individuals were "Chinese agents," a claim that may or may not be true.

Likewise, we have seen numerous videos of counter-protesters also engaging in violence against the Hong Kong protesters, many of whom being members of Hong Kong/Chinese organized crime as mentioned earlier. The videos depicting police attacks against protesters have also been widely circulated in the media.

Scale Of Protests VS Counter Protests

The Hong Kong protests have spread from Hong Kong itself to all across the world with the immigrant community engaging in demonstrations in their adopted countries. Likewise, counter-protests have expanded globally.

There is very little doubt that the protests against greater Chinese involvement in Hong Kong have been much larger than those supporting it. One need only look at the numbers of the protests that took place on August 17 where 1.7 million people showed up to march.

What A Good Outcome Would Look Like

To claim that the protesters have a legitimate cause while, at the same time, pointing out that the US is directing the leaders of their movement may seem contradictory but, unfortunately, it is not. It should be possible to any unbiased observer to understand that the protesters are justified in their fear of being taken over by a country that just finished slaughtering 80 million people and that is currently oppressing each and every one of their citizens. It should also be possible to understand that the Western NGOs have seized upon this fear and desire for freedom for its own nefarious purposes. Only those who wish to promote an ideology would refuse to mention both aspects of the protests, something both the mainstream and alternative media outlets have unfortunately been guilty of.

So with all this in mind, what would a positive outcome be?

1.) First, the United States must cease using its NGO community or intelligence agencies to direct and manipulate an uprising or unrest in Hong Kong. The future of Hong Kong is for Hong Kongers to decide, not under the manipulation of Western NGOs. The US must immediately cease fostering dissent in other nations. If the US wants to counter Chinese empire, it must do so by offering economic and other incentives and not by threats, social unrest, or violence.

2.) None of the protesters' demands thus far are unreasonable. There should be an independent inquiry as to the techniques being used by police, police brutality, and the connections these tactics have to the growing Chinese influence in Hong Kong. Protesters who have been arrested for their political views (not those arrested for offensive violence, rioting, or peddlers of foreign influence) should be released. While official categorizations are no issue to fixate upon, the protests should be reclassified as what they are, protests. Elections should be instituted and the people of Hong Kong should elect their Legislative Council and Chief Executive directly. Withdraw the extradition bill completely from consideration until a reasonable proposal can be drafted, discussed, and agreed upon. Carrie Lam is widely known as a tool of Beijing and, for this reason, a gradual, orderly, and democratic transition of power should take place.

In addition, while not official protest demands, the solidification of the rights to free speech, expression, possession of weapons, and privacy should take place.

3.) Just as the United States should stop inserting itself into the domestic life of Hong Kong, so should China immediately cease any and all attempts to control public opinion, social discourse, and political life in Hong Kong. Because of China's lack of human rights within its own borders, there is a legitimate reason for Hong Kong to desire complete separation from the mainland. Thus, if China is not interested in becoming a free society, the "One country, two systems" policy must be extended abandoned and Hong Kong should remain independent.

Conclusion

By now, it should be relatively clear that many of the leaders of the Hong Kong protests are controlled and directed via the network of United States intelligence agencies and NGO apparatus for the purpose of protecting its corporate tax haven, keeping a friendly outpost on the Chinese border, and sowing seeds of discord within China itself.

However, the protesters are absolutely right in their concern for what will happen if they become part of China – i.e., another human tragedy that is the result of Communist authoritarianism exhibited by the Chinese government.

Thus, both the official and the mentioned unofficial demands are entirely reasonable. The people of Hong Kong must not be forced to live oppressed under authoritarian Chinese rule. Because the US has its own interests that do not involve freedom or human rights, it would be wise of the Hong Kong protests to abandon their Western-backed opposition leaders and find real organic leaders that are not taking orders from the West.

They should, however, continue to press for the rights they have and the rights they deserve.


Savvy , 3 minutes ago link

The reason they protest makes no sense. Many countries have extradition laws. How is Hong Kong exempt? Why would 2mm protest some criminals being sent for trial? Or if they're separatists, and Beijing wants their organs why would that mobilize millions? Haven't they got better battlea to pick?

AOC , 1 minute ago link

The autonomy of Hong Kong was guaranteed in all areas apart from defence and foreign affairs. Under it, Hong Kong's laws and "common law" legal system would remain in place. The independence of its courts and their right to exercise the power of final adjudication were assured.

In doing this, both the UK and Chinese Governments had accepted the "one country, two systems" proposal based on the rule of law and which was to remain unaltered and in place until 2047.

bluez , 4 minutes ago link

If my facts are real, the vast Chinese area surrounding Hong Kong speaks Mandarin, and the (relatively) tiny city of Hong Kong speaks Cantonese, which is a different language. Somehow this was set up by those jolly old Englishmen as their 'Green Zone', from which to control the rest of China (largely with narcotics). Those Brits have quite a talent for creating these utopias.

The Hong Kongers are very wealthy compared with their 'peasant' Chinese neighbors, so they deserve very special treatment! So this was guaranteed to happen.

Inevitably the Langley Boys had to stick their fingers in it (it's all they know how to do).

Imagine if Argentina is a great superpower, and California wants to break away, and the Argentinians are only there to help. Great diplomatic move!

yojimbo , 3 minutes ago link

If they are demanding representative democracy they are either blind to its historic effects across the world, or they are paid for by those for whom the representative system works so well.

Let them ask for semi-direct democracy, direct access to reverse their representative's decisions. See how fast the US and China proper coordinate to cut them off at the root.

HRClinton , 5 minutes ago link

Lastly, Hong Kong currently acts as a tax haven for Western corporations and as a dumping ground for wealth that needs to avoid taxation.

FYI, virtually all former British colonies that are defacto city-states or tiny islands are acting as tax havens for the rich and corrupt. For example:

The Jersey and Guernsey islands, Cayman islands, Turks & Caicos, HK, Singapore. For the former colonies and territories, where its rich and/or corrupt want to expatriate their untaxed wealth, you can also add the Vancouver and Toronto RE, Dubai... and of course London itself.

New_Meat , 15 minutes ago link

when you get 2MM people out on the street, that's more than astroturf.

Hope WB7 is keeping his head on a swivel and discreetly doing his best.

UnionPacific , 27 minutes ago link

At this stage of the war between America and China it does not matter if the protests are organic or supported by America. Beijing sees it as a covert operation by Trump aimed to destabilize China and I do not blame Beijing for thinking that. We are in the process of overturning the Venezuelan government and are actively engaged in the carnage in Yemen while engaging in Colonial style tactics to buy Greenland

Under this light Beijing is going to treat these Protestors as agents of America.

Noob678 , 29 minutes ago link

It's a Rothschild funded color revolution in Hong Kong same as in Ukraine, Syria, Iran, Egypt, .... Looks like many support his color revolution in Hong Kong.

shankster , 32 minutes ago link

Why aren't ameriKans protesting Silicon Valley or the Banks or DC?

Koba the Dread , 13 minutes ago link

Americans are too busy protesting those Communistos overseas who want to destroy our beautiful and pure democracy such as Silicon Valley, banks and the free market democrats who protect us from the ramparts of DC.

[Aug 26, 2019] Hong Kong protest and Euromaydan riots

Notable quotes:
"... Miles Kwok aka Guo Wengui is a disgruntled Chinese oligarch. He is one of the men who finances the Hong Kong protests. Here he appears with Steve Bannon Miles Kwok & Mr Bannon: The 5 principles on Hong Kong's matter (vid). But the NYT ..."
"... One policeman fired a warning shot against the increasingly brutal mob. It is only of question of time until the first person gets killed. ..."
"... China churns out millions of consumer-grade quadcopters starting at $9-00 per unit all the way up to self-navigating programmable units with HQ video transmission. I'd be very surprised if the PLA hasn't got every potential Maidan rooftop and window covered from several angles. I haven't heard any whingeing about drones from the Disgusting Western MSM but drone surveillance/ oversight is already state of the art. ..."
"... might result in providing an adequate narrative for G7 to join the USA in concerted move to decouple China. That's my take away in watching the incremental escalations in both the severity and absurdity of the violence. How else to explain protesters wantonly targeting the tourist industry as the one to bear the blunt? Even 17, 18 years are old enough to know their Mom and Dads' jobs, and thus their own livelihood, depend on this economy and left to their own they would likely have chosen some other means to press their points, if not for having to obey or get paid by their instigators? ..."
"... I also agree with you that TPP was a China-decoupling Plan conceived under Obama. But I am not so sure the idea of China-decoupling dated back before Obama. If it did, the deep state would have ample time prior to now to start the building up of alternative supply chains and other logistics. ..."
"... It is apparent at this point that the deep state is caught off-guarded by China's intransigence and at loss of what to do next. It seems that in their zeal to contain China, they instead are accelerating their own decline. The ironies of real life! ..."
Aug 25, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Hoarsewhisperer , Aug 25 2019 15:27 utc | 8

The black block in Hong Kong, which consists of just a few hundred youth, is now back at rioting . Subway stations get vandalized and people pushed off the trains that the rioters use to ferry from one flash mob incident to the next one. Bricks and Molotov cocktails are thrown at police lines. Some protesters use baseball bats against the police, others have handguns . Today the police, for the first time, deployed water cannon trucks . One policeman fired a warning shot against the increasingly brutal mob. It is only of question of time until the first person gets killed.

The allegedly "leaderless" protesters even have a Dummy Guide for frontline rioters .

Miles Kwok aka Guo Wengui is a disgruntled Chinese oligarch. He is one of the men who finances the Hong Kong protests. Here he appears with Steve Bannon Miles Kwok & Mr Bannon: The 5 principles on Hong Kong's matter (vid). But the NYT still claims that the nativist protesters' use of Pepe the frog is not a sign of alt-right influence.

Joshua Wong, one of the U.S. coddled students, compares the situation with 2014 Maidan riots in Ukraine. He is right in more ways than he says . H.K.
One policeman fired a warning shot against the increasingly brutal mob. It is only of question of time until the first person gets killed.

China churns out millions of consumer-grade quadcopters starting at $9-00 per unit all the way up to self-navigating programmable units with HQ video transmission. I'd be very surprised if the PLA hasn't got every potential Maidan rooftop and window covered from several angles. I haven't heard any whingeing about drones from the Disgusting Western MSM but drone surveillance/ oversight is already state of the art.

Oriental Voice , Aug 25 2019 4:09 utc | 94

@60, milomilo:

I agree with you the HK violent protests were designed to prompt China to over react and send in troupes. The resulting carnage might result in providing an adequate narrative for G7 to join the USA in concerted move to decouple China. That's my take away in watching the incremental escalations in both the severity and absurdity of the violence. How else to explain protesters wantonly targeting the tourist industry as the one to bear the blunt? Even 17, 18 years are old enough to know their Mom and Dads' jobs, and thus their own livelihood, depend on this economy and left to their own they would likely have chosen some other means to press their points, if not for having to obey or get paid by their instigators?

China thus far has not followed their antagonists' script and refused as yet to ramp the confrontation up another notch. But the time will come! The time will come that mass psychology in HK, and subsequently vast other parts of the world, would change into one that demands stern actions be taken by China to stem the carnage and restore minimal order for the sake of livelihood of 7.5 million people. That's when the broom will be lowered, and vassals of the USA would have an excuse of not joining the decoupling if they don't want to.

I also agree with you that TPP was a China-decoupling Plan conceived under Obama. But I am not so sure the idea of China-decoupling dated back before Obama. If it did, the deep state would have ample time prior to now to start the building up of alternative supply chains and other logistics.

It is apparent at this point that the deep state is caught off-guarded by China's intransigence and at loss of what to do next. It seems that in their zeal to contain China, they instead are accelerating their own decline. The ironies of real life!

[Aug 26, 2019] Deeper meanings of the Hong Kong protests> by Prof. Anis H. Bajrektarević

Soviet Union was a theocratic state. The fact that it was simultaneously military empire is only of secondary importance. When Bolshevik's ideology collapsed after the WWII (despite the fact that USSR emerged as the victor), the writing was on the wall as there was no force able to which stand nationalism, fueled by West financial injections and support. nationalism turn the USSR apart. Attempt to colonize the post Soviet state and convert it in a new Latin America by the USA and other western countries was only partially successful. Russia despite huge losses due to drunk Yeltsin period when briefly it was a colony of the USA escaped the clutches and due to economic rape experienced became a staunch opponent of the US imperialism. Which drives the US neoliberal elite crazy if we judge it by the level of anti-Russian hysteria in the USA now (although there are some domestic motive to fuel anti-Russian hysteria -- it helps to unite the fractured society using the fake threat from the "enemy" and thus to patch cracks in the neoliberal facede of the US society)
The USA now is experiencing the situation somewhat similar to the situation of the USSR in 70th or early 80th. Neoliberal idology collapsed in 2008. That means that forces that keep the US global financial empire together with the network of treaties and US financial dominance weakered and nationalism started to show its face prompting country after country engage in attempts to diminish the USA influence and/or revoke vassal status.
The US neoliberal elite now is so de-generated that in comparison the level of degeneration of Soviet Politburo under Brezhnev looks pretty mild. And that also speed up the demise of the US controlled global neoliberal empire. Trump launched trade war with China without understanding possible consequences for the world economic order and the US empire and the situation might go out of control, when the USA will be ostracized fist in "China friendly space" (which BTW is probably half of total global population and then one by one among former vassals in EU and Latin America.
Neoliberals in Congress slowly by surely work on dismantling of the USA neoliberal empire not because they want such an outcome but because they do not understand what are the steps that might help to prevent it other then a switch to gangster capitalism. Add to this possible fracturing of the country (God knows what will happen when the dollar loses the reserve currency status)
In any case this is a slow process. It took the USSR 46 years to collapse after the victory in WWII. It might take even longer for the USA empire to collapse. Much depends on the speed of oil depletion.
Notable quotes:
"... The Soviet Union – much as (the pre-Deng's) China itself – was far more of a classic continental military empire (overtly brutal; rigid, authoritative, anti-individual, apparent, secretive), while the US was more a financial-trading empire (covertly coercive; hierarchical, yet asocial, exploitive, pervasive, polarizing). ..."
"... However, the US imperium managed to survive and to outlive the Soviets. How? The United States, with its financial capital (or an outfoxing illusion of it), evolved into a debtor empire through the Wall Street guaranties. ..."
"... These two pillars of the US might from the East coast (the US Treasury/Wall Street and Pentagon) together with the two pillars of the West coast – both financed and amplified by the US dollar, and spread through the open sea-routs (Silicone Valley and Hollywood), are an essence of the US posture. ..."
"... This very nature of power explains why the Americans have missed to take the mankind into completely other direction; towards the non-confrontational, decarbonized, de-monetized/de-financialized and de-psychologized, the self-realizing and green humankind. ..."
"... Sadly enough, that was not the first missed opportunity for the US to soften and delay its forthcoming, imminent multidimensional imperial retreat. The very epilogue of the WWII meant a full security guaranty for the US: Geo-economically – 54% of anything manufactured in the world was carrying the Made in USA label, and geostrategically – the US had uninterruptedly enjoyed nearly a decade of the 'nuclear monopoly'. ..."
"... Look the map, at Russia or China and their packed surroundings. The US is blessed with its insular position, by neighboring oceans. All that should harbor tranquility, peace and prosperity, foresightedness. ..."
"... Indeed, no successful and enduring empire does merely rely on coercion, be it abroad or at home. The grand design of every empire in past rested on a skillful calibration between obedience and initiative – at home, and between bandwagoning and engagement – abroad. ..."
"... To sum up; After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Americans accelerated expansion while waiting for (real or imagined) adversaries to further decline, 'liberalize' and bandwagon behind the US. ..."
"... When the Soviets lost their own indigenous ideological matrix and maverick confrontational stance, and when the US dominated West missed to triumph although winning the Cold War, how to expect from the imitator to score the lasting moral, or even a momentary economic victory? ..."
"... The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is what the most attribute as an instrument of the Chinese planetary posture. Chinese leaders promised massive infrastructure projects all around by burning trillions of dollars. ..."
"... In 9 more days, high school begins in China, so many of the thrill-seekers will be in class, while the US-paid street criminals will be exposed and ridiculed.. Hopefully locked up for a very long time.. ..."
"... When communism collapsed in 1989, a whole class of smug self satisfied individuals like Fukuyama and the Neocons and Ziocons feeding off them patted themselves on the pack, assured of their complete moral superiority and unlimited virtue. They had won, and could now throw their weight around the planet however they pleased. ..."
"... People who were a little bit more far sighted subsequently concluded that communism collapsed FIRST. The prevailing system in the Anglozionist empire just took longer to collapse. Our system of crony capitalism, crapitalism, parasitic financial capitalism, looting kleptocracy, managed to endure for another 20 years before it collapsed in turn over 2007-8, never to recover. It has remained on life support ever since, sustaining its zombie existence through the printing of tens of trillions of toilet paper money backed by nothing but thin air, negative interest rates, and draconian austerity ravaging societies and entire countries. ..."
"... The world could have been re ordered for the better after 1989. Genuine cooperation between great powers. Wide ranging disarmament. A new security structure for all the countries of the planet. The dismantling of relics like NATO. The resolution of previously intractable conflicts. A much better deal for developing countries with new terms of trade. The needs of billions of people given the priority they deserved. This was all up for grabs. But the opportunity for a better world was thrown away and will never return. ..."
"... Instead, militarism and aggression were given their head. NATO expanded deep into the former Soviet Union in breach of all the undertakings that were given to the contrary. Russia was comprehensively looted and reduced to destitution and misery. One country after another was invaded and destroyed. Millions died and tens of millions immiserated. The whole planet was destabilised. Trillions were squandered that could have been devoted to productive purposes and real human needs. ..."
"... Successful use of propaganda as a means of social control requires a number of conditions: The will to use it, the skills to produce the propaganda, the means to deiiseminate it; and the use of significant symbols with real power over emotional reactions – ideally symbols of the sacred and satanic (Light vs DARK) ..."
"... Nice essay! Indeed, the US empire has survived [hopefully for not much longer] by swindling, and, fraudulent treaties. One critical aspect of the widespread of US influence is SPYING! Highly likely, most of what the US achieved would not have been possible without the spying apparatus that have infiltrated every corner of the world. Of course, spying did not start with the Internet, although now it is made 'natural'. ..."
"... Their education is first and foremost about recognizing the importance of the existing hierarchy and knowing their place in it. Any facts or ideas they learn after this are recognized, understood and acted upon within the context of performing that role. ..."
"... Most of the rewards and punishments of being a middle class professional are not related to being right or wrong, justified or not, honest or dishonest. They are to do with being obedient or not, disciplined or indisciplined, "normal" or eccentric. ..."
consortiumnews.com
Aug 23, 2019 | off-guardian.org

Does our history only appear overheated, while it is essentially calmly predetermined? Is it directional or conceivable, dialectic and eclectic or cyclical, and therefore cynical? Surely, our history warns. Does it also provide for a hope? Hence, what is in front of us: destiny or future?

Theory loves to teach us that extensive debates on what kind of economic system is most conductive to human wellbeing is what consumed most of our civilizational vertical.

However, our history has a different say: It seems that the manipulation of the global political economy – far more than the introduction of ideologies – is the dominant and arguably more durable way that human elites usually conspired to build or break civilizations, as planned projects.

Somewhere down the process, it deceived us, becoming the self-entrapment. How?

*

One of the biggest (nearly schizophrenic) dilemmas of liberalism, ever since David Hume and Adam Smith, was an insight into reality: Whether the world is essentially Hobbesian or Kantian. As postulated, the main task of any liberal state is to enable and maintain wealth of its nation, which of course rests upon wealthy individuals inhabiting the particular state.

That imperative brought about another dilemma: if wealthy individual, the state will rob you, but in absence of it, the pauperized masses will mob you.

The invisible hand of Smith's followers have found the satisfactory answer – sovereign debt. That 'invention' meant: relatively strong central government of the state. Instead of popular control through the democratic checks-&-balance mechanism, such a state should be rather heavily indebted. Debt – firstly to local merchants, than to foreigners – is a far more powerful deterrent, as it resides outside the popular check domain.

With such a mixed blessing, no empire can easily demonetize its legitimacy, and abandon its hierarchical but invisible and unconstitutional controls. This is how a debtor empire was born. A blessing or totalitarian curse?

Let us briefly examine it.

The Soviet Union – much as (the pre-Deng's) China itself – was far more of a classic continental military empire (overtly brutal; rigid, authoritative, anti-individual, apparent, secretive), while the US was more a financial-trading empire (covertly coercive; hierarchical, yet asocial, exploitive, pervasive, polarizing).

On opposite sides of the globe and cognition, to each other they remained enigmatic, mysterious and incalculable: Bear of permafrost vs. Fish of the warm seas. Sparta vs. Athens. Rome vs. Phoenicia However, common for the both was a super-appetite for omnipresence. Along with the price to pay for it.

Consequently, the Soviets went bankrupt by mid 1980s – they cracked under its own weight, imperially overstretched. So did the Americans – the 'white man burden' fractured them already by the Vietnam war, with the Nixon shock only officializing it.

However, the US imperium managed to survive and to outlive the Soviets. How? The United States, with its financial capital (or an outfoxing illusion of it), evolved into a debtor empire through the Wall Street guaranties.

Titanium-made Sputnik vs. gold mine of printed-paper

Nothing epitomizes this better than the words of the longest serving US Federal Reserve's boss, Alan Greenspan, who famously quoted J.B. Connally to then French President Jacques Chirac: "True, the dollar is our currency, but your problem" .

Hegemony vs. hegemoney .

House of Cards

Conventional economic theory teaches us that money is a universal equivalent to all goods. Historically, currencies were a space and time-related, to say locality-dependent. However, like no currency ever before, the US dollar became – past the WWII – the universal equivalent to all other moneys of the world.

According to history of currencies, the core component of the non-precious metals' money is a so-called promissory note – intangible belief that, by any given point in future, a particular shiny paper (self-styled as money) will be smoothly exchanged for real goods.

Thus, roughly speaking, money is nothing else but a civilizational construct about imagined/projected tomorrow – that the next day (which nobody has ever seen in the history of humankind, but everybody operates with) definitely comes (i), and that this tomorrow will certainly be a better day then our yesterday or even our today (ii).

This and similar types of collective constructs (horizontal and vertical) over our social contracts hold society together as much as its economy keeps it alive and evolving. Hence, it is money that powers economy, but our blind faith in constructed (imagined) tomorrows and its alleged certainty is what empowers money.

Clearly, the universal equivalent of all equivalents – the US dollar – follows the same pattern: Bold and widely accepted promise. What does the US dollar promise when there is no gold cover attached to it ever since the time of Nixon shock of 1971?

Pentagon promises that the oceanic sea-lanes will remain opened (read: controlled by the US Navy), pathways unhindered, and that the most traded world's commodity – oil, will be delivered.

So, it is not a crude or its delivery what is a cover to the US dollar – it is a promise that oil of tomorrow will be deliverable. That is a real might of the US dollar, which in return finances Pentagon's massive expenditures and shoulders its supremacy.

Admired and feared, the Pentagon further fans our planetary belief in tomorrow's deliverability – if we only keep our faith in dollar (and hydrocarbons' energized economy), and so on and on in perpetuated circle of mutual reinforcements.

These two pillars of the US might from the East coast (the US Treasury/Wall Street and Pentagon) together with the two pillars of the West coast – both financed and amplified by the US dollar, and spread through the open sea-routs (Silicone Valley and Hollywood), are an essence of the US posture.

This very nature of power explains why the Americans have missed to take the mankind into completely other direction; towards the non-confrontational, decarbonized, de-monetized/de-financialized and de-psychologized, the self-realizing and green humankind.

In short, to turn history into a moral success story. They had such a chance when, past the Gorbachev's unconditional surrender of the Soviet bloc, and the Deng's Copernicus-shift of China, the US – unconstrained as a lonely superpower – solely dictated terms of reference; our common destiny and direction/s to our future/s.

Winner is rarely a game-changer

Sadly enough, that was not the first missed opportunity for the US to soften and delay its forthcoming, imminent multidimensional imperial retreat. The very epilogue of the WWII meant a full security guaranty for the US: Geo-economically – 54% of anything manufactured in the world was carrying the Made in USA label, and geostrategically – the US had uninterruptedly enjoyed nearly a decade of the 'nuclear monopoly'.

Up to this very day, the US scores the biggest number of N-tests conducted, the largest stockpile of nuclear weaponry, and it represents the only power ever deploying this 'ultimate weapon' on other nation. To complete the irony, Americans enjoy geographic advantage like no other empire before. Save the US, as Ikenberry notes:

" every major power in the world lives in a crowded geopolitical neighborhood where shifts in power routinely provoke counterbalancing".

Look the map, at Russia or China and their packed surroundings. The US is blessed with its insular position, by neighboring oceans. All that should harbor tranquility, peace and prosperity, foresightedness.

Indeed, no successful and enduring empire does merely rely on coercion, be it abroad or at home. The grand design of every empire in past rested on a skillful calibration between obedience and initiative – at home, and between bandwagoning and engagement – abroad.

In XXI century, one wins when one convinces not when one coerces. Hence, if unable to escape its inner logics and deeply-rooted appeal of confrontational nostalgia, the prevailing archrival is only a winner, rarely a game-changer.

To sum up; After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Americans accelerated expansion while waiting for (real or imagined) adversaries to further decline, 'liberalize' and bandwagon behind the US.

Expansion is the path to security dictatum only exacerbated the problems afflicting the Pax Americana. That is how the capability of the US to maintain its order started to erode faster than the capacity of its opponents to challenge it. A classical imperial self-entrapment!

The repeated failure to notice and recalibrate its imperial retreat brought the painful hangovers to Washington by the last presidential elections. Inability to manage the rising costs of sustaining the imperial order only increased the domestic popular revolt and political pressure to abandon its 'mission' altogether. Perfectly hitting the target to miss everything else

Hence, Americans are not fixing the world any more. They are only managing its decline. Look at their (winner) footprint in former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria – to mention but a few.

*

When the Soviets lost their own indigenous ideological matrix and maverick confrontational stance, and when the US dominated West missed to triumph although winning the Cold War, how to expect from the imitator to score the lasting moral, or even a momentary economic victory?

Neither more confrontation and more carbons nor more weaponized trade and traded weapons will save our day. It failed in past, it will fail again any given day.

Interestingly, China opposed the 1st World, left the 2nd in rift, and ever since Bandung of 1955 it neither won over nor (truly) joined the 3rd Way.

Today, many see it as a main contestant. But, where is a lasting success?

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is what the most attribute as an instrument of the Chinese planetary posture. Chinese leaders promised massive infrastructure projects all around by burning trillions of dollars.

Still, numbers are more moderate. As the recent The second BRI Summit has shown, so far, Chinese companies had invested $90 [billions] worldwide. Seems, neither People's Republic is as rich as many (wish to) think nor it will be able to finance its promised projects without seeking for a global private capital. Such a capital – if ever – will not flow without conditionalities.

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the BRICS – or 'New Development' – Bank have some $150 billion at hand, and the Silk Road Infrastructure Fund (SRIF) has up to $40 billion. Chinese state and semi-private companies can access – according to the OECD estimates – just another $600 billion (much of it tight) from the home, state-controlled financial sector.

That means that China runs short on the BRI deliveries worldwide. Ergo, either bad news to the (BRI) world or the conditionalities' constrained China.

Greening international relations along with a greening of economy – geopolitical and environmental understanding, de-acidification and relaxation is the only way out.

That necessitates both at once: less confrontation over the art-of-day technology and their monopolies' redistribution (as preached by the Sino-American high priests of globalization) as well as the resolute work on the so-called Tesla-ian implosive/fusion-holistic systems (including free-energy technologies; carbon-sequestration; antigravity and self-navigational solutions; bioinformatics and nanorobotics).

More of initiative than of obedience (including more public control over data hoovering). More effort to excellence (creation) than struggle for preeminence (partition).

Finally, no global leader has ever in history emerged from a shaky and distrustful neighborhood, or by offering a little bit more of the same in lieu of an innovative technological advancement. (Eg. many see the Chinese 5G as an illiberal innovation, which may end up servicing authoritarianism, anywhere.

And indeed, the AI deep learning inspired by biological neurons (neural science) including its three methods: supervised, unsupervised and reinforced learning can end up used for the digital authoritarianism, predictive policing and manufactured social governance based on the bonus-malus behavioral social credits.)

Ergo, it all starts from within, from at home. Without support from a home base (including that of Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Tibet), there is no game changer. China's home is Asia. Its size and its centrality along with its impressive output is constraining it enough.

Hence, it is not only a new, non-imitative, turn of technology what is needed. Without truly and sincerely embracing mechanisms such as the NaM, ASEAN and SAARC (eventually even the OSCE) and the main champions of multilateralism in Asia, those being India Indonesia and Japan first of all, China has no future of what is planetary awaited – the third force, a game-changer, lasting visionary and trusted global leader.

Post Scriptum: To varying degrees, but all throughout a premodern and modern history, nearly every world's major foreign policy originator was dependent (and still depends) on what happens in, and to, Russia. It is not only a size, but also centrality of Russia that matters. It is as much (if not even more), as it is an omnipresence of the US and as it is a hyperproduction of the PR China.

Ergo, it is an uninterrupted flow of manufactured goods to the whole world, it is balancing of the oversized and centrally positioned one, and it is the ability to controllably destruct the way in and insert itself of the peripheral one. The oscillatory interplay of these three is what characterizes our days.

Professor Anis H. Bajrektarević is chairperson and professor in international law and global political studies, Vienna, Austria. He has authored six books (for American and European publishers) and numerous articles on, mainly, geopolitics energy and technology. His 7th book, From WWI to www. – Europe and the World 1918-2018 was to released in December.


Monobazeus

https://sputniknews.com/world/201908241076626482-greenland-us-consulate-denmark/

The US is opening a consulate in Greenland.!

Colour Change Greenland has officially begun.!

eddie
Memo to author: try an analogy with Macau; China's other SAR (special administrative region); the 2nd wealthiest city in the world, and the world leader in gambling profit.. From 05:30 until 23:00, Mainlanders flock into the City, 7 days a week; like an entire country migrating daily.. No protests there, unlike their sinking cousins across the Bay in Hong Kong..

The author suggests that Xinjiang and Tibet be included as somehow vital to China's dynamic progress, when they are empty of resources, and only need to be stabilized as a transit point for the BRI, which is progressing very well indeed.. People here think of it as the New Silk Road, not BRI..

The author is welcome to visit next year, when the 600 k.p.h. Maglev (magnetic levitation) train enters operation, and compare it to say, Amtrak in America, which is like a system from an 1860's cowboy and Indian film..

In 9 more days, high school begins in China, so many of the thrill-seekers will be in class, while the US-paid street criminals will be exposed and ridiculed.. Hopefully locked up for a very long time..

Jack Leon
Hopefully locked up for a very long time..

Ahh the blessed joys of absolute power literally controlling every aspect of peoples thoughts and daily lives, can't wait to move there. People in Macau cannot be black holed into a Chinese gulag that's exactly why it is so successful, no one with any money goes to gamble and party in Beijing. Mainlanders flock there to escape the prison state that is modern China.

"Please move to the back of the Maglev or you will be punished. Discredited Entities are not welcome on this ride."

mark
When communism collapsed in 1989, a whole class of smug self satisfied individuals like Fukuyama and the Neocons and Ziocons feeding off them patted themselves on the pack, assured of their complete moral superiority and unlimited virtue. They had won, and could now throw their weight around the planet however they pleased.

People who were a little bit more far sighted subsequently concluded that communism collapsed FIRST. The prevailing system in the Anglozionist empire just took longer to collapse. Our system of crony capitalism, crapitalism, parasitic financial capitalism, looting kleptocracy, managed to endure for another 20 years before it collapsed in turn over 2007-8, never to recover. It has remained on life support ever since, sustaining its zombie existence through the printing of tens of trillions of toilet paper money backed by nothing but thin air, negative interest rates, and draconian austerity ravaging societies and entire countries.

The world could have been re ordered for the better after 1989. Genuine cooperation between great powers. Wide ranging disarmament. A new security structure for all the countries of the planet. The dismantling of relics like NATO. The resolution of previously intractable conflicts. A much better deal for developing countries with new terms of trade. The needs of billions of people given the priority they deserved. This was all up for grabs. But the opportunity for a better world was thrown away and will never return.

Instead, militarism and aggression were given their head. NATO expanded deep into the former Soviet Union in breach of all the undertakings that were given to the contrary. Russia was comprehensively looted and reduced to destitution and misery. One country after another was invaded and destroyed. Millions died and tens of millions immiserated. The whole planet was destabilised. Trillions were squandered that could have been devoted to productive purposes and real human needs.

We now face disaster on multiple fronts. The very real possibility of war on a scale never seen before in human history, leading to human extinction. Financial, economic and social collapse dwarfing the experience of 1929. Political chaos and upheaval. All of this completely unnecessary.

mark
The US National Debt Clock is whizzing round at $25,000 a second. The current budget deficit is $1,175 billion. Trump is trying to loot the rest of the planet to get himself out of the economic hole he is in.
Jack Leon
The world could have been re ordered for the better after 1989. Genuine cooperation between great powers. Wide ranging disarmament."

All very true and concise, but do you truly believe that had the USSR won the cold war and the USA gone bankrupt, they would have even extended the olive branch the other way? Although impossible to definitively say, my guess is yeah right the Soviets would make Perestroika look like a bargain. We'd be wearing shitty Communist clothes, eating Borscht and watching as the party ravaged every resource for the Soviet oligarchs.

Capitalism is ths best system for economic growth, undeniably proven over and over, problem is, your right we live in a corporate communist state, which destroyed the greatest economic system ever created. And I would also agree 2007 was the official end of our great Republic although building for decades to that point.

vexarb
"the main champions of multilateralism in Asia, those being India Indonesia and Japan first of all"

Read that slowly and all will become crystal clear -- despite the author's Germanic gnomic English.

vexarb
Sorry, I was being pretty gnomic myself. The Herr Professor is saying that the Chief Champions of Multi-Lateralism are countries which are either allied to the Empire (India) or have been crushed by the Empire (Indonesia) or both (Japan).
TheThinker
BigB – I wrote this over on the thread a couple of articles back in a reply to George. But, it seemed pertinent to what you say above, perhaps even reinforces it. As I am double posting, Admin, feel free to delete if it is not useful to the discussion.

I've been reading a collection of essays by a Australian guy called Careys – on Democracy and propaganda, fully named, Taking the Risk out of Democracy. He died unpublished but his papers were collated in a book after. Here some bits from my read that were interesting.

In Jan 1994 David Hume reflecting on the consequences of the recent state terrorist projects that Washington had organised and directed in its Central American domains, with the Church a prime target. They took special note of 'what weight' the culture of terror has had in domestically the expectations of the majority vis-a-vis alternatives different for the powerful; the destruction of hope, they recognised, is one of the greatest achievements of the free world doctrine of 'low intensity conflict' what is called 'terror' when conducted by official enemies. Noam Chomsky 1994

Propaganda is the management of collective attitudes by the manipulation of significant symbolism collective attitudes are amenable to many modes of alteration . intimidation intimidation .economic coercion drill

But their arrangement and rearrangement occurs principally under the importers of significant symbolism and the technique of using significant symbols for this purpose is propaganda. Lasswell, Bardson & Janowitz 1953

Successful use of propaganda as a means of social control requires a number of conditions: The will to use it, the skills to produce the propaganda, the means to deiiseminate it; and the use of significant symbols with real power over emotional reactions – ideally symbols of the sacred and satanic (Light vs DARK)

A society or culture which is disposed to view the world in Manichean terms will be more vulnerable to control by propaganda. Conversely, a society where propaganda is extensively employed as a means of control, will tend to retain a Manichean world view, a view dominated by symbols and visions of the sacred and satanic.

Manichean – an adherent of the dualistic systems (dual = 2) religious systems of Manes, a combination of Gnostic, Buddiasm, Zoroastrianism and various other elements with a doctrine of a conflict between the Light and Dark, matter being regarded as dark and light / good vs evil – love vs hate

The 'public mind' was recognised long ago by corporate leaders to be 'the only serious danger confronting' their enterprise & major hazards facing industrialists along with the newly realised political power of the masses, which had to be beaten back.

Big Business in the US stated started the Americanise Movement ostensibly to Americanise worker, who was being perceived as being under threat from subversive forces of the Industrial Workers of the world.

what started as a method of controlling the political opinion of immigrant workers quickly turned into a massive program for the thinking of an entire population. One of the most startling examples of the escalation of the whole population in processes of propaganda was how Americanisation Program ( a word which conjures up the 'thought police') came to be transformed into a National Celebration Day for the 4th July, to many of us (Carey's words not mine) it comes as a shock to discover that American Independence Day had it's beginning in a Business led program to control public opinion rather than as a direct expression of a Nation celebrating its historical birth.

Gary Weglarz
("The Soviet Union – much as (the pre-Deng's) China itself – was far more of a classic continental military empire (overtly brutal; rigid, authoritative, anti-individual, apparent, secretive), while the US was more a financial-trading empire (covertly coercive; hierarchical, yet asocial, exploitive, pervasive, polarizing).").

– sorry, but this line left me laughing out loud and gasping for a little air. If the meaning of the term's "covertly coercive" and "exploitive" actually are simply euphemisms to mean things like carpet bombing peasant societies into the 'stone age,' running, training and arming death squads and torture operations decade upon decade, over-throwing democratic populist governments and installing brutal dictators, and organizing and supporting mass murder and torture on an epic scale from Indonesia to Chile to Vietnam to Guatemala, and of course endless others, then yes, I suppose we American's have been "covertly coercive" and "exploitive."

I wonder, however, why such routine U.S. mayhem fails to rise to the level of the former Soviet's "overtly brutal" designation? As usual when I read the world as described by Western "academics" I am confused by the carefully coded language used to describe the absolute amoral brutality of Western empire. But hey, perhaps describing the willful murder of a half-a-million Iraqi children as "worth it," is simply an example of America's "asocial" tendencies rather than of actual barbarity.

wardropper
The worst of it all is that none of it NEEDS to have "meaning".

Another sex scandal, or a bank scandal of huge proportions is plastered all over the media, and, two days later, while people are still trying to digest it with the most superficial thought processes they can muster, we suddenly find we are at war with China, Russia – or Denmark, for that matter

"Oh, we seem to be at war again!", would seem to be the most likely response, while we eagerly await the next scandal

The owners of our media honestly deserve the same end that Goebbels faced , but we share guilt inasfar as we have all-too readily allowed them to confuse our thinking until it isn't even thinking any more, but merely knee-jerk reaction to click-bait.

Junaid
Russian President Vladimir Putin demanded that the Department of Defense, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. New US weapons: how will Russia respond

New US weapons: how will Russia respond

Antonym
Russia's centrality? I wouldn't be fooled by the CIA's apparent obsession with Russia; the rest of the world knows that China is now no. 2. The Chinese have caught up technologically by study and crook, and are financially and population wise much stronger than Russia.

In fact Russian Siberia must look quite juicy for Beijing with all its space and minerals , were it not for those damn old Russian MIRVs.

Note well
Nice essay! Indeed, the US empire has survived [hopefully for not much longer] by swindling, and, fraudulent treaties. One critical aspect of the widespread of US influence is SPYING! Highly likely, most of what the US achieved would not have been possible without the spying apparatus that have infiltrated every corner of the world. Of course, spying did not start with the Internet, although now it is made 'natural'.

SPYING, and the ubiquitousness of it, should be stated every time US influence is mentioned.
Antonym
Why would only growing Indian or Chinese middle classes be cancer? Any greed is cancer, whether from a beggar or a billionaire. be they be India, Chinese, American, British etc.
Fair dinkum
The Western middle class has pushed the planet to the precipice. The 400 million plus Chinese and Indian middle class will bury the world at the bottom of it.
Roland Spansky
Oh give it a rest, Chicken Little. People such as yourself have been squawking about the planet being on the edge of a precipice for – conservatively – the last sixty years. Open your eyes. It's a con. You've been had.
wardropper
It seems to have escaped your attention that the middle classes are the main victims of "austerity" these days. The aim is to wipe them out, and have the 1% vs. the enslaved 99% as the new norm. It would be very uncomfortable to have a flourishing 55% middle class against the 1%, which is why we have austerity in the first place.
As for "deadly cancers", well, we obviously have our own fair share of those, but it so happens that they are not the middle class.
Dominic Berry
Their education is first and foremost about recognizing the importance of the existing hierarchy and knowing their place in it. Any facts or ideas they learn after this are recognized, understood and acted upon within the context of performing that role.

Implicitly anti hierarchical facts provoke a cognitive dissonance which prevents them being recognized, but even when it is recognized as important, not accounted for by the existing procedures, critically important, (e.g., ecological collapse, nuclear weapons, austerity economics,) even when we see that something has to be done, well, "What am I supposed to do?"

Most of the rewards and punishments of being a middle class professional are not related to being right or wrong, justified or not, honest or dishonest. They are to do with being obedient or not, disciplined or indisciplined, "normal" or eccentric.

[Aug 26, 2019] US Backs Xenophobia Mob Violence in Hong Kong

Highly recommended!
Like in the case of EuroMaydan with enough money injected and support of local oligarchs militants can be trained and then used as the street fighters in the color revolution.
The fact the NED and similar NGO was not prohibited in Hong Cong in retrospect might be crucial blunder of Chinese authorities. In a way, Hong Cong serves as Western Ukraine in those events.
Aug 19, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

President Donald Trump tweeted on August 13 that he "can't imagine why" the United States has been blamed for the chaotic protests that have gripped Hong Kong.

Trump's befuddlement might be understandable considering the carefully managed narrative of the U.S. government and its unofficial media apparatus, which have portrayed the protests as an organic "pro-democracy" expression of grassroots youth. However, a look beneath the surface of this oversimplified, made-for-television script reveals that the ferociously anti-Chinese network behind the demonstrations has been cultivated with the help of millions of dollars from the U.S. government, as well as a Washington-linked local media tycoon.

Since March, raucous protests have gripped Hong Kong. In July and August, these demonstrations transformed into ugly displays of xenophobia and mob violence.

The protests ostensibly began in opposition to a proposed amendment to the extradition law between Hong Kong, Taiwan, mainland China, and Macau, which would have allowed Taiwanese authorities to prosecute a Hong Kong man for murdering his pregnant girlfriend and dumping her body in the bushes during a vacation to Taiwan.

Highly organized networks of anti-China protesters quickly mobilized against the law, compelling Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam to withdraw the bill.

But the protests continued even after the extradition law was taken off the table -- and these demonstrations degenerated into disturbing scenes. In recent days, hundreds of masked rioters have occupied the Hong Kong airport, forcing the cancellation of inbound flights while harassing travelers and viciously assaulting journalists and police .

The protesters' stated goals remain vague. Joshua Wong, one of the most well known figures in the movement, has put forward a call for the Chinese government to "retract the proclamation that the protests were riots," and restated the consensus demand for universal suffrage.

Wong is a bespectacled 22-year-old who has been trumpeted in Western media as a "freedom campaigner," promoted to the English-speaking world through his own Netflix documentary, and rewarded with the backing of the U.S. government.

But behind telegenic spokespeople like Wong are more extreme elements such as the Hong Kong National Party, whose members have appeared at protests waving the Stars and Stripes and belting out cacophonous renditions of the Star-Spangled Banner. The leadership of this officially banned party helped popularize the call for the full independence of Hong Kong, a radical goal that is music to the ears of hardliners in Washington.

Xenophobic resentment has defined the sensibility of the protesters, who vow to "retake Hong Kong" from Chinese mainlanders they depict as a horde of locusts. The demonstrators have even adopted one of the most widely recognized symbols of the alt-right, emblazoning images of Pepe the Frog on their protest literature. While it's unclear that Hong Kong residents see Pepe the same way American white nationalists do, members of the U.S. far-right have embraced the protest movement as their own, and even personally joined their ranks.

Among the most central influencers of the demonstrations is a local tycoon named Jimmy Lai. The self-described "head of opposition media," Lai is widely described as the Rupert Murdoch of Asia. For the masses of protesters, Lai is a transcendent figure. They clamor for photos with him and applaud the oligarch wildly when he walks by their encampments.

Lai established his credentials by pouring millions of dollars into the 2014 Occupy Central protest, which is known popularly as the Umbrella Movement. He has since used his massive fortune to fund local anti-China political movers and shakers while injecting the protests with a virulent brand of Sinophobia through his media empire.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/OSUSVgLgZx0?feature=oembed

Though Western media has depicted the Hong Kong protesters as the voice of an entire people yearning for freedom, the island is deeply divided. This August, a group of protesters mobilized outside Jimmy Lai's house, denouncing him as a "running dog" of Washington and accusing him of national betrayal by unleashing chaos on the island.

Days earlier, Lai was in Washington, coordinating with hardline members of Trump's national security team, including John Bolton. His ties to Washington run deep -- and so do those of the front-line protest leaders.

Millions of dollars have flowed from U.S. regime-change outfits like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) into civil society and political organizations that form the backbone of the anti-China mobilization. And Lai has supplemented it with his own fortune while instructing protesters on tactics through his various media organs.

With Donald Trump in the White House, Lai is convinced that his moment may be on the horizon. Trump "understands the Chinese like no president understood," the tycoon told The Wall Street Journal . "I think he's very good at dealing with gangsters."

Born to Wealthy Mainland Parents

Born in the mainland in 1948 to wealthy parents, whose fortune was expropriated by the Communist Party during the revolution the following year, Jimmy Lai began working at 9 years old, carrying bags for train travelers during the hard years of the Great Chinese Famine.

Inspired by the taste of a piece of chocolate gifted to him by a wealthy man, he decided to smuggle himself to Hong Kong to discover a future of wealth and luxury. There, Lai worked his way up the ranks of the garment industry, growing enamored with the libertarian theories of economists Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, the latter of whom became his close friend.

Friedman is famous for developing the neoliberal shock therapy doctrine that the U.S. has imposed on numerous countries, resulting in the excess deaths of millions. For his part, Hayek is the godfather of the Austrian economic school that forms the foundation of libertarian political movements across the West.

Lai built his business empire on Giordano, a garment label that became one of Asia's most recognizable brands. In 1989, he threw his weight behind the Tiananmen Square protests, hawking t-shirts on the streets of Beijing calling for Deng Xiaoping to "step down."

Lai's actions provoked the Chinese government to ban his company from operating on the mainland. A year later, he founded Next Weekly magazine, initiating a process that would revolutionize the mediascape in Hong Kong with a blend of smutty tabloid-style journalism, celebrity gossip and a heavy dose of anti-China spin.

The vociferously anti-communist baron soon became Hong Kong's media kingpin, worth a whopping $660 million in 2009.

Today, Lai is the founder and majority stakeholder of Next Digital, the largest listed media company in Hong Kong, which he uses to agitate for the end of what he calls the Chinese "dictatorship."

His flagship outlet is the popular tabloid Apple Daily , employing the trademark mix of raunchy material with a heavy dose of xenophobic, nativist propaganda.

In 2012, Apple Daily carried a full page advertisement depicting mainland Chinese citizens as invading locusts draining Hong Kong's resources. The advertisement called for a stop to the "unlimited invasion of mainland pregnant women in Hong Kong." (This was a crude reference to the Chinese citizens who had flocked to the island while pregnant to ensure that their children could earn Hong Kong residency, and resembled the resentment among the U.S. right-wing of immigrant "anchor babies.")

Ad in Lai's Apple Daily: "That's enough! Stop unlimited invasion of mainland pregnant women!"

The transformation of Hong Kong's economy has provided fertile soil for Lai's brand of demagoguery. As the country's manufacturing base moved to mainland China after the golden years of the 1980s and '90s, the economy was rapidly financialized, enriching oligarchs like Lai. Left with rising debt and dimming career prospects, Hong Kong's youth became easy prey to the demagogic politics of nativism .

Many protesters have been seen waving British Union Jacks in recent weeks, expressing a yearning for an imaginary past under colonial control which they never personally experienced.

In July, protesters vandalized the Hong Kong Liaison Office, spray-painting the word, "Shina" on its facade. This term is a xenophobic slur some in Hong Kong and Taiwan use to refer to mainland China. The anti-Chinese phenomenon was visible during the 2014 Umbrella movement protests as well, with signs plastered around the city reading, "Hong Kong for Hong Kongers."

This month, protesters turned their fury on the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions, spray-painting "rioters" on its office. The attack represented resentment of the left-wing group's role in a violent 1967 uprising against the British colonial authorities, who are now seen as heroes among many of the anti-Chinese demonstrators.

Besides Lai, a large part of the credit for mobilizing latent xenophobia goes to the right-wing Hong Kong Indigenous party leader Edward Leung. Under the direction of the 28-year-old Leung, his pro-independence party has brandished British colonial flags and publicly harassed Chinese mainland tourists. In 2016, Leung was exposed for meeting with U.S. diplomatic officials at a local restaurant.

Though he is currently in jail for leading a 2016 riot where police were bombarded with bricks and pavement – and where he admitted to attacking an officer – Leung's rightist politics and his slogan, "Retake Hong Kong," have helped define the ongoing protests.

A local legislator and protest leader described Leung to The New York Times as "the Che Guevara of Hong Kong's revolution," referring without a hint of irony to the Latin American communist revolutionary killed in a CIA-backed operation . According to the Times , Leung is "the closest thing Hong Kong's tumultuous and leaderless protest movement has to a guiding light."

The xenophobic sensibility of the protesters has provided fertile soil for Hong Kong National Party to recruit. Founded by the pro-independence activist Andy Chan, the officially banned party combines anti-Chinese resentment with calls for the U.S. to intervene. Images and videos have surfaced of HKNP members waving the flags of the U.S. and U.K., singing the Star Spangled Banner, and carrying flags emblazoned with images of Pepe the Frog, the most recognizable symbol of the U.S. alt-right.

While the party lacks a wide base of popular support, it is perhaps the most outspoken within the protest ranks, and has attracted disproportionate international attention as a result. Chan has called for Trump to escalate the trade war and accused China of carrying out a "national cleansing" against Hong Kong. "We were once colonized by the Brits, and now we are by the Chinese," he declared.

Displays of pro-American jingoism in the streets of Hong Kong have been like catnip for the international far-right.

Patriot Prayer founder Joey Gibson recently appeared at an anti-extradition protest in Hong Kong, livestreaming the event to his tens of thousands of followers. A month earlier, Gibson was seen roughing up antifa activists alongside ranks of club wielding fascists. In Hong Kong, the alt-right organizer marveled at the crowds.

"They love our flag here more than they do in America!" Gibson exclaimed as marchers passed by, flashing him a thumbs up sign while he waved the Stars and Stripes.

Xenophobic Propaganda Such xenophobic propaganda is consistent with the clash of civilizations theory that Jimmy Lai has promulgated through his media empire.

"You have to understand the Hong Kong people – a very tiny 7 million or 0.5 percent of the Chinese population – are very different from the rest of Chinese in China, because we grow up in the Western values, which was the legacy of the British colonial past, which gave us the instinct to revolt once this extradition law was threatening our freedom," Lai told Fox News' Maria Bartiromo. "Even America has to look at the world 20 years from now, whether you want the Chinese dictatorial values to dominate this world, or you want the values that you treasure [to] continue."

During a panel discussion at the neoconservative Washington-based think tank, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Lai told the pro-Israel lobbyist Jonathan Schanzer,

"We need to know that America is behind us. By backing us, America is also sowing to the will of their moral authority because we are the only place in China, a tiny island in China, which is sharing your values, which is fighting the same war you have with China."

While Lai makes no attempt to conceal his political agenda, his bankrolling of central figures in the 2014 Occupy Central, or Umbrella movement protests, was not always public.

Leaked emails revealed that Lai poured more than $1.2 million to anti-China political parties including $637,000 to the Democratic Party and $382,000 to the Civic Party. Lai also gave $115,000 to the Hong Kong Civic Education Foundation and Hong Kong Democratic Development Network, both of which were co-founded by Reverend Chu Yiu-ming. Lai also spent $446,000 on Occupy Central's 2014 unofficial referendum.

Lai's U.S. consigliere is a former Navy intelligence analyst who interned with the CIA and leveraged his intelligence connections to build his boss's business empire. Named Mark Simon , the veteran spook arranged for former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin to meet with a group in the anti-China camp during a 2009 visit to Hong Kong. Five years later, Lai paid $75,000 to neoconservative Iraq war author and U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz to organize a meeting with top military figures in Myanmar.

This July, as the Hong Kong protests gathered steam, Lai was junketed to Washington, D.C., for meetings with Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, National Security Advisor John Bolton, and Republican Senators Ted Cruz, Cory Gardner, and Rick Scott. Bloomberg News correspondent Nicholas Wadhams remarked on Lai's visit, "Very unusual for a [non-government] visitor to get that kind of access."

One of Lai's closest allies, Martin Lee, was also granted an audience with Pompeo, and has held court with U.S. leaders including Rep. Nancy Pelosi and former Vice President Joseph Biden .

Among the most prominent figures in Hong Kong's pro-U.S. political parties, Lee began collaborating with Lai during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. A recipient of the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy's "Democracy Award" in 1997, Lee is the founding chairman of Hong Kong's Democratic Party, now considered part of the pro-U.S. camp's old guard.

While Martin Lee has long been highly visible on the pro-western Hong Kong scene, a younger generation of activists emerged during the 2014 Occupy Central protests with a new brand of localized politics.

Joshua Wong meets with Sen. Marco Rubio in Washington on May 8, 2017.

Joshua Wong was just 17 years old when the Umbrella Movement took form in 2014. After emerging in the protest ranks as one of the more charismatic voices, he was steadily groomed as the pro-West camp's teenage poster child. Wong received lavish praised in Time magazine, Fortune , and Foreign Policy as a "freedom campaigner," and became the subject of an award-winning Netflix documentary called "Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower."

Unsurprisingly, these puff pieces have overlooked Wong's ties to the U.S. regime-change apparatus. For instance, National Endowment for Democracy's National Democratic Institute (NDI) maintains a close relationship with Demosisto, the political party Wong founded in 2016 with fellow Umbrella movement alumnus Nathan Law.

In August, a candid photo surfaced of Wong and Law meeting with Julie Eadeh, the political counselor at the U.S. Consulate General in Hong Kong, raising questions about the content of the meeting and setting off a diplomatic showdown between Washington and Beijing.

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The Office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Hong Kong submitted a formal complaint with the U.S. consulate general, calling on the U.S. "to immediately make a clean break from anti-China forces who stir up trouble in Hong Kong, stop sending out wrong signals to violent offenders, refrain from meddling with Hong Kong affairs and avoid going further down the wrong path."

The pro-Beijing Hong Kong newspaper Ta Kung Pao published personal details about Eadeh, including the names of her children and her address. State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus lashed out, accusing the Chinese government of being behind the leak but offering no evidence. "I don't think that leaking an American diplomat's private information, pictures, names of their children, I don't think that is a formal protest, that is what a thuggish regime would do," she said at a State Department briefing.

But the photo underscored the close relationship between Hong Kong's pro-West movement and the U.S. government. Since the 2014 Occupy Central protests that vaulted Wong into prominence, he and his peers have been assiduously cultivated by the elite Washington institutions to act as the faces and voices of Hong Kong's burgeoning anti-China movement.

In September 2015, Wong, Martin Lee, and University of Hong Kong law professor Benny Tai Lee were honored by Freedom House, a right-wing soft-power organization that is heavily funded by the National Endowment for Democracy and other arms of the U.S. government.

Just days after Trump's election as president in November 2016, Wong was back in Washington to appeal for more U.S. support. "Being a businessman, I hope Donald Trump could know the dynamics in Hong Kong and know that to maintain the business sector benefits in Hong Kong, it's necessary to fully support human rights in Hong Kong to maintain the judicial independence and the rule of law," he said .

Wong's visit provided occasion for the Senate's two most aggressively neoconservative members, Marco Rubio and Tom Cotton, to introduce the "Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act," which would "identify those responsible for abduction, surveillance, detention and forced confessions, and the perpetrators will have their U.S. assets, if any frozen and their entry to the country denied."

Wong was then taken on a junket of elite U.S. institutions including the right-wing Heritage Foundation think tank and the newsrooms of The New York Times and Financial Times . He then held court with Rubio, Cotton, Pelosi, and Sen. Ben Sasse .

In September 2017, Rubio, Ben Cardin, Tom Cotton, Sherrod Brown, and Cory Gardner signed off on a letter to Wong, Law and fellow anti-China activist Alex Chow, praising them for their "efforts to build a genuinely autonomous Hong Kong."

The bipartisan cast of senators proclaimed that "the United States cannot stand idly by."

A year later, Rubio and his colleagues nominated the trio of Wong, Law, and Chow for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize.

Washington's support for the designated spokesmen of the "retake Hong Kong movement" was supplemented with untold sums of money from U.S. regime-change outfits like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and subsidiaries like the National Democratic Institute (NDI) to civil society, media and political groups.

As journalist Alex Rubinstein reported , the Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor, a key member of the coalition that organized against the now-defunct extradition law, has received more than $2 million in NED funds since 1995. And other groups in the coalition reaped hundreds of thousands of dollars from the NED and NDI last year alone .

While U.S. lawmakers nominate Hong Kong protest leaders for peace prizes and pump their organizations with money to "promote democracy," the demonstrations have begun to spiral out of control.

Protests Become More Aggressive

After the extradition law was scrapped, the protests moved into a more aggressive phase, launching "hit and run attacks" against government targets, erecting roadblocks, besieging police stations, and generally embracing the extreme modalities put on display during U.S.-backed regime-change operations from Ukraine to Venezuela to Nicaragua.

The techniques clearly reflected the training many activists have received from Western soft-power outfits. But they also bore the mark of Jimmy Lai's media operation.

In addition to the vast sums Lai spent on political parties directly involved in the protests, his media group created an animated video "showing how to resist police in case force was used to disperse people in a mass protest."

While dumping money into the Hong Kong's pro-U.S. political camp in 2013, Lai traveled to Taiwan for a secret roundtable consultation with Shih Ming-teh, a key figure in Taiwan's social movement that forced then-president Chen Shui-bian to resign in 2008. Shih reportedly instructed Lai on non-violent tactics to bring the government to heel, emphasizing the importance of a commitment to go to jail.

According to journalist Peter Lee , "Shih supposedly gave Lai advice on putting students, young girls, and mothers with children in the vanguard of the street protests, in order to attract the support of the international community and press, and to sustain the movement with continual activities to keep it dynamic and fresh." Lai reportedly turned off his recording device during multiple sections of Shih's tutorial.

One protester explained to The New York Times how the movement attempted to embrace a strategy called, "Marginal Violence Theory:" By using "mild force" to provoke security services into attacking the protesters, the protesters aimed to shift international sympathy away from the state.

But as the protest movement intensifies, its rank-and-file are doing away with tactical restraint and lashing out at their targets with full fury. They have thrown molotov cocktails into intersections to block traffic; attacked vehicles and their drivers for attempting to break through roadblocks; beaten opponents with truncheons; attacked a wounded man with a U.S. flag; menaced a reporter into deleting her photos; kidnapped and beat a journalist senseless; beat a mainland traveler unconscious and prevented paramedics from reaching the victim; and hurled petrol bombs at police officers.

The charged atmosphere has provided a shot in the arm to Lai's media empire, which had been suffering heavy losses since the last round of national protests in 2014. After the mass marches against the extradition bill on June 9, which Lai's Apple Daily aggressively promoted, his Next Digital doubled in value , according to Eji Insight.

Meanwhile, the protest leaders show no sign of backing down. Nathan Law, the youth activist celebrated in Washington and photographed meeting with U.S. officials in Hong Kong, took to Twitter to urge his peers to soldier on : "We have to persist and keep the faith no matter how devastated the reality seems to be," he wrote.

Law was tweeting from New Haven, Connecticut, where he was enrolled with a full scholarship at Yale University. While the young activist basked in the adulation of his U.S. patrons thousands of miles from the chaos he helped spark, a movement that defined itself as a "leaderless resistance" forged ahead back home.

Dan Cohen is a journalist and co-producer of the award-winning documentary, "Killing Gaza." He has produced widely distributed video reports and print dispatches from across Israel-Palestine, Latin America, the U.S.-Mexico border and Washington, D.C. Follow him on Twitter at @ DanCohen3000 .


RW Nye , August 22, 2019 at 11:42

The author's use of the term "xenophobia" here is certainly inappropriate, as virtually all persons involved are Chinese–however divided they may be on issues of politics. Those political issues are thorny ones, stemming from the different historical experiences of the Chinese in Taiwan, Hong Kong and the mainland. Weak government doomed the imperial dynasty, so it is understandable that the Chinese leadership should place a high premium on maintaining order and stability. Ordinary people also value order and stability, but not necessarily as much as they treasure their personal liberties. The percentage of Hong Kong's population supporting the protesters is difficult to determine from overseas, but available sources suggest it is substantial. Extradition procedures and suffrage issues may be only the tip of the iceberg. I suspect the real concern is the increasingly repressive "social credit" policies and universal surveillance of mainland society.

Nicholas Smith , August 23, 2019 at 16:22

I'm sorry, but the usage of locusts to refer to "outsiders" is classical xenophobic imagery, regardless of ethnic similarities. By your logic the french considering the Germans "huns" wouldn't be xenophobic, because they're both Caucasian.

Maricata , August 21, 2019 at 18:26

""You have to understand the Hong Kong people – a very tiny 7 million or 0.5 percent of the Chinese population – are very different from the rest of Chinese in China, because we grow up in the Western values, which was the legacy of the British colonial past, which gave us the instinct to revolt once this extradition law was threatening our freedom," Lai told Fox News' Maria Bartiromo"

Right.

Western values of imperialism, class, racism, violence, misogyny and indignity.

This is where Trump comes in. Anyone who doesn't understand that Western civilization is crumbling just needs to look at Trump.

Funny,no mention of Soros. You know he is lurking somewhere behind the scenes.

Robert , August 21, 2019 at 14:10

US is pushing for a Chinese Maidan. Soon the escalation of false-flag violence will occur, pushing China to respond with force. In the East, the CIA is fomenting separatism and extremism among Muslim Uighurs, pushing them to volunteer for ISIS and Al Qaeda in the ME, and then blaming China for responding to their terrorism with re-training camps.

Maricata , August 21, 2019 at 18:27

That is how the CIA works.

John Patrick , August 21, 2019 at 05:28

I don't see any mention of the China's "re-education" camps for 1 million Muslims or of the brutal religious persecution (from Christianity to Falun Gong) by the author or commenters. The list of atrocities could go on, but they might have something to do with the huge number of people ("small streets" or not) in HK protesting against the possibility being sent across the boarder to the totalitarian behemoth on their border. No, but they're all dupes of the US.
Yes, of course, the US is corrupt and its foreign policy evil, but the same for China. (Check in with the Dali Lama on that). So here's a news flash for you idealogues: both countries suck. They are oppressive and ruthless.
And "xenophobic"? What SJW drivel. Fortunately, China and HK are both mostly Asian, otherwise the ever so woke author would be playing enough race cards to fill the East China Sea.

Rad , August 21, 2019 at 20:34

"(Check in with the Dali Lama on that)." What makes you think the Delai Lama is objective? After all, his brother worked for the CIA and also had skin in the game. Look up the article in the Chicago Tribune on CIA funding for the Tibetan warriors. The writer managed to interview Tibetians involved in the failed uprising many many years later and they were willing to talk because they realised they had sacrificed their lives for nothing.

Anonymot , August 20, 2019 at 19:18

One of the more interesting things about our trajectory of failed regime changes and installing ignorant quislings is that they have happened from the Democratic administrations, like Truman with Korea, Cuba with Kennedy, Vietnam that started with Democrats and ended with Republicans on to the inflaming of the Middle East under Bush and exploding with Libya, Afghanistan, Irak etc. under Obama and the Ukraine and hate-Russia, ostensibly Democrat. under Hillary.

If you look at the overall rather than piecemeal it is perfectly clear that the sole consistency in all of it is the CIA AND ITS BROTHER INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES. They and the State Dept. were and are the sole filters and providers of foreign affairs policy recommendations to Presidents and Congress, Republican and Democrat.

Considered beyond the surface level that clearly says that neither the Presidents nor Congress control anything we do overseas. The options, the personnel, and their weights are all provided by our sole experts, via the CIA.

Our domestic issues may be argued until Kingdom Come, by Sanders, Warren, or Marion whatsername, but they don't say anything of any significance about foreign affairs. (The sole exception being Tulsi Gabbard who's just been run off the rails by the Clinton controlled DNC.)

You can rail until you're blue, vote for whoever you will. The mindset of the CIA is directed now and always has been by oil and MIC interests. The reason they have all failed is a vision of failure representing semi-permanent chaos in those countries as power. It's a variation of divide-and-conquer, because the divided are too weak to resist our advances.

One day we'll wahe up to the discovery that we don't need the expensive facade of elected official at any level. They only make noise. The Harrises and O'Rourkes may argue over the best toothpaste or hypothesize over how to gussie up police uniforms, but none of the billions they spend to become elected make any difference on what goes down the sewers in our foreign policies.

Democracy was a great idea. Too bad we never tried it.

Michael Antony , August 20, 2019 at 18:34

I fear this is only Part One of the US plan. The expectation is that sooner or later China will have to crack down on this movement, and the demonstrators will ensure the crackdown is harsh and brutal. It is what happens afterwards in Taiwan that will matter. There a wave of sympathy for Hong Kong will lead to popular demands to declare independence. US agents will encourage them. Taiwan independence for China means war, because if they allow it, Taiwan will become a massive US military base. The US is already arming Taiwan to prepare for that war. They think that a largely naval and air war is winnable for them. They think that the modest Chinese nuclear deterrent (max. 300 warheads) has been neutralized by the Thaad anti-missile system in South Korea. The US war party is actually betting on winning a war with China to set it back 3o years. And they think this is the moment to do it.

Realist , August 21, 2019 at 06:23

Your remarks about Taiwan are really food for thought. It seemed almost unthinkable to me that Washington would eagerly instigate a war with China on its own turf. They undoubtedly assume that China cannot or will not strike at the American homeland in response. Japan and South Korea, certainly at risk in such a war, are probably incapable of talking any sense into the Americans. They haven't succeeded with respect to North Korea. Russia has plenty of nukes to spare, what makes Washington think that they would not be for sale or gifting to the Chinese in the extreme scenario you picture. A conquered China would pretty much mean the quick end of an independent Russia. Putin has to know that.

Maricata , August 21, 2019 at 18:28

Thank Steve Bannon for this. He consistently meets with Chinese 'dissidents' to create the subjective and material basis for chaos and crisis.

Dan Kuhn , August 20, 2019 at 11:46

If this writer can identify the leaders, ( collaboraters of the US and Brit Governmenst) why can`t the Chinese authorities pick them up one at a time. If this were happening in the USA all of these leaders would be in maximum security lockups. Just pick them up and disappear them for a while. You never fight a fire by dumping water into the centre of the fire you fight it from around the edges. Cut off it`s oxygen supply.

I am sure China has a plan to end this rebellion , but so long as these people are running around free Hong Kong will be unmanageable. Cut off the head of the snake. Go for the leaders. First step cancel the one country two systems treaty, the Brits and US are doing their best to subvert the word and intent of the treaty so why should China be forced to live with it? Out law every NGO in the country. close the US embassy there. Then clear the streets. Businesses that want to leave let them go. Those that want to stay need to understand that they will stay out of politics and live under the rule of law.

lysias , August 20, 2019 at 14:45

The West wants an excuse to treat China as a pariah state. China should react with patience. Time is on its side.

Gary Weglarz , August 20, 2019 at 11:25

The "Yellow Vest" are rendered essentially invisible by Western MSM, and if covered at all are roundly vilified even after 9 straight months of being on the streets all over France. Any resistance to our neoliberal military/police state paradise is unacceptable and will be treated as such. One is hard pressed in examining MSM to find any critique of the brutality of the French police in suppressing these protests.

However, Western MSM simply LOVES protests that can be used to paint our official enemies as "evil," or "totalitarian," or "un-democratic," as if the word "democracy" has ANY meaning whatsoever in the Western lexicon other than "rule by oligarchy."

One need not be the proverbial "rocket scientist" to see the events unfolding in Hong Kong within the prism of the ever present American and Western neocolonial soft power and propaganda operations. However, one does need to close one's eyes rather tightly and to deny a great deal of well documented recent history from about the globe NOT TO SEE these connections.

– "citizen-consumers are daily less interested in whether something is a fact than in whether it is convenient that it should be believed"- this quote from far back in 1962 – Alex Carey quoting Daniel Boorstin from Boorstin's book – "The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America"

The following quote by Carey of Boorstin from the same book seems to sum up our current reality all to well:

"we are threatened by a new and peculiarly American menace . . . It is the menace of unreality . . . We risk being the first people in history to have been able to make their illusions so vivid, so persuasive, so 'realistic' that they can live in them. We are the most illusioned people on earth. Yet we dare not become disillusioned, because our illusions are the very house in which we live, they are our news, our heroes . . . our very experience."

Ma Laoshi , August 20, 2019 at 10:41

There is one question which I can't seem to get answered; perhaps this means it is the right question. As far as I know, all these CIA fronts NED, NDI, IRI, etc., violate HK's Basic Law when they operate in the territory. And I'm positive that foreign affairs are explicitly excluded from HK's autonomy deal. So why on earth are these outfits still allowed to meddle in Hong Kong's, and thus China's, politics, financially and otherwise? Part of me says that the weak HK Govt is only getting what it deserves if they don't keep their own house in order.

Carroll Price , August 20, 2019 at 08:03

The planners of international chaos strike again. Does Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Ukraine, ring any bells?

Zhu , August 20, 2019 at 07:40

I find it hard to believe anyone in the US political elite really has good will for Chinese people. They've slaughtered yellpw
People by the million thrughout my lifetime. Probably Trump, Wolfowitz, et al. lust to turn China into another Itaq. :-(

Herman , August 20, 2019 at 06:46

t seems the anti-PRC forces are using the failure of Hong Government to provide a rising standard of living for ordinary people as a reason for protesting against the PRC. The PRC has demonstrated the ability of its government to raise the standard of living for hundreds of millions of people. Hong Kong has not.

I would guess the PRC will be patient and let the authorities in Hong Kong regain control of the island and aiding those who see what is happening as another color revolution engineered by America. Private persons with personal fortunes who see the opportunity to shape events can be very dangerous as we have seen in America.

Hong Kong appears to be a one percent city, where the elite shape events, and this needs to be addressed by the people of Hong Kong with assistance from the PRC. Hong Kong is, after all, part of China.

Does anyone else see the constant use of the left wing right wing dichotomy as both tiresome and unproductive. And confusing.

Realist , August 20, 2019 at 05:11

The Diem brothers, Nguyen Van Thieu, Nguyen Cao Ky, Bill Browder, Porky Poroshenko, Yats, Juan Guaido, Ahmed Chalabi, Hamid Karzai, Chung Kai-shek, and now Jimmie Lai, Martin Lee and Joshua Wong: all just Quislings to American hegemony. There are and have been legions of others, some, like Marco Rubio and Clarence Thomas, even operate within the United States and against the interests of most of its people. Though they purport to be champions to their community of origin, they are simply exploiting their ethnicity to surreptitiously push dangerous far right agendas that are to no one's benefit but the richest oligarchs. That's what all these names have in common; they were all spawned of wealth and privilege and adopted by the American aristocracy to bring their own people under American vassalage.

What was the impetus for this latest color revolution propped up by Washington? That citizens of Hong Kong have the freedom to kill their pregnant girl friend in another jurisdiction and not be extradited and prosecuted for the crime? Why is that "get out of jail free" card not being played on behalf of Julian Assange, who committed only noble acts to expose high crimes by the state against humanity only to better our dysfunctional society? He exposed deliberate murder, he did not commit it. It was done systematically by powerful elements in society, not by a single deluded individual. An awful lot of gullible people in the Orient are being misled to preserve privileges for a subset of their population, and it's not "white privilege" in this case. It's just good old fashioned might makes right. Meanwhile, the white folks back in their own bailiwick are crucifying one of their own to protect the rich and powerful rather than to hold them accountable for their atrocious behavior–all justified with the most erudite hypocrisies conceived within the minds of men. (And I use that last word as it has been employed over the last thousand years or so in this language. The alphabet community can keep their collective shirts on. You've all been included in these bad decisions, if only for the optics by geniuses like Karl Rove, Rahm Emanuel, and John Bolton.)

Thanks to the authors for underscoring that "members of the U.S. far-right have embraced the protest movement as their own, and even personally joined their ranks." That certainly elucidates why grizzled pols like Pelosi, Schumer, Biden, Cardin and even Sherrod Brown have embraced the coup plotters. They know how to maintain a grasp on power while not exerting the slightest effort to uphold moral principles. The warmongering Dems have long been every bit as antagonistic to true freedom, democracy and the American constitution as the GOPers, substituting instead this absurd charade, this bait and switch we see played out in the news media every day. Certainly no surprise that right wing extremist and noted toady to plutocrats, Marco Rubio, would nominate that lot for a Nobel Peace Prize. Considering the Zeitgeist, it would also not surprise me if they won, assuming Washington wanted them to win. Norway (this Nobel is awarded from Oslo rather than Stockholm) has apparently had some kind of epiphany in this new millennium and now shares Washington's every niggling paranoia which brings us full circle, because the original Quisling, who acted as a puppet for the Third Reich, was from Norway.

Det McNulty , August 20, 2019 at 03:44

As an investigation of some of the reactionary forces that are operating amongst the HK protests, this offers points of interest and concern, which warrant exploration and condemnation. However, I disagree with the framing; to see these elements as representative of the protests as a whole is simply propaganda that supports the most right-wing elements inside the PRC that claim all the protestors are rioters. When it comes to complex politics events, there will always be foreign interference at some levels and on all sides. Yet the writing here is not balanced and does not recognise that the vast majority of the protestors are ordinary working people, many of whom are non-aligned and simply want to protect the freedoms they are afforded in HK and not have the place be completely absorbed into the opaque legal system of the PRC. The lack of empathy for the people of HK in some parts of the radical left is quite revolting. The PRC has never been some haven of democratic socialism and doesn't support real workers' self management or anything of the like. HK is being exploited by powerful forces, but our support should be with its people against state oppression in all forms.

Cara , August 21, 2019 at 19:08

Thank you for your comments here and on Patrick Lawrence's recent column. Your perspective is refreshingly sensible. I find the leftist orthodoxy (that word now seems to apply) where these protests are concerned disturbing. As a friend of mine who lived in HK for a decade put it: the notion that these protests are being choreographed mainly by US interests is just another expression of US-centrism. As if the people of HK couldn't possibly have their own worthy agenda.

Realist , August 22, 2019 at 06:07

Yet they wave a sea of American flags and sing the American national anthem at their protests. They may have an agenda but they are telegraphing that it is an integral part of Washington's agenda with this symbolism. Or did you miss that?

Det_McNulty , August 22, 2019 at 16:40

Indeed, I find it rather ridiculous that people seem more concerned with 'exposing' what appears to be a relatively small element of the protests and not actually addressing the legitimate concerns of those protesting and engaging with those involved in the movement, i.e. interviewing ordinary people on the street and representatives from trade unions. Investigating the role of different states and their intermediaries in fomenting and tactically supporting aspects of the movement is of course important, but reads like propaganda when it doesn't account for the complexities of the situation and reduces the events to something along the lines of orchestration by US imperial agents and neoconservative NGOs, rather than a popular movement. Also, if people are concerned about such contradictions, why's there no focus on the role of the UK in selling arms to HK (I believe there's an HK delegation at the upcoming September arms bazaar at the Excel Centre in London); such a point should be of interest to anyone concerned with power and corruption.

Gui Lottine , August 20, 2019 at 02:48

What happened to god old fashioned "off with his/her head"? China needs to take out these servants of the anglo-zionist empire, once and for all.

Zhu , August 20, 2019 at 07:25

You can be absolutely certain that no one in China gives 2 fen about Zionism, Anti-zionism, etc

JOHN CHUCKMAN , August 20, 2019 at 02:19

Yes, the author is right. This represents just one more front of a new massive effort against China. For America's establishment, China's rise and competition are just unacceptable.

American officials have a great deal of experience encouraging and supporting discontent abroad – in Ukraine, in Venezuela, in half a dozen other Latin countries, and now in Hong Kong.

It is always possible in any country to find a fair number of discontented people.

There are literally millions of such people in the US for example.

So when some highly trained and organizers come into a place – as the US has very much done in Hong Kong – it is not hard to create some trouble.

Here is some really interesting analysis of crowd sizes in Hong Kong.

This is science-based estimating.

The numbers coming out of it, which really cannot be terribly wrong, tell us the crowds are far less than much of the mainline press claims.

With the city's narrow streets, photos can give quite a false impression.

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/08/which-hong-kong-protest-size-estimate-is-right.html#more

IOANNHS , August 20, 2019 at 01:45

8/20/19
Dear CN,
HERE'S ONE OF THE BETTER WESTERN COVERAGES ON THE HK UPHEAVAL, AND MORE.
(THERE'S 1 MORE VIDEO ON THIS TOPIC BY "The Duran" DATED AUG. 6, 2018) -- these guys are really good!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZTYb43zA5g

GO TO YOU TUBE, THEN LOOK FOR "The Duran" videos. I think you'll like many / most of their videos; they make mince meat of western MSM. More in their own site. I'm sure Mr. Lauria knows them.

Stephen Morrell , August 20, 2019 at 01:01

Thanks for publishing Dan's excellent article.

geeyp , August 20, 2019 at 00:31

I am curious as to who actually wrote this piece. There are two different authors listed: Norton or Cohen?

TIMOTHY KINNAIRD , August 19, 2019 at 22:56

In keeping with standard operating procedure, when does the CIA begin shipping weapons to Hong Kong?

RBHoughton , August 19, 2019 at 22:14

Thank you for publishing this. I have lived in Hong Kong all my life and I despaired of reading anything in the English-language press that was vaguely fair about the riots here. All I see are Guardian style pejorative bias. Well done.

[Aug 25, 2019] What Is the US Role in the Hong Kong Protests> by Reese Erlich

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Reese Erlich's nationally distributed column, Foreign Correspondent, appears every two weeks. Follow him on Twitter , @ReeseErlich; friend him on Facebook ; and visit his webpage ..."
Aug 23, 2019 | original.antiwar.com

I first met Jason Lee when he was promoting jazz concerts in his hometown of Hong Kong. More recently, he has been sending me Facebook messages about the Hong Kong protests. You would think that a relatively prosperous, 43-year-old Hong Konger would support the demonstrations that have rocked that city since June. Well, you may be surprised by his views.

Lee, who spends time in both Hong Kong and mainland China, says protesters' attacks on police and government buildings "are going too far." Referring to how they recently closed the Hong Kong airport, he asks, "Would the USA let JFK airport be occupied for one day?"

Protesters carrying British flags and spray painting anti-communist slogans on legislative offices don't understand the region's colonial history when British troops brutally occupied Hong Kong, Lee tells me in a phone interview.

"I'm Chinese from Hong Kong," says Lee. "I love my country, China."

The protest movement began in opposition to a proposed extradition law, which demonstrators claimed would allow political dissidents to be extradited to China. Hong Kong officials said the law wouldn't be used for political repression but later withdrew it.

Some Hong Kongers, Lee included, think the protesters' calls for "democracy" are really demands for independence from China, even a return to British colonial rule .

"They want the movement to go on and on by raising new demands," Lee says. "And then they claim the government isn't responding."

Sharp class divisions

One major factor driving the protests is economic inequality. For many years, Hong Kong was a key financial and commercial outpost for the People's Republic of China (PRC). But, as the PRC's economy expanded, it didn't need Hong Kong as a middle man and the territory's economy declined relative to China's.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong billionaires made huge profits leading to one of the world's highest rates of income inequality.

Housing is now in short supply and Hong Kong rents are the highest in the world. Many young adults still live with their parents or crowd into small, subdivided apartments.

"My apartment is 350 square feet," Sean Starrs, a Hong Kong professor, told the Real News Network. "My students say, well what do you do with all that space?"

And, as always, Washington is happy to take advantage of those complaints for its own odious purposes.

In the old days, the CIA would slip wads of cash to dissidents in order to promote anti-government riots and install pro-U.S. regimes. That method worked for Iran in 1953 and Chile in 1973.

Nowadays, the United States uses the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to spread propaganda to accomplish the same goals. The NED is supposed to build democracy but in reality promotes dissidents who favor U.S. style capitalism, and it funds aspiring autocrats.

I don't think the CIA initiated the demonstrations, but the events bear a strong resemblance to other U.S.-manipulated "color" revolutions.

Color revolutions vs. genuine uprisings

With the collapse of the USSR in 1991, several former Soviet republics faced a series of elections, mass demonstrations and coups. In Georgia the uprising was called a "rose revolution." In Ukraine, it was orange. During the 2013 Maidan revolt in Ukraine, the US role in manipulating the mass movement and selecting the country's new president was revealed publicly.

On the other hand, popular, mass uprisings in 2011 overthrew dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt. So how do you tell the difference between genuine uprisings and the color revolts?

The key questions are who is leading the protests and what would happen if they took power? Would the country go in a progressive direction or join the reactionary camp led by the United States? While no one party or recognized coalition leads the Hong Kong protests, there are identifiable political trends.

Political trends in Hong Kong

The pan-democratic forces call for universal suffrage and direct elections of Hong Kong officials. Critics say those calls for democracy cover up their close alliance with US policy and their rejection of eventual unity with China. The pan-democrats suffered surprising losses in last year's legislative council elections.

The umbrella protests of 2014 accelerated the rise of another trend, the localists, a xenophobic rightwing movement that calls for "self determination" (independence) from Beijing.

"They think Hong Kongers are better than Chinese," says Elvin Ho, a retired business consultant living in Hong Kong. Native Hong Kongers mostly speak Cantonese, he explains in a phone interview. "Localists will pick a fight with random targets during the riot, who speak Mandarin, and bully them."

Imagine for a moment that the PRC ceased to exist. Would Hong Kong transform itself into a democratic society? I think some combination of localists and pan-democratic forces would come to power and then violently repress those who supported the PRC and the previous Hong Kong government.

Sound farfetched? That's what has happened when the pro-western forces came back to power in Ukraine and Hungary .

But the PRC does exist, and it's not about to allow Hong Kong independence. China has massed paramilitary police along the Hong Kong border as a clear threat against the protesters. Many Hong Kongers are getting tired of the constant disruptions and violence on both sides.

So far the Hong Kong government has bided its time, hoping the public will tire of the constant turmoil. We can only hope the current crisis ends without further violence.

Reese Erlich's nationally distributed column, Foreign Correspondent, appears every two weeks. Follow him on Twitter , @ReeseErlich; friend him on Facebook ; and visit his webpage .

[Aug 23, 2019] The HK protesters are shooting themselves on the foot. They can't achieve a military victory because, contrary to countries like Brazil and Ukraine, USA's infiltration in China is very low (reduced to embassies and universities), which rules out unconventional warfare as per the TC-18-01.

Aug 23, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

vk , Aug 23 2019 12:37 utc | 82

As I predicted, HK's color revolution didn't spill to the Mainland:

HK chaos leaves mainland economy unscathed, inbound investment stable

Not only was the Mainland's economy "unscathed":

But analysts argued that the mainland will become even more attractive to foreign investors, as business conditions are set to improve through reform and opening-up measures and as other major economies, including in the US and Europe, are engulfed in their own economic and political chaos.

The HK protesters are shooting themselves on the foot. They can't achieve a military victory because, contrary to countries like Brazil and Ukraine, USA's infiltration in China is very low (reduced to embassies and universities), which rules out unconventional warfare as per the TC-18-01.

The only part that loses with this situation is the Hongkonger capitalist (native) elite -- that's why Carrie Lam is desperate and almost cried in one recent speech. But this is a problem for the protesters themselves, who are liberals and seek to establish a perpetually capitalist HK. Hence HSBC, Standard Chartered, Bank of East Asia speak up against violence, call for peace in HK ; hence a op-ed from the SCMP fears this is the end of HK as we know it . It can't come sooner.

... ... ...

[Aug 23, 2019] Dirty tricks neoliberals play: In Hong real real and legitimate grievances with the Chinese government coused by neoliberalism were used by the USA and Taiwan to press mainland China on concenttion to the USA in thier trade war

Aug 23, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

O , Aug 22 2019 22:47 utc | 45

"This is an issue I've broached a few times on The Corbett Report now, because I think it's a trap that those of us watching the machinations of the American Empire can fall into. It seems straightforward: If Washington is paying to stir things up in a given area, then the protests are all fake and the freedom movement in that area is not a "real" freedom movement. But this is too binary and simplistic. The people of Hong Kong have real and legitimate grievances with the Chinese government and real worries about their future. The right of the people to self-determination is a real and powerful motivating force there just as it is anywhere else, and who are we to tell the people of Hong Kong that their wish for freedom is illegitimate?

Something that should give pause for thought to those who would write off such protests as nothing more than American deep state operations is that when you dehumanize the protesters and disallow the legitimacy of their movement, you inevitably find yourself in the awkward position of cheering on the jackbooted thugs of the police state who are there to quell the protests.

Yes, as many in the independent media have pointed out, the protesters have engaged in acts of violence during these protests, and that is despicable and should be condemned. But the police (who, interestingly, are dressing themselves up as protesters and mingling in with the crowds, Montebello-style), are also using brutal violence against protesters, and to ignore or deny that reality is dishonest.

So that brings us to our next question: Where does all of this leave us, looking on at a situation like this? The question itself is a trick. It presupposes that we have a role of some sort to play in these protests. That non-Hong Kongers should be actively choosing sides, rooting for, and even "aiding" one side or another in this conflict. But that's precisely the problem, isn't it? If it's outside interference that is stirring all of this discontent up in the first place, as some in the independent media would have you believe, then is more outside interference really the answer here?

In fact, as usual, the violence and conflict taking place in Hong Kong right now is playing directly into the hands of those who want to come in and impose "order" in the region. The protests obviously give Beijing the excuse to line their army up at the border and threaten to do away with the fig leaf of Hong Kong's quasi-sovereignty altogether. At the same time, any such crackdown would be exactly the excuse that the US and its partners in international crime would need to escalate their Clash of Civilizations 2.0 with the dreaded Chinese bogeyman.

One thing is for certain: the fight for the future of Hong Kong is raging as we speak. But the real question is: who is fighting that fight? The people of Hong Kong, or Beijing and Washington? The answer to that question will determine whether Hong Kong ever achieves a modicum of freedom, or whether it is destined to forever be a plaything in a proxy wars between the great powers."

https://www.minds.com/CorbettReport/blog/hong-kong-chaos-before-the-order-1009445054717251584

[Aug 21, 2019] Creative use of Taiwan to fuel protests by providing asylum to protesters

Aug 21, 2019 | news.yahoo.com

China slammed Taiwan Monday for offering asylum to Hong Kong people facing prosecution for involvement in anti-government protests, telling the island's leaders to "stop meddling" in the territory's affairs.

Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen voiced support last month for granting asylum to some Hong Kong protesters, with the semi-autonomous financial hub in the midst of an unprecedented political crisis.

Ma Xiaoguang, a spokesperson for the Chinese cabinet's Taiwan Affairs Office, warned Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party to "stop undermining the rule of law in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, stop meddling in Hong Kong affairs, and stop indulging criminals in any way".

Taiwanese authorities "ignore the facts and reverse black and white, not only masking the crimes of a small number of Hong Kong militants, but also fuelling their arrogance for destroying Hong Kong", said Ma.

Last month after dozens of Hong Kong activists reportedly involved in an unprecedented storming of the city's parliament fled to Taiwan, the Taipei said it would provide assistance to those seeking sanctuary.

"They openly claim to provide (protesters) asylum, making Taiwan into a 'haven sheltering criminals', where does this put the safety and welfare of the Taiwan people?" asked Ma.

Beijing regards Taiwan as a part of China awaiting reunification, but the island is a self-ruled democracy.

The protest movement in Hong Kong was sparked by widespread opposition to a plan for allowing extraditions to the Chinese mainland, but has since morphed into a broader call for democratic rights.

Taiwan's history of providing sanctuary to Chinese dissidents has been mixed.

The island still does not recognise the legal concept of asylum but has, on occasions, allowed dissidents to stay on long-term visas.

Ties with Beijing have soured since Tsai came to power in 2016 because her party refuses to recognise the idea that Taiwan is part of "one China". lawrence

2 days ago

Taiwan is an independent country. Of cause it has the right and authority to grant any asylum to the eligible asylum seeker. Respect Taiwan as an respected country ,equal to china, and the world will put china in a better place. Loving freedom and democracy is a human basic right realty and could not be altered by force...wake up china..

[Aug 19, 2019] US Backs Xenophobia Mob Violence in Hong Kong Consortiumnews

Looks like the USA played Hong Hong population like Western Ukrainians... Differneces in history and interests with mainland china are easy to amplify given enough dollars and acess to free training of students. Who are the the core of this color revolution with oligarchs like Jimmy Lai concerned with the future of this fortunes under Chines control are real puppeteers of this show.
Like in case of EuroMaydan some concerns of citizens are real and deserve listening. But they serve are just a pretext for fueling violet actions against legitimate government.
Aug 19, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

But the protests continued even after the extradition law was taken off the table -- and these demonstrations degenerated into disturbing scenes. In recent days, hundreds of masked rioters have occupied the Hong Kong airport, forcing the cancellation of inbound flights while harassing travelers and viciously assaulting journalists and police .

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The protesters' stated goals remain vague. Joshua Wong, one of the most well known figures in the movement, has put forward a call for the Chinese government to "retract the proclamation that the protests were riots," and restated the consensus demand for universal suffrage.

Wong is a bespectacled 22-year-old who has been trumpeted in Western media as a "freedom campaigner," promoted to the English-speaking world through his own Netflix documentary, and rewarded with the backing of the U.S. government.

But behind telegenic spokespeople like Wong are more extreme elements such as the Hong Kong National Party, whose members have appeared at protests waving the Stars and Stripes and belting out cacophonous renditions of the Star-Spangled Banner. The leadership of this officially banned party helped popularize the call for the full independence of Hong Kong, a radical goal that is music to the ears of hardliners in Washington.

Xenophobic resentment has defined the sensibility of the protesters, who vow to "retake Hong Kong" from Chinese mainlanders they depict as a horde of locusts. The demonstrators have even adopted one of the most widely recognized symbols of the alt-right, emblazoning images of Pepe the Frog on their protest literature. While it's unclear that Hong Kong residents see Pepe the same way American white nationalists do, members of the U.S. far-right have embraced the protest movement as their own, and even personally joined their ranks.

Among the most central influencers of the demonstrations is a local tycoon named Jimmy Lai. The self-described "head of opposition media," Lai is widely described as the Rupert Murdoch of Asia. For the masses of protesters, Lai is a transcendent figure. They clamor for photos with him and applaud the oligarch wildly when he walks by their encampments.

Lai established his credentials by pouring millions of dollars into the 2014 Occupy Central protest, which is known popularly as the Umbrella Movement. He has since used his massive fortune to fund local anti-China political movers and shakers while injecting the protests with a virulent brand of Sinophobia through his media empire.

Though Western media has depicted the Hong Kong protesters as the voice of an entire people yearning for freedom, the island is deeply divided. This August, a group of protesters mobilized outside Jimmy Lai's house, denouncing him as a "running dog" of Washington and accusing him of national betrayal by unleashing chaos on the island.

Days earlier, Lai was in Washington, coordinating with hardline members of Trump's national security team, including John Bolton. His ties to Washington run deep -- and so do those of the front-line protest leaders.

Millions of dollars have flowed from U.S. regime-change outfits like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) into civil society and political organizations that form the backbone of the anti-China mobilization. And Lai has supplemented it with his own fortune while instructing protesters on tactics through his various media organs.

With Donald Trump in the White House, Lai is convinced that his moment may be on the horizon. Trump "understands the Chinese like no president understood," the tycoon told The Wall Street Journal . "I think he's very good at dealing with gangsters."

Born to Wealthy Mainland Parents

Born in the mainland in 1948 to wealthy parents, whose fortune was expropriated by the Communist Party during the revolution the following year, Jimmy Lai began working at 9 years old, carrying bags for train travelers during the hard years of the Great Chinese Famine.

Inspired by the taste of a piece of chocolate gifted to him by a wealthy man, he decided to smuggle himself to Hong Kong to discover a future of wealth and luxury. There, Lai worked his way up the ranks of the garment industry, growing enamored with the libertarian theories of economists Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, the latter of whom became his close friend.

Friedman is famous for developing the neoliberal shock therapy doctrine that the U.S. has imposed on numerous countries, resulting in the excess deaths of millions. For his part, Hayek is the godfather of the Austrian economic school that forms the foundation of libertarian political movements across the West.

Lai built his business empire on Giordano, a garment label that became one of Asia's most recognizable brands. In 1989, he threw his weight behind the Tiananmen Square protests, hawking t-shirts on the streets of Beijing calling for Deng Xiaoping to "step down."

Lai's actions provoked the Chinese government to ban his company from operating on the mainland. A year later, he founded Next Weekly magazine, initiating a process that would revolutionize the mediascape in Hong Kong with a blend of smutty tabloid-style journalism, celebrity gossip and a heavy dose of anti-China spin.

The vociferously anti-communist baron soon became Hong Kong's media kingpin, worth a whopping $660 million in 2009.

Today, Lai is the founder and majority stakeholder of Next Digital, the largest listed media company in Hong Kong, which he uses to agitate for the end of what he calls the Chinese "dictatorship."

His flagship outlet is the popular tabloid Apple Daily , employing the trademark mix of raunchy material with a heavy dose of xenophobic, nativist propaganda.

In 2012, Apple Daily carried a full page advertisement depicting mainland Chinese citizens as invading locusts draining Hong Kong's resources. The advertisement called for a stop to the "unlimited invasion of mainland pregnant women in Hong Kong." (This was a crude reference to the Chinese citizens who had flocked to the island while pregnant to ensure that their children could earn Hong Kong residency, and resembled the resentment among the U.S. right-wing of immigrant "anchor babies.")

The transformation of Hong Kong's economy has provided fertile soil for Lai's brand of demagoguery. As the country's manufacturing base moved to mainland China after the golden years of the 1980s and '90s, the economy was rapidly financialized, enriching oligarchs like Lai. Left with rising debt and dimming career prospects, Hong Kong's youth became easy prey to the demagogic politics of nativism .

Many protesters have been seen waving British Union Jacks in recent weeks, expressing a yearning for an imaginary past under colonial control which they never personally experienced.

In July, protesters vandalized the Hong Kong Liaison Office, spray-painting the word, "Shina" on its facade. This term is a xenophobic slur some in Hong Kong and Taiwan use to refer to mainland China. The anti-Chinese phenomenon was visible during the 2014 Umbrella movement protests as well, with signs plastered around the city reading, "Hong Kong for Hong Kongers."

This month, protesters turned their fury on the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions, spray-painting "rioters" on its office. The attack represented resentment of the left-wing group's role in a violent 1967 uprising against the British colonial authorities, who are now seen as heroes among many of the anti-Chinese demonstrators.

Besides Lai, a large part of the credit for mobilizing latent xenophobia goes to the right-wing Hong Kong Indigenous party leader Edward Leung. Under the direction of the 28-year-old Leung, his pro-independence party has brandished British colonial flags and publicly harassed Chinese mainland tourists. In 2016, Leung was exposed for meeting with U.S. diplomatic officials at a local restaurant.

Though he is currently in jail for leading a 2016 riot where police were bombarded with bricks and pavement – and where he admitted to attacking an officer – Leung's rightist politics and his slogan, "Retake Hong Kong," have helped define the ongoing protests.

A local legislator and protest leader described Leung to The New York Times as "the Che Guevara of Hong Kong's revolution," referring without a hint of irony to the Latin American communist revolutionary killed in a CIA-backed operation . According to the Times , Leung is "the closest thing Hong Kong's tumultuous and leaderless protest movement has to a guiding light."

The xenophobic sensibility of the protesters has provided fertile soil for Hong Kong National Party to recruit. Founded by the pro-independence activist Andy Chan, the officially banned party combines anti-Chinese resentment with calls for the U.S. to intervene. Images and videos have surfaced of HKNP members waving the flags of the U.S. and U.K., singing the Star Spangled Banner, and carrying flags emblazoned with images of Pepe the Frog, the most recognizable symbol of the U.S. alt-right.

While the party lacks a wide base of popular support, it is perhaps the most outspoken within the protest ranks, and has attracted disproportionate international attention as a result. Chan has called for Trump to escalate the trade war and accused China of carrying out a "national cleansing" against Hong Kong. "We were once colonized by the Brits, and now we are by the Chinese," he declared.

Displays of pro-American jingoism in the streets of Hong Kong have been like catnip for the international far-right.

Patriot Prayer founder Joey Gibson recently appeared at an anti-extradition protest in Hong Kong, livestreaming the event to his tens of thousands of followers. A month earlier, Gibson was seen roughing up antifa activists alongside ranks of club wielding fascists. In Hong Kong, the alt-right organizer marveled at the crowds.

"They love our flag here more than they do in America!" Gibson exclaimed as marchers passed by, flashing him a thumbs up sign while he waved the Stars and Stripes.

Xenophobic Propaganda Such xenophobic propaganda is consistent with the clash of civilizations theory that Jimmy Lai has promulgated through his media empire.

"You have to understand the Hong Kong people – a very tiny 7 million or 0.5 percent of the Chinese population – are very different from the rest of Chinese in China, because we grow up in the Western values, which was the legacy of the British colonial past, which gave us the instinct to revolt once this extradition law was threatening our freedom," Lai told Fox News' Maria Bartiromo. "Even America has to look at the world 20 years from now, whether you want the Chinese dictatorial values to dominate this world, or you want the values that you treasure [to] continue."

During a panel discussion at the neoconservative Washington-based think tank, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Lai told the pro-Israel lobbyist Jonathan Schanzer,

"We need to know that America is behind us. By backing us, America is also sowing to the will of their moral authority because we are the only place in China, a tiny island in China, which is sharing your values, which is fighting the same war you have with China."

While Lai makes no attempt to conceal his political agenda, his bankrolling of central figures in the 2014 Occupy Central, or Umbrella movement protests, was not always public.

Leaked emails revealed that Lai poured more than $1.2 million to anti-China political parties including $637,000 to the Democratic Party and $382,000 to the Civic Party. Lai also gave $115,000 to the Hong Kong Civic Education Foundation and Hong Kong Democratic Development Network, both of which were co-founded by Reverend Chu Yiu-ming. Lai also spent $446,000 on Occupy Central's 2014 unofficial referendum.

Lai's U.S. consigliere is a former Navy intelligence analyst who interned with the CIA and leveraged his intelligence connections to build his boss's business empire. Named Mark Simon , the veteran spook arranged for former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin to meet with a group in the anti-China camp during a 2009 visit to Hong Kong. Five years later, Lai paid $75,000 to neoconservative Iraq war author and U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz to organize a meeting with top military figures in Myanmar.

This July, as the Hong Kong protests gathered steam, Lai was junketed to Washington, D.C., for meetings with Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, National Security Advisor John Bolton, and Republican Senators Ted Cruz, Cory Gardner, and Rick Scott. Bloomberg News correspondent Nicholas Wadhams remarked on Lai's visit, "Very unusual for a [non-government] visitor to get that kind of access."

One of Lai's closest allies, Martin Lee, was also granted an audience with Pompeo, and has held court with U.S. leaders including Rep. Nancy Pelosi and former Vice President Joseph Biden .

Among the most prominent figures in Hong Kong's pro-U.S. political parties, Lee began collaborating with Lai during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. A recipient of the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy's "Democracy Award" in 1997, Lee is the founding chairman of Hong Kong's Democratic Party, now considered part of the pro-U.S. camp's old guard.

While Martin Lee has long been highly visible on the pro-western Hong Kong scene, a younger generation of activists emerged during the 2014 Occupy Central protests with a new brand of localized politics.

Joshua Wong meets with Sen. Marco Rubio in Washington on May 8, 2017.

Joshua Wong was just 17 years old when the Umbrella Movement took form in 2014. After emerging in the protest ranks as one of the more charismatic voices, he was steadily groomed as the pro-West camp's teenage poster child. Wong received lavish praised in Time magazine, Fortune , and Foreign Policy as a "freedom campaigner," and became the subject of an award-winning Netflix documentary called "Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower."

Unsurprisingly, these puff pieces have overlooked Wong's ties to the U.S. regime-change apparatus. For instance, National Endowment for Democracy's National Democratic Institute (NDI) maintains a close relationship with Demosisto, the political party Wong founded in 2016 with fellow Umbrella movement alumnus Nathan Law.

In August, a candid photo surfaced of Wong and Law meeting with Julie Eadeh, the political counselor at the U.S. Consulate General in Hong Kong, raising questions about the content of the meeting and setting off a diplomatic showdown between Washington and Beijing.

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The Office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Hong Kong submitted a formal complaint with the U.S. consulate general, calling on the U.S. "to immediately make a clean break from anti-China forces who stir up trouble in Hong Kong, stop sending out wrong signals to violent offenders, refrain from meddling with Hong Kong affairs and avoid going further down the wrong path."

The pro-Beijing Hong Kong newspaper Ta Kung Pao published personal details about Eadeh, including the names of her children and her address. State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus lashed out, accusing the Chinese government of being behind the leak but offering no evidence. "I don't think that leaking an American diplomat's private information, pictures, names of their children, I don't think that is a formal protest, that is what a thuggish regime would do," she said at a State Department briefing.

But the photo underscored the close relationship between Hong Kong's pro-West movement and the U.S. government. Since the 2014 Occupy Central protests that vaulted Wong into prominence, he and his peers have been assiduously cultivated by the elite Washington institutions to act as the faces and voices of Hong Kong's burgeoning anti-China movement.

In September 2015, Wong, Martin Lee, and University of Hong Kong law professor Benny Tai Lee were honored by Freedom House, a right-wing soft-power organization that is heavily funded by the National Endowment for Democracy and other arms of the U.S. government.

Just days after Trump's election as president in November 2016, Wong was back in Washington to appeal for more U.S. support. "Being a businessman, I hope Donald Trump could know the dynamics in Hong Kong and know that to maintain the business sector benefits in Hong Kong, it's necessary to fully support human rights in Hong Kong to maintain the judicial independence and the rule of law," he said .

Wong's visit provided occasion for the Senate's two most aggressively neoconservative members, Marco Rubio and Tom Cotton, to introduce the "Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act," which would "identify those responsible for abduction, surveillance, detention and forced confessions, and the perpetrators will have their U.S. assets, if any frozen and their entry to the country denied."

Wong was then taken on a junket of elite U.S. institutions including the right-wing Heritage Foundation think tank and the newsrooms of The New York Times and Financial Times . He then held court with Rubio, Cotton, Pelosi, and Sen. Ben Sasse .

In September 2017, Rubio, Ben Cardin, Tom Cotton, Sherrod Brown, and Cory Gardner signed off on a letter to Wong, Law and fellow anti-China activist Alex Chow, praising them for their "efforts to build a genuinely autonomous Hong Kong." The bipartisan cast of senators proclaimed that "the United States cannot stand idly by."

A year later, Rubio and his colleagues nominated the trio of Wong, Law, and Chow for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize.

While U.S. lawmakers nominate Hong Kong protest leaders for peace prizes and pump their organizations with money to "promote democracy," the demonstrations have begun to spiral out of control.

Protests Become More Aggressive

After the extradition law was scrapped, the protests moved into a more aggressive phase, launching "hit and run attacks" against government targets, erecting roadblocks, besieging police stations, and generally embracing the extreme modalities put on display during U.S.-backed regime-change operations from Ukraine to Venezuela to Nicaragua.

The techniques clearly reflected the training many activists have received from Western soft-power outfits. But they also bore the mark of Jimmy Lai's media operation.

In addition to the vast sums Lai spent on political parties directly involved in the protests, his media group created an animated video "showing how to resist police in case force was used to disperse people in a mass protest."

While dumping money into the Hong Kong's pro-U.S. political camp in 2013, Lai traveled to Taiwan for a secret roundtable consultation with Shih Ming-teh, a key figure in Taiwan's social movement that forced then-president Chen Shui-bian to resign in 2008. Shih reportedly instructed Lai on non-violent tactics to bring the government to heel, emphasizing the importance of a commitment to go to jail.

According to journalist Peter Lee , "Shih supposedly gave Lai advice on putting students, young girls, and mothers with children in the vanguard of the street protests, in order to attract the support of the international community and press, and to sustain the movement with continual activities to keep it dynamic and fresh." Lai reportedly turned off his recording device during multiple sections of Shih's tutorial.

One protester explained to The New York Times how the movement attempted to embrace a strategy called, "Marginal Violence Theory:" By using "mild force" to provoke security services into attacking the protesters, the protesters aimed to shift international sympathy away from the state.

But as the protest movement intensifies, its rank-and-file are doing away with tactical restraint and lashing out at their targets with full fury. They have thrown molotov cocktails into intersections to block traffic; attacked vehicles and their drivers for attempting to break through roadblocks; beaten opponents with truncheons; attacked a wounded man with a U.S. flag; menaced a reporter into deleting her photos; kidnapped and beat a journalist senseless; beat a mainland traveler unconscious and prevented paramedics from reaching the victim; and hurled petrol bombs at police officers.

The charged atmosphere has provided a shot in the arm to Lai's media empire, which had been suffering heavy losses since the last round of national protests in 2014. After the mass marches against the extradition bill on June 9, which Lai's Apple Daily aggressively promoted, his Next Digital doubled in value , according to Eji Insight.

Meanwhile, the protest leaders show no sign of backing down. Nathan Law, the youth activist celebrated in Washington and photographed meeting with U.S. officials in Hong Kong, took to Twitter to urge his peers to soldier on : "We have to persist and keep the faith no matter how devastated the reality seems to be," he wrote.

Law was tweeting from New Haven, Connecticut, where he was enrolled with a full scholarship at Yale University. While the young activist basked in the adulation of his U.S. patrons thousands of miles from the chaos he helped spark, a movement that defined itself as a "leaderless resistance" forged ahead back home.

Dan Cohen is a journalist and co-producer of the award-winning documentary, "Killing Gaza." He has produced widely distributed video reports and print dispatches from across Israel-Palestine, Latin America, the U.S.-Mexico border and Washington, D.C. Follow him on Twitter at @ DanCohen3000 .

This article is from The Grayzone .

RBHoughton , August 19, 2019 at 22:14

Thank you for publishing this. I have lived in Hong Kong all my life and I despaired of reading anything in the English-language press that was vaguely fair about the riots here. All I see are Guardian style pejorative bias. Well done.

[Aug 19, 2019] Pepe Escobar weighs in on Hong Kong civil disobedience

Aug 07, 2019 | caucus99percent.com

'Hong Kong, Kashmir: a Tale of Two Occupations' Pepe Escobar, August 7 , 2019, strategic-culture.com (CC w/ attribution):

"Readers from myriad latitudes have been asking me about Hong Kong. They know it's one of my previous homes. I developed a complex, multi-faceted relationship with Hong Kong ever since the 1997 handover, which I covered extensively. Right now, if you allow me, I'd rather cut to the chase.

Much to the distress of neocons and humanitarian imperialists, there won't be a bloody mainland China crackdown on protesters in Hong Kong – a Tiananmen 2.0. Why? Because it's not worth it.

Beijing has clearly identified the color revolution provocation inbuilt in the protests – with the NED excelling as CIA soft , facilitating the sprawl of fifth columnists even in the civil service.

There are other components, of course. The fact that Hong Kongers are right to be angry about what is a de facto Tycoon Club oligarchy controlling every nook and cranny of the economy. The local backlash against "the invasion of the mainlanders". And the relentless cultural war of Cantonese vs. Beijing, north vs. south, province vs. political center.

What these protests have accelerated is Beijing's conviction that Hong Kong is not worth its trust as a key node in China's massive integration/development project. Beijing invested no less than $18.8 billion to build the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge, as part of the Greater Bay Area, to integrate Hong Kong with the mainland, not to snub it.

Now a bunch of useful idiots at least has graphically proven they don't deserve any sort of preferential treatment anymore.

The big story in Hong Kong is not even the savage, counter-productive protests (imagine if this was in France, where Macron's army is actually maiming and even killing Gilets Jaunes/Yellow Vests). The big story is the rot consuming HSBC – which has all the makings of the new Deutsche Bank scandal.

HSBC holds $2.6 trillion in assets and an intergalactic horde of cockroaches in their basement – asking serious questions about money laundering and dodgy deals operated by global turbo-capitalist elites.

In the end, Hong Kong will be left to its own internally corroding devices – slowly degrading to its final tawdry status as a Chinese Disneyland with a Western veneer. Shanghai is already in the process of being boosted as China's top financial center. And Shenzhen already is the top high-tech hub. Hong Kong will be just an afterthought."

'Civil Disobedience in Hong Kong or US Color Revolution Attempt?', Stephen Lendman , Global Research, August 13, 2019

" As the saying goes, if it walks, talks, and quacks like a duck, chances are it is one.

What's been going on for months in Hong Kong has all the earmarks of a US orchestrated color revolution , aimed at destabilizing China by targeting its soft Hong Kong underbelly.

In calling for reunification of China in the early 1980s, then-leader Deng Xiaoping said Hong Kong and Macau could retain their own economic, financial and governmental systems, Taiwan as well under a "one country, two systems" arrangement.

The above would be something like what the US 10th Amendment stipulates, stating:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Each of the 50 US states has its own electoral system, governing procedures, and laws that may differ from federal ones.

China's soft underbelly in Western-oriented Hong Kong left it vulnerable to what's going on. US dirty hands likely orchestrated and manipulated pro-Western 5th column elements behind months of anti-Beijing protests.

Dubbed Occupy Central, China's leadership is well aware of what's going on and the high stakes. Beijing is faced with a dilemma.

Cracking down forcefully to end disruptive Hong Kong protests could discourage foreign investments. Letting them continue endlessly can destabilize the nation.

US war on China by other means aims to marginalize, weaken, contain, and isolate the country -- because of its sovereign independence, unwillingness to bend to US interests, and its growing political, economic, financial, and military development.

China's emergence as a world power threatens Washington's aim to control other countries, their resources and populations worldwide.

Its successful economic model, producing sustained growth, embarrasses the US-led unfair, exploitative Western "free market" system.

The US eliminated the Japanese economic threat in the 1980s, a similar one from the Asian Tiger economies in the 1990s, and now it's China's turn to be taken down.

Its leadership understands what's going on and is countering it in its own way. China is a more formidable and resourceful US adversary than earlier ones.

Its strategy includes taking a longterm approach toward achieving its objectives with plenty of economic and financial ability to counter US tactics.

It may become the first post-WW II nation to defeat Washington's imperial game, making the new millennium China's century in the decades ahead.

US strategies to control other nations include preemptive wars of aggression, old-fashioned coups, and color revolutions -- what appears to be going on in Hong Kong.

This form of covert war first played out in Belgrade, Serbia in 2000. What appeared to be a spontaneous political uprising was developed by RAND Corporation strategist in the 1990s -- the concept of swarming.

It replicates "communication patterns and movement of" bees and other insects used against nations to destabilize and topple their governments.

The CIA, (anti-democratic) National Endowment for Democracy (NED), International Republican Institute (IRI), National (undemocratic) Democratic Institute, and USAID are involved.

Their mission is disruptively subverting democracy and instigating regime change through labor strikes, mass street protests, major media agitprop, and whatever else it takes short of military conflict.

Belgrade in 2000 was the prototype test drive for this strategy. When subsequently used, it experienced successes and failures, the former notably in Ukraine twice -- in late 2004/early 2005, again in late 2013/early 2014.

US color revolution attempts have a common thread, aiming to achieve what the Pentagon calls "full spectrum dominance" -- notably by neutralizing and controlling Russia and China, Washington's main rival powers, adversaries because of their sovereign independence.

Controlling resource-rich Eurasia, that includes the Middle East, along with Venezuelan world's largest oil reserves, is a key US imperial aim."

'Hong Kong protests met with denunciations and threats', Peter Symonds, 14 August 2019 , wsws.org

"Yesterday, amid an occupation numbering in the thousands, the airport authority was compelled to halt all check-in services for flights after 4.30 p.m., resulting in the cancellation of some 300 departures. Clashes erupted between riot police in the evening after protesters seized a mainland Chinese man who they accused of being an undercover police officer.

According to the South China Morning Post , the riot police used pepper spray in the airport to drive out protesters. It reported that as of this morning only a small group of some 30 protesters remained.

The airport occupation has dramatically raised the stakes in the political confrontation that is now in its 10th week. The huge protests in June over planned legislation to allow extradition from Hong Kong to China have morphed into a protest movement making wider democratic demands , including action against police violence and free elections based on universal suffrage.

The city's administration, led by Chief Executive Carrie Lam and backed by Beijing, has adamantly refused to make any concessions to the protesters, other than to suspend the legislation. At a press conference yesterday, Lam denounced the "illegal activities" of the protesters, defended the violent actions of the police and warned that "riot activities [have] pushed Hong Kong to the brink of no return."

Lam's remarks echoed those of Hong Kong business leaders amid falling share prices and fears of an economic downturn, especially in the property sector. Swire Pacific, a wealthy family-owned business empire that owns the Cathay Pacific airline and an extensive property portfolio, issued a statement condemning "illegal activities and violent behaviour" and gave Lam and the police full support "in their efforts to restore law and order." Sun Hung Kai Properties, controlled by Asia's third richest family, also called on Tuesday for the restoration of social order and backed Lam.

Sections of the Hong Kong business elite, concerned at Beijing's encroachment on their interests, had initially supported the protests against the extradition bill but are now calling for an end to the protest movement. Property tycoon Peter Woo said in a statement on Monday that the protests had already forced the government to shelve the legislation and claimed that some people were using the issue to "purposely stir up trouble."

The huge social gulf between the handful of billionaires who dominate Hong Kong, economically and politically, and the vast majority of the city's population looms large. Low wages, economic insecurity, the lack of opportunities for young people, unaffordable housing, and threadbare welfare services are all fuelling discontent and anger."

'Violent Protests In Hong Kong Reach Their Last Stage; The riots in Hong Kong are about to end', August 14, 2019 , moonofalabama.org

The protests, as originally started in June, were against a law that would have allowed criminal extraditions to Taiwan, Macao and mainland China. The law was retracted and the large protests have since died down. What is left are a few thousand students who, as advertised in a New York Times op-ed , intentionally seek to provoke the police with "marginal violence":

Such actions are a way to make noise and gain attention. And if they prompt the police to respond with unnecessary force, as happened on June 12, then the public will feel disapproval and disgust for the authorities. The protesters should thoughtfully escalate nonviolence, maybe even resort to mild force, to push the government to the edge. That was the goal of many people who surrounded and barricaded police headquarters for hours on June 21.

The protesters now use the same violent methods that were used in the Maidan protests in the Ukraine. The U.S. seems to hope that China will intervene and create a second Tianamen scene . That U.S. color revolution attempt failed but was an excellent instrument to demonize China. A repeat in Hong Kong would allow the U.S. to declare a "clash of civilization" and increase 'western' hostility against China. But while China is prepared to intervene it is unlikely to do the U.S. that favor. Its government expressed confidence that the local authorities will be able to handle the issue.

There are rumors that some Hong Kong oligarchs were originally behind the protests to prevent their extradition for shady deals they made in China. There may be some truth to that. China's president Xi Jingpin is waging a fierce campaign against corruption and Hong Kong is a target rich environment for fighting that crime." [snip]

"Rents and apartment prices in Hong Kong are high. People from the mainland who buy up apartments with probably illegally gained money only increase the scarcity. This is one reason why the Cantonese speaking Hong Kong protesters spray slurs against the Mandarin speaking people from the mainland. The people in Hong Kong also grieve over their declining importance. Hong Kong lost its once important economical position. In 1993 Hong Kong's share of China's GDP was 27%. It is now less than a tenths of that and the city is now more or less irrelevant to mainland China."

'World is watching': US reaction points to Hong Kong as a 'color revolution', 12 Aug, 2019, RT.com

"One cannot help but recall that the same phrasing was used for Ukraine, during the Maidan protests of 2013 that culminated in a violent coup in February 2014 – and plunged that country into secession of Crimea and civil war in the Donbass, eastern Ukraine.

The impression is only reinforced by the images reminiscent of Kiev coming out of Hong Kong, showing helmeted protesters in black masks firing grenades and throwing firebombs at police – none of which has stopped the chorus of US media from calling the protesters
"pro-democracy."

OMG.

Hong Kong protesters in Hong Kong proudly sing US National anthem "The Star-Spangled Banner" O say can you see ... What so proudly we hailed ...brings tears to my eyes pic.twitter.com/CeM5zrA1Fe

-- Carl Zha (@CarlZha) August 10, 2019

"There is even nationalism, albeit of a xeno variety: some protesters have brandished flags of Hong Kong's former colonial master, the UK. Others have embraced the US flag, telling reporters it stands for "freedom, human rights and democracy ." [snip]

"Even though US President Donald Trump has steered clear of Hong Kong and made sure to describe is as an internal Chinese matter, focusing his diatribes entirely on trade, the Chinese public is becoming increasingly convinced that Washington is instigating turmoil in Hong Kong along the lines of "color revolutions" elsewhere."

And for a it of comic relief: ' Hong Kong phooey! Would you like any hypocrisy with that? , George Galloway, August 13, 2019 , RT.com

"Like a homing pigeon in reverse the entire UK media has flown like a bat out of hell away from France all the way to Hong Kong (as they had earlier flown to Caracas until the big protests turned into the wrong kind of protests).

There is nothing, except the shoe-sizes, of the demonstrators in Hong Kong that I don't know thanks to the veritable blizzard of in-depth analysis of the protestors there and their each and every demand. Protesters in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain can be executed, but we will never be told their names.

And the hypocrisy of the media is just for starters.

If a group of British protesters broke into the British Parliament and hung, for argument's sake, a Russian flag over the Speaker's chair it is " highly likely " that a commando force would quickly and violently overwhelm and arrest them accompanied by volleys of accusations about Russian interference.

If a crowd of British protestors occupied Heathrow Airport in such numbers and so disruptively that British Airways had to stop flights in and out of the airport, causing massive financial loss, dislocation, and personal inconvenience, I promise you that their protest would have been cleared out by the above mentioned commandos on the very first day of their protests.

If protesters in London were hoisting Chinese flags and singing the Chinese national anthem then, well, I'm sure you get my point.

The struggle between the government of China and its citizens is no more the business of the British than it is of the Slovakians. It's true that Hong Kong was a British colony for 150 years but the least said about the shame and disgrace of how that came to be, the better, I promise you.

Suffice to say that to acquire territory by force, followed by unequal treaty at gunboat-point to punish the actual owners of the land for resisting the British opium trade, is, even by British Imperial standards, extraordinary. So shameful is it you'd think the British would want to draw a veil over it. But not so."

On the other hand, and note sources and today's date :

'Chinese military personnel near Hong Kong border', Ambassador in London says China prepared to intervene 'if things get worse'; troops 7km from border, Jimmy Yee & AFP, asiatimes.com, August 15, 2019

"Thousands of Chinese military personnel waving red flags paraded at a sports stadium in a city across the border from Hong Kong on Thursday.

Armored vehicles were also seen inside the stadium in Shenzhen, as concerns build that China may intervene to end more than 10 weeks of unrest in Hong Kong.


Trucks and armoured personnel carriers are seen outside the Shenzhen Bay stadium in Shenzhen, bordering Hong Kong in China's southern Guangdong province, on August 15, 2019.

"Indeed, China's ambassador in London warned several hours later that Beijing was ready to intervene if the crisis gets worse.

"Should the situation in Hong Kong deteriorate further the central government will not sit on its hands and watch," Ambassador Liu Xiaoming said at a news conference in the UK. "We have enough solutions and enough power within the limits of Basic Law to quell any unrest swiftly. Their moves are severe and violent offenses, and already shows signs of terrorism."

China's state-run media reported this week that the elements of the People's Armed Police (PAP), which is under the command of the Central Military Commission, were assembling in Shenzhen.

Some of the personnel inside the stadium on Thursday had armed police insignias on their camouflage fatigues, according to an AFP reporter.

The security forces could be seen moving in formation inside the stadium and occasionally running, while others rode around outside on motorbikes.

Outside the stadium – which is around seven kilometers from Hong Kong – there were also dozens of trucks and armored personnel carriers.

The People's Daily and Global Times, two of the most powerful state-run media outlets, published videos on Monday of what it said was the PAP assembling in Shenzhen.

The Global Times editor-in-chief, Hu Xijin, said the military presence in Shenzhen was a sign that China was prepared to intervene in Hong Kong.

"If they do not pull back from the cliff and continue to push the situation further beyond the critical point, the power of the state may come to Hong Kong at any time," Hu wrote.

US President Donald Trump also said Tuesday American intelligence had confirmed Chinese troop movements toward the Hong Kong border .

"I hope it works out for everybody including China. I hope it works out peacefully, nobody gets hurt, nobody gets killed," Trump said.

'Satellite images show China's military massing near Hong Kong border; A satellite photo has revealed a worrying threat, right on the border with Hong Kong. It indicates Beijing is losing patience', news.com.au, August 15, 2019

"Satellite photos show what appear to be Chinese armoured personnel carriers and other military vehicles across the border from Hong Kong.

Parked in a sports complex in the city of Shenzhen, the deployment has been interpreted as a threat from Beijing to use increased force against pro-democracy protesters.

The pictures, collected on Monday by Maxar's WorldView, show 500 or more vehicles sitting on and around the soccer stadium at the Shenzhen Bay Sports Centre.

The military force is just across the harbour from the Asian financial hub that has been rocked by near-daily street demonstrations.

Hong Kong's 10-week political crisis, in which millions of people have taken to the streets calling for a halt to sliding freedoms, is the biggest challenge to Chinese rule of the semi-autonomous city since its 1997 handover from Britain." [snip]

"The state-run People's Daily did not comment on the purpose of the vehicles but noted that the People's Armed Police was in charge of "handling riots, turmoil, seriously violent, criminal activities, terrorist attacks and other societal security incidents".

(cross-posted from Café Babylon ) Comments


Pluto's Republic on Thu, 08/15/2019 - 6:45pm

Shenzhen is like a city of the future.

China looks so sleek and modern. But then, so do the futuristic skylines of many Asian and MiddleEast cities. Such economic opulence. Such energy in a rising and thriving middle class.

Sorry for the OT. Pepe Escobar is always a great read when he covers the CIA's activities throughout the world. A rare topic in the tattered old US. Thanks for bringing it.

wendy davis on Thu, 08/15/2019 - 9:14pm
it's not OT at all.

@Pluto's Republic

simply astounding buildings, and sleek, as you say. pepe's covered so many stories over the decades, and my guess is that he and lendman are altogether correct that this was a USAID, NED, cia prompted rebellion. and you?

now i haven't a clue about the alleged chinese troops massing at the border, nor about any of the attributed to the chinese quotes, but i had pinged: 'and who invented the game of chess?' as i discovered, few claim it was the chinese, most say east indians > persia, etc.

singing the amerikan national anthem? waving UK and US flags? RU kidding me?

thanks for reading and commenting, pluto.

China looks so sleek and modern. But then, so do the futuristic skylines of many Asian and MiddleEast cities. Such economic opulence. Such energy in a rising and thriving middle class.

Sorry for the OT. Pepe Escobar is always a great read when he covers the CIA's activities throughout the world. A rare topic in the tattered old US. Thanks for bringing it.

mweens on Fri, 08/16/2019 - 10:29am
@Pluto's Republic living in Shenzhen right

@Pluto's Republic living in Shenzhen right now.

China looks so sleek and modern. But then, so do the futuristic skylines of many Asian and MiddleEast cities. Such economic opulence. Such energy in a rising and thriving middle class.

Sorry for the OT. Pepe Escobar is always a great read when he covers the CIA's activities throughout the world. A rare topic in the tattered old US. Thanks for bringing it.

tle on Fri, 08/16/2019 - 8:01am
The U.S. empire continues to decline.

"It may become the first post-WW II nation to defeat Washington's imperial game, making the new millennium China's century in the decades ahead." As a citizen of the U.S., which will be devastated when the dollar is dropped as the reserve currency... I'm rooting for China.

I very much appreciate this piece. While I did experience a "ding!" moment when I saw the NED referenced, because I just watched a video on it yesterday, I was nevertheless pathetically oblivious to what the U.S. is doing.

wendy davis on Fri, 08/16/2019 - 10:42am
oh, good, mintpress news is

@tle

back up again today. you'll like the abundance of information and tweets alex rubenstein brought on june 13, 2019 :

' American Gov't, NGOs Fuel and Fund Hong Kong Anti-Extradition Protests '
It is inconceivable that the organizers of the protests are unaware of the NED ties to some of its members' (one outtake in a lengthy exposé):

As MintPress News previously reported :

"The NED was founded in 1983 following a series of scandals that exposed the CIA's blood-soaked covert actions against foreign governments. 'It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the CIA,' NED President Carl Gershman told the New York Times in 1986. 'We saw that in the Sixties, and that's why it has been discontinued. We have not had the capability of doing this, and that's why the endowment was created.'

Another NED founder, Allen Weinstein, conceded to the Washington Post's David Ignatius, 'A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.'"

UK media cheerlead Hong Kong protesters who fear China will use 'non-political crimes to prosecute critics'. The same media that's spent 9 years cheerleading persecution, torture of whistleblowing platform founder Julian Assange for non-political crimes https://t.co/KuYyF0L5dS

-- Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) June 12, 2019

this wasn't on alex's, but:

You'd think @RobertMackey might find the US government's huge role in organizing these protests worth reporting to his US American audience but he totally omitted that crucial information. Maybe he should've read @RealAlexRubi 's report: https://t.co/98Ykr856AR https://t.co/658mbQcjLN

-- Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) August 8, 2019

on edit : the subtweets under cohen's original are great! robert mackey was not amused....

now one thing to remember is that pierre omidyar was a deep contributor to centre ua, and either NED or USAID before maidan and the putsch in ukraine. i haven't read the intercept link, but mackey (i'm fairly certain) was one of the five 'fearless investigative journalists' who'd smeared julian assange while he was down.

glad you've found this compilation of value, tle; me too.

on second edit: i did remember correctly, as it turns out. from my recent diary on the crushing of julian assange (this via oscar grenfell):

An article by Robert Mackey in November, 2017 accused the WikiLeaks founder of a "willingness to traffic in false or misleading information," of "working on behalf of Trump" and of transforming "the WikiLeaks Twitter feed into a vehicle for smearing Clinton."

"It may become the first post-WW II nation to defeat Washington's imperial game, making the new millennium China's century in the decades ahead." As a citizen of the U.S., which will be devastated when the dollar is dropped as the reserve currency... I'm rooting for China.

I very much appreciate this piece. While I did experience a "ding!" moment when I saw the NED referenced, because I just watched a video on it yesterday, I was nevertheless pathetically oblivious to what the U.S. is doing.

wendy davis on Fri, 08/16/2019 - 8:12am
café commenter juliania

noted that commenter karlov1 had urged others to click into b's tianemen scene hyperlink, which goes to his own june 4, 2019 ' Tian An Men Square - What Really Happened (Updated)' (including grisly photos)

"Since 1989 the western media write anniversary pieces on the June 4 removal of protesters from the Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The view seems always quite one sided and stereotyped with a brutal military that suppresses peaceful protests.
That is not the full picture. Thanks to Wikileaks we have a few situation reports from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing at that time. They describe a different scene than the one western media paint to this day."

he's also brought any number of tweeted descriptions of similar violence perpetrated by protestors on those they believe might be undercover police, and this telling paragraph:

""While the protests against the extradition bill may have been backed by some tycoons, it is obvious that there is also a large U.S. government influence behind them. It is the U.S., not some oligarchs, which is behind the current rioting phase.
In 1992 Congress adopted the United States–Hong Kong Policy Act which mandates U.S. government 'pro-democracy' policies in Hong Kong. Some Senators and lobbyists now push for a Support Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act which would intensify the interference. Before the June protests started Secretary of State (and former CIA head) Mike Pompeo met with the Hong Kong 'pro-democracy' leader Martin Lee and later with 'pro-democracy' media tycoon Jimmy Lai. The National Endowment for Democracy finances several of the groups behind the protests."

again, you can find it all here ; good job, b!

i have a few relevant tweets to embed in a bit.

[Aug 18, 2019] Hong Kong's Inevitable Showdown

Aug 18, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

yojimbo , 12 minutes ago link

Bluff to democracy as they have it - HK only became democratic because the AnZis could then use it to stir unrest against China. Funny how HK was never democratic while the Brits were still there.

Prolls still think representative democracy actually gives them anything more than a mirage.

americhinaman , 28 seconds ago link

Yes. HK had 0 votes under imperialist British rule, until near their departure. How many British Kings, err adminstrators, of HK were elected by the HK people?

The British seeded the idea of democracy as a "gift" to the people of China, with the specific intention of causing trouble down the line. Add a few dozen US NGO's to the mix, Soros' funding for the "colors"... all that's happened is that down the line has arrived. It's a politically expedient time to activate the colors.

But the era in which Britain and the US controlled all geopolitical change is over. It's not going to happen in HK either. China has specifically told the HK police to use no violence (imagine any of these protests happening in the USA and what would happen to the rioters there...). The first step will be to authorize HK police to defend themselves. There won't be a second step, as the protestors have the courage of chicken ****.

[Aug 13, 2019] China Claims US 'Black Hand' Is Behind Hong Kong Protests

Aug 13, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

Fred C. Dobbs , August 13, 2019 at 04:53 AM

China Claims US 'Black Hand' Is Behind Hong Kong Protests
https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-claims-u-s-black-hand-is-behind-hong-kong-protests-11565356245
WSJ - Eva Dou in Beijing and
Natasha Khan and Wenxin Fan in Hong Kong - Aug. 9, 2019

China ratcheted up its accusations of U.S. involvement in fomenting protests in Hong Kong, spotlighting a top diplomat in state media, as the restive city prepared for a 10th weekend of demonstrations under the threat that Beijing could step in.

Hundreds of black-clad protesters began a three-day sit-in at the city's international airport on Friday, while several demonstrations planned for the weekend were banned by the local police. That could give rise to further clashes, days after Beijing warned it could intervene directly if Hong Kong authorities were unable to quell the unrest on their own.

The protests come amid rising trade tensions between the U.S. and Beijing. Chinese officials have accused the U.S. of encouraging protesters to undermine the government, though the Trump administration has offered guidance to officials to maintain a measured response in an effort to avoid derailing U.S. efforts on trade talks. U.S. diplomatic representatives in Hong Kong have met with senior government officials.

On Thursday and Friday, Beijing-backed media outlets circulated a photo of Julie Eadeh, the political unit chief of the U.S. consulate general in Hong Kong, meeting in a hotel lobby with prominent members of the opposition, including 22-year-old Joshua Wong, a key figure in protests that rocked Hong Kong five years ago.

The reports, in the China Daily and other mainland outlets, pointed to the meeting as evidence that a U.S. "black hand" was behind the protests. Tai Kung Pao, a Beijing-backed newspaper in Hong Kong, called Ms. Eadeh an expert in subversion with experience in Iraq. It publicized the names of her children and husband, citing a church publication from her hometown. The narrative and some of the personal details were reposted on numerous mainland Chinese publications and websites.

State broadcaster CCTV said Friday that the Central Intelligence Agency was known for instigating "color revolutions," a reference to demonstrations that sprang up in former Soviet states during the previous decade. Beijing officials also said this week that the Hong Kong unrest had the markings of a color revolution.

What do you think is motivating Beijing to connect the U.S. with the protests in Hong Kong? Join the conversation below.
.
A spokesman for the U.S. consulate general in Hong Kong said Ms. Eadeh wasn't available for comment, and referred questions to Washington.

A State Department spokeswoman said on Twitter on Friday that the Chinese state media reports on the U.S. diplomat in Hong Kong had gone from irresponsible to dangerous and must stop. She earlier called China a "thuggish regime" for targeting Ms. Eadeh.

"Chinese authorities know full well, our accredited consular personnel are just doing their jobs, just like diplomats from every other country," she said in the tweet.

A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy denied that Washington was behind the protests, saying that the Hong Kong demonstrations reflected residents' concerns about eroding autonomy.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry's Hong Kong Commissioner's Office on Friday said the U.S. remarks revealed again the "dark and twisted side of U.S. psychology."

Mr. Wong said Friday that neither he nor his group receive any funding, supplies or advice from the U.S. government. ...

Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs... , August 13, 2019 at 04:58 AM
Protests Put Hong Kong on Collision Course With
China's Communist Party https://nyti.ms/2MfpdHo
NYT - Javier C. Hernández and Amy Qin - August 12

HONG KONG -- As anti-government demonstrations escalate in Hong Kong, each side is staking out increasingly polarized positions, making it difficult to find a path to compromise between the protesters and China's ruling Communist Party.

The demonstrations, which began as a fight against a bill that would have allowed Hong Kong residents to be extradited to the mainland, have more broadly morphed into a call for free elections, which largely do not exist in China. To Beijing, it would be a direct challenge to the leadership, tantamount to losing control of Hong Kong.

The once peaceful demonstrations have now intensified, coming into conflict with Hong Kong's reputation for order and efficiency. Protesters on Monday filled the airport, crippling one of the world's busiest transportation hubs.

Demonstrators returned again on Tuesday, with more flights canceled that day.

China is also projecting more power, raising the possibility of more intense and more frequent clashes with the police. An official in Beijing on Monday condemned the actions of the protesters last weekend, casting it as the first signs of "terrorism." The Chinese police also appeared to conduct large-scale exercises across the border from Hong Kong in Shenzhen, a city on the mainland.

"We are at a crossroads," said Martin Lee, a democracy advocate and former lawmaker. "The future of Hong Kong -- the future of democracy -- depends on what's going to happen in the next few months."

The unrest is exposing the inherent conflict in the political experiment that began when China reclaimed Hong Kong from Britain in 1997, an ambitious attempt to marry Beijing's brand of authoritarianism with a bastion of civil liberties.

China's top leader, Xi Jinping, wants to make Hong Kong more like a mainland city, using economic incentives to buy happiness and propaganda to win loyalty. The protesters, who represent a wide swath of Hong Kong, want a government that looks out for their interests, not just Beijing's, to help resolve problems like astronomical housing prices and low wages.

The two sides no longer seem to recognize each other's concerns. ...

Plp -> Fred C. Dobbs... , August 13, 2019 at 05:09 AM
High housing costs and inadequate wages

Are these the driving issues

Then they are resolved
by a George tax that is distributed as a wage supplement

Hong Kong's landlord class is the enemy

Plp -> Plp... , August 13, 2019 at 05:15 AM
Demands

"The complete withdrawal of the proposed extradition bill"

Obviously doable

"The government to withdraw the use of the word "riot" in relation to protests"

Yes

"The unconditional release of arrested protesters and charges against them dropped"

Normal

"An independent inquiry into police behaviour"

Always sensible

:Implementation of genuine universal suffrage"

Very very ambiguous


Where are the demands for higher wages and housing cost relief

This sounds like middle class college kid
Stuff

Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs... , August 13, 2019 at 05:03 AM
Hong Kong Airport Suspends
Check-Ins as Protests Continue

Hundreds of people occupied parts of Hong Kong
International Airport, with some using luggage
trolleys to block travelers from reaching their gates.

The demonstration came hours after the city's
embattled leader pleaded for order following days
of escalating chaos and violent street clashes.

Hong Kong Airport Suspends Check-Ins in 2nd Day
of Disruptive Protests https://nyti.ms/2MekLsu
NYT - Mike Ives - August 12

HONG KONG -- Hong Kong's airport suspended check-ins for a second straight day on Tuesday as protesters again disrupted its operations, hours after the city's embattled leader pleaded for order amid escalating chaos.

Hundreds of demonstrators occupied parts of Hong Kong International Airport's departures and arrivals halls on Tuesday, with some using luggage trolleys to block travelers from reaching their departure gates. The Hong Kong Airport Authority closed check-in services in the late afternoon, and it advised all passengers to leave as soon as possible.

It was the second day in a row that demonstrators had seriously disrupted operations at the airport, one of the world's busiest. On Monday, protesters effectively shuttered it after storming the arrivals and departures halls. As flight cancellations piled up on Tuesday, a few scuffles broke out between protesters and travelers. ...

Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs... , August 13, 2019 at 07:18 AM
China Says Hong Kong Protests Show 'First Signs of Terrorism'
https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-says-hong-kong-protests-show-first-signs-of-terrorism-11565604635
WSJ - Chun Han Wong - August 12

BEIJING -- Chinese authorities condemned violent weekend demonstrations in Hong Kong as "deranged" acts that marked the emergence of "the first signs of terrorism" in the semiautonomous city, vowing a merciless crackdown on the perpetrators.

The escalating rhetoric from Beijing followed a day of heated protests in Hong Kong, including the hurling of petrol bombs, and came as thousands of protesters gathered at Hong Kong's international airport on Monday, prompting officials to cancel all flights for the rest of the day apart from those already en route to the air-travel hub.

"Radical Hong Kong protesters have repeatedly used extremely dangerous tools to attack police officers," a spokesman for the Chinese government's Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office told a news briefing on Monday, according to Chinese state media. "The first signs of terrorism are starting to appear."

On Sunday, police in riot gear fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse crowds of protesters across Hong Kong, some of whom threw bricks and what police identified as Molotov cocktails and smoke bombs. Police said an officer was hospitalized with burns to his legs after being hit by a Molotov cocktail hurled by a protester.

The spokesman, Yang Guang, expressed "intense condemnation" for such "deranged and severe criminal activities committed without regard for the consequences." Such violence must be severely punished, "without leniency, without mercy," he said.

Mr. Yang also called on ordinary Hong Kong residents to oppose the violence. "Hong Kong has already reached an important juncture," he said. "All the people who care about Hong Kong's future should step firmly forward, and say no to all criminal activities and all violent elements."

Mr. Yang didn't indicate that Beijing has any imminent plans to intervene in the unrest. Instead, he reiterated the central government's firm support for Hong Kong's police and judiciary in their efforts to "decisively enforce the law" and punish wrongdoers as soon as possible.

Chinese state media, however, appeared to signal that mainland forces are ready to step in, if necessary.

On Monday, social-media accounts run by the Communist Party's flagship newspaper, People's Daily, and other leading state news outlets published footage of Chinese paramilitary forces arriving in the southern city of Shenzhen, which abuts Hong Kong, over the weekend.

The footage, dated Saturday, featured captions describing the columns of armored vehicles and trucks as a detachment from the People's Armed Police that may have been sent to participate in summer training drills.

The People's Daily, in a microblog post featuring the footage, cited a Chinese law outlining the armed police's powers, saying the paramilitary force can be used to deal with "riots, disturbances, severe violent criminal incidents, terrorist attacks and other public security incidents."

Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs... , August 13, 2019 at 07:32 AM
Hong Kong's billionaires are
calling for order to be restored
CNN Business - August 13

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/13/business/hong-kong-protests-billionaires/index.html

Hong Kong -- Hong Kong's real estate billionaires are calling for an end to massive protests that have crippled local businesses and paralyzed the city's international airport.

Swire Pacific, one of Hong Kong's richest family-owned business empires, issued a strongly worded statement on Tuesday. The company condemned "illegal activities and violent behavior" and threw its support behind Hong Kong's beleaguered government.

"Swire Pacific is deeply concerned by the ongoing violence and disruption impacting Hong Kong," the company said in a statement, offering its full support for Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam and the city's police "in their efforts to restore law and order."

The company's CEO is billionaire Merlin Swire. The family's business empire dates back more than 200 years and has had roots in Hong Kong for much of that time. It owns luxury hotels, office towers and high-end shopping malls in the city.

Swire is also the largest shareholder in Cathay Pacific, Hong Kong's flagship airline that has become a high profile casualty of the turmoil. Swire said it fully supports the carrier's "strict implementation" of new restrictions on the airline handed down by China's aviation authority over the weekend.

The statement came as hundreds of protestors crowded into Hong Kong's international airport, disrupting flights for the second day in a row. ...

Property tycoon: Time to "think deeply"

Sun Hung Kai Properties, which is controlled by Asia's third richest family, the Kwoks, also called Tuesday for demonstrators to stop the violence. The real estate developer called for the restoration of social order and voiced support for Hong Kong's government ...

[Aug 13, 2019] "Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power."

Highly recommended!
Aug 13, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

im1dc , August 12, 2019 at 11:15 AM

I need to learn how to use this as an Occam's Razor to cull candidates for PRES

"Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power."

Bertrand Russell

[Aug 12, 2019] World is watching US reaction points to Hong Kong as a color revolution by Nebojsa Malic

"Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power." ~Bertrand Russell
Fully applicable to any color revolution.
Notable quotes:
"... The president's top legislative ally, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), was far more direct: "Any violent crackdown would be completely unacceptable... The world is watching." ..."
"... One cannot help but recall that the same phrasing was used for Ukraine, during the Maidan protests of 2013 that culminated in a violent coup in February 2014 – and plunged that country into secession of Crimea and civil war in the Donbass. ..."
"... The impression is only reinforced by the images reminiscent of Kiev coming out of Hong Kong, showing helmeted protesters in black masks firing grenades and throwing firebombs at police – none of which has stopped the chorus of US media from calling the protesters "pro-democracy." ..."
"... There is even nationalism, albeit of a xeno variety: some protesters have brandished flags of Hong Kong's former colonial master, the UK. Others have embraced the US flag, telling reporters it stands for "freedom, human rights and democracy." ..."
"... All of this has been seen before, most recently in Kiev but also in other places. There was even the requisite meddling by the State Department: US diplomat Julie Eadeh was photographed meeting with protest leaders. It wasn't quite Victoria Nuland passing out cookies to the Maidan demonstrators, but it was enough to raise alarm. ..."
"... This is very very embarrassing. Julie Eadeh, a US diplomat in Hong Kong, was caught meeting HK protest leaders. It would be hard to imagine the US reaction if Chinese diplomat were meeting leaders of Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter or Never Trump protesters. ..."
"... " Our diplomat was doing her job and we commend her for her work," State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said at a news briefing last week. Ortagus then denounced what she said was publication of Eadeh's personal details, including the names of her children, in Chinese media as the action of a "thuggish regime." ..."
"... It is worth noting that the protests have already accomplished their original purpose, as the bill that would have allowed the extradition of criminal suspects to mainland China has been suspended. So now the demonstrators are calling for city officials to resign and broader political reforms, open-ended demands that will likely only grow with time. ..."
"... Color evolutions are a type of regime change technique developed by US strategists and executed by diplomats and non-governmental organizations. They rely on exploiting legitimate grievances of the local population, amplifying with money and marketing small groups of activists they either create or co-opt. The goal is to provoke the government into a violent crackdown, so as to destroy its legitimacy – whereupon it can be replaced in the name of "democracy and human rights." ..."
"... In the "best case" scenario, such as Serbia, the immediate body count is low but the country's democratic institutions are irreparably damaged and corrupted by this sort of fraud and manipulation. Ukraine, Syria, or Libya are what the worst-case scenario looks like: civil war or anarchy, with tens of thousands of deaths. ..."
Aug 12, 2019 | www.rt.com

If the iconography and tone of Hong Kong protests and the support from US diplomats weren't enough, Washington's words of concern sure seem to suggest that the months-long demonstrations amount to a 'color revolution.' On Monday, the Trump administration urged "all sides to refrain from violence." While carefully paying lip service to Hong Kong being an internal Chinese matter, the unnamed White House official who spoke to the press said the US supported those "looking for democracy."

The president's top legislative ally, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), was far more direct: "Any violent crackdown would be completely unacceptable... The world is watching."

The people of Hong Kong are bravely standing up to the Chinese Communist Party as Beijing tries to encroach on their autonomy and freedom. Any violent crackdown would be completely unacceptable. As I have said on the Senate floor: The world is watching. https://t.co/5VPm5P4PfB

-- Leader McConnell (@senatemajldr) August 12, 2019

One cannot help but recall that the same phrasing was used for Ukraine, during the Maidan protests of 2013 that culminated in a violent coup in February 2014 – and plunged that country into secession of Crimea and civil war in the Donbass.

The impression is only reinforced by the images reminiscent of Kiev coming out of Hong Kong, showing helmeted protesters in black masks firing grenades and throwing firebombs at police – none of which has stopped the chorus of US media from calling the protesters "pro-democracy."

There is even nationalism, albeit of a xeno variety: some protesters have brandished flags of Hong Kong's former colonial master, the UK. Others have embraced the US flag, telling reporters it stands for "freedom, human rights and democracy."

Hong Kong protesters in Hong Kong proudly sing US National anthem "The Star-Spangled Banner" O say can you see ... What so proudly we hailed ...brings tears to my eyes 😂🤣💀 pic.twitter.com/CeM5zrA1Fe

-- Carl Zha (@CarlZha) August 10, 2019

All of this has been seen before, most recently in Kiev but also in other places. There was even the requisite meddling by the State Department: US diplomat Julie Eadeh was photographed meeting with protest leaders. It wasn't quite Victoria Nuland passing out cookies to the Maidan demonstrators, but it was enough to raise alarm.

The State Department did not deny the meeting, arguing that it was something "American diplomats do every single day around the world."

This is very very embarrassing. Julie Eadeh, a US diplomat in Hong Kong, was caught meeting HK protest leaders. It would be hard to imagine the US reaction if Chinese diplomat were meeting leaders of Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter or Never Trump protesters. pic.twitter.com/JfiU2O2HZq

-- Chen Weihua (@chenweihua) August 8, 2019

"Our diplomat was doing her job and we commend her for her work," State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said at a news briefing last week. Ortagus then denounced what she said was publication of Eadeh's personal details, including the names of her children, in Chinese media as the action of a "thuggish regime."

It is worth noting that the protests have already accomplished their original purpose, as the bill that would have allowed the extradition of criminal suspects to mainland China has been suspended. So now the demonstrators are calling for city officials to resign and broader political reforms, open-ended demands that will likely only grow with time.

Even though US President Donald Trump has steered clear of Hong Kong and made sure to describe is as an internal Chinese matter, focusing his diatribes entirely on trade, the Chinese public is becoming increasingly convinced that Washington is instigating turmoil in Hong Kong along the lines of "color revolutions" elsewhere.

HK media has the right to report on US diplomats who actively interfere in HK situation, and help people understand what they're doing. The US administration is instigating turmoil in HK the way it stoked "color revolutions" in other places worldwide. This is thuggish diplomacy. pic.twitter.com/4hkH7eYyEH

-- Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) August 9, 2019

If this charge is in fact true, that is very bad news for the already strained Sino-American relations – but also for Hong Kong itself.

Color evolutions are a type of regime change technique developed by US strategists and executed by diplomats and non-governmental organizations. They rely on exploiting legitimate grievances of the local population, amplifying with money and marketing small groups of activists they either create or co-opt. The goal is to provoke the government into a violent crackdown, so as to destroy its legitimacy – whereupon it can be replaced in the name of "democracy and human rights."

The prototype for this approach was the October 2000 coup in Serbia, which US diplomats and the cheerleader media then invoked in subsequent cases.

Also on rt.com October 5, 2000: Flashback to Yugoslavia, West's first color revolution victim

In the "best case" scenario, such as Serbia, the immediate body count is low but the country's democratic institutions are irreparably damaged and corrupted by this sort of fraud and manipulation. Ukraine, Syria, or Libya are what the worst-case scenario looks like: civil war or anarchy, with tens of thousands of deaths.

Neither of which matters to the US diplomats, media or politicians, though. They declare it a "victory for democracy" and move on to the next target, to replay the scenario all over again.

Nebojsa Malic is a Serbian-American journalist and political commentator, working at RT since 2015

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[Aug 12, 2019] Allegedly authorities are infiltrating protests, instigating violence, then making arrests.

Aug 12, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

KC , Aug 12 2019 20:48 utc | 132

Anyone else see this story about HK ?

Allegedly authorities are infiltrating protests, instigating violence, then making arrests. Anybody have anything on this or a countervailing narrative?

[Aug 11, 2019] Furious pushback this week by the US State Department after a photo of a US consular official meeting with "pro-democracy activists" was published in Hong Kong media.

Aug 11, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

jayc , Aug 11 2019 22:27 utc | 24

Furious pushback this week by the US State Department after a photo of a US consular official meeting with "pro-democracy activists" was published in Hong Kong media. The National Endowment for Democracy money is distributed through the HK consulate. The NED spent about $8 million from 1998-2015, promoting "civil society" organizations and trade unions, and training democracy "activists", yet has remained almost invisible to the western press.
http://nedprogramsinhk.blogspot.com/2016/08/ned-grants-to-hong-kong-1994-to-2015.html

Numerous HK protesters have stated publicly they seek a "return" to democracy and freedom. Semantically, this suggests that democracy and freedom was something the HK people once possessed. The young protesters seem ill-informed on HK's colonial past and the dynamics of the city's internal politics. Surely the NED's millions haven't been squandered promoting false narratives?

Engagement in regular street battles with the police would not be tolerated anywhere. If anything, the HK police have been relatively restrained, though the protesters believe otherwise. They seem to believe that if the government does not immediately institute their demands and "listen" to them, then the next logical step is vandalism, street blockades and attacks on police stations. What are the NED educational programs on democratic functions actually teaching people?

The current battles don't match up to the fury of HK riots in 2016, when police tried to shut down unauthorized street vendors. The emotional pitch of those battles are quite shocking, and perhaps suggest that commerce is ultimately the most cherished freedom in HK.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1rKmZ0xLKw

[Aug 11, 2019] Hong Kong Maidan starts crossing the Rubicon from the upgrade from bricks and umbrellas to US-made grenade launchers

Notable quotes:
"... US consular official giving orders ... ahem, meeting with "pro-democracy activists" was identified as Julie Eadeh. ..."
Aug 11, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Sasha , Aug 11 2019 21:00 utc | 13

Hong Kong Maidan starts crossing the Rubicon from bricks and umbrellas to US-made grenade launchers...Do you recall the moment the Maidan snipers arrived and Pravy Sektor battallions trained months before in Poland took over from the initially seemingly popular uprise?

This follows the book to the letter...

https://twitter.com/ChinaDaily/status/1160559229452705792


Jen , Aug 12 2019 0:57 utc | 34

JAYC @ 24:

The protests in Hong Kong are starting to look more and more like the events at the Kiev Maidan in late 2013 / early 2014. Apparently someone got hold of a US-made M320 grenade launcher.

Petrol bombs are also being used.

Next thing they'll need will be tyres to create barricades and to burn.

BTW that US consular official giving orders ... ahem, meeting with "pro-democracy activists" was identified as Julie Eadeh.

Strange that the US didn't deny that Julie Eadeh met with these people but instead labelled China as "thuggish" for doxxing Eadeh in Hong Kong media. Looks like the US doesn't even bother any more to advise its diplomats to take care in meeting dissidents and regime-change activists, and not to get themselves into situations where people can photograph them on their cellphones and spread the news on social media.

Jen , Aug 12 2019 1:15 utc | 35
Aye, Myself & Me @ 33:

You could try forming the movement and see how far you get without it being infiltrated by the police, the FBI or any other law enforcement agency in the area where you live, assuming that you live in the United States.

This could very well mean that you and your followers will have to communicate and do everything "off the grid" - that means no online contact, no email, maybe even no cellphone contacts at all. How far would you all be able to go with that? You could use old-fashioned snail mail but I understand the US Postal Service is now photographing and scanning all mail and may share information about senders and recipients with law enforcement agencies.

How will The Movement be organised? Will it have a centralised leadership to control the agenda, aims and membership? Or will it be a network of decentralised cells with the problems that that arrangement might have (fragmentation, disagreement over goals, objectives and agenda and how to carry it out, whether you are prepared to use violence or not)?

I'm not saying your suggestion is a bad idea but to form a grassroots movement these days is not as easy as it might have been in the past (and that wasn't easy for those who did form such organisations).

lysias , Aug 12 2019 1:25 utc | 37
Julie Eadeh did not have a typical career path in East Asian affairs, as one would expect from a political officer in a Chinese consulate...

[Aug 06, 2019] The fact that, even after the backdown on the extradition proposal, the protesters continued escalating their demands to the point of demanding current HK leader Carrie Lam's removal, demonstrates that there is far more to the protesters' agenda than the extradition proposal. Add to that the fact that protesters receive cash payments for protesting (with the amounts jacked up if protesters destroy or damage things) and a CIA operative, Brian Kern, has been identified as a ring-leader, and it is apparent that a Color Revolution regime-change operation is in full swing.

Aug 06, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

Northern Star August 1, 2019 at 7:41 pm

I think the grievances of the students against the Chinese government had merit. Moreover yielding to continuing the status quo ante or reversion to Brit colony status were not the only possible outcomes. The former happens to be the case but things need not have gone
that way.
https://www.history.com/topics/china/tiananmen-square

Like

Mark Chapman August 1, 2019 at 8:11 pm
That's probably true, but there is often inflexibility on the part of the protesters as well, and in cases where they believe they have international backing – spelled U.S.A. – their demands rarely allow much room for compromise. The government must step down and yield governing power, usually to a group of ideologues and liberal activists, and the next step is well-known to everyone. The American 'advisers' are sent in, and state institutions are rapidly dismantled and privatized for international investment, as happened in Yeltsin's Russia.

In this case, the students wanted 'more democracy', and that right there suggests they really did not have any clear goals but change.

Like

yalensis August 2, 2019 at 3:04 am
So true. When protesters claim to want "more democracy" but cannot even define what "democracy" means, then it's clear they don't know what they are talking about, and probably just American stooges.

Like

Jen August 1, 2019 at 8:49 pm
People in HK do have many grievances but many of their problems, like the insanely high property prices, the shortage of housing for people who are not billionaires, the pollution, the crappy infrastructure, the lack of jobs in any industry apart from buying and selling property, the dismal job prospects of people who have been through an education system that relies on rote learning and slaving through scads of homework, are problems arising from the capitalist system they still retain. Unfortunately, for most of its 20-year rule since the hand-back in 1997, the HK govt has been inept in handling most of these problems.

The thing that sparked this year's protests was the proposed extradition bill that would establish appropriate extradition arrangements between Hong Kong and every other state or territory that it currently does not have extradition agreements with, and this included Mainland China, Macau and Taiwan, in the wake of the 2018 St Valentine's Day murder in which a 20-year-old HK woman was strangled by her 19-year-old HK boyfriend while holidaying in Taiwan, who then stuffed her body into a suitcase and left it at a train station in Taiwan while he returned to HK. The man is currently in jail on charges relating to stealing the woman's money after her death (he took all her ATM cards and used them) and he is due to be freed this coming October. The HK govt has currently delayed a second reading of the extradition bill but haven't withdrawn it entirely, which was one of the protesters' demands.

The fact that, even after the backdown on the extradition proposal, the protesters continued escalating their demands to the point of demanding current HK leader Carrie Lam's removal, demonstrates that there is far more to the protesters' agenda than the extradition proposal. Add to that the fact that protesters receive cash payments for protesting (with the amounts jacked up if protesters destroy or damage things) and a CIA operative, Brian Kern, has been identified as a ring-leader, and it is apparent that a Color Revolution regime-change operation is in full swing.

https://www.greanvillepost.com/2019/07/08/confucius-laozi-and-buddha-are-humbly-winning-against-the-imperial-west-in-troubled-hong-kong/

Like

Moscow Exile August 1, 2019 at 10:38 pm
The cops in Hong Kong Crown Colony were unbelievably corrupt. I worked with a former Hong Kong policeman, a British European (the HK Crown Colony police had British senior officers and Chinese "other ranks") who joined the force "to see the world". He was an idealist and resigned. He could not stand the corruption that he witnessed there. His father, by the way, was the local cop where I lived: the "village bobby", so to speak, complete with standard issue Raleigh bicycle and cycle clips, who was a decent, friendly bloke.

[Aug 05, 2019] HK-China conflict The national identity gap by Frank Ching - Sic Semper Tyrannis

Aug 05, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

05 August 2019 "HK-China conflict: The national identity gap " by Frank Ching

Hong-kong-picture_020428803_160

"The Hong Kong-Mainland conflict reflects a huge gap in national identity. This can be explained in part on how the nationality of most Hong Kong people was changed in 1997 from British to Chinese.

From China's standpoint, Hong Kong had always been Chinese soil. Through 150 years of British rule, its people remained Chinese, regardless of British law.

This fitted nicely with Britain's policy, which was to see to it that the millions of Chinese "British citizens" in Hong Kong could not move to the United Kingdom. Nationality and immigration laws were changed.

Britain created a new category of citizens, called British Dependent Territory Citizens, in the 1980s. This transformed United Kingdom citizens into Hong Kong citizens. When Hong Kong was no longer a British dependent territory, yet another new category was created, British National (Overseas). The holder has no right to live in Britain and the citizenship cannot be passed on to the next generation.

China, too, changed its nationality law to deal with Hong Kong. The Standing Committee of its National People's Congress in 1996 – the year before the handover – issued "Explanations" of how China's Nationality Law would be applied in Hong Kong. That is to say, the law would mean different things in different parts of the country, a highly unusual legal situation.

The "Explanations" introduce a concept missing in the nationality law itself, that of "Chinese descent." Thus, any Hong Kong resident of Chinese descent who was born in Hong Kong or China is a Chinese national, regardless of whether he possesses Canadian, Australian, British or other nationality. That means people who were foreign nationals were transformed into Chinese nationals in 1997.

China – and Britain – wanted the people as well as the territory to be transferred wholesale. The millions of people in Hong Kong were considered nothing but chattel.

Actually, the idea of giving the inhabitants a choice of nationality when the ownership of land is transferred is by no means novel. In fact, it happened on Chinese territory when the Qing dynasty ceded Taiwan to Japan in 1895 in the Treaty of Shimonoseki."

http://www.ejinsight.com/20190805-hk-china-conflict-the-national-identity-gap/

----------------

The news from HK this morning is such that I think CCP/China government mass intervention is near. pl


Agnes Smedley , 05 August 2019 at 01:01 PM

Attention to fake news and inforamtion warfare...

This video is circulating supposedly showing the Chinese Army about to enter Hong Kong. Not so, it is a police ceremony to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the founding of communist China on July 30.

https://twitter.com/descifraguerra/status/1158402018253377537

Jack , 05 August 2019 at 03:52 PM
Hedge fund manager who forecast the breakdown in the HKD currency board peg last May.

https://www.zerohedge.com/video/2019-07-17/kyle-bass-talks-future-fears-about-hong-kong

LondonBob -> Jack... , 05 August 2019 at 04:14 PM
Well his predictions of doom and gloom on China were always going to be right at some point given the nature of economic cycles.
oldman22 , 05 August 2019 at 04:42 PM
Here is an article in deeper detail written by Chaohua Wang.
She was at Tiananmen in 1989, and on the short list of students wanted by the Government, but managed to escape, eventually getting a PhD at UCLA.
https://outline.com/Tdnha9

[Aug 05, 2019] Looks like in Ukraine local Hong Kong authorites are thorously corrupted and may well be infiltrated by Western intelligence againceto the same expect as the goverment of Yanukovich

Aug 05, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Herr Ringbone , Aug 5 2019 5:37 utc | 71

The HK situation is more interesting, i.e. worse, than it first appears. I am not sanguine that the Colour Revolution here will be suppressed by local authorities. It is clear that the police are loath to use anything approaching adequate force on rioters, as they will face an unsupportive and indeed overzealous magistracy, one prepared to jail police readily, but which will release rioters on derisory bail amounts.

In that connection, think of Andy Chan, allegedly arrested in a building full of explosives and offensive weapons, who was promptly bailed for a mere HKD1,000 without any restriction on leaving Hong Kong.

Effectively, the administration in HK is failing to exercise the first prerogative of a state, that being the monopoly on the use of force. Large parts of the legislature and the judiciary will not support the police, so they do not do their jobs beyond a highly ineffective minimum.

In such conditions the HK government cannot survive. I think it is much more likely now that there will be armed intervention from China. There must be. HK authorities are split and can no longer use force as appropriate and required.

[Aug 04, 2019] Provoking direct intervention may be the intent of Hong Kong protests oragnizers

The current situation is a direct analogy with Euromaydan. And the relevant question is who "Luovochkin" in case of Hong Cong color revolution? How many high level Hong Kong politicians were bought by the US and UK embassies and Taiwan clandestine network ?
The hidden goal might well be to impose sanction on China based on the " violation of human rights" like the USA regime did with Russia after EuroMaydan.
Aug 04, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

jjc , 03 August 2019 at 02:53 PM

Provoking direct intervention may be the intent here. Few jurisdictions anywhere would tolerate mob attacks on legislature buildings or police stations. Donning body armour and throwing bricks at police gets one labelled a domestic terrorist in the USA. The HK police have been remarkably restrained to this point, particularly compared to similar actions in, say, France.

The protest movement succeeded in achieving its immediate demand - the shelving of the extradition law - and is now motivated by more amorphous grievances. If much of the motivation is the desire to retain a degree of independence from the mainland, then engaging in insurrectionary violence directed at governmental institutions is precisely a way to achieve the exact opposite. In that context, the influence of malign interests seeking to provoke the CCP into a TIannemen-like crackdown is an understandable supposition.

difficult bird said in reply to walrus... , 04 August 2019 at 12:36 AM
China will not intervene unless there is pro-independence armed insurgency, like what happened in Tibet in 1959. The Chinese government does not have to worry about contagion either, because most mainland Chinese either doesn't care or they oppose the protest. In fact, most Hongkongers probably also oppose the protest. The Chinese and Hong Kong governments will wait the protest to run it course and use it as a cautionary tale for future protests, because such movement eventually hurts Hong Kong's economy and its own bottom line.
b -> blue peacock... , 04 August 2019 at 01:25 PM
In 1990 750 million people in China were below the poverty threshold. Today there are less than 30 million poor in China.

Worldbank -
Poverty & Equity Data Portal - China

It was, in your words, "the most repressive and totalitarian political force in the world today", the CCP, which achieved that?

m , 04 August 2019 at 01:18 AM
Colonel

that is the wrong way to describe it! the chinese do not recognise (quite rightly) hong kong borders. if the hong kongers choose to play up then they will be put down just as you describe.

b , 04 August 2019 at 04:41 AM
The Hong Kong police has so far done little against the rioters. Few have been arrested. It can still up its response by several grades.

The tactic for now is to let the rioters expose themselves as what they are. The typical Hong Konger want to mind their business and dislike having it disturbed by some unruly students. They back the police.

When the time is ripe the police will pick off the leaders of the riots and do them in.

No need for the PLA to intervene.

[Aug 03, 2019] Hong Kong Police Fire Tear Gas As Peaceful Protest Turns Chaotic

While Hong Cong people, especially working and middle class might have legitimate grievances, The USA poison and exploits for pretty nefarious purposes any protest converting it into anti-government action organized and financed by foreign sources. Trump promised isolationalist foreign policy. He folded and his policy does not differ much from Obama administration policy.
Compare with Yellow vest movement Paris police fire tear gas at protesters - BBC News - YouTube
I wonder if this is propaganda or not that some civil servants jointed the protest. In any case the carrot of emigration to Taiwan might work for some.
Vandalizing vehicles and destroying commerce will not fare well with the majority of population, so in a way the protesters already alienated themselves from the people of Hong Kong and clearly represent foreign interests.
Chinese "officials also recently described the US as a "black hand" behind the anti-Beijing protests - which began over a proposed extradition bill - something which the US state department dismissed as "ridiculous". " But why they were unable to prevent those riots despite previous exprince needs to be investigated. Probably like in EuroMaydan some Hong Kong officials changed sides.
Analogies with EuroMaydan clashes with police in the center of Kiev are evident if you want the videos. Looks like the "fighters" (which is a tiny percentage of protesters) are well trained to play the role of shock troops. Analogies with EuroMaydan are evident in a way they use the improvised body armor and the way they use inflammable liquids
There is also strong analogy in demands: "Protesters are also demanding that the government look into allegations of police abusing their power, as well as a full withdrawal of the extradition bill, which has only been suspended for now. They are also demanding that all arrested protesters be exonerated , along with the implementation of universal sufferage and that the government stop referring to their demonstrations as riots. "
Protesters could be seen hurling bricks at the Mong Kok province police station, while others vandalized walls, vehicles and lamp posts .
Aug 03, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
Protesters could be seen hurling bricks at the Mong Kok province police station, while others vandalized walls, vehicles and lamp posts .

A day after thousands of civil servants took to the streets in Central to urge authorities to give in to protesters' demands, people gathered on Saturday for an approved rally in the shopping hub of Mong Kok, but which soon splintered off into different directions , ending in clashes in Mong Kok and Tsim Sha Tsui as police used tear gas.

Outside Tsim Sha Tsui Police Station, some had hurled bricks into its car park , while others vandalised vehicles and lamp posts. The force said it had issued a warning for the crowd to leave before firing rounds of tear gas.

Earlier, protesters marched all the way to the Cross-Harbour Tunnel, briefly blocking it and bringing traffic to a halt, before circling back to Mong Kok and Tsim Sha Tsui. Along sections of the main thoroughfare Nathan Road, some set up barricades and geared up with helmets and masks as night fell. - SCMP

According to reports, thousands of civil servants have defied government orders not to join the protests - and were met with applause from Hong Kong residents as they took to major roads in the heart of the city's business district.


dustinthewind , 11 minutes ago link

The protestors were warned peaceful or not as these constant riots have been destroying businesses as people simply will not shop under such conditions. The fact is there is no reason for the protests accept to remove the HK government and destroy the economy as the extradition agreement has been removed. This has nothing to do with democracy or communism but of the US forcing China to open up their markets just as Briton did with the Opium Wars in 1841. HK is in fact a Chinese territory and has been all along even though the Brits forced them to sign over the place after the first Opium War. It is no accident we have protests there, in Venezuela and now in Moscow all US and British backed.

The Chinese have more patience than me as I would have set in the military the first day of protests after the HK gov announced the extradition treaty was gone. The fact is the Chinese did not have to ask for one in the first place as it is and always has been theirs.

Do you think the British had ask for one when they took control of all their colonies years ago? How about the US with all theirs territories like Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, etc.

Do you think the people of Hawaii had a choice when statehood was forced on them and the removal of the royal family there all because of Dole Pineapple, US Sugar, etc. Bringing democracy to the world!

Kartolas , 12 minutes ago link

Destroy all those treasonous trash cans!

reader2010 , 15 minutes ago link

Lets get some perspective

43,000 marchers -- 17,000 U.S. World War I veterans, their families, and affiliated groups -- who gathered in Washington, D.C. in the summer of 1932 to demand cash-payment redemption of their service certificates. Organizers called the demonstrators the "Bonus Expeditionary Force". General McArthur ordered Patton to roll out tanks to machine gun down his own former soldiers on Pennsylvania Ave.

Lost in translation , 4 minutes ago link

Truths not taught at West Point ^

reader2010 , 26 minutes ago link

If this is happening in the US, police has already opened fire at the protesters for sure. Because they will be labeled as domestic terrorists and killed.

Justin Case , 36 minutes ago link

A time to reflect on history of ones own imperfections. Approximately 250,000 people participated in this 1963 civil rights march in DC, where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous "I have a Dream" speech.

Between 500,000 and 600,000 people demonstrated against the Vietnam War in DC, which had led to thousands of deaths by 1969. Coalitions started organizing smaller rallies in 1967, eventually leading up to the large anti-Vietnam march two years later.

The Solidarity Day march was a rally of about 260,000 people in DC in 1981. It was in response to President Ronald Reagan's decision to fire 12,000 air traffic controllers who went on strike and demanded wage increases and safer working conditions.

In 1982, around a million protestors filled Central Park to protest nuclear weapons during Ronald Reagan's presidency.

This 1987 protest (also known as "the Great March") drew around 200,000 people, The New York Times reported at the time.

The march called for federal money for AIDS research and treatment, as well as an end to discrimination against LGBT people.

In 1995, Washington, DC's Million Man March took place with a stated aim to unite the Black community. Estimates for the number of attendees vary from 400,000 to 1.1 million people.

Between 800,000 and a million people marched on the National Mall in 1993 for LGBT rights. The organizers' primary demands were civil rights bills against discrimination, an increase in AIDS research funding, and reproductive rights.

In 1997, two years after the Million Man March, anywhere from 500,000 to 2 million people convened for the Million Woman March. The event, which was held on a rainy Saturday in 1997, included prayer, musical performances, and speeches by local organizers and civil rights activists.

As a protest to George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq, between 10 to 15 million people marched in 600 cities across the world in 2003. At least 500,000 people protested in American cities, including New York City, Los Angeles, and Seattle.

In 2004, the March for Women's Lives was one of the largest pro-choice protests in American history, with between 500,000 and 1.1 million attendees.

A day after Trump's inauguration, approximately half a million people protested in the Women's March in Washington DC, making it one of the largest one-day protests in American history. Nationwide, an estimated 4.2 million came out for sister marches in over 600 cities.

The effort also extended internationally with marches in over 60 countries on every continent -- including Antarctica.

"We must create a society in which women -- including Black women, Native women, poor women, immigrant women, disabled women, Muslim women, lesbian queer and trans women -- are free and able to care for and nurture their families, however they are formed, in safe and healthy environments free from structural impediments," its organizers wrote.

[Aug 03, 2019] France vs China: compare and learn

Notable quotes:
"... Since the beginning of the yellow vest protests end of november 2019 there have been made 11000 arrests,without proof,it's the police that decides.There are 2000 condemnations of people that never were known to be outside the law. The arrested people are kept in a small cell ,with up to twenty persons,without sanitary equipment, stinking piss, and maybe released after 24 hours. The Order of French Lawyers sais it has nothing to do with exercising justice, when after such a confinement you must chose to accept or refuse "comparution immediate", thus to accept being judged immediately, with a lawyer appointed, who has no time to study your file, or staying in detention for maybe months, to prepare your trial. ..."
"... There have been 4000 injuries,300 grave injuries, like head injuries, losing hands, comas, 26 people lost an eye. (While Macron and his ministers are concerned about the health of Navalny, they say bluntly that- those injuries are all fault of the protestors, who'd better stay home.) ..."
Aug 03, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

willie , Aug 3 2019 11:50 utc | 78

I would like to point to the following article ,for those who read French and are interested in the policies of the Macron regime towards protests from french citizens.

It appeared on the website Agoravox, which offers a forum for anyone wanting to write and publish. Of course there are regular authors that publish on one specific subject, like Ukraine, or the Empire, but if you want- to write about gardening, or climate change ,you can do it.

At the moment there is even an article of some Iranian defending MEK, and an emirati author, gives always a hallugenic view on middle-eastern events.

Anyways,this article provides a lot of information about the violence that is bestowed upon the protesting citizen,by an unleashed police force,who becomes more and more violent beacause of its uncountability.Whenever there is enquiry,it is police enquiring police.

https://www.agoravox.fr/tribune-libre/article/l-incroyable-violence-de-la-216974

I translate and paraphrase some quotes:

Since the beginning of the yellow vest protests end of november 2019 there have been made 11000 arrests,without proof,it's the police that decides.There are 2000 condemnations of people that never were known to be outside the law. The arrested people are kept in a small cell ,with up to twenty persons,without sanitary equipment, stinking piss, and maybe released after 24 hours. The Order of French Lawyers sais it has nothing to do with exercising justice, when after such a confinement you must chose to accept or refuse "comparution immediate", thus to accept being judged immediately, with a lawyer appointed, who has no time to study your file, or staying in detention for maybe months, to prepare your trial.

There have been 4000 injuries,300 grave injuries, like head injuries, losing hands, comas, 26 people lost an eye. (While Macron and his ministers are concerned about the health of Navalny, they say bluntly that- those injuries are all fault of the protestors, who'd better stay home.)

Police make a lavish use of LBD granade lancers, a weapon of war class A2 according to international standards. France is the only european country that uses them, and the Swiss manufacturer needed a derogation to export them.

There have been 19000 shots of LBD and 4000 grenades fired.

The death of Zaynab Ridouane,in Marseille,a lady 82 years,on the second floor of her appartment, who was closing the volets of her window when two shots were deliberately fired. The enquiry said she died of heart failure.

The death of Steve Maya Caniço, which is now focused upon in the media, was caused,on the day of la fête de la musique, when a police charge drove 14 people assisting a techno concert at 4 A.M on the quai of the Loire right into the river, after falling down seven meters.

The young man, who couldnt swim drowned and his corpse was found last week. Police inquiry sais he was drowned but not in relation to the police charge. Now the prefect of Nantes has prohibited a memory march for Steve. At the same time white collar criminals like tax evading ministers are still walking free. Officials, ministers and Macronist party representatives are lying all the time now, rarely confounded in MSM.

The author's main point, I think he is right,is that Macron has to fulfill the recommendations of the European Council, a.k.a. GOPE(Grand Orientations de la Politique Economique) like his predecessors Sarkozy and Hollande, and that in view of the protests to come he is doubling down on state violence to put fear in the citizens so that they will stay home.

Of course the media in France, who put Macron in power, and 95% of which are owned by a handful of billionaires and weapon industrials, are minimizing protestors in numbers and legitimacy.,in the same time worrying about Russian and Chinese state violence towards Putin-contestot no.1 Navalny and HongKong protesters.

The GOPE are actually the directives that would completely abolish all the post-war social achievements of the french people.After the war de Gaulle and the communists put on a welfare system pensions, and other social and equal laws.

Since the fall of the USSR they are demolishing it, bit by bit. Now the GOPE for 2019 show this:diminishing of social spending,and public spending.Gains in efficiency,etc.There is also the pension reform coming up.

Violence is the last resort of Macron and his fascist clique to get those thçngs done, and with less than 15% population support you can reign the world in France.

Where will it all end? Suicide among police man have reached 45 cases this year up till now, more than last year's total. This is not getting away by itself.

Norwegian , Aug 3 2019 12:09 utc | 79

willie @78
The young man,who couldnt swim drowned and his corpse was found last week.Police inquiry sais he was drowned but not in relation to the police charge.Now the prefect of Nantes has prohibited a memory march for Steve.

The situation in France needs a lot more exposure. It seems the prohibition was unsuccessful, there is a big march ongoing (video)

Protesters Hold March of Silence in Nantes After Man Dies Amid Clashes With Police

[Aug 03, 2019] Events in Hong Kong may be less about extradition laws and more about the upcoming election in Taiwan

Aug 03, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

jayc , Aug 2 2019 21:30 utc | 20

Events in Hong Kong may be less about extradition laws and more about the upcoming election in Taiwan, where the two main candidates are largely identified with either the mainland or the USA. Using the HK protests to provoke a harsh reaction from the HK authorities and/or the Chinese government itself, provides a ready platform for the pro-American candidate. In light of this, the protests will likely continue indefinitely, including violent acts designed to provoke over-reaction.

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3020313/taiwans-2020-election-candidates-its-us-vs-china

[Jul 31, 2019] China Accuses US Of Orchestrating Hong Kong Protests

Notable quotes:
"... And while some may be quick to dismiss her allegations, it was similar "interference" by the US state department that was observed in Ukraine just days before the fateful Maidan protests that brought down the president and thanks to Victoria "Fuck the EU" Nuland , set the world on its current path of cold war-era confrontation between the US and Russia, which in turn has virtually assured another global military conflict in the future. ..."
Jul 31, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

...China's Foreign Ministry on Tuesday claimed the recent protests in Hong Kong are "the work of the U.S.," adding that the United States owes the world an explanation.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo "thinks that the recent violence in Hong Kong is reasonable because everyone knows that this is the work of the U.S.," spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a regular press briefing, referring to when Pompeo said China should "do the right thing" in dealing with protests in Hong Kong, in an interview with Bloomberg Television last week.

According to Kyodo, as evidence Hua provided examples of recent U.S. "interference" in which, she claims U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton and Pompeo met with opposition figures multiple times throughout the weeks-long protests over a controversial extradition bill. And while some may be quick to dismiss her allegations, it was similar "interference" by the US state department that was observed in Ukraine just days before the fateful Maidan protests that brought down the president and thanks to Victoria "Fuck the EU" Nuland , set the world on its current path of cold war-era confrontation between the US and Russia, which in turn has virtually assured another global military conflict in the future.

"There have been many American faces in the violent parade in Hong Kong, and even some American flags," Hua said.

In urging the United States to "let go" of the Hong Kong issue, Hua warned, "Those who play with fire only get themselves burned."

China's remarks came just hours before the ministerial-level trade talks between the two nations in Shanghai collapsed without even a glimmer of progress after just a few hours of discussions, with the future of trade negotiations in limbo.

... ... ...

BobPaulson , 11 minutes ago link

The US forment unrest in its adversary's backyard? Never!

[Jul 29, 2019] HK like the Ukraine and the mess while based on existing grievances was facilitated by the US government agencies

Notable quotes:
"... I don't doubt that Hong Kong residents have legitimate gripes, but like a tapeworm attaching itself to the host, almost any domestic unrest in any US "adversary" is usually tapped into by the US for its own purposes. ..."
"... The real issue here is the idea that Western nations have the right to interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign countries, anywhere in the world, whenever it suits them to further the agenda of the Imperialism. ..."
"... It's also funny that China.gov has decided that the protesters shouldn't be treated too harshly because its not their fault that they're childish and impatient. ..."
"... I find it interesting how "pro-democracy activists" in Hong Kong, Venezuela, Nicaragua et al uniformly resort to vandalism and arson as a preferred tactic, with the encouragement of western politicians who warn the target nations to restrain the police. ..."
"... In Hong Kong, the protesters are conducting direct attacks on government institutions - legislature, police HQ, PRC offices - which pretty much anywhere else would be met by overt force to quell insurrectionary violence. The "pro-democracy activists" in the above mentioned countries in fact show little interest in democratic process. ..."
"... China no longer needs HK the money center has moved to the Main Land. China can seat back and watch HK melt down, ..."
"... Once again, pay close attention to who is carrying water for the western empire by regurgitation corporate media narratives about the color revolution attempt in Hong Kong. Do always suspect these individuals' posts now that they reveal themselves as tools of the empire. ..."
"... How can you tell when protests are genuine and "organic" ? The corporate mass media ignores them, downplays them, and when it cannot ignore them refers to them in disparaging and ridiculing terms. ..."
"... The National Endowment for Democracy spends millions of dollars to subvert sovereign governments. You will notice that no "color revolutions" in Colombia, Honduras, or Chile. ..."
"... Hudson's main thesis is that the Petro-Dollar is instrumental in the continued operation of the Empire, and there will be no movement away from that as it would undercut dollar hegemony through the weakening of the oil market which the US has control. Therefore any movement to curb the climate catastrophe will not gain support by the US. It is a contradiction of existence. ..."
"... Currently there are numerous articles on protests in Russia (five on the portal's main page, all of which are critical of the Russian government and supportive of the relatively tiny protests). Likewise there are numerous article supportive of the protesters in Hong Kong. Again, five on Google News' main page supporting the protesters but none voicing any criticism of them. ..."
"... Meanwhile the gilets jaunes protests remain backpage news with no coverage on the main page of either the news aggregation portals or on the major news sites landing pages. Ongoing protests in Haiti, though, are not even getting backpage coverage in the western corporate mass media. ..."
"... There are certainly newsworthy events in the world, but coverage of them by the corporate mass media is 100% propaganda. They are all capitalist enterprises with pervasive interest in defending capitalism and the empire that capitalism has built. This concept isn't complicated. ..."
"... This is all money that could be spent repairing and improving our flagging infrastructure, preparing our electrical grids for possible cyber or EMP attacks (solar panels/inverters/batteries in large population centers), and addressing the student debt crisis that is only getting worse. But we all know that big business and Wall Street/The City of London control every aspect of the U.S. government and every action taken by said government is in service to their short and long term goals. ..."
"... Jacques actually criticizes Beijing for being too lenient towards Hong Kong. With its "One Nation, Two Systems" policy - which it has adhered to scrupulously - China has also allowed Hong Kong to wallow in its own lack of any spirited imperative. In consequence, many in HK look with envy across the water to Shenzhen, and wonder where their own rise to glory will come from. The structure that Jacques describes is not going to produce it. ..."
"... Wait. I thought it was one issue. The extradition issue? I wonder if Syrians had legitimate issues too? Oh my! ..."
"... I don't want my government starting revolutions that lead to wars for regime change I'm not free to stop. The ZioAnglo imperialists corrupt everything they touch. ..."
"... cash payments were offered to students to protest. This is confirmed by Jeff J Brown's article for The Greanville Post in which he mentions people were paid higher amounts "for tearing the place up". ..."
"... Interesting too in the same article is that Brian Kern has been noted as an apparent CIA operative stirring up protesters. ..."
"... In September the new university year starts. ..."
Jul 29, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Passer by , Jul 27 2019 17:09 utc | 1

next page " OT

Guys, i think i found the reason behind the trade wars and crack down on globalisation by the US. They think that they will save themselves, to a certain degree, that way.

There are long term GDP Growth and Socioeconomic Scenarios developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the OECD, and the world scientific community. They are generally used to measure the impact of Climate change on the World. In order to measure it, Socioeconomic Scenarios were developed, as the level of economic growth in the world is very important for determining the impact of Climate Change in the future. High growth levels will obviously affect Climate change, so these estimates are important.

For more on this you can check these studies here, some of the many dealing with this topic.

There are 5 main scenarios. All of them describe different worlds.

  1. SSP 1 - Green World, economic cooperation, reduced inequality, good education systems. High level of economic growth, fast catch up of the developing world with the developed world. High level of multipolarity.
  2. SSP 2 - More of the same/ Muddling through - continuation of the current trends. Relatively high level of economic growth, relatively fast catch up of the developing world with the developed world. Good level of multipolarity.
  3. SSP 3 - Regional Rivalry - nationalisms, trade wars, lack of global cooperation, fragmentation of the word, environmental degradation. Low levels of economic growth everywhere, the developing world remains poor and undeveloped. Low level of multipolarity, West retains many positions.
  4. SSP 4 Inequality - depicts a world where high-income countries use technological advances to stimulate economic growth; leading to a high capacity to mitigate. In contrast, developments in low income countries are hampered by very low education levels and international barriers to trade. Growth is medium, the catch up process between the developing world and the developed world is not fast. Medium level of multipolarity.
  5. SSP 5 Economic growth and fossil fuels take priority over green world - High levels of economic growth, fast catch up of the developing world with the developed world. High level of multipolarity.

See SSP 3. A world of rivalry, trade wars, trade barriers, lack of global cooperation, and fragmentation, will lead to lower level of growth in the developing world, and thus a slow catch up process. Multipolarity in such a world is weak as the developing world is hampered.

In other words, a world of cooperation between countries will lead to higher economic growth in the developing world, faster catch up process, and thus stronger multipolarity. Basically, globalisation is key. The developing world (ex West) was growing slowly before globalisation (before 1990). Globalisation means sharing of technology and knowledge, and companies investing in poorer countries. Outsourcing of western manufacturing. Etc. After globalisation started in 1990, the developing world is growing very well. It is globalisation that is weakening the West and empowering the developing world. So the US needs to kill it.

So what do we see: exactly attemts to create the SSP 3 scenario. Trade wars, sanctions, attacks on multilateral institutions - the WTO, on international law, on the Paris Agreement for Climate Change (which if accepted would put constraints on the US economy), on the UN, bullying of Europe, support for Brexit (which weakens Europe), crack down on chinese students and scientists in the US, crack down on chinese access to western science data, demands to remove the perks for poor countries in the WTO, etc. This is hitting economic growth in the whole world and the global economy currently is not well. By destroying the world economy, the US benefits as it hampers the rise of the developing nations.

You can see this process described in this article:

Trump's Brilliant Strategy to Dismember U.S. Dollar Hegemony

https://russia-insider.com/en/trumps-brilliant-strategy-dismember-us-dollar-hegemony/ri26154

But the author is wrong. Trump does not do that in order to dismantle the dollar or US hegemony. Trump does that in order to save it, implementing policies, in my opinion, devised by the US military/intelligence community. They want to destroy globalisation and create fortress US, in order to save as much as possible of the US Empire. Chaos and lack of cooperation in the world benefit the US.

karlof1 , Jul 27 2019 17:48 utc | 2
The Outlaw US Empire's desperate. It was recently announced that Russia/China trade is now conducted mostly in Yuan/Rubble with dollar transactions at 45% and dropping fast.

Plus, the volume of Russia/China trade is rapidly increasing and has already surpassed 2018's volume. The major Power of Siberia gas pipeline to China with an export capacity of 38 billion cubic meters compared with the initial Nordstream project's 55 billion cubic meters will vastly increase the non-dollar trade value.

Additionally, China seeks ever more ag products from a Russia that's rapidly expanding that export potential thereby taking away one of the Empire's few export earners. Rather soon, all Russia/China trade will be outside of the dollar system while its volume rapidly expands. IMO, Hong Kong represents an Outlaw US Empire temper tantrum that only serves to further delegitimize its standing with China and the ASEAN region. Rather starkly, the Outlaw US Empire is beginning to realize China doesn't need it whatsoever, nor does most of Eurasia. Ouch!

bluedog , Jul 27 2019 18:18 utc | 4
Hmm are you trying to say that HK is unlike the Ukraine and the issuing mess that was created by the U.S. government agencies, if you are your sadly misinformed.!!!
sleepy , Jul 27 2019 18:20 utc | 5
Ron Sizely no. 3

I don't doubt that Hong Kong residents have legitimate gripes, but like a tapeworm attaching itself to the host, almost any domestic unrest in any US "adversary" is usually tapped into by the US for its own purposes.

AnneR , Jul 27 2019 18:27 utc | 8
Thank you b. I had a strong suspicion that the west - particularly the US/UK - were behind this brouhaha, if for no other reason than that it arose when it did. And that the BBC World Service has been beating the drum for the protestors, always mentioning fantastical numbers (millions, hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands) when it does so.

The BBC World Service, as the US-UK voice of corporate-capitalist-imperialism, *never* speaks to those Hong Kong people who are not interested in the protests or the purported reasons for them (so much for their much vaunted "impartiality" which is and always has been utter bunkum). Nor, when the extradition bill is mentioned, does the Beeb *ever* point out that it includes Taiwan and Macau. Only China is spoken of as the focus of the bill. *Nor* does the BBC ever say that Hong Kong has (and is) used as a bolt hole for real criminals who are wanted in China, Taiwan and Macau. And they have never mentioned the fact that HK has similar treaties with other nation states. Nor has anything (in my hearing) been said about the US connections of any of the leaders of this "movement." Omitting information is as important as repetition, use of weaselly terms, outright lying when seeking to propagandize.

In contrast - because it's "one of us" - virtually nothing has been reported on the Gilets Jaunes protests, except on the odd occasion when some accompanying the protests have broken Parisian shop windows. And during those few and far between reports no mention at all was made about the French Riot Police's brutality and the terrible wounds they inflicted on the demonstrators. (Of course, we also never hear *anything* about what the Israelis do to Palestinians unless it can be portrayed as poor, weak and vulnerable Israel being victimized by the Goliath Palestinians.)

By contrast every report on the HK protests underscores the HK police's use of tear gas and plastic bullets.

Barovsky , Jul 27 2019 18:33 utc | 9
The real issue here is the idea that Western nations have the right to interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign countries, anywhere in the world, whenever it suits them to further the agenda of the Imperialism.

If the Chinese people of Hong Kong have a problem with their rulers, surely they have the right to do whatever they choose about it, without external interference. But apparently not, according the Empire and its lackeys. As ever, the West is the arbiter of other peoples lives (and death). It's sickening and I'm ashamed by the actions of our so-called leaders.

psychohistorian , Jul 27 2019 18:34 utc | 10
Below is a link to another stunt that late empire is doing keep the brainwashed in line and its failing if this posting is any indication

Religious Persecution Survivors on the Oval Stage

The brainwashed faith breathers need to ask themselves which country is really persecuting religions by using them as pawns in the ongoing oppression of others by the elite of empire and their puppets.

Petri Krohn , Jul 27 2019 18:36 utc | 12
Nice of you to quote Tony Cartalucci. As I mentioned in the previous thread, he has been banned by Facebook and Twitter . Cartalucci has been opposing NED, Soros and their fake civil society organizations and color revolutions in Asia for at least 10 years. Part of the reason for his ban is likely his opposition to the color revolution attempt in Hong Kong.

Follow Cartalucci on VK or read his blog, the Land Destroyer .

Hoarsewhisperer , Jul 27 2019 18:43 utc | 14
...
"As that outcome was totally predictable one wonders why the Trump administration bothered to launch such nonsense. It will only make it more difficult to solve other problems, like North Korea or global trade, over which China has influence."
Posted by b on July 27, 2019 at 17:06 UTC

... not to mention the tired old fantasy of driving a wedge between China and Russia. The chance of that succeeding now is less than zero. It's also funny that China.gov has decided that the protesters shouldn't be treated too harshly because its not their fault that they're childish and impatient.

Barovsky , Jul 27 2019 19:09 utc | 16
PS: For more on this see Stephen Gowans piece here: https://gowans.blog/2019/07/26/once-again-chomsky-and-achcar-provide-a-service-to-the-us-global-dictatorship/
Circe , Jul 27 2019 19:12 utc | 17
Okay, so when these protests first started I wrote that this was U.S.-instigated and that Hong Kong was looking like the new Taiwan, and the usual Trump bootlickers pretended I was exaggerating. I pretty much predicted Trump was a fraud, and a Zionist Neocon from minute one. Never mind. I'm vindicated...again and again.

Eat crow.

jayc , Jul 27 2019 19:14 utc | 18
I find it interesting how "pro-democracy activists" in Hong Kong, Venezuela, Nicaragua et al uniformly resort to vandalism and arson as a preferred tactic, with the encouragement of western politicians who warn the target nations to restrain the police.

The so-called Black Bloc torched a single police car and sprayed some graffiti in Toronto some years back and the whole city entered a version of martial law for a few days. In Hong Kong, the protesters are conducting direct attacks on government institutions - legislature, police HQ, PRC offices - which pretty much anywhere else would be met by overt force to quell insurrectionary violence. The "pro-democracy activists" in the above mentioned countries in fact show little interest in democratic process.

In contrast, the protests in Puerto Rico have accomplished a fair amount with, as far as I know, very little vandalism or insurrectionary activity. Not much media coverage on that.

james , Jul 27 2019 19:16 utc | 19
thanks b... you have struck the trolls nerve center, lol.... i see the cbc is trying to rustle up more animosity towards russia-putin with the protests from today in moscow.. https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/moscow-election-protest-arrests-1.5227714 that and the selective coverage on the yellow vests protests, Venezuela protests and etc. etc. the usa empire sure is busy these days!
C I eh? , Jul 27 2019 19:57 utc | 24
@vk #21

Speaking of trots, you might be interested in this:

Repressive Tolerance by Herbert Marcuse

https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/60spubs/65repressivetolerance.htm

dltravers , Jul 27 2019 20:03 utc | 26
C I eh? @ 22
you are always talking to a wall of hasbara psyop trolls

All in all just another brick in the wall. The more I read, the more I am stunned by the system. The scope and breath of this stuff is stunning.

We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone
All in all it's just another brick in the wall
All in all you're just another brick in the wall

We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave those kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave those kids alone
All in all you're just another brick in the wall
All in all you're just another brick in the wall

Wrong, do it again!
Wrong, do it again!
If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding!
(Wrong, do it again!)
How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?
(Wrong, do it again!)
You! Yes! You behind the bike sheds! Stand still, laddie!
(If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding! How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?)
You! Yes! You behind the bike sheds! Stand still, laddie!

vk , Jul 27 2019 20:21 utc | 27
Posted by: C I eh? | Jul 27 2019 19:37 utc | 22

If the existence of a mafia is the indicator of a fascist state, then you'll also have to worry about Japan (Yakuza), Taiwan (allied with the Hongkonger Triad), Hong Kong itself (Triad), Russia (Eurasiatic Mafia), Italy (where the term was created), USA (Kennedy's family had link with the American mafia) and essentially all Latin America (where narcotrafic is in all but name mafias).

jo6pac , Jul 27 2019 20:52 utc | 30
China no longer needs HK the money center has moved to the Main Land. China can seat back and watch HK melt down,

Thanks b, stay cool. You need to find a basement to hide in;-)

William Gruff , Jul 27 2019 20:53 utc | 31
Once again, pay close attention to who is carrying water for the western empire by regurgitation corporate media narratives about the color revolution attempt in Hong Kong. Do always suspect these individuals' posts now that they reveal themselves as tools of the empire.

How can you tell when protests are genuine and "organic" ? The corporate mass media ignores them, downplays them, and when it cannot ignore them refers to them in disparaging and ridiculing terms.

How can you tell when protests are events that are manufactured by the empire in the fashion of free open air music festivals? Because the empire's corporate mass media will give them free advertising, exaggerate the attendance, and refer to the heavily marketed events in glowingly positive terms.

The above behaviors of the corporate mass media have so far proven to be infallible indicators of the legitimacy of protests and can be relied upon with the utmost confidence. Likewise, people who echo the empire's corporate mass media narratives reveal themselves as tools, witting or otherwise, of the empire, and their comments warrant deep skepticism.

Ian , Jul 27 2019 20:53 utc | 32
As that outcome was totally predictable one wonders why the Trump administration bothered to launch such nonsense.

Simple. Washington DC's only option left is throwing a temper tantrum, tossing Molotov's everywhere, a scorched earth policy.

C I eh? | Jul 27 2019 19:37 utc | 22:

That's an interesting point of view. However, I remember some politician (forgot who it was) in an interview mentioning that if the stock exchanges in HK and Shanghai were to ever merge, it would make New York and London look like small potatoes (or something to that effect). I see all this ruckus as payback for going against The Empire.

El Cid , Jul 27 2019 20:58 utc | 33
The National Endowment for Democracy spends millions of dollars to subvert sovereign governments. You will notice that no "color revolutions" in Colombia, Honduras, or Chile.
Schmoe , Jul 27 2019 21:25 utc | 38
@2 karlof1

Russia and China are ditching the dollar for bilateral trade but not necessarily using local currencies. I am not sure if those Euro transfers use SWIFT; I would guess so.

Per the Moscow Times.

"The dollar's share fell to 45.7% in the first quarter of 2019, down from 75.1% in 2018. When both exports and imports of goods and services between Russia and China are considered, the share of the dollar also fell dramatically but still accounted for 55.7% of payments ($14.7 billion of a total turnover of $26.4 billion), RBC reported.

At the same time, the euro's share in payments of Russian exports to China increased tenfold over the year from 0.7% in the first quarter of 2018 to 37.6% in the first quarter of 2019.
news

"The euro has become a safe haven for trade operations" between Russia and China, Oleg Remyga from the Eurasia program at Skolkovo Business School told RBC.

The euro is increasingly being used in payments for crude oil -- Russia's main export to China -- . . ."

Michael , Jul 27 2019 21:31 utc | 40
You can always figure out where the truth lies when the beloved "directors of the revolution" show up to pass out cookies. You'd think Pompeo et al would have figured that one out by now.

Regarding the scenarios outlined by Passer by | Jul 27 2019 17:09 utc | 1: This seems very credible as Michael Hudson outlined in his piece in Counterpunch on July 22:

"Global warming is the second major existentialist threat. Blocking attempts to reverse it is a bedrock of American foreign policy, because it is based on control of oil. So the military, refugee and global warming threats are interconnected."

Hudson's main thesis is that the Petro-Dollar is instrumental in the continued operation of the Empire, and there will be no movement away from that as it would undercut dollar hegemony through the weakening of the oil market which the US has control. Therefore any movement to curb the climate catastrophe will not gain support by the US. It is a contradiction of existence.

Since China has little oil, and considers reliance on the same a vulnerability and consequently has spent 20 years in rare earth refinement industry development, it now controls 70 percent of the market. It will take quite a while for the West to catch up, as at least one industry consultant has pointed out that it takes about 20 years for an industry to go from an idea to production. These difference will underline the struggle between China and the US in the meantime You can be assured the US will not change its current course until the Petro-Dollar is annulled.

Time will tell whether China will be able to wean itself from coal. If not, climate change remediation will not matter.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/22/u-s-economic-warfare-and-likely-foreign-defenses/

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/08/the-two-capitalisms-electric-batteries-as-a-case-study-in-us-magical-thinking-vs-chinese-vertical-integration.html


William Gruff , Jul 27 2019 21:37 utc | 41
NemesisCalling @35

Your defense of the empire's mass media is charming, but since you are one of the obvious tools of empire that I was speaking of it is not unexpected.

The proof of what I said above is trivial: Go to any major news aggregation site ( Google News is typical) with your browser in incognito mode and count the stories from major corporate sources concerning protests and tax your brain to try and determine if the articles are pro or con (critical/supportive of the protesters or the target of the protests).

Currently there are numerous articles on protests in Russia (five on the portal's main page, all of which are critical of the Russian government and supportive of the relatively tiny protests). Likewise there are numerous article supportive of the protesters in Hong Kong. Again, five on Google News' main page supporting the protesters but none voicing any criticism of them.

Meanwhile the gilets jaunes protests remain backpage news with no coverage on the main page of either the news aggregation portals or on the major news sites landing pages. Ongoing protests in Haiti, though, are not even getting backpage coverage in the western corporate mass media.

"Is there not one iota of newsworthy events left in the world to cover or is it all propaganda?"

There are certainly newsworthy events in the world, but coverage of them by the corporate mass media is 100% propaganda. They are all capitalist enterprises with pervasive interest in defending capitalism and the empire that capitalism has built. This concept isn't complicated.

KC , Jul 27 2019 21:39 utc | 42
From the landdestroyer blog entry:
The longer the US wastes time, resources, and energy on tired tactics like sponsored mobs and political subversion, the less time, resources, and energy it will have to adjust favorably to the new international order that will inevitably emerge despite Washington's efforts.

How true, and add to that list the money spent on military adventurism in the ME/Iran and destabilizing Central/South American countries. Where does all this money come from? These "non-profits" sure seem to have a lot of it if they can send over $1.5M to groups in Hong Kong alone within just two years.

This is all money that could be spent repairing and improving our flagging infrastructure, preparing our electrical grids for possible cyber or EMP attacks (solar panels/inverters/batteries in large population centers), and addressing the student debt crisis that is only getting worse. But we all know that big business and Wall Street/The City of London control every aspect of the U.S. government and every action taken by said government is in service to their short and long term goals.

Tannenhouser , Jul 27 2019 21:52 utc | 44
I work with many Chinese, both of mainland and HK descent. A few RL observations. Chinese from HK seem to dislike Chinese from the mainland and vise versa. HK Chinese have generally better English. Mainland Chinese are typically less high strung and more jovial than their HK counterparts. I have been told by HK Chinese that the protests are selfish and not fully embraced by pop. They are seen as a nuisance, or a youthful excess. ML Chinese have told me the same as well as the opposite, they have also expressed the same sentiment as the Chinese pol in b's article.

Circe. Do you have an answer to my question from the OT? Got a prez that wasn't a Zioshill?

karlof1 , Jul 27 2019 21:57 utc | 46
Schmoe @38--

Can't find the link now, but within the past week it was announced that a new clearing mechanism was being initiated in Russia's Far East to facilitate settling all bilateral trade between China and Russia in either Rubbles or Yuan matching a similar facility already opened by the PBC. The figures you cited were for the 1st Q; I cited hearsay 2nd Q figures which ought to be published soon. The point is both the dollar and its monopolistic trade and settlement mechanisms will soon be bypassed and further widened in scope to accommodate ever increasing amounts of global commercial transactions to the great detriment of the Outlaw US Empire.

gzon , Jul 27 2019 21:58 utc | 47
I am not sure if it is possible to run an anti-empire theme by denying democratic representation. I don't think you are going to be able to defend the likes of Junius Ho as easily as the above, nor that locals, who to my view are almost entirely moderate, run on manipulation from Washington or wherever.

The only point I think that can be contested outright is the local election results, that is the layer that was open to universal suffrage, were pro-Beijing

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Hong_Kong_legislative_election

Gives the figures under the tab "Elections of the Legislative Council" and it seems majority in absolute votes were outside of pro-Beijing. So I still stay with the notion that at the least it is Beijing that is overstepping the mark here, that this level of tension is not necessary. On the other hand, Beijing entered an agreement on handover that was going to be difficult for it to meet when compared to its own ideology, not that that is any excuse.

Circe , Jul 27 2019 22:16 utc | 49
China's ownership of over a trillion in U.S. treasury and its control over rare earth refinement are not leverage it can easily use against U.S. imperialism as it could turn into a case of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. Wearing down the hegemony of the dollar is the best strategy. The other two are weapons of last resort. However, China has enough leverage to sabotage the U.S. plan in regards to Iran, and even Venezuela, and so far it has done squat. This inaction is a huge mistake as China's sources of oil will be U.S. compromised, and if greater conflict breaks out and the U.S. wants control, the first thing the U.S. will do is turn off the spigot.
Circe , Jul 27 2019 22:30 utc | 52
@44 Tannenhouser

Trump being the worst Zio-shill of all so far!

Ian , Jul 27 2019 22:37 utc | 53
Tannenhouser | Jul 27 2019 21:52 utc | 44:
Chinese from HK seem to dislike Chinese from the mainland and vise versa.

Normal. There will always be one region disliking another within a nation.

Grieved , Jul 27 2019 23:19 utc | 54
@53 Ian

Thanks for your sanity, and your perspective on this storm in a Chinese teacup. Yes, regions within countries have their own attitude towards other regions. And HK was tutored by British hypocrisy for a century and a half.

If you haven't already seen this, I think you will enjoy this short (9 min) clip from Martin Jacques on Hong Kong. He points to the economic structure and the structure of governance in HK. In both cases they are the imperial model, where there is little representation of the people, where policy direction came from London rather than being concocted locally, and where a few oligarchs rule the economy and have no capacity to innovate or evolve:

Martin Jacques' view on the Hong Kong development dilemma

Jacques actually criticizes Beijing for being too lenient towards Hong Kong. With its "One Nation, Two Systems" policy - which it has adhered to scrupulously - China has also allowed Hong Kong to wallow in its own lack of any spirited imperative. In consequence, many in HK look with envy across the water to Shenzhen, and wonder where their own rise to glory will come from. The structure that Jacques describes is not going to produce it.

ben , Jul 28 2019 0:06 utc | 56
Sleepy @ 5 said;"I don't doubt that Hong Kong residents have legitimate gripes, but like a tapeworm attaching itself to the host, almost any domestic unrest in any US "adversary" is usually tapped into by the US for its own purposes.

Posted by: sleepy | Jul 27 2019 18:20 utc | 5

True! And repeated around the globe often....

aspnaz , Jul 28 2019 0:15 utc | 57
Posted by: Ron Sizely | Jul 27 2019 18:06 utc | 3

Completely with you Ron. First, Hong Kong is China's only international financial center, so to call it insignificant is uninformed: it will take at least another generation and a change in China's currency access before Shanghai reaches the status of Hong Kong.

Second, there is no appetite for leaving China, Hong Kong is part of China, the dispute is about the speed at which the two are merging and respect for the 50 years agreement. Three, there is no democracy in HK: The pro-democracy politicians were voted into the Legislature by the 5000 or so HK individuals who have been chosen to vote, but even then they were banned by Beijing because they wouldn't swear allegiance to Beijing.

Four: People have not benefited from China, their lives have got worse: Rent controls were abolished, public housing is not being built and the locals are being discarded in favour of a select 150 mainlanders brought in every day to take the top jobs (lawyers, finance etc), bringing mainland corruption to what was once a fairly clean HK.

Then you have the huge wave of mainland tourists allowed to visit HK, crowding the city out with illmannered and discourteous tourists swarming around places like TST and Mong Kok, places close to the new high speed train terminal. The business men who used to run HK for its own interests are now running the city for Beijing: even though I think that economic reasons are not the main drive behind the demonstrations.

As for independence: Ask yourself why Taiwan, which has been ruled by the independence party for the last 3 years, has still not declared independence: Maybe the local politicians use it as a threat to keep back the worst aspects of Beijing? Maybe nobody really wants to be independent, they just don't want to be invaded by uncontrollable corruption?

As for the violence, anyone with any knowledge of the HK Chinese will know that this is not their way. It is total ignorance to think that the HK people would support violence against their own police. Even the triads who carried out the train invasions appear to have had second thoughts afterwards, releasing the recording about them "not getting paid for the job".

I am not saying the US is not involved, they are unlikely to resist such an opportunity, but the US has no real knowledge of the local HK population and could never influence the HK people to turn violent. Most HK people are very proud to be Chinese, they are not looking to be American even though they will use America to get ahead. It looks like the increase in violence is foreign interference as a signal to Beijing, but it will not have the support of the locals: 2 million marched against the extradition law, a few thousand are involved in the riots, there is no comparison.

vk , Jul 28 2019 2:00 utc | 65
@ Posted by: aspnaz | Jul 28 2019 1:16 utc | 60

But your account doesn't eliminate the hybrid warfare hypothesis. On the contrary, the confirm it.

In TC-18-01 -- the American manual to unconventional warfare (UW), it states that:

WILL OF THE POPULATION

1-15. The population must possess not only the desire to resist but also the will to bear the significant
hardships associated with repressive countermeasures by the government or occupying power. Populations
that the regime subjugates or indoctrinates for long periods are less likely to possess the will required to
sustain a prolonged and difficult struggle. Populations living under repressive conditions generally either
retain their unique religious, cultural, and ethnic identity or begin to assimilate with the regime out of an
instinct to survive. Planners need to distinguish between the population's moral opinion of their
"oppressors" and their actual willingness to accept hardship and risk on behalf of their values and beliefs.
Populations recently overtaken by an occupying military force have a very different character than those
that have had to survive for decades under an oppressive regime.

1-16. Information activities that increase dissatisfaction with the hostile regime or occupier and portray the
resistance as a viable alternative are important components of the resistance effort. These activities can
increase support for the resistance through persuasive messages that generate sympathy among populations.

1-17. In almost every scenario, resistance movements face a population with an active minority supporting
the government and an equally small militant faction supporting the resistance movement (Figure 1-2). For
the resistance to succeed, it must convince the uncommitted middle population, which includes passive
supporters of both sides, to accept it as a legitimate entity. A passive population is sometimes all a well-
supported insurgency needs to seize political power. As the level of support for the insurgency increases,
the passive majority will decrease.

[...]

CIVIL AFFAIRS SUPPORT TO THE SEVEN PHASES
OF UNCONVENTIONAL WARFARE

3-42. CA forces are capable of providing support to all seven phases of a UW campaign. CMO planners
and CA forces are well equipped to assist SFODs in developing the factors that make up the operational
environment of UW operations, in achieving the support or neutrality of various segments of society, or
influencing the JSOA. All Civil Affairs operations (CAO) may support UW, although the most important
role of CAO is facilitating the swift transition of power from the resistance forces to a legitimate
government after the cessation of hostilities.

In other words, it's not that the USA creates, ex nihilo , the inner contradictions of a country (which indeed exist in any country -- the USA itself included); what they do is to take those domestic contradictions and magnify them with propaganda warfare and hot warfare resources (color revolutions and guerrilla, low intensity warfare).

For example, you may have a young son who hates you because you deny him ice cream (you're afraid he's going to get cavities, diabetes, obesity etc. etc.). To wage an hybrid warfare on you would be for me to tell him you're doing it not because you're taking care of his health, but because you want to see him sad and then give him a loaded gun. Sure, many things may happen after that: he may kill you, you may kill him, he may heavily wound you and vice versa; you can neutralize his weapon before anything graver happens, or he may not shoot you simply because, deep down, he still loves you. Indeed, hybrid war has unpredictable results -- but the selling point of it is that it is low cost, low risk to the USA: even if it fails, it can be tried again and again simply because the American military is, today, the master of logistics and can reach any corner of the world while the other countries can't touch it in a non-MAD scenario.

Aka akasaka , Jul 28 2019 2:18 utc | 66
HK is fake and gay, an international airport, stock market and a place to launder your money. Honkies should emigrate to anglo-white coutries if becoming eunuchs for the nordic man is their greatest dream in life. It does suit them well and they'll be relieve without the burden of useless genitals.
aspnaz , Jul 28 2019 2:24 utc | 67
Posted by: vk | Jul 28 2019 2:00 utc | 65

Everything is possible, what should colour your views is the likelyhood of it happening. You cannot rule out anything. Let's start at the beginning of your theory: How did the USA persuade Carrie Lam to table the Extradition Bill in the first place? And if the answer is that they were just waiting for "something" bad to be tabled, then they are not in control, they are not manipulating the situation, they are observers.

Grieved , Jul 28 2019 2:37 utc | 68
@55 Tannenhouser

No, nothing so diametric as implying insanity in others simply from applauding sanity where I find it. I hadn't read your comment, and I had to go back to find your reference. I can't place who or what RL is - sorry the reference is lost on me. But I wasn't referring to anything except the perspective that one region having an attitude about another region means nothing more than it would anywhere else in the world.

~~

While I'm making this comment I may as well address the thread in general and say that I don't accept any of the claims in this thread made by anyone that this is a majority popular movement in Hong Kong. If it were that, it would feel different in its very bones, and most people here would strongly support it. I agree totally with b's article. The US is interfering and magnifying things, as usual, and failing.

What is clear to me, is that Hong Kong is a little bit lost, suffering from the ghosts of British sensibility, and with no forward vision for itself. It should indeed, as Jacques suggests, seek closer integration with the mainland, in order to experience a superior form of democratic representation, and the liberating vision of actually having a future.

gzon , Jul 28 2019 3:02 utc | 71
@ vk 65

You are not only saying a non specific CIA manual confirms it's own involvement, but that the totatility of that occuring (or majority as we are talking democratic values here) is product of its approach. In other words no event is organic if it fits the description of a circumstance that the CIA might use or fabricate. You understand you are busy justifying dictatorship, denying (in this case Hong Kongers) the credibility or ability of own opinion. Do you really understand what you are transmitting as message ? It is exactly opposite of what you might pretend to represent. You could take this one step further,though it won't be appreciated here, by saying b is using that tactic to subvert western opinion by making western method seem oppressive. You can go round in circles endlessly like this, and you call it confirmation.

karlof1 , Jul 28 2019 3:29 utc | 73
Grieved @68--

The Hong Kong links to Outlaw US Empire regime change NGOs are overt as revealed by b and further on this thread; so yeah, it's as you write. My opinion seconds that of many: Hong Kong had the opportunity to become another Singapore in tandem with Macau--are there riots there, NO!--and blew it totally. There was no Hong Kong-based vision for what to do after reunification. It should've been no secret as to what direction PRC was going to go economically and what its plans were. These "protesters" want to be independent so they say, but I doubt very much if they could articulate what their future plans are to keep Hong Kong's economy vibrant and the relations they propose to have with their biggest market right next door. Without those sorts of visions there's no way the "movement" is legitimate.

If you're going to organize a genuine Movement, you must have an agenda, a manifesto, a plan, a vision of what you want to accomplish, particularly if you win and gain power. I've written down ideas and solutions for specific problems, analytical essays and such--but I've never written a Revolutionary Manifesto to propose to the masses. (Big Lightbulb overhead!) It could be framed as an answer to this WaPost op/ed : "We Are in Our Articles of Confederation Moment: Our national legislature no longer functions," which I linked to yesterday. We know what's wrong, but the solution and change in direction needed don't fit soundbites. Nice homework assignment for Political Revolution 101.

karlof1 , Jul 28 2019 3:39 utc | 75
When you're old, you can be fearless :

"Malaysian PM: #Israel 'the main cause of #terrorism in world'"

And can say what needs to be said. While I applaud, I disagree; IMO the Outlaw US Empire is both the main cause and most involved globally and with impunity.

S , Jul 28 2019 3:50 utc | 76
@Petri Krohn #12: Please ask Tony Cartalucci to enable anonymous commenting on his LiveJournal blog The New Atlas .
Vaughn L. Treude , Jul 28 2019 3:59 utc | 77
What a shame that pro-democracy and pro-liberty movements get tainted by association with US government opportunism.
Paora , Jul 28 2019 4:15 utc | 78
apsnaz @67

Although you seem to completely misstate vk @65's argument, your query regarding "How did the USA persuade Carrie Lam to table the Extradition Bill in the first place?" may not be as daft as it first appears.

In 2018, Hong Kong man Chan Tong-kai, 19, took his girlfriend Poon Hiu-wing, 20, on a Valentine's Day trip to Taiwan. While there he strangled her, stuffed her body in a suitcase and dumped it near a subway station in Taipei. After he returned to Hong Kong, he was safe from extradition to a Taiwanese court. This horrific incident led to protests in Hong Kong and was the impetuous for the extradition bill.

While I'm not suggesting Chan was acting at the behest of the CIA, it would certainly fit with the hybrid war scenario for the US to use its assests to amplify the pro-extradition protests inspired by the murder, while also preparing a Colour Revolution in response to the inevitable introduction of an extradition bill.

The NYT described it as "The Murder Case that lit the fuse in Hong Kong", hate to link to them but here goes:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/15/world/asia/hong-kong-murder-taiwan-extradition.html

psychohistorian , Jul 28 2019 4:50 utc | 79
@ Paora who wrote in response to apsnaz
"
While I'm not suggesting Chan was acting at the behest of the CIA, it would certainly fit with the hybrid war scenario for the US to use its assests to amplify the pro-extradition protests inspired by the murder, while also preparing a Colour Revolution in response to the inevitable introduction of an extradition bill.
"

We are not suppose to think that deeply.....grin Thanks for that

I agree with what Grieved wrote in a comment above and which I have repeated below
"
What is clear to me, is that Hong Kong is a little bit lost, suffering from the ghosts of British sensibility, and with no forward vision for itself. It should indeed, as Jacques suggests, seek closer integration with the mainland, in order to experience a superior form of democratic representation, and the liberating vision of actually having a future.
"
Hong Kong has been used as a tool like the US used Puerto Rico as to attempt to show up Cuba.

South Korea is going to go through the same transition, given the opportunity.

Democratic values are BS when the money in your pocket and bank account is not worth the digits or paper printed on......it has no intrinsic value like before 1971 and in reality now represents DEBT maintained by FAITH

And China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and other have lost FAITH in the fiat DEBT of the West because it is connected to nothing of intrinsic value.

This is the reality that many are not prepared for but is coming soon. The West is being forced to return to a money system that is not FIAT.

This will clarify my lifeblood claim about finance and focus folks on the perfidy of private fiat money systems

difficult bird , Jul 28 2019 5:26 utc | 82
...

I am not surprised by this, the mainland has a scheme which allows 150 people to emigrate to HK every day, it has been running since 1997: (2019-1997) * 365 * 150 = 1,204,500. Add to that all the individuals who have moved for other reasons, such as marriage, and there are quite a few mainlanders in HK. Mainlanders do not speak the local language and do not have the same loyalty to HK. The emigration scheme is part of the problem as most of those immigrants are people associated with the Chinese Communist Party - maybe not members, but they got the ticket to emigrate, so they are viewed favourably: HK locals see them as part of the problem!

...

Posted by: aspnaz | Jul 28 2019 1:28 utc | 62

1,204,500 is only about 15% of the Hong Kong population. If the protesters truly believe that they are the majority, they can start their own petition, as well as protesting in the streets. The fact that they haven't done so makes me a little bit suspicious if they are the real majority, even among the 6 million or so native Hongkongers.


...

Maybe this petition shows that HK locals are right to be worried!

Posted by: aspnaz | Jul 28 2019 1:28 utc | 62


Divide and conquer, exaggerating the difference between different groups of Hongkongers?

difficult bird , Jul 28 2019 5:35 utc | 83
...

Another interesting factor raised by your post raises is that of kissing ass: One grievance that the HK locals have is that the local business community is too busy kissing Beijing ass. There is a small minority of HK locals, mostly business folk, who will sign up to such a petition - handing over their HK ID numbers - in the hope of being recognised by Beijing as worthy of preferential treatment. Beijing is authoritarian and corrupt, so having evidence of your support for Beijing can go a long way in business circles.

Posted by: aspnaz | Jul 28 2019 1:39 utc | 64


Well, I guess Hong Kong businessmen are pragmatic. I can't really blame them. Maybe that's one of the reasons why the protesters haven't started their own petition yet and are concentrating on street demonstrations only so far.

Circe , Jul 28 2019 6:07 utc | 84
apsnaz

Naive. Either the naïveté is the product of blind idealism or it's a pretence to make a more convincing argument on the so-called purity of the revolution emerging in HK.

You know what I don't trust? HK is like the victim of a long kidnapping by the West for many years and the locals are now suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, believing somehow that the kidnappers had the right idea and did what they did for the locals benefit. Now it's time to see the kidnappers for who they really are. Unfortunately for the locals and fortunately for China, the end goal is way more important than the capitalist utopia the West uses as an inducement for rebellion.

vk gets it.

@50 NemesisCalling

Well at least you came clean about your affection for Trump. Who's fixated? The one who can see no wrong in their brand of messiah, or the one who sees, period!????

Yeah, yeah it's what I said, you supported the Assad side over the suffering weak Syrian rebels before you supported the suffering weak rebel side in HK. Trump's rebels over Obama's, riiiight? Cause there's a difference, riiiight? NOT.

Who cares how China stiffs the West when the West gets away with murder! The point isn't to make China clean up its act in order to trust its power In an imperfect world, the point is a CHECK ON POWER. I don't expect anything from China except that it act as the wall that stops imperial hegemony, and it's pretty well-positioned to do so.

If you wanna compare China's corruption vs the ZioAnglo Empire's corruption, that's a whole other circular discussion I'm not interested in having.

I want China to be the means to the END OF THE ZIOANGLO EMPIRE. Get it? That's the big picture I care about.

Regarding the migration thing. Trump is an old man who wishes he were young again, but he won't get that either. You can't reverse reality and you can't fight karma. So Trump, the latest Zionist stooge, can't admit that the rest of the world suffered a massive Muslim migration thanks to wars instigated by the ZioAnglo Empire led by U.S. and so the U.S. must in turn suffer its own massive migration of the latino kind. Nothing will reverse it; it's reality, it's karma, and so it's bigger and stronger than Trump. He'll die a disillusioned man if he thinks a wall and cages will deter the inevitable changing demography.

Finally, Anacharsis

Yes, despite that somewhat cynical outlook on China's imperfections, I'm counting on China focusing on survival over blind capital ambition, therefore, hopefully reclaiming more of its lost ideology, as its survival is hydrocarbon dependent which will require it to flex some geopolitical strategy over the ZioAnglo Empire.

Noname , Jul 28 2019 6:11 utc | 85
Posted by: karlof1 | Jul 28 2019 3:39 utc | 75

Israel is the main cause of terrorism in the world.

The US is the main tool of terrorism in the world.

Hassaan , Jul 28 2019 6:18 utc | 86
The seeds for these color revolutions are similar to sleeper terrorist cells. Assets are in place, and more are held in reserve not for "specific" events to unfold, but for general societal discontent to rise to a certain level, at which time the assets will be mobilized to help organize and focus the discontent, ultimately for the purpose of destabilizing the offending nation state.

In Syria, for example, water shortages led to civil unrest. Western powers could have spent those billions of dollars on desalination plants, diplomatic pressure on Turkey to release more water from their reservoirs, and helped the country remain stable through a tough time. Instead the Western Powers spent billions of dollars hiring and arming mercenaries to collapse the Syrian Nation, along with a massive propaganda effort geared at demonizing Assad and the Syrian Government.

Noname , Jul 28 2019 6:18 utc | 87
Proof Government & Cops Are Behind "Islamic Terror"
https://www.henrymakow.com/2019/07/Proof-Government-Cops-Are-Behind-Islamic-Terror.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf6aZCERrKo
Circe , Jul 28 2019 6:29 utc | 88
@71gzon

I wonder what all those tens or hundreds of thousands of dead Syrian rebels think of the organic protest started by a few thousands that they then surrendered to the ZioAnglos and their terrorist collaborators ISIS just to achieve the revolutionary noteriety and humanitarian assistance that led them to an early grave? I'm sure it's a cautionary tale for Hong Kong.

Pft , Jul 28 2019 6:35 utc | 89
Calling Martin Lee a US stooge is BS. A true Patriot (HK) if there ever was one. I don't deny the US has a hand in fueling the fire, but the HK people (bottom 90%) have some legitimate grievances.
Circe , Jul 28 2019 6:47 utc | 91
@89Pft

I don't deny the US has a hand in fueling the fire, but the HK people (bottom 90%) have some legitimate grievances.

Wait. I thought it was one issue. The extradition issue? I wonder if Syrians had legitimate issues too? Oh my!

flankerbandit , Jul 28 2019 6:53 utc | 92
@ William Gruff 31
Once again, pay close attention to who is carrying water for the western empire by regurgitation corporate media narratives about the color revolution attempt in Hong Kong. Do always suspect these individuals' posts now that they reveal themselves as tools of the empire.

Right on the money... Bernhard's article has hit every nail squarely on the head...and driven it home with gusto...

Yet we see a number of quite ridiculous posts taking issue with the basic premise...'Organic' my arse...the color revolution fingerprints are all over this bullshit...

I see James has also noted the unusually frenetic troll activity...

They will of course end up sorely disappointed...China is not Georgia or Ukraine where their stunts can have some effect...come to think of it, even there the old tricks mostly now just provoke a collective yawn from the target populace...LOL

Circe , Jul 28 2019 7:15 utc | 94
I don't want my government starting revolutions that lead to wars for regime change I'm not free to stop. The ZioAnglo imperialists corrupt everything they touch. Let's face it, Revolution has become a dirty word. The Revolution should be AGAINST the Zio Anglo Empire and not a source to expand its hegemonic reach!

Aye! Che is turning in his grave at this perversion.

Anacharsis , Jul 28 2019 9:50 utc | 95
Circe

Re: my somewhat cynical (I would say ironic, but I won't quibble) outlook on China's (your word:) imperfections: any "ideology" has been lost (more discarded than lost, really) last century and China is now the epitome of pragmatist--pragmatism is a stage significantly less coherent than ideologically-driven; therefore, decadence and dissolution come next--then it's just a matter of time and how many band-aids they can come up with. If you add this to the fact that if China erodes the dollar, they also erode the value of the money in their own pocket (since they own a rather large percentage of that corporation)...logically, I just don't see how that horse is gonna run.

Rancid , Jul 28 2019 10:56 utc | 101
Posted by: Circe | Jul 28 2019 6:07 utc | 84

You raise a little known aspect of Karma inadvertently or not, in that there is personal, racial and country Karma. So apart from building your own personal negative or positive Karma, we are also liable to the other sorts. How could supporting a war mongering nation not have consequence? As such he that stands idly by as evils are committed by his country or race will be affected by the negative Karma generated. Those that oppose such acts not so.

However the popular notion of instant Karma is nonsense, Karma can't cause effect that quickly. Sometimes it takes several lives to balance previous Karma as all issues can't be queued for one lifetime as such perfect circumstance rarely exists. Would expect the Karma affecting masses would be more so. Albeit it certainly appears instant in the example given.

Interesting is that there have been other civilizations prior this one, and wherein lies their history? Purely in myths or old writing more often as analogy. But the day to day machinations and intrigues of those that wielded power there are not remembered or even vaguely important in the mists of time. As will be our current. Sadly nothing will change with the power brokers until our mindset as humanity changes.

aspnaz , Jul 28 2019 10:56 utc | 102
Posted by: Herr Ringbone | Jul 28 2019 10:41 utc | 99
"The primary legitimate grievances are impossibly high housing costs (which many of the poorer residents of HK are not affected by, as they have access to the city's massive public housing programme)"

More "fake" facts: Stock of public housing has gone up by 110,000 in the past 10 years. Up to 1997, under British rule, the government was building over 84000 apartments per year. Have a look here https://www.thb.gov.hk/eng/psp/publications/housing/HIF2018.pdf for the misserable record of the China government. In addition, prior to 97 there were rent controls which made living easier for the poorest: look it up yourself.

"and poor work conditions in the form of low wages and absurdly long working hours."

So the chef down the local restaurant who is a migrated mainlander, helping to keep HK salaries low, is not the fault of the government?

I call BS on your "facts".

Herr Ringbone , Jul 28 2019 11:09 utc | 103
Posted by: aspnaz | Jul 28 2019 10:56 utc | 102
So the chef down the local restaurant who is a migrated mainlander, helping to keep HK salaries low, is not the fault of the government?

You really have a problem with people from the Mainland, don't you? Aside from your repellent racism, which you appear to have adopted wholesale from your HK relatives, you should understand how absurd your position is. The overwhelming majority of families in HK are only one or two generations away from the Mainland, i.e. a thirty-five year old here will have parents who very likely came to HK from China (usually Guangdong). HK is very much a society of immigrants -- from China.

It is inevitable that people from China will come to live in Hong Kong. You appear to be complaining because you don't like Putonghua speakers.

aspnaz , Jul 28 2019 11:10 utc | 104
Posted by: Herr Ringbone | Jul 28 2019 10:51 utc | 100
"You should be able to see from this that people are lying when they claim that the extradition law would have put Hong Kong critics of China at risk of extradition to the Mainland. That would not have been possible under the law."

The people of Hong Kong are already at risk of rendition if they criticize China: Remember the HK booksellers, kidnapped while abroad, taken to China and forced to give TV confessions to mainland China courts. That is the reality: The people of HK know what China will do if they criticize China!

Herr Ringbone , Jul 28 2019 11:13 utc | 105
Posted by: aspnaz | Jul 28 2019 11:10 utc | 104
The people of Hong Kong are already at risk of rendition if they criticize China: Remember the HK booksellers, kidnapped while abroad, taken to China and forced to give TV confessions to mainland China courts. That is the reality: The people of HK know what China will do if they criticize China!

If the booksellers are the only thing you can cite in this respect -- and let's face it, they are -- then you are on pretty shaky ground, and I am not going to bother further.

Jonathan , Jul 28 2019 11:26 utc | 106
#103

Aspnaz aka "blame the mainland for everything" is the embodiment of why mainlanders finds HKers pathetic and annoying.

William Gruff , Jul 28 2019 11:42 utc | 107
flankerbandit @92 said: "[The trolls] will of course end up sorely disappointed...China is not Georgia or Ukraine where their stunts can have some effect."

Good post, and correct. It is surprising how badly these State Department/Atlantic Council trolls misread the situation in Hong Kong. Protests alone are not going to do more than annoy the rest of the HK population, even if they do somehow manage to get 2 million people on board with the staged events. They absolutely need the CIA death squad snipers to shoot up the protesters and police at one of these events in order to gain broader sympathy from the HK population, but that is not so easy in HK as in Libya, Syria, or Ukraine. Chinese intelligence and even the Hong Kong Triads are fully expecting the CIA's antics and keep wrecking the CIA's plans. So long as there is no violence that the complicit corporate mass media can pin on the authorities then the protests will remain simple events... staged entertainment for a portion of the HK population. The protests will go nowhere and die out as the audience/attendees realize that they have better things to do with their lives.

Jen , Jul 28 2019 11:43 utc | 108
Due to being sick with chills and headaches, I have been laid up for several days and have come late to this party of all parties to be late for (as relatives of my late father still live in Hong Kong, in Northpoint).

I have been been following the recent protests over the extradition bill through Rebecca Chan's 21SilkRoad Facebook group. A number of people who contribute to the discussions there have mentioned that cash payments were offered to students to protest. This is confirmed by Jeff J Brown's article for The Greanville Post in which he mentions people were paid higher amounts "for tearing the place up".

Interesting too in the same article is that Brian Kern has been noted as an apparent CIA operative stirring up protesters.

Jen , Jul 28 2019 11:51 utc | 110
William Gruff @ 107:

"...The protests will go nowhere and die out as the audience/attendees realize that they have better things to do with their lives."

In September the new university year starts.

William Gruff , Jul 28 2019 12:48 utc | 113
Note how the Asperger Nazi pointed out how he "attended" a protest. This is an important part of the distinction between fake and staged "protest events" and genuinely organic protests. Did he participate in organizing the protest? Did he hear about it from an organizer at his workplace, or a group passing out leaflets on a street corner? Did he pass out leaflets himself and try to convince others to help?

No, of course not. The Asperger Nazi heard about the protest event from TV advertisements days ahead of time. The advertisements may have been disguised as news segments, but they are advertisements nonetheless.

Fake protest events don't have participants, but rather attendees and audiences. The top organizers are salaried professionals from event management corporations. They often hire hundreds of people (usually college students on vacation) days ahead of time to train them up to act as event chaperones. Typically the event chaperones will themselves be managed by a couple dozen trainers and handlers that the event management company brings in from abroad (Britain or the US). The event chaperones will be issued identical t-shirts with an event logo professionally silkscreened on them. They will also be issued identical whistles or other signalling devices on lanyards that they wear around their necks. They will likewise be issued backpacks with some "protest supplies" , such as hand towels or bandannas and bottles of solutions to neutralize teargas and things like that. On the day of the protest event each of the event chaperones will attempt to form squads of about a dozen or less protesters and explain signalling so that the squad can coordinate its actions. In this manner the few hundred event chaperones can steer thousands of event attendees, and by herd instinct the rest of the attendees/audience will follow.

The event management corporation will handle the marketing of the protest event. This includes working out with local TV station producers and even international TV network producers how the event is to be portrayed and TV viewers attracted to it. "Guerrilla marketing" tactics will also be employed. See the linked Wikipedia article for examples. Entertainers and notable athletes will be contracted to promote the protest event, and if possible an outdoor stage with sound system, light show, and jumbotron screens will be arranged for the entertainers to perform from (particularly notable at the fake Maidan protests in Kiev back in 2013-2014).

Key here is that none of the attendees/audience participate in organizing the protest event. The event just seems to happen all on its own and all the attendees/audience have to do is show up.

Real and "organic" protests are a whole different matter.

john , Jul 28 2019 12:56 utc | 114
gzon says:

In essence it would allow extradition of Hongkongers and Taiwanese to mainland China from Hong Kong, something both do not trust to do

well, i don't think i'd be going to far out on a limb to suggest that big HK money is, at least tangentially, behind the extradition protests

maybe mainland China's track record for executing its corrupt billionaires has the HK variety scared shitless.

Herr Ringbone , Jul 28 2019 13:10 utc | 116
Posted by: gzon | Jul 28 2019 12:15 utc | 111
That is to say that extradition could occur before any proof of guilt, before a trial had occurred ...

That's how extraditions always work, isn't it?

You haven't paid attention to any of the safeguards I mentioned that are in the law.

If there is any favouritism in the HK judiciary, it goes against China. Those people are trained in the common law tradition and many have a thoroughly colonial mentality still. Some judges are still foreigners, for heaven's sake. You only have to listen to the comments that come from the Bar Association, for example.

blues , Jul 28 2019 13:25 utc | 117
The USSA "security services" are all over the world, ceaselessly promoting "color revolutions" and controlling media of all kinds.

Whether they have a any success or not is not that important. Their job security is really all that matters.

They sure are expensive for the USSA population, but who cares about them?

Acar Burak , Jul 28 2019 13:25 utc | 118
@114 William

Those might have happened exactly as you describe, but I've been in a similar situation in another part of the world and fascists have described the situation exactly as in that manner and the gov have still been putting protesters in jail after so many years with exactly the same accusations. Now in our situation too there might have been external actors (I don't know), yet the protest was righteous as well. I'm not blaming you, but you may be naive too. Or it's me who's naive.

Kristan hinton , Jul 28 2019 13:26 utc | 119
Importantly, the US instigated the coup in Honduras which ousted a democratically elected socialist president.

Obama, Hillary and her friend Lanny Davis were hands on - instrumental to its success.

After the coup, a succession of right wing crooks and head knockers, police and military made Honduras a living hell for the common people.

Hence, a significant number of refugees are fleeing the murder and mayhem.

To the USA, where, sadly, the Obama administration was locking them up in cages.

Trump, as we know has continued to cage them. There's money in it for crony capitalists at a reported $750 per head. Very cruel and sad.

William Gruff , Jul 28 2019 13:58 utc | 121
Acar Burak @119

The process that I described above costs lots of money. Many $millions. It also requires the complicity of the so-call "free press" corporate mass media. If you overlook that aspect then indeed it is you who are being naive.

Who has $millions and would pay them to disrupt the empire's satrap in Haiti? How could those people recoup their investment? Particularly when any such investors would certainly understand that the empire can outspend them and will just install another satrap after this one is deposed? More critically, where is the mass media cheering on the protesters in Haiti?

To be certain, it is possible to fool people into thinking external agents are behind genuine protests, but only when those people who are fooled overlook the practical aspects of organizing protests. In fact, in order to successfully fool the fooled it is necessary for the "free press" corporate mass media to participate in the deception.

This last point cannot be stressed enough: Whichever "side" the "free press" corporate mass media is supporting in a protest is the bad guys in every single case. The only time the "free press" corporate mass media will suddenly discover the righteousness of a genuine protest is if they realize that their necks are on the chopping blocks next if they continue to back the empire.

nottheonly1 , Jul 28 2019 14:28 utc | 122
How can this not be another attempt to 'divide and conquer'? The only odd thing about this - it still is gobbled down by the masses of those countries in which this dividing and conquering originates. Tell me that there are similar tactics in place outside the Western value regimes.

Nevertheless, the real importance of finding out who perpetrated/organized this latest round of instigated civil unrest, lies within the fact that it is also applied in numerous other Nations who are turning away from this Western business model of coercion and mayhem.

The deep state stooges will point out how bad all the socialist countries are - Nations that actually care for their populations. Nothing China has done since Tienanmen square can compete with the Fascism of the US and Europe.

I urge anybody to read up this article on the WSWS web site for what it is worth. The German regime has just affirmed the 'Gesinnungsstrafrecht' in a ruling by the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Constitutional Court).

If the Chinese government would have affirmed a law like this for Hong Kong, or its mainland territory, the Fascists would foam at the mouth. That this law is now affirmed - 74 years after the alleged end of Fascism in Germany - in what calls itself a 'Democracy', is beyond words.

Max Liebermann said that "One cannot eat as much as one wants to vomit" when he observed the Nazis marching through the Brandenburg Gate.

'Gesinnungsstrafrecht' means that you can now be locked away in Germany for opposing capitalism. Or for demanding 'equality'.

How much worse has it to become before it can change to the better?

vk , Jul 28 2019 14:58 utc | 123
Responding to the criticisms to my posts:

1) all hybrid wars have an "organic" component. What differentiates a legitimate revolt from a hybrid war is the artificiality of its growth: in a popular uprising, growth is organic (result of mass mobilization by the working classes themselves), in a hybrid war (or just a color revolution), growth comes from material and human resources help from the USA. As the Americans themselves admit, the degree of its growth is unpredictable, and depends on many variables within the target country itself.

2) for newcomers here, please read my comments on a past free tread here. The sequence of events clearly indicates a textbook hybrid warfare modus operandi : from pacif to violent -- this violence growing on a constant and linear degree. There was no chance a color revolution would topple the Lam government (because it won the popular vote in the last elections), so the protest leaders knew they needed a body count to escalate it to unconventional warfare. Was it a purely organic uprising, the protest would've stopped once Lam killed the bill: any legitimate opposition without a prospect of absolute victory would stop right there and declare victory, thus maintaining the mobilization and stepping up to the phase of organization (probably, founding a new localist party to dispute the next elections); that wasn't the case with these protests, which clearly tried to breed chaos and thus creating a theater for guerilla warfare (one of the main tactics for unconventional warfare).

3) yes, the movement initially attracted 2 million people to the streets (it probably was much less, but that's not the point here). But after Lam withdrew the bill, those 2 million immediately turned into 70,000, which then turned into 30,000 (again, those are the propaganda numbers, spread by the Western MSM, so you cannot accuse me of being pro-Beijing with them). Meanwhile, a pro-Beijing movement attracted 500,000 to the streets of Hong Kong. This movement of the masses clearly indicates the anti-bill protests had a highly artificial inflating factor -- possibly with paid protesters and paid propaganda. My bet would be that some American NGO is paying some student leaders in HK to organize the whole thing.

4) the main problem with the anti-Beijing protesters is that their cause is utopic: full independence in not viable for Hong Kong not much because of the Mainland grip, but because the natural conditions make the construction of a Nation-State unfeasible. Hong Kong doesn't have agriculture and doesn't have a significant source of water. The UK is now an impoverished giant and doesn't have the resources to sustain and eventual "independent" HK. It would continue to be a de facto province of China on economic pressure alone (as is already the case of Taiwan -- a much bigger and naturally richer island). And the majority of the HK people know this: the localist parties (yes, the pro-independence movement in HK is not even united) never won an election.

5) I'm not saying that the USA is evil. Good and Evil are Christian concepts, therefore they are idealisms and don't exist in the real world. We Marxists don't use them. What I'm saying is that the USA is using its strengths to order to gain a geopolitical advantage over its two main enemies of the 21st Century: Russia and China. Those advantages are: military logistics (hundreds of bases around the world; supremacy over the Seven Seas and the Dollar Standard) and soft power (the world still believes that the USA system is, if not the best possible model, the least worse). Those are the two ingredients only the USA have. Hybrid Warfare, therefore, is a war tactic that is very cheap -- both in the political and material sense -- for the Americans to use: no wonder it was created by them and only them use it.

Circe , Jul 28 2019 15:24 utc | 124
The fact that the West infected the natives of Hong Kong with an extended dosage of capitalist utopia ideology plays a role in China's ability to hold on to Hong Kong and the ZioAnglo Empire knows this. The Empire only and always fuels and fans dissent that is good for it geostrategically and infiltrates what is ripe for the picking and HK is just too ripe and strategically important a chess piece for the Empire to ignore and not weaponize against China.

So you all who are pretending purity in this fake incipient revolution stop pretending this isn't what's happening in HK.

China has a HK Taiwan problem. The only reason Trump isn't gloating is because he's got to settle a favorable tariff arrangement to win over U.S. farmers in 2020.

China needs to act on its power as a global player, get serious about flexing leverage against the U.S. in different areas including on North Korea, Iran and Venezuela as well as financially, and be less discreet and polite regarding ZioAnglo Empire's goals while domestically balancing economic ambition with political ideology that rallies its people to recognize and stand firm and ready against the subversive attempts of the Empire to diminish China's power.

If China continues with its laissez-faire attitude regarding the Empire's multiple aggressive geopolitical moves, and holds back on moves of its own, then this time in history represents the beginning of China's decline and Trump is on a mission to capitalize on its inaction and accelerate that outcome.

Acar Burak , Jul 28 2019 15:33 utc | 125
@124 vk

I don't disagree with that, except for "I'm not saying that the USA is evil." I say, as an atheist, the USA is deeply, unbelievably evil. Yet I don't want to be blind to the sufferings of people under much much much less evil rulers as well. Any ruler is better, much better in comparison to the rule of US. But I don't blindly approve them, in themselves, as good ones.

I admit I hadn't looked at the links etc.; yes, it seems a genuine colour rev! Yet again US, not always, but sometimes if not most of the times, use an already existing wound.

William Gruff , Jul 28 2019 16:26 utc | 126
Acar Burak @126 said: "Yet again US...use an already existing wound."

That's the beauty of identity politics and the US color revolutions. You can always find many people who believe that they have "an already existing wound" and who just want others to acknowledge and validate it. Even in the most affluent communities in the imperial homelands you will find no shortage of people you can recruit to your cause (whatever it may be) simply by affirming to them that their personal butthurt is legitimate and it is someone else's fault. It is just a warmed over version of Catholic "original sin" and in imperfect societies you will never be short on people who will find that stain or injury within themselves that they feel is holding them back from true happiness.

Such "wounded" individuals are always easy prey for the con artist. The empire's narrative spinners encourage self-pity among the weak while the Communists try to discourage it, so it is no surprise that the weak go crying to capitalist hucksters who offer empty promises of cures for their internal unhappiness. That is an advantage the empire makes full use of, both internally and among its vassal states.

Curtis , Jul 28 2019 16:30 utc | 127
Vaughn L. Treude 77
"What a shame that pro-democracy and pro-liberty movements get tainted by association with US government opportunism."

So very true. The groups want support. Unfortunately they get it from the likes of Pompeo. I watched a TED talk from 2015 about our democracy not representing us. It pointed to the Hong Kong protests of 2014 and how the candidates were selected by a committee for the people to vote on instead of a more democratic process.

William Gruff , Jul 28 2019 16:40 utc | 128
Curtis @128 sez: "...the candidates were selected by a committee for the people to vote on instead of a more democratic process."

When you implement a more democratic process then maybe you can show them the way.

difficult bird , Jul 28 2019 17:01 utc | 129
Posted by: Pft | Jul 28 2019 6:35 utc | 89:
Calling Martin Lee a US stooge is BS. A true Patriot (HK) if there ever was one. I don't deny the US has a hand in fueling the fire, but the HK people (bottom 90%) have some legitimate grievances.

The real grievance of Hongkongers is the rampart income and wealth disparity in Hong Kong. That this grievance is not even mentioned by the protesters is an ominous sign that the movement has been hijacked by those who have ulterior motivations.

donkeytale , Jul 28 2019 17:11 utc | 131
Gruff - please provide a detailed historical example of an "organic" protest in your terms.

I go back to the 60s and every single major protest movement since that time fits neatly inside your simplistic box. None can pass your smell test. Not to mention you offer no positive steps to correct what you see as a problem, except banning/ignoring people with different ideas from you who are automatically considered paid trolls. And this is just blog commentary we're talking about not y'know, organised political agitation, a relatively toothless pasttime for old timers. Duly noted even here in a commenters' community you take the side of the supposed "insider" status-quo and seek to push out anyone with different ideas.

Grow up Gruff. Your schtick was already overly tired in 2005. It lives on here among a few self-identified "insiders" only because b to his credit doesn't believe in ideological banning. I could name names but its the same ol high volume commenters who start the insinuations of "lot of trolls out tonight" or whatever baloney to rally the like minded into a clique of "anti-subversion."

Every movement has its agitators and its co-opters, all with agendas of their own. Every revolution contains counter-revolutions (real and imagined) within its power structures (AKA "power struggles"). And yes, every revolution has its power structure too. Inescapable given human need for social hierachy. This is also the fatal flaw within every political movement (and in fact human civilisation itself) that from the beginning it plants the seeds for fractiousness, division and eventual downfall.

What's to do then? Bow to the inevitable power of the state, is that your reactionary, arch conservative solution Gruff? Seems the only logical answer to be inferred from your ongoing repetitive tiresome same ol same ol "troll hunting".

Maybe you are a CIA troll. See how easy that is?

At least start backing up your schtick with some relevant data. You have gone beyond simplistic and boring dude.

Grieved , Jul 28 2019 17:22 utc | 132
@128 Curtis - ".. pointed to the Hong Kong protests of 2014 and how the candidates were selected by a committee for the people to vote on instead of a more democratic process."

You illustrate an excellent example of the shit colonial administrative system of governance that the British left in Hong Kong. Recall that the policy of China towards its returning provinces is the "One Nation, Two Systems" framework - the same framework that will apply to Taiwan eventually.

Under this policy of two systems, China has scrupulously left Hong Kong to govern itself, and to enjoy its own oligarchical, stagnant and corrupt economy. Both of these things are much inferior to those in China. If people have grievances about their life in Hong Kong, they would do well to look at the foreign methods ruling them. They would be better off under the Chinese system, as Martin Jacques criticized Beijing for NOT imposing on Hong Kong, in the clip I posted up-thread.

difficult bird , Jul 28 2019 17:35 utc | 134
Posted by: aspnaz | Jul 28 2019 10:16 utc | 97:
Two million people are prepared to go marching on the street, yet you are suspicious that they are not genuine because they have not signed a petition? Sorry, I don't follow this logic: You are suspicious of anti-government protesters who will not put their ID card numbers on a petition in an country rules by a corrupt, authoritarian government? And why is a petition more convincing than 2m people in the street?

The number of protesters was exaggerated. The police counted only 340,000 when the protest organizers claimed two millions. Hong Kong government is in cahoots with the real estate tycoons and is in the pockets of the uber-rich. But that's the case for every government in the world. It does not mean the Hong Kong government is especially corrupt or authoritarian. If the protesters can demonstrate that they are indeed a force to be reckoned with by both protesting in the streets and garnering hundreds of thousands of signatures to support their cause, then they will have a far greater chance of success. Success means that they do not have to worry about government persecution. By hiding both their faces and names, they undermine their own cause, reduce the chance of their success, and increase their risk of being persecuted by the HK government.

Jeff , Jul 28 2019 17:59 utc | 135
One wonders how long it will take before other countries kick US NGOs like the CIA front organization the National Endowment for Democracy and Soro's Open Society out of their countries as the subversives that they are.
bevin , Jul 28 2019 18:10 utc | 137
As a simple rule of thumb "If any organs of the US State or its allies appear to support a political demonstration, that demonstration ought automatically to be condemned by anti-imperialists and democrats of any kind". The only demonstrations worth supporting are those organised by principled opponents of the state and spontaneous responses to actions supported by the state. Where the state in question is at loggerheads with the Empire any opposition to that state is going to be contaminated by imperialist money and support.

The truth is that in almost every case where the Empire, and this includes its ideological engines such as the media, is supporting opposition to the state which it is attempting to overthrow, support for demonstrations is not only mistaken but counter productive.
No good can come from actions which the imperialists approve of, guide and promote. This must be the case because the purpose of the imperialists is to enslave, rape and plunder populations.

The lessons of Iran in 2009, Kiev in 2014, Venezuela today, Brazil last year etc etc, of Libya and Syria and of the overthrow of Aristide in Haiti are quite clear: the Empire exploits the poor and the disenfranchised, it aims not to liberate them but to bind them into a slavery more profound than any previously undergone.

With reference to Hong Kong, no doubt there are plenty of genuine grievances with the CP government. There are also plenty of tensions of a caste and racial nature, borne of the long rule of the imperialists, employing the place as a base from which to impose its deleterious rule on a population that it exploited in every way including the trafficking (kidnapping and sale) of millions of 'coolies.'
Anyone with any sense in Hong Kong knows that the National Endowment of Democracy and the UK Foreign Office are not involved to promote the interests of the people but to revive the fascist power that the Communists displaced and the "west" supported for so long.

james , Jul 28 2019 18:13 utc | 138
@138 bevin... thanks.. that is a good way to see it... personally i think donkey might work at NED which would explain his take!!
donkeytale , Jul 28 2019 19:07 utc | 140
bevin - your "simple rule of thumb" of course precludes any chance for revolution anywhere. Thus yours is a reactionary statement at base. Not that I'm surprised at that fact. Disappointed though.

We no longer live in the early 20th Century. When I read you more and more I believe you are mired within an antiquated political philosophy that no loner resembles economic conditions on the globalised ground.

As imperialism already exists everywhere in many forms, guises, is international and not necessarily bound anymore by recognised nation states, monied forces will always seek to contaminate and control any movement seeking political change.

Your rule of thumb means support for Brexit is a waste of time.

For, as is now readily apparent to most (and should have been for a long time now), the main beneficiary of Brexit will be...US imperialism.

vk , Jul 28 2019 19:09 utc | 141
Posted by: Acar Burak | Jul 28 2019 15:33 utc | 126

We must stop with these false moralisms: we all know that the question on the table here is not the welfare of the HK people, but on which terms it will be pacified.

If you cared about the welfare of the people in abstract, you would be talking about Africa and the Middle East, not Hong Kong.

woootendw , Jul 28 2019 19:46 utc | 144
I sent this post to a friend from mainland China who is now a US citizen living in Arizona. Here is his reply:

The mess in Hong Kong definitely has British and American "black hands" behind it. I wouldn't be surprised the Chinese government decides to take back Hong Kong completely soon if the violent protests continue. Some people in Hong Kong don't understand how lucky they are that they don't have to live under the same rules that rest of the Chinese people have to live. Small number of people wanted independence which I think is supported by British and American "black hands" (that's the word used by Chinese government). Instead of enjoying what they have and possibly make it last longer than the 50 years that Chinese government originally promised, they may very well lose it in less than 50 years. Like most Chinese, I absolutely have no sympathy for them. Soon they will find out life will be much worse under the true Chinese government. Naturally the small number of people who started all this will escape to England or the U.S. but rest of the people in Hong Kong will be permanently screwed.

- Jing

foolisholdman , Jul 28 2019 19:46 utc | 145
NemesisCalling | Jul 27 2019 18:24 utc | 6

What is wrong with extraditing people accused of crimes to the places where they are alleged to have committed the crime? This bill that is being protested, seems to be hedged round with all sorts of restrictions on when it would be permissible to extradite someone. To me it looks like a pretty reasonable bill. What do you think is wrong with it?

donkeytale , Jul 28 2019 20:07 utc | 146
And yes, I read bevin's comment regarding B-o-rexit @ 170 in that thread the other day and snorted coffee through my nose I laughed so hard. You were obviously straining mightily to reconcile your support for the Brexit debacle with some "wishin and hopin" that maybe Jeremy Corbin-style socialism will strike Trump's base of voters as the way forward?

What has become of you bevin? Srsly, sir. That comment and this one support reactionary, hard right policies falsely shrouded in a deceptive, utopian fantasy.

foolisholdman , Jul 28 2019 20:09 utc | 147
vk | Jul 27 2019 20:21 utc | 27
If the existence of a mafia is the indicator of a fascist state, then you'll also have to worry about Japan (Yakuza), Taiwan (allied with the Hongkonger Triad), Hong Kong itself (Triad), Russia (Eurasiatic Mafia), Italy (where the term was created), USA (Kennedy's family had link with the American mafia) and essentially all Latin America (where narcotrafic is in all but name mafias).

Check out too, while you are at it Ron Unz's massive essay on "The Power of Organised Crime" in the Unz Review (unz.com)

foolisholdman , Jul 28 2019 20:22 utc | 148
NemesisCalling | Jul 27 2019 21:06 utc | 35

"By their fruit shall ye know them." If it walks like a duck...
The msm is the propaganda arm of the Empire. Anyone that relies on it for news is going to be at best confused, at worst totally misinformed or completely shut off from reality. Yes sometimes there is some real news in it but not very often and you cannot, sensibly, rely on it.

donkeytale , Jul 28 2019 20:41 utc | 149
The Brexit "leavers" movement was heavily supported and influenced by powerful US political figures and billionaires . Therefore, according to bevin's "simple rule of thumb", bevin should disown Brexit.
foolisholdman , Jul 28 2019 21:19 utc | 150
If anyone wants to read the bill that all the fuss is about here is the link: Although it is Wikipedia I have no reason to doubt its accuracy (so far!). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Hong_Kong_extradition_bill
foolisholdman , Jul 28 2019 22:12 utc | 151
Or if you prefer it straight from the horse's mouth here is the bill: https://www.legco.gov.hk/yr18-19/english/bills/brief/b201903291_brf.pdf
foolisholdman , Jul 28 2019 22:30 utc | 152
donkeytale | Jul 28 2019 20:41 utc | 150

I feel very deeply torn about "Brexit". On the on hand I like having Europe so united and on the other the people supporting "Remain" are the likes of Tony Blair, Mandelson, Cameron and a whole gang of undesirables and the US seems to be supporting Brexit!

Willam Gruff , Jul 28 2019 22:35 utc | 153
It is very clear that the State Department (NED) and Atlantic Council crew have gotten their marching orders concerning Hong Kong! Apparently the State Department thinks their HK operation still has legs and can be revitalized with sufficient astroturfing.

If b were to publish on the empire's disruption efforts in Russia that are in the news these last couple days you can expect the very same crew to be casting FUD on b's analysis and talking up the clown Navalny like he was the real "opposition" to Putin's United Russia party. These tools would even have defended Random Guaido if they could have thought of a way to do so without being universally laughed at. Where Hong Kong is concerned, however, they are nursing the mistaken impression that there is still an opening to try and sell the corporate media narrative. The only people buying though are their astroturfing companions.

One may wonder why they come to these alternative media sites that provide analysis that is independent of the empire's artificial narratives. Do they imagine readers here might somehow have not heard the mass media's take on things already and that if the astroturfers regurgitate the corporate media narratives readers here will be "enlightened" and flock back to Huffington Post and similar imperialist forums? More likely they are just following orders. Still, their presence here indicates that the empire is concerned about the analysis that b shares and the discussions that follow that sharing. That concern is gratifying.

Hassaan , Jul 28 2019 23:13 utc | 154
William Gruff @154

I agree, when the empire sends it's beasts of burden to sow chaos, you know you have gotten somewhere as an alternative media source. The concern is indeed gratifying.

Acar Burak , Jul 28 2019 23:28 utc | 155
@154 Willam

Who is your real patron? Whose orders are you taking to police the forums?

You sell the left as a very power hungry, fascistic and extremely idiotic position; you and your "comrades" are excellent left repellents –though only for the idiotic youngsters.

But if you don't have a patron (which I doubt) and you're a genuine charlatan, that's even worse. I always smile when all those scoundrels in the West are called left, progressive etc. And now I see the real left and I laugh. Really.

What a farce! Hilarious!!!!

ben , Jul 28 2019 23:44 utc | 158
WG @ 154; Yes, an apt synopsis on HK.

Just a reminder; https://21stcenturywire.com/2014/03/01/paid-govt-and-corporate-internet-trolls-are-real/

Grieved , Jul 29 2019 1:57 utc | 159
@154 William Gruff - "...why they come to these alternative media sites that provide analysis that is independent of the empire's artificial narratives. Do they imagine readers here might somehow..."

You raise a good point that is worth considering.

We know that everything they do is done in full mediocrity, and that it either fails to achieve anything or else actually results in a loss of what they had before. If the same dynamic is at work here, then one could expect to see that they are actually losing with every slanderous and attacking comment they make.

Why do they hurt themselves in this way, by sending in sub-par operatives to engage with the very view that comes from having seen through the pretense they use as cover?

Can it be that they know one thing better than us, which is that this very conversation is a fatal threat to them? In a way that we fail to measure to its full weight, do they see they are losing? Is it possible that they see that for every troll they send, thousands may be liberated from thralldom? And the more they see this liberation, the more they double down?

This "death by irony" would match everything else they do.

Jen , Jul 29 2019 2:15 utc | 161
Grieved @ 160:

"... Why do they hurt themselves in this way, by sending in sub-par operatives to engage with the very view that comes from having seen through the pretense they use as cover? ..."

You think that the likes of GCHQ and their equivalents in Langley and Tel Aviv will willingly pay impoverished university students or otherwise unemployable dole-chq takers on zero-hours styled contracts a decent wage for their pains?

Even hiring people to staff the trolling call-centres is subjected to the rigours of neoliberal labour hiring and remuneration.

StarMan , Jul 29 2019 8:53 utc | 166
From the Morning Star
"Earlier this year, in mid-March, before most people in Hong Kong, never mind the West, were aware of the details of the Extradition Bill, the US National Security Council (NSC) issued an invitation to Hong Kong opposition politicians to visit Washington.

Headed by Anson Chan, the most senior civil servant in the last British colonial administration, meetings were fast-tracked with Trump's Vice-President Mike Pence and the NSC itself.

"The vice-president is clearly concerned about rights and freedoms in Hong Kong, including religious rights," Chan told the media.

The main topic of conversation was stopping the extension of the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance (Extradition Bill).

Hong Kong's Civic Party leader Dennis Kwok, who was part of Chan's delegation, said after the NSC meeting that the US government was "paying high attention to what's happening in Hong Kong, and extradition is certainly at the top of their priority when it comes to Hong Kong."

They were particularly interested in how the Bill "would directly affect the interests of the American businesses and citizens who are either in Hong Kong or going through Hong Kong."

Chan also referred directly to the United States-Hong Kong Policy Act of 1992, which states that the US regards Hong Kong as "an independent customs territory and economic entity separate from the rest of China."

This status gives Hong Kong considerable advantages in the ease of trade with the US -- its loss would seriously harm the Hong Kong economy.

Given Hong Kong's separate monetary authority and currency, taxation rules, banking systems and property laws, this is simply a reflection of economic reality.

However, if Hong Kong were to lose that status in US law, it could be subject to punitive tariffs, economic sanctions and a whole raft of restrictions on Hong Kong-US trade.

These were the first hints that the Hong Kong opposition and the Trump administration would tie the Extradition Bill to the ongoing US-China trade war.

In mid-May, these threats took a more direct form. Just weeks before the first major public mobilisation against the fugitives law, a second high-profile delegation, this time headed by Hong Kong Democratic Party founder Martin Lee, also found a warm welcome in the US capital.

On this occasion, the delegation met US Secretary of State Mike "Regime Change" Pompeo, then with Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives and the most powerful Democrat on Capitol Hill.

The highpoint of Lee's visit was an invitation to give testimony to the bipartisan US Congressional-Executive Commission on China, chaired by Marco Rubio.

The timing of the visit was not exactly coincidental. At that point, Rubio was already drafting a piece of legislation called the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act."
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/hong-kong-opposition-and-trump-administration

Pawel , Jul 29 2019 9:16 utc | 167
I have seen the true face of the HK demonstrations in the Australian Financial Review photo of the demonstrators holding US flags, I think,that is a good example of the real reason and source of this disturbances ,
Circe , Jul 29 2019 12:35 utc | 169
Donkeytale

Is a revolution that benefits the ZionistAnglo Empire's hegemony legitimate? The Empire is fascism on a global scale. Do you not see that? The higher goal should be to remove that scourge not add to its power. If the Empire hijacks a foreign domestic protest for its own power-driven agenda, how does that benefit so many more others on the planet who don't want to be under its dominion?

Your thinking is naive and driven by the humanitarian propaganda that the Empire uses as a Trojan Horse to move in and take over.

I don't want Zionist America in every corner of the world exerting its militaristic world order by chaos! F.ck it! I am for a multi-polar world where Zionist America and its vassals don't dictate the rule by breaking international law!

Again, you are not right on this.

Circe , Jul 29 2019 13:00 utc | 170
Donkeytale,

If the Empire co-opts through various forms of concerned psy-ops, crowd enhancement illusion, Zionist media promotion and fake righteousness, which amounts to propaganda, the protest of 340,000 to further its enslavement of say, 350,000,000 on a global scale, how is that good?

Again, the Empire represents GLOBAL FASCISM. In other words GREATER EVIL.

Circe , Jul 29 2019 13:59 utc | 171
@152 foolisholdman

In the case of Brexit, I would discard who prefers what. Brexit is America's gain. Better to reign in the poorhouse than to serve in the palace. In Europe the UK always demands exceptionalism. When it becomes more dependent on the US, the latter will make the demands.

Now, of course, the UK could use a lesson in humility, and so far Brexit has certainly delivered on that! 😁

I think the U.K. should quit acting like Europe's primadonna, return to the fold and play nice with others. The alternative is probably more karmic spanking.

@166 StarMan

Why am I not surprised?

Especially that Marco Rubio weaseled his way into this.

Circe , Jul 29 2019 14:18 utc | 172
Donkeytale,
A political reality which has devolved so far to the right that while we babble about online trolls we begin to believe authoritarian fascist govts supported by global oligarchs are doing the right thing on our behalf!

And is the Fascist ZioAnglo Empire doing the right thing on our and everyone's behalf with its unchecked global militaristic and financial power and tyranny???

Come clean Donkeytale...are you a neolib?

[Jul 28, 2019] The U.S. Stunt In Hong Kong Will Make Other Issues More Difficult

Jul 27, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

The current attempt of a U.S. instigated color revolution in Hong Kong is failing :

Protesters wearing all black streamed through the Yuen Long area, even though police refused to grant permission for the march, citing risks of confrontations between demonstrators and local residents.

By nightfall, protesters and police were once again facing off in the streets, as they've done previously during the summer-long pro-democracy protests in the Chinese territory. Demonstrators threw objects and ducked behind makeshift shields, and police officers shot plumes of tear gas into the air.

In May the chief organizer of the demonstrations met with U.S. leaders:

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Hong Kong pro-democracy leader Martin Lee on Thursday, the State Department said, as Hong Kong activists seek to derail a proposed extradition law pushed by Beijing.

"Secretary Pompeo expressed concern about the Hong Kong government's proposed amendments to the Fugitive Ordinance law, which threaten Hong Kong's rule of law," the department said in a statement.

Lee founded the first pro-democracy party in Hong Kong in 1990 and has been a prominent voice calling for civil liberties for the city's residents.

Lee and other U.S. stooges organized large demonstrations against an extradition bill which would allow the government to send people who committed crimes in mainland China, Taiwan and Macau to those provinces where the crime was committed to receive their punishment. Hong Kong already has similar agreements with foreign countries.

Since then the government of Hong Kong temporarily pulled the bill back. The protest movement immediately diminished. But a core of black-clad students, influenced by the U.S. paid leaders, is trying to keep the struggle up. Throughout the last weeks they broke into the parliament building and ransacked it. They defiled family graves or pro-Chinese politicians, attacked police lines, harassed elderly arrivals (vid) at Hong Kong's airport and today, during an illegal demonstration, destroyed a car which they falsely believed to have a Chinese mainland owner.

Such behavior will only diminish the popular support they might have received otherwise.

That the U.S. is behind this can also be seen in the slanted coverage the riots receive in 'western' media. The picture they draw is incomplete :

Unable to defeat the bill legislatively, Hong Kong's pro-Western opposition has taken to the streets. With the help of Western media spin - the illusion of popular opposition to the extradition bill and Beijing's growing influence over Hong Kong is created.

What is not only omitted - but actively denied - is the fact that the opposition's core leaders, parties, organizations, and media operations are all tied directly to Washington DC via the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and corporate foundations like Open Society Foundation.

Hong Kong has 7.5 million inhabitants. While demonstrations of several ten thousands seems big, they does not represent a majority. The so called 'pro-democracy' parties in Hong Kong have lost in each and every local election. The pro-China parties always receive a majority of votes.

Hong Kong was once the exclusive 'door to China'. It lost that status when China opened up for trade. Today a number of much larger cities within the mainland are way richer and more important. Hong Kong has little influence on what happens elsewhere in China. The temporary special status it received after Britain's colonial rule is of little concern. Most people in Hong Kong recognize that. They know that their economic well being now depends on Beijing's good will.

The U.S. may believe that the circus it creates with these student stunts might push China into doing something harsh. But the mainland is not concerned about such nonsense. It already knows how this will end:

"Trying to seize the opportunity to incite chaos in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region does not have popular support and will not be successful," [Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang] said.

The students who were instigated to commit violence and crimes will go to jail. The extradition bill will be reintroduced at a convenient time and pass Hong Kong's legislative council with a large majority.

As that outcome was totally predictable one wonders why the Trump administration bothered to launch such nonsense. It will only make it more difficult to solve other problems, like North Korea or global trade, over which China has influence.

Posted by b at 17:06 UTC | Comments (0) Ron Sizely no. 3

I don't doubt that Hong Kong residents have legitimate gripes, but like a tapeworm attaching itself to the host, almost any domestic unrest in any US "adversary" is usually tapped into by the US for its own purposes.


AnneR , Jul 27 2019 18:27 utc | 8

Thank you b. I had a strong suspicion that the west - particularly the US/UK - were behind this brouhaha, if for no other reason than that it arose when it did. And that the BBC World Service has been beating the drum for the protestors, always mentioning fantastical numbers (millions, hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands) when it does so.

The BBC World Service, as the US-UK voice of corporate-capitalist-imperialism, *never* speaks to those Hong Kong people who are not interested in the protests or the purported reasons for them (so much for their much vaunted "impartiality" which is and always has been utter bunkum). Nor, when the extradition bill is mentioned, does the Beeb *ever* point out that it includes Taiwan and Macau. Only China is spoken of as the focus of the bill. *Nor* does the BBC ever say that Hong Kong has (and is) used as a bolt hole for real criminals who are wanted in China, Taiwan and Macau. And they have never mentioned the fact that HK has similar treaties with other nation states. Nor has anything (in my hearing) been said about the US connections of any of the leaders of this "movement." Omitting information is as important as repetition, use of weaselly terms, outright lying when seeking to propagandize.

In contrast - because it's "one of us" - virtually nothing has been reported on the Gilets Jaunes protests, except on the odd occasion when some accompanying the protests have broken Parisian shop windows. And during those few and far between reports no mention at all was made about the French Riot Police's brutality and the terrible wounds they inflicted on the demonstrators. (Of course, we also never hear *anything* about what the Israelis do to Palestinians unless it can be portrayed as poor, weak and vulnerable Israel being victimized by the Goliath Palestinians.)

By contrast every report on the HK protests underscores the HK police's use of tear gas and plastic bullets.

Barovsky , Jul 27 2019 18:33 utc | 9
The real issue here is the idea that Western nations have the right to interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign countries, anywhere in the world, whenever it suits them to further the agenda of the Imperialism.

If the Chinese people of Hong Kong have a problem with their rulers, surely they have the right to do whatever they choose about it, without external interference. But apparently not, according the Empire and its lackeys. As ever, the West is the arbiter of other peoples lives (and death). It's sickening and I'm ashamed by the actions of our so-called leaders.

Jay , Jul 27 2019 18:35 utc | 11
the World Socialist Website sees the protests in Hong Kong as legitimate:

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/07/26/hkch-j26.html

Even if the WSWS full well understands that the USA and UK have agent provocateurs there also.

Petri Krohn , Jul 27 2019 18:36 utc | 12
Nice of you to quote Tony Cartalucci. As I mentioned in the previous thread, he has been banned by Facebook and Twitter . Cartalucci has been opposing NED, Soros and their fake civil society organizations and color revolutions in Asia for at least 10 years. Part of the reason for his ban is likely his opposition to the color revolution attempt in Hong Kong.

Follow Cartalucci on VK or read his blog, the Land Destroyer .

Hoarsewhisperer , Jul 27 2019 18:43 utc | 14
...
"As that outcome was totally predictable one wonders why the Trump administration bothered to launch such nonsense. It will only make it more difficult to solve other problems, like North Korea or global trade, over which China has influence."
Posted by b on July 27, 2019 at 17:06 UTC

... not to mention the tired old fantasy of driving a wedge between China and Russia. The chance of that succeeding now is less than zero. It's also funny that China.gov has decided that the protesters shouldn't be treated too harshly because its not their fault that they're childish and impatient.

[Jul 23, 2019] Hong Kong The Crisis Deepens by Frank Ching

WARNING: The article by Frank Ching reflects the position of the proponents of Hong Cong color revolution.
So brainwashed young people will pay for the Washington plot. This dream of emigrating to Taiwan and, eventually, to the USA might or might not be granted. Business as usual for any color revolution I think: without such guarantees from the State Department neocons to the leaders of the color revolution would not push people to riot, but those guarantees might be a fake and they might land in jail for along long time.
Attempt to undermine police moral is standard color regulation playbook trick, but I think Chinese authorities are well aware of this (attempt to demoralize policy is number one method in any color revolution; girls attaching flowers into police shields is classic) and took some countermeasures. but this petition of Junior police Officers Association suggests that those efforts probably at least partially failed and there is some level of infiltration into policy force of color revolution proponents.
Of coarse, petition might be in itself a fake manufactured by color revolution proponents and signed by people who can't represent the whole Association.
In might be interesting to know the level of infiltration of color revolution proponents into the government. If we use EuroMaydan color revolution as an example some clashes might be provoked by moles indie the government doing Washington bidding. The problem is that neoliberalism is no longer as strong as in 2014 and such methods might be not have the same effects despite all the efforts and money spend.
Not that the mainland China is paradise but here Hong Cong protesters are mainly doing Washington necons bidding as timing is very suspicious indeed.
Jul 23, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

That day, June 27, the Department of Justice was literally under siege, with hundreds of protesters encamped outside urging the secretary not to prosecute those who had been arrested since June 9

... ... ...

The civil service can run on autopilot but police morale is a grave concern. While protest marches are still peaceful, they are often followed by clashes between protesters and the police, often leading to injuries on both sides.

The Junior Police Officers Association, which represents the bulk of the 31,000-strong police force, has in a statement said that management "should not assign them tasks that may result in injuries or deploy them to dangerous places to minimize their occupational risks." Otherwise, the association said, it would "seek legal advice to find solutions that will better guarantee the safety of officers."

walrus ,

I am concerned for the people of Hong Kong. The one thing the Chinese will not tolerate is political disorder because Hong Kong is potentially an example for the rest of China.

I would therefore hope for a negotiated settlement that preserves face. This is not a time for Western SJW's to egg the kids on either.

The alternative is perhaps Two hundred thousand young hong kong Chinese in prison camps.........or worse. The Chinese are quite ruthless in dealing with potential insurrection and couldn't care less about western hand wrinklier, sanctions and congressional resolutions.

[Jul 22, 2019] Latest desperate attempt to trigger a color revolution in Hong Kong

Jul 22, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

vk , Jul 22 2019 11:50 utc | 123

Latest desperate attempt to trigger a color revolution in Hong Kong:

Mob Attack at Hong Kong Train Station Heightens Seething Tensions in City

William Gruff , Jul 22 2019 12:36 utc | 130

Damnit, folks, it is their job to say things that are wrong!

There is being wrong because one is missing some crucial information, or because one is personally invested in a wrong narrative, but then there is being wrong because one is deliberately trying to change a narrative to a false one for duty and profit.

The goings on in Hong Kong are so obviously a retry of the previous color revolution attempt by the evil empire that it can be used as a reliable litmus test for who is carrying water for the US State Department and Atlantic Council.

Herr Ringbone , Jul 22 2019 12:57 utc | 135
gzon @129

Yes, they 'feel encroached upon'. But honestly, their feelings in this matter are delusional, and I mean that they are on the same level of delusion as the beliefs of those involved in the Salem witch trials. Fantastic, community-wide, shared delusion.

It is hard for people to get their heads around the truth, because the narrative universally starts from the assumption that 'China has been interfering', 'China hasn't kept its word', etc.

And why not? It's China, right? It's a communist dictatorship. All those have to be safe assumptions?

Except that they aren't; such assumptions are quite wrong. China has pretty much left Hong Kong alone.

Yes, many Hong Kongers believe that they are being oppressed by China. But the belief is simply and literally delusional. Very badly so.

vk , Jul 22 2019 13:00 utc | 136
@ Posted by: aspnaz | Jul 22 2019 1:51 utc | 90

Your theory fails the empirical test. It's an abstraction akin to the "Sea Peoples" theory about the end of the Late Bronze Age.

Hong Kong, even after receiving 2 million migrants (which should've risen it GDP considerably), begun to stagnate in relation to the Mainland. Since 1997, it's grown on average 30%-50% the Mainland's average annual GDP growth rate (it is now growing at a 3% annual average -- half the Mainland's rate).

In 2017, Shenzhen surpassed Hong Kong in terms of "GDP".

The matter is simple: after the handover (1997), Hongkongers demanded to remain capitalist. The "One country, two systems" deal was a Hongkonger condition to go back to China. At the time, it seemed like a wise decision: China was still a poor country, and there was no signal Deng Xiaoping's reforms would be able to get out of the "middle income trap".

They simply bet on the wrong horse: Chinese socialism demonstrated more dynamism than Soviet socialism and achieved an important breakthrough in the period that ranged from its accession to the WTO in 2001 to the aftermath of the 2008 crisis in 2012 (when, e.g. Brazil -- another country growing at an accelerated pace from 2005 to 2011 thanks to high commodities' prices and was used as a counterexample to Chinese socialism's success -- collapsed).

We can attest this "bet on the wrong horse" theory by simply looking at the protesters' face: most of them very young, probably born after 1997 or too young to remember pre-1997 Hong Kong. They didn't live during the British despotic and authoritarian rule; they waived the colonial flag and called it freedom. They forgot they are already living the British dream: Hong Kong is still capitalist to the bone -- and will be until 2047, as the deal dictates (legal guarantee of deals is a basic principle of freedom, since it's a basic principle of Rule of Law -- so I don't know why the protesters are complaining about it).


@ Posted by: Herr Ringbone | Jul 22 2019 12:15 utc | 126

This "Hongkonger is a nationality" is farce, a modern fabrication by the Western MSM. Hong Kong was never a nation, and never will be a nation. The city proper doesn't even have a source of potable water.

And you don't have to be unicultural to be a country; the same way, having a culture doesn't entitle you to be a country. Culture doesn't equal country. This myth, that states country borders are determined by cultural (specially, linguistic) differentiation is a post-WWI fabrication, when the big imperialist powers had to find an excuse to partition the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires. Nobody outside Europe (and the Japanese) believes that.

In fact, China officially is a multi-ethnic nation, as it reiterated in a recent white paper about the Uighur quesiton.

Herr Ringbone , Jul 22 2019 13:18 utc | 140
Posted by: vk | Jul 22 2019 13:00 utc | 137

You are right. Hong Kongers effectively bet on the wrong horse. I mean, you can't really blame them. Even Deng didn't realize how quickly China would grow.

Personally I think that Hong Kongers are having a very hard time, psychologically, adjusting to the fact that Mainland Chinese are catching up or surpassing them in terms of wealth. In the 1990s, they felt superior to other Chinese, and were secure in this feeling.

That's all finished now.

In fact, given that this current colour revolution falls flat and we get back to normal in a couple of months, I predict that Hong Kongers themselves will beg for One Country, Two Systems to be ended early in about fifteen years' time. By then, it will be clear to anyone who isn't brain dead that 1C2S is harming the Hong Kong economy by preventing full integration with China, and no one in HK will support it any more.

You'll see Chinese flags being waved enthusiastically all over the place, probably by a lot of 37-year-olds who were once chucking bricks at the cops and yelling for 'independence' in 2019.

People are like that.

Jonathan , Jul 22 2019 15:23 utc | 157
@ Posted by: Herr Ringbone | Jul 22 2019 13:18 utc | 140

The lack of any productive industry is the fundamental economic problem with HK since 1997, and it's prior prosperity based on using itself as a main trade and investment gateway into the Mainland is a short and one-time affair of the unique geopolitics of that era. HKers who believe that privilege will last forever was naive to say the least, even when back in 97.

Contrast with Singapore that insists on sustaining a sizable manufacturing base to the point it's considered a top economic priority, albeit one where much of it is being owned by foreign capital.

Nemesiscalling , Jul 22 2019 16:18 utc | 167
Some posters are arguing that Hong Kongers are deluding themselves and that they should know better and stop fighting assimilation into the Chinese system.

Talk about arrogance. Hey, Venezuelans should stop fighting the U.S. And kiss the ring! I know what's good for them.

A good analogy for asserting our will over Hong Kong would be like trying to change the nature of lemmings because we know what's best for them. Sure they commit ritualistic suicide, but it is still their right and within their nature to do so.

Everything else equates to meddling and this is the stuff of absolute power and empire. A far cry indeed from the ideals that most here espouse in every other circumstance. I am not buying for a second that Hong Kongers don't have legitimate grievances with the concept of being absorbed into China and that they are indeed airing them out for the world to see.

*Applause*

[Jul 22, 2019] In Hong Kong, what we already suspected is now pretty much confirmed: there was an attempt of a color revolution in the city

Jul 22, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

vk , Jul 21 2019 16:51 utc | 19

In Hong Kong, what we already suspected is now pretty much confirmed: there was an attempt of a color revolution in the city:

Two of three men arrested over Hong Kong's biggest bomb plot, discovered on eve of major anti-government protest, are members of pro-independence groups

The process was textbook hybrid warfare: first, they tried to do "mass peaceful protests" in order to seek a violent police response (preferably, with some dead) so as to trigger a chain reaction to topple the democratically elected government. The Chinese are not stupid and ordered the police to not act violently. Then, they tried to storm the Legco in order to provoke a violent response: the police was against smart, and used the "scorched earth" tactic: the building was left empty and unprotected, so all that was left to the protesters was to vandalize the building (which played against their image); the fact that some blowhards waived the colonial flag also didn't help their image (good image is a conditio sine qua non for a color revolution).

Carrie Lam then outsmarted the protesters further by killing the bill (which is not essential to Mainland governance of Hong Kong either way). That further delegitimized the continuation of the protests. We can even speculate here if this bill wasn't a bait used to test the waters in Hong Kong.

As a last, desperate attempt by the protesters, they tried to besiege the police hq in order to try to induce a massacre. That obviously didn't work.

And then, this came to light:

Hong Kong protesters 'went to Taiwan in June' to explore options for asylum

Those "protesters" are likely the heads of the color revolution attempt, almost surely on the pockets of some NGO linked to Washington. They are now planning a fall back in order to regroup. Taiwan is using this to consolidate itself even more as liberal Festung in China.

As I stated here before, a color revolution only works against a strong government when it has the backup of the unconventional warfare (UW). Hong Kong is very susceptible to a color revolution, but is inviable as an unconventional warfare theater. That's because it doesn't have any sources of potable water -- which comes from the New Territories (the flatlands directly above the city-peninsula).

Well, it seems the color revolutionaires are very aware of this fact:

Police use tear gas against protesters in heart of city, violence erupts in New Territories

According to "Two masked male protesters", there's new reivindication in the agenda: they want the dissolution of the government and new elections, to be decided by "popular vote" (i.e. whoever is in the pockets of Washington).

vk , Jul 21 2019 17:10 utc | 21

Now even the Chinese government recognize the existence of the "Clash of Civilizations" doctrine in the USA:

Op-Ed: Promulgating the myth of "clash of civilizations" is stupid and dangerous

[Jul 14, 2019] >What's Really Going On in Hong Kong

Jul 14, 2019 | original.antiwar.com

by Reese Erlich Posted on July 13, 2019

For more than three months, people in Hong Kong massed in the streets to protest a proposed extradition law. Critics say it would allow China to extradite dissenting students, journalists, and business people to the mainland, where they could face prison for their views. Rallies and marches of tens of thousands grew to perhaps almost two million at their peak.

"I was very angry about the proposed law," says Adrian Leong, a former Hong Kong resident and political activist in San Francisco. "Everyone could see themselves getting in trouble."

But supporters of the Beijing government say the proposed law would only allow extradition of people accused of serious crimes, not political dissidents. Western governments and media use the phony extradition issue to foment rifts between Hong Kong and the mainland, they argue.

"They want China to splinter and die," says Nathan Rich, an American YouTube blogger living in China.

To sort out these competing claims, we have to understand some Hong Kong history.

Opium Wars

Starting in the late 1700s, the British East India Company illegally sold opium to China. By the 1830s, British and American entrepreneurs became fabulously wealthy selling opium, while addicting millions of Chinese. When the Chinese government ordered the sales to stop, the British sent gunboats to Chinese ports and fought the first Opium War from 1839-1842.

The Qing dynasty lost the war and was forced to cede Hong Kong island to the British, along with parts of other port cities. The British launched the Second Opium War from 1853-1858, in which they seized more Chinese territory and forced China to legalize opium.

For centuries, China had the world's largest economy, selling far more goods overseas than it imported. The opium wars were fought in the name of "free trade," – i.e., the right of British and American drug barons to open up the Chinese market.

Modern day imperialism

Selling addictive drugs to China didn't end in the nineteenth century. During the reign of President Ronald Reagan, for example, the US forced China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan to buy US made cigarettes – all in the name of opening their markets to free trade.

But by the 1980s, the People's Republic of China was emerging as a major world power, and Britain agreed give up Hong Kong. In 1997, Britain returned Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty with an agreement that it would maintain two different political and economic systems. It became known as "one country, two systems."

One country, two systems was a bold step, something never tried before. China would keep its socialist economy; Hong Kong would remain capitalist. Hong Kong would maintain governing institutions established by the United Kingdom, including independent courts but also indirect election of top political leaders. The one country, two systems would last for 50 years.

The Communist Party of China hoped that, given time, Hong Kong residents would come to see the advantages of socialism and voluntarily join the mainland. They hoped Hong Kong could be a model for integrating Taiwan into China.

But Hong Kong had existed as a separate entity for well more than 100 years, and reunification wasn't going to be easy. Many Hongkongers seek to maintain their capitalist institutions for as long as possible. They want direct election of political leaders and a judiciary that tilts their way in case of disputes with Beijing.

Hongkongers have developed their own identity, notes Tom Fowdy, a China analyst who attended university in Hong Kong. "On paper they are the same ethnic group, but they are culturally different."

Extradition law

The roots of the current protests can be traced to the case of Chan Tong Kai . In February, he flew to Taiwan with his girlfriend, strangled her, stuffed her body in a suitcase, dumped her in a field, and flew back to Hong Kong. Although he confessed, he couldn't be sent to Taiwan because Hong Kong had no extradition treaty. (Hong Kong has extradition agreements with 20 countries but not China, Macao, and Taiwan.)

Hong Kong authorities couldn't charge Chan with a murder that took place elsewhere. So a Hong Kong court convicted him on a lesser charge and sentenced him to a few months in jail.

Outrage over the Chan case led Hong Kong legislators to draft a law that would allow extradition to any country on a case by case basis. Taiwan later indicated it would not seek Chan's extradition, making the murder case moot. But the extradition issue remained on the table.

Critics claim the proposed law would enable China to extradite and imprison political dissidents from Hong Kong. However, the bill's supporters point out that an extraditable offense must be a crime in both China and Hong Kong, which protects Hongkongers from arbitrary arrest. And the law specifically prohibits extradition for political crimes.

In addition, the bill granted Hong Kong's chief executive the ability to review extradition requests and allows for two separate judicial review processes. And according to the chief executive's office, extradition would "only cover 37 offenses punishable with imprisonment for seven years or above, and none of them prohibits the exercise of the right to freedom of expression."

But many people in Hong Kong simply don't trust Beijing. They cite examples when China remanded Hong Kong residents without following judicial procedures. "The Communist Party of China no longer respects the two systems," says activist Leong. "It only respects the one country."

Demonstrations

On March 31, Hongkongers marched and rallied against the proposed legislation. By June, the mostly peaceful protests grew to hundreds of thousands. On June 9, organizers said two million people marched, while police put the number at 338,000.

Then, in a preplanned action on July 1, hundreds of militants smashed their way into Hong Kong's legislative offices, where they destroyed furniture and sprayed anti-communist graffiti on the walls. They draped the union jack flag over the speaker's podium.

Analyst Fowdy says displaying the British flag doesn't mean protesters want a return to British rule. Rather, they want Hong Kong to "remain a special administrative region under Chinese sovereignty. They don't want Hong Kong to be just another Chinese city."

Whatever the militants' intention, in my opinion, raising the British flag leaves the impression that they favor independence. That plays into the hands of Western powers who have long sought to divide China.

It's no coincidence that most mainstream media unabashedly support the protesters and seek to excuse the violent actions. An opinion article in the Wall Street Journal urged readers to see the vandalism as "an act of desperation after years of frustration." I've yet to see the Journal apply that logic to Black Lives Matters protesters in the US.

Here's the bottom line: Hong Kong is Chinese; it's not an independent country. Any effort towards independence angers mainland Chinese, not just the government in Beijing.

Contrary to the impression left by the mainstream media, Hong Kong opinion is divided on the extradition law. On June 30, tens of thousands gathered for a rally supporting extradition and backing the Hong Kong government. Legislators say they collected 700,000 verified signatures on a petition supporting the proposed law.

For now, however, the momentum is with the anti-government forces. Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam suspended the bill from consideration and on July 9 declared it "dead." Critics say that isn't enough. They want her to withdraw the legislation completely and to resign.

So demonstrations are likely to continue. China and Hong Kong will be struggling for many years to determine exactly what "one country, two systems" really means.

Reese Erlich's nationally distributed column, Foreign Correspondent, appears every two weeks. Follow him on Twitter , @ReeseErlich; friend him on Facebook ; and visit his webpage .

[Jun 24, 2019] For those interested in the Big Picture behind events leading up to the Hong Kong extradition law impasse, the essay below by longtime Hong Kong columnist Nuri Vittachy gives a detailed sequence

Notable quotes:
"... China leader Xi Jinping was not behind the attempt to introduce an extradition law in Hong Kong, well-placed sources say. Nor did it originate with Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor ..."
"... In the entire 22-year history of Hong Kong, China, only 100 people had been extradited, mostly fugitives put on planes to the United States. ..."
"... One was the China-US trade war, which was now causing easily detectable damage to their country's economic indicators. And the other was the rise in illegal capital outflows, often through underground banks to Hong Kong, where it distorted the property markets. ..."
"... On May 1, China critic Gordon C. Chang (known for his 2002 book The Coming Collapse of China) wrote a widely circulated essay claiming that Beijing was behind the amendment. ..."
"... Beijing, with methodical ruthlessness, is trying to bring Hong Kong to heel,, he wrote. Many believe new rules facilitating the sending of suspects to China would effectively allow Beijing to grab people at will and thereby completely control the city. ..."
"... Hong Kong end game: why the extradition bill is an infinity stone that could decimate half of society, said a headline in the Hong Kong Free Press over a melodramatic call to action by lawyer-activist Jason Ng. ..."
"... The number of complaints, from sensible suggestions to fantastical allegations, were so large they could not be ignored. ..."
"... Dramatic interpretations of what some people believed the amendment really meant, ie, the total loss of all freedom in Hong Kong, proliferated through social media. This led, on June 9, to a peaceful protest march of hundreds of thousands of people (but probably not a million: no self-respecting journalist takes the organizer estimate as hard fact). ..."
Jun 24, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

LittleWhiteCabbage , Jun 24, 2019 9:32:25 AM | 227

For those interested in the Big Picture behind events leading up to the Hong Kong extradition law impasse, the essay below by longtime Hong Kong columnist Nuri Vittachy gives a detailed sequence.

Nury has posted his article on his FaceBook, and those who have such an account may also read it there. Suffice to say, there is always plenty of Western mainstream disinformation and provocateurs in the mix.

____________________________________

China leader Xi Jinping was not behind the attempt to introduce an extradition law in Hong Kong, well-placed sources say. Nor did it originate with Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor.

The real story is quite different. And although I am sorry I cannot name the sources for the report below, this account rings true to me. For a start, it indicates that a lot of what journalists like me have been saying was not correct. Read it if you wish, and make up your own mind.

PROLOGUE: HANDS OVER A WALL

In 1994, an extraordinary meeting was held between police detectives from British Hong Kong, Portuguese Macau, and communist Guangzhou. They talked about the possibilities of working jointly on cross-border crime. It seemed a tall order: the future was full of political uncertainties.

1) MIRACLE CITY

A quarter of a century later, in 2019, Hong Kong had blossomed into a genuine oddity: a city in China with a world-class, independent legal system.

Civil servants were proud that the city was repeatedly rated number one for judicial independence in Asia by the Global Competitiveness Report of the World Economic Forum.

In the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index, Hong Kong was ranked 16th for its rule of lawigher than many Western countries. In the World Bank Worldwide Governance Indicators project, Hong Kong scored an impressive 93 for rule of law.

But there was a little problem.

2) A SMALL DIFFICULTY

The community lawyers knew Hong Kong was weak on international co-operation against crime, having few extradition treaties. This was awkward as the Chinese coastal city had signed a United Nations pledge to significantly reduce illicit financial and arms flows [and] strengthen the recovery and return of stolen assets.

And then Hong Kong was criticized by the G7 Financial Action Task Force, which said it had a significant deficit in this area and was undermining international collaboration.

Critics of Hong Kong weakness pointed to the UN Model Treaty on Extradition which made it clear that in the name of justice, states had an obligation to extend extradition treaties.

In the entire 22-year history of Hong Kong, China, only 100 people had been extradited, mostly fugitives put on planes to the United States.

3) THE EXTRADITION PARADOX

This needed fixing. Hong Kong civil servants reviewed the literature.

Jurisdictions which claim to uphold the rule of law need extradition treaties as a social justice issue, said the writers of an influential 2011 UK report on extradition.

Extradition must NOT be limited to places with similar legal systems. States have increasingly recognized that effective extradition should operate on the basis of mutual trust and confidence (not suspicion and disrespect)." Extradition treaties forced other places to follow rule-of-law procedures in handling fugitives.

Extradition treaties and were particularly necessary for places which shared borders, such as neighbouring states, it said.

Britain signed extradition treaties with numerous countries with abysmal human rights records, such as Iraq and Zimbabwe. America signed deals with the Congo, Myanmar and El Salvador.

In Hong Kong, Department of Justice staff prepared to follow the leads of Western countries in this area. Simple, right?

4) MEANWHILE IN BEIJING

Under the surface in China , the internal enemies of Premier Xi Jinping were slamming him hard on two fronts, Beijing sources say.

One was the China-US trade war, which was now causing easily detectable damage to their country's economic indicators. And the other was the rise in illegal capital outflows, often through underground banks to Hong Kong, where it distorted the property markets.

At some stage, it became clear that Xi's people (but likely not Xi himself) would have been told about routine legal developments in Hong Kong, as a part of periodic briefings.

Some people say that China's illegal cash outflow problem to Hong Kong would have been mentioned at this time, but that remains speculation.

5) CHANGES ARE TABLED

In Hong Kong, the civil servants proposal for the lengthening of the extradition countries list was filed in February. At this point, the job was under the remits of Justice secretary Teresa Cheng and Security secretary John Lee.

Then, in March, there was a moment of high drama. A man in Hong Kong confessed to murder overseas but could not be arrested for it. The incident wasn't just dangerous, worrying, and embarrassing but it made real the glaring hole in Hong Kong ability to manage international crime.

But as the expansion of extradition treaties was discussed, activists noticed that China was NOT excluded in the proposals and saw red.

Just two years earlier, a decision to allow co-operation between Chinese and Hong Kong immigration channels at a railway station in Kowloon had caused dire predictions of doom.

6) THE LAW IS EXPLAINED

In the face of criticism from activists, Chief Executive Carrie Lam encouraged security minister Lee to explain the amendment better.

Hong Kong extradition law, based on the UN model used in the west, was simple at heart, he said. It targeted fugitives suspected of one or more of a limited list of serious crimes, including murder and rape. The caseload was expected to be very small.

Offenders accused of crimes related to politics and religion would automatically be untouchable. Tax-related matters were added to the exemptions list. ALL decisions would be made by Hong Kong legal community.

Reviewing the proposal, some lawyers felt the built-in safeguards (such as right of appeal) were strong, while others felt they were not. Some lawyers at the Bar Association pointed to weaknesses in the wording which needed to be changed. This was not unusual for new laws or amendments. Lawyers with an anti-government stance made dire predictions which were not necessarily impossible but were highly unlikely.

A number of activists interpreted this discussion as proof that the legal community agreed that the amendment was a ploy by a CCP puppet government who wanted to silence them. The media, hungry for drama, overwhelmingly featured the angriest, most negative interpretations.

7) CONSPIRACY OVERLOAD

On May 1, China critic Gordon C. Chang (known for his 2002 book The Coming Collapse of China) wrote a widely circulated essay claiming that Beijing was behind the amendment.

Beijing, with methodical ruthlessness, is trying to bring Hong Kong to heel,, he wrote. Many believe new rules facilitating the sending of suspects to China would effectively allow Beijing to grab people at will and thereby completely control the city.

Grab people at will? Frustrated pro-extradition lawyers said: If this was true, tourists could not visit UK without being in danger of being snatched by Zimbabwe and tourists visiting the United States could be snatched by the Congolese government But who could believe that?


8) INTERPRETATIONS ESCALATE

The fears fanned by Chang and others spread fast. Soon, the main narrative for much of the Western media was that a corrupt Hong Kong civil service was following Beijing secret orders to destroy the city rule of law, with brave youths nobly resisting.

Typical was Vox headline: The Fight to Save Hong Kong..Time magazine had: Hong Kong's Extradition Law Would be a Victory for Authoritarianism Everywhere. Quartz had Hong Kong is in the fight of its life.

Perhaps the root of the misunderstanding was the problem of scale. Hong Kong existing extradition arrangements only handled four or five cases a year. Even if the amendment caused the number to double or triple, it would still be a tiny number.

Yet activists gave the impression that tens of thousands of people were in imminent danger of being dragged over the border to mainland jails: a genuinely terrifying prospect.

Hong Kong end game: why the extradition bill is an infinity stone that could decimate half of society, said a headline in the Hong Kong Free Press over a melodramatic call to action by lawyer-activist Jason Ng.

9) REPORTED AND UNREPORTED

The number of complaints, from sensible suggestions to fantastical allegations, were so large they could not be ignored.

Carrie Lam took the ball from Lee's court and headed north. (Mrs Lam periodically reports to Zhongnanhai in Beijing in the same way that Hong Kong's British leaders periodically reported to Whitehall in London.)

In May, she reported to Central People government representatives that Hong Kong people had significant anxieties about the extradition amendment her people were trying to introduce.

But she said that she felt it was worth continuing. A significant portion of society was in in favor of the amendment, although their positive declarations went largely unreported.

Her complaint was fair. News articles blithely implied that businesses, diplomats and lawyers were all united against the law, but this was not the case.

All five of Hong Kong biggest business organizations (The Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, The Chinese General Chamber of Commerce, The Chinese Manufacturers Association of Hong Kong, The Federation of Hong Kong Industries, and The Hong Kong Chinese Importers and Exporters Association) were in favor of the legislation, and most urged the government to pass it as soon as possible.

Hong Kong consular officials, after a detailed briefing on the amendment, came on side, recognizing the positive intentions and close similarity to their own extradition laws.

Many senior lawyers were in favor, too although the mainstream media and social media preferred to give airtime only to the others.

10) WRONG AGAIN

Dramatic interpretations of what some people believed the amendment really meant, ie, the total loss of all freedom in Hong Kong, proliferated through social media. This led, on June 9, to a peaceful protest march of hundreds of thousands of people (but probably not a million: no self-respecting journalist takes the organizer estimate as hard fact).

Afterwards, many journalists (including the present writer) confidently speculated that Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam would have spent the evening in deep consultation with her ultimate boss, Xi Jinping, over what to do next.

In fact, we appear to have been wrong again. Xi Jinping was never involved, and there was no consultation that day between Mrs. Lam and Beijing. She told reporters she and her team spent the day monitoring events in Hong Kong and had no contact with the north.

The media portrayed the story as the Hong Kong government made this amendment [as a result of the] instruction of the Beijing government, said Chinese official Liu Xiaoming on June 12. As a matter of fact, Beijing central government gave no instruction, no order about making amendment. This amendment was initiated by the Hong Kong government.

On Saturday, 15 June, Mrs. Lam put the amendment plan on hold. She and her team remain undecided on next steps.

The real story of this amendment begins as a mundane tale of civil servants trying to fix a shortcoming they spotted in a rather technical ordinance. But perhaps the heart of the story is something else: evidence of a deep well of mistrust of China.

EPILOGUE: HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Recently in Guangzhou, the top CID officers of Hong Kong, Macau and Guangdong met for their 25th anniversary annual confab, celebrating a long and impressive record of successful joint crime-busting operations.

But that meeting didn't fit the present media narrative, so went unreported by the mainstream media.

And that is why wise people read widely, talk to many people, and make up their own minds about what is going on and then, hopefully, realize that a positive future is possible. But it requires collaboration. The message of 1994 is clear--what is needed is co-operative hands reaching over walls.

[Jun 23, 2019] The 'Extradition Protest' appears to have a startling resemblance to the 'Umbrella Protests' backed by the CIA/NED

Notable quotes:
"... Keep a close watch on whether the organizers are shown to have studied in the US and if the most vociferous media are known to have had connections to the CIA/NED. ..."
Jun 23, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

chet380 , Jun 12, 2019 3:04:15 PM | 19

The 'Extradition Protest', with its thousands of protesters seemingly instantly mobilized, appears to have a startling resemblance to the 'Umbrella Protests' that were backed by the CIA/NED.

Keep a close watch on whether the organizers are shown to have studied in the US and if the most vociferous media are known to have had connections to the CIA/NED.

[Jun 23, 2019] The Financial War Escalates

Notable quotes:
"... The build-up of riots against Hong Kong's proposed extradition treaty with the Mainland started months ago, supported and driven by commentary in the Land of the Free ..."
"... This happened before, in 2014. The Chinese leadership was certain the riots in Hong Kong reflected the work of American agencies. The following is an extract translated from a speech by Major-General Qiao Liang, a leading strategist for the Peoples' Liberation Army, addressing the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee in 2015: ..."
"... weakening yuan-dollar exchange rate will dissuade international portfolios from investing in China's projects, for which the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank was established. China should respond to moves to undermine her currency, seeking to enhance the attractions of her investment opportunities to international investment funds by taking measures to support the yuan. If not, global investment funds will simply not come China's way. ..."
"... Besides attracting portfolio flows into the US, a rising dollar is also a threat to foreign governments and corporates who have borrowed dollars and then have to pay them back later. This was what mauled South-East Asian economies in the 1997 financial crisis. China as a state is not in this position, though some of her regional trading partners will have fallen into this trap again. ..."
"... It is clear from elsewhere in Qiao's speech that the Chinese understand America's motives and methods. Therefore, they will anticipate American actions to undermine the yuan. If the Americans succeed and with the yuan made unattractive, international portfolio money that is already invested in China will be sucked out, potentially crashing China's capital markets. ..."
"... Put another way, we face no less than a dangerous escalation of the financial war between America and China, with America trying to close off international finance to China. ..."
"... Through deploying similar monetary policies to the Americans, it might now occur to Beijing's central planners that they are at a severe disadvantage playing that game. The dollar and the yuan are both unbacked credit-based currencies bedevilled with debt. But if the dollar goes head-to-head against the yuan, the dollar will always destabilise the yuan. ..."
"... Meanwhile, Chinese inaction is likely to be encouraged by another factor: the escalation of US embargoes on Iranian oil, and the increasing possibility of a new Middle-East conflict with Iran. This is bound to have a bearing on Chinese-American relations. ..."
"... Meanwhile, China is securing her defences. Besides aligning with Russia and both being expected to vote at the UN against Israeli/American attempts to escalate tensions in the Gulf, Russia can be expected to covertly help Iran. Beijing is also securing a partnership to protect North Korea, with Xi visiting Pyongyang this week in order to head off American action in that direction. The whole Asian continent from Ukraine to the Bering Sea is now on a defensive footing. ..."
Jun 23, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

When you see a rash, you should look beyond the skin for a cause. It has been like this with Hong Kong over the last few weeks. On the surface we see impressively organised demonstrations to stop the executive from introducing extradition laws to China. We observe that university students and others not much older are running the demonstrations with military precision. The Mainland Chinese should be impressed.

They are unlikely to see it that way. The build-up of riots against Hong Kong's proposed extradition treaty with the Mainland started months ago, supported and driven by commentary in the Land of the Free . America is now coming out in the open as China's adversary, no longer just a trading partner worried by the trade imbalances. And Hong Kong is the pressure point.

This happened before, in 2014. The Chinese leadership was certain the riots in Hong Kong reflected the work of American agencies. The following is an extract translated from a speech by Major-General Qiao Liang, a leading strategist for the Peoples' Liberation Army, addressing the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee in 2015:

"Since the Diaoyu Islands conflict and the Huangyan Island conflict, incidents have kept popping up around China, including the confrontation over China's 981 oil rigs with Vietnam and Hong Kong's "Occupy Central" event. Can they still be viewed as simply accidental?

I accompanied General Liu Yazhou, the Political Commissar of the National Defence University, to visit Hong Kong in May 2014. At that time, we heard that the "Occupy Central" movement was being planned and could take place by end of the month. However, it didn't happen in May, June, July, or August.

What happened? What were they waiting for?

Let's look at another time table: the U.S. Federal Reserve's exit from the Quantitative Easing (QE) policy. The U.S. said it would stop QE at the beginning of 2014. But it stayed with the QE policy in April, May, June, July, and August. As long as it was in QE, it kept overprinting dollars and the dollar's price couldn't go up. Thus, Hong Kong's "Occupy Central" should not happen either.

At the end of September, the Federal Reserve announced the U.S. would exit from QE. The dollar started going up. Then Hong Kong's "Occupy Central" broke out in early October.

Actually, the Diaoyu Islands, Huangyan Island, the 981 rigs, and Hong Kong's "Occupy Central" movement were all bombs. The successful explosion of any one of them would lead to a regional crisis or a worsened investment environment around China. That would force the withdrawal of a large amount of investment from this region, which would then return to the U.S."

That America is stoking and organising discontent anew in Hong Kong is probably still China's view today. Clearly, the Chinese believed America covertly managed "Occupy Central" and therefore are at it again. Apart from what their spies tell them, the protests are too well organised and planned to be spontaneous. This time, the attack appears to have a better chance of success. The plan is coordinated with American pressure on Hong Kong's dollar peg in an attempt to destabilise it, principally through the threat to extend tariffs against China to Hong Kong. This second attempt to collapse Hong Kong is therefore more serious.

Hong Kong is critical, because through Shanghai Connect it is the only lawful channel for foreign investment flows into China. This is important to the Americans, because the US Treasury cannot afford to see global portfolio flows attracted into China at a time when they will be needed to invest in increasing quantities of US Treasury stock. Understand that, and you will have grasped a large part of the urgency behind America's attempt to destabilise Hong Kong.

Qiao Liang makes this point elsewhere in his aforementioned speech, claiming American tactics are the consequence of the ending of Bretton Woods:

"Without the restriction of gold, the US can print dollars at will. If they keep a large amount of dollars inside the US, it will certainly create inflation. If they export dollars to the world, the whole world is helping the US deal with its inflation. That's why inflation is not high in the US."

While one can take issue with his simplistic analysis, that is not the point. What matters is what the Chinese believe. Qiao concludes:

"By issuing debt, the US brings a large amount of dollars from overseas back to the US's three big markets: the commodity market, the Treasury Bills market, and the stock market. The US repeats this cycle to make money: printing money, exporting money overseas, and bringing money back. The US has become a financial empire."

Conceptually, Qiao was broadly correct. His error in these two statements was to not explain that ownership of dollars means they are deployed exclusively in America, but perhaps he was simplifying his argument for a non-technical audience. All dollars, despite foreign ownership, remain in the American economy as a combination of US Treasuries and T-bills, investment in US listed and unlisted securities, physical assets such as property and also deposits through correspondent banks held in New York.

It is not the dollars that flow, but their ownership that changes. Dollars are bought and sold for foreign currencies by central banks, sovereign wealth funds, commercial banks, insurance companies and pension funds. The currencies in which these entities invest matters, and investment decisions are obviously affected by currency prospects. It allows the US Treasury to attract these flows into the dollar by simply making other currencies less attractive. Foreign owners of foreign currencies can easily be spooked into the safe havens of the dollar and US Treasuries. This is the way foreigners are corralled into funding the budget deficit.

A weakening yuan-dollar exchange rate will dissuade international portfolios from investing in China's projects, for which the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank was established. China should respond to moves to undermine her currency, seeking to enhance the attractions of her investment opportunities to international investment funds by taking measures to support the yuan. If not, global investment funds will simply not come China's way.

Besides attracting portfolio flows into the US, a rising dollar is also a threat to foreign governments and corporates who have borrowed dollars and then have to pay them back later. This was what mauled South-East Asian economies in the 1997 financial crisis. China as a state is not in this position, though some of her regional trading partners will have fallen into this trap again.

It is clear from elsewhere in Qiao's speech that the Chinese understand America's motives and methods. Therefore, they will anticipate American actions to undermine the yuan. If the Americans succeed and with the yuan made unattractive, international portfolio money that is already invested in China will be sucked out, potentially crashing China's capital markets.

With the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act going onto the US statute book, President Trump will be able to use the link to the Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose sanctions against trade, finance and technology. The concern in Hong Kong is personal wealth will now decamp and that Hong Kong property prices will implode.

The British involvement

America's strategy has included putting pressure on her allies to fall into line with her interests against China. All NATO members have been told not to buy Huawei equipment. Protective of the special relationship, the British have gone along with it. But Cheltenham's GCHQ (the UK's cyber monitoring agency) has at least given Huawei the opportunity to address the security issues that have been raised.

A greater problem is bound to arise, and that is the role of the City of London. In 2014, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, agreed a plan with the Chinese leadership for the City to work with Hong Kong to internationalise the yuan. The Chinese wanted to bypass New York for obvious reasons.

The request to meet Osborne went through Boris Johnson, at the time Mayor of London and leading a trade delegation to China on behalf of the City. Johnson is now odds-on favourite to become the next Prime Minister and if appointed will undoubtedly find himself in a difficult position. He will have to walk a very fine line between Britain's developing Chinese interests, her special relationship with America, his new friendship with Trump, and also the trade agreement with America which both Trump and Johnson are likely to prioritise following Brexit.

Depending on how Johnson acts, China may have to put her plans to internationalise the yuan on hold. The risk for China is that with her international financial plans threatened and the Americans determined to strengthen the dollar in order to undermine the yuan, she will not have access to the international portfolio flows she needs to help finance her infrastructure plans and her Made in China 2025 project.

Put another way, we face no less than a dangerous escalation of the financial war between America and China, with America trying to close off international finance to China.

China's policy predicament

In a tactical retreat, Hong Kong has put plans to introduce the new extradition legislation on hold. All it has achieved is to redirect demonstrators' demands towards Hong Kong's Chief Executive to resign, and the demonstrations continued.

The question now arises as to how the Chinese will proceed. So far, they have played their hand defensively in the financial war against America, but things are now coming to a head. Obviously, they will protect Hong Kong, but more importantly they must address capital flight through the Shanghai Connect. One option will be to suspend it, but that would undermine the trust fundamental to future inward portfolio flows. It would also be a huge setback for the international yuan. In any event, action must be taken to underwrite the yuan exchange rate.

One option would be to increase interest rates, but this will risk being read as a panic measure. In this context, an early and definite rise in interest rates would be better than a delay or a lesser adjustment to monetary policy. For the domestic economy, this would favour savers in an economy already savings-driven, but disadvantage exporters and many small and medium-size businesses. It would amount to a reversal of recent economic and monetary policies, which are intended to increase domestic consumption and reduce export surpluses.

The economic theories that the central planners in Beijing actually believe in will become centre-stage. China has adopted the global neo-Keynesian standard of economic planning and credit expansion. When the country moved rapidly from a peasant economy, credit was able to expand without the regular pitfalls of a credit cycle observed in an advanced economy being noticeable. This was because economic progress eclipsed the consequences of monetary inflation.

But China is no longer an economic green-field site, having become predominantly a modern economy. Consequently, she has moved from her pure mercantilist approach to running the economy to a more financial and monetary style of central planning.

Through deploying similar monetary policies to the Americans, it might now occur to Beijing's central planners that they are at a severe disadvantage playing that game. The dollar and the yuan are both unbacked credit-based currencies bedevilled with debt. But if the dollar goes head-to-head against the yuan, the dollar will always destabilise the yuan.

Supping from the Keynesian cup is China's principal weakness. She cannot afford to face down the dollar, and the Americans know it. For the Chinese, the path of least risk appears to be the one China has pursued successfully to date: do as little as possible to rock the boat, and let America make the mistakes. However, as I shall argue later, the time is coming for China to take the offensive.

Meanwhile, Chinese inaction is likely to be encouraged by another factor: the escalation of US embargoes on Iranian oil, and the increasing possibility of a new Middle-East conflict with Iran. This is bound to have a bearing on Chinese-American relations.

False flags and Iran

Last week, two oil tankers suffered an attack by parties unknown after leaving the Strait of Hormuz outward-bound. Predictably, the Americans and the Saudis blamed Iran, and Iran has denied involvement. The Americans, supported by the British, have been quick to point out that Iran had the motivation to attack and therefore was the guilty party. As a consequence of US sanctions, her economy is in a state of collapse and Iran needs higher oil prices. The US has been building up its Gulf fleet provocatively, increasing tensions. According to Al-Jazeera, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani warned last December that "If one day they (the US) want to prevent the export of Iran's oil, then no oil will be exported from the Persian Gulf."

Perhaps that day is close. Tehran must be desperate, and she blames the Americans and Israelis for a false flag attack, an accusation that bases its credibility on previous incidents in the region and a suspicion that Israel backed by America wants an excuse to attack Iran. The Syrian bridge to Hezbollah threatens Israel to its North, so its involvement is logical, and it looks like a Mossad operation. By driving Iran into a corner, it is hard to see any other outcome than further escalation.

If America does get tied up in a new war in the Middle East, she will be fighting on two Asian fronts: militarily against Iran and financially against China. It could descend rapidly into a global crisis, which would not suit China's interests or anyone else's for that matter. However, an American attack against Iran could trigger the widespread flight of investment money to the safety of the dollar and US Treasuries.

If America achieves that objective before sending in the troops, she could then compromise on both Iran and on tariffs against China. Assuming Qiao Liang's analysis still has traction in Beijing, this is the way American strategy might be read by the Chinese war-gamers.

Meanwhile, China is securing her defences. Besides aligning with Russia and both being expected to vote at the UN against Israeli/American attempts to escalate tensions in the Gulf, Russia can be expected to covertly help Iran. Beijing is also securing a partnership to protect North Korea, with Xi visiting Pyongyang this week in order to head off American action in that direction. The whole Asian continent from Ukraine to the Bering Sea is now on a defensive footing.

How will it be resolved?

If the funding of the US deficit is the underling problem, then a continuation of China's longstanding policy of not reacting to America's financial aggression is no longer an option. A weaker yuan will be the outcome and a second Asian financial crisis involving China would be in the offing. It also means the progression of China's economy would become more dependent on domestic inflationary financing through the expansion of bank credit at a time when food prices, partially due to the outbreak of African swine fever, are rising as well.

There is bound to be an intense debate in the Chinese Politburo as to whether it is wise to abandon neo-Keynesian financing and revert to the previous understanding that debasing the currency and the inflation of food prices impoverishes the people and will inevitably lead to political destabilisation. The logic behind the state accumulating a hoard of gold, encouraging citizens to hoard it as well, and dominating international bullion markets was to protect the citizens from a paper money crisis. That paper money crisis now threatens the yuan more than the dollar.

It must be clear to the Chinese, who are no slouches when it comes to understanding political strategy, why America is taking a far more aggressive stance in their financial war. The absence of foreign buyers in the US Treasury market could turn out to be the most serious crisis for America since the end of Bretton Woods. The Deep State, driven in this case by the US Treasury, will not permit it to happen. For both China and America, these are desperate times.

There was always going to be a point in time when mundane chess moves end up threatening to check and then checkmate one or the other king. China now finds her king under serious threat and she must make a countermove. She cannot afford portfolio flows to reverse. The financing of her Made in China 2025 plan and the completion of the silk roads are vital to her long-term political stability.

China must therefore counter dollar strength by means other than simply raising interest rates. Inevitably, the solution points towards gold. Everyone knows, or at least suspects that China has accumulated significant undeclared reserves of gold bullion. The time has probably come for China to show her hand and declare her true gold reserves, or at least enough of them to exceed the official gold reserves of the US.

It is likely a declaration of this sort would drive the gold price significantly higher, amounting to a dollar devaluation. By denying gold is money, America has exposed itself to the risk of the dollar's reserve status being questioned in global markets, and this is China's trump card.

If Xi attends the Osaka G20 at the end of this month, the purpose would be less to talk to Trump, but more to talk to the other leaders to make it clear what the Americans are up to and to ensure they are aware of the consequences for the global monetary system when China takes positive action to protect her own currency and domestic capital markets.


Demeter55 , 4 hours ago link

China gives the US too much credit for "people organizing" skills. Credit where credit is due: the Hong Kong population is dynamic and driven. They are "incentivized" by Chinese policy itself.

I am Groot , 19 hours ago link

My next prediction is that Iranian oil leaving their country is blockaded. Especially oil going to China.

BennyBoy , 19 hours ago link

It's a war to secure global RESOURCES.. Fixed it.

iSage , 19 hours ago link

Word war, trade war, financial war, then kinetic war...how many times over history has this happened? 1939 Japan, ring a bell?? Oil embargo.

[Jun 22, 2019] The Financial War Escalates

Jun 22, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

When you see a rash, you should look beyond the skin for a cause. It has been like this with Hong Kong over the last few weeks. On the surface we see impressively organised demonstrations to stop the executive from introducing extradition laws to China. We observe that university students and others not much older are running the demonstrations with military precision. The Mainland Chinese should be impressed.

They are unlikely to see it that way. The build-up of riots against Hong Kong's proposed extradition treaty with the Mainland started months ago, supported and driven by commentary in the Land of the Free . America is now coming out in the open as China's adversary, no longer just a trading partner worried by the trade imbalances. And Hong Kong is the pressure point.

This happened before, in 2014. The Chinese leadership was certain the riots in Hong Kong reflected the work of American agencies. The following is an extract translated from a speech by Major-General Qiao Liang, a leading strategist for the Peoples' Liberation Army, addressing the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee in 2015:

"Since the Diaoyu Islands conflict and the Huangyan Island conflict, incidents have kept popping up around China, including the confrontation over China's 981 oil rigs with Vietnam and Hong Kong's "Occupy Central" event. Can they still be viewed as simply accidental?

I accompanied General Liu Yazhou, the Political Commissar of the National Defence University, to visit Hong Kong in May 2014. At that time, we heard that the "Occupy Central" movement was being planned and could take place by end of the month. However, it didn't happen in May, June, July, or August.

What happened? What were they waiting for?

Let's look at another time table: the U.S. Federal Reserve's exit from the Quantitative Easing (QE) policy. The U.S. said it would stop QE at the beginning of 2014. But it stayed with the QE policy in April, May, June, July, and August. As long as it was in QE, it kept overprinting dollars and the dollar's price couldn't go up. Thus, Hong Kong's "Occupy Central" should not happen either.

At the end of September, the Federal Reserve announced the U.S. would exit from QE. The dollar started going up. Then Hong Kong's "Occupy Central" broke out in early October.

Actually, the Diaoyu Islands, Huangyan Island, the 981 rigs, and Hong Kong's "Occupy Central" movement were all bombs. The successful explosion of any one of them would lead to a regional crisis or a worsened investment environment around China. That would force the withdrawal of a large amount of investment from this region, which would then return to the U.S."

That America is stoking and organising discontent anew in Hong Kong is probably still China's view today. Clearly, the Chinese believed America covertly managed "Occupy Central" and therefore are at it again. Apart from what their spies tell them, the protests are too well organised and planned to be spontaneous. This time, the attack appears to have a better chance of success. The plan is coordinated with American pressure on Hong Kong's dollar peg in an attempt to destabilise it, principally through the threat to extend tariffs against China to Hong Kong. This second attempt to collapse Hong Kong is therefore more serious.

Hong Kong is critical, because through Shanghai Connect it is the only lawful channel for foreign investment flows into China. This is important to the Americans, because the US Treasury cannot afford to see global portfolio flows attracted into China at a time when they will be needed to invest in increasing quantities of US Treasury stock. Understand that, and you will have grasped a large part of the urgency behind America's attempt to destabilise Hong Kong.

Qiao Liang makes this point elsewhere in his aforementioned speech, claiming American tactics are the consequence of the ending of Bretton Woods:

"Without the restriction of gold, the US can print dollars at will. If they keep a large amount of dollars inside the US, it will certainly create inflation. If they export dollars to the world, the whole world is helping the US deal with its inflation. That's why inflation is not high in the US."

While one can take issue with his simplistic analysis, that is not the point. What matters is what the Chinese believe. Qiao concludes:

"By issuing debt, the US brings a large amount of dollars from overseas back to the US's three big markets: the commodity market, the Treasury Bills market, and the stock market. The US repeats this cycle to make money: printing money, exporting money overseas, and bringing money back. The US has become a financial empire."

Conceptually, Qiao was broadly correct. His error in these two statements was to not explain that ownership of dollars means they are deployed exclusively in America, but perhaps he was simplifying his argument for a non-technical audience. All dollars, despite foreign ownership, remain in the American economy as a combination of US Treasuries and T-bills, investment in US listed and unlisted securities, physical assets such as property and also deposits through correspondent banks held in New York.

It is not the dollars that flow, but their ownership that changes. Dollars are bought and sold for foreign currencies by central banks, sovereign wealth funds, commercial banks, insurance companies and pension funds. The currencies in which these entities invest matters, and investment decisions are obviously affected by currency prospects. It allows the US Treasury to attract these flows into the dollar by simply making other currencies less attractive. Foreign owners of foreign currencies can easily be spooked into the safe havens of the dollar and US Treasuries. This is the way foreigners are corralled into funding the budget deficit.

A weakening yuan-dollar exchange rate will dissuade international portfolios from investing in China's projects, for which the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank was established. China should respond to moves to undermine her currency, seeking to enhance the attractions of her investment opportunities to international investment funds by taking measures to support the yuan. If not, global investment funds will simply not come China's way.

Besides attracting portfolio flows into the US, a rising dollar is also a threat to foreign governments and corporates who have borrowed dollars and then have to pay them back later. This was what mauled South-East Asian economies in the 1997 financial crisis. China as a state is not in this position, though some of her regional trading partners will have fallen into this trap again.

It is clear from elsewhere in Qiao's speech that the Chinese understand America's motives and methods. Therefore, they will anticipate American actions to undermine the yuan. If the Americans succeed and with the yuan made unattractive, international portfolio money that is already invested in China will be sucked out, potentially crashing China's capital markets.

With the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act going onto the US statute book, President Trump will be able to use the link to the Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose sanctions against trade, finance and technology. The concern in Hong Kong is personal wealth will now decamp and that Hong Kong property prices will implode.

The British involvement

America's strategy has included putting pressure on her allies to fall into line with her interests against China. All NATO members have been told not to buy Huawei equipment. Protective of the special relationship, the British have gone along with it. But Cheltenham's GCHQ (the UK's cyber monitoring agency) has at least given Huawei the opportunity to address the security issues that have been raised.

A greater problem is bound to arise, and that is the role of the City of London. In 2014, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, agreed a plan with the Chinese leadership for the City to work with Hong Kong to internationalise the yuan. The Chinese wanted to bypass New York for obvious reasons.

The request to meet Osborne went through Boris Johnson, at the time Mayor of London and leading a trade delegation to China on behalf of the City. Johnson is now odds-on favourite to become the next Prime Minister and if appointed will undoubtedly find himself in a difficult position. He will have to walk a very fine line between Britain's developing Chinese interests, her special relationship with America, his new friendship with Trump, and also the trade agreement with America which both Trump and Johnson are likely to prioritise following Brexit.

Depending on how Johnson acts, China may have to put her plans to internationalise the yuan on hold. The risk for China is that with her international financial plans threatened and the Americans determined to strengthen the dollar in order to undermine the yuan, she will not have access to the international portfolio flows she needs to help finance her infrastructure plans and her Made in China 2025 project.

Put another way, we face no less than a dangerous escalation of the financial war between America and China, with America trying to close off international finance to China.

China's policy predicament

In a tactical retreat, Hong Kong has put plans to introduce the new extradition legislation on hold. All it has achieved is to redirect demonstrators' demands towards Hong Kong's Chief Executive to resign, and the demonstrations continued.

The question now arises as to how the Chinese will proceed. So far, they have played their hand defensively in the financial war against America, but things are now coming to a head. Obviously, they will protect Hong Kong, but more importantly they must address capital flight through the Shanghai Connect. One option will be to suspend it, but that would undermine the trust fundamental to future inward portfolio flows. It would also be a huge setback for the international yuan. In any event, action must be taken to underwrite the yuan exchange rate.

One option would be to increase interest rates, but this will risk being read as a panic measure. In this context, an early and definite rise in interest rates would be better than a delay or a lesser adjustment to monetary policy. For the domestic economy, this would favour savers in an economy already savings-driven, but disadvantage exporters and many small and medium-size businesses. It would amount to a reversal of recent economic and monetary policies, which are intended to increase domestic consumption and reduce export surpluses.

The economic theories that the central planners in Beijing actually believe in will become centre-stage. China has adopted the global neo-Keynesian standard of economic planning and credit expansion. When the country moved rapidly from a peasant economy, credit was able to expand without the regular pitfalls of a credit cycle observed in an advanced economy being noticeable. This was because economic progress eclipsed the consequences of monetary inflation.

But China is no longer an economic green-field site, having become predominantly a modern economy. Consequently, she has moved from her pure mercantilist approach to running the economy to a more financial and monetary style of central planning.

Through deploying similar monetary policies to the Americans, it might now occur to Beijing's central planners that they are at a severe disadvantage playing that game. The dollar and the yuan are both unbacked credit-based currencies bedevilled with debt. But if the dollar goes head-to-head against the yuan, the dollar will always destabilise the yuan.

Supping from the Keynesian cup is China's principal weakness. She cannot afford to face down the dollar, and the Americans know it. For the Chinese, the path of least risk appears to be the one China has pursued successfully to date: do as little as possible to rock the boat, and let America make the mistakes. However, as I shall argue later, the time is coming for China to take the offensive.

Meanwhile, Chinese inaction is likely to be encouraged by another factor: the escalation of US embargoes on Iranian oil, and the increasing possibility of a new Middle-East conflict with Iran. This is bound to have a bearing on Chinese-American relations.

False flags and Iran

Last week, two oil tankers suffered an attack by parties unknown after leaving the Strait of Hormuz outward-bound. Predictably, the Americans and the Saudis blamed Iran, and Iran has denied involvement. The Americans, supported by the British, have been quick to point out that Iran had the motivation to attack and therefore was the guilty party. As a consequence of US sanctions, her economy is in a state of collapse and Iran needs higher oil prices. The US has been building up its Gulf fleet provocatively, increasing tensions. According to Al-Jazeera, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani warned last December that "If one day they (the US) want to prevent the export of Iran's oil, then no oil will be exported from the Persian Gulf."

Perhaps that day is close. Tehran must be desperate, and she blames the Americans and Israelis for a false flag attack, an accusation that bases its credibility on previous incidents in the region and a suspicion that Israel backed by America wants an excuse to attack Iran. The Syrian bridge to Hezbollah threatens Israel to its North, so its involvement is logical, and it looks like a Mossad operation. By driving Iran into a corner, it is hard to see any other outcome than further escalation.

If America does get tied up in a new war in the Middle East, she will be fighting on two Asian fronts: militarily against Iran and financially against China. It could descend rapidly into a global crisis, which would not suit China's interests or anyone else's for that matter. However, an American attack against Iran could trigger the widespread flight of investment money to the safety of the dollar and US Treasuries.

If America achieves that objective before sending in the troops, she could then compromise on both Iran and on tariffs against China. Assuming Qiao Liang's analysis still has traction in Beijing, this is the way American strategy might be read by the Chinese war-gamers.

Meanwhile, China is securing her defences. Besides aligning with Russia and both being expected to vote at the UN against Israeli/American attempts to escalate tensions in the Gulf, Russia can be expected to covertly help Iran. Beijing is also securing a partnership to protect North Korea, with Xi visiting Pyongyang this week in order to head off American action in that direction. The whole Asian continent from Ukraine to the Bering Sea is now on a defensive footing.

How will it be resolved?

If the funding of the US deficit is the underling problem, then a continuation of China's longstanding policy of not reacting to America's financial aggression is no longer an option. A weaker yuan will be the outcome and a second Asian financial crisis involving China would be in the offing. It also means the progression of China's economy would become more dependent on domestic inflationary financing through the expansion of bank credit at a time when food prices, partially due to the outbreak of African swine fever, are rising as well.

There is bound to be an intense debate in the Chinese Politburo as to whether it is wise to abandon neo-Keynesian financing and revert to the previous understanding that debasing the currency and the inflation of food prices impoverishes the people and will inevitably lead to political destabilisation. The logic behind the state accumulating a hoard of gold, encouraging citizens to hoard it as well, and dominating international bullion markets was to protect the citizens from a paper money crisis. That paper money crisis now threatens the yuan more than the dollar.

It must be clear to the Chinese, who are no slouches when it comes to understanding political strategy, why America is taking a far more aggressive stance in their financial war. The absence of foreign buyers in the US Treasury market could turn out to be the most serious crisis for America since the end of Bretton Woods. The Deep State, driven in this case by the US Treasury, will not permit it to happen. For both China and America, these are desperate times.

There was always going to be a point in time when mundane chess moves end up threatening to check and then checkmate one or the other king. China now finds her king under serious threat and she must make a countermove. She cannot afford portfolio flows to reverse. The financing of her Made in China 2025 plan and the completion of the silk roads are vital to her long-term political stability.

China must therefore counter dollar strength by means other than simply raising interest rates. Inevitably, the solution points towards gold. Everyone knows, or at least suspects that China has accumulated significant undeclared reserves of gold bullion. The time has probably come for China to show her hand and declare her true gold reserves, or at least enough of them to exceed the official gold reserves of the US.

It is likely a declaration of this sort would drive the gold price significantly higher, amounting to a dollar devaluation. By denying gold is money, America has exposed itself to the risk of the dollar's reserve status being questioned in global markets, and this is China's trump card.

If Xi attends the Osaka G20 at the end of this month, the purpose would be less to talk to Trump, but more to talk to the other leaders to make it clear what the Americans are up to and to ensure they are aware of the consequences for the global monetary system when China takes positive action to protect her own currency and domestic capital markets.


Demeter55 , 4 hours ago link

China gives the US too much credit for "people organizing" skills.

Credit where credit is due: the Hong Kong population is dynamic and driven. They are "incentivized" by Chinese policy itself.

I am Groot , 19 hours ago link

My next prediction is that Iranian oil leaving their country is blockaded. Especially oil going to China.

BennyBoy , 19 hours ago link

It's a war to secure global RESOURCES..

Fixed it.

iSage , 19 hours ago link

Word war, trade war, financial war, then kinetic war...how many times over history has this happened? 1939 Japan, ring a bell?? Oil embargo.

[Jun 20, 2019] The uprising in Hong Kong is regime change-motivated

Notable quotes:
"... I was one of the first to comment that the uprising in Hong Kong is regime change-motivated. The road to Beijing leads through Hong Kong. Venezuela, Iran, China are all simmering on the Neocon stove top. And then Russia will fall like a house of cards. ..."
"... Yes, paying off more than a couple thousands would be absurd, but that's not how the US State Department manufactures these "regime change" protests. Only a few thousand end up on the payroll and that is plenty to create the illusion of "grassroots" . The real magic happens in the corporate mass media studios and newsrooms where the few thousand is amplified into a hundreds of thousands and the protest is transformed through the wizardry of marketing into the gala event of the decade. ..."
"... Assuming the Hong Kong authorities can prevent the CIA death squad snipers from doing their part of shooting up cops and protesters to turn the event into a riot, the protests will eventually die out like they did last time. The protests alone, without the CIA inspired riots, are insufficient for "regime change" ..."
Jun 20, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Circe , Jun 20, 2019 6:28:14 PM | 161

I was one of the first to comment that the uprising in Hong Kong is regime change-motivated. The road to Beijing leads through Hong Kong. Venezuela, Iran, China are all simmering on the Neocon stove top. And then Russia will fall like a house of cards.

Let's not leave out the stealthy regime change through trumped up charges against Lula in Brazil.

So, no BRI, no SCO, no OBOR, no EAEU, absolutely no competition to Zionist Empire. That's the plan and Trump is front and center on it. Absolute domination c/o Trump.

There are stealth Zionists on this board, e.g. trashy referencing Mullahs and excusing Trump's cancellation of Iran deal as complicated . Sounds Zionist to me. If it takes the Ayatollah to pound Zionist/U.S. aggression into the ground, gimme 10 of them!!!

@139 Zach

I'll answer that: ZERO TOLERANCE.

It is an indignity on Bashar's part to have to allow Trump to save face with hundreds of U.S. cruise missiles raining on sovereign Syrian soil.

Once you allow for one strike, you're losing and Israel will get in on the action too whenever it feels like it. The rule must be to shoot down all intruders, manned and unmanned the second they breach sovereign space and not give an inch. Period!

NemesisCalling , Jun 20, 2019 7:22:10 PM | 177

@161 circe

Regime change in China? Lol. Through Hong Kong? Omg, Circe. Talk about a bridge too far. Calm yourself and get real! If Venezuela ain't falling to the !Zionists! I sincerely doubt that Hong Kong is going to be the vanguard which will topple Beijing.

Hilarious stuff, though.

William Gruff , Jun 20, 2019 7:37:22 PM | 182
NemesisCalling @175

Yes, paying off more than a couple thousands would be absurd, but that's not how the US State Department manufactures these "regime change" protests. Only a few thousand end up on the payroll and that is plenty to create the illusion of "grassroots" . The real magic happens in the corporate mass media studios and newsrooms where the few thousand is amplified into a hundreds of thousands and the protest is transformed through the wizardry of marketing into the gala event of the decade.

Assuming the Hong Kong authorities can prevent the CIA death squad snipers from doing their part of shooting up cops and protesters to turn the event into a riot, the protests will eventually die out like they did last time. The protests alone, without the CIA inspired riots, are insufficient for "regime change" .

[May 04, 2019] America's Global Financial War Is Escalating

Notable quotes:
"... the Huawei controversy is part of a wider conflict, with America determined to stop the Chinese changing the world's power structure, moving it from under America's control. When China was just a cheap manufacturing centre for low-tech goods, that was one thing. But when China started developing advanced technologies and began to dominate global trade, that was another. China must be put back in its box. ..."
"... America failed to bring Russia to her knees, so now the focus is directly on destroying, or at least containing China. China has already outspent America in Africa, Central and South America, buying influence away from America in her traditional spheres of influence. Attempts to neutralise North Korea are coming unstuck. ..."
"... Behind the cyber war, there is a financial war. In the financial war, America has the advantage of its currency hegemony, which it exercises to the full. It has allowed Americans to have lived beyond their means by importing more goods than they export, and the government spends more than it receives in taxes. In order to achieve these benefits, inward capital flows are necessary to finance them. To date, these have totalled in current value-terms some $25 trillion, being total foreign ownership of dollar assets and deposits. ..."
"... In 2017, Hong Kong was the third largest recipient of foreign direct investment (substantially property) after the US and China. FDI inflows rose by £104bn to total nearly $2 trillion. Largest investors were China, followed by corporate money channeled through offshore centers. ..."
"... China is sure to see the financial and monetary stability of Hong Kong as being vital to the Mainland's interests. Apart from the Bank of China's Hong Kong subsidiary being the second largest issuer of bank notes, the Peoples' Bank itself maintains reserve balances in Hong Kong dollars, which in the circumstances Kyle Bass believes likely, they can increase to support the HKMA's management of the currency peg. ..."
"... The alternative is for Washington to recognise and accept that its days of being a uni-polar global power are coming to an end but that is not possible when power is in the hands of maniacal psychos like Bolt-on. ..."
"... Bretton Woods, World Bank, IMF, BIS, just for starters. The US/UK built the present financial system. Of which most of the world has joined, because in the main it profits them. ..."
"... What are the benefits? Being enslaved by a bunch of inbred assholes in Switzerland? ..."
May 04, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com, Cyber Wars And All That...

Behind the Huawei story, we must not forget there is a wider financial war being waged by America against China and Russia. Stories about China's banks being short of dollars are incorrect: the shortage is of inward capital flows to support the US Government's budget deficit. By attracting those global portfolio flows instead, China's Belt and Road Initiative threatens US Government finances, so the financial war and associated disinformation can be expected to escalate. Hong Kong is likely to be in the firing line, due to its role in providing China with access to international finance.

Introduction

Huawei is hitting the headlines. From ordering the arrest of its Chief Financial Officer in Vancouver last December to the latest efforts to dissuade its allies from adopting Huawei's 5G mobile technology, it has been a classic deep state operation by the Americans. Admittedly, the Chinese have left themselves open to attack by introducing a loosely-drafted cybersecurity law in 2016/17 which according to Western defence circles appears to require all Chinese technology companies to cooperate with Chinese intelligence services.

Consequently, no one now knows whether to trust Huawei, who have some of the leading technology for 5G. The problem for network operators is who to believe. Intelligence services are in the business of dissembling, which they do through political puppets, all of which are professionals at being economical with the truth. Who can forget Weapons of Mass Destruction? More recently there was the Skripal poisoning mystery: the Russians would have been bang-to-rights, if it wasn't for Skripal's links through Pablo Miller to Christopher Steele, who put together the dodgy dossier on Trump's alleged behaviour in a Russian hotel.

The safest course is to never believe anything emanating from a government security agency, which does not help hapless network operators. They, and the rest of us, should look at motives. The attack on Huawei is motivated by a desire to impede China's technological progress, which is already eclipsing that of America, and America is using her leadership of the 5-eyes intelligence group of nations to impose her geostrategic will on her allies. The row in Britain this week escalated from a cabinet-level security breech on this subject, to American threats of withholding intelligence from the UK if UK companies are permitted to order Huawei 5G equipment, to the sacking of the Minister of Defence.

A threat to withhold intelligence sharing, if carried out, only serves to isolate the Americans. But you can see how desperate the Americans are to eliminate Huawei. Furthermore, the Huawei controversy is part of a wider conflict, with America determined to stop the Chinese changing the world's power structure, moving it from under America's control. When China was just a cheap manufacturing centre for low-tech goods, that was one thing. But when China started developing advanced technologies and began to dominate global trade, that was another. China must be put back in its box.

So far, all attempts to do so appear to have failed. Control of Afghanistan, seen as an important source of minerals ready to be exploited by China, has been a costly failure for the West. Attempts to wrest control of Syria from Russia's sphere of influence also failed. Russia is China's economic and military ally. America failed to bring Russia to her knees, so now the focus is directly on destroying, or at least containing China. China has already outspent America in Africa, Central and South America, buying influence away from America in her traditional spheres of influence. Attempts to neutralise North Korea are coming unstuck.

In truth, there is an undeclared war between China and Russia on one side, and America and her often reluctant allies on the other. It will now escalate, mainly because America increasingly needs global portfolio flows to cover her deficits.

America's financial war strategy

Behind the cyber war, there is a financial war. In the financial war, America has the advantage of its currency hegemony, which it exercises to the full. It has allowed Americans to have lived beyond their means by importing more goods than they export, and the government spends more than it receives in taxes. In order to achieve these benefits, inward capital flows are necessary to finance them. To date, these have totalled in current value-terms some $25 trillion, being total foreign ownership of dollar assets and deposits.

America's policy of living beyond its means now requires more than just recycled trade flows: inward portfolio flows are required as well. Global portfolios, comprised of commercial cash balances as well as investment money, periodically increase their exposure to other regions, potentially leaving America short. The problem is resolved by destabilising the region that has most recently benefited from capital investment, to encourage money to return to dollars and thus America's domestic markets. Now that she is due to escalate infrastructure spending both in China and along the new silk roads, it is China's turn.

This will be the opinion of Qiao Liang, who was a Major-General in the PLA and one of its chief strategists. It was his explanation for the South-East Asian crisis of 1997, when a run started on the Thai baht and spread to all neighbouring countries. In the decade prior to the crisis, the region saw substantial inward capital flows, so much so that countries such as Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia ran significant deficits on their balance of payments. This conflicted with the US's trade balance, which was beginning to deteriorate. The solution was the collapse of the South-east Asia investment story, which stimulated the re-allocation of investment resources in favour of the dollar and America.

Qiao Liang cites a number of other examples from the Latin-American crisis in the early-1980s to Ukraine, whose yellow revolution reversed investment flows into Central Europe. This did not go to plan, with over a trillion dollars-worth of investment coming out of Europe, most being redirected to the Chinese economy, which was the most attractive destination at that time. Through the new Shanghai-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect, in April 2014 China facilitated inward investment and the ability for foreign investors to realise profits without going through exchange controls.

Being the gateway for foreign investors, our story now moves to Hong Kong. According to Chinese and Russian intelligence sources, America tried to destabilise it with covert support for the Occupy Hong Kong movement between September and December 2014. The Fed ended its QE that October, and international capital was needed back in the US. The Americans had also escalated the row over the Spratly Islands and Scarborough Shoal at the beginning of that year, which effectively halted free trade negotiations between China, Japan, South Korea, Macau, Taiwan and Hong Kong. The Chinese hoped this potential free trade area could be expanded to include the ASEAN FTA, which would then have been the largest in the world by GDP and an area in which they could develop the renminbi as the reserve currency.

These plans were effectively scuppered, but China was not provoked into a public response by these actions. Instead, they started reducing their US Treasury holdings in their dollar reserves from $1.27 trillion to $1.06 trillion in 2016 – not a great fall, but demonstrating they were not recycling their trade surpluses into dollars.

All that happened at a time when both the American and global economies were expanding – admittedly at muted rates. Trump's trade protectionism has changed that, and early indications are that the US economy is now stalling. Tax revenues are falling short, while government expenditures are rising. America now urgently needs more inward capital flows to finance the growing budget deficit.

If Qiao Liang were to comment, doubtless his conclusion would be that America will increase its attack on China to precipitate disinvestment and reallocation to the dollar. And so, the attacks have begun; first by trying to break Huawei. Now, the mainstream media, perhaps with off-the-record briefings, are claiming China and Hong Kong are facing difficulties.

Last week, the Wall Street Journal published an article claiming China's banks are running out of dollars. Clearly, this is untrue. China's banks can acquire dollars any time they want, either by selling other foreign currencies in the market, or by selling renminbi to the People's bank. They have their dollar position because they choose to have it, and furthermore all commercial banks use derivatives, which are effectively off-balance sheet exposure. Furthermore, with the US running a substantial trade deficit with China, dollars are flooding in all the time.

Following the WSJ article, various other commentators have come up with similar stories. How convenient, it seems, for the US Government to see these bearish stories about China, just when they need to ramp up inward portfolio flows to finance the budget deficit.

There is, anyway, a general antipathy among American investors to the China story, so we should not be surprised to see the China bears restating their case. One leading China bear, at least by reputation for his investment shrewdness, is Kyle Bass of Hayman Capital Management. According to , he has written his first investment letter in three years, saying of Hong Kong, "Today, newly emergent economic and political risks threaten Hong Kong's decades of stability. These risks are so large they merit immediate attention on both fronts."

If only it were so simple. It is time to put the alternative case. Hong Kong is important, because China uses Hong Kong and London to avoid being dependent on the US banking system for international finances. And that's why the US's deep state want to nail Hong Kong.

Lop-sided analysis

Bass is correct in pointing out the Hong Kong property market appears highly geared, and that property prices for office, residential and retail sectors have rocketed since the 2003 trough. To a large extent it has been the inevitable consequence of the currency board link to the US dollar, which broadly transfers the Fed's inflationary monetary policy to Hong Kong's more dynamic economy. Bass's description of the relationship between the banks, the way they finance themselves and property collateral is reminiscent of the factors that led to the secondary banking crisis in the UK in late-1973. Empirical evidence appears to be firmly on Bass's side.

Except, that is, for a significant difference between events such as the UK's secondary banking crisis, and virtually every other property crisis. Hong Kong is a truly international centre, and the banks' role in property transactions is as currency facilitator rather than lender. In 2017, Hong Kong was the third largest recipient of foreign direct investment (substantially property) after the US and China. FDI inflows rose by £104bn to total nearly $2 trillion. Largest investors were China, followed by corporate money channeled through offshore centers.

So, yes, Hong Kong banks will be hurt by a property crisis, but not as much as Bass implies. It is foreign and Chinese banks that have much of the property as collateral. It is not the Hong Kong banks that have fuelled the property boom with domestic credit, but foreign money.

Bass fails to mention that a collapse in property prices and the banking system is unlikely to be confined to Hong Kong. Central banks have made significant progress in ensuring all banking systems are tied into the same credit cycle. Unwittingly, they have simply guarenteed that the next credit crisis will hit everyone at the same time. It won't be just Hong Kong, but the EU, Japan, Britain and America. Everyone will be in difficulty to a greater or lesser extent.

Interestingly, the Lehman crisis, which occurred after Hong Kong property prices had already doubled from 2003, caused strong inflows to develop, driving the Hong Kong dollar to the top of its peg. The situation appears to be similar today, with US outward investment at low levels, but near-record levels of foreign ownership of dollar assets. Despite Hong Kong's foreign direct investment standing at $2 trillion, the prospect of capital repatriation to Hong Kong should not be ignored.

Probably the most important claim in Bass's letter is over the future of the currency peg operated by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA). He claims that the "aggregate balance", which is a line-item in the HKMA's balance sheet, is the equivalent of the US Fed's excess reserves, and that "Once depleted, the pressure on the currency board will become untenable and the peg will break."

The aggregate balance on the HKMA's balance sheet has declined significantly over the last year, from HK$180bn to HK$54.4bn currently. The decision about changes in aggregate balances comes from the banks themselves, and for this reason they are commonly taken to reflect capital flows into and out of the Hong Kong dollar. This is different from aggregate balances reflecting actual pressures on the peg, as suggested by Bass.

The HKMA maintains a US dollar coverage of 105%-112.5% of base money (currently about 110%) and has further unallocated dollar reserves if necessary. The peg is maintained by the HKMA varying its base money, not just by managing a base lending rate giving a spread over the Fed's fund rate, not just by influencing the commercial banks' aggregate balances, but by addressing the three other components that make up the monetary base. These are Certificates of Indebtedness, Government notes and coins in circulation and Exchange Fund Bills and Notes (EFBNs). In practice, it is the EFBNs in conjunction with the aggregate balances that are used to adjust the monetary base and keep the currency secured in the Convertibility Zone of 7.75 and 7.85 to the US dollar.

In maintaining the peg, the HKMA prioritises maintaining it over managing the money supply. There is little doubt this goes against the grain of mainstream Western economists who believe inflation good, deflation bad. Over the last year base money in Hong Kong contracted from HK$1,695bn to HK1,635bn. Does this worry the HKMA? Not at all.

How the Chinese will act in the circumstances of a new global credit crisis is yet to be seen, but we should bear in mind that they are probably less Keynesian in their approach to economics and finance than Westerners. Admittedly, they have freely used credit expansion to finance economic development, but theirs is a mercantilist approach, which differs significantly from ours. We simply impoverish our factors of production through wealth transfer by monetary inflation. We think this can be offset by fuelling financial speculation and asset inflation. China enhances her production and innovation by generating personal savings. Wealth is created by and linked more directly to production.

The objectives and effects of monetary and credit inflation between China's application of it and the way we do things in the West are dissimilar, and it is a common mistake to ignore these differences. The threat to China's ability to manage its affairs in a credit crisis is significantly less than the threat to Western welfare-dependent nations whose governments are highly indebted, while China's is not.

China is sure to see the financial and monetary stability of Hong Kong as being vital to the Mainland's interests. Apart from the Bank of China's Hong Kong subsidiary being the second largest issuer of bank notes, the Peoples' Bank itself maintains reserve balances in Hong Kong dollars, which in the circumstances Kyle Bass believes likely, they can increase to support the HKMA's management of the currency peg.

Conclusions

It is a mistake to think the Hong Kong property market is as much of a systemic danger as it first appears. Expectations of a devaluation of the peg appear to be wishful thinking by the bears.

Far more important are the consequences of the cyber and financial war being pursued against China and Russia, its close ally, by the American deep state. Under President Trump it was accelerated by his trade tariff policies, which are fundamentally an attack on China's economy. China will be a hard nut to crack, and the effect of America's trade protectionism has been to trigger a diminution in international trade, which is now becoming apparent. The negative effects on the American economy appear to be being underestimated.

The attempt to destroy Huawei's 5G global ambitions is both the current and most visible part of an undeclared cyber and financial war. Trade protectionism was only a step along the way. The financial war is now escalating with the global economy facing at least a significant recession, almost certain to trigger an overdue credit crisis. The Chinese have long been on a financial war footing, as shown by Qiao Liang's analysis of how America needs global portfolio flows and what they are prepared to do to attract them. Western thinking that the Chinese and their Russian allies are vulnerable to American hegemony has been disproved time and again. Financial analysts consistently fail to understand the Chinese are not muppets.

China will not be provoked, and by standing firm, they are sure to protect Hong Kong and get on with diverting investment flows from a failing US economy into its Belt and Road Initiative. This will force a financial crisis on the Americans of their own making. At least, that's how China has always seen it and they see no need for their passive financial war strategy to change.


smacker , 3 hours ago link

The Washington strategy described here to prevent China from becoming a global player in geo-politics and technology is doomed to failure as more and more countries side with China (including Russia, which wants its own share of the action). It will lead to a hot war and I believe Washington knows this and is stepping in that direction.

The alternative is for Washington to recognise and accept that its days of being a uni-polar global power are coming to an end but that is not possible when power is in the hands of maniacal psychos like Bolt-on.

Offthebeach , 4 hours ago link

Bretton Woods, World Bank, IMF, BIS, just for starters. The US/UK built the present financial system. Of which most of the world has joined, because in the main it profits them.

All clubs have rules. All clubs have requirements. Or else, by by.

China wants in the club, wants the club facilities, the club benefits, wants to go to the parties and be warmly accepted at the bar. But it doesn't like the rules. But it doesn't like being outside the club either.

The Communist Chinese government, decades used to treating its own people as dirt. This is how they roll.

So too Iran, Maduro, Cuba, Putin.

They want the benefits of the west, but not the strings. State Street, as we say in Massachusetts ( State Street in Boston is where the state capital is, and it is one way only)

fackbankz , 4 hours ago link

What are the benefits? Being enslaved by a bunch of inbred assholes in Switzerland?

The Herdsman , 5 hours ago link

"...financial war being waged by America against China and Russia."

And by China and Russia against America. Lets not pretend the Russians and Chinese are innocent victims here. Its a competition. Thats the way the world works. Were all competing for trade, money and resources.

[Mar 14, 2015] The Coming Chinese Crackup

Mar 14, 2015 | Zero Hedge
TheFourthStooge-ing

Giving the boot to US NGOs like USAID, National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House, Human Rights Watch, et al., would make an ideal pressure relief valve.

YHC-FTSE

Sounds like one of those articles you see as a prelude to a colour revolution being cooked up in a corner office at Langley to get the public to accept that the chaos they create is real and spontaneous. Funny how these things pop up just after the Chinese deals with Russia, announcing to the world the future implementations of CIPS and the BRICS New Development Bank (Alternative to the IMF & World Bank).

I think the chinese already got the memo about Operation Gladio B and the shit the CIA sponsored Turks are pulling with the Uighurs. If they don't have contingency plans for a "spontaneous" colour revolution then they're all idiots. I thought the neo-cons would use Japan to start a pivot in the East, but I guess they are going to try the cheap and cheerful propaganda crap they used on HK first.

These days all you have to do is follow the US State Dept travel itinerary to predict where riots, wars, murders, and terrorists will strike in the next few months.

reader2010

From what I read online it seems the student protest in Hong Kong last year was financed and supported by a major foreign power. The Chinese state-controlled media capped the casualty data of a numerous Islamic suicide attacks on civilians and police in Xijiang region (rumor mill saying about 400 people had died since the beginning of 2015). There are credible sources pointing to a major western power that is financing and training those Chinese Islamic militants in the nearby boarding countries.

Apostate2

Hmm, 'what you read online". Well perhaps you didn't read that the HK Federation of Students who funded the campaign have opened their books to show no foreign donations or influence. The internet is a dangerous and faulty source without due diligence. And the Xinjiang attacks and response have not been verified, though many reports in the Chinese press. If anyone is training those militants it is the Islamists not your so-called 'west'.

YHC-FTSE

You might want to do a bit of due diligence yourself.

Leaders of the HK occupy movement have been busted. GW did a good expose of them here. The student leader Mr.Wong spent some time as a guest in Macau in 2011 at the invitation of the American Chamber of Commerce. Where did this meeting take place? Venetian Macao owned by the Sands Corp - yep the very one owned SHELDON ADELSON, the American oligarch behind Benjamin Netenyahu. Sometimes I seriously cannot believe these zionists popping up at the centre of every disgusting criminal plot to make this world even more unpleasant than it already is.

As for the Uighurs, you might want to google "Sibel Edmonds - Operation Gladio B" to verify beyond any doubt that there is a serious concerted effort to foster terrorism in NW China by the CIA Although I don't share her views on Edward Snowden, her research is very thorough and verifiable on the subject of Gladio B.

Here's a youtube interview to get you started: Sibel Edmonds interview. It was a shocking revelation for me when I first saw it.

WhyWait

No doubt the Empire is cooking up a color revolution in China. And we have to ask, what on earth were they doing letting a WSJ reporter into their inside conversations?

Yet, the elite moving themselves their money and their children out of China is certainly telling us something, and the story of officials and Party members speaking the party line without conviction is eerily familiar.

Missing from this article is the fact that this all is happening in the context of what is shaping up to be a global economic collapse of historic proportions, which China as a country that has jumped into capitalism with both feet is about to experience full force.

If China were about to experience a collapse like that of the Soviet Union, the elite would be preparing to inherit it, jockying for their place, looking forward to the great plundering of public resources and the remaining state-owned companies begins. But instead they're fleeing en masse. Evidently they're expecting something else.

Deng Jiao Peng proposed that China had to undergo capitalist accumulation first, then build socialism. The coming collapse of the world and Chinese economies is just what Marx predicted - and Marx is part of China's state religion. The hard-pressed over-worked and over-exploited millions in China's privately owned factories, and the Communist Party members among them, have that doctrine as part of their legacy. They are by all acounts already in a state of pre-revolutionary ferment and anger, as witnessed by thousands of strikes and protests per year, and they are about to get thrown into a crisis of survival.

The resulting revolutionary upheaval may make the Cultural Revolution look like a dress rehearsal.

Foreseeably this will open huge opportunities for the US and Japan to engage in mischief, and will put Russia in a very difficult position with its new strategic partner incapacitated.

WhyWait

Elaborating a bit on how I'm framing this:

China and Russia have both already had profound anti-capitalist revolutions followed by a kind of counterrevolution and a partial restoration of capitalism. In Russia this counterrevolution was marked by the collapse of Communist Party rule. In China it involved a takeover of the leadership of the Communist Party by capitalist kleptocrats and oligarchs. Thus the collapse of Communist Party rule in China, while inevitable, will be of an entirely different character. Without the global collapse of the capitalist economic system it might have devolved into a liberal democratic system more like those of Western Europe. In the present context that is not an option and what we will see instead is a counter-counter-revolution, i.e. a revolution.

goldhedge

"The elites getting their kidz out of China" is probably more to do with Chinese Expansionism.

These will be rich and therefore powerful ppl in their new found homes and still have "some" allegiance to their motherland.

Its all by design.

silverlamb

"A more secure and confident government would not institute such a severe crackdown. It is a symptom of the party leadership's deep anxiety and insecurity"...

A government that feels safe should not militarize the police and try to control the Internet ... but USA is doing . There are not good countries, only good people and corrupt or weak governments ...

shovelhead

Norinco. The PLA's corporate face of the Chinese MIC. They own our West Coast port facilities under various shell co. names.

I imagine, like any army, that political factions in Govt. can only purge dissident military leaders after carefully assessing that they have a majority in the clique of power that will remain loyal.

I also imagine that the political /miltary power structure is a fluid balance of interlocking sheres of influence and interests. When it becomes unbalanced in the US, you end up with dead Kennedys.

reader2010

China embraced liberal market ideology right after the collapse of the Soviet Union thanks to the propaganda engineered by Wall Street. However, in the Aftermath of 2008 financial meltdown, China finally realized that was purely a bullshit. And particularly after the Pivotal to Asia led by Washington, China was made to understand that Washington sees it as the "rogue state". So they started to engage the West in a different light completely. Getting rid of the 5th column (many of them came to study in the US in the 70s and early 80s) is what Xi has been doing in the name of anti-corruption. That's what's happening in real time, folks.

Md4

We cannot predict when Chinese communism will collapse, but it is hard not to conclude that we are witnessing its final phase. The CCP is the world's second-longest ruling regime (behind only North Korea), and no party can rule forever."

China is in the mess its in mostly because the west, having outsourced much the its middle class wealth producing jobs to the east, is mostly broke, and suffering a dramatic and on-going decline in income with which to consume. While life has never been easy for the mostly poor peasant class of Chinese, they were led to believe an insatiable appetite in the west for the goods once produced there would endlessly enable them to enjoy a rising (even if very modestly by western standards) standard of living.

When you come from rice paddy, rural and antiquated agrarian poverty for generations, even a shanty town life in the shadow of new and empty high rises and mega factories are a step up. At least you're working, making a steady wage and eating a little meat once in awhile. If this keeps up, you think, you might actually be able to have something for yourself one day...

But then, that's not how it's all turning out.

What the idiots, in a bonsai rush to outsource western manufacturing and middle class wealth-producing industries apparently never considered, is, what do workers in an emptied-out west do for income when the old jobs are gone, and how will western spending-dependent economies inheriting those former American industries survive without western spending?

Eventually, like the west, the east will implode, of course.

And that's what we're seeing. China is the most visible because it's the largest, most talked about of the beneficiaries of western outsourcing. But it is certainly not the only EM in trouble. What's worse are all of the commodity spin offs heavily dependent on supplying the giant manufacturing engine China became. They, too, are beginning to suck air, as China doesn't need production inputs if the outputs aren't selling much.

The outputs are seriously declining in demand because western incomes are in serious decline. We're witnessing a global train wreck, with each car beginning to slam into the one ahead of it. Eventually, and because of the state of affairs that bonsai outsourcing set into motion, these cars will derail.

The world has never been here before. It is clear to me it doesn't know what to do about what is a checkmate. All of the old easy monetary games aren't working because they can't work. If anything, they're making the inevitable collapse just that much tougher to overcome. This cannot be fixed, but it sure as hell can be screwed up more.

My gut tells me the world will likely fracture into smaller and smaller pieces when the calamity finally takes hold. Human nature more often circles wagons into tighter groups under extreme pressures of disintegration. That may ultimately look like the break up of the Warsaw Pact, or it may look more like the north and south of antebellum America. Much depends upon what any people feel is their best shot at some kind of peaceful prosperity while weathering an unprecedented storm.

But...the collapse HAS to happen first.

The world remains checkmated until it does, and there is no way back to before.

m

scatha

What a crap. ZH could do better then re-posting WSJ excretions. Did author ever read anything about China's history or US for that matter? The Chinese Xi guy's just doing what his predecessors were doing for thousands of years namely purging old clique, replacing it with new clique who helped him to power.

This happens everywhere where there is any REAL change of power. Not in US where the same regime continues for almost 240 years without any change. Not one iota. Nothing, the same British imperial aristocrats with support by courtiers and domestic slaves from Britain colonies like Kenya.

China is much further from collapsing then these US where hordes of oligarchs escape US to Asia to find shelter for their money and their families before this whole shit collapses, joined there by tens of thousands of US expatriates looking for better life in Asia or even Russia or Europe.

Thanks to Japanese renewed militarism and fascist leaning government as well as US aggressive behavior vs. Russia average Chinese learn to stick to evil they know. The popularity of so-called communist party but actually nationalist party surged over last 10 years but not due to economics since it raised standard of living for only about 100 millions (8% of population) but because they learned a lesson that they cannot be divided by the West, never again, otherwise they know they'll return to western slavery as it was for several centuries.

This is Chinese philosophy of life. It hard to believe but vast majority of Chinese are ready to put on gray uniform and jump on a bike dropping all those western useless gadgets at a whim. And if WSJ does not know about it, it does not know anything about China.

So we have to judge this piece for what it is, pure propaganda, unleashed to prep brain damaged Americans for dying for.. few rocks in the ocean or nothing.

Free_Spirit

Unlikely, the instant catastrophic collapse vis USSR was caused by the leaders (drunk yeltsin) choosing to write the nation into history, and wasn't caused by the people. Granted a spineless Gorbachev fataly weakened the system, but what really destroyed the soviet system was lack of reliable food and basic consumer goods supply. Teachers couldn't attend school because they had to queue for food all day. Nor factory workers, whose factories closed for lack of attending workers. Food rrotted in railway sidings because there were no reliable drivers and locos to keep the supply chain going. This above all else was the breakdown of the system. So long as China avoids such a breakdown of supply and basic services, and retains focused leadership the CPP will survive. I don't see any senior CCP leader who rivals Gorby for spinelessness or Yeltsin for drunken stupidity. If we ever do, then it'll be time to talk collapse.

Chinese Authorities and US-Made 'Color Revolution' in Hong Kong

Let's see what methods the China used in response to the orange infection.

1. As we remember the significant contribution to EuroMaidan was transportation by buses of residents of Western regions of Ukraine into Kiev. In Hong Kong this trick failed. China has established a tight cordons on the border of Hong Kong – tourists who looks like potential street fighters and coordinators tourists were turned back. Buses with armed bits and fittings gull of young aggressive young people had no chance to get into the area of unrest.

2. China has carefully worked the Hong Kong professors, who trying to repay the US grants by droving students to the streets. Dismissal, conversations with the Chinese KGB, check about the payment of taxes from money from grants make this method of generating the crowd from university students by-and-large closed. Similar problems were created for all American NGOs.

Yanukovich during his time in power did not managed to close this channel of feeding of Maidan via "pre-paid" university professors, and NGOs has almost diplomatic immunity status in Ukraine. At the end he almost paid with his life for that.

3. A dangerous groups that could take on the role of storm troopers for insurgents – such as radical environmentalists were placed under administrative arrest and could not participate in the riots.

4. Around the Maidan was organized by the cordon of police, who did not give peaceful protesters the ability to smuggle to the place of unrest Molotov cocktails and such. Those who were caught were packed into police car and removed.

5. China found for local Poroshenko, who fanned the Maidan through his media resources, some very convincing words. Jimmy Lai for a couple of days disappeared from the public view, and when he returned, his revolutionary enthusiasm had sharply diminished.

6. Chinese media together were explained to local residents that because of protests big business and big money will move to other cities. which gladly will cease the opportunity to take over Hong Kong financial hub. For residents of Hong Kong this is a very troubling prospect: at least in terms of higher unemployment and lower wages. At this point many will not be able to pay their mortgages and other loans.

Explanations had its effect – CNN reports that the locals became really aggressive toward protesters. Quote:

Talks planned as Hong Kong protest numbers shrink – CNN.com

The news of official talks comes as a dwindling number of pro-democracy demonstrators continue to cling on to their protest sites in key areas of the tightly packed city. As their numbers wane, so does patience of some of their fellow citizens.

"At first, I supported them, but then I started to think they are being selfish because they block the roads - and that's wrong," said Virginia Lai, who has sold newspapers from a stall in the busy district of Mong Kok for 45 years.

Lai says her business is down 30% and getting worse. The student-led demonstrators are camped out at a major intersection in the neighborhood, which witnessed violent clashes between protesters and their opponents over the weekend.

At the moment on the streets of Hong Kong are still about 300 protesters:

http://itar-tass.com/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/1492865

As we know from previous color revolutions experience, hardcore protesters themselves usually do not disperse voluntarily: they sit until the last, waiting for the moment when the police begin to disperse them. How will China to solve the problem is unclear.

However, we can already say that Americans have faced this time with an intelligent and cold-blooded enemy: the enemy, who had carefully studied all of their previous games, and provided a strong response to each standard course of manuals.

Perhaps, in the place of the Americans, I would think not even about Hong Kong, but about Texas and Washington. In the U.S., more than enough smoldering conflicts that an experienced player will be able, with a little luck to inflate to a full-scale protest. and amount of armed people could make it problematic for policy to crash.

By Fritz Morgen

Hong Kong's "Occupy Central" is US-backed Sedition by Tony Cartalucci

October 20, 2014 | journal-neo.org

The goal of the US in Hong Kong is clear – to turn the island into an epicenter of foreign-funded subversion with which to infect China's mainland more directly.

Protesters of the "Occupy Central" movement in Hong Kong shout familiar slogans and adopt familiar tactics seen across the globe as part of the United States' immense political destabilization and regime change enterprise. Identifying the leaders, following the money, and examining Western coverage of these events reveal with certainty that yet again, Washington and Wall Street are busy at work to make China's island of Hong Kong as difficult to govern for Beijing as possible.

Naming Names: Who is Behind "Occupy Central?"

Several names are repeatedly mentioned amid coverage of what is being called "Occupy Central," the latest in a long line of US-engineered color revolutions, and part of America's vast, ambitious global geopolitical reordering which started in earnest in 2011 under the guise of the so-called "Arab Spring."

Benny Tai, a lecturer of law at the University of Hong Kong, is cited by various sources across the Western media as the primary organizer – however there are many "co-organizers" mentioned alongside him. The South China Morning Post in an article titled, "Occupy Central is on: Benny Tai rides wave of student protest to launch movement (1)," mentions most of them (emphasis added):

Political heavyweights including Civic Party chairwoman Audrey Eu Yuet-mee, former head of the Catholic diocese Cardinal Jospeh Zen Zi-kiun and Democratic Party founding chairman Martin Lee Chu-ming addressed the crowd.

The Post also mentions (emphasis added):

Jimmy Lai Chi-Ying, the embattled boss of Next Media who is under investigation by the Independent Commission Against Corruption over donations to pan-democrat politicians, said he arrived immediately after a call from Martin Lee Chu-ming.

Benny Tai regularly attends US State Department, National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its subsidiary the National Democratic Institute (NDI) funded and/or organized forums.

Just this month, he spoke at a Design Democracy Hong Kong (NDI-funded) conference on political reform. He is also active at the University of Hong Kong's Centre for Comparative and Public Law (CCPL) – also funded by NDI.

CCPL's 2013-2014 annual report lists Benny Tai as attending at least 3 of the center's functions, as well as heading one of the center's projects.

Martin Lee, Jimmy Lai, and Joseph Zen are all confirmed as both leaders of the "Occupy Central" movement and collaborators with the US State Department. Martin Lee, founding chairman of the Democratic Party in Hong Kong, would even travel to the United States this year to conspire directly with NED as well as with politicians in Washington.

Earlier this year, Lee would even take to the stage of NED's event "Why Democracy in Hong Kong Matters." Joining him at the NED-organized event was Anson Chan, another prominent figure currently supporting the ongoing unrest in Hong Kong's streets.

Media mogul Jimmy Lai was reported to have met with Neo-Con and former president of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz in June 2014.

China Daily would report in an article titled, "Office opposes foreign interference in HK," that:

A special edition of Eastweek showed Lai, owner of Next Media and Apple Daily, meeting Paul Wolfowitz, a former US deputy secretary of defense in George W. Bush's administration. The pair met on Lai's private yacht for five hours in late May.

Wolfowitz, who was also president of the World Bank between 2005 and 2007, is well-known in the US for his neo-conservative views and belief in a unilateral foreign policy. Wolfowitz also held the post of under secretary of defense between 1989 and 1993. He is currently a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Lai would also seek Wolfowitz' help in securing various business deals in Myanmar. The South China Morning Post in their article, "Jimmy Lai paid Paul Wolfowitz US$75,000 for help in Myanmar," reported that:

Leaked documents show Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai Chee-ying paid former US deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz US$75,000 for his help with projects in Myanmar.

According to a July 22, 2013, remittance notice by the Shanghai Commercial and Savings Bank, Wolfowitz received the money from Lai as "compensation for services in regards to Myanmar".

15385666631_ce65467461_zLai's liasons with notorious Neo-Con Wolfowitz should be no surprise – as NED, the principle director of Washington's vast portfolio of political agitators worldwide is rife with Neo-Cons who intermingle both on NED's board of directors, as well as in various other corporate-financier funded think tanks.

NED itself is merely a front, couching geopolitical and corporate-financier interests behind the cover of "promoting freedom" and "democracy" around the world.

There is also "student leader" Joshua Wong, who was arrested amid the protests. Wong has had his career tracked by the NDI's "NDItech" project since as early as 2012. In a post titled, "In Hong Kong, Does "Change Begin with a Single Step"?," NDI reports:

Scholarism founder Joshua Wong Chi-fung, 15, has become an icon of the movement, and his skillful interactions with media have been memorialized and disseminated on Youtube. Through this page, Hong Kong youth have coalesced around common messages and images – for example, equating MNE with "brainwashing" and echoing themes reminiscent of the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement.

Wong's work serves to challenge attempts by Beijing to reestablish Chinese institutions on the island, preserving Western-style (and co-opted) institutions including the education system.

The aforementioned Civic Party chairwoman Audrey Eu Yuet-mee is also entwined with the US NED, regularly attending forums sponsored by NED and its subsidiary NDI. In 2009 she was a featured speaker at an NDI sponsored public policy forum hosted by "SynergyNet," also funded by NDI.

In 2012 she was a guest speaker at the NDI-funded Women's Centre "International Women's Day" event. The Hong Kong Council of Women (HKCW) itself is also annually funded by the NDI. Just this year, should would also find herself associated with CCPL, presenting at one of its functions beside "Occupy Central" leader Benny Tai himself.

In addition to SynergyNet, CCPL, and HKCW, there are several other US-funded NGOs supporting, legitimizing, and justifying "Occupy Central," or hosting those leading it. Among them is the US NED-funded "Hong Kong Transition Project" which claims it is "tracking the transition of Hong Kong people from subjects to citizens."

In name and mission statement alone, the goal of the US in Hong Kong is clear – to turn Hong Kong into an epicenter of foreign-funded subversion with which to infect China's mainland with more directly.

The Transition Project was tasked with legitimizing Occupy Central's "pro-democracy referendum" conducted earlier this year – which then served as justification for increasing unrest on Hong Kong's streets. Guardian in a June 2014 article titled, "Hong Kong's unofficial pro-democracy referendum irks Beijing," would report:

About 730,000 Hong Kong residents – equivalent to a fifth of the registered electorate – have voted in an unofficial "referendum" that has infuriated Beijing and prompting a flurry of vitriolic editorials, preparatory police exercises and cyber-attacks.

Occupy Central with Love and Peace (OCLP), the pro-democracy movement that organised the poll, hopes to pressure Beijing into allowing Hong Kong's 7.2 million residents to choose their own leader by 2017. If Beijing refuses, OCLP says, the movement will mobilise at least 10,000 people next month to block the main roads in Central, a forest of skyscrapers housing businesses and government offices on Hong Kong island's northern shore.

The Transition Project links with other US-funded organizations, including the Hong Kong-based "think tank" Civic Exchange. Funded by Exxon, the US State Department's NDI, the British Council, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Morgan Stanley, Citi Group, the British Consulate itself, and many others, its claim of being "Hong Kong's independent public policy think tank" is scandalous.

The Agenda: What Does "Occupy Central" Really Want?

345435US NDI openly states on its own page dedicated to its political meddling in Hong Kong that:

In 2005, NDI initiated a six-month young political leaders program focused on training a group of rising party and political group members in political communications skills. In 2006, NDI launched a District Council campaign school for candidates and campaign managers in the lead-up to the 2007 elections.

NDI has also worked to bring political parties, government leaders and civil society actors together in public forums to discuss political party development, the role of parties in Hong Kong and political reform. In 2012, for example, a conference by Hong Kong think tank SynergyNet supported by NDI featured panelists from parties across the ideological spectrum and explored how adopting a system of coalition government might lead to a more responsive legislative process.

Indeed, the very organizations, forums, and political parties the "Occupy Central" movement is associated with and led by are the creation of foreign interests – specifically the US State Department through NDI. Since "democracy" is "self-rule," and every step of "Occupy Central" has seen involvement by foreign interests, "democracy" is surely not the protest's true agenda.

Instead, it is "soft" recolonization by Washington, Wall Street, and London. If "Occupy Central" is successful and Beijing ever foolishly agrees to allowing the leaders of this foreign-orchestrated charade to run for office, what will be running Hong Kong will not be the people, but rather foreign interests through a collection of overt proxies who shamelessly sustain themselves on US cash, political backing, and support across the West's vast media resources.

The West's Long War With China

"Occupy Central" is just one of many ongoing gambits the US is running against Beijing. A visit to the US NED site reveals not one, but four pages dedicated to meddling in China's internal politics. NED's activities are divided among China in general, Xinjiang – referred to as "East Turkistan" as it is called by violent separatists the US backs – and Hong Kong.

All of NED's funding goes to politically subversive groups aligned to and dependent on the West, while being hostile toward Beijing. They range from "monitoring" and "media" organizations, to political parties as well as fronts for violent extremists.

And as impressive as this network of political subversion is, it itself is still but a single part of a greater geopolitical agenda to encircle, contain, and eventually collapse the political order of Beijing and replace it with one favorable to Wall Street and Washington.

As early as the Vietnam War, with the so-called "Pentagon Papers" released in 1969, it was revealed that the conflict was simply one part of a greater strategy aimed at containing and controlling China. While the US would ultimately lose the Vietnam War and any chance of using the Vietnamese as a proxy force against Beijing, the long war against Beijing would continue elsewhere.

This containment strategy would be updated and detailed in the 2006 Strategic Studies Institute report "String of Pearls: Meeting the Challenge of China's Rising Power across the Asian Littoral" where it outlines China's efforts to secure its oil lifeline from the Middle East to its shores in the South China Sea as well as means by which the US can maintain American hegemony throughout the Indian and Pacific Ocean.

The premise is that, should Western foreign policy fail to entice China into participating in the "international system" as responsible stakeholders, an increasingly confrontational posture must be taken to contain the rising nation.

This includes funding, arming, and backing terrorists and proxy regimes from Africa, across the Middle East, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and even within China's territory itself.

Documented support of these movements not only include Xinjiang separatists, but also militants and separatists in Baluchistan, Pakistan where the West seeks to disrupt a newly christened Chinese port and pipeline, as well as the machete wielding supporters of Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar's Rakhine state – yet another site the Chinese hope to establish a logistical hub.

Meddling in Thailand and stoking confrontation between China and an adversarial front including Vietnam, the Philippines, and Japan are also components of this spanning containment policy.

Whatever grievances those among "Occupy Central's" mobs may have, they have forfeited both their legitimacy and credibility, not to mention any chance of actually achieving progress. Indeed, as the US-engineered "Arab Spring" has illustrated, nothing good will come of serving insidious foreign interests under the guise of "promoting democracy."

The goal of "Occupy Central" is to make Hong Kong ungovernable at any cost, especially at the cost of the people living there – not because that is the goal of the witless though well-intentioned participants being misled by Washington's troupe of seditious proxies, but because that is the goal of those funding and ultimately directing the movement from abroad.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine "New Eastern Outlook".


First appeared:http://journal-neo.org/2014/10/01/hong-kong-s-occupy-central-is-us-backed-sedition/

How Hong Kong's umbrella movement folded

Benny Tai, the charismatic law professor who cofounded the original Occupy Central movement, zipped himself into a tent at the main protest camp near the Hong Kong government complex and refused to talk even to his allies for days following the cancellation of talks between officials and student leaders in early October, claiming he "could not come up with solutions to some problems". He has since returned to teaching.
Al Jazeera English

... ... ...

The latest opinion poll by the Chinese University of Hong Kong also shows that almost half of all the city's residents do not have any trust whatsoever in their government, which has stonewalled all requests by campaigners for a properly democratic system. The government is widely perceived as having sold out the city's treasured semi-autonomous status to the ever more insistent urgings of the Chinese Communist Party.

Blaming Hong Kong and Beijing officialdom for the current atrophied state of the protest movement is easy. After all, it was the Hong Kong government that refused first to talk to representatives of the democracy movement, and then to convey their desires to the rubber-stamp mainland legislature that drafted the electoral rules they wanted changed - rules under which, come polling day in Hong Kong, only Communist Party loyalists would get a look in.

And it was the government on the mainland that stopped student protest leaders Alex Chow, Nathan Law and Eason Chung from boarding a plane bound for Beijing to take the democracy message to what many Hongkongers regard as a distant imperial capital.

Turning in on itself

What supporters of the Umbrella Revolution will find less easy is looking at the role its leaders have played in its apparent demise. An effective boycott by the relevant interlocutors, in the form of government officials, and for two months the lack of a face-to-face oppressor, in the form of police - who until last week appeared to have learned that gassing protesters was the equivalent of poking a stick into a hornet's nest - left Hong Kong's democracy movement to turn in on itself.

"Even before the renewed police aggression of recent days, the city's three formerly buzzing protest sites had become forlorn reminders of the movement's early promise."

The leadership of the movement, faced with no one to talk to and no one to confront on the streets when they were at the peak of their power, has done precisely that. Even before the renewed police aggression of recent days, the city's three formerly buzzing protest sites had become forlorn reminders of the movement's early promise.

Benny Tai, the charismatic law professor who cofounded the original Occupy Central movement, zipped himself into a tent at the main protest camp near the Hong Kong government complex and refused to talk even to his allies for days following the cancellation of talks between officials and student leaders in early October, claiming he "could not come up with solutions to some problems". He has since returned to teaching.

Others in the front rank of the protests, including university student union leaders Lester Shum and Alex Chow, and Joshua Wong, a teenage firebrand from the vocal school pupils' democracy group Scholarism, have often appeared paralysed by indecision. When in early November, for instance, a pro-Beijing group won widespread media coverage of a petition opposing the occupation movement that claimed the signatures of almost one in every four Hongkongers - allegedly from individuals that included preschool children, tourists and people paid to sign multiple times - it was more than the democracy camp's leaders could do even to challenge its rigour.

Occupation crumbles

Even now, as the occupation crumbles amid a crackdown involving a quarter of the city's entire police force, there has been little indication from protest leaders as to how the movement should develop and how its supporters might continue to work together to achieve their democratic aims.

The remarkable degree of self-organisation by protesters has demonstrated that there is no shortage of support for the democratic cause in Hong Kong. Yet, a lack of direction from the front as police act with an impunity they appeared to have lost in the protest's early days, is failing a movement that arose with minimal leadership but which, in order to progress towards its goals, demands strong leaders.

For the time being, the task of maintaining the momentum of protest may be left to perhaps the most dedicated supporters of the movement, whose scattered acts of civil disobedience have in recent days provoked ever more determination by the police to crush it. But in the longer term, Hong Kong's democracy advocates will realise that dedication is nothing without direction, and when they do, the forces ranged against them may well find themselves facing a more muscular protest leadership with bolder plans to advance their cause.

Padraic Convery is an Asia-based journalist who has spent almost a decade working at news organisations in the region.

[Feb 19, 2015] Catholics Play Key Role in Hong Kong's "Umbrella Revolution" Women of Grace

A large swath of the Christian population of Hong Kong is taking part in the massive "umbrella revolution" underway in that nation as citizens fight for the right to elect their own leader and break away from the control of the mainland communist regime in Beijing.

According to Joe Carter of the Acton Institute, tens of thousands of people have been pouring into the streets of Hong Kong in the last week, led by pro-democracy activists that include Catholic Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, to protest Beijing's interference in their 2017 elections.

Communist Chinese leaders had promised direct elections for a chief executive of Hong Kong, but decided last month that voters will only have a choice between two or three candidates that were hand-picked by a nominating committee comprised of people from Hong Kong's pro-Beijing population.

In other words, Beijing broke their promise and now wants to control the election, something that has infuriated the people of Hong Kong.

As result, students began boycotting classes and holding demonstrations outside Hong Kong's main government compound in Tamar Park. Since then, members of the Occupy Central with Love and Peace - which is the same Occupy movement that staged protests on Wall Street earlier this year – also became involved.

Even though the movement is considered secular, Christians have been in the vanguard of the pro-democracy sentiment that is now raging through the country, mostly because of their desire to put an end to Beijing's virulently anti-religious government.

Catholic leaders such as Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, who served as the sixth bishop of Hong Kong, addressed the crowds on September 24, urging them to ignore the Communist government.

"In a place where education is not sufficient, people will get cheated easily. There will be danger of manipulation. However, the basic conditions in Hong Kong are ready. People are mature enough," he said according to Catholic Online. "Beijing does not allow civil nomination because they fear. They do not trust in us, thinking that we will intentionally choose a leader who will confront them."

Cardinal Zen is among four Catholic leaders that state-run newspapers have dubbed the "four troublesome gangsters of Hong Kong". The others include Jimmy Lai, founder of the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily; Anson Chan, a well known protester, and; Martin Lee, founder of the Hong Kong Democratic Party.

In addition to these Catholic firebrands, many Occupy Central leaders in Hong Kong are Christian and pastors of all denominations are allowing their churches to be used as sites to provide support to marchers such as the distribution of food, water and a place to rest.

Police have tried to curtail the movement and it was their use of pepper spray and tear gas that prompted people to carry umbrellas to ward off the toxic fumes – thus dubbing the march the "umbrella revolution."

Hong Kong has an unusual history. It was ceded to Britain by China in 1842 after the First Opium War, but it's 99-year lease expired in 1997. It then became a "special administrative region" of China.

"Hong Kong is governed under the principle of 'one country, two systems',under which China has agreed to give the region a high degree of autonomy and to preserve its economic and social systems for 50 years from the date of the handover," explains Carter.

"China controls Hong Kong's foreign and defense policies, but the territory has its own currency and customs status. Hong Kong's constitution, the Basic Law, provides for the development of democratic processes. However, the Chinese government can veto changes to the political system and pro-democracy forces have been frustrated by what they see as the slow pace of political reform."

Even though Catholics comprise just five percent of the population, and Protestants just seven percent, Hong Kong Christians have born the brunt of Beijing's anti-religion sentiment.

"Christians in Hong Kong, they see that economic development has not brought more religious tolerance in China, so despite economic development, despite improvement in living standards and opening to the external world, tolerance of Christianity especially has not been improving, in fact in the recent two years persecution has strengthened," said Joseph Cheng Yu-shek, a professor of politics at the City University of Hong Kong.

It makes perfect sense that those who have been denied the most freedom are now the loudest voices calling for democracy.

[Feb 19, 2015] Hong Kong's Umbrella Revolution Isn't Over Yet

You can justify a color revolution in many different ways, but it remains a color revolution and net result as worsening of the life of common people. One interesting feature is the level of corruption of professors at universities by Western grants. During EuroMaidan National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy was one of the intellectual center of far right nationalism. Here it looks like University of Hong Cong played a similar role with many professors directly involved in protest movement. Quote: "It began as a movement called Occupy Central With Love and Peace, the brainchild of a tidily dressed law professor at the University of Hong Kong named Benny Tai"
Feb 19, 2015 | NYTimes.com

On Dec. 11, the police cleared some of the final protesters off a highway in Hong Kong.

... ... ...

Hong Kong is a city whose self-conception is, above all, as a good place - a polite place - to do business. It scores well in global transparency studies. Taxes are kept low to encourage commerce. Nominally, under the arrangement known as One Country, Two Systems, the city is free to govern itself. But under Hong Kong's strange mix of authoritarianism and corporatism, the general public votes on only half of the seats in the city legislature, with many of the remaining seats decided by corporations. The city leader, known as the chief executive, is selected by an electoral committee, a majority of whose members are not subject to popular vote and are widely believed to be under the control of mainland China.

Despite this, people in Hong Kong have held out hope that Beijing might eventually allow them real democracy. This hope was dashed last August, when China issued an edict that reserved the power to choose the candidates for Hong Kong's highest leadership position. The decision spurred the democracy movement into the streets, where protesters demanded the opportunity to nominate and elect their own chief executive - the chance to do better. The odds of bringing Beijing to the negotiating table were, from the beginning, understood as slim, but the protesters aimed to show China's leaders their displeasure. "It's a war, not just a battle," Joshua Wong, Hong Kong's most famous student activist, told me the day after Occupy ended. "We still have time."

No one planned the Umbrella Revolution, at least not the way it actually unfolded. It began as a movement called Occupy Central With Love and Peace, the brainchild of a tidily dressed law professor at the University of Hong Kong named Benny Tai, who works out of a narrow office where bookcases run from floor to ceiling - even his scholarly clutter is well dusted and clean. He speaks with the slight British accent that is common in Hong Kong and manages to sound enthusiastic about his subject without a single change in his expression. "I see myself more as an idea carrier," Tai told me, when we met at his office. "I contribute an idea, and that's it," he explained. Then he added, "Now I more and more understand that ideas can be very dangerous."

Tai floated his idea two years ago in a column in The Hong Kong Economic Journal. He proposed a new set of tactics for the city's democracy movement, which had grown somewhat predictable and toothless over the years: an annual candlelight vigil on the anniversary of Tiananmen Square and a protest every July 1 to mark the city's handover to China. "The power of civil disobedience lies with using nonviolent methods to break the law," Tai wrote, "thereby appealing to the general public's sense of justice."

As a student in the 1980s, Tai served on a 180-person committee that oversaw the drafting of Hong Kong's Constitution, a document that called for Hong Kong's autonomy but gave sweeping powers to the city's chief executive. It also left Hong Kong with a system of government that puts power directly into the hands of the city's business elite. Half the seats in Hong Kong's legislature are determined by so-called functional constituencies - voting blocs grouped by industry rather than by geographic district. "A lot of the votes in functional constituencies are actually corporate votes; they're not even given to human individuals," Anson Chan, the 75-year-old woman who ran the city's Civil Service before and after the handover, told me over cups of tea at the office of her pro-democracy group, Hong Kong 2020. "So if you are a big business tycoon in Hong Kong, and you have a dozen companies, all of which are eligible to vote, you essentially not just have one vote or two votes, you have a dozen votes." While there are 3.5 million eligible voters for the 35 seats divided by geography, there are only 232,000 people and corporations voting in the functional constituencies.

A result of this system, according to Tai and many protesters, is growing economic inequality - and a hated chief executive: Leung Chun-ying, a former real estate surveyor with a penchant for insensitive comments. Leung was elected to the position in 2012 by the 1,200-member committee that decides the office, most of whom are not subject to popular elections. After a campaign in which he accused his opponent of having an illegal structure in his home, Leung turned out to have illegal structures in his own. He later pushed an education-reform package that emphasized a rosy, more patriotic picture of Beijing (it was ultimately dropped). Leung, who is better known as C.Y. Leung, is so reviled that toilet paper was sold with his face on it; at an appearance at LegCo, a legislator threw a bun at him. In an interview with foreign media during the protests, he warned that democracy would turn Hong Kong over to the poor. "Then you would end up with that kind of politics and policies," he said, ominously.

Leung's administration has also presided over a slide in the standard of living. Hong Kong's businesses are increasingly tied to mainland China and seen as beholden to leaders in Beijing. Over the past 10 years, the median income in the city has increased by 30 percent, even as G.D.P. has grown by 60 percent. Twenty percent of Hong Kong's population is living under the official poverty line, but the city's 50 richest people, according to the annual list compiled by Forbes, are worth a total of $236 billion (Hong Kong's entire G.D.P. in 2013, by comparison, was $274 billion). Tai paid lip service to economic inequality in the name of his movement - Occupy - but his demands were more modest, limited only to the election of the city's chief executive. "It's just getting Hong Kong people to have that right to vote and have a true election," he said. "It's a first step only." By the time I arrived at the camp on Harcourt Road, comparisons with other global protests had started to grate on the leaders; they did not aim to overthrow a government, they pointed out, or to challenge an entire economic system. The movement's name changed to the Umbrella Revolution to reflect not just the literal image of umbrellas as shields but also how participation had expanded.

"Many people interpret this movement as sort of young people dissatisfied with the current economic environment," Christopher Lau, a member of the pro-democracy party People Power, told me. "This is the case, but this is a case that is shared with the rest of the world. So I don't want to overinterpret this. The movement itself is more like a deep-down frustration. We've been told the hard truth that, Sorry, no democracy for Hong Kong as long as the Communist Party is in charge."

... ... ...

For the party, the protests have threatened to become a powerful symbol of liberalization and economic prosperity. In arguing for democracy, Tai was pitting himself not against Leung but against leaders on the mainland ("Leung Chun-ying is widely understood as an underground C.C.P. member and a puppet of Beijing," reads an introduction on the Occupy Central website). The only way to measure Beijing's response has been through crackdowns. In mainland China, those thought to be supporters of the protest - even those who just expressed support online - have been thrown in jail. Late in the protest, when China's president, Xi Jinping, made a trip to Macau on a rainy day, journalists were not allowed to carry umbrellas.

From the first days of Occupy Central With Love and Peace, Tai's most visible collaborators were college students. The Hong Kong Federation of Students, a group that includes representatives from many of Hong Kong's universities, helped organize a series of town-hall meetings with Occupy Central, the first of which had 700 participants. It also attracted the attention of Wong, who has been a celebrity in Hong Kong since 2012, when, at 15, his group Scholarism fought against a program of nationalistic educational reform. With thick glasses and a bowl haircut, Wong, skinny and looking even younger than he was, organized protests and held a hunger strike. He became so famous that when the results of his college entrance exam came out, he had to hold a news conference.

Continue reading the main story

When Wong heard about Occupy, he had already been considering taking Scholarism in a different direction. "Rather than reject the things that we don't want, we want to fight for the things we want," he told me, sitting in a coffee shop not far from the cleared protest camp, texting on his phone as he spoke. The movement, he felt, belonged to the students.

Occupy Central With Love and Peace started with meetings to discuss changes to Hong Kong's electoral system. The city's government would hold five months of public hearings before Beijing announced its finalized plans. Occupy Central held a civil referendum on the form the election could take. Its final move would be to take over a section of Hong Kong's Central district during a national holiday in October. Tai estimated they would occupy the space for five days at most and, because of a national holiday, disrupt only one business day. They would go forward with the plan, he said, only if Beijing did not make any concessions. Tai and the others hoped that just the threat of such a mass movement would be enough to sway the mainland. The group held a series of smaller events last summer, and after the annual July 1 march, 511 students were arrested during a sit-in.

Not surprisingly, it had little effect. On Aug. 31, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, Beijing's leadership, issued its proposal: Hong Kong could vote for chief executive, but it could not nominate the candidates. That would be left to the same committee that selected Leung. Beijing was essentially offering the Hong Kong people a chance to choose between three different Leungs. "After the 31st of August decision, there was no way out," Tai said. "We had to continue our occupation action."

But a series of snap decisions by the students caused the plans to scramble. The students staged a strike in advance of the Occupy protest. On what was to be the strike's final night, Joshua Wong and the leaders of the H.K.F.S. decided to storm Civic Square, next to LegCo, in one final dramatic gesture. Alex Chow, the secretary general of H.K.F.S., told me that to win more popular support, the students knew they needed to make some kind of sacrifice. This would be it. Wong got onstage in front of LegCo and shouted the plan into a microphone. Students started running toward the square; the security fence offered little resistance.

... ... ...

A canister hit the pavement near where Jack was standing. He ran, tripped and fell down. He waited for a first-aid volunteer to come help him - the volunteer, a student named Eugene, was his first new friend in the protest movement.

That day, Hong Kong's police threw 87 canisters of tear gas at the crowd. They aimed pepper spray at people who did their best to protect themselves with umbrellas. In a city with a history of polite protest, where the last tear-gas incident happened nine years ago and on a much smaller scale during W.T.O. protests, the images coming out of Admiralty were shocking. Protesters scattered, but only for a moment. Instead, supporters who saw the images on television showed up on the scene. Eventually the police retreated, and protesters sat down on the streets.

"It's very easy to handle the tear gas," Jack told me. The key, he explained, is not to panic. "It's like if you get dropped in water and you're too scared, you'll die very fast." Students started arming themselves with wet washcloths, masks and goggles. They learned to walk away slowly, breathing shallowly and avoiding the worst of the cloud.

... ... ...

The Hong Kong Federation of Students is headquartered in a small high-rise tucked in between a highway and a market in Hong Kong's Mong Kok district. It shares the building with a handful of small companies. "The carpet company really hates us," Alex Chow said; the owners opposed the protests. Chow is a bookish student of comparative literature and sociology, with a history of becoming emotional in front of crowds. When he was appointed to the H.K.F.S. in the spring of 2014, he was a bit shy and wary of public speaking. His deputy, Lester Shum, was the outspoken one. After the movement began and the pair became famous, signs started popping up turning their silhouettes into protest art and even combining their name: Alexter.

... ... ...

In the meantime, protesters in the camps were doing their best to balance their lives with long-term occupation. A study tent was set up in Admiralty, along with a power station where people could charge their phones. The camps would clear out during the days - tents flapping in the breeze along the overpasses - then fill up again after dark. High-school students rushed home on the last train of the night. It was a euphoric, exhausting schedule, one that students recognized would be difficult to keep up.

In early November, a handful of bus companies and transportation organizations began filing injunctions against the camps for blocking traffic. The protests had been disrupting commutes. For both the government and the students, these lawsuits offered a quiet, nonconfrontational way to dissolve the camps. The cases started working their way through the courts. The police would occasionally make an effort to move barriers, pepper spraying and using their batons as they went.

... ... ...

Chow plans on stepping down as the head of the H.K.F.S. next month; Lester Shum will be stepping down as well. In the meantime, Chow and Shum can't walk down the street in Hong Kong without being recognized. Some people grin and give them thumbs up, though occasionally people will scold them.

"It matters," Lau said, "although the movement is not successful because the government didn't yield to any of our requests." The importance of the movement, he explained, was to show that Hong Kong could do more. "All these protests that you guys find normal in the States or Europe or France, Hong Kong people detested it. They thought, We cannot have this kind of chaos in Hong Kong, we are an economic city."

After two and a half months of protests, workers set about clearing the detritus of tents and yellow umbrellas.

The end of Occupy did not entirely snuff out the Umbrella Revolution. As soon as the camps closed down, other, smaller protests started popping up around the city. A group of activists hung a yellow banner on a cliff face known as Lion Rock, and the police had to use a helicopter to get it down. Nightly crowds gathered in Mong Kok, and as Christmas approached, groups of singers roamed the streets, singing protest songs to the tune of carols, like "O Come All Ye Faithful":

Everyone has head injuries and bloody limbs

Everyone has a long scar from a healing wound on their forehead

Evil police angrily wave their batons, hoping to kill a few pedestrians

The first large-scale protest since the occupation was held on Feb. 1, organized by the Civil Human Rights Front. They marched peacefully, carrying the familiar yellow umbrellas of the movement, but with just an estimated 13,000 people, the crowd was smaller than expected. "Maybe this is a not a negative thing," Chow told me. The diversity of opinions that he had struggled with in the protest zone could be a source of strength in Hong Kong's post-Occupy movement. Members of H.K.F.S. argued that each small act of protest would keep the movement going.

For the students in the First Defensive Line, the movement didn't change their daily lives, but it changed them. I met up with a few of them at a Häagen-Dazs in Mong Kok a few days after the protest. Jodi had a yellow ribbon pinned just beneath her scarf. "We didn't successfully fight for what we wanted," she said. "But more and more teenagers will think more about the government and society, and one day we will have some success. Not this month or next year. I believe it will be a long fight."

... ... ...

Lauren Hilgers is a writer living in New York City. This is her first article for the magazine.

[Feb 02, 2015] Hong Kong pro-democracy protests – in pictures

Again those White Hall stooges from guardian glorify protest when it suits establishment needs and vilify the protest if they run contrary of British ruling hypocrites.

Thousands of protesters demanding free elections took to Hong Kong's streets on Sunday in the first large rally since demonstrators brought the city to a standstill last year

[Feb 02, 2015] Hong Kong democracy protesters march for 'true universal suffrage'

Looks like UK and US want to keep pressure...

Thousands of pro-democracy protesters took to the streets of Hong Kong on Sunday for the first time since mass demonstrations shut down parts of the city for more than two months.

A sea of yellow umbrellas – the symbol of the campaign – moved slowly through central Hong Kong with crowds shouting for "true universal suffrage".

Organisers had said the rally would draw 50,000 people. Onlookers estimated that several thousand had joined the march by mid-afternoon, but no police estimate was available.

Police said that attempts to reoccupy main roads that were cleared of tented protest camps in December are likely. But no protest group has announced it intends to relaunch the occupation and the march began peacefully, with many carrying yellow balloons.

The rally will be a gauge of the public's willingness to keep fighting for free leadership elections. The authorities have made no concessions to activists' demands and tensions remain high in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory.

"We just want to express our frustration with the government in Hong Kong," said Ronnie Chan, a protester in his 40s who works in sales and marketing. "We understand there is very little we can do but if we don't speak out nothing will change."

In December, officials cleared protest camps that had blocked several main roads. Rallies drew around 100,000 at their peak and saw intermittent violent clashes with police.

China promised Hong Kong residents the right to vote for their chief executive for the first time in 2017. But it ruled that nominees must be vetted by a pro-Beijing committee, a proposal that was heavily criticised by activists.

Daisy Chan, a protest organiser, said the rally would show that the Occupy movement, as the protests were known, was a political awakening. "In the past, these citizens were less political than they are right now. The Occupy movement woke people up."

The founders of the movement, including Benny Tai, along with teenage activist Joshua Wong and other student leaders, are also attending the rally. Alex Chow, a student activist, said there was no plan to take back the streets. "We don't have a plan (to reoccupy). If others want to do it, they will have to do it themselves," he said.

"This march demonstrates to the citizens that the pro-democracy momentum is not dead," said a political analyst, Sonny Lo. But he also believes residents are exhausted from protests over political reform. "At this moment members of the public are tired of politics. The democrats have to strategise very carefully," said Lo, head of the social sciences department at the Hong Kong Institute of Education.

Chan said marchers were not planning to reoccupy the streets on Sunday but police were nervous. "It is believed that those supporting the illegal occupation are likely to seize the opportunity to reoccupy roads which have been now reopened to traffic," a police statement said.

Around 2,000 police are being deployed to the rally, according to local media. Hong Kong's government is urging the public to support Beijing's electoral plan, which needs the backing of two-thirds of the city's legislature to be passed.

Lam Woon-kwong, convenor of the executive council or cabinet, warned campaigners to accept Beijing's framework. "You can't threaten the central authorities," he told a radio programme. "If we can have consensus to have universal suffrage in 2017 first and democratise further later, it would be a more pragmatic approach."

Protests in Hong Kong predate Occupy, with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets over issues including an unpopular security bill. Last July hundreds of thousands also demonstrated a month before Beijing ruled on political reform.

Monkeybiz -> SwissArmy1984 2 Feb 2015 02:00

The British East India company killed millions in the Bengal Famine of 1860s grew opium which Jardine Matheson sold to the Chinese so it could drain China of its silver wealth. Genghis Khan probably killed a few as well. I'll match your history with my history and raise you one.


Monkeybiz -> dolly63 2 Feb 2015 01:58

Oh pulease. Students in HK now, as they always have been, are concerned about pretty much only one thing, and that is getting a good job, preferably in an investment bank, or being a private doctor, or a commercial lawyer so they can get lotsadosh.

The democracy thing has only come about because like everywhere else it's getting much harder now that the people in the middle class own all the property and have pulled the ladder up, that the economic situation means jobs that pay lots are harder to come by, and the other issues that are a product of out times and the Bonfire of the Democracies.

If apartments were affordable - like elsewhere - the democracy thing wouldn't be on the radar.

However, people are quite happy to see their quite good NHS-like public health care system shifted from a general taxation funded to a private insurance based system with nary a murmur. Wake up peoples and smell the real roses.

ShanghaiGuy -> canbeanybody 2 Feb 2015 01:43

Election is election because you cast your vote?

Even for your biased delusional BS this sets a new low bar.

The election for HK ceo is to be gerrymandered by a small clique saying who can be voted for, ergo it is not a free and fair (true) election.
You have lived in UK 3 decades and still ignorant.

Monkeybiz -> Aeola2000 2 Feb 2015 01:40

I always wonder why in the UK the choice of Prime Minister isn't up for discussion When there's a general election. We always seem to get stuck with the person who just happened to be buggins of the day, and ffs look what a mess Cameron's made of the UK in the last 5 years. My uncle could stand for election, only trouble is, he'd never get a look in because the money that controls politics in the UK would drown out any one else. That's why we were stuck with the likes of Thatcher, Bliar and now Call me a Liar. Why can't we have true democracy...oh, wait a minute...

canbeanybody -> TheObamaRebooted 2 Feb 2015 01:30

The western democracy is good for the west and cursed for the rest.

But those occupy central fanatics in Hong Kong is not even for western democracy as they dismiss election as false unless their candidate is free from check and inspection.

It has nothing to do with democracy but regime change.

feebristow12 -> TheObamaRebooted 1 Feb 2015 23:30

Actually. Democracy is entitled to us all - including "Muslims". But each country in the world has a very different understanding of what democracy means, and each nation has very different needs.

And where people are "escaping" from are war - zones (Syria) and these people leave their home, their culture and history in seek of safe refuge, regardless if the nation is a "democracy" or not.

Shoken -> anotherforgottenman 1 Feb 2015 23:22

I would say that democracy itself is far from the idea form of political legitimacy. The problem with soceity and people is that everyone is bent on self-interest. Democracy has evolved into a secular religion that wields undue moral power. Will a "democratically elected" leader of HK necessarily lead HK into a bright future? My answer is NO. That the US and the UK is and was the global dominant power in their particular historical times owes nothing to democracy. A whole string of economic, geographic, social, political, technological factors propelled them to their respective historical status, not election or "real" election or wise voting and public participation in politics.

So the importance of how to select a CE for Hong Kong (or any national leader in any country) has been blown out of all proportions. Even if you get a "real" democratically elected CE, he or she may perform much worse than an appointed (or even hereditary) leader.

alfredwong -> SwissArmy1984 1 Feb 2015 23:19

" .....as long as the Beijing gangsters hold the reins."

I think you should reserve this label for Hong Kong's erstwhile colonial masters who had seized and ruled Hong Kong for 156 years without giving it any form of democracy.


Adrasteia789 -> laLouisiane 1 Feb 2015 22:52

Useful summary.
On Hawaii, it sounds like it has more autonomy than Hong Kong, but apart from the "symbolism" that China wants for first vet potential candidates for CEO, the substance between the two may not be that great?
Hong Kong does have a "high degree of autonomy" as was promised. HK is one of the easiest places in the world to start up a business, taxes are low, law courts are independent, the rule of law is respected (although not always by the "democrats")...the character of HK's independent autonomy is clearly very deep.
Perhaps the "complainants" are motivated more by economic opportunism than the political structure. They fret about expensive housing and difficulty of getting jobs outside of the orbit of the "taipan" conglomerates. These people need to take a leaf or two from their parents' get-up-and-go" attitude to life, which made HK into the rich city state it is today.

Adrasteia789 -> SwissArmy1984 1 Feb 2015 22:40

The "democrats" on show are in a minority, this much seems clear. Being a minority how can they claim legitimacy by the definition of democracy?

And they certainly did display a deep hypocrisy last year by ignoring their co-citizens who just wanted them to get the hell out of the way.

By obstructing businesses, the streets, telling everybody to accept their losses as "its for their own good, anyway", they lost the moral highground they initially enjoyed.

This is not ignorance, it is factual observation. I guess you disagree, from your bitter little comment. Fortunately, the numbers are not with you at all.
On your bike!

The Guardian

The Guardian


Adrasteia789 peternh 27 Dec 2014 03:10

You will always skirt the key issues with flannel and digressions.

The main points are:
1. The street squatters are obstructing other peoples' livelihoods and rights to pass. This is why they are not supported by the majority; and why the HK Police will continue to crack down on them. The preachers of democracy practice something directly opposed to the principles of democracy. They are hypocrites.

2. You are unable to quote the clauses which leave China with a contractual obligation to allow universal suffrage without prior screening by China.

You are banging your heads against a brick wall. You will not be successful.

quarrytone -> candeesays 26 Dec 2014 06:17

I've already said I agree with the demands for greater political flexibility, posters keep saying everyone will get arrested or silenced if they post criticism of the state or leaders, I'm just pointing out the latest research into the reality, it can be highly sarcastic and vitriolic just like our threads here.

That doesn't mean those who agitate for a Western system or try to organise an opposition movement won't get persecuted. Facts are facts, not ivory towers. But they are indeed the opposite of exaggerated to the point of disinformation stereotypes. Be reasonable and objective, not biased and prejudiced. I understand your hate and contempt for the CCP, but as Liu Xiaobo said of his colleagues in 89, if we distort the truth or even lie (tanks crushing tens of cowering students hiding in tents) we are no better than they are.

GoddessOFblah -> BeatonTheDonis 25 Dec 2014 20:05

Haha that's what I was thinking. The way some of the posters are commenting with a superior "we live in a de-mock'racy" attitude you'd think our police wave flowers at us when we protest and our government never goes back on promises and lies to us

GoddessOFblah -> candeesays 25 Dec 2014 19:57

The HK police ought to learn the tactics of US police in beating up protestors. The police in the US even get away with killing unarmed people.

Perhaps the US can train the HK police to be more aggressive.

candeesays -> quarrytone 25 Dec 2014 19:34

An empire is an empire.

The idea that HK or Taiwan is lucky to be tolerated before they become overwhelmed is the problem. The principle for freedom of peoples is self-determination. Not being dominated by an imperial party, regardless of whether they are communist or Qing.

Empire is rule of the few, not representative government or participation in your own destiny. Empire is inefficient, so empire encourages corruption at home and colonialism abroad. Empire is unjust and irrational, because it is predicated on the suppression of the people.

[Jan 12, 2015] The Xinjiang-Chechnya correlation

Is this redirection of efforts and money flow from Hong Cong ?

Asia Times

The Xinjiang/Chechnya correlation
By Peter Lee

Long story short, from the Communist Party of China's point of view, Xinjiang needs the best and the brightest to manage its profound contradictions, but the hardship posting tends to attract cadres and citizens who trend toward the "worst and dimmest" end of the spectrum.

The Center is trying to square this circle with money, attention, and smarter policies; but it also realizes its strategy for Xinjiang has a certain chance of failing catastrophically because of growing local dissatisfaction with what is essentially colonial occupation harshly implemented by mediocre cadres.

The PRC has no interest in cultivating capable and sophisticated local Uyghurs - such as Ilham Tohti, recent recipient of an extravagantly draconian sentence - who might serve as an alternative rallying point for improved governance of Xinjiang. Instead, it is muddling through with what it's got, while preparing for the worst-case scenario by beefing up the full suite of effective repressive measures.

The PRC government invokes the threat of terrorism to justify its actions, and its reactions to the occasional spectacularly bloody acts involving aggrieved Uyghurs, Han citizens, and the security apparatus.

Western governments and the press instinctively gag at the idea of endorsing the repressive Chinese regime's insistence on characterizing Uyghur violence as "terrorism" even when - as in the case of ethnic Uyghurs running amok in a train station in southern China and slaughtering 29 people and injuring 143 more - it's hard to call it anything else.

Even the paranoid sometimes have real enemies, if only in the future, and the PRC government has confronted the reality that the nasty political dynamic provoked by its rule over Xinjiang has the potential to generate bona fide, professionalized, international-seal-of-approval candlelight-vigil terrorism, instead of the frantic ad hoc hatcheting that seems to be the rule today.

The explanation for PRC Xinjiang policy, I believe, can boil down to one word: Chechnya.

In the West we tend to pigeonhole Chechnya as Russian President Vladimir Putin's Problem, Bloodsoaked Caucasus Division. In fact, there seems to be a sizable contingent of Putinophobic Western journos who view Chechnya primarily as a Russia versus Freedom cage match and wait with barely disguised impatience for Chechnya to fall to pieces again so that Putin, his tsar-light repressive regime, and his ferocious local client, Ramzan Kadyrov, can be discredited.

But Chechnya has another, less Euro-centric, more Central Asian identity, as a way-station on the global jihad trolley. After the USSR got its ass handed to it in Afghanistan, the trained, motivated, and at that time generously funded (Saudi religious foundation, natch) jihadis went looking for a new battle. After a few stopovers in Bosnia and Tajikistan, they found one in Chechnya.

Chechnya in the 1990s looked pretty much like a reprise of Afghanistan - same terminally dysfunctional Russky military machine savaging another freedom-loving Islamic population with a brutal occupation/security operation.

Arab jihadis, led by Ibn al-Khattab, descended on Chechnya in the mid-1990s. Thanks to their ruthlessness, fighting experience, and attractive, practical ideology (Khattab was a champion of what one might characterize as "jihadism in one country" a la Stalin as opposed to Osama Bin Laden's rather Trotskyite global jihad focused on attacking the US) the Arab militants to a significant degree took over the indigenous Chechen independence movement, and also set up a conveyer belt of Chechen fighters to be trained in Afghanistan (many of whom, unable to go home to a liberated Chechnya, have found employment and distraction in Syria/Iraq, but that's another story).

Khattab was a ferociously effective military leader who bested the Russians in numerous military engagements. He also benefited from external support, as Thomas Hegghammer describes in his book, Jihad in Saudi Arabia: Violence and Pan-Islamism since 1979:

Shortly after his arrival in Chechnya, Khattab began building a training infrastructure which he would run in partnership with the legendary Chechen commander Shamil Basayev. By mid-1995 a logistics chain had been set up to facilitate the arrival of foreign volunteers. The main stations on this chain were Istanbul (Turkey) and Baku (Azerbaijan).

The Baku safe house was run by Arabs operating under the cover of the Islamic Benevolence Committee. Khattab enjoyed a certain amount of logistical and financial report from Saudi Arabia. Saudi sheikhs declared the Chechen resistance a legitimate jihad, and private Saudi donors sent money to Khattab and his Chechen colleagues. As late as 1996, mujahidin wounded in Chechnya were sent to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment, a practice paid for by charities and tolerated by the state.

After the end of the first Chechen war, Khattab expanded his activities in Chechnya, build more camps and set up an institute in which old Saudi friends of Khattab taught religion and military science to Chechen rebel leaders.

Khattab also benefited from the de facto haven of the Pankisi Gorge in neighboring Georgia which, according to whomever you believe, has either been shut down by the pro-US Georgian government in a fit of altruism, or still provides rest and resupply infrastructure for current and new jihadis hoping to stick it to Putin in Chechnya and President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

Khattab's demise has a rather Game of Thrones cum Medici-ish vibe to it, per Wikipedia:

He was killed during the night of March 19–20, 2002, when a Dagestani messenger hired by the Russian FSB [successor to the Soviet-era KGB] gave Khattab a poisoned letter. Chechen sources said that the letter was coated with "a fast-acting nerve agent, possibly sarin or a derivative". The messenger, a Dagestani double agent known as Ibragim Alauri, was turned by the FSB on his routine courier mission.

Khattab would receive letters from his mother in Saudi Arabia, and the FSB found this to be the most opportune moment to kill Khattab, rather than attack his mountain hideout and risk losing soldiers. It was reported that the operation to recruit and turn Ibragim Alauri to work for the FSB and deliver the poisoned letter took some six months of preparation. Ibragim was reportedly tracked down and killed a month later in Baku.

What's this got to do with Xinjiang? Seven areas of high or partial correlation, I would think, as far as PRC strategists are concerned.

First of all, there's the thirst for independence shared by activist Uyghurs and Chechens that decades of immersion in a multi-ethnic communist empire have failed to quench.

Second, there's the powerful "godless foreigners oppressing Muslims" dynamic that worked so well in Afghanistan and carried over to Chechnya.

Third, the religious dynamic in the Xinjiang Uyghur community is similar to that in Chechnya in the 1990s: indigenous, relatively quietist Sufism discredited by its impotence in the independence struggle.

Fourth, the challenge of militant Wahabbism, its philosophy of jihad, its well-heeled charities backed by Saudi sheikhs, and its fifth column of madrassahs, to traditional religious/political practice.

In Chechnya, Wahabbists were able to achieve an at least temporary and partial ascendancy.

In the PRC, as this excellent article by Muhammed al-Sudairi in The Diplomat points out, the PRC has been vigilant in restricting Wahabbist efforts at prostelitization, education (within the PRC and at Arab universities), and pilgrimage sponsorship via Saudi charities.

With this context, for instance, the offensive and intrusive PRC regulations against religious observances within homes, and for growing beards and wearing hijabs, are understandable. It is assumed that, by abandoning traditional Uyghur dress and observance in favor of Wahabbi-tinged practices, these individuals are self-identifying as malcontents and professional troublemakers. And, in particular, by making beards and hijabs a regulatory offense, the PRC has a basis for questioning these people and creating a useful database of worrisome individuals, families, and social networks.

It pretty much runs in parallel with Chechen Republic efforts to re-establish the prestige of indigenous Sufi observance as an alternative to "foreign" and subversive Wahabbism.

Fifth, the availability of havens. At the height of the Chechen war, many parts of the country were no-go zones, there was the Pankisi Gorge, and behind it the incalculable comfort of knowing that medevac to Saudi Arabia was available (just as fighters in Syria and Iraq are granted access to Turkish medical facilities).

The PRC is expending immense resources to ensure that its writ runs the length and breadth of Xinjiang. But outside of Xinjiang, there are the wobbly stans, there's Afghanistan, and there's the security train-wreck that is the Pashtun regions of western Pakistan - and there's the reduction in Afghanistan of the intimidating if strategically ineffectual US/ISAF presence thanks to the Obama drawdown.

Sixth, there is admission to Jihadi University, the international network of experienced, talented and "entrepreneurial" Islamic militants. Only a few hundred can make a difference, as Higghammer states:

In the Islamist historical narrative, the emergence of the Saudi jihadist movement represents a spontaneous "rise of the people" in the face of outside aggression in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya. The reality was far more complex. "The people" never rose to any of these causes, and the mobilisation was far from spontaneous. A few thousand men were mobilised, and only as the result of the systematic and sustained effort of entrepreneurial groups of devoted individuals.
Khattab helped bring jihad to Chechnya.

In Pakistan, as I have attempted to point out frequently, the essential identity of the Pakistan Taliban (not, please, to be confused with the PRC-friendly and open-for-business Afghan Taliban) is to avenge the bloody 2007 assault on the Lal Masjid Mosque in Islamabad - which was undertaken at the insistence of the PRC, partially because it believed that Uyghur militants were being harbored there.

In Central Asia, the PRC has historically benefited from the contacts and resources it developed in its role as the CIA's quartermaster to the anti-Soviet mujahidin, and in its intimate security alliance with Pakistan's military. But those relationships are in danger of fraying, at least with some groups that have dumped al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban to declare loyalty to the Islamic Caliphate. And there, militant Uyghurs have reportedly found haven.

PRC's diplomacy and security policy for Central Asia is, I believe, a matter of trying to shore up the anti-terror capability of its more rickety neighbors against the day when a significant chunk of professional Islamic militants decide that fighting the Chinese infidel in Xinjiang on behalf of Islam and the Uyghurs is the cause du jour.

Seventh, there is outside money. Saudi fiddling in Chechnya is a matter of record. And there is the notorious rumor that the then head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, threatened President Putin with Chechnya problems at the time of the Sochi Olympics if Russia did not abandon its pro-Syria policy.

Thankfully, for the PRC at least, the prospect of Saudi Arabian sheikhs funneling money and support to Uyghur rebels - and thereby terminally offending and alienating China, the 21st century's biggest customer for Middle East hydrocarbons - is relatively remote.

As long as the PRC is left to its own devices and the Uyghur community is fragmented internally and isolated from outside support, the CCP's divide and rule/assimilationist/repressive model for Xinjiang - backed by the world's largest population and second largest economy - has good prospects for success.

But factors 1-6 offer the PRC plenty of food for thought.

This is an edited version of Peter Lee's article on the PRC's handling of its Uyghur minority in Xinjiang, titled "The Stan That Never Was" published in the current edition of CounterPunch Magazine, the subscription-only print/digital monthly. Subscribe here. Republished with permission.

Peter Lee writes on East and South Asian affairs and their intersection with US foreign policy. His articles can be found on his blog site ChinaMatters.

[Jan 09, 2015] How it was organized in Hong Kong... How can it be organized everywhere... by Ruslan Karmanov

December 26 2014 | marina-yudenich.livejournal.com

First of all they announced the "we have no leader, we are self-organizing movement, we are high-tech, dynamic and independent." In reality for everybody a s special messenger was installed in smartphone (FireChat was used in Hong Kong), which allows phones to communicate in the crowd with each other directly and send messages through the chain of participants, even with switched off cellular towers.

In fact all their claimed are blatant lie.

In the Hong Kong crowd of students was coordinated by elderly aunts and uncles with walkie-talkies, normal Kenwood. And via those walkie-talkie orders what to slogan to scream were distributed. First it was screamed by the key participant. On the second repeat it was followed with his assistants (approximately five persons located at the edges of the crowd), then the crowd was mindlessly repeating the slogan for a minute or two.

That means that it is important to suppress not smartphone communication by walkie-talkie. Left to themselves creakles are stupid mass that panic very easily on any occasions. Without a shepherd, they will become bored and demotivated. Typically the quietly dispersed by themselves pretty soon.

Special messenger FireChat is very simple. It just gives all participants a unique identifier and is using all communications protocols of the smartphone (Bluetooth, GSM/3G/4G, WiFi). It tries to identifies neighbors and tries to build a graph using the Protocol just like OSPF.

The specifics of that when crowd moving this problem cannot be solved in such a way because there are hundreds of reconnects per second, and topology fluctuates to the extant of "boiling"; no convergence is achieved. Scheme of work is trying to cram the data packet not via the best route, but suboptimal, to most plausible target in a hope that via few hops at lease one packet will reach the destination, the recipient.

That means that a person with FireChat installed on the mobile phone and with network packet sniffer will show a bunch of different messages from different subscribers all of which are trying to reach their destinations. A couple of such observers in the middle of the crowd will give a coverage of about 100% (Hong Kong the Chinese did on the second day of protest).

Additionally, continuous scan on all channels WiFi, attempts to send data to multiple instances through several different interfaces, always-on Bluetooth is a very heavy load for a mobile phone load, and the battery goes down quickly (it's a stress test with "always on" screen, running an active application active processor, all network interfaces are enabled and all are receiving transmitting something.

Cutting off the possibility of charging the battery turns the crowd (within a couple of hours) in the dust. All promptly run home or to nearby internet cafee to read in comfort and with fast Internet, what happens there and, from experience, most will not return. Psychology of an infantile office loser (aka creakle -- the key participant of such protests) doesn't see the difference between "personal involvement" and "the ability to like and comment on facebook" and it is easier to do from your house when you battery is dead.

To prevent carrying batteries and charging them "in place" is easy to implement. Batteries most of the owners of advanced modern mobile phones are fixed. To the mass to charge in a reasonable time (at 1A to the outlet, and the new iPhones and more) you need generator or a large battery. The generator cannot be present at the protest site as there fuel in it (gasoline), the battery should be inspected for a long time as it can have an explosive device. Allowing to carry only staff that is allowed to the plane is a good policy here. That means only one small battery can be carried with each person..

All those measures are legal and all represent established international practice of dealing with such protests. As for the cellular network you do not need to shut it down. It might be enough like as did humorous Chinese hackers to send personalized SMS. Something like "Student BJ, we learned that You expelled from the University for 5 absences in a row. This is not a problem - our site will help You to find your calling. Jobs for construction workers, waiters, drivers are avaible. Terrible full of desperation cry young creakle produces when he/she is seeing such a message is typical reaction. now he/she remembers that he/she got in the university winning the contest of 280 people in one place just a year ago. And sometimes this cry can be can be heard as far as Madagascar ;-)

Supplies for making barricades and such

People need water and hot drinks. Without the organization of such supplied in walking distance from the demonstrators, long rally will disperse pretty soon. This is how the Chinese put pressure on creakles --- all within the letter of the law. If this is a trade then the license is necessary. Certificate about sanitary condition of the cart. And information who are judicial persons who pay for all this.

Again this is all with the existing law framework. Is vendor an illegal worker? Then the question is whether he/she has working visa? if no, then good by my love -- this person can be deported immediately. and those who financed him/her can be investigated for attempt of tax evasion and the use of illegals. Immediately, i.e., quickly find who the owner immediately came at the place of registration of the firm. If the firm is not located at the given address you have all right to open criminal investigation. You won't believe how fast "voluntary funds for the development of democracy" which paid in Hong Kong the delivery of water to the places of protest burst under such pressure, when to them the same day came officials and checked all who bought, when, why. Amazing things about financing of protest by respectable people from the UK and US were uncovered.

I already mentioned the important of blocking the possibility to recharge the smartphones batteries at the rally talkie but I will repeat it again: contemporary protesters are the terminology of A. Navalny "fucking sheep" which is standing reading and sending messages on their smartphones and phablets, and wait for commands. It looks like "meeting successful young, dynamic effective active people with their own businesses, IQ=160, 3 high educations and 4 spoken languages". HiTech-lumpens, in short. that mean that will disperse is they will not be able to recharge their phones.

The toilets

An important point to supply the biotoilets. Without them too anywhere, especially in the cold protesting is a very tough, even painful job. Modern creakles are able to give advice on how to organize military operations and what sniper rifle is better to buy (he's say in the game some cute American models), but to shit on the road on a cold, he can find very unappealing. Accordingly, for any unauthorized meeting, city should not supply any toilets. And if the meeting is approved makes only as much as needed for the stated number of participants. Standing a long time to visit the cabin usually draw down revolutionary enthusiasm of this canon fodder of color revolutions pretty quickly. If someone decided to relieve himself in a place not designed for this purpose, this is a clear administrative offence, the penalty should be given and the person should be transported to the police department immediately. This is also a good time to check the documents - if it is not the citizen of the Russian Federation, there must be a visa or tickets, if another from another city, then registration. This is all according to the law, because you wouldn't be surprised if those who do it at the bus stop will be approached a policeman and asked for documents? It's just "as in normal countries", in any county citizens do not like such behaviour no matter how lofty political ideals are behind them.

About the food.

This is the item that should be controlled in a way similar to water. Sanitary inspection certificates and like are a must. Proper equipment and correspondence of the products to documents is also very important.

After all, if someone will be poisoned on such an event all blame falls not on organizers but on the government. and municipal authorities.

They are just children

If someone brings a child (we saw such cases two years ago, when a joyful mother explained to the camera that is police starts to beat protesters the child (5 years old) will see the country in which he lives). In such cases n immediately video recording is warranted and all documents about the child should be checked. Documents are required from all parents - it is quite possible that the mother is divorced. In such cases if the father don't know, and id not gave a written permission to drag the child to places of additional danger, then sorry. It is the responsibility of the authorities to protect the child. If there are no documents that proves that child is her own then additional checks should be performed in Police station. It can be that Gypsies gave her " a child for rent" or some shady orphan organization tries to earn money this way). All parents should be iether present or aware where the child is. if not, you should call the absent parents to find out their attitude, to inform that the citizen so-and-so took the child and brought him to an unauthorized rally, highlighting the danger and risks. Relatives usually a on the phone usually find a proper words to explain this "mother" all her behaviour. All of this is within the law, everything you need to record on video. Again, if the citizen who brought the child has stamp of divorce in the passport it can't bring the child without the written permission of the other parent not only on a rally. but also on the plane, for a visit to the steel mill, to ride a homemade airplane, and other similar events. It is just that law enforcement usually do not care. and this is big mistake. Yes, we need to care guys.

Minors at such events also fall under all that usual - i.e. needs to install their identity, contact with parents, check on alcohol and drug intoxication, fixation results. In case of failure - detention to establish, because the child is in danger - it is unclear who and how I came across illegal mass event, it is necessary to protect against possible risks. Sleep on a narrow bench until the morning, the sound of steps of the guard on duty is a great way not to get into serious trouble. Parents of stupid ass will be pleased that he is now on recorded at the police department, and if in his district somebody will rape a senior, then in door of their apartment at night might come square tired people with long questions about their son whereabouts

Artists performances

To support those who have no leader, dynamic and modern structure, one in the center to put the scene with clowns, otherwise modern and independent protesters are bored and leave. Clowns must combine action (goal - keeping the public the maximum amount of time and political propaganda. Clowns need money and electricity, as well as the mounting of the scene, perhaps some kind of hand

Now, here are the things that we need to establish. Who collects the scene whether it has the right and license (remember how at the Swamp when mounting the scene design was broke and killed the worker, who was guilty? a minute after medics removed the corpse some jerk from the scene said that this is not the last victim of Putin's regime). For electricity - what is the wiring diagram, what is consistent, what power, what with fire protection and the wire to the ground. Remember, any force majeure will be announced by the dirty tricks of the Authorities, even if drunk creakle just stick in his ass power cable. All MSM will describe the event in the framework of the struggle against the Terrible Regime of This Country.

If not - sorry guys, but this time you need to enjoy yourself without clowns.

Aggression and militants

Of course, there will be fighters - those that aim to undermine the situation. Serious money were invested in their training; for many it is a full time job. They are easily detectable, especially due to the difference of their behaviour and the behaviour of the office creakles. They associate between themselves differently, communicate differently, and have a clear plan of action with each "order arrived. Now it's time for ... ". Here, of course, the experience of Hong Kong can be taken without any modification -- fighters are immediately packed into police cars. If someone tries to make barricades from local items, this is the vandalism, the damage to the city property, i.e., video this episode should be documented, because there is a crime. In Hong Kong they did barricaded from the police barriers, binding them with plastic binders using in construction and adhesive tape. In Russia people are stronger. I confess - I broke two barricades in Hong Kong purely to try how strong local ties are, and all sitting in tents creakles something between 30 and 40 did is to protest with the words "What are you doing", but did not even move closer then ten meters. Probably in their package there was no a paid item for " a fight with a strong white foreigner who is twice bigger them me".

All onstuction materials can be easily blocked - you need just to conduct the examination on entrance to the rally and not to miss the materials that can be used for such purposes. Let leave then outside, if brought. After meeting you can return them Within the protest zone such building materials are not needed, right?

Some random tips and observations

In winter conditions, you can add several things at the same time remaining within the letter of the law.

For example, to pump water at the aggressive crows at the temperature below freezing is a bad idea. But in advance of the meeting, to fill the area with water is not. it prevents destruction of pavement BTW. This is very cool - in fact, to protest at the ice rink work. But to attack police on ice ring is much less convenient. They will stand laugh at the attackers falling one over the other.

You also need to patrol the retail outlets near the meeting. If people come in there to warm up, EN masse, you have to ask the owner does his license allow such services as temporary stay, whether the visitors paid for these services. Checks should be on the table for each participant, otherwise this is not a honest commercial outlet (i.e., people sit, do something, consume services - cell phones charged, drink-eat, and pay nothing). Such measures are typically applied to homeless. Want to warm up - make an order to buy something, even a bottle of water and pay.

Inspection of documents all participants is another key "cooling" measure. Unauthorized rally gives the law of total freedom for this action - "We received the statement that there are planned riots. Show, please, passport". this is the law.

Maximum recording what is happening is warranted just of have an official version of events which can be contrasted with MSM coverage.

In Hong Kong there is still the active work of checking "who did what' and as a result many respected people who receiving generous grants for the development of "Normal non-Chinese Democracy" (this is when the citizens of the UK control all the financial flows), lost the positions of professors, advisors, etc. Some case about corruption were opened too. There can be a lot of fun here as typically on such realized it is government that is accused of corruption. but getting foreign money for got know what services is a clear corruption too.

And then the same will recall, two years ago, 1.5 million Euros in cash was seized from the citizen Sobchak (despite the fact that she, as an entrepreneur, received exactly the minimum is 8 thousand rubles a month, judging by her tax reports). K. Sobchak began to yell that it was her, honest money, and that she's going to prove that they earned. "Proves" said the investigator. After a week of Sobchak changed his mind and said that that this were s honest money, who were given to her. "And who?" "asked the investigator. "Good man! He himself will say!" cried Sobchak, and then completely deflated. Because people who are able to donate 1.5 million Euros in cash to some woman, do not like to go to the investigator. At this place some skeleton from the closet can abruptly appear. And everybody has history. No one wants to sit in jail for crazy, eccentric girl who is dancing on the tables for rich. This is how business always reacts on such revelations. Smart people do not go to Bolotnaya Square - they explain the fools that they are independent, free, geniuses, admirer of Europe's History. They just send anonymous e-mail with the text of the poster for the protest really, and the coordinates where each participant need to stand, and from what time until what.

Something like that... This overview, I stress, is only based on my presence in Hong Kong and the study of local color revolution experience, No claims for perfection and completeness. Sill I hope this might help.

The key observation is that the workbook of color revolutions is becoming old, and several precedents of breaking color revolution plots are already here. But in Hong Cong they lost the key part of color revolution playbook - the technological superiority. They proved to be outdated and outgunned -- they simply can't match technical sophistication of the opponents. Which in general, is reflecting the situation with the United States on a global scale.

The world is changing.

hrono61

"the crowd of students coordinated old aunts and uncles with walkie-talkies, normal Kenwood radios from which the order when and what to scream were coming. The slogans were fist screamed by the key participant, then repeated by his assistants (approximately five persons located at the edges of the crowd), then the crowd mindlessly repeating the slogan for a minute or two."

Actually, this is exactly how they organized crowd at all EuroMaidan events in the Ruin:

This was how Maidan was organized: using unobtrusive radio and foremen in red jackets. Each foreman controls the core of 10 associates.

30:00 Как был организован майдан: с помощью малозаметных рации и бригадиров в красных куртках. Каждый бригадир удерживает ядро в 10 человек.

The last appearance of the "red jackets" was in Simferopol - the next day "polite" appeared.

Wu-Tang Clan's "A Better Tomorrow" video is a powerful tribute to nationwide protesters

Dewayne-Net Archives

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Wu-Tang Clan's "A Better Tomorrow" video is a powerful tribute to nationwide protesters
By Ross Miller
Dec 6 2014
<http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/6/7344733/wu-tang-clans-a-better-tomorrow-music-video-is-a-tribute>

"A Better Tomorrow," the title track from Wu-Tang Clan's new album, is a powerful and contemplative song about social injustice, racial violence, and police brutality, anchored by Teddy Pendergrass's haunting vocals from 1975's "Wake Up Everybody." So it's especially fitting that the accompanying video, released just last night, incorporates dramatic footage of the peaceful and ongoing nationwide protests for both Brown and Eric Garner - just two of countless unarmed people of color that have died tragically at the hands of the police.

Audio from the protest footage cuts in throughout the video; large, culturally diverse crowds chanting "I can't breathe" and "Hands up don't shoot." It also incorporates several segments from President Barack Obama's speech from Wednesday's Tribal Nations Conference, ending on this particularly poignant message:

"And it is incumbent upon all of us, as Americans, regardless of race, region, faith, that we recognize this is an American problem, and not just a black problem or a brown problem or a Native American problem. This is an American problem. When anybody in this country is not being treated equally under the law, that's a problem."

Much of the footage used in "A Better Tomorrow" is at most days old. The protests remain ongoing.

[Dec 17, 2014] 2014 Hong Kong protests

December 2014 | Wikipedia

On the morning of 1 December, there were the most vigorous clashes between police and protesters in Admiralty after the Federation of Students and Scholarism called upon the crowd to surround the Central Government Offices. The police used a hose to splash protesters for the first time. The entrance to the Admiralty Centre has also been blocked. Most of the violence occurred near Admiralty MTR station.[172] Also, Joshua Wong and two other Scholarism members started an indefinite hunger strike.[173]

On 3 December, the OCLP trio, along with 62 others including lawmaker Wu Chi-wai and Cardinal Joseph Zen, turned themselves in to the police, bearing the legal consequences of civil disobedience. However, they were set free without being arrested or charged.[174] They also urged occupiers to leave and transform the movement into a community campaign, citing concerns for their satety amidst the police's escalation of force in recent crackdowns.[175] Nonetheless, HKFS and Scholarism both continued the occupation. Nightly shopping tours continued in Mong Kok for over a week after the clearance of the occupation site, tying up some 2500 police officers;[176] the minibus company that took out the Mong Kok injunction was in turn accused of having illegally occupying Tung Choi Street for years.[177]

On the morning of 11 December, many protesters had left the Admiralty site before crews of the bus company that had applied for the Admiralty injunction dismantled roadblocks without resistance. Afterwards, the police set a deadline for protesters to leave the occupied areas and cordoned off the zone.[178] 209 protesters declined to leave and were arrested,[179][180][181] including several pan-democratic legislators and members of HKFS and Scholarism.[182] Meanwhile, the police set the bridge access to Citic Tower and Central Government Office only allowing media to access. The Independent Police Complaints Council was present to monitor the area for any "excessive use of force" for 10 mins.[183]

On 15 December, police cleared away protesters and their camps at Causeway Bay.[184][185]

Hong Kong Protesters Surround City Leader's Office in Renewed Confrontation - NYTimes.com By CHRIS BUCKLEY and AUSTIN RAMZYNOV. 30, 2014

"Many protesters wore masks and goggles, worried that the police would use pepper spray." Something similar with EuroMaidan. "The protesters' actions were "completely in contravention of the organizers' declared principles of nonviolence," the police said in a separate statement." another interesting similarity. "The crowds of retreating protesters blocked any further advance by the police by throwing metal barriers, bags of trash, shopping carts and other boxes onto the escalator leading to the pedestrian bridge, forming a crude barricade." I wonder where are burning tires ?

HONG KONG - Pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong suffered a setback on Monday, when their attempt overnight to besiege government offices collapsed and the police thrust into the protesters' biggest street camp.

The reversal came after a night of seesaw clashes in the political heart of the city, ending weeks of anxious calm at the protesters' main street camp, in the Admiralty neighborhood, and threw into question how much longer the Hong Kong government would tolerate hundreds of tents there, only a stone's throw from the city's administrative and legislative complex.

Fear rippled through the protest camp, with some student leaders defending the decision to escalate the confrontation with the police, and others wondering whether the protest leaders had made the right decision.

Many protesters wore masks and goggles, worried that the police would use pepper spray.


"The police have never gotten so close to the heart of our camp," said Augustine Chung, a 24-year-old employee of a nongovernmental organization who was among the protesters. "I can only hope the student leaders know what to do next."

Sunday night began with rousing speeches from the student leaders in the Admiralty protest camp and calls for peaceful disobedience. But the bravado gave way to chaotic, panicky strife at the nearby government complex, where the police did indeed use pepper spray and batons to drive back protesters.

The tumult erupted soon after student leaders urged protesters to besiege city government offices in an attempt to force concessions to their demands for democratic elections for the city's leader. The protesters have said that election plans for the city offered by the Chinese government will not give voters a real say. Student protest leaders, who have dithered and debated over the direction of their movement, said their patience had expired.

"We feel that the government feels no pressure if this movement simply drags on like this," said Oscar Lai, a leader of Scholarism, a protest group of high school and university students, who urged protesters to peacefully block the Hong Kong leader's office. "This escalation shows that Hong Kong people can't wait anymore."

"Surround the government," Nathan Law, a leading member of the Hong Kong Federation of Students, said from a podium in the Admiralty protest camp where thousands of people had gathered.

Minutes later, thousands of protesters surged toward the government offices, including the headquarters of Hong Kong's chief executive, where the police were ready with barricades and anti-riot equipment. The action ended an armistice that for several weeks had allowed government staff members and the chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, to go to work minutes from the protest camp without any hindrance.

By 3 a.m. Monday, the police had arrested 40 people in Admiralty, the site of the largest remaining protest camp. (Protesters also maintain a much smaller street camp in Causeway Bay, a shopping district.) Radio Television Hong Kong, the city's public broadcaster, reported more arrests were likely, citing the police.

The protesters' actions were "completely in contravention of the organizers' declared principles of nonviolence," the police said in a separate statement.

The clashes came after a week in which the beleaguered pro-democracy movement lost its street camp in the Mong Kok neighborhood, one of three such camps that demonstrators have held since Sept. 28. Back then, a police operation to disperse protesters backfired, and thousands of residents surged onto the streets, irate at the police's use of batons, pepper spray and tear gas.

"The action tonight is to paralyze government operations," Alex Chow, the secretary-general of the Hong Kong Federation of Students, one of the two student groups that initiated the attempted siege, said early Monday. "Our objective is very clear, which is to have the government respond to our demand, and this action will continue until they respond."

But if student protest leaders felt they could no longer wait, they offered little illumination of how they expected to succeed by urging demonstrators to surround the government's headquarters and attempting to choke off access to it before the start of the workweek. Even protesters caught up in the euphoria of defiance feared they could win only a Pyrrhic victory before the police regained the upper hand.

"I don't know if we can hold out for so long," said Murphy Wong, a writer who was among the protesters outside the barricades at the chief executive's office. Like many protesters, he wore goggles and a surgical mask as protection against pepper spray. "I'm not very confident our movement can influence and outlast the government," he said. "But if we didn't make our point, it would be even worse."

Soon after he spoke, the police raised flags warning that people faced arrest if they did not leave, but the crowd remained defiant and poured across a harborside road and blocked the chief executive's office. The police with riot shields and helmets then used pepper spray to force back the crowd, and soon dozens of protesters lay on the grass of an adjacent park while first-aid teams poured water on their eyes.

The police forces regrouped and further drove back the protesters to a nearby park facing Victoria Harbor. A back-and-forth struggle lasted for more than an hour until the police retreated. But at 7 a.m. the police moved against the exhausted protesters, many of whom were sleeping on the road. The police continued their charge, pushing demonstrators out of the park and across a pedestrian bridge over the main protest area, where panicky crowds ran back and forth. It was the police's deepest incursion into the protest camp since the occupation began.

The crowds of retreating protesters blocked any further advance by the police by throwing metal barriers, bags of trash, shopping carts and other boxes onto the escalator leading to the pedestrian bridge, forming a crude barricade.

But many of the thousands of protesters around the Admiralty camp wondered how much longer they could stay.

"This is our final stand," said Leo, an 18-year-old student, wearing a gas mask, goggles and a white towel draped over his neck, who helped build the barricade on the escalator. Like growing numbers of the protesters, he would not give his full name, fearing punishment.

"I think the government will ignore us again but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try."

In mid-October, the government offices and a nearby traffic tunnel and park became a battleground between the police and protesters who blockaded the chief executive's office. Hundreds of police officers used pepper spray to disperse hundreds of demonstrators who had barricaded nearby Lung Wo Road.

The two student groups at the forefront of the protests, the Hong Kong Federation of Students and Scholarism, had urged supporters to congregate in Admiralty and bring the now-familiar paraphernalia of the protest: safety helmets and drinking water, as well as goggles and umbrellas, which have been used to fend off bursts of pepper spray from the police.

"There comes a time when you need to take some risks, and that's what we did," said Boon Ho Sung, a 36-year-old stage actor who was among the protesters milling around Admiralty. "This will trigger another wave of action from the people," he added. "Some people in the movement will be willing to take more radical steps."

Alan Wong and Michael Forsythe contributed reporting from Hong Kong.

[Nov 24, 2014] MPs' trip to China cancelled after row over Hong Kong protests debate

Case study in British hypocrisy...
Nov 24, 2014 | theguardian.com

A visit by a cross-party group of parliamentarians to China, led by Peter Mandelson, has been cancelled at the last minute after Beijing refused to grant a visa to a Conservative MP in retaliation for a Westminster debate on the recent pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

In a sign of Beijing's sensitivity to international criticism of its response to the protests in Britain's former colony, the Chinese embassy in London demanded that Richard Graham, MP for Gloucester, make a statement clarifying his thinking after he held the debate in Westminster Hall last month.

The MPs, who had been due to leave on Tuesday morning for the three-day visit to Shanghai, issued an ultimatum to the embassy: grant Graham, the chair of parliament's all-party China group, a visa or the whole trip would be cancelled. The embassy failed to agree to their demands by 5pm on Monday, which meant the trip was cancelled.

Hugo Swire, the Foreign Office minister with responsibility for the Asia-Pacific region, was understood to have been involved in talks to try to save the trip and avoid a diplomatic row.

But members of the delegation, who included the former Labour cabinet minister and China expert Liam Byrne, shadow cabinet member Emma Reynolds, Conservative MPs Conor Burns and Alok Sharma, were understood to feel that the Chinese embassy was interfering in a wholly unacceptable way in the internal affairs of the UK. The trip was part of the UK-China Leadership Forum. Their attitude was described as regretful rather than angry.

A Foreign Office spokesman said:

"The UK-China Leadership Forum has an important role in UK/China relations. We have raised this with the Chinese government and sought an explanation of their decision to deny a visa."

Sources made clear that the Great British China Centre, which organised the trip, is independent of the government. The centre makes its own decisions about travel arrangements.

Graham, a former diplomat who served at the British embassy in Beijing and as the British consul in the former Portuguese colony of Macao in the late 1980s, used the debate in Westminster Hall on 22 October to voice support for some of the protesters' demands. The protests were sparked by the decision of Beijing to impose restrictions on the election of Hong Kong's next chief executive.

In a highly nuanced speech, designed to show his deep understanding of Chinese sensitivities while voicing support for the pro-democracy activists, Graham told MPs that Britain had a duty to uphold the principles of the 1984 joint declaration by Britain and China, which led to the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997. In the declaration China agreed to maintain "freedom under the law, an independent judiciary, a free press, free speech and the freedom to demonstrate".

He added: "If we allow any of those freedoms to be curtailed and if we say nothing about any dilution of Hong Kong's high degree of autonomy, whether deliberate or inadvertent, we risk colluding in Hong Kong's gradual – not immediate – decline, helping others in Asia who would swiftly take any opportunity at Hong Kong's expense, and we would not be fulfilling the commitments that John Major, Robin Cook and, most recently, our prime minister have re-emphasised in the clearest terms."

Graham, who was living in Hong Kong at the time of the 1984 declaration and the 1997 handover, tried to reassure Beijing on one of its main concerns: that outside powers were orchestrating the protests. He said:

"It is my belief that most of those in Hong Kong who feel most strongly about the issues around the election of the next chief executive represent a new generation of Hong Kongers. They were mostly born after the joint declaration. They are not, as has sometimes been claimed, ancient colonial sentimentalists or those left by dark foreign forces to create disturbance after the colonialists had gone, but a new generation with a different take on life from their predecessors. They are more sure of their Hong Kong identity, less sure of their future prospects and less trustful of government or leaders in whose appointment they still feel they do not have enough say."

Graham concluded his speech by addressing two of Beijing's long-held concerns: the need for stability and an assurance that Britain was not seeking to extend its influence back into its former colony.

He said:

"Stability for nations is not, in our eyes, about maintaining the status quo regardless, but about reaching out for greater involvement with the people – in this case, of Hong Kong – allowing them a greater say in choosing their leaders and, above all, trusting in the people.

"We have no interest, no advantage or no conceivable selfish purpose in any form of car crash with Hong Kong's sovereign master, China. Rather, it is in all our interests, but particularly those of Britain and China in fulfilling the joint declaration, that Hong Kong continues to thrive and prosper, in a different world from that of 1984 or even 1997."

[Nov 21, 2014] 200PM Water Cooler 11-21-14

naked capitalism

Hong Kong

Senior Triad member "Mr Kong" says Mainland paid triads to infiltrate Occupy, citing Legco storming as an example [South China Morning Post]. Maybe Obama shared the DHS handbook with Xi? Probably not, actually, since the Chinese no doubt has expertise of their own.

Mainland immigration blacklist from Hong Kong [Roydon Ng]. And self-selected unscientific online poll: Does the Umbrella Movement represent the Democracy Movement? 44% yes, 44% no.

Activists protest at British Embassy [Straits Times].

[Nov 21, 2014] Hong Kong pro-democracy leaders condemn parliament clashes

Looks like Stage Ii of events started, if we consider this a replay of EuroMaidan tactic. That's what nationalist also tried do with the Ukrainian Parliament (Rada)... Opposition leaders can condemn radicals openly and support them behind the close doors...
19 November 2014 | bbc.com

Pro-democracy leaders in Hong Kong have condemned violent action by a small group of protesters on Tuesday who tried to break into parliament.

The Occupy Central movement said those behind the clashes had misled the crowd by spreading "false information".

The police also denounced the violence, saying it had "seriously disrupted public order and public safety".

Protesters calling for full democracy have occupied three key sites in Hong Kong for nearly eight weeks.

But hours before Tuesday's incident, bailiffs and police peacefully cleared a section of the main Admiralty protest camp.

Police say they are also preparing to clear the roads at the main camp at Mong Kok on Thursday.

Protesters 'misled'

Police used pepper spray and batons to drive back the group of protesters after they used metal barricades and concrete slabs to smash the glass doors of the legislature, known as Legco.

At least four people were arrested and three police officers injured in the overnight clashes. The situation had returned to normal by Wednesday morning, after the protesters retreated.

Protest leaders have condemned the violence, suggesting it may undermine their ultimate aim for Hong Kong to hold leadership elections without interference from China.

One of the main protest groups, Occupy Central, said "some people... had egged on other protesters to enter the Legco building but left themselves," in a statement condemning the violence.

Democratic lawmaker Fernando Cheung, who was among a group of people trying to stop the protesters, said they had been "misled" into thinking that parliament was about to debate a controversial ruling on freedom of the internet.

... ... ...

While it is not yet clear when the camp will be cleared, the South China Morning Post says thousands of police are on standby to clear the site as early as Thursday. A third protest site remains at Causeway Bay.

The protesters have been on the streets since early October to demonstrate against a decision by China to screen candidates for Hong Kong's 2017 leadership election. Numbers were originally in the tens of thousands but have fallen to a few hundred.

Hong Kong and the Beijing government say the protests are illegal, and there is growing public frustration with the disruption to traffic and business.

Police operations to clear and contain the camps in recent weeks have sometimes led to clashes. An earlier attempt to clear an underpass near Admiralty led to accusations that police had used excessive force, after a video emerged of officers apparently beating a protester.

Support for Hong Kong street protests wanes ahead of expected dispersal poll

November 18, 2014 | InterAksyon.com
The online news portal of TV5

Reuters - More than two-thirds of Hong Kong people think pro-democracy demonstrators who have occupied key parts of the Chinese-controlled city for seven weeks should end their street protests, a Chinese University of Hong Kong survey suggests.

Of those surveyed, 67.4 percent said the protesters should vacate the streets. Public support for the movement was also wavering, with 43.5 percent of people saying they were against it, compared with 33.9 percent who gave their support.

The results came after an eviction notice for the main Admiralty protest site, next to the Central business district, was published in newspapers on Saturday, suggesting police may move in any day to clear all the street blockades in line with court-ordered injunctions.

The former British colony of Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under a "one country, two systems" formula that gives the city more autonomy and freedom than the mainland and a goal of universal suffrage.

The protesters are demanding open nominations in the city's next election for chief executive in 2017. Beijing has said it will allow a vote in 2017, but only between pre-screened candidates.

The protests, which drew well over 100,000 at their peak, have dwindled to hundreds camped out in colorful tents at key intersections on both sides of the harbor.

China and Hong Kong launched the Stock Connect scheme on Monday, giving foreign and Chinese retail investors unprecedented access to the Hong Kong and Shanghai exchanges.

There were no protests at the Hong Kong exchange against the scheme that will bolster financial ties with the mainland.

Even as the university survey showed a lack of support for the protesters' occupation of the streets, it also showed displeasure with the Hong Kong government's handling of the crisis.

About 40 percent of those surveyed felt the government's response had been inadequate and nearly half - 48.5 percent - said the government needed to make concessions.

The survey involved 1,030 Cantonese-speaking residents between Nov. 5 and 11. (Reporting by Clare Baldwin, Farah Master, Clare Jim and Kinling Lo)

[Nov 13, 2014] A Fruitful Visit by Obama Ends With Blunt Words by Xi Jinping by Jane Perlez

Nov 12, 2014 | NYTimes.com

Initially, Mr. Xi appeared to ignore two questions from a reporter for The New York Times: whether China feared that the Obama administration's pivot to Asia represented an effort to contain China, and whether China would ease its refusal to issue visas to some foreign correspondents in light of a broader visa agreement with the United States.

After first taking an unrelated question from a Chinese state-run newspaper - appearing to draw a bemused reaction from Mr. Obama - Mr. Xi circled back, declaring that the visa problems of news organizations, including The Times, were of their own making. He evinced little patience for the foreign news media's concerns that they were being penalized for unfavorable news coverage of Chinese leaders and their families.

Mr. Xi said that China protected the rights of media organizations, but that the organizations needed to abide by the rules of the country. "When a certain issue is raised as a problem, there must be a reason," he said, apparently acknowledging a link between news coverage and the refusal to extend the visas.

Mr. Xi used a Chinese metaphor to describe the travails of The Times and other organizations, saying they were like a faulty car. "When a car breaks down on the road, perhaps we need to step down and see what the problem is," he said.

In a passage that was not translated into English, the president added that "the Chinese say, 'Let he who tied the bell on the tiger take it off'" - a saying that can also be translated as, "The one who created the problem should be the one who solves it."

Mr. Xi also bluntly warned the United States and other foreign countries not to get involved in the pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong, which he dismissed as illegal, responding to a question to Mr. Obama about rumors in the Chinese media that the United States is fomenting the unrest there.

Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story

Continue reading the main story

"Hong Kong's affairs are exclusively China's internal affairs, and foreign countries should not interfere in Hong Kong's affairs in any fashion," the Chinese leader declared. "It goes without saying that law and order must be protected in any place."

The authorities in Hong Kong have issued increasingly strong warnings for protesters to clear the streets as Mr. Obama's visit and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting in Beijing have neared an end.

Mr. Xi dismissed suggestions that Mr. Obama's pivot to Asia - including a proposed regional trade pact that does not include China - was an effort by the United States to contain his country. And he brushed off a recent wave of anti-American statements in China's state-run media, saying, "I don't think it's worth fussing over."

Taken together, Mr. Xi's statements offered a rare, unvarnished glimpse of the Chinese president, two years into his term and after his swift consolidation of power. He showed no hesitation in departing from his usual script about the importance of a "major power" relationship.

For his part, Mr. Obama tried to keep the emphasis on working with China. He, too, sharply disputed suggestions that the United States's new focus on Asia should be seen as a threat, saying that "our conversation gave us an opportunity to debunk the notion that our pivot to Asia is about containing China."

Mr. Obama said he had assured Mr. Xi that the United States had nothing to do with the protests in Hong Kong. "These are issues ultimately for the people of Hong Kong and China to decide," he said of the protests demanding fully democratic elections, though he voiced support for the right of free expression.

In general, Mr. Obama's references to human rights were carefully calibrated. He noted America's refusal to recognize a separate Taiwan or Tibet. He also praised China for its role in nuclear negotiations with Iran, its response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and its dealings with a nuclear-armed North Korea.

Mr. Obama played down a recent wave of virulently negative coverage of him and the United States in China's state-run media. Tough press coverage, he said, came with being a public official, whether in China or the United States. "I'm a big believer in actions, not words," he added.

White House officials told reporters that the president had called on a reporter for The Times in part because several of its China correspondents had been denied visas by the government.

The state-run Chinese television station CCTV did not broadcast the 48-minute news conference. "That would have been a deliberate decision by the central propaganda department, which everyone knows is even more hard-line than Xi Jinping," said Shi Yinhong, professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing.

Propaganda officials did not want the Chinese public to see President Obama talking about human rights and Tibet, Mr. Shi said, even though he said Mr. Obama had been gracious in not saying "hard things to annoy his host."

[Nov 12, 2014] Hong Kong's umbrella protests are here to stay

"The umbrella protesters often cite Hong Kong's high costs of living, inequality, lack of hope for the young etc. as reasons for demanding democracy, but yet are unable to offer any coherent argument as to how democracy would solve these problems."

Nov 12, 2014 | theguardian.com

The movement is cosmopolitan, inclusive, and networked – and Beijing's scope for a Tiananmen-style crackdown is limited.

... Although the protest's goals may not be met before the next major election, in 2017, it has already succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of its originators. None of them expected the occupation to get this big or last this long.

... The government also has its hands tied. Given the high degree of international media attention Hong Kong received after earlier police actions, an immediate, Tiananmen-style crackdown is unlikely. Teargas and pepper spray might just send more people back into the streets.

quarrytone -> Herman Kusuma 14 Nov 2014 07:23

Really Herman, China is nothing like 1984 (which incidentally you can buy in most big book shops as well as online here). You seem to be mistaking it for North Korea or the former Soviet Union.

Yes the just over 1000 political prisoners the US would like to be released are a shame on the country, but that's out of 1.38 billion souls. The proportion in a real 1984 state is astronomically higher.

quarrytone -> Herman Kusuma 14 Nov 2014 07:13

Sorry Herman, I said a lot, so first you didn't say which bit was "wrong", and second I've seen a few vids myself from the BBC and NYT as well as reports of academic research.

Are you saying life expectancy hasn't doubled? That literacy hasn't risen dramatically? That exemption from the one child policy isn't true when well documented? That lower score access to top universities isn't true? That there is enormous wealth generated from a tourism boom in new hotels, shops, restaurants etc.? With respect you need to be specific.

EliasMcLiar -> quarrytone 14 Nov 2014 00:26

You are, of course, right to call me out on vulgar hyperbole. I am an asshole, that's just my style. For context, I also consider the entire southeastern US, most US cities, Liverpool, Marseille, Slovakia, Mexico, and many other places to fit my definition of "shithole" and freely discuss them as such. Beijing is ok, but, frankly, if it and Shanghai are the best China has to offer I'll be staying home. Many of the other cities, however are very far from the Beijing middle class experience of security and safety, and danger comes from the government, the criminals (white and blue collar), and the huge overlap between the two.

Totally with you on Tibet, by the way. Odd that we don't see white people wearing "Restore the Dzungar Khanate!" T-shirts.


ricohflex 13 Nov 2014 13:17

Journalists need to pay the bills and feed their families. When their drafts get rejected repeatedly by the editors, the journalists get the message. They write articles with a particular slant.

Surely you don't think that these softie Hong Kong kiddies are really slugging it out on the streets. Of course they don't. It is only a show. They rotate shifts and go back to their homes from time to time to shower, have a good warm meal, go to the toilet, have fresh change of clothes, recharge their mobile phones and notebook computers, catch some nice TV show --- and then when they are bored, they go back to the nice camping tent on the Hong Kong street. The little kiddies want to bluff the world that they are on the streets 24 hours 7 days a week for 1 month plus? Don't bluff. It is all crap.

quarrytone EliasMcLiar 13 Nov 2014 10:32

On the violent crime, yes, out of 1.38 billion people there are stories of knifings about every 3 weeks because they are rare, they are very newsworthy and go all over the net and press. Still far safer than the States.

To be honest if you talk to ladies in Beijing they feel very safe late at night. We just had that Brit rapist 3 years ago. Thanks to him your 1st work visa now requires a home country criminal record check.

quarrytone EliasMcLiar 13 Nov 2014 10:27

Fair enough Elias. I live in Beijing and have visited Hong Kong 5 times. I prefer both Beijing and Hong Kong to London.

To be fair I know what you mean about Hong Kong being a fantastic city, but do you need to use such unpleasant language about China to make your point? Beijing has smog 1/3rd of the time, but the people are great, and there are some great places to spend your time. We can all rotten cherry pick the worst then claim the whole tree is rotten. I've only had food poisoning once in 4 years, less than India in 6 weeks, and about average for frequent eating out in the UK. I just wouldn't choose to live in a "shithole".


Viewcart jdanforth 13 Nov 2014 03:05

U.S. dollars pay for stockpiles of supplies hidden in three makeshift warehouses in three schools. NED did not pay for Occupy Wall Street and that's why it failed.


JoeSmith25 12 Nov 2014 06:03

This article is typical of many of the articles written by the western press. The article ignores the fact that Hong Kong already practises many elements of democracy, e.g. free speech, elected legislators, right to assembly etc. The Chief Executive is not elected directly by the people of Hong Kong (and this is the issue with the Occupy participants), but no Chief Executive in his/her right mind would do anything that is highly unpopular withe the public. Importantly, the article does not mention that a number of surveys suggest 70% of the people in Hong Kong wants the umbrella protesters to end their occupation immediately. Throughout the entire period of the protests, the protesters have never garnered much more than 40% support from the public. All evidence point to the majority in Hong Kong as being against the protests.

People in Hong Kong understand the ideals of democracy, but can also see that democracy creates its own set of problems, e.g. decisions made based on political calculations rather than what is good for the community, short-termism etc.

The umbrella protesters often cite Hong Kong's high costs of living, inequality, lack of hope for the young etc. as reasons for demanding democracy, but yet are unable to offer any coherent argument as to how democracy would solve these problems. After all, don't UK, US, Australia, Europe not have these problems?


canbeanybody 12 Nov 2014 05:15

"Hong Kong's umbrella protests are here to stay"

No, you are not and occupation by those occupy central fanatics will be cleared.

Yes the western mainstream media appears to scream head off hoping the "success" of regime change but they fail.

All those fanatics group masters are now talking about to "hand themselves in" although it is likely a trick to deceive themselves.

Arrest all those hard core occupy central fanatics, prosecute them, fine them or impose custodial sentences as appropriate.

The wealthy fanatics should also made to pay for the damages to Hong Kong and to Hong Kong businesses who have suffered great financial losses.

Justice must prevail and justice, law and order will prevail.


JovialMerchant 12 Nov 2014 05:09

Guardian's reaction to mass protests in Hong Kong over appointing their own technocrat:
"This is the biggest shakeup in China since Tiananmen Square!!"... "This is a huge victory for democracy and social justice!!"

Guardian's reaction to mass protests in London over austerity and privatisation:
"Russell Brand met with Occupy Westminster today. Probably to promote his new book"... "Are the protests ignoring feminist issues?"

Raymond Ashworth -> Gonebush 12 Nov 2014 05:05

Just because you personally don't know about the CIA's involvement, shouldn't stop you from going away and reading about it before commenting ignorantly.

[Nov 02, 2014] China gets silence from Hong Kong tycoons instead of vocal support By Julie Makinen

Oct 31, 2014 | LA Times

With a $32-billion fortune and business interests as diverse as supermarkets and ports, Asia's richest man, Li Ka-shing, would seem to have little to fret about. But as the Hong Konger told a class of graduating students in the summer at mainland China's Shantou University, he's kept up at night by worries over his city's yawning wealth gap..

The government needs "dynamic and flexible [wealth] redistribution policies" and should invest more in education, the 86-year-old said in an address titled "Sleepless in Hong Kong."

The concerns troubling Li are among those that have echoed through the night in Hong Kong this fall as protesters, many of them students, have taken to the streets to demand change. Although their primary goal has been greater democracy - a sensitive topic that Li studiously avoided in his speech - they also have fretted about their economic prospects and the state of education.

When the demonstrations erupted in late September, many people - particularly leaders in Beijing - expected power brokers like Li to come out firmly and forcefully against the sit-ins and call for a quick return to the status quo. After all, the territory's business elite has enjoyed a cozy and profitable relationship with government officials since the former British colony reverted to Chinese rule 17 years ago, reaping massive windfalls as closer ties with the mainland set the city's property market on fire and supercharged other sectors of the economy.

But that calculation may have underestimated the tycoons' support for Hong Kong's more Westernized traditions, and their distaste for its government leader, Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying.

To protesters in the streets, Leung is Beijing's man, a representative of anti-democratic forces. But a majority of the region's billionaires have long seen him as a populist, an up-from-poverty arriviste who doesn't share their background or values.

Over the weekend, James Tien, a local legislator and head of the pro-business Liberal Party, called on Leung to resign, becoming the first such establishment figure to do so. Beijing's displeasure at this became manifest Wednesday, when Tien was expelled from the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, a prestigious government body.

Tien's call may only reinforce notions in Beijing that the billionaires who were supposed to have the Communist Party's back are instead engaging in an internecine battle, some observers said.

"This is not a Hong Kong-mainland battle; this is a tycoon-tycoon battle."
- Michael DeGolyer, professor of government and international studies at Hong Kong Baptist University

"I think the way the mainland is seeing it is that the real face of the struggle has been revealed," said Michael DeGolyer, a professor of government and international studies at Hong Kong Baptist University. "And this is not a Hong Kong-mainland battle; this is a tycoon-tycoon battle."

"This is probably also why [Beijing] is being fairly noninterventionist; it was supposed to be tycoons running Hong Kong," DeGolyer added. "So clearly I think they're interpreting this as an internal struggle in which the pro-democracy movement is either an unwitting dupe, being manipulated, or actually an arm or branch or acting element being encouraged by one of the tycoon factions."

None of this is to suggest that the tycoons have been out in the streets alongside the protesters. For the most part, they have said nothing publicly about the unrest, and it is impossible to know what they are thinking or saying in private.

A fair number of Hong Kong's 1% may be unsympathetic to the Occupy Central demonstrations and simply don't want to say anything to offend their hometown customers. So far, the sit-ins have hurt the pocketbooks of taxi drivers, restaurateurs and some retailers, but spared the stock exchange and property market.

"The big boys are doing OK; their businesses have not been hurt," said Willy Lam, a Hong Kong-based political analyst. Li and other billionaires "have called on the students to leave, but they have not used excessively heavy or colorful language to scold them. It's obvious that they realize that the students have substantial support among the population. So I think they are playing it both ways."

China's communist leaders appear to be chafing at the silence. Last weekend, the state-run New China News Agency published an article-cum-plea headlined, "Hong Kong tycoons reluctant to take sides amid Occupy turmoil." The story lamented that former Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa was nearly alone among the wealthy in voicing opposition to the protests.

Li had urged protesters to go home "but did not make it clear whether or not he agrees with the appeals of the protesters," it said. "Other Hong Kong tycoons have all remained mute."

There may be intrigue behind their silence.

Two years ago, Li and many of his peers backed Leung's rival, Henry Tang, for the city's top job. Tang, the son of a Shanghai textile baron, was seen by many of Hong Kong's elite as cut from the same cloth. Leung - the son of a police officer, raised in public housing - was regarded as more populist and unpredictable, despite having made millions in the real estate and surveying businesses.

Ultimately, Beijing signaled its preference for Leung after Tang was hit by scandals over an affair and illegal additions to his mansion. Still, Leung managed to get only 689 votes from the 1,200-member committee of movers and shakers that chooses the chief executive.

"C.Y. Leung has never had the support of these tycoons," Lam said. "So it's highly possible they see this as an opportunity to settle old scores."

So far, there's no indication that the wealthiest tycoons have supported the demonstrators financially, though the city was abuzz this week with revelations that Occupy Central With Love and Peace, one of the key protest groups, received $166,000 from one anonymous donor.

But at least one protest leader believes their reticence to speak out may be a sign of tacit support.

"It seems that the Chinese Communist Party is not allowing people to remain silent. This may be the communist way of doing things, but I think [the elites'] acquiescence speaks loads about how they feel about the Occupy movement," said Alan Leong, leader of the pro-democracy Civic Party. "They may think and feel as strongly as we do that the present system does not work. And if it continues, Hong Kong will become ungovernable."

Special correspondents Tiffany Ap and Echo Hui in Hong Kong contributed to this report.

Prominent Hong Kong activist says protesters need to unify, strategize by By Echo Hui

Oct 30, 2014 | LA Times

A variety of groups coalesced behind the democracy sit-ins, including Occupy Central With Peace and Love and two student groups: Scholarism and the Hong Kong Federation of Students.

Leaders of those three main groups have expressed mutual support and have all spoken frequently to the crowds of protesters. But many people who have joined the demonstrations over the last month say they're not allied with any of those organizations and have "spontaneously" joined the protests.

The diffuse nature of the protest leadership may have helped perpetuate the demonstrations – but also has limited protesters' ability to forcefully unite and agree on a strategy to bring more pressure to bear on government authorities.

Leung's remarks came as two founders of Occupy Central, university professors Benny Tai and Chan Kin-man, announced they have resumed their university teaching duties after a month spent mainly at the protest zone in the Admiralty district, near government headquarters.

Tai told reporters this week that the move does not indicate a retreat and said he and Chan would continue spending a lot of time in Admiralty. But one senior member of Occupy Central, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the issue, said differences between the protest leaders contributed to their decision to go back to work.

"They have different views about how to lead the movement forward," said the member, adding that the advice of Occupy Central founders had been repeatedly ignored by the student groups.

... ... ...

Leung -- a well known rabble-rouser partial to Che Guevara T-shirts -- has been active in the sit-ins since day one, becoming one of the first people to sit down in front of the cordoned-off plaza at Hong Kong's Legislative Council last month to voice his displeasure over limits set by mainland Communist authorities on who can run in Hong Kong's 2017 chief executive elections.

"Every day that passes by, we waste another opportunity. Without leadership, the crowds won't stick around long."
- Leung Kwok-hung, chairman of the League of Social Democrats, speaking about Hong Kong protests

Thousands of students joined him, and dozens of students were arrested, including Federation of Students general secretary Alex Chow and Scholarism leader Joshua Wong. As they were detained by police last month, Leung dropped to his knees in front of other protesters, imploring them to stay and keep fighting for "true democracy."

"I have never knelt down to the tyranny of the Communist Party, but today I feel humble, I will bow to true democracy," Leung said in front of a large crowd of protesters in Admiralty.

Last week, a group of five Hong Kong government officials engaged in a two-hour dialogue with five representatives of the Federation of Students over the protesters' demands and 2017 election rules.

But the session yielded little, and no further discussions have been scheduled. Leung said the government's decision to talk only to the Federation of Students was a tactical move to divide the protesters.

"Students are easier to control," he said.

Government authorities don't want to talk to lawmakers and other political actors because they fear ceding any political power to pro-democratic parties of individuals, he added. But he said the protests have grown far beyond a student movement, and students cannot represent all the demonstrators.

Leung said he tried to persuade Tai to form a new group called United Front to unify the protest movement and mobilize more Hong Kongers to support it. But he said Tai rejected the idea, saying the time was not right.

"In terms of forming a 'United Front,' we need to have a common position, and most importantly, discussion on our strategy," said Leung. "But there is no leadership and very little cooperation."

Hui is a special correspondent.

Why China Won't Talk to Hong Kong's Protesters - FPIF Kaja Baum

Beijing's willingness to allow negotiations came in stark contrast to the hard line it has propagated in state media outlets, which have painted Occupy Central as a hostile movement and accused the peaceful protesters of "illegal activity."Heavily censored news reports and editorials have played up the inconvenience the protests have caused the general population and the threat they may pose to Hong Kong's economic stability. Following a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Li reinforced Beijing's refusal to compromise. "I believe for any country, for any society, no one will allow those illegal acts that violate public order," he said.

Michael Forsythe and Alan Wong of the New York Times had postulated that the talks may have been used to "provide a useful delay for the government, helping to sap the energy of the protests without promising a meaningful compromise." It is possible that they were canceled to prevent even that victory from coming to fruition, as the ranks of protestors have slowly dwindled.

Trouble at Home

For China, the outcome of these protests will have consequences that reverberate far beyond the borders of Hong Kong itself. As Vox's Max Fisher observes, the Chinese government views Occupy Central as "a potentially existential threat to the entire Chinese system, which is perceived as so weak and embattled that leaders believe even peaceful protests like this could bring everything crashing down."

Contrary to its reputation in much of the world as a rising power and economic powerhouse, China is facing numerous internal challenges that have greatly diminished its own self confidence.

Following decades of tremendous economic development, China's export-based economy now faces a looming economic stagnation crisis that will require major policy changes to adjust. And the breakneck pace of development in the country has fomented all kinds of social unrest. According to Foreign Policy In Focus columnist Walden Bello, the country has seen a wave of new protests and strikes against inequality, corruption, environmental degradation, labor exploitation, and land grabs.

China fears that granting concessions in Hong King will only look like weakness, encouraging more internal conflict.

China's restive minority groups, as well as nervous countries on its periphery, are watching the events closely for an opportunity to highlight what they see as Beijing's unfair and even brutal policies. According to Foreign Policy magazine, China's handling of Hong Kong is seen as a "template for how it might approach Taiwan," which currently functions as an independent state that China claims as rightfully belonging to the mainland. In western China, Tibetans and Uighurs are also hoping that these events draw more international attention to how China treats its ethnic minorities.

From their point of view, President Xi Jinping and China's leaders are beating back the wolves at every door and in their own den. While the rest of the world may view China as a rising and sometimes intimidating power, the Chinese leadership sees bogeymen around every corner, threatening its legitimacy.

Reclaiming Space

The likelihood that China's negotiations with Hong Kong's citizens would have led to any substantial victories on behalf of the voters was small. Although some form of negotiations may eventually resume, there is simply too much at stake in the eyes of China's leadership to offer major concessions. As Occupy Central's holdouts return to their studies and jobs, tired Hong Kong citizens may be losing their window for reform, with convictions fizzling out even promises are broken.

There is small comfort to be taken, if only feigned, in China's temporary willingness to talk with protestors. It lands far removed from the grisly conclusion of the highly publicized protests in 1989 at Tiananmen Square.

Will Hong Kong's protestors be able to resurrect the promise of negotiations in the future? The longer the issue is drawn out, the less likely it becomes that the movement will have the leverage it needs to push the government-at least not without maintaining a vibrant presence in the streets.

The election for Hong Kong's next chief executive, however, does not take place until 2017. Even if the democratic aspirations of Hong Kong's citizens are not addressed this time around, the opportunity is not entirely lost. "All gates were closed before," said federation spokeswoman Yvonne Leung. "We have now won some space for dialogue, and we've seen a growth in our civil society. The people used to be unaware of their own power, but now they know."

[Oct 30, 2014] Ukraine's authoritarianism Events in Kiev signal the end of the color revolutions By Anne Applebaum

Blast form the past. Well known neocon, the wife of Polish former Forigh minister shared her views. Note similarities with Hong Cong coverage. she might be more gentle with the USA main banker but the message would be the same -- "regime change"
Ukraine

A pro-European protester wears a gas mask during street violence in Kiev on Jan. 23, 2014.

Photo by David Mdzinarishvili/Reuters


WARSAW-The Ukrainian parliament recently passed legislation directly modeled on Russian precedents. The laws curb demonstrations, using language broad enough to apply to almost any gathering. They criminalize "slander," which might mean any criticism of the government. They require the members of any organization with any foreign funding, including the Greek Catholic Church, to register as "foreign agents," which is to say spies. These laws were passed at night, with a show of hands. Deputies did not discuss them, or in some cases even read them. since November.

Priests said Mass before the barricades; buses burned in the snow. Riot police shot people with rubber bullets. Then they shot them with real bullets. Others were hauled away and beaten. Anyone standing near the scene last Tuesday received a text message from the phone company: "Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance." So far, five people are dead.

In fact, corrupt oligarchs, backed by Russian money and Russian political technology, are a lot stronger than anyone ever expected them to be. They have the cash to bribe an entire parliament's worth of elected officials. They have the cynicism to revive the old Soviet technique of selective violence: One or two murders is enough to scare off many thousands of peaceful demonstrators, one or two arrests will suffice to remind businessmen who is boss. They have also learned to manipulate media (as the Russians do), to multiply their money in Western financial institutions (as the Russians do), even to send threatening text messages. They have crafted a well-argued, well-funded alternate narrative about Western economic decline and cultural decadence. A friend jokingly calls this the "all your daughters will become lesbians" line of argument, but it is surprisingly powerful. hand out cookies to demonstrators in Kiev

Now the administration says it might not issue visas to a few Ukrainian leaders. That policy might make a few people in Washington feel better, but it will also send the Ukrainians running directly into the arms of the Russians. In the words of a Canadian diplomat, "It's like watching a hockey game with only one team on the ice."

[Oct 23, 2014] Why is America so obsessed with 'Color Revolution'

It looks like china authorities realized that they overspet the preparation for this color revolution and now have difficulties to control events. Now the protester for several weeks blocked traffic in many strategically important areas in Hong Kong and access to central business districts and government compounds causing mass disruptions. Chenese official now admin that "The central government certainly need to heed legitimate concerns among people in Hong Kong within the framework of "One country, two system" such as widening wealth gap, rising property prices and erosion of distinct identity of Hong Kong due to an influx of mainlanders."

CCTV.com English

Hong Kong's illegal Occupy Central movement has become the focus of public opinion in the US, with some US forces striving to add fuel to Occupy.

According to foreign media, months ago a responsible person of National Endowment for Democracy (NED), met "the soul person" in "Occupy Central" to discuss the relevant affairs. The responsible person, named Louisa Greve, is the deputy Chairman of NED for Asian and West Asian-North African affairs. For many years, there have been frequent reports about her connections with Tibetan separatists, East Turkistan Islamists and Democratic Movement Activists; she has also hosted or participated in activities such as symposiums on Arab Spring and color revolutions in other areas. As always, the US side denies its involvement in and manipulation of Occupy Central, just like it never admit its manipulation of other anti-Chinese forces. Those involved have cloaked themselves in the guise of "democracy, freedom and human rights" to justify their behavior.

NGOs and think-tanks in America pour lots of energy into the Occupy Central campaign and offer suggestions. In her essay How the Hong Kong Protesters Can Win, by Maria J. Stephan, senior research fellow in United States Institute of Peace and distinguished research fellow in Atlantic Council, proposed strategies for Occupy with the so-called research data of "non-violent, non-cooperation movements" for a century, especially lessons drawn from "civil disobedience" in a dozen of countries. This essay doesn't discuss whether Occupy is advocated by the majority of Hong Kong people, nor the negative impact of Occupy on Hong Kong's politics, economy and society. It merely focuses on how to achieve Hong Kong protestors' aim -"democracy".

Mainstream US media displays unusual interest in Occupy Central, with many compliments for Occupy Central in reports and reviews about it. Media organizations all arbitrarily use the word "pro-democracy" when determining the nature of Occupy Central and repeatedly call it "Umbrella Revolution", taking Occupy Central as a copy of Color Revolutions in other areas. AP's report on Occupy Central is titled Umbrella Revolution Spreads in Hong Kong; "Umbrella Revolution" appears on the cover of Time's Asia Edition; on Wall Street Journal, an article says the Hong Kong people "finally see that they can only get democracy by fighting for it".

The US government stays involved, too. Let alone the fact that NGO organizations such as NED directly use the fund for "democracy and human rights" provided by US government, spokesmen and officials in the White House and the State Council, and diplomats in Hong Kong have all declared several times their "moral" support for Occupy Central. In an open letter, three American former counselors in HK described the chief executive nominating committee system in HK as "democracy in retreat", worsening the confusing situation HK government faced.

Although the US has denied it, the treatment of the Occupy Central by the US government, NGOs and public opinion, and their involvement in this issue remind us of the US's role in various Color Revolutions in areas such as the Commonwealth of the Independent States, the Middle East, North Africa. America always enjoys pushing forward "Color Revolution" in some countries. Seemingly, it is practicing the "universal value" of "democracy, freedom and human rights", and a number of Americans and NGOs believe they have the "entitled duty" to "deliver all living creatures from torment". But if we look at the consequences of color revolution, we find that the US, with a focus on its own strategic interests, is using revolutions to destroy the disobedient regimes it dislikes. In US logic, "democratic" countries and regimes accord with its interests.

America's Greater Middle East Plan has failed; the Arab Spring has become the Arab Winter; street politics in Ukraine has led to national separation and bloodshed. What these countries experienced is turmoil, not true democracy. But the US turns a blind eye to these lessons.

With advocates all over the world, including in Hong Kong, the US sometimes benefits from interfering with domestic affairs of other countries. But on the issue of Hong Kong, the US faces not only China's consistent strategy of maintaining Hong Kong's stability and prosperity, but the mainstream opinion in Hong Kong. What the US has done is lift a rock only to drop it on its own feet.

[Oct 23, 2014] Protesters ignore HK court order By TIMOTHY CHUI and LUIS LIU (China Daily)

2014-10-23 | chinadaily.com.cn
Protesters ignore HK court order

Placards support the police and government at a rally opposing the "Occupy Central" movement in Hong Kong's Mong Kok district on Wednesday. One placard reads: "No rule of law, no future. Hong Kong needs rule of law, and residents support police."

Clashes continued in Hong Kong on Wednesday as demonstrators ignored a court order to vacate protest sites.

Protesters manned barricades for a second day after the city's High Court ordered key roads to be cleared.

Notices of the court injunction were placed in newspapers, plastered on walls and read out by bailiffs, but the protesters ignored them and scuffled with opponents.

A standoff lasted into Wednesday evening after a brief confrontation in Mong Kok following the lunch hour.

A group of taxi drivers and people opposing the protests descended on a blockaded intersection in the district and dismantled barriers before police moved in.

A man was detained for suspected arson after he allegedly threw what is believed to be a flammable liquid as protesters subdued an opponent venting his frustration over the blockades.

Dozens of taxi drivers, with their vehicles covered in messages supporting the police, staged a drive-by in the district.

Alliance for Peace and Democracy founder Robert Chow plans to launch a signature campaign to support police clearing the roads.

"People should have the choice of living normal lives. We hope this movement to resume law and order can make our voices heard," Chow said.

Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong chairman Tam Yiu-chung called on protesters to respect the city's rule of law and the court injunction, describing the protest scene in Mong Kok as "virtually a riot".

Three transport companies are also seeking injunctions to open key roads near the central business district, citing HK$3 million ($386,730) in losses caused by the closures.

A separate injunction obtained by the owners of CITIC Tower in Admiralty continued to be ignored by protesters who have blocked routes used by emergency vehicles.

Police Chief Superintendent Stephen Hui urged parents not to take their children to high-risk protest zones, citing safety concerns, and saying that those who do so are irresponsible and behaving in an extremely dangerous way.

Hui said TV footage of clashes among protesters showed that the sit-ins are far from being peaceful and non-violent, adding that radical protesters and "troublemakers" are gathering at protest zones to incite the demonstrators and to challenge police.

He described protesters' actions as "utterly illegal and provocative", citing incidents where demonstrators surrounded police vehicles and police stations to demand the release of those arrested. Others had interfered with arrests and attempted to seize those detained, Hui said.

He said the personal details of officers, who have already received verbal abuse, have been uploaded online by critics targeting their families.

Hui said there are increasing incidents of officers' families being targeted for intimidation and bullying in cyberspace.

Police detained a 23-year-old man for allegedly sending a threatening message to an officer's daughter.

Hui reiterated warnings that "real world" laws also apply in cyberspace and criticized those who incite others online to carry out illegal acts. These included an online call to occupy the city's international airport, he said.

[Oct 22, 2014] Why is America so obsessed with 'Color Revolution' by Zhang Dan

10-22-2014 | CCTV.com English

By Dr. Chen Xulong, Director and Senior Research Fellow of Department for International and Strategic Studies, China Institute of International Studies

The central authorities were able to quick label the "Occupy Central" campaign as "Hong Kong version of color revolution" because they have identified much resemblance it bears to the "color revolutions" in other parts of the world.

Zhang Xiaoming, director of the Liaison Office off the Central People's Government in the Hong Kong S.A.R., noted that the nature of the "Occupy Central" campaign is defined by how it has mimicked the ways "color revolutions" were staged - extreme street protests, blockage of government compounds and roads and demands for Hong Kong SAR officials to resign.

With the development of this event and the exposure of the inside story of the plot, more and more people, realizing the involvement of internal and external opposing forces into the campaign, are convinced that this campaign serves as color revolution with Hong Kong characteristics, which poses threat to stability, solidarity and prosperity in Hong Kong.

The so-called Color Revolution refers to, originally, the revolution confined to the former Soviet Union which aimed to overthrow the regime established after the disintegration of the Soviet Union and led by its influential people, and to establish a non-Russia influence, Western values-oriented and more pro-Western regime. Afterwards, the conception of "Color Revolution" developed into a wider one: the US and European countries support the "regime change" designed to overthrow the traditional regime in some countries and establish, based on the Western values, another pro-America regime, such revolution like the political unrest in Middle East and North Africa (namely the so-called Arab Spring). In the contemporary world politics, "Color Revolution" has become notorious for its odious nature and great damage and has caused a high degree of vigilance and precaution in many countries.

By penetrating the Color Revolution incited by the west in the past decades, we can drew that the west has formed a set of operating system in terms of stirring up "Color Revolution". The consistent tricks to be applied in provoking such kind of revolution has been revealed: generally, it is the strategic decision makers of the US who first designate the countries and areas bounding up with its national security and interests, then, those countries and areas would be sorted based on their degree of threat and importance. Whereafter, the west would pointedly determine a specific country or an area and take the advantage of the its local anti-government forces to launch a serious of political activities which aim to overturn the existing regime under color of democratization and by means of human rights struggles. The CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) takes charge of secrete plots and guidance behind the scenes, and deals with the flow of human resource and funds. The relative non-governmental organizations are responsible for supporting and assisting the local pro-America and anti-government forces. The means used include overseas broadcasting station and network propaganda, founding printed journal in local areas and extending their power in the form of religious organizations, cultural community and forum, they also establish training institutions to train activists while widely issuing the so-called "democracy" guidebooks and leading local people to organize street politics and anti-government activities.

Throughout the history, it is believed that color revolutions in distinct locations have been staged in different versions according to varied periods of their occurrence. Versions that has been recorded in history are as follows: in 1989, the "Velvet Revolution" broke out in Czechoslovakia. In 2000, Milosevic, president of Yugoslav, was ousted by the opposition and ended up being in jails. Georgia's "Rose Revolution", Ukraine's "Orange Revolution" and Kyrgyz's "Tulip Revolution" happened in 2003, 2004, 2005 respectively. In 2007, "Saffron Revolution" was piloted in Burma but failed. Attempted color revolution, so-called "Twitter Revolution", occurred in Moldova and Iran in 2009. In 2011, Tunisia's "Jasmine Revolution" brought out the "Arab Spring". In spring this year, "Secondary Color Revolution" occurred in Ukrainian.

History repeatedly shows that when color revolution approaches, brutal political struggle will be staged while peace and tranquility will be gone, development and prosperity will be fled. Color revolution leads some countries to split up, some regimes collapse, some politicians die, and some countries enmesh in turmoil, conflict, ethnic and religious conflicts. Besides, it also incurs economic slump, social disorder, the rise of extremist violence. Ultimately it is the innocent people that are apt to be suffering.

Color revolution has never been simple, but it has to gain the help and support of pure and passionate youth (especially university students), taking advantage of their patriotic enthusiasm and pursuit of justice. Many good and innocent participants involved in color revolution eventually become pawns or even victims.

We need to draw lessons from these pernicious facts. Due to color revolution, the "Arab Spring" transforms into the "Arab Winter", the war flames and national crisis spread in Ukraine. People should have sufficient knowledge and profound alert on symptoms and hazards of various versions of the color revolutions.

Hong Kong's "Umbrella Revolution", the new version of the color revolution, which has lasted for more than three weeks, is diminishing Hong Kong's democracy in the name of seeking democracy, and has harmed the basic principle of "One Country, Two Systems" and threatened the stability requirement of the "silent majority" of Hong Kong. So, the illegal and unwelcome movement is doomed to be a failure, and which would be a bliss to the ordinary people in Hong Kong, to the social stability and economic prosperity of Hong Kong, and to the continuing implementation of the Basic Law.

More

[Oct 16, 2014] Hong Kong protests a 'colour revolution' backed by the West, says Beijing By Li Xueying Hong Kong Correspondent

Oct 15, 2014 | straitstimes.com

BEIJING has stepped up its rhetoric against the Occupy movement in Hong Kong, characterising it as a "colour revolution" being supported by Western forces to undermine the Chinese government - a charge both the United States and protest leaders have denied.

Vice-Premier Wang Yang, in remarks reported in Hong Kong media yesterday, accused Western countries of "supporting the opposition forces trying to foment a colour revolution in Hong Kong".

"Colour revolution" is used to describe a wave of uprisings that took place to bring about regime change, such as the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, which was part of the Soviet Union until the latter broke up in 1991.

Following up on Mr Wang's remarks, retired senior official Chen Zuo'er, who negotiated with the British prior to Hong Kong's return to China, told reporters in Beijing of a "major conspiracy" behind the Occupy movement. He quoted Foreign Minister Wang Yi as saying the root of the unrest in Hong Kong lay in the US.

Beijing Claims Hong Kong's Pro-Democracy Protests Are a US-Backed Color Revolution by Oiwan Lam

October 15, 2014 | Global Voices

Occupy Central protesters brought their tents to the sit-in sites to prepare for long-term fight. Photo by PH Yang, non-commercial use.

Days after the debut of a massive sit-in in Hong Kong calling for genuine democratic elections, Beijing began accusing the grassroots movement of being a color revolution backed by the US government.

Since late September, protesters have camped out in central Hong Kong to demand an open nomination process for candidates in the next election of the city's top leader instead of the mainland's plan for a largely pro-Beijing nominating committee. Pro-democracy group Occupy Central With Love and Peace had planned the sit-in as a last resort if the Hong Kong and Beijing governments refused to bend on the nominating committee despite significant popular support for something more democratic.

At its peak, the sit-in has attracted tens of thousands of participants. The Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece, China Daily, has published commentaries since October 4 accusing a small number of instigators of receiving support from the US government and attempting to stage a color revolution in Hong Kong to undermine the central Beijing government's power. The paper further characterized the protests as a "riot" in a front page news feature on October 11.

Color revolution describes a series of peaceful uprisings in countries of the former Soviet Union. The US government has firmly denied the accusation of having a hand in Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement.

Chinese authorities' use of the term fits with their previously stated belief that Hong Kong conforming to the Beijing-approved election system is an issue of national security. It also implies that it is rather unlikely for China's legislature, the National People Congress, to withdraw or amend the nomination framework set for special administrative region Hong Kong.

Pro-Beijing media in Hong Kong have also spread the conspiracy theory about the US government's role in the Occupy Central protests. In addition to the claim that Hong Kong pan-democrats have a connection with the National Endowment for Democracy, a US-funded organization that promotes democracy and freedom worldwide, the most bizarre smear is the accusation that Joshua Wong, the 17-year-old leader of high school activist group Scholarism, is being cultivated as a political superstar and received combat training from US Marines. Scholarism is one of the leading groups of the protests.

While pro-democracy protesters have treated the rumors as jokes, pro-Beijing lawmakers, who hold the majority in the Hong Kong Legislative Council thanks to the current undemocratic "functional constituency" system, built upon the conspiracy theory of foreign intervention and demanded an investigation into the mobilization behind the Occupy Central protests on October 10.

Some of the evidence of foreign intervention that is being pushed is the abundant supply of resources, such as food, drink, stationary, posters and banners at the protest sites. Blogger Sze Ching Cheun laughed at the claim:

As the occupy movement carried on smoothly, the pro-government camp reintroduced the "foreign intervention theory" with the intention of discrediting the protests. […] The abundant supply of resources is now turned into evidence of foreign intervention. […] Are Hong Kong people that poor? Let's check past reports. Whenever there has been a natural disaster, the donations from Hong Kong have always been astonishing. For example, following the Szechuan earthquake [in 2008], donations coming from Hong Kong citizens reached 13 billion Hong Kong dollars [approximately 1.9 billion US dollars] […] Everyone contributes to the protests what they can, so adding that all up means we have an abundant supply of resources. We don't need foreign donations. We can pay for our own resources.

In response to being labeled a color revolution and a riot, the Hong Kong Federation of Students and Scholarism, two key organizations that started a class boycott mid-September, issued an open letter to Chinese President Xi Jingping. In it, they pointed out the antagonism is rooted in the failure of the Hong Kong government to incorporate public opinion in their election reform consultation report:

[…] The consultation report put forward by the Hong Kong government did not genuinely reflect public opinion. It even claimed that Hong Kong people did not want reform the Legislative Council election system, in particular the abolition of functional constituency. The report is disrespectful to the Hong Kong people's political aspirations. The political reform framework set by the Standing Committee of the National Congress of People Representatives was misled by the Hong Kong government's misleading report. If the Hong Kong government is sincere towards its citizens, it has to admit its mistake, correct the report and incorporate the people's aspirations for genuine democracy into the political reform.

The groups further mentioned that citizen nomination is a common practice in the election of local representatives in mainland China, hence the Hong Kong people's demand for citizen nomination is legitimate:

The fact that local governments in mainland China also accept citizen nomination has provided both legal and practical foundation for the incorporation of citizen nomination into Hong Kong's election of the chief executive. […] The occupy protests are not a color revolution. It is a campaign calling for democracy. The student class boycotts and the sit-in are reactions to the actions of chief executive CY Leung, among other government officials, that go against the people's will. […] Genuine universal suffrage is not about seizing power [from the central government]; it is the realization off a high degree of autonomy and administrative power as written in the Basic Law.

Szeto Tzelong, an online current affairs commentator, further elaborated on the constitutional ground of citizen nomination presented by the two student activist groups in the open letter and stressed that the Occupy Central protests do not mean to undermine Beijing's authority:

From day one, Umbrella Movement protesters have demanded democratic political reform. This has nothing to do with overthrowing the government in mainland China. "Citizen nomination" and "abolition of Functional Constituency" will not challenge the central government's authority. Even the call for the "withdrawal of the decision made by the National Congress of People's Representatives" is made in accordance with China's Constitution Article 62 Clause 11, which includes in the authority of the National People Congress to power to "amend and withdraw the decision made by the standing committee of the NPC." […] In mainland China, the local election of people's representatives allows for "voter nomination". Any citizen who obtains 10 legitimate voters' nominations can become a candidate. In addition, in mainland China, the role of an "election committee" is purely administrative and does not enjoy the substantive nomination right. According to the principle of "one country, two systems," the election law in Hong Kong should be more flexible than mainland China. The practice of "citizen nomination" is consistent with the current practice of the elections in the District Council and Legislative Council and by no means violates the law implemented in China. The struggle for "citizen nomination" is just a civil rights movement and has nothing to do with over taking power [from the central government], nor is a [color] revolution.

Teng Biao, a mainland Chinese human right lawyer, however, believes that the fate of Hong Kong and mainland China cannot be detached and the struggle for democracy in Hong Kong will inevitably affect China. He called the dilemma, the unbearable heaviness of revolution:

The nature of dictatorship is to keep everything under control. The authoritarian system will not allow the existence of a free system. It considers genuine universal suffrage in Hong Kong to be a crack in the dam, which will eventually lead to the downfall of dictatorship. […] Hong Kong people are not just struggling for their own democracy. The political context has turned their democratic struggle into a struggle for China's democracy. This is a paradoxical reality for Hong Kong people, who have developed very strong local identification and wanted to keep a distance with mainland China. […] The Hong Kong people have taken up the unbearable heaviness of revolution, struggling for democracy for those who live in a piece of land that they do not identify with. […]

They seem to have forgotten their history

Oct 6, 2014 | moonofalabama.org

brian | Oct 6, 2014 8:06:25 PM | 108

this appeared in the guardian

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/05/hong-kong-protests-betrayed-by-china-abandoned-by-britain

but they seem to have forgotten their history

Karl Marx wrote in "Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist," Volume One of "Capital":

"The English East India Company, as is well known, obtained, besides the political rule in India, the exclusive monopoly of the tea-trade, as well as of the Chinese trade in general, and of the transport of goods to and from Europe. ... The monopolies of salt, opium, betel and other commodities, were inexhaustible mines of wealth."

So while the Chinese government was taking stronger and stronger measures to end the opium trade, the British were doing all they could to increase it.

Britain's East India Company would wage three wars on the people of China in order to secure the right to sell opium there. These wars for imperialist plunder and to open up new markets determined the fate of Hong Kong.

They were the world's first drug wars. Their sole purpose was to secure the importation of an addictive substance that provided a bountiful flow ofdidn't stand a chance against the British warships.

Rowntree wrote that the British were "in a great hurry to make money out of the East, and the gunboats were found to clear the way quickly. All vestiges of compassion for mankind had been swept away by the silver stream of rupees which poured into the Calcutta Exchequer."

The wars waged on the Chinese people caused untold deaths and casualties. The British destroyed, plundered, looted and raped their way along the coast of China.

http://www.serendipity.li/wod/hongkong.html

The Adults Show Up in Hong Kong by Peter Lee

University administrators has to be the key players in the protest movement as without their direct support any large stale student demonstration outside holidays and vacations is simply impossible. The same was true for Kiev, where rectors of major universities were actually on payroll of Maidan organizers and, at least initially, provided foot soldiers for the protest. Quote: "I tend to give the greatest respect to one group of actors - the university administrators - in the midst of what has been a carnival of less-than-honest framing, slippery tactics, and alarmist bullshit."
Oct 07, 2014 | CounterPunch

... ... ...

Possibly, the Hong Kong government has already signaled, if not its capitulation, its willingness to horsetrade.

As I previously wrote, I considered the fizzling out of the student ultimatum on Thursday night (for C.Y. Leung to resign) and the rapid withdrawal of the students on Sunday night despite the violence in Mong Kok as signs of a choreographed deal.

I tend to give the greatest respect to one group of actors-the university administrators-in the midst of what has been a carnival of less-than-honest framing, slippery tactics, and alarmist bullshit.

They apparently have the job of wrangling the student demonstrators and they seem to have a sincere desire to keep them safe, not only from the Hong Kong cops, but also from the machinations of the Occupy movement, which may, as the situation requires, need some student martyrs at the hands of cops, triads, or provocateurs to keep the outrage machine cranking. I, for one, would not consider it beyond possibility that some determined backer of the movement might actually send some anonymous goons to rough up some students if he felt that was necessary to keep the pro-democracy fire burning and realize his investments in political reform.

After he went downtown to ceremoniously call for the cancellation of the Thursday ultimatum against C.Y. Leung, the president of City University of Hong Kong, James Sung, issued this remarkable statement:

"Although they can't grasp the full complexity of the situation, they have innocent hearts…and should be given the utmost toleration and compassion."

The struggle for Hong Kong isn't just students speaking truth to power with umbrellas and Cantopop.

This is a prolonged, sophisticated multi-stage political battle between two resourceful and capable adversaries.

If you want to understand what's going on in Hong Kong, you can't focus solely on the beauty of democracy and the adorableness of the students. The democracy movement is also embedded in a matrix of money, subterfuge, compromise, subornation, propaganda, and manipulation. In other words, it's good old-fashioned politics, Hong Kong-and Beijing-style.

Peter Lee edits China Matters and writes for CounterPunch on Asia.

Hong Kong's war for democracy gets dirtier by Peter Lee

Oct 10, 2014 | atimes.com

[Hong Kong opposition lawmakers have asked the territory's anti-corruption agency to investigate CY Leung, the chief executive, following revelations that he received 4m pounds [US$7 million] in undisclosed payments from an Australian company.

The Democratic party on Thursday asked the Independent Commission Against Corruption to open a probe, while members of the umbrella pan-democrat camp said the opposition would also consider launching impeachment proceedings. - Financial Times, October 9.]

Things have become hotter for Hong Kong Chief Executive CY Leung, with Australian journalist John Garnaut revealing that Leung signed a non-compete agreement when he parted ways with an Australian company, UGL, that also included a multi-million dollar consulting clause that might have exposed him to some conflict of interest ethics problems when he became Hong Kong's chief executive.

Though the sin seems to be of a venial nature as Radio Free Asia reported it:

While there was nothing apparently illegal about the contract itself, Leung didn't disclose it during his election campaign, the paper said.
That's not good enough for the pro-democracy movement:
Pan-democratic lawmakers in Hong Kong said they would impeach Leung over the allegations.
Fair enough. In my opinion, this is a not unpredictable escalation of the crisis, an effort to get the pro-Beijing government on the defensive when dealing with the negotiations with the students, intimidate the government with the pro-democracy movement's clout and capabilities and, perhaps, decapitate the HK gove forcing CY Leung's resignation and putting the accommodation-minded Carrie Lam - Hong Kong's chief secretary, ie the city's top civil servant - in the driver's seat.

So Leung has his work cut out for him. No problem with that. We're clearly in the hardball phase of the struggle.

I predicted there will be a continual escalation of pressure against the Hong Kong government in order to reform and co-opt it and present the pro-democracy case to Beijing, maybe not out of conviction but because of the desire to dodge the intense political pressure that the democracy movement will continue to bring to bear, inside and outside the governments, from elites and key constituencies, and backed up by the ability to put students on the streets to protest.

Educators now in open support of the movement, as I also predicted. A student told RFA that only half the students were in class:

"[The rest] are all in Admiralty and Central," Chin said. "The college still supports us, and the teachers are e-mailing stuff to us, to help the students."
And indeed, Garnaut's audio segment (illustrated with a quite timely Next Media animation), editorialized about the "travesty" of the nine-day delay in the Hong Kong government's beginning talks with the students and opined that revelations about the deal "add to the pressure on CY Leung to be more reasonable in upcoming talks".

... ... ...

If the journalistic community is unable to recognize, as I put it on Twitter, plain vanilla psyops meant to sow FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) between Beijing and Hong Kong at a level befitting an IQ test in a petting zoo, while dodging the fact that the pro-democracy movement is engaged in a calculated and rather inelegant exercise in dirty tricks ?

... ... ...

My general feeling is this. The Western media wants a big story to come out of this. Heck, there's a certain prestige media outlet that's laying off journos by the fistful while maintaining an expensive, top-heavy presence of exiled reporters in Hong Kong; it needs a big story.

And it's hoping that story is democratic revolution in Hong Kong and maybe, just maybe, in mainland China.

Unfortunately, that's just one story. And right now it's not the main story.

The main story is that the pro-democracy movement is coordinated and financed by a group of clever, determined, and ruthless bigwigs who are using the student demonstrations as part of a sophisticated political campaign against the Hong Kong government to achieve some electoral reforms.

Maybe not the story the pro-democracy media wants to tell.

... ... ...

Speaking of facts - actually, facts, leaks, and oppo research dumps from the other side of the fence - pro-Beijing operators unearthed another interesting nugget from the computers of Jimmy Lai, the Next Media tycoon who is bankrolling and overseeing much of the democracy action in Hong Kong.

The Lai camp has not challenged the authenticity of an audio recording purporting to be Lai's own record of his discussions with Taiwan democracy icon Shih Ming-teh in October 2013.

Shih did 25 years - yes, 25 years, including 13 years of solitary and four years of hunger strike - of hard time in Taiwan's prisons during a struggle for reform of the Republic of China's political system (under Chiang Kai-shek, and until his son Chiang Ching-kuo yielded, the ROC operated under a martial law regime inherited from the mainland that gave Taiwaners only a minority voice as one of the two dozen or so Chinese provinces in the parliament). As a result, he is called by some "Taiwan's Mandela".

As befits the factionalized character of Taiwanese politics, Shih broke with the Democratic Progressive Party and is now on the outside looking in. His most relevant experience to Lai apparently was his organization of the "Million Voices against Corruption, President Chen Must Go" "Red Shirts" action in 2006, an orchestrated multi-stage, multi-week street action that contributed to independence-minded Chen Shui-bian's removal from office, much to the delight of Beijing; in fact, Shih was accused of acting as the PRC's cat's paw.

... ... ...

The accompanying news story says Lai made an offering of 200,000 yuan (currency not specified) to arrange the meeting (which was puckishly described as Lai "going to pick up the scriptures" as Tripitika did in Journey to the West) and Lai collected everybody's phones so they couldn't be used as listening devices (Lai apparently knew about the ability of government surveillance authorities to secretly turn on cellphones and turn them into microphones).

Shih supposedly gave Lai advice on putting students, young girls, and mothers with children in the vanguard of the street protests, in order to attract the support of the international community and press, and to sustain the movement with continual activities to keep it dynamic and fresh.

... ... ...

The meeting was apparently meant to be a super secret summit between Lai, some Hong Kongers, and Shih Ming-teh and some other Taiwan figures who had experience in the use of mass street politics. One of the other attendees at the meeting, a local media nawab associated with protest politics named Fan Keqian, revealed on Taiwan TV that he was furious at Lai - who had demanded complete, "silent as the grave" secrecy - for letting the audio get out, calling him "a son of a dog". Neither Fan nor another attendee, Yao Li-ming, a political commentator who also helped put the wood to Chen Shui-bian in the 2006 mass action, can be heard on this excerpt.

The audio is an interesting look at the nuts and bolts of high-stakes activism by two serious players, one well-heeled and determined, the other bringing a lifetime of experience to the table. Shih talks about the importance of a commitment to go to jail for the cause (he says he's willing to go to Hong Kong and get arrested) and the inevitable dangers of provocateurs...

... ... ...

Note:
For the sake of posterity and interested readers and journos, see here for a translation of the transcript of the discussion between Jimmy Lai and Shih Ming-teh.

Peter Lee writes on East and South Asian affairs and their intersection with US foreign policy.

(Copyright 2914 Peter Lee)

[Oct 12, 2014] Unlike Ukraine, The Hong Kong Protests Will Almost Certainly Fail by Paul Roderick Gregory

I like how Paul Roderick Gregory distort EuroMaidan events ;-). And I agree that "Euromaidan succeeded because of special circumstances" -- inclusion by Stalin Galicia into Ukraine.
Oct 10, 2014 | Forbes
Ukraine's Euromaidan protests-taking place in Kiev from November 21, 2013 to February 22, 2014-aimed to break Ukraine out of Vladimir Putin's sphere of influence. They succeeded, although how well depends on the West's response to Putin's ferocious counterattack. Hong Kong's Democracy protests (August 31-?) are being carried out by Hong Kong students protesting for a semblance of freedom from the autocratic control of Communist China under its flawed "one country, two systems" formula. These demonstrations were sparked by China's reneging on its promise to restore the democratic election of the Hong Kong governor by 2017.

Unlike Ukraine, the Hong Kong protests will almost certainly fail. Euromaidan was a rare exception of success carried out under more propitious circumstances. The questions for Hong Kong are: how soon will the demonstrations be put down and at what cost in terms of blood and loss of economic freedom?

The parallels between Euromaidan and Hong Kong's Umbrella Revolution (so called because demonstrators carry umbrellas) have not gone unnoticed in China. Chinese commentators dismiss what they call Maidanocracy as "the rule of the square, from the infamous Maidan in central Kiev where the Ukrainian protests began. If carried out to its full extent, it will not end well for Hong Kong."

The Communist Party of China's (CPC) fear of Maidanocracy is reflected in its complete news blackouts of both Maidan and the Umbrella Revolution. In its official diplomatic pronouncements, China has followed the Russian line that no government established by the mob rule of Maidanocracy is legitimate.

Inherent in this claim is that both Russia and China are ruled by legitimate regimes, whose overthrow would be illegal and contrary to international law.

Euromaidan succeeded because of special circumstances: The Maidan Square protests reflected a general and genuine public revulsion with out-of-control corruption that affected everyone from common citizen to oligarch, by the years of national tragedy under Soviet rule, and by a genuine desire to become a part of Europe rather than of the Eurasian kleptocracy of Russia. Moreover, Maidan took place in the nation's capital and the center of pro-European, anti-Putin sentiment. It had the widespread support of Kievans who kept demonstrators fed and plied them with moral support. The immediate and perverse source of victory was the government's loss of nerve when it authorized sniper fire that killed a considerable number of demonstrators and set in motion intensifying violence.

[Oct 12, 2014] Furious protesters chase police to Mong Kok station in nightly stand-off by Peter So and Emily Tsang

October 12 , 2014 | South China Morning Post

A series of angry stand-offs between police and protesters in Mong Kok the early hours of Sunday marked the end of an otherwise largely peaceful second week of democracy protests in the bustling Kowloon district.

At least three protesters were arrested. A citizen journalist was hit by a baton to collapse temporarily and a reporter working for the Ming Pao newspaper said he sustained a scratch in his leg after being kicked by the police. Police have yet to comment on the night's events.

Tensions rose around 2am on Sunday when plain-clothes police officers requested some protesters on Nathan Road to show their ID cards. The group had been reinforcing barricades at the occupied area south of Nelson Street.

The protesters in return requested the officers to show their proof of identification. Heated arguments between ensued. The stand-off ended with police escorting away one protester and retreating to Sai Yeung Choi Street, a sidestreet.

Protesters followed the police officers to Sai Yeung Choi Street, where another confrontation ended with at least two further arrests.

James Bang, a 28-year-old citizen journalist, was hit by a police baton on his knee and arm. One female protester said she had been hit on the chest by a police officer during the altercation.

[Oct 12, 2014] Carrie Lam 'helpless' over talks deadlock

Oct 12, 2014 | South China Morning Post

Hong Kong government No 2 Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor has expressed "disappointment and helplessness" over the collapse of talks with students, as unprecedented democracy protests which have rocked the city entered their third week.

Lam - who insisted a resumption of dialogue could happen only if the students accepted talks based on the controversial August ruling of the National People's Congress - made the comments as a flurry of late-night activity saw both sides dig their heels in amid growing concern in the business community over the economic impact of the Occupy Central movement.

Student leaders issued an open letter to President Xi Jinping in which they reiterated that their movement was not a "colour revolution" but a genuine call for universal suffrage and a government that is truly accountable for its actions. The letter also called on the president to "not be afraid of your people''.

The letter came just hours after student leader Agnes Chow Ting announced she was stepping down from her position as Scholarism spokeswoman due to exhaustion and stress.

Beijing is showing no signs of bending to pressure. A front-page editorial in yesterday's People's Daily turned up the heat on the Occupy Central movement, describing it as "unrest", the most serious charge laid at the student-led protest since it began three weeks ago.

... ... ...

The 'Umbrella Revolution' and Secessionist Political Contagion in China (II) by Andrew Korybko

Oriental Review

Raining on China's Parade

It is now necessary to look at the 'Umbrella Revolution' in a larger geopolitical perspective to best understand how it fits into the larger picture of US grand strategy for Eurasia. In short, the US is attempting to 'rain on China's parade' of global ascendancy by hijacking and sabotaging it via whichever means possible, including internal subversion and the festering of violent and secessionist tendencies. Finally, important attention must be paid to how the Chinese authorities are dealing with the conundrum between capitulation and escalation

Low-Hanging Fruit

Hong Kong finally became reunited with China in 1997 after over 150 years of British occupation. Seeing as how it socially, politically, and economically developed in a different manner than the rest of China during such important and rapidly changing historical periods, it can be seen as having already formulated its own identity somewhat separate from that of the rest of the country. Hong Kong's semi-autonomy institutionalized this in its citizens' mindset after the reunification, and considering that they are formally an island chain (albeit in extreme close proximity to the mainland), there is also a geographic separation that reinforces their self-identification separateness. Through these means, a sizeable proportion of Hong Kong's population is influenced by the West and its various mechanisms of projecting such influence (including in 'democratic' rhetoric), thus making it the low-hanging fruit of a unified China and subject to extreme outside interference.

The Chaos Contagion

The primary domestic objectives of the 'Umbrella Revolution' is to unleash a contagion of chaos to sweep through coastal China and severely undermine and weaken, if not overthrow, the Communist Party's leadership. The idea is to create a 'battering ram' to break centralized control and initiate a chaotic chain reaction that spreads into all of China's megalopolises via copycat movements (whether activated Color Revolution sleeper cells or not) and divides the rest of society, even if it is only theoretically 10% of a city's population in favor of revolution and 90% against it. This strategic societal splitting leads to domestic chaos and a clash of two Chinas – 'Chinese China' and 'Western China', with the former supporting the Chinese method of democracy and managing affairs while the latter want to brazenly copy the West in all regards (like Russia's 'Westernizer' leadership in the early 1990s, to similar success).

The end result is to create as much domestic chaos as possible to throw the authorities off balance and provoke another Tiananmen Square event. In turn, this can be selectively manipulated by Western media outlets for long-term image advantage and information warfare. CNN has already taken to highlighting the similarities between 1989 and 2014, and the activists themselves seem intent on doing the same, even hoisting the infamous 'goddess of democracy' above their gatherings. This is where the umbrella and plastic wrap innovations come into play. By offering the authorities no other non-lethal way to physically respond besides rubber bullets, the chances of this happening increase. Should the 'Umbrella Revolution' follow the template of Color Revolutions before it, one can expect 'mysterious' snipers to begin shooting indiscriminately at both police and civilians to maximize the chaotic uncertainty and provoke even more panic on the streets. Even if the Color Revolution attempt fails in all of its other objectives, it's last-ditch intended legacy is to supercede the Tiananmen Square events as an even bigger black eye to China's international reputation (whether real or perceived/manipulated).

The Containment and Cutting Apart of China

On an even larger scale, the 'Umbrella Revolution' is intended to both contain and then cut apart China, representing an ominous threat to the country's international ambitions and even territorial integrity. To begin with, by redirecting the country's focus back to the coast and away from the South China Sea maritime frontiers, it seeks to strategically distract Beijing in an already vulnerable geopolitical theater at a time of heightened competition and overlapping claims. In a certain way, it is specific iteration of the 'Reverse Brzezinski' theorem first postulated this summer in that it creates a US-sponsored 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' dilemma for Beijing. Not only that, but the US has a long-term 'defensive' goal of strategic economic diversification away from China and towards the ASEAN countries. To explain, the US understands that the complex and intimate level of economic interdependence is a vulnerability that constraints itself from more aggressive actions against China. It also wants to create a buffer belt of anti-Chinese states in ASEAN. Thus, it seeks to marry these two goals together by finding ways for Western businesses to relocate from China to Vietnam, for example. It remains to be seen, but if the 'Umbrella Revolution' stretches on indefinitely, as EuroMaidan seemed to do, it is only a matter of time before some Western businesses make high-profiled exits from Hong Kong in favor of locales further south. This is but a small development in a very long-term game, but the general idea should be grasped by the reader, and this probable trend is something to monitor going forward.

The hype caused by the 'Umbrella Revolution' is expected to spread not only to coastal China (as explained previously), but further afield and deeper into the country. Specifically, the US would like to see its pro-separatist policies in Tibet and Xinjiang energized by this movement, hoping that its proxy 'activists' take to the streets of Lhasa and Urumqi with umbrellas and plastic wrap themselves. By deflecting the non-lethal crowd control tactics of the Chinese authorities, they too can provoke an escalation that may tragically result in unintended civilian casualties. In fact, looking at it another way, the 'Umbrella Revolution' is the first time that the US' destabilization campaigns have penetrated the Heihe-Tengchong Line. This geographical division divides the country into roughly two geographically equal parts, but with the West having about 6% of the population and the East, the other 94%. Ideally for America, if destabilization can be coordinated on both sides of the Heihi-Tengchong Line between Hong Kong, Tibet, and Xinjiang (not only by their American overseers, but by collaborationist and unwitting domestic organizers within China), then this would be a partial fulfilment of America's strategic warfare against China, throw Beijing off balance, and reorient the overall Asian initiative against China's favor. Accordingly, this scenario represents a terrifyingly realistic nightmare for the Communist Party, hence the seriousness with which they are regarding the 'Umbrella Revolution'.

Between Two Chairs

Thus, an analysis of Beijing's response to the 'Umbrella Revolution' takes on even more heightened importance than previously thought, since the movement, as has been argued, could be the spark initiating a larger separatist and anti-government push all throughout the country. With the activists having neutralized all non-lethal methods of crowd control by the authorities through their umbrellas and plastic wrap, the government now stands between two chairs, to quote a Russian saying, where neither capitulation nor escalation is preferable. Thus, as was remarked in Part I, China has opted to wait and see how the movement develops, hoping that the majority of Hong Kong's citizens which oppose the destabilization will demonstrate their opposition to the Color Revolution and fizzle the event out. This, however, is fraught with risk and could drastically backfire, although in the present circumstances, it may be the only reasonable approach of the country's leadership at the moment.

As the New York Times noted in the above-referenced hyperlink, by choosing such a strategy, the government is effectively ceding the momentum to the movement, which could result in its exponential expansion. Nonetheless, if the Chinese authorities use this extra time to arrest the core and cohorts behind the Color Revolution attempt, then it can adeptly eliminate this threat by leaving only a mass of peaceful and confused civilians sitting around without subversive orders. The government does appear to be making moves in this direction, as the newspaper also reports that it is tracking and monitoring the cell phone activity of certain activists, likely in an attempt to locate and arrest the covert ringleaders (not the red-herring and media-iconic strawmen like Joshua Wong).

Beijing's method of dealing with the crisis also carries with it another risk, namely that the pro-government crowds that it expects to gather could in the long run turn out to be dangerous in their own right. For example, although they may be useful in mitigating the 'Umbrella Revolution' and saving Hong Kong's stability, in the future they could gather on their own (using the connections acquired during their previous activity) to act autonomously and without Beijing's blessing. This could take the form of extreme and widely broadcasted nationalist protests pertaining to the South China Sea controversy that could disrupt delicate Chinese diplomacy during a future crisis. Of course, the greater question is the extent that China can monitor and influence its citizens (both those that are pro- and anti-government), but this seemingly far-off threat could become a realistic possibility (or even one that could be directed and instigated by outside forces seeking to undermine China) sometime in the future. Basically, by opening the floodgates of activist civil society, China could also be unintentionally opening up a Pandora's Box.

Concluding Thoughts

Hong Kong's 'Umbrella Revolution' is undeniably a Western-orchestrated Color Revolution that seeks to exploit legitimate grievances to subversive and possibly secessionist effect. It is divided into two main groups, the dupes and the troops, with both of them having been brought together to form an anti-government mass in the middle of Hong Kong. By eliminating the effectiveness of the authorities' non-lethal crowd control methods through cheap and readily available umbrellas and plastic wrap, they have pressed the government to resort to near-lethal force and rubber bullets if the activists follow through on their occupation threats. Although engineered to create a social contagion to rip through coastal China and the ethnic periphery, the 'Umbrella Revolution' succeeds if it can merely create the perception of another Tiananmen Square. Thus, Beijing is faced with a near intractable dilemma in how to proceed, hence its tentative 'wait and see' approach. This is, however, but a temporary breather, and both the anti-government activists and the legitimate authorities are likely bracing for what seems to be an inevitable escalation (protester-provoked) that could very well climax in catastrophe.

Andrew Korybko is the American political correspondent of Voice of Russia who currently lives and studies in Moscow, exclusively for ORIENTAL REVIEW.

[Oct 12, 2014] Hong Kong's Revolt Will Probably End Like Moscow's by Leonid Bershidsky

I think Leonid Bershidsky forgot to mention the level of control over Ukrainian government exercised by the USA in Yanukovich days and existence of militant far right squads trained for street fights and supported by major Western powers, especially Poland, Lithuania, Sweden and Germany. Yanukovich was essentially on a short leash.
Oct 1, 2014 | Bloomberg View
It's hard not to notice the similarities between Hong Kong's "umbrella revolution" and the recent rebellions in Kiev and Moscow. The crucial question is whether the Chinese protesters will topple their leadership like the Ukrainians did, or gradually crumble under government pressure like the Russians. I would bet on the latter outcome.

Like Russian President Vladimir Putin, supporters of Chinese leader Xi Jinping see signs of a U.S. conspiracy in the familiar attributes of the Hong Kong protests: The use of ribbons, the "mobile democracy classroom" in Causeway Bay, the self-organization, the voluntary cleanups, the rallying cries on social networks, the idealism and young faces of the pro-democracy protesters all echo the demonstrations in Moscow and Kiev.

Pro-Beijing newspaper Wen Wei Po recently accused Hong Kong student leader Joshua Wong of being on the U.S. government's payroll. Russian state television has portrayed the Hong Kong protests as U.S. attempts to destabilize China. Yury Tavrovsky, a pro-Kremlin sinologist, urged the Chinese authorities to "squeeze out the boil:" "I don't think it will be possible to somehow persuade the protesters, because the Americans are behind them, I'm sure of that."

The problem with the U.S. conspiracy theory is that it's impossible to buy if, like me, you experienced the Moscow and Kiev demonstrations first hand. The leaders were weak and non-essential. The protests would have gone on without them. If not through the leaders, how could any puppeteer exert influence? People took to the streets because they felt cheated, and in every case the deception was real. In Moscow, Putin's party blatantly stole a parliamentary election. In Kiev, the president reneged on his promise to sign a trade pact that would have put Ukraine on a path toward European integration. In Hong Kong, a plan to vet candidates for the city's chief executive nullified Beijing's promise of universal suffrage.

The U.S. neither perpetrated the deceptions nor opened people's eyes to them. People aren't as dumb as authoritarian leaders think. The creation of symbols, organization against common ills and the desire to keep protest camps clean are instinctive and universal. They require no more conspiracy or outside influence than a swarm of bees does to organize a new hive.

The government reactions have been no less instinctive, following what political scientist Christian Davenport has called the "Law of Coercive Responsiveness." Only the degree of repression has varied.

In Moscow in 2011 and 2012, the authorities tread carefully, detaining and quickly releasing only the most visible activists. The peaceful, mostly middle-class demonstrators freely posted their "revolutionary" photos on Facebook (I did, too). When a rally on May 6, 2012 turned a bit violent, Putin's repressive machine sprang into action, accusing 28 people of resisting police and sentencing them to considerable prison terms (most have since been amnestied). Putin did nothing that could have radicalized the protesters. He waited until the demonstrations turned repetitive and most people stopped coming, then gradually tightened the screws, creating today's smothering regime in a matter of months.

In Kiev, President Viktor Yanukovych started down the same path, but the cruel beating of several hundred students by riot police re-energized the protests and led to an escalation of violence. Two months after the rallies started, angry men on the barricades were wielding shovel handles and Molotov cocktails, not umbrellas.

In Hong Kong, the authorities used tear gas last weekend. Like the beating in Kiev, the move has provoked and re-energized the protesters, who are now threatening to occupy government buildings -- just as the Ukrainians did, with bloody consequences.

Hong Kong chief executive Leung Chun-ying and his bosses in Beijing can still play the Putin game and refrain from the use of force. Chances are that the protesters will disperse. Like the Muscovites, the demonstrators are a well-educated, middle-class group who have little support in the rest of the country and lack the desperation to risk their lives.

Alternatively, the authorities can unleash more tear gas or bring in the Chinese military. That could lead to a violent, Kiev-style scenario, but the ending would be different. Unlike Yanukovych, now hiding in Russia, the Chinese leadership has the resources to put down the Hong Kong protests even if the city's entire 7 million population joins them.

This leaves the protesters with an unpleasant choice: Either go home and watch Beijing tighten control just like Putin did in 2012, or fight like Ukrainians and lose a bloody battle. Something tells me they will choose the first, safer option. To contact the writer of this article: Leonid Bershidsky at [email protected].

[Oct 12, 2014] Why Hong Kong Is Massively Pissed (A Primer from Big Lychee)

rudepundit.blogspot.com

... ... ...

Hong Kong's 'umbrella revolution' has just made it onto the cover of the Asian edition of Time. This suggests that the pro-democracy protests and the story will now start to fade from view. But the root cause of the unrest will not go away unless the Chinese government authorizes the city's administration to fix what Beijing's leaders coyly call 'contradictions' (i.e., Communist Party fuck-ups).

Hong Kong was founded as a British colony in the 1840s as a base from which merchants could trade with tea- and silk-producing China using opium as a means of payment – the protectionist Qing dynasty having absorbed most of the silver in circulation (an earlier version of China's more recent mercantilist trade policies). From this no-nonsense start, the city was a business-first sort of place.

When the UK handed Hong Kong to China in 1997, Beijing's paranoid Leninist dictatorship embraced the city's tycoons as a support base and to prove it would maintain the city's capitalist system. The Marxist-trained Chinese officials seem to have assumed that the richest businessmen in town created the wealth. In fact, the big conglomerates were masters at skimming it off from the smaller businesses and enterprising citizens who did the hard work of making the city a major economic success.

You may have heard Hong Kong is a 'freewheeling' capitalist paradise. But its economic structure is closer to feudalism. A small group of family-run companies controls the real-estate sector. This has enabled them since the 1970s to amass the fortunes necessary to corner other sectors, like retail and distribution, transport, electric and gas, and construction supplies. Cartels – price-fixing and other anti-competition arrangements – are essentially legal. Hong Kong consumers work like serfs for these guys.

(A quick explanation of the Hong Kong land system is in order. The government owns all the land – a British colonial practice adopted way back following the unforgettable failure of stamp duties as a viable way to raise revenue in the American colonies starting in the 1760s. In today's Hong Kong both bureaucrats and developers have an interest in maintaining an artificial shortage of land to boost government revenues and profits. The government revenues are earmarked for pointless infrastructure projects which empower bureaucrats and further enrich the tycoons.)

Since the 1997 handover, any semblance of balance between tycoon and public interests has gone out the window. Beijing has bought the tycoons' loyalty partly by giving them access to Mainland China markets; the plutocrats' Mainland assets are profitable but at the mercy of an authoritarian system with no due process (the state can grab private assets at any time, thus has the tycoons by the balls). China also seems to have guaranteed that the tycoons will be allowed free rein to gouge whatever they like from the rest of Hong Kong's economy and society. China's leaders' own families are of course up to their ears in Hong Kong-based money laundering and deals with the tycoons.

The result is a huge concentration of wealth in the hands of half a dozen or so families who control the housing market and rented commercial space. Hong Kong's post-1997 administrations have deliberately kept land supply tight. At the same time, immigration controls on Mainlanders have been relaxed, so Chinese property-buyers and shoppers have flooded into Hong Kong. The young 'umbrella revolution' protestors have little hope of buying a decent home in their own city: a tiny apartment (say 400 square feet) will cost the equivalent of maybe 12 years' total average income for a couple. And their chances of starting a business have plummeted as commercial rents have soared: landlords lease space at sky-high rents to luxury-goods chains selling crap to Mainland shoppers (such goods are taxed or faked in the Mainland). Neighborhood stores selling basics to local residents are closing to give way to designer-label brands for outsiders, adding to the feeling that Hongkongers' own city is being taken away from them.

You get some of this in New York, San Fran, Vancouver or London. But the process is on steroids in Hong Kong, thanks to the distortions created by government land policies and the influx of Mainlanders.

... ... ...

Hong Kong's Umbrellas are 'Made in USA' by William Engdahl

October 8, 2014 | boilingfrogspost.com

The Washington Hong Kong "Democracy" Project

The Washington neo-cons and their allies in the US State Department and Obama Administration are clearly furious with China, as they are with Russia's Vladimir Putin. As both Russia and China in recent years have become more assertive about defining their national interests, and as both Eurasian powers draw into a closer cooperation on all strategic levels, Washington has decided to unleash havoc against Beijing, as it has unleashed the Ukraine dis-order against Russia and Russian links to the EU. The flurry of recent deals binding Beijing and Moscow more closely-the $400 billion gas pipeline, the BRICS infrastructure bank, trade in rubles and renminbi by-passing the US dollar-has triggered Washington's response. It's called the Hong Kong 'Umbrella Revolution' in the popular media.

In this era of industrial globalization and out-sourcing of US industry to cheap-labor countries, especially to China, it's worth taking note of one thing the USA-or more precisely Washington DC and Langley, Virginia-are producing and exporting to China's Hong Kong. Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China has been targeted for a color revolution, one that has been dubbed in the media the Umbrella Revolution for the umbrellas that protesters use to block police tear gas.

The "umbrellas" for Hong Kong's ongoing Umbrella Revolution are made in Washington. Proof of that lies not only in the obscenely-rapid White House open support of Occupy Central just hours after it began, following the same model they used in Ukraine.[1] The US State Department and NGOs it finances have been quietly preparing these protests for years. Consider just the tip of the Washington Hong Kong "democracy" project.

Same dirty old cast of characters…

With almost by-now-boring monotony, Washington has unleashed another of its infamous Color Revolutions. US Government-steered NGOs and US-trained operatives are running the entire Hong Kong "Occupy Central" protests, ostensibly in protest of the rules Beijing has announced for Hong Kong's 2017 elections. The Occupy Central Hong Kong protest movement is being nominally led by a 17-year-old student, Joshua Wong, who resembles a Hong Kong version of Harry Potter, a kid who was only just born the year Britain reluctantly ended its 99-year colonial occupation, ceding the city-state back to the Peoples' Republic. Wong is accompanied in Occupy Central by a University of Minnesota-educated hedge fund money man for the protests, Edward Chin; by a Yale University-educated sociologist, Chan Kin-man; by a Baptist minister who is a veteran of the CIAs 1989 Tiananmen Square destabilization, Chu Yiu-ming; and by a Hong Kong University law professor, Benny Tai Yiu-ting, or Benny Tai.

Behind these Hong Kong faces, the US State Department and its favorite NGO, the US Congress-financed National Endowment for Democracy (NED), via its daughter, the National Democratic Institute (NDI), is running the Occupy Central operation. Let's look behind the nice façade of peaceful non-violent protest for democracy and we find a very undemocratic covert Washington agenda.

Start with Chu Yiu-ming, the Baptist minister chosen to head Occupy Central. The most reverend Chu Yiu-ming is a founder and sits on the executive committee of a Hong Kong NGO– Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor (HKHRM). HKHRM as they openly admit on their website, is mainly financed by the US State Department via its neo-conservative Color Revolution NGO called National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

They state their purpose: "HKHRM briefs the press, the United Nations, local and overseas governments and legislative bodies on Hong Kong human rights issues both orally and through written reports." [2] In their 2013 Annual Report, the NED reports giving Rev. Chu Yiu-ming's HK Human Rights Monitor a grant of US$ 145,000. You can buy a boatload of umbrellas for that. [3] Chu's HKHRM also works with another NED-financed creation, the Alliance for Reform and Democracy in Asia (ARDA).[4]

When Occupy Central top honchos decided to (undemocratically) name the very reverend Chu as leader of Occupy Central this past January, 2014, Chu said it was because "I have more connections with different activist groups, and experience in large-scale social campaigns." [5] He could have named NED as activist group and the CIA's 1989 Tiananmen Square as a 'large-scale social campaign,' to be more specific. The Baptist preacher admitted that he was named de facto leader of Occupy Central by two other leading organizers of the civil disobedience movement, Benny Tai Yiu-ting and Dr Chan Kin-man, who wanted him "to take up" the role. [6]

Benny Tai is also familiar with the US State Department. Tai, law professor at the University of Hong Kong and co-founder of Hong Kong Occupy Central, works with the Hong Kong University Centre for Comparative and Public Law which receives grants from the NED subsidiary, National Democratic Institute for projects like Design Democracy Hong Kong. The Centre Annual Report states, "With funding assistance from the National Democratic Institute, the Design Democracy Hong Kong website was built to promote a lawful and constructive bottom-up approach to constitutional and political reform in Hong Kong." [7] On its own website, NDI describes its years-long Hong Kong law project, the legal backdrop to the Occupy demands which essentially would open the door for a US-picked government in Hong Kong just as Victoria Nuland hand-picked a US-loyal coup regime in Ukraine in February 2014. The NDI boasts,

The Centre for Comparative and Public Law (CCPL) at the University of Hong Kong, with support from NDI, is working to amplify citizens' voices in that consultation process by creating Design Democracy Hong Kong (www.designdemocracy.hk), a unique and neutral website that gives citizens a place to discuss the future of Hong Kong's electoral system. [8]

The Hong Kong wunderkind of the Color Revolution Washington destabilization, 17-year-old student, Joshua Wong, founded a Facebook site called Scholarism when he was 15 with support from Washington's neo-conservative National Endowment for Democracy via its left branch, National Democratic Institute and NDI's NDItech project. [9] And another Occupy Central leading figure, Audrey Eu Yuet mee recently met with Vice President Joe Biden.[10] Hmmmm.

Cardinal Zen and cardinal sin…

Less visible in the mainstream media but identified as one of the key organizers of Occupy Central is Hong Kong's Catholic Church Cardinal Bishop Emeritus, Joseph Zen. Cardinal Zen according to the Hong Kong Morning Post, is playing a key role in the US-financed protests against Beijing's authority. [11] Cardinal Zen also happens to be the primary Vatican adviser on China policy. Is the first Jesuit Pope in history, Pope Francis, making a US-financed retry at the mission of Society of Jesus founder (and, incidentally, the Pope's real namesake) Francis Xavier, to subvert and take over the Peoples' Republic of China, using Hong Kong as the Achilles Heel?

Vice President Joe Biden, whose own hands are soaked with the blood of thousands of eastern Ukraine victims of the neo-nazi civil war; Cardinal Zen; Reverend Chu; Joshua Wong; Benny Tai and the neo-conservative NED and its NDI and a bevy of other State Department assets and NGO's too numerous to name here, have ignited a full-blown Color Revolution, the Umbrella Revolution. The timing of the action, a full two years before the Hong Kong 2017 elections, suggests that some people in Washington and elsewhere in the west were getting jumpy.

The growing Eurasian economic space of China in conjunction with Putin's Russia and their guiding role in creating a peaceful and very effective counter-pole to Washington's New World (dis-)Order, acting through organizations such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the BRICS, is the real target of their dis-order. That is really quite stupid of them, but then, they are fundamentally stupid people who despise intelligence.

# # # #

F. William Engdahl, BFP contributing Author & Analyst
William Engdahl is author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics in the New World Order. He is a contributing author at BFP and may be contacted through his website at www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net where this article was originally published.

Endnotes:


[1] Reuters, White House Shows Support For Aspirations Of Hong Kong People, Reuters, September 29, 2014, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/29/white-house-hong-kong_n_5901782.html.

[2] Wikipedia, Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_Human_Rights_Monitor#Officers.2C_founders_and_staff.

[3] NED, 2013 Annual Report, Grants, China (Hong Kong), http://www.ned.org/where-we-work/asia/china-hong-kong

[4] Wikipedia, Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_Human_Rights_Monitor#Officers.2C_founders_and_staff

[5] Asia News, Occupy Central chooses Rev Chu Yiu-ming as its new leader, January 3, 2014, http://www.asianews.it/news-en/%27Occupy-Central%27-chooses-Rev-Chu-Yiu-ming-as-its-new-leader-29951.html

[6] Ibid.

[7] Hong Kong University Centre for Comparative and Public Law, Annual Report, 2014, http://www.law.hku.hk/ccpl/Docs/Annual%20Report%202014.pdf.

[8] Tony Cartalucci, US Openly Approves Hong Kong Chaos it Created, September 30, 2014, Land Destroyer Blog, http://landdestroyer.blogspot.de/2014/09/us-openly-approves-hong-kong-chaos-it.html

[9] NDI, In Hong Kong Does Change Begin with a Single Step?, September27, 2012, National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, https://www.demworks.org/blog/2012/09/hong-kong-does-change-begin-single-step

[10] Tony Cartalucci, op. cit.

[11] Timmy Sung, Ernest Kao and Tony Cheung, Occupy Central is on: Benny Tai rides wave of student protest to launch movement, September 27, 2014, Hong Kong Morning Post, http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1601625/hong-kong-students-beat-us-it-benny-tai-declares-start-occupy-central

[Oct 11, 2014] Color Umbrellas over Hong Kong

Oct 10, 2014 | from-ua.com
The wave of "color revolutions", it seems, has come to China...

Most of us knew Hong Kong only as the home of Jackie Chan, endless epidemics of influenza and cheap copies of expensive European brands. But today, it attracts attention as the epicenter of a possible Chinese Maidan. Recent mass protests in this Chinese city has been nicknamed "the revolution of the umbrellas, and the official Beijing demanded that Washington not to interfere in the situation.

A city of contrasts and triads

Each "color revolution" there are two simple explanations that give its supporters and opponents. The first claim that it is a spontaneous uprising of the people, facing the street to protest against the regime, for democracy and civil rights. The second claim that this is the planned operation of the West (primarily the US) aimed at carrying out a bloodless (as it will) coup or the creation of a "controlled chaos".

Events in Hong Kong is no exception: Chinese, together with Russian politicians immediately began talking about "the hand of the West", but in the West events were interpreted strictly positive. However, every revolution, iether color "injected" with money from the West, or spontaneous, always carry the specifics of the region in which it occurs and is based on real problems. And in the end, its net result of any color revolution can be very far from the victory of democracy against tyranny.

For example, the "Arab spring" in Egypt (2011) was in reality a rebellion of radical Islamists. who are very far from ideas of democracy . "Tulip revolution" in Kyrgyzstan (2005) was nothing but the war of tribal clans. And the February revolution in Ukraine is nothing but an oligarchic coup, when one clan displaced another on a wave of opposition of Western-oriented agricultural producers and Donetsk criminal industrialists. Hong Kong "revolution of the umbrellas", also carry on its specific nuances because the city does not fit into the normal scope of our view about China.

Today, many have already forgotten that Hong Kong was the first piece of China, separated from them by the West: it happened in 1842, after the defeat of China in the Opium war with Britain.

Soon Hong Kong and adjacent areas have received the status of "overseas territories". Convenient Harbor became the main base of the British in South-East Asia and the far East, one of the most famous international ports along with Nagasaki and Rio de Janeiro.

But more importantly, Hong Kong became the South gate to China. Besides him there were two more lart ports, but the Russian Harbin lost its importance after 1920, and international Shanghai became a Communist and was nationalized after 1949. Then Taiwan was still agrarian-fisherman island, and Hong Kong had behind the support of the entire British economy, and therefore running from the Communists large and medium-sized companies and banks of Homindan China moved into it. Then he became the only trade gates with red China, maintaining this status up to 80-ies.

The result was an unprecedented economic boom of Hong Kong in the second half of the twentieth century. However, initially, it was the monstrous city of contrasts. Corporations made huge profits on intermediary trade between China and the West and the exploitation of cheap labor for the poor emigrants. Local bigwigs earned billions of dollars in property speculation: using triads, also immigrated to Hong Kong from all over China, they have pressed the poor out of homes and then resold the plots to companies. And triads, after domistication, "invested" in the manufacturing and trading business.

The economy of Hong Kong was named the most free in the world. And although, on the one hand, businessmen were not much bothered the officials, on the other, the level of social protection and working conditions of the employees were fully depended on the good will of employers. Someone squeezed all the juices for a penny, and then kicked out on the street, the sick and pregnant, and someone paid a very high salary, provided medical insurance, and housing. But generally by the time of the reunification of Hong Kong with China (1997) in the city have has had a numerous middle class, shopkeepers, officials and specialists. And the last two "strata" played in the life of Hong Kong's and the recent events an important role.

Students and the "Chinese miracle"

To become a Bank clerk, government bureaucrat in some Bureau, or engineer, the young man ought first to graduate from the University. Each Hong Kong family wants to see their children to be university students, even though not every can afford to pay for their studies.

Hong Kong students knew that in a few years they will get a well-paid job in the office - in contrast to Ukrainian students, 2/3 of which after graduation throw their diplomas under the couch because of thier uselessness in obtaining decent employment. They also feel that in on student bench they are an important social force. And yet, because of young age, they are politically acive, and not against to fool around sometimes. Mass action protests in Hong Kong is not uncommon, they occur almost every year, and in all of them in the first rows were students.

Recently, however, the Hong Kong students were drawn to protest not only the high ideals and the desire to fool around, but real concern about their future.

In 1997 when Hong Kong came under the sovereignty of red China, the future of those students was seen in the most pink colors. Hong Kong for 50 years was granted significant autonomy: the economic, administrative and political. Therefore, future city employees (who namber in the city for over a quarter of a million) confidently looked forward. And then the shortage of specialists in the rapidly growing economy of greater China has opened vast prospects for graduates of economic and technical Colleges. In addition, Hong Kong remained the major Finance and trading and manufacturing center, so that type of local employment was expected to remain plentiful too.

But fifteen years later, the situation has changed. Hong Kong became increasingly difficult to compete with mainland China in the industrial production capabilities, so many companies have moved their factories back to the "mainland". Many financial companies moved their activities in Shanghai, which became the most powerful economic capital of China. Thus, vacancies for young professionals of Hong Kong became smaller both in their native city, and in greater China - at the same time as number of student continue to increase.

Of course, Hong Kong remains the Chinese center for international banking business, and through it will still pass an enormous amount of export-import transactions and investments, however Shanghai has is a viable competitor. The reason is simple: Shanghai is the main economic project of Beijing, fully controlled by the PRC government, while Hong Kong is still more of a "Western" and less controllable.

Beijing put on Hong Kong not only economic pressure. Its autonomy is severely limited by the system of local elections, controlled from the centre. And in 2017 it was planned to replace the more limited self-government in the region. Strictly speaking, this is the limitation of democracy and was a formal pretext of the current protests. However, it's not even about democracy, as much as what can follow its loss.

For example, local authority Hong Kong forms the local bureaucracy and govern the army of civil servants. And if the local authorities will be led by a protégé of Beijing, and Hong Kong officials will depend on his whims. Want to reduce them. Want to replace their people. This means that the current students in Hong Kong hometown can cause problems not only with his career, but in employment too. Yes they will be accepted in government positions on mainland, but as they say, reluctantly and with probation, as potentially unreliable.

That's why Hong Kong students were actively involved in the movement "Occupy Central" acting for holding in city of direct democratic elections without "care" of Beijing. These young people really believe that, saving in your city enclave of democracy, they will be able to save the future. However, we emphasize that students are only actors, performers, and not the organizers and sponsors of this movement.

"I'm shaking your skyscraper"

It is clear that the sponsors of the "revolution of the umbrellas" themselves did not show, so we can only guess who they are. But hasty statements about Washington is trying to undermine there is a traditional Chinese "stability", far from reality. Because there are other, more plausible versions...

... the Hong Kong financial site is controlled by Britain and the United States, while in Shanghai is the UE which is most active participant. One thing is certain, Shanghai and Hong Kong compete for huge money flows. And even just surprising that those concern are expressed in just rather innocent "the revolution of the umbrellas.

However, event proved to be no so innocent as they lowered by 2% the value of shares of companies of Hong Kong and hit the local real estate market. And since both are within in the commercial interests of the triads, it is not surprising that they decided to squash the rallies, acting in the role of the Chinese "strike-breakers". However, on the demonstrators were thrown not tattooed members of clans but armed with sticks semi-legal "guest workers" of Hong Kong workshops...

[Oct 08, 2014] How Chinese authorities try to extinguish color revolution fire in Hong Cong

Unrest in Hong Kong are declining. On Monday, the part of the fence was dismantled, the main government complex resumed its work. Protesters with umbrellas behave peacefully and do not interfere with civil servants getting in/out of work; the number of activists on the streets has decreased dramatically:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/russian/rolling_news/2014/10/141006_hong_kong_protest_monday.shtml

Of course, it's too early to say "Done". As recently as last winter EuroMaidan a few times almost completely faded, but then petrol to sustain fire was injected again and again; in the end all this ended with national socialist revolution and Anti-Russian course for Ukraine as well as the rapid destruction of economy, and civil war at the East. However, the initial success of China authorities is obvious, and if the organizers of "umbrella Maidan" will not be able to inject new resources and money into the protest and/or organize a serious provocation along the class like of sharpshooter from the roof, Hong Kong might soon return to a normal life.

Let's see what methods the China used in response to the orange infection.

1. As we remember the significant contribution to EuroMaidan was transportation by buses of residents of Western regions of Ukraine into Kiev. In Hong Kong this trick failed. China has established a tight cordons on the border of Hong Kong - tourists who looks like potential street fighters and coordinators tourists were turned back. Buses with armed bits and fittings gull of young aggressive young people had no chance to get into the area of unrest.

2. China has carefully worked the Hong Kong professors, who trying to repay the US grants by droving students to the streets. Dismissal, conversations with the Chinese KGB, check about the payment of taxes from money from grants make this method of generating the crowd from university students by-and-large closed. Similar problems were created for all American NGOs.

Yanukovich during his time in power did not managed to close this channel of feeding of Maidan via "pre-paid" university professors, and NGOs has almost diplomatic immunity status in Ukraine. At the end he almost paid with his life for that.

3. A dangerous groups that could take on the role of storm troopers for insurgents - such as radical environmentalists were placed under administrative arrest and could not participate in the riots.

4. Around the Maidan was organized by the cordon of police, who did not give peaceful protesters the ability to smuggle to the place of unrest Molotov cocktails and such. Those who were caught were packed into police car and removed.

5. China found for local Poroshenko, who fanned the Maidan through his media resources, some very convincing words. Jimmy Lai for a couple of days disappeared from the public view, and when he returned, his revolutionary enthusiasm had sharply diminished.

6. Chinese media together were explained to local residents that because of protests big business and big money will move to other cities. which gladly will cease the opportunity to take over Hong Kong financial hub. For residents of Hong Kong this is a very troubling prospect: at least in terms of higher unemployment and lower wages. At this point many will not be able to pay their mortgages and other loans.

Explanations had its effect - CNN reports that the locals became really aggressive toward protesters. Quote:

Talks planned as Hong Kong protest numbers shrink - CNN.com

The news of official talks comes as a dwindling number of pro-democracy demonstrators continue to cling on to their protest sites in key areas of the tightly packed city. As their numbers wane, so does patience of some of their fellow citizens.

"At first, I supported them, but then I started to think they are being selfish because they block the roads -- and that's wrong," said Virginia Lai, who has sold newspapers from a stall in the busy district of Mong Kok for 45 years.

Lai says her business is down 30% and getting worse. The student-led demonstrators are camped out at a major intersection in the neighborhood, which witnessed violent clashes between protesters and their opponents over the weekend.

At the moment on the streets of Hong Kong are still about 300 protesters:

http://itar-tass.com/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/1492865

As we know from previous color revolutions experience, hardcore protesters themselves usually do not disperse voluntarily: they sit until the last, waiting for the moment when the police begin to disperse them. How will China to solve the problem is unclear.

However, we can already say that Americans have faced this time with an intelligent and cold-blooded enemy: the enemy, who had carefully studied all of their previous games, and provided a strong response to each standard course of manuals.

Perhaps, in the place of the Americans, I would think not even about Hong Kong, but about Texas and Washington. In the U.S., more than enough smoldering conflicts that an experienced player will be able, with a little luck to inflate to a full-scale protest. and amount of armed people could make it problematic for policy to crash.

[Oct 04, 2014] Violent clashes break out in Hong Kong after counter-protesters storm sit-in by Tania Branigan in Hong Kong and Jonathan Kaiman in Beijing

From comments: "It will be interesting to see how this paper and the Western media in general will report on the use of violence from the pro democracy supporters in Hong Kong, because it is inevitable.
My guess is that it will be excused and promoted as heroic."
Oct 03, 2014 | The Guardian

newenergyspace, 03 October 2014 12:17pm

Send in the boys disguised as protesters, wait for violence to ensue, then claim the whole thing had descended into a riot and that the police were justified in their intervention in the interests of 'public safety'.

MurkyFogsFutureLogs newenergyspace, 03 October 2014 2:35pm

And whom are the original protesters? Shall we (as in the West) send in the NGO's posing as student unions to protest and undermine the regional government?

Shall we, (as in the West) support our allies (like Saudi-Arabia and Turkey's) efforts in undermining the Syrian government, by sending in the jihadi's to kick off a civil war under the false auspices of a peaceful protest being violently cracked down upon?

Or how about Ukrainian style? Sending in the armed neo-nazi's to fire upon police officers to garner a like for like response to augment an excuse which leads to actions that support a Western global agenda, for example, the installation of a pro-Western government.

Come on, everyone's playing dirty, these tactics are not reserved for communist or sectarian states.

Shinnel88 Daniel Lee, 03 October 2014 2:15pm

I believe those kids were manipulated by their US-influenced school teachers. Very dangerous.

They do not know what they really want and have very misled fantasies about the Western democracy which is non-existing, especially in UK and USA where we are all evilly monitored and controlled by MI5, MI6, FBI, CIA, and NSA.

xiangbalaolao superdonyoungy, 03 October 2014 5:02pm

Are you saying the multitude of tai tais are the Chinese secret granny squad shipped down from Shenzhen? Can you speak Cantonese? Do you know HK beyond Wanchai and Central? Anyone who has lived here long enough knows you dont mess with Mong Kok and Yau Ma Dei residents, especially the triads and old girls and boys who dont take kindly to spotty kids from HKU interfering with business.

RenZantetsuken Jtd979, 03 October 2014 6:33pm

I was waiting for the standard CIA comment! Ha ha

I was waiting for the plain-clothed cops comment too, wasn't disappointed.

Imagine, if they're both correct.

hipstorian, 03 October 2014 12:24pm

It's not all Beijing sending in a mob. There is a very large number of Hong Kong people who aren't involved in the protests - mostly middle aged, who see the action as damaging the intrests of the place. Despite the reporting about it being a sweeping democratic movement, it isn't. There are disperate groups with different agends which have been lumped together.

QueenElizabeth hipstorian, 03 October 2014 1:08pm

Yes, but 'rent-a-mob' is catchier.

As 'CIA-organised demonstrations' is catchier in the Beijing tabloids.

ploughmanlunch, 03 October 2014 12:27pm

It will be interesting to see how this paper and the Western media in general will report on the use of violence from the pro democracy supporters in Hong Kong, because it is inevitable.
My guess is that it will be excused and promoted as heroic.

Marella, 03 October 2014 12:29pm

Presumably the Chinese government can now claim this was a 'spontaneous' uprising of loyal citizens, and avoid international criticism.

marky226, 03 October 2014 12:29pm

The pro- democracy crowd is being helped significantly in funding by guess who America. The CIA involved again, now I would be support them but this.

eveready, 03 October 2014 12:29pm

Just as I predicted. Hongkong is a fast and furious society. Time is money. The demonstrators are depriving the businessmen in the vicinity of their livelihood. These locals have big losses staring into their faces. The Hongkong government doesn't need to lift a finger to make the demonstrators go home. What more the Communist Chinese government.

WinstonTheChair marky226, 03 October 2014 12:48pm

Have you got evidence for this? Sorry but links to the blogs of nutjobs don't count and neither does inferring on the basis that, "It must be, mustn't it?" – I mean real evidence that might stand rational examination.

Krustallos WinstonTheChair, 03 October 2014 1:03pm

Even if the CIA was involved, would that be a reason not to support the protestors? The KGB fairly seriously infiltrated the UK trade union movement but that didn't mean UK trade unions were nothing but a Kremlin plot.

Besides, basing your political decisions on opposing whatever the US supports is likely to lead you into some very strange places. Better to analyse the issues from an independent standpoint. What's likely to benefit the working class in Hong Kong the most? Political freedom and the right to vote for whoever they choose, or a government hand picked by the dictatorship in Beijing?

alfredwong WinstonTheChair, 03 October 2014 1:11pm

The Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi has sternly warned the US to not get involved in Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests. China probably has the evidence that the US is actually pulling the strings from behind the scene.

marky226 Krustallos, 03 October 2014 1:57pm

China is dictatorship, meantime in America you have a country which is much the same when few vote and the rich and big companies run the country.

arhead4u2 LarsPorsena, 04 October 2014 2:42am

The following is a comment I read earlier:

On Thursday, Wen Wei Po published an "expose" into what it described as the U.S. connections of Joshua Wong, the 17 year-old leader of student group Scholarism.

The story asserts that "U.S. forces" identified Mr. Wong's potential three years ago, and have worked since then to cultivate him as a "political superstar."

Evidence for Mr. Wong's close ties to the U.S. that the paper cited included what the report described as frequent meetings with U.S. consulate personnel in Hong Kong and covert donations from Americans to Mr. Wong. As evidence, the paper cited photographs leaked by "netizens." The story also said Mr. Wong's family visited Macau in 2011 at the invitation of the American Chamber of Commerce, where they stayed at the "U.S.-owned" Venetian Macao, which is owned by Las Vegas Sands Corp.

Benny Tai "Occupy Central's" leader, has spent years associated with and benefiting from US State Department cash and support.

"Occupy Central's" self-proclaimed leader, Benny Tai, is a law professor at the aforementioned University of Hong Kong and a regular collaborator with the NDI-funded CCPL. In 2006-2007 (annual report, .pdf) he was named as a board member – a position he has held until at least as recently as last year. In CCPL's 2011-2013 annual report (.pdf), NDI is listed as having provided funding to the organization to "design and implement an online Models of Universal Suffrage portal where the general public can discuss and provide feedback and ideas on which method of universal suffrage is most suitable for Hong Kong.

The U.S. has certainly promoted regime change worldwide, often by using non-governmental organizations as front groups to funnel money to dissidents who will overthrow the government.
For example, USAID has been called the "new CIA", and FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds told Washington's Blog that the U.S. State Department is involved in many "hard power" operations, often coordinating through well-known "Non-Governmental Organizations" (NGOs). Specifically, Edmonds explained that numerous well-known NGOs – which claim to focus on development, birth control, women's rights, fighting oppression and other "magnificent sounding" purposes or seemingly benign issues – act as covers for State Department operations. She said that the State Department directly places operatives inside the NGOs.

Edmonds also told us that – during the late 90s and early 2000s – perhaps 30-40% of the people working for NGOs operated by George Soros were actually working for the U.S. State Department.

If this all sounds too nutty, remember that historians say that declining empires tend to attack their rising rivals … so the risk of world war is rising because the U.S. feels threatened by the rising empire of China.

marky226, 03 October 2014 12:33pm

http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-openly-approves-hong-kong-chaos-it-created/5405387

Isotropisch marky226, 03 October 2014 1:09pm

You do know that the so-called "Centre for Research on Globalization" is actually one person, Michael Chussodvsky, a rampant conspiracy theorist and holocaust denier, who relates every single event in the world to a CIA/White House plot. He is the definition of an unreliable source.

Reynardus, 03 October 2014 12:35pm

Has the U.S. State Department come up with the color name for this "revolution"?

21794h, 03 October 2014 12:36pm

Unacceptable abuse of human rights and a peaceful protest? Waits for Cameron's statement supporting the Chinese regime...........

guface 21794h, 03 October 2014 3:22pm

abuse of human rights

isnt the disruption of other people's livelihoods and stopping the progress of an entire city a bit of an abuse of human rights too?

kw9751, 03 October 2014 12:51pm

man, this article may have well been written by fox news.

firstly for the clueless pressitutes here, the mong kok area in hong kong has no government buildings. its is a tightly packed area of small businesses and apartments.

it is highly therefore highly likely the mob in question are local residents that have seen their business wreaked for a week and their sleep disturbed for an entire week.

now imagine you have a bunch of hippies outside your door singing kumbaya all day, all night preventing you from working or sleeping for an entire. would you not want to beat them into a pulp too no matter how worthy their cause is?

Prianichek, 03 October 2014 12:53pm

Applause! US State Dept. set another country on fire. Who s gonna be next?

VengefulRevenant, 03 October 2014 12:54pm

The resort to lame abuse and insulting epithets against the opponents of the occupation by the Guardian "journalist" is actually rather pitiable. It's an infantile tantrum.

Their Guardian's atavistic colonialist hopes were so high that the Occupy Central protest would cause severe political damage to China but the turnout for the demonstrations turned out to be rather underwhelming. And now the whole spectacle appears to be fizzling further.

In their disappointment the Guardian petulantly editorialised that Brazil and South Africa and other non-European countries "must" join in the China bashing to provide cover for the attacks so that they didn't all appear to come from the usual suspects, the decrepit white empires. Of course none of the countries to whom the Guardian's liberal Colonel Blimps issued instructions paid them the slightest attention.

Now that the demonstrators have overstayed their welcome with many residents of the occupied areas and have mostly have gone home, the Guardian is shedding bitter tears of rage and lapsing into hate speech. Sad really ... they would have happy with a win or a bloodbath but it looks like they won't get either.


mapleflot VengefulRevenant, 03 October 2014 1:05pm

Or you could just have free elections. Or is it `petulant' to suggest that if the majority are against protests, the majority would vote accordingly?

VengefulRevenant mapleflot, 03 October 2014 1:23pm

Yes, your comment is petulant, because it reflects a combination of arrogance and impotence.

The point is this: what you think and want for Hong Kong and what the Guardian thinks and wants are completely beside the point.

What happens in China will be decided by the people of China and not by liberal editorialists and commentators in Britain, no matter how convinced you are of your moral and political superiority.

Britain isn't the boss in Hong Kong any more, get it? The British military dictatorship over the territory died with a post-imperial whimper. Your ruling class no longer rule there.

The empire's over.

Gang TieRen, 03 October 2014 12:55pm

This is the old tactic of the Communist and now adopted by the Hong Kong government. These thugs are paid by the Communist to intimate freedom loving people just like what they are doing inside of China.

Zakida Gang TieRen, 03 October 2014 12:57pm

"These thugs are paid by the Communist to intimate freedom loving people just like what they are doing inside of China."

canbeanybody Gang TieRen, 03 October 2014 1:03pm

Those "occupy central" extremists are bona fide thugs who behave irrationally and unreasonably.

They do what they did only because their American handlers told them so.

It has nothing to do with "democracy" as it has everything to do with regime change.

And the need for those Americans handlers to mobilize "Occupy central" I because they are not doing that great in terms of containing China with their lousy war machines, ganging up their little fellow "friends" in Far East to trouble China.

nothingtoeat, 03 October 2014 12:57pm

I love the how the author uses picture images propaganized her bias views. The pictures show the young occupier are calm, innocent, heoric, victomized where the contrast you see mid-age mob-looking, angry, vulger and wretched.


StevenJ19, 03 October 2014 1:09pm

We should be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the pro-democracy activists, and if the Chinese don't like it, Hong Kong should become a British protectorate until free and fair elections have taken place.

Wiseowl123 StevenJ19, 03 October 2014 1:22pm

A very nice imperialist wet dream you are having there...why not go back to bed.

VengefulRevenant StevenJ19, 03 October 2014 1:41pm

Hong Kong should become a British protectorate until free and fair elections have taken place.

And how long would that take?

The British regime occupied Hong Kong for 144 years after grabbing it as a base for its opium-pushing operation into China. It was governed as a racist military dictatorship with an autocratic governor.


Luke Taco Powell, 03 October 2014 1:10pm

Stay calm Hong Kong, they can't fight you if stay peaceful.

Sarah7591Wilson Luke Taco Powell, 03 October 2014 3:09pm

Don't be naive. Of course they can. Look at what happened to those college students in California in 2011, whom the cops pepper-spayed directly into their faces and eyes as they were participating in a completely peaceful sit-down.

StephenDaedalus, 03 October 2014 1:14pm

Would be helpful to tell us more about the counter-demonstrators and what they have to say. "Thugs" on its own doesn't tell us much.

游天 StephenDaedalus, 03 October 2014 1:29pm

Because they are not thugs. They are mostly people living close by or have a tiny business in the same region. They are being disrupted not only during day time but 24 hours a day. It makes sense that they are fed up because in reality majority of the people in Hong Kong do not support this "protest". If you are interested, go back and check the poll of people who vote against this protest before it started.

Babeouf, 03 October 2014 1:14pm

Yes they have done the same at large demonstrations in the UK for years. You don't send in the riot squads until people start to drift away. And I expect it will be the same here. You don't want to be with the last few hundred demonstrators on which the authorities will leave a violent imprint. The Honk Kong Protesters appear to have commonalities with Occupy Wall Street many of whose members had the most fantastic illusions about what they were actually doing. In Honk Kong you knew they were done when the Western media highlighted their politeness.

There are no polite revolutions. Perhaps they can put it on again next year for the tourists.

VERBALWARRIOR, 03 October 2014 1:16pm

Democracy does not prevent oppression, and in most EU and western states including the UK it is actually oppressive due to the electoral systems in place.

Oppression is common in UK, though the use of English language, its definitions and meanings are used to deceive the reality.

One just needs to watch/listen to Tory conference.

The proposed freezes to public worker wage rises and to those on tax credits or even on benefits are forms of oppression, which reduces and removes peoples ability to maintain their living standards and lives. There can be no clearer reality of definition of oppression. This Tory group seek to afflict oppressive policies upon millions of people.

In UK, our first pass the post electoral system is used to oppress the views and will of a vast number of citizens, very often in UK those elected are elected by a minority of those who actually voted in total, once all opposition votes for all parties are accounted for.

All very well protesting and fighting for democracy, but at the end of the day it is the type of democracy that ultimately counts.

sydsam, 03 October 2014 1:50pm

Dear Guardian, Why pro-democracy activists and not pro-US separatist, as was labelled in Ukraine?

Hong Kong protests: Violence 'organized', Occupy Central leaders say – as it happened

Compare with Slightly Skeptical EuroMaidan Chronicles, December 2013 and Slightly Skeptical EuroMaidan Chronicles, January 2014

marion4

I'm a pro-democracy HK student. Whilst I don't agree with the views of the pro-Beijing groups, I accept that their voices have the right to exist in the city, because of something called freedom of speech. But yet these pro-Beijing groups try to stifle our voices through their fists...

(By the way, there are witness accounts saying that the pro-Beijing groups are targeting female protesters and sexually harassing them...)

canbeanybody marion4

Once the law and order deliberately breaks down by those "occupy central" activists then many Hong Kong Chinese will suffer.

This is why ever so important to maintain stability and law and order.

Those law breakers ignoring the rules and regulation but just indulge in disruption and destruction, by blocking all major roads, blocking business and traffic then the city is paralysed.

Students will miss their lessons and Hong Kong economy will be severely damaged.

That is why Hong Kong authority appeal to all of you to disperse.

Why not just heed the call?

canbeanybody

After Kiev, the Americans now think it is Chinese turn to get their deadly and nasty game.

Although there are many "occupy central" extremists do exactly what those Americans say, yet they will fail.

Arrest those nasty "occupy central" extremists who are now hidden behind. But first isolate them for the arrest. Impose heavy fines on them and impose long sentences on those most violent and notorious die hard extremists.

MikeLundun canbeanybody

Show your evidence.

canbeanybody MikeLundun

what evidence you want? The evidence the CIA met Kiev regime leaders? Or you want evidence the meeting between Americans agencies and "occupy central" extremists? Or you want evidence of meetings between "occupy central" extremists with foreign governmental officials?

They are all in the press.

It would not be that far fetched to say that they have discussed strategy and techniques.

Are you saying otherwise?

credox969

The Guardian or how to turn HK business owners, store keepers and other bread winners into "pro-beijing rule" supporters. I'm getting disgusted reading this Guardian crap

[Oct 04, 2014] Hong Kong The Radicalize Or Fold Alternative

October 04, 2014

The protest in Hong Kong, instigated by U.S. financed groups, were on the verge of ending in a fizzle.

Hong Kong protests dwindle after talks offer

Mass protests in Hong Kong appear to have lost steam after the leader of the Chinese territory refused to step down, instead offering dialogue.
...
The Hong Kong Federation of Students said in a statement early on Friday that they planned to join the talks with the government, focused specifically on political reforms. They reiterated that Leung step down, saying he "had lost his integrity".

A wider pro-democracy group that had joined the demonstrations, Occupy Central, welcomed the talks and also insisted that Leung quit.

The offer for talks, the weather and the end of a two day holiday was the point where the protests largely died down. A few diehards kept blocking streets and buildings but the end was in sight.

Remarked a political editor of a U.S. magazine:

Blake Hounshell
‏@blakehounshell

When protesters don't get at least some of what they want, they have to radicalize or fold. Key moment in Hong Kong right now.

5:36 AM - 2 Oct 2014

It seems that other people had the same thought and some idea of how to radicalize the crowd:

Hundreds of people opposed to Hong Kong's pro-democracy demonstrations converged on one of the movement's main sites Friday, prompting some of the ugliest scenes of violence yet in the past week of protests.

In the early afternoon on Friday, opponents of the demonstrations moved en masse against the occupation site in the neighborhood of Mong Kok, a popular shopping district across the harbor from Hong Kong. They dismantled tents and removed the protesters' supplies. Scuffles broke out, with reports of roving street battles between protesters and their opponents.

The predictable consequence of that attack, certainly not in the interest of the government, was a revival of the protests and a hardening of the protesters position:

Student leaders called off talks with the government – offered the previous night – accusing officials of allowing violence to be used against them. It dashed the hopes of a resolution to a mass movement that has seen tens of thousands of people take to the streets of the city at its height.

So who paid the thugs, the police says some attackers were members of criminal triads, who instigated the radicalization? The government which wants to end the protests, the businesspeople who lose money due to the blockades or some three letter agency of foreign provenience?

The government now announced that it will end the protesters' blockades of public roads and buildings by Monday. As I had warned in an earlier piece:

While earlier Color Revolutions employed mostly peaceful measures the aim now is blood in the streets and lots of infrastructure damage to weaken the forces resisting the regime change attempts. Accordingly the authorities in Hong Kong should prepare for much more than just unruly demonstrations.
Posted by b at 08:38 AM | Comments (128)

Don Bacon | Oct 4, 2014 10:13:12 AM | 3

What might have some chance of working in the West will fail in China, and Western views will fail also. Chinese, and many Asians in general, have a more benign view of centralized authority then Western democrats do. The idea of teenagers in the streets dictating to government, a higher authority, in China is doomed to fail, even given the youngsters' Western views.

P

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Oct 4, 2014 11:33:49 AM | 7

The protesters shot themselves in the collective foot when they adopted, and then uttered, the Obama-ism "Leung must step down" AFTER he had offered to negotiate on their demands for reforms including 'universal suffrage.'

Rejecting Leung before negotiations began, and thus depriving him of the opportunity do demonstrate good faith, was an act of utter and complete dumbfuckery and makes them sound like Chinese sock-puppets of the 1%'s sock-puppet, Obama.

Gene Sharp would be proud. If they don't come to their senses quicksmart they should prepare for a prolonged bout of universal sufferage.

Posted by: guest77 | Oct 4, 2014 11:54:49 AM | 8

So who paid the thugs, the police says some attackers were members of criminal triads, who instigated the radicalization?

It bears investigating who exactly these people were, but I wouldn't buy into the idea they are provocateurs necessarily.

In the face of these colour revolutions, a local mobilization of the loyal population is an absolute necessity. A country cannot simply rely on the repression of police forces against the Western-backed groups. As seen in Venezuela - a seemingly forgotten about color revolution that has failed (though the right wingers still murder with impunity) - local involvement of the population against the protestors is vital.

When government have genuine support - as the CCP does have among sectors in Hong Kong, as the Chavista's do have in Venezuela - then the people can and should be used in counter-protests to put down or restrict the scope of the foreign backed protests.

When a government does not have immediate support, like that of Yanoukovich in Ukraine, they have to rely on police for repression and this creates much worse looking scenes for the cameras, much more problems internationally.

This is a battle for the life of the country, we shouldn't reject the participation of loyal people. Calling regular people ready to reassert control of their neighborhoods without the police "thugs" I think is incorrect and unhelpful.

VE link: here

Posted by: Don Bacon | Oct 4, 2014 12:44:48 PM | 12

China Matters has written on an interesting character in this story, "Next Media boss and China pariah Jimmy Lai Chee-ying."

Including:
--According to earlier reports, Lai and Paul Wolfowitz went on a five-day visit to Burma in June last year.
--Wolfowitz, a former Pentagon operative (Iraq war) and World Bank president, is with American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a capitalist-promoting think tank.
--Lai and Wolfowitz boarded a yacht in Sai Kung on May 27 and were not seen again for five hours.
--Lai has donated more than HK$40 million to the pan-democratic camp and legislators in Hong Kong since 2012.

Read about Lai here and here.

@3 Don Bacon:

While the general perception in the west is that Asians are in general more submissive to authorities, this in fact is hogwash. I have lived here in the US for 45 years now, and I have never seen a population more submissive to oligarchs than the sheeples (or as the Goldman Sachs called muppets) here. Since the Ronny years of Contra and Credit Union bailout conspiracies, muppets' been led through the nose on Long Term Management fiasco, Desert Storm I (and No Fly Zone II), Yugoslavia bulldoze, ME wars, color revolutions, ......, you name them. Slaughtering and destruction of humans and their habitats, one after and other. For enriching the Military/Industrial complex? I don't know, but I don't recall any of these undertaking being initiated or demanded by the muppets, or anyone I know around me. They shoved these down our throats and we swallowed--not a wimp. And look at OWS, the anger against TRAP, against ObamaCare, against bombing Syria, on and on. What did we do but rollover? How would these kinds of color revolutions work in the west that you don't think would work in China?

Denk's posts on the Umbrella Revolution in HK has been the most accurate assessments of the situation. I know because I was from HK, and still read its papers online everyday and visit at least once every year to visit family.

Posted by: OleImmigrant | Oct 4, 2014 12:47:38 PM | 13

Flashback to 2011: John McCain promises that the Arab Spring is like a virus that will spread to Moscow and Beijing. Quite a prediction, I'd say.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/11/the-arab-spring-a-virus-that-will-attack-moscow-and-beijing/248762/

Posted by: yellowsnapdragon | Oct 4, 2014 12:54:52 PM | 14

The cultivation of subversion against PRC in HK has long been around, since at least the early 1980's. I think shortly after the signing of the Sino/UK agreement on HK reversion. The large gathering supporting the Tiananman revolution in 1989 was the first sign of their success. Back around 1985,or 6, Wall Street Journal published a long interview of Jimmy Lai when he was nobody! I was surprised then why some unknown such as this bump would drew WSJ to devote a two column long interview? It soon became apparent who Jimmy was working for.

Posted by: OleImmigrant | Oct 4, 2014 1:01:00 PM | 15

Posted by: Chinese american | Oct 4, 2014 1:49:43 PM | 18

The HK media is now lamenting the economic impacts of what is happening. In reality, HK's fate as a world premier financial center had been dashed when China announced the establishment of Chien Hai in Shenzhen as the financial center back in 2012. The Chien Hai district would be a modern financial 'service' center, meaning it would serve not only the financial transaction but also the chain of services needed in making it efficient in the 21st century sense--logistics, technical support, financing and supply of talent needed for major technological undertakings, currency managements, and innovation breeding grounds vsi-a-vis Silicon valley. In my view, HK is finished. It would remain a entertainment and shopping destination for quite a while yet, due to its infra-structures and beauty. But as far as growth in economical importance to China or the world, it is done for.

Posted by: OleImmigrant | Oct 4, 2014 1:59:13 PM | 19

[Oct 04, 2014] Hong Kong protesters beaten and bloodied as thugs attack sit-in

February instructions from Ukrainian template are dusted off and reused. Good work Guardian. Reuse is a path to sustainable future ;-).
theguardian.com

pauloneill, 3 Oct 2014 21:15

message to HK students:

Don't bother - real democracy does not exist today - all you are fighting for is for an ultra-capitalist big business democracy which will leave you with someone like David Cameron.

sbabcock, 4 Oct 2014 00:19

It's incredible how talking heads on American cable news can talk with a straight face about the 'brute tactics' China is using on its people for demonstrating. What convenient lapses of recent memory...

LostInWonder, 3 Oct 2014 23:47

If protestors blocked off all major arteries approaching the West End of London and Westminster, and erected scaffolding and tents to do so so as to stop all commerce, they would be removed by police. It was made illegal to set up tents on the lawns in front of the houses do Parliament.

The students in HK block off access to government buildings and swore to prevent the chief executive getting to work to force their agenda. Attempts to remove them by police is labeled in the West as Communist brutality.

Just think about is.

And how much coverage is there of the opinions of a large part of the HK public who are against the tactics and the demands of the students so as to provide a balanced picture? I know of many friends and relations in HK who are against what the students are doing but ther is no representation of their views in the foreign press. I wonder why?

RudolfSteinerRules, 3 Oct 2014 23:42

The goal of the US in Hong Kong is clear – to turn the island into an epicenter of foreign-funded subversion with which to infect China's mainland more directly.

"Protesters of the "Occupy Central" movement in Hong Kong shout familiar slogans and adopt familiar tactics seen across the globe as part of the United States' immense political destabilization and regime change enterprise. Identifying the leaders, following the money, and examining Western coverage of these events reveal with certainty that yet again, Washington and Wall Street are busy at work to make China's island of Hong Kong as difficult to govern for Beijing as possible."

http://journal-neo.org/2014/10/01/hong-kong-s-occupy-central-is-us-backed-sedition/

spiritof1983, 3 Oct 2014 23:39

If applied the benefit of rational thought and describe truthfully the context of the picture is totally different.

In this case in Mongkok, Kowloon, the crazy fools have 'occupied' a main road junction in the middle of the district which is a very high density working class residential and shopping and restaurant area (non-luxury). Understand that the unlike western 'Occupy Movement' which is actually sit-ins (with a fancy name for re-branding an old form of visible dissention), that sit-in takes up a space but does not obstruct the functionality of the facility. In Hong Kong, the protest have morphed to blockade or near that, of selected main roads or government building complex. Especially to police movement. Kind of ironic that they then accuse the police of not coming to their aid, more so when they have taxed the police over so many areas and 24 hours a day for a week now.

This blockade action is in fact closer to the actions in Thailand past (airport siege 2006 and 2008) which were for holding the economy hostage, through foreign tourist trade, and showing the government to be powerless thereby discrediting it. This is what the 'occupy' actions in Hong Kong have morphed into. An attempt to paralyse government and key commercial area. In Mongkok, the clowns are trying to paralyse a working class shopping and eating area (Mongkok would be frequented by more Asian tourists, especially mainland China, and HK local residents than Westerners). This is pure stupidity. Of course there will be resident backlash. Hell some might be mainland tourists as well, in addition to residents who are first generation mainland migrants or HKers (especially older ones) loyal to the mainland (patriotic, as opposed to loyal to CPC which is another thing and also in play). Definitely the petty traders and taximen who would consist more of poor mainlanders will be feeling the economic pinch and be among the angry lot. Triad/secret society boldness would be more in Kowloon and New Territories than in HK Island.

This type of paralysis strategy is a form of brinkmanship. It worked in Thailand because, while the government was in the other parties hand, the armed forces and police (top echelon) was with the elite and the other party. Here in Hong Kong, the police at best is neutral, at worst more to the side of the status quo. The Army is with the other side. So playing this strategy protracted will bring out the residents against and eventually the law enforcement.

The sit-ins have to be targeted and prolonged visible dissent. Not blockade and indiscriminate and unthought one at that. The right action of leadership, is not just to advise the protestors to abandon the Mongkok occupation for Admiralty for their own safety, but to in fact go further and disavow the Mongkok group's continued occupation as being counter productive and not lead by them. In Admiralty and Causeway Bay, it has to be sit-in, not blockade of movement.

"They [the government] are trying to use the people to fight against the people. The cops are just going to stand here and watch – they are doing nothing about people breaking laws."

Of course they are. In any population there is more than one side of the argument and support. Of course the government will adjust it actions to allow its side to also show their support. Its pointless crying foul about police not upholding the law when your own action of occupation which spurs the reaction, is illegal. There is a legal way of expressing public dissent in Hong Kong. Use it.

As I wrote after the Thursday midnight ultimatum. There has to be better strategy and leadership. The 'occupy' strategy has failed. Moved to negotiations and rallying with sit-ins. The longer they 'occupy'/blockade the more local resentment will build up and more moved to express counter-protest via blue ribbon movement.


spiritof1983 Cedrik Thibert, 3 Oct 2014 23:55

".....when your thug regime...."

You are making the presumption I am Chinese. I am neither a Chinese national nor a Chinese ethnic of the diaspora. I am a Malaysian. Have posted here and regularly stated this. My old account is in fact ReaderMALAYSIA. Interestingly enough after I posted a view and approach dissenting to the common trend in the thread, post MH17 downing (that is a Malaysian carrier and I am Malaysian and I took the side of the Russian Ukrainians right to life, self defense, not our war and we should negotiate directly with the rebels to retrieve the bodies and conduct investigation), I was accused immediately by a contributor of not being a Malaysian. It seems the argument of people like you is to claim the other of being a cyberbot of the other side. Rather than to retort rationally. The key reason in this is the projection of infallibility (of the side of argument you favour) which is impossible and therefore unbelievable even to outside observers unfamiliar with the current event and place.

IXOXOXI, 3 Oct 2014 20:46

A US created Kiev re-run. Trying to force the Chinese to let up on vetting Govt candidates, and thus get a US paid stooge into power.

But the necessary moral high ground isn't forthcoming. The authorities aren't biting. D'oh!

So this 'evidence' is presented to us. The only evidence offered here of 'Thuggery' is one man trying to get home accused of physically taking on several thousand students, and a photo of someone with a bloody face.

Locals and residents now suffering due to lost business, and getting understandably angry and vocal. Even the local organized criminals (triads) are apparently losing business.

BTW, is it coincidental that the areas of unrest - around the Admiralty - centres around the location of the US embassy (consulate)? Google it.

ryinmcd IXOXOXI, 3 Oct 2014 20:49

I 'd shocked if US didn't get involved. You have to ask the citizens in Libya, Egypt, Iraq and others that are you better off today.

TONY C, 3 Oct 2014 20:38

This is mild compared to what protesters are exposed to in the United States of AmeriKKKa. Here in the US, police kill protesters. And then a grand jury is convened, and then the police are found innocent.

jackscht TONY C, 3 Oct 2014 20:41

Well, in China and Russia they don't even get to trial to be found innocent.
So don't complain too much about your lot.

illbthr22 TONY C, 3 Oct 2014 20:53

Care to remind me when the last Tianamen Square level atrocity occurred in the US?

pauloneill illbthr22, 3 Oct 2014 21:06

dude that was 26 years ago. Today's world looks a little different. Western governments have become more violent and intrusive towards their citizens while the Chinese have tried to tone it down a notch.

Amazingly I would say they are not miles apart any more. Just shows that big business ultra-capitalist democracy is relly very similar to a dictatorship.

[Oct 3, 2014] Hong Kong protests: Leaders threaten to call off talks

Fake goal for real frustration of protesters -- much like in EuroMaidan.
Oct 3, 2014 | bbc.com

Leaders of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong have threatened to call off talks with the government after demonstrators were involved in scuffles with pro-Beijing supporters.

Protesters blockading key parts of Hong Kong had earlier accepted an offer of talks from Hong Kong's Chief Executive CY Leung late on Thursday.

Protesters have been occupying parts of the city for several days. They are angry at China's plan to vet candidates for elections in 2017.

[Oct 3, 2014] The wider concerns of Hong Kong's protesters

"For middle class residents, many with passports to other countries, that's a choice they can make. But, as Mr Xie points out, many young Hong Kongers educated after 1997 find themselves trapped. "
Oct 3, 2014 | bbc.com

For the Hong Kong students thronging the streets of the Central business district this week the issue at stake has been wider democracy.

But for the thousands more young professionals living and working in the city's nearby office blocks, the protests have re-ignited some worrying memories.

It was in the late 1980s or early 90s that many Hong Kong families took out citizenship of another country. They were prompted by fears of what might happen after the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from the UK back to China.

Quotes

"That's a sizeable number of people, even though we are still talking about less than 5% of the population.
Deep down most people are concerned about bread and butter issues" -- Andy Xie, Independent economist

"You have this sector of society who identify with Western values.

"This idea comes into play when you have a situation when people are dissatisfied with Hong Kong - they have this other cultural identity too, and that leads them to think that they can land in another country."

"People are desperate and they are looking for a quick solution - I don't see that coming - so this thing is going to go on" - Andy Xie, Independent economist

In the case of Joyce Man's family it was Canada that provided a temporary refuge; as an insurance policy in case things turned nasty in Hong Kong.

Ms Man, 30, was a teenager at the time of the handover. She moved with her parents and sister to Canada in 1989, and after obtaining Canadian citizenship, they later moved back to Hong Kong.

But now, like many of her contemporaries, Ms Man is thinking about moving again - and this time it could be for good.

"I think like a certain section of the Hong Kong population I grew up with the idea that you can leave," says Ms Man, who is now a writer of a popular blog: Criss Cross Culture.

"Hong Kongers are also outward looking. Before '97 many people left to go to England, Australia , Canada, or the USA.

... ... ...

Veteran Hong Kong and China expert, Jonathan Fenby, was editor of the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong during the handover in 1997.

He says there are many different currents flowing under the surface of the current unhappiness with life in Hong Kong. One of the key issues is the identity of the citizens - how they see themselves.

Mr Fenby points out that surveys of the population by Hong Kong's universities going back over the past 20 years have frequently found that Hong Kong people do not identify themselves as being purely Chinese - most say instead that they are "Hong Kongers" or "Hong Kong Chinese".

And that makes the leadership in Beijing uneasy, he believes.

"A very large proportion of the people living in Hong Kong at the moment are the children or grandchildren of refugees from mainland China," says Mr Fenby.

"This is a more fluid population, and that is not something the authorities in Beijing like very much.

"Because they like the idea of Chinese national unity, Chinese stability and the Han race sticking together - and the Hong Kongers are different."

And it's the feeling that they want to maintain the differences between Hong Kong and China that appears to be driving many Hong Kongers onto the streets. But it could also drive many away from Hong Kong altogether if events take a wrong turn.

For middle class residents, many with passports to other countries, that's a choice they can make. But, as Mr Xie points out, many young Hong Kongers educated after 1997 find themselves trapped.

"It's difficult for the people here to leave now," he says. "Hong Kong introduced mother tongue education in '98 - in Cantonese.

People are less likely to speak either English or Mandarin than before the handover. So it is very difficult for people to emigrate."

"People are desperate and they are looking for a quick solution - I don't see that coming - so this thing is going to go on. ''

[Oct 02, 2014] Hong Kong Government's Strategy on Protesters Wait Them Out

From comments: "I would like to congratulate the Chinese government on conferring much more democracy to the Hong Kong people merely 17 years after it took over than the British had done over the previous 150 years of its rule. At least according to the newly proposed law Hong Kong people can cast votes in an election for their top leader. During the 150 year of preceding British rule they had no such luxury but to passive accept whatever Governor London appointed. The Obama administration should criticize and condemn the state of dictatorship imposed on Hong Kong during every single day of the British rule right up to the last day in 1997! "
Oct 02, 2014 | NYTimes.com

HONG KONG - Crowds of pro-democracy protesters thinned noticeably by Thursday morning after the Hong Kong government adopted a more conciliatory stance of trying to wait out the demonstrators.

Downtown streets that had been fairly crowded on previous nights began to empty late Wednesday, as many went home after days outdoors in heat that had been sweltering even by Hong Kong's tropical standards. But many predicted that crowds would build again later on Thursday, as demonstrators returned after showers, sleep and hot meals.

"Compared to yesterday morning, I think there is a smaller crowd," Venus Wong, a 22-year-old office worker, said as she sat in front of the local government headquarters with two friends, eating a McDonald's breakfast at midmorning. "But I think more people will come back later in the day."

A protester with a defaced cutout of Leung Chun-ying, the chief executive of Hong Kong. Analysts say his removal from office may help Beijing placate protesters.

Thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators gathered in Hong Kong on Monday to continue calls for free and open elections for the city's chief executive in 2017.

But on Thursday, The People's Daily, the main newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, issued the most severe official warning yet from Beijing about the protests, saying that Hong Kong could succumb to "chaos."

What Prompted the Hong Kong Protests?

Hong Kong belongs to China and operates under a policy of "one country, two systems." Hong Kong, a British colony until 1997, when China resumed sovereignty, is governed by a mini-constitution, the Basic Law.

The city maintains an independent judiciary, and residents enjoy greater civil liberties than residents of mainland China. Hong Kong has a robust tradition of free speech.

Democratic groups say Beijing has chipped away at those freedoms, citing an election law proposed last month that would limit voting reforms.

China had promised free elections for Hong Kong's chief executive in 2017. But the government rejected a call for open nominations, instead proposing that candidates would continue to be chosen by a committee dominated by Beijing.

The current city leader, Leung Chun-ying, has clashed with the pro-democracy opposition. After the crackdown on protesters, some called for his resignation.

In a front-page editorial, the newspaper accused the movement Occupy Central With Love and Peace - the group that led the pro-democracy campaigns that preceded the mass protests - of "blaspheming" the rule of law in the city.

"The actions of 'Occupy Central' have flagrantly violated the laws and regulations of Hong Kong, severely obstructed traffic and disrupted social order," the editorial said.

Hong Kong's chief executive and his advisers have decided, with support from China's leaders, that their best strategy is to wait and hope that the disruption of everyday life will turn local public opinion against the demonstrators.

Leung Chun-ying, the chief executive, and his advisers do not plan to use force to disperse the demonstrations, but they also will not hold negotiations with protest leaders for now, said people with a detailed knowledge of the policies of the Hong Kong government and Beijing. Nor has there been any serious discussion of Mr. Leung's resigning, as the protesters, who have numbered in the tens of thousands, are demanding.

Thursday was a traditional Chinese holiday that follows a lunar calendar, and it coincidentally came right after the National Day holiday this year. As a result, many people had expected the rallies to remain just as large on Thursday as on Wednesday.

Demonstrators were making a bigger effort by midmorning Thursday to minimize their disruption to commerce. Ken Lee, a 17-year-old hotel worker, sat on a gray plastic stool next to a row of safety cones - commandeered earlier from the police - that partly blocked the entrance to Queens Road, an important commercial street in Hong Kong. He explained that he was supposed to remove the cones not just for emergency vehicles that might come along, but also for delivery vehicles. Moments later, a newspaper deliveryman on a bicycle and a large bakery truck appeared. Mr. Lee politely moved the cones. The city's leadership has concluded that it would be pointless for Mr. Leung to sit down with protest leaders, although a few informal contacts have been made with democracy advocates and a few of Mr. Leung's friends have recommended negotiations. Beijing has given the Hong Kong government only a little room to negotiate the details of how the next chief executive will be elected in 2017 - the fundamental issue for the demonstrators.

"The government can tolerate the blockade of three or four or five areas and see how the demonstrations go, so the only way the demonstrators can go is to escalate it - spread it to more places, and then they cannot sustain it - or they will become violent," said a person who is involved in the Hong Kong government's decision-making.

An adviser to the government said the officials believed that Mr. Leung should bide his time. "The consensus is to wait and patiently deal with the crisis - it is not easy, but we shall do our best to resolve it peacefully," the adviser said.

The strategy carries risks for the local and national governments because it in effect cedes momentum to the protesters and allows them to drive events. For China, continuing protests could inspire more dissent on the mainland, despite its censors' attempts to block discussion of the events. Chinese Human Rights Defenders, an advocacy group, said Wednesday that China had already detained or intimidated dozens of people for perceived transgressions like expressing support for the protesters on social media.

For the Hong Kong government, the risk is that the city's image as a stable financial center will be harmed and that the government's intransigence, rather than the protesters' actions, will be blamed for the disruption.

"If he believes that if he keeps on dragging on without answering to our demands then people will go away, forget about it," said Mr. Chan, who added that protesters would skip work to remain in the streets. "If they are not afraid of tear gas, I don't think they will be afraid of their supervisors and bosses," he said.

The demonstration leaders have insisted that they will pursue only nonviolent civil disobedience. In terms of public opinion, violence would be risky for either side: When the outnumbered police resorted to tear gas on Sunday night, they provoked widespread anger, and more people came to protest on Monday. Yet after the police largely withdrew from the downtown district for the past three days, that indignation seemed to have attenuated by Thursday.

The lack of a cohesive leadership among the protesters, combined with the ambitious nature of their demands - Mr. Leung's resignation, fully open elections for his successor - have prompted Hong Kong officials to conclude that the protest leaders are unlikely to accept half-measures in any negotiations.

The wait-them-out strategy appears to have the support of the city's influential tycoons, many of whom are out of town during this holiday week. The tycoons derive the bulk of their income from leasing out their many commercial, office and residential properties, which demand Hong Kong's famously high rents even as protesters restrict access to many businesses.

The hope of the Hong Kong government, and of Beijing, is that this economic pressure will turn owners of small businesses and other members of the middle class against the demonstrators. Officials hope that the public will see the protesters as nuisances, not heroes of democracy, as the students occupying Tiananmen Square in Beijing became in 1989 before China's brutal crackdown.

"This is a Cultural Revolution revival, this is not Tiananmen - they think they are doing the right thing, so they can infringe on other people's interests and therefore make the government kowtow to them," said the person heavily involved in the government's decisions.

President Obama and Susan E. Rice, his national security adviser, raised the protests while meeting Wednesday at the White House with Wang Yi, China's foreign minister. In a statement, the White House said Mr. Obama and Ms. Rice had told Mr. Wang they were monitoring the situation and "expressed their hope that differences between Hong Kong authorities and protesters will be addressed peacefully."

steve, Florida 20 days ago

If any fool actually believes a 17 year old will accomplish anything by "standing up" to the Chinese Communists. I'd like to offer a bridge to them in Brooklyn, at a fair price of course.

Are all New Yorkers so gullible as to believe any of this fairy tale?

China will tolerate this for a while -- then crush them. Dictatorships do not like bestowing freedoms to its' subjects, it gets in their way.

American Expat, Vancouver

I would like to congratulate the Chinese government on conferring much more democracy to the Hong Kong people merely 17 years after it took over than the British had done over the previous 150 years of its rule. At least according to the newly proposed law Hong Kong people can cast votes in an election for their top leader. During the 150 year of preceding British rule they had no such luxury but to passive accept whatever Governor London appointed.

The Obama administration should criticize and condemn the state of dictatorship imposed on Hong Kong during every single day of the British rule right up to the last day in 1997!

CM, California 21 days ago

The strategy of the Hong Kong government has high likelihood of working in part because the fight is over an abstract concept of election procedure. The day the protesting public can rally around a popular candidate that Beijing dislike, it would be a different story. When majority of the voting public either refuse to take part in an election or write-in the name of candidate they really want, it would be quite impossible to ignore.

Of course, it is more difficult to develop real leadership than street protest but to achieve real democracy, there must be strong and visionary leaders.

Taichi Yang, Hong Kong 21 days ago

I think that this "Wait them out" strategy is the right decision, yes, only for now.

If you look at those so called organizers (you rightly pointed out that there is no real leaders of the movement), they won't give up and they do want to escalate.

Up front, they bet on the Chinese government to be "more civilized" or "don't have the guts to crackdown" (well, using Xi's comments on the break up of the Soviet Union: men with no balls!).

What I don't understand is: this movement was planned more than a year ago and the government has been "fighting against it or trying to deter it, I can't believe that the Chinese government does not have an "action plan" to deal with it? The "worst case" scenario should have been considered and action plan mapped out... or even prepared/drilled about. The HK police action is an evidence of this planning. Of course, they did not know that the tear gas could not disperse the crowd and it would invite more people to the streets. However, the Chinese government should have prepared for this... if not, how can you expect the White Paper being issued right before the Occupy Central sign up/demonstration?

Or the NPC decision? I would be really surprised if the Chinese government has not considered this outcome and be prepared for it. If this is the case, then the issue of the White Paper and the NPC decision were all dumb decisions.

Niu Chang, Washington 21 days ago

I heard two days ago, President Xi has refused request from field to crackdown and gave the following firm two sentence order -- "No compromise; no bloodshed".

This is the best, smart "move" under the circumstances --completely ignoring the protest, and refusing to meet or even listen to any of the protesters, and carrying out the business as usual. Pretty soon, the protesters will have to find some face-saving ladders to climb down to answer to Hong KOng citizens and business community about the mess and economic loss they have caused.

Chinese leadership simply has nothing to lose but everything to gain -- it will set an unprecedented example for any future protesters - China have the determination, patience and national will to rule Hong Kong according to the the national interests of China, peacefully, but firmly, without any bloodshed and without any compromise.

Quan, Atlanta 21 days ago

Many references to 1989 have been made recently. Well, I was in the Tiananmen square in late May 1989. As a high school student, I participated in the demonstration enthusiastically. Looking back, the biggest mistake made by the student leaders was not to compromise at all, in any shape or form, with the government. In the end, the moment did not advance the goal of a more democratic society. Democracy is the art of compromise and politics is the art of the possible.

The current demand that the central government reverses itself is not realistic. It is better to push for gradual changes in the makeup of the nominating committee. Forcing a showdown now, just like shutdown the US federal government to overturn ObamaCare, is a fool's errand.

Michael, Carlsbad, CA 21 days ago

If the government plans to wait out the protesters then the protesters need a different strategy. I cannot think of any really good ones. The target would ideally be those that gain the most from the current system and are against more democracy.

Would it be possible to flood these entities with requests, such as opening and closing bank accounts, setting up and closing accounts, waiting in line for repeated deposits and withdrawals. Spending a lot of time in their stores. Filing legal paperwork with anti-democratic legal firms that has to be responded to. Instead of sitting around, could the protesters be calling the phone lines and help lines of the governments supporters to request information or to convey information that they are legally entitled to do. Over and over and over again.

When the mechanisms of profit that are used to bribe the rich into compliance with the regime are suddenly at issue then the government might become more willing to compromise. This is a peaceful yet effective form of civil disobedience. On another note, have you noticed the comment effort of government stooges with seemingly English names.

There are thought to be over 100,000 full time censors in China, and some have been assigned to "manage" comments in newspapers. A recent research study indicated that you can say anything in China except you cannot suggest anything that organizes the people. Clever.

chet380, west coast

The leaders of the protesters have all received money from the NED/NDI/CIA -- another US-funded attempt at a "color revolution".

mingsphinx, Singapore

Can the Chinese government yield to the demands of the protesters?

Such protests have happened many times before and they have always come to nothing. When mass demonstrations occur, the Chinese government will put on hold all 'reforms' and simply wait out the storm. Sooner or later the fervor dies out as the needs of everyday life intrudes and people go back to the pressure cooker life they lead.

Hong Kong has become a very Chinese city and soon it will be just another Chinese city. The Chinese have always interpreted 'one country two systems' as a way to merge different polities into one unit with the central government in China calling the shots.

In my opinion, nothing much is happening. All the power, including basic control over Hong Kong's economic well-being, is in the hands of the Chinese government. They will no repeat the mistake of Tiananmen because they do not have to. All the Chinese have to do is nudge Hong Kong's cheese a little and everyone will fall in line.

CAF, Seattle 21 days ago

And, again, where is the American response? The American political "leadership" just backed a coup in Ukraine and downgraded Russia-US relations to the worst they've been since 1985, and sanctioned Russia to the point where Western Europe is seeing a cold winter in front of it.

This was some under the banner of "freedom" from autocracy and corruption. Why is Hong Kong different? China is far worse than Russia

Oh, wait, American corporations haven't spent the last thirty years offshoring jobs and production to Russia because the oppressed people there cost pennies to the dollar compared to Americans. I forgot. That's right, American corporations now rely on the oppressed labor of China, and the government there could really wreck the bottom line for some people.

Xiao, New Haven

I think different voices are good. However as a mainlander, I care more about how mainlanders' voices can be channeled out without suddenly paralyzing cities,...cause people will starve after the resulted economic blow.

I think Hong Kong government/police 's reaction is very appropriate. Many compare it with Occupy Wall street, however, the later only occupied parks and other area allowed by the law. If they tried to block 5th ave. or marched into congress buildings. Would they be stopped?

Of course, Taiwan's government is more tolerant, who did let students occupy their buildings. Their leaders are fully elected with democracy, however also least favored...

SpecialAgentA, New York City

As Occupy found in NYC (and elsewhere), the wait-out strategy is effectively checkmate. Massive corporate propaganda will increasingly vilify the protestors as economic pressure mounts. Besides militarized police and security armies, the institutions also have all the money. Unlike the diverse group of protestors, institutions only allow the most slavishly loyal and vetted to rise to positions of power. (Non-sociopaths need not apply.) To summarize: the machine cannot be shut down.

As an added bonus, those who had enough and thought that real change on behalf of the collective betterment of society was possible have now been clearly identified by those in power as dissenters or a "contagion".

As such, they will find themselves replaced at work by those with less moral sense, empathy or social decency. It is amusing to watch Western corporate media try to spin this all in a way that ignores the links between the Arab Spring, Occupy, Turkey and Occupy Central. As with Occupy, it's hard to watch the ideals and hope of some of our best youth being boiled out of them, all to be tossed away by the madness of state capitalism and the "elite" who rule such a system.

[Oct 02, 2014] The (NED Financed) Hong Kong Riots

As EuroMaidan had shown, genuine, authentic protest against neoliberalism can be easily converted into neoliberal coup d'état. Quotes from comments: "As documented by Tony Carlucci here many of the Hong Kong protest leaders have a long of contacts with NED/NDI." ... "HK looks like a Ukraine rerun: once again 'corruption' is the excuse to wage a color revolution...where the end result will be worse corruption and more oligarchs"
September 29, 2014 | Comments (205)

Some organized "student groups" in Hong Kong tried to occupy government buildings and blocked some streets. The police did what it does everywhere when such things happen. It used anti-riot squads, pepper spray and tear gas to prevent occupations and to clear the streets.

The "western" media are making some issue about this as if "western" governments would behave any differently.

The alleged issue in question is the election of new Hong Kong chief executive in 2017. According to Hong Kong's basic law, which was implemented when Britain gave up its dictatorship over the colony, there will be universal suffrage - everyone will be allowed to vote - but the candidates for the position will have to go through some pre-screening by a commission. This is what China had promised and this is what the students, falsely claiming that China is backtracking from its promises, want to change.

Peter Lee aka Chinahand has an excellent piece on the issue at Asia Times Online. But Lee is making one mistake in that he does not consider outside influence:

Occupy Hong Kong decided to light it, starting with a class boycott and demonstrations organized by the Hong Kong Federation of Students. And, since I'm never afraid to mix a metaphor, the Hong Kong government poured fuel on the fire by pepper-spraying and teargassing it.

Who really "decided to light this"? To me the protests, and the "western" reporting about it, have the distinct smell not of tear gas but of some expensive Color Revolution perfume of "western" origin.

So lets look up the usual source of such exquisite fragrance. The 2012 annual report of the U.S. government financed National Endowment of Democracy, aka the CCA - Central Color-Revolution Agency, includes three grants for Hong Kong one of which is new for 2012 and not mentioned in earlier annual reports:

National Democratic Institute for International Affairs - $460,000

To foster awareness regarding Hong Kong's political institutions and constitutional reform process and to develop the capacity of citizens - particularly university students - to more effectively participate in the public debate on political reform, NDI will work with civil society organizations on parliamentary monitoring, a survey, and development of an Internet portal, allowing students and citizens to explore possible reforms leading to universal suffrage.

So the U.S. government in 2012 (2013 numbers are not yet available) hands over nearly half a million to "develop the capacity" of "university students" related to the issue of "universal suffrage" in the election of Hong Kong's chief executive.

Two years after the money starts to flow from the U.S. government university students in Hong Kong provoke street riots with demands exactly on the issue the U.S. government money wanted to highlight.

That is just some curious coincidence - right?

---

PS (1): There is no reason to believe that a majority of the people in Hong Kong are supporting the U.S. induced demands of the "students". Hong Kong has some 7 million inhabitants. Ten to twenty thousands protesting amounts to some rather marginal 0.2% of the population.

PS (2): We noted earlier that the new Color Revolution scheme 2.0 - see Libya, Syria, Ukraine - now includes lots of violence:

Color revolutions in the old form had become too obvious a scheme to be of further use. The concept was therefore extended to include intensive use of force and mercenaries and to support those forces from the outside with weapons, ammunition, training and other means.

While earlier Color Revolutions employed mostly peaceful measures the aim now is blood in the streets and lots of infrastructure damage to weaken the forces resisting the regime change attempts. Accordingly the authorities in Hong Kong should prepare for much more than just unruly demonstrations.

PS (3): The NDI through which the NED money was funneled is the Democratic Party arm for regime change campaigns. It also does quite a bit of other Hong Kong meddling by financing various other organizations. Such foreign agents need to be restrained.

JohnH | Sep 29, 2014 1:27:21 PM | 2

Let's not forget that John McCain is COB of the National Republican Institute, which receives the majority of NED money doled out by the State Department.

McCain is also a member of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, the Armed Services Committee, and the Homeland Security Committee.

This incestuous relationship between the executive and legislative branches is not something foreseen in the Constitution and should be banned. It raises the question of who is working for whom--McCain for Obama, or Obama for McCain. (Not that it makes any difference in Obama's increasingly public neocon policy positions.)

Hoarsewhisperer | Sep 29, 2014 1:35:29 PM | 3

One certainly doesn't need 3 guesses to suspect whether the people behind HK's 'troubles' are the Usual Suspects. I'm genuinely curious to see how China plays this - aside from the Tienanmen Option. Vlad booted several Yankee NGO's out of Russia a few years ago (for violating WRITTEN agreements to refrain from certain specified activities; would you believe?).

The spooks left on such short notice that they had to leave things behind which would have left with them if their departure was more leisurely. I'm treating this as a test to see whether China & Russia, together, can outsmart the regime changers, or whether they're unbeatable - like the US Military....
LOL.

Where-Wolf | Sep 29, 2014 2:39:59 PM | 11

While the Empire runs simulataneous destabilization ops in Hong Kong and Xinxang, the mind control grid gives lotsa love to Ali Babba and its techno-fascist CEO on 60 Minutes. When you're allowed to raise 25 billion on US markets and your compatriots own trillions in potentially worthless US paper, you are compromised and/or dependent. It seems only Vlad so much as considers the possibility of up turning the NWO apple cart and I'm not even sure about that.

The promise to China goes like this: support Zion and we'll keep paying interest and rent with our worthless paper.

Will China take this 'deal' or will they do exactly as Deng did in Tiananmen? Things worked out pretty good for the PRC leadership after 1989. Does the belligerent faction hold any sway? Someone might be itching to teach 'Democracy' advocates a lesson.

Don Bacon | Sep 29, 2014 3:37:30 PM | 12

The HKFS Declaration for Students' Strike -
(extracts)

And shockingly, the government is insolent enough to simply ignore the people's voices. In other words, the nominating committee, which is to a great extent controlled by the capitalists locally and from the mainland, will continue to turn a deaf ear to all kinds of rights and welfare we legitimately called for!

Beijing has removed the right for Hong Kongers to determine their future, and handed it to a committee of Beijing loyalists and tycoons with vested commercial and political interests. They have ignored our call for the right to a Chief Executive who is representative of Hong Kong's interests at large.

At this rate, Hong Kong is doomed to remain to be one of the cities in the world with the most ridiculously wide wealth gap. Millions of our people would live under the poverty line, and the enactment of universal retirement security or standard working hours policies would be nowhere in sight.

--The Hong Kong Federation of Students, 10 September 2014

Demian | Sep 29, 2014 3:59:10 PM | 14

@ben #8:

It's interestiyng that #universalsuffrage is one of the three main hashtags for the Hong Kong protests, given that it is mentionined in the 2012 NED report that b quotes.

Peter Lee writes in the post b links to:

Clearly, the PRC's envisioned terminus (the "ultimate aim") of the democratic reform line is universal suffrage to vote for candidates put forth by a nominating committee, not universal suffrage in the nomination as well as election process, which is the Occupy Hong Kong movement's demand.
Americans do not have universal suffrage in the latter sense. Because of the corruption caused by TV commercials in election campaigns being legal, the 0.01% get to nominate political candidates for major positions.

jayc | Sep 29, 2014 4:02:28 PM | 15

The Chinese government relies on surveillance and informant networks to identify and block potential challenges to its political equilibrium. The one-party system is prone to corruption and lack of accountability, and is resistant to genuine grassroots reform efforts.

That said, programs like the NED, starting from assumptions which are condescending and arrogant, do indeed meddle in the internal affairs of other nations - and serve a counter-productive role in that they allow the authorities of a target nation to assume and proclaim any political unrest as the direct result of foreign intervention (NED funded or not).

NED mission statements usually overflow with feel-good nostrums about the will of the people and transparency - but as Ukraine shows, those concepts can and will be dropped at convenience.

Comparing the NED Ukraine mission statement with the actions and intent of the coup government reveals that the supposed intent of the NED project couldn't be further away from being realized and in fact was dealt a disastrous setback by the coup - yet the organization has been silent or quietly supportive of the coup regime.

Don Bacon | Sep 29, 2014 4:09:37 PM | 16

Ralph Nader wrote a book, Crashing The Party, about trying to counter the two-party juggernaut in the US. The states have restrictive requirements about getting on the ballot, they wouldn't allow Nader to even sit in the audience at the "presidential debates," etc. "I asked one British reporter what could possibly occupy him hour after hour, and he replied: 'Well, you try and garnish the dullards a bit as best you can.'"

Don Bacon | Sep 29, 2014 4:33:16 PM | 17

One party, two party -- there's little difference because in the US the R's and the D's go after the same voters and similar money, and the "elections" end up being on irrelevant issues (by design) as promoted by establishment media.

Then add in gerrymandering, where most of the Ins stay in, and you get declining participation in elections, 62% in the last presidential, less in off-years.

Seamus Padraig | Sep 29, 2014 6:11:15 PM | 25

@21, Coldy von Moldy:

I don't remember OWS knocking over the US Govt. Do you? That usually requires a little foreign help.

And if that movement were operating in the belly of beast, that would require a LOT of foreign help.

brian | Sep 29, 2014 6:16:56 PM | 26

this appeared on Pravda

US backed colour revolution in Hong Kong:

'The leaders of the protest movement "Occupy Central", which organizes in Hong Kong, various public events with the requirements of the democratization of the management system, pre-workshops held in the "Hong Kong-American Center."

It is noteworthy that they were trained in the spring and summer campaign began. This information is leaked to the media. Officially stated purpose of the nonprofit organization is "to promote mutual understanding between the Chinese and the Americans", ITAR-TASS reported.

Pravda.Ru, that it is a social movement in Hong Kong, which formally aims to reform the electoral system, a special area (not to recall the NGO "Voice").

During the workshops, some international experts taught them the tactics of protest actions, negotiation strategies with the authorities in a large-scale popular uprisings, were isolated from the list of political demands points from which in any case should not be abandoned, says Chinese newspaper "Huanqiu Shibao".

Head of the "Hong Kong-American Center," Morton Holbrook appointed to this position at the end of last year, is "an important spy," about 30 years in the American intelligence agencies, says "Huanqiu Shibao." As noted in the article, Holbrook, as well as Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai, a sponsor opposition, close to the former Minister of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.

"One gets the impression that the United States-based" Hong Kong-American center "is trying to use the experience of Eastern European" color revolutions "in Hong Kong in order to influence the internal situation," - emphasizes the newspaper.

Pravda.Ru recalls that color revolutions are called "non-violent" overthrow the government.
http://www.pravda.ru/news/world/asia/25-09-2014/1228147-Cina-0/

harry law | Sep 29, 2014 6:22:45 PM | 28

"Hong Kong has some 7 million inhabitants. Ten to twenty thousands protesting amounts to some rather marginal 0.2% of the population".

Islamic State has between 15 to 20,000 fighters yet they are just 1 mile from Baghdad entering the suburbs http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2773268/ISIS-militants-fighting-Iraqi-government-forces-just-six-miles-Baghdad-despite-Western-airstrikes-against-terror-group.html Are these people supermen?

the Iraqi army is over 200,000 strong the numerous Shia militias number in the many 10's of thousands, where are they?

rjj | Sep 29, 2014 6:37:04 PM | 29

Meanwhile ....

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/tdsb-trustees-moving-to-end-controversial-partnership-with-confucius-institute/article20821968/

http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2014/09/confucius-institutes

Half a million dollars in one year is not much. I should think the US spends that on "democracy" in each and every member of the United Nations. Nothing compared with the $5 billion spent by Nuland in Ukraine, which if averaged out is more than $200 million a year.

Alexno | Sep 29, 2014 7:15:48 PM | 30

Half a million dollars in one year is not much. I should think the US spends that on "democracy" in each and every member of the United Nations. Nothing compared with the $5 billion spent by Nuland in Ukraine, which if averaged out is more than $200 million a year.

Alexno | Sep 29, 2014 7:22:46 PM | 31

re 28. Are these people supermen? the Iraqi army is over 200,000 strong the numerous Shia militias number in the many 10's of thousands, where are they?

ISIS are sitting in Sunni villages outside Baghdad. They don't have a hope of getting into the city, because Baghdad is almost entirely Shi'a these days.

Actually yes, they probably are as near to supermen as you can get. They are feared, like the Mongols were, and the Israelis used to be.

Farflungstar | Sep 29, 2014 7:32:34 PM | 34

@27

Sorely needed! Ironic to have "these" people trying to open up the average US person's eyes, I'll take it from wherever I can get. Can't wait to hear US pols and pundits crying about it.

@28

I had wondered that also. ISIS is like God...or a strange ghost army no once can quite pin down, except for Amrikans on der Homefront looking under their beds because Faux News and their ilk, that's all their mouthpieces can talk about.

Immune they are to the bullets and bombs of the Iraq military and US air strikes, invisible to satellite imagery as convoys pf pickups cross wide open stretches of desert, and apparently, absent completely are any MOSSAD, CIA, Jordanian, Turkish, KSA-backed spooks, spies, infiltrators and informants to disrupt forthcoming plans.

Keep it on a low boil until after the Nov. midterms' then President Redline can go back to doing what he does best - killing people and making shit up as he goes along.

brian | Sep 29, 2014 8:08:29 PM | 35

dh | Sep 29, 2014 4:47:46 PM | 20

oligarches and capitalists? when they are being funded by oligarches and capitalists.

HK looks like a Ukraine rerun: once again 'corruption' is the excuse to wage a colour revolution...where the end result will be worse corruption and more oligarchs

the guy who is @GazaGlobal (tweets on gaza) has been supporting the HK patsies

brian | Sep 29, 2014 8:14:47 PM | 36

ive just tweeted this page to @waiminglo and ask why he is a front for US NED

people should do the same ...put pressure on him

dh | Sep 29, 2014 8:44:34 PM | 37

@35 I'm not sure this is Maidan again. That turned violent quite quickly. You need something like Pravyi Sektor to get a real response from the police. Don't see that in Hong Kong.

If Beijing handles it carefully it could end peacefully.

brian | Sep 29, 2014 9:07:48 PM | 38

dh | Sep 29, 2014 8:44:34 PM | 37

no this is another maidan....which also began peacefully before local and imported snipers took over.

cant wait for the snipers to appear as they did in Egypt, venezuela

http://www.globalresearch.ca/unknown-snipers-and-western-backed-regime-change/27904

Demian | Sep 29, 2014 9:14:53 PM | 39

@dh #37:

I agree. I don't think this is going anywhere, so I don't see the point of stirring up these protests. The US State Department just can't help itself.

There was a pretty big turnout at the demo. I am suprised that so many Hong Kong students let themselves get fooled.

Don Bacon | Sep 29, 2014 10:09:01 PM | 41

We've had huge demos in the US that didn't affect anything. Hundreds of thousands of people.
Aren't these mostly college kids blowin' it off?

denk | Sep 29, 2014 11:15:25 PM | 42

ah, the ubiquitous ned !

but dont forget hk has been the gateway to destabilisation of china since the opium war, its a virtual homeground of mi6/cia cunts.

in 1997 those perfidious albions literally passed a trojan horse back to china, laden with hk born n bred wogs, fukus patsies in all walks of life. a perfect hotbed for color rev.

ex mi6 spy Baroness Park

* MI6 uses traditional spying methods and ''a few new ones'' was ''very good'' at disruptive or covert action* [1] ;-)

snowden giving out limited handout...

*eah. I could be rendered by the CIA, I could have people come after me, or any of their third party partners, you know. They work closely with a number of other nations. Or, you know, they could pay off the Triads, or any, any of their agents or assets. We've got a CIA station just up the road in the consulate here in Hong Kong,* [2]

as if we need a *whistleblower* to tell us hk is clawing with cia, mi6 !

[1]
http://www.scmp.com/article/52872/former-spy-chief-reveals-mi6-targets-china

[2]
http://news.genius.com/Edward-snowden-interview-on-nsa-whistleblowing-full-transcript-annotated#note-1857386

ToivoS | Sep 29, 2014 11:18:41 PM | 43

For some reason I do not think that China will let any color revolution spin out of control. They have been paying attention to what has been happening in eastern Europe. There is also something else going on in China today.

The new government has been vigorously pursuing an anti-corruption campaign. It is very difficult to figure out who is being targeted right now but I suspect that the campaign is being directed toward wealthy capitalist (and their allies in the government) and not just corrupt officials.

The government is working hard to prevent the emergence of any oligarchies that might compete for political power. They must see what happened in Russia not to say the mess Ukraine has become.

Putin spent a decade trying to reverse the political power of the Russian oligarchs and it is still uncertain if he succeeded.

Demian | Sep 30, 2014 12:47:58 AM | 44

Very interesting article about Japan: Japan as an American Client State

let this sink in: Washington managed, without the use of violence, to manipulate the Japanese political system into discarding a reformist cabinet. The party that had intended to begin clearing up dysfunctional political habits that had evolved over half a century of one-party rule lost its balance and bearings, and never recovered. Hatoyama's successor, Kan Naoto, did not want the same thing happening to him, and distantiated himself from the foreign policy reformists, and his successor in turn, Yoshihiko Noda, helped realign Japan's bureaucracy precisely to that of the United States where roughly it had been for half a century. By calling for an unnecessary election, which everyone knew the DPJ would lose, he brought the American-blessed LDP back to power to have Japan slide back into its normal client state condition, essentially answerable, even if only tacitly, to Washington's wishes.

Where earlier a China policy of friendly relations was being forged, there was suddenly nothing.

Almand | Sep 30, 2014 12:53:05 AM | 45

China has a great deal of experience handling internal unrest. The Chinese government spends more on internal security than defense suppressing strikes and riots (180,000 such incidents in 2010). Most of these "incidents" are actions taken by those exploited or left behind by China's great capitalist experiment. A lot of them also take place in the factories of Western interests, so it's in everyone's "interest" to ignore them.

Nobody wants to see rustic, unsophisticated dirty faced miners and workers asking for mundane things like higher wages (although the Xi government may be much more receptive to these demands in the near future) when there are bright, fresh-faced, Westernized Hong Kong students protesting for something glorious like democracy!

nomas | Sep 30, 2014 2:51:48 AM | 46

"The "western" media are making some issue about this as if "western" governments would behave any differently"

Oh the "western" (American) police would come in blazing with live ammo. You kiddin?

Sunny Jim R | Sep 30, 2014 3:37:04 AM | 47

You bet lots of the student protesters are there for the p**** and beer plus something to do on a a day off, a few care about the politics, maybe the US has groomed a few abbie hoffman, jerry rubin, tim leary types for misdirection. where is the smart money on this?

denk | Sep 30, 2014 6:28:25 AM | 49

what did neocon wolfowitz and mark simon the spook talk with jimmy lai, the shady financier of the hk *democratic movement* in lai's pte yacht ? [1]
u bet it aint about the weather !

incidentally, wolfowicz was anwar ibrahim's mentor in that zwo outfit aei [2].
for the uninitiated, anwar is zwo's man in malaysia.
no sooner than he was convicted of sodomy in mar this yr when mh370 got *disappeared.*
those who think that two mal airliners got zapped in less than six months is sheer *coincidence* would do well to take a look into the anwar saga and fukus decades old covert wars against malaysia. -- [3]

[1]
http://www.chinadailyasia.com/hknews/2014-06/20/content_15142785.html

[2]
http://www.aei.org/article/society-and-culture/religion/anwar-ibrahim/

[3]
http://bigdogdotcom.wordpress.com/2007/04/22/gores-racist-assault-against-malaysia/
http://bigdogdotcom.wordpress.com/2011/02/28/paul-wolfowitz-al-gore-mat-king-leather-and-the-strange-case-of-mister-john-malott-is-he-lonely-and-frustrated-or-just-well-paid/

ChipNikh | Sep 30, 2014 6:47:20 AM | 50

21

OWS was a displacement operation, the magician's 'brilliant object'. When The Seeing Eye of Mordor glimpsed, in the wake of 'Grampa War Bucks - Princess See It From Here' defeat in 2008, amid the concomitant wipeout of US equities and 401ks, a rising phoenix of the Teabag Movement, seeking to sever the cord between NYC and WADC-NOVA, and therefore, as dangerous as the Tango were to the Muj in Afghanistan, The Chosen moved more brilliantly than we give them credit for.

The Blue Team created 'Occupy Wall Street', it's that simple. Directly athwart American Tealiban's march to Wall Street, bent on lynching The Chosen, The Right Stuff laid a psychic moat of radical, rebellious unwashed hoi polloi, a nocuous atheist antitrope to the American Tealiban's gray beards and blue hairs, hoping to pull the Temple pillars down.

And golly gajammit, it worked!

The Chosen laughed in derision at OWS, pissed out the windows on them. Breitbart taunted them in drunken glee. OWS were hosed with tear gas, the cops tended their clown show, the union garbagemen made their rounds. Then . they . all . went . home, leaving the American Tealiban in 'white hot rage', fecklessly slashing at their Twitters into an uncaring void.

After that inglorious defeat, the American Tealiban were coopted by trolls and trollops, led off madly tilting at Muslims, Migras and Microbes, or whatever Rush, Bill and Glenn served up for the day. Education and Ebola. Burkhas and Bimbos. Huddled in their basement bunkers, the MOST POWERFUL GROUP OF HUMANS IN WORLD HISTORY, who collectively control more wealth than lower four age quintiles combined, in fact, the last reserve of unconsolidated distributed private wealth still on Earth, were left helplessly blatherskite.

Think about that! Only 7,000 people showed for their Sovereigntist '10,000,000 Man March'!

The oldest jujitsu in the book. The Three Card Monte switcheroo. He who controls the meme, controls the masses. As Huxley said, or maybe it was McLuhan, 'the medium is the message'.

Now scale 'OWS' up to snuff flicks on You Tube by Brit pop-star wannabes, with a compliant corporate media running ISIS PSYOP front page, until every NATO member was back on board, and you have a small glimpse of the power of meme displacement, as it's being used today.

As Yuval Harari points out, "What is so special about us that allows for such cooperation? Unflatteringly, it is our talent for deluding ourselves. If you examine any large-scale human cooperation (or co-option), you will always find some imaginary story at its base. As long as many people believe in the same stories about gods, nations, money or human rights (memes and antitropes) – they follow the same laws and rules (of conduct)."

You all might as well go pound your keyboards in the bathtub for all the good it will do, and rename MoA, ♫ La Société des Acolytes Jean-Paul Marat ♫. It's one World Mil.Gov Uber Alles, and it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead. That's what it does!!

The Fourth Reich of a Thousand Years, on Prime Time, in plain view. Dig it.

Demian is a dumbshit | Sep 30, 2014 7:12:37 AM | 51

Right, of course:

"The promise to China goes like this: support Zion and we'll keep paying interest and rent with our worthless paper.

Will China take this 'deal' or will they do exactly as Deng did in Tiananmen? Things worked out pretty good for the PRC leadership after 1989. Does the belligerent faction hold any sway? Someone might be itching to teach 'Democracy' advocates a lesson."

Israel has nothing to do with this. And that's also a hilarious misreading of Deng Xiaoping.

c1ue | Sep 30, 2014 8:07:16 AM | 52

@Demain #139

You said: "There was a pretty big turnout at the demo. I am suprised that so many Hong Kong students let themselves get fooled."

I am not surprised at all. Kids in college - besides being in a bubble, are also at an age where then naturally tend to rebel against authority. Throw in a nice line and some funding - which "democracy" and the NED do nicely, and there you have it.

I do think it is amusing that protests in Hong Kong are such big news when far larger and violent student protests in South Korea have been going on for decades.

They were so common at one point, there was a "protest season"

Yastreblyansky | Sep 30, 2014 9:23:02 AM | 53

2013 numbers are available: NED funding for Hong Kong was down by a third from your 2012 figure, at slightly under $300,000, half of it for one human rights monitor. Compared to three times as much for Malaysia, say, or Ecuador, where any US hegemonic aims are certainly not being realized.

You really need to think in terms of what kind of power an empire is capable of projecting (military yes, nonviolent protest no), and what kinds of class interest are involved. I can understand how dirty US interests can be guilty of fomenting an upper-class coup in Venezuela, say, but I cannot understand how they could bring people out into the streets the way people are doing in Hong Kong--especially students: tight as the labor market in HK always is, youth unemployment is 11.6%. That's a real grievance, not a pretext made up by some American.

Farflungstar | Sep 30, 2014 9:49:29 AM | 55

@ 50: "The Fourth Reich of a Thousand Years, on Prime Time, in plain view. Dig it."

AKA, the coming "Global Plantation". Love the prose.

ben | Sep 30, 2014 9:34:12 AM | 54

If this wasn't NED sponsored, this story wouldn't have such legs. In Amrika, radio and TV twats are talking about it, so now people who normally do not give a crap about anything that doesn't directly affect them, are talking about it.

brian | Sep 30, 2014 10:13:37 AM | 56

http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com.au/2014/09/us-openly-approves-hong-kong-chaos-it.html

brian | Sep 30, 2014 10:16:34 AM | 57

Yastreblyansky | Sep 30, 2014 9:23:02 AM | 53

real grievances? amercains have real grievances yet we see no american springs, maidains or HK twats

what we do see in HK is the leaders meeting with 'people' like Joe Biden...just like Ukraine and Vicki(Fuck the EU) Nuland and M

Demian | Sep 29, 2014 9:14:53 PM | 39

There was a pretty big turnout at the demo. I am suprised that so many Hong Kong students let themselves get fooled.

brian | Sep 30, 2014 10:18:45 AM | 58

the ukrainians of euromaidan also let themselves be fooled

what im waiting for now is part 2: the SNIPERS

IhaveLittleToAdd | Sep 30, 2014 10:39:53 AM | 60

The synopsis is that the non-elite US citizenry and their interest groups have no influence on public policy. I sense this is fairly accurate.

http://www.princeton.edu/~mgilens/Gilens%20homepage%20materials/Gilens%20and%20Page/Gilens%20and%20Page%202014-Testing%20Theories%203-7-14.pdf

Noirette | Sep 30, 2014 10:42:10 AM | 61

This is a typical Color Revolution Move.

Hong Kong is a fantastic place for it.

The young people, school-, students, are all wired (smartphones), close by and near to each other, very into group young 'activities', in a particular social slot as part of an age category and position which is very strictly defined, generally massed together in their daily lives, imho also quite conventional and ready to follow leaders / their popular guys / gals, etc. Partly because they are, in my imagination, never set foot there, pretty a-political.

1. OK a bit of a caricature, to make a point. Which is that such fires can be lit but then may die down, collapse under their own weight, the line between 'doing our thing' and political action dissolves into insignificance. Yet, they may spin off into violence on a reaction-counter-reaction scenario. An instigation of a color buzz in Hong Kong is in a way an admission of down-scaling.

Note the Hong Kong young ppl are occupying, demonstrating, or crowding, on questions that are not burning issues for them/their mates/families. The wider scope is perhaps sympathetic in a way, but not thought out (imho)

Contrast with what happened at the Maidan. What happened there is far more complicated, and many ordinary citizens of all ages / categories supported Maidan. Maidan was not your regular US-NED-type instigated color revolution. Ukraine had a color revolution - Orange - in 2004, which failed.

1. In other places, young ppl (not all of course..) are politised. In CH, for ex, they are Green, Neo-Nazi, libertarian, Goths, Radical-Liberal just like Dad, mainstream social democrats, People's Party supporters, etc. All have other outlets for political action that they would not eschew (except in dire cases of course.) Some defend only the interests of their corporation (watch-maker apprentices! A plan for life!)

Don Bacon | Sep 30, 2014 12:44:35 PM | 62

The NED, often acting with its partner USAID, working for the US State Department and CIA, has been active in Latin America also. Their involvement in the 2009 Honduras coup and the current unrest in Venezuela have been fully described. Bolivia wisely expelled USAID last year.

Demian | Sep 30, 2014 12:50:34 PM | 64

Maybe we've been relying to much on the msm on this.

Counterpunch: Hong Kong's Fight Against Neoliberalism

As protesters flood the streets of Hong Kong demanding free elections in 2017, the international media puts on its usual spin, characterizing the struggle as one between an authoritarian state and citizens who want to be free. ...

But regardless of what the BBC wants the world to believe, Occupy Central isn't so much a fight for democracy as a fight for social justice. ...

The main issue with CY Leung's administration isn't the fact that it wasn't democratically elected, but that it serves two main groups: Beijing on one hand, and local elites on the other – in other words, far from democratic in its representation. It's not hard to see why big business and the oligarchs are terrified of Occupy Central: any movement towards real democracy would see them losing power and losing their grip over the territory.

So according to this Hong Kong student (currently living in London), this protest movement is authentic after all.
b | Sep 30, 2014 12:51:29 PM | 65

As documented by Tony Carlucci here many of the Hong Kong protest leaders have a long of contacts with NED/NDI.

Behind the so-called "Occupy Central" protests, which masquerade as a "pro-democracy" movement seeking "universal suffrage" and "full democracy," is a deep and insidious network of foreign financial, political, and media support. Prominent among them is the US State Department and its National Endowment for Democracy (NED) as well as NED's subsidiary, the National Democratic Institute (NDI). ...

They also seem to have found some additional funding from some local oligarchs (with fonancial interests in the U.S.)

Don Bacon | Sep 30, 2014 1:21:15 PM | 66

@Demian #64
Hong Kong's Fight Against Neoliberalism

Juan Cole wrote about the neoliberal angle here, in regard to Syria but the general case applies.

Demian | Sep 30, 2014 1:28:02 PM | 67
@b #65:

Hm, I guess I should have paid more attention to that Hong Kong student studying at LSE. David Lindorff got fooled, too.

More from that Tony Carlucci piece:

The "Occupy Central" protests in Hong Kong continue on – destabilizing the small southern Chinese island famous as an international hub for corporate-financier interests, and before that, the colonial ambitions of the British Empire. Those interests have been conspiring for years to peel the island away from Beijing after it was begrudgingly returned to China in the late 1990′s, and use it as a springboard to further destabilize mainland China. ...

To push this agenda – which essentially is to prevent Beijing from vetting candidates running for office in Hong Kong, thus opening the door to politicians openly backed, funded, and directed by the US State Department – NDI lists an array of ongoing meddling it is carrying out on the island.

@Noirette #61:
Maidan was not your regular US-NED-type instigated color revolution.
No, it wasn't. NED-type instigated color revolutions don't typically have racist fascists playing a leading role.
dh | Sep 30, 2014 2:17:37 PM | 70

Kinda interesting look at the protest leaders.....

"Wong, 17, the razor-thin leader of the student group Scholarism, has been one of the city's most outspoken pro-democracy activists for three years. Wong founded the group in 2011 to protest a Beijing-backed proposal to implement a "patriotic education" curriculum in the city's public schools; the following autumn, he mobilised 120,000 people to occupy the city government headquarters, leading officials to shelve the plan.

As a testament to his influence, state media has attempted to discredit him by portraying him as an "extremist" with shadowy ties to the US (he firmly denies the charge). Police arrested him on Friday night after a group of students scaled a fence to invade the government complex. By the time they released him on Sunday afternoon, his detention had already catalyzed further demonstrations."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/30/hong-kong-pro-democracy-protest-leaders-occupy

nomas | Sep 30, 2014 5:07:42 PM | 74

In all the pictures I have seen the Hong Kong "students" all look like mercenaries. They are all men, 20-30 YOA, muscular, all dressed in workout clothes, all carrying fanny packs, all wearing boots. If these aren't US trained troops then, bullshit. Because 90% of them are.

guest77 | Sep 30, 2014 9:36:56 PM | 76

"Sticking with the neolib angle"

I don't think it is too far fetched to say that countries like Libya, Egypt and Syria bought into the neo-liberal bill of goods and faced - at least in part - some homegrown agitation because of it. The US is well known for "making economies scream" and the Bush-era was the height of neoliberal encroachmment into the former socialist areas.

Nothing is more sure to create a riot that slashing of food and fuel subsidies. The Americans know this, and push for this.

This is not to say that those who rush out into the streets and chop off the heads of the Shia have legitimate grievances, or are even motivated by the hurt of the average Arab citizen. But it does play a role, I have no doubt.

Gaddafi and Assad as well toyed with neoliberalism when the GWOT threatened them. It was "the offer they couldn't refuse" that lead to chaos in Libya and civil war in Syria.

guest77 | Sep 30, 2014 9:40:31 PM | 77

What a joke to discuss "democracy" at a time like this.

The choice on the world stage is not wether this island city will have "democracy" but wether we will have a world dominated by one power - the worst conception of life that fascism strives for.

None of us know what occurs in HK past the slogans. What we do know is that, if China or Russia falls to the US - no matter how "autocratic" they may be - there will be no independent action anywhere.

Unless you call what is happening in Greece "democracy" or what is happening in Ukraine "democracy" or what is happening in Libya "democracy". In which case - you've said enough.

Demian | Sep 30, 2014 9:51:46 PM | 79

@guest77 #76:

Maidan demonstrators might not have wanted neoliberalism, but that's what they're getting, thanks to their "revolution". It would be the same with Hong Kong, if it citizens got "universal suffrage", a.k.a. officials chosen by the Empire (instead of China).

guest77 | Sep 30, 2014 9:59:54 PM | 81

@Demian - there is no fascist who does not work for the oligarchy, no matter what he or she thinks. The Night of the Long Knives comes - always.

denk | Sep 30, 2014 10:30:29 PM | 82

besids wolfowitz the neocon and mark simon the spook, media tycoon jimmy lai's buddies include the well known ned patsy martin lee, a hk born n bred wog.

his ned connection is beyond doubt, hell, he got standing ovation whenever he went to the *hill* to sermonise on democracy in china.

hehehe

http://tinyurl.com/6xdr54

guest77 | Sep 30, 2014 10:42:21 PM | 83

Andre Vitcheck sums up Western "freedom" succinctly:

The West has finally reached the highest level of 'freedom'. It is a freedom for itself – a terrible freedom to play with the world as if it were a ball, a cheap and insignificant thing.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39796.htm

denk | Sep 30, 2014 11:10:34 PM | 85

http://zcomm.org/znetarticle/the-west-perfecting-its-techniques-to-hurt-china-by-andre-vltchek/

brian | Sep 30, 2014 11:28:25 PM | 90

So according to this Hong Kong student (currently living in London), this protest movement is authentic afteer all. Hong Kong's Fight Against Neoliberalism Posted by: Demian | Sep 30, 2014 12:50:34 PM | 64

think that one thru! euromaidan in ukraine and the reforms rallies in syria may have had valid goals...this didnt stop them from being used by shadowy persons...both groups ended up being attacked by snipers..used to put pressure of the govts


if no snipers appear we can take this is a legit rally for what they claim....but my guess is others are there with other agendas

Demian | Sep 30, 2014 11:47:05 PM | 91

@brian #90:

I think that the role that the NED has played here by itself shows that the demonstrators are being used and duped. I doubt that snipers will be used in Hong Kong.

By the way, from #66, Juan Cole wrote:

Only when the regime dealt with the 2011 protests by drawing up tanks and firing on peaceful protesters, and by stationing snipers on rooftops, did the protesters gradually take up arms.
As far as I can tell, he is just lying there. First, as far as I know, the snipers did not work for the "regime": same as in Kiev. Second, the "protesters" did not "take up arms". The armed fighters are foreign jihadists trained by the US, as Andre Vitchec explains.

Juan Cole is such a pompous, hypocritical whore. Informed Comment my foot.

Posted by: Don Bacon | Sep 30, 2014 11:50:49 PM | 92

Democracy is a Western concept, not an Asian one.

Don Bacon | Sep 30, 2014 11:52:35 PM | 93

@ Demian #91
Get issues into perspective.
Juan Cole may be wrong on snipers (you don't know), but not on neoloberalism.

brian | Sep 30, 2014 11:53:04 PM | 94

@89
Global research has picked up on the students article

http://www.globalresearch.ca/occupy-central-hong-kongs-fight-against-neoliberalism/5405426

so we have two more sides to this issue! where lies the truth?

brian | Sep 30, 2014 11:55:06 PM | 95

Ming Chun Tang has a blog
http://clearingtherubble.wordpress.com/
its often useful to go back thru a persons blog to gain an idea of his/her orientation(....sorry!)

Don Bacon | Sep 30, 2014 11:59:12 PM | 96

Toby Carroll's description of the HK economic situation might be applied almost verbatim to that in the U.S. One in five in poverty? US -- 15%. etc.

Crest | Oct 1, 2014 12:01:40 AM | 97

@95 Brian

I hope that's correct. It would be nice if there was an organic movement for social justice. Color revolutions seem to make everything worse for everyone but oligarchs.

Demian | Oct 1, 2014 12:31:09 AM | 98

@Don Bacon #93:

I never said that Cole is wrong on neoliberalism.

Cole also says that "ISIL surprised [Obama] and his intelligence officials". Cole doesn't mention that the ISIL is a CIA creation, so he is just backing up Obama with his lying.

denk | Oct 1, 2014 2:17:33 AM | 100

brian 94

do hkers have grievances , do mainlanders hve grievances too, do indians have grievances, indonesians have grievances ?

u betcha !

here's the truth....

what u can be damn sure is someone out there have been spending yrs in infiltrating and manipulating these dissidents movements. There's an army of cunts out there whose *day jobs* consist of looking for *sparks* at every corner of the world and ignite it into an inferno.

witness tibet, xinjiang, south china sea, east china sea, ukraine and....hk --

the uber militancy of these protestors is rather revealing, now they demand the hk chief to step down. -- the puppet masters know full well china wouldnt budge, in fact the police has issued an ultimatum to the protestors to back off.

in demanding a regime change, the manipulators are no doubt trying to provoke a clash, hopefully leading to *tam massacre* sequel. u bet they already have the editorials, headlines standing by...
*hk police shot at unarmed protestors, killing hundres....*

wow , i could almost visualise these cunts wanking themselves in front of the screen already !

in every guardian thread abou tibet, xinjiang and now hk, there'd be idiots chanting about the tam *massacre*, where *the brutal ccp used tanks to crush the bones of unarmed protestors* [sic]
some cunts are already salivating that this would turn into tam2. !

p.s.

in every fukus destabilisation caper, there'r always the willing and unwitting patsies, then there'r the useful idiots .....
*********************************************************************
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2014/09/the-ned-hong-kong-riots.html#c6a00d8341c640e53ef01bb078feb09970d

useful idiot
*If it's true - then they must have learned it from Red China *

kid,
ukus [ i cant use fukus over there] wrote the book on ff, any idea whats a false flag ?
http://www.globalresearch.ca/americas-foreign-policy-script-false-flags-humanitarian-crises-and-russias-phantom-tanks/5399836

*However, as usual, you do the people of Hong Kong a great
disservice. Hong Kong people are westernised and are very politically aware.*

u bet -- your idols martin lee, anson chan are typical hk born n bred wogs lol -- mind u,
politically aware isnt the same as politically astute -- a politically aware but obtuse activist is perfect target for brainwashing !

*A bit of tear gas isn't brutal. What's brutal is sending in tanks and armed infantry into a bunch of students in Tianamen Square.*

see what i mean, u've been kept in the dark n fed bs all these yrs !

*Let's also not forget when China was inspiring not just riots in Hong Kong but also planting bombs in numerous places.

You want links? Here you are:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_1967_Leftist_riots

The true face of China.*

i dont want *links*
i want evidence, if u think wiki is credible *evidence* that just goes to show how brainwashed you'r. :-(

hmm,
i forgot to tell him, ever heard of gladio ?

xxx
Pro-Beijing Media Accuses Hong Kong Student Leader of U.S. Government Ties
By: WUFYS
Tags: CHINA CURRENT EVENTS PROTESTS/REVOLUTION
The face of Hong Kong's student democracy movement came under furious attack by a pro-Beijing newspaper today, upping the ante in the fight over the former British colony's political future.

WEBMASTER ADDITION: "Evidence for Mr. Wong's close ties to the U.S. that the paper cited included what the report described as frequent meetings with U.S. consulate personnel in Hong Kong and covert donations from Americans to Mr. Wong. As evidence, the paper cited photographs leaked by "netizens." The story also said Mr. Wong's family visited Macau in 2011 at the invitation of the American Chamber of Commerce, where they stayed at the "U.S.-owned" Venetian Macao, which is owned by Las Vegas Sands Corp."

Las Vegas Sands Corp. is owned by Sheldon Adelson, who is facing bribery charges under the current Chinese government and thus has a powerful motive to fund an overthrow.

Posted by: brian | Oct 1, 2014 8:20:30 AM | 103

xxx
speaking of hedge funders

'Argentina is engaged in a debt row with a number of US hedge funds.'
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/10/01/380657/kirchner-says-us-plotting-to-oust-her/

and

'The top Argentine official further insisted that on her recent visit to Argentinian Pope Francis, she was alerted by police of a purported assassination plot against her by ISIL terror elements.'

now why would ISIL attack an argentinian leader? a clue as to who owns them?

Posted by: brian | Oct 1, 2014 9:09:53 AM | 105

xxx
@97:

So these are the idealistic young people fighting for social justice and "against Neo-liberalism" (frankly, I wonder what percentage of them has ever heard of the concept), while simultaneously calling mainland people "locusts"? Hmmm, calling an entire huge group of people by the dehumanizing name of an insect...Does that remind anyone of anything?

What I understand, there is indeed a big wealth gap and social injustice in Hong Kong, stemming from the stranglehold of the financial and real estate oligarchs. But where did these oligarchs come from, and where did the legal system that protects them come from? IMHO, the Beijing government's fault was precisely too many concessions toward "local interests".

By the way, Here is an interesting article from, of all places, the Guardian. It does not see all the sides of the issue, but does make some good points.

Posted by: Chinese american | Oct 1, 2014 10:27:08 AM | 106

xxx
It is truly heart warming to hear people like Chris Patten calling for democracy. Under British rule democracy wasn't even up for discussion.

Posted by: dh | Oct 1, 2014 10:31:48 AM | 107

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#OccupyCentral leader Jimmy Lai Chi-Ying is a business partner of Paul Wolfowitz

http://journal-neo.org/2014/10/01/hong-kong-s-occupy-central-is-us-backed-sedition/

Posted by: brian | Oct 1, 2014 10:32:04 AM | 108

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@107 Thank you, brian, for connecting the dots.

Posted by: madisolation | Oct 1, 2014 10:52:20 AM | 109

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David Cameron is "deeply concerned" about the situation in Hong Kong

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/09/30/uk-hongkong-china-britain-idUKKCN0HP0JH20140930

Nick Clegg meets the "activists" from Hong Kong.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/15/nick-clegg-hong-kong-china-democracy

Posted by: Willy2 | Oct 1, 2014 10:55:48 AM | 110

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Cameron and Clegg are right to be deeply concerned. The FTSE is crashing.

Posted by: dh | Oct 1, 2014 11:02:42 AM | 111

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@103 My point is that the extreme neoliberal system in Hong Kong ("the world's freest economy") is the cause of Occupy Central, which is a symptom of the problem. I didn't say, nor do I think the movement's leaders are necessarily concerned about neoliberalism or indeed informed about the ideology. I think democracy could be a way for Hong Kongers to take back their own territory, and the vote is just the starting point. Once the vote is won, there'll still be a long way to go. BUT having the vote provides the opportunity and is therefore a condition for any real change to happen.

@105 There is indeed a lot of racism in Hong Kong, especially towards the Chinese nowadays. But that in itself doesn't make people's grievances illegitimate. Also note that the people labelling the Chinese "locusts" are a minority. The fact is that it's becoming increasingly difficult to make a living in Hong Kong, largely thanks to mismanagement by a government in bed with local elites and controlled by Beijing, and that is one of the main reasons why so many Hong Kongers are taking to the streets.

Also note that China has been paying protesters to rally against Occupy Central. One thing that Occupy Central's leaders haven't done is hand out cash to participants.

Posted by: Ming Chun Tang | Oct 1, 2014 11:23:29 AM | 112

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@112 "I think democracy could be a way for Hong Kongers to take back their own territory..." That suggests you envision an independent Hong Kong.

As I understand it Hong Kong has never been independent. Not under the Manchu and certainly not under the British.

Do you think Hong Kong would be economically better off as an independent entity? If that happened it's hard to imagine foreign companies that use HK as a base would be welcome in China.

Posted by: dh | Oct 1, 2014 12:14:58 PM | 115

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@dh #114:

Good point. An independent Hong Kong makes no more sense than an independent Okinawa.

Posted by: Demian | Oct 1, 2014 12:25:49 PM | 116

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@114

I don't know if that is what @112 means exactly; there is the whole "one country, two systems" idea, after all.

Though of course I cannot read anyone's mind. It would not surprise me if @112 identifies more with the British, and does not see himself as "Chinese" (e.g. when it comes to those being called "locusts", he uses the word Chinese when I would have used mainlander.) But maybe I'm wrong.

As for Hong Kong independence, I suppose it is theoretically possible -- if China is utterly destroyed. I don't think Hong Kong will be better off economically better off in that situation, though.

Posted by: Chinese american | Oct 1, 2014 12:46:08 PM | 120

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Ming Chun Tang, do you consider yourself to be on the left? Or even left leaning? In US there is a form of what I, and others on this blog, call fake democracy.

The US now only trails the EU in being neoliberal. In other words, US has brought in fascism by popular vote. The EZ has had their democracy totally destroyed.

So called, free elections, can get any state neck deep in neoliberal orthodoxy.

Posted by: okie farmer | Oct 1, 2014 1:13:37 PM | 122

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So China is by far the most democratic country in the world:

http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-learn-Disinformation-Hurting-Humanity/dp/1493546449/ref=la_B00G3SWQZ0_1_1_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412183709&sr=1-1

So this is not about democracy but about imperial aggression.

Posted by: Ben | Oct 1, 2014 1:17:30 PM | 123

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Peter Lee has responded to b's post which started this thread at Counterpunch:
Bernhard of Moon of Alabama unearthed a fascinating budgetary item for the NDI in 2012 (and also, I must own, rebuked me for my naïveté in regarding the Hong Kong demos as home grown).
I think we should treat Ming Chun Tang as an imposter and a troll. Someone here said that the real Ming Chun Tang has a blog. If a person with a blog makes a post at MoA, he will give a link to his blog.

Posted by: Demian | Oct 1, 2014 1:18:48 PM | 124

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@123 Troll perhaps. But interesting. He is echoing the protesters line. They avoid using the word 'independence'. Too early for that I think.

Posted by: dh | Oct 1, 2014 1:22:30 PM | 125

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Americans inciting the sheep in Hong Kong against their will.

https://twitter.com/RaviCNN/status/517018598616072192/photo/1

Posted by: ab initio | Oct 1, 2014 2:02:33 PM | 126

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dh, I agree. Independence is a loaded word that, if used, could bring the Beijing authorities down hard on on occupy cnetral.
to take back their own territory
Sounds like the US Tea Party folk, "We have to take back America." WARNING: Ming Chun Tang don't use that word.

Posted by: okie farmer | Oct 1, 2014 2:10:31 PM | 127

xxx
@124 "I think we should treat Ming Chun Tang as an imposter and a troll. Someone here said that the real Ming Chun Tang has a blog. If a person with a blog makes a post at MoA, he will give a link to his blog."

That's pretty funny. Someone would actually impersonate me, a 20-year-old college student with a blog? Here is my piece published on three sources:

CounterPunch http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/09/30/hong-kongs-fight-against-neoliberalism/
ZNet http://zcomm.org/znetarticle/occupy-central-hong-kongs-fight-against-neoliberalism/

GlobalResearch.ca http://www.globalresearch.ca/occupy-central-hong-kongs-fight-against-neoliberalism/5405426

Now, my blog: http://clearingtherubble.wordpress.com/

On the right, you'll see my Twitter feed, where I acknowledge your suggestion that I may be an imposter. Happy?

Posted by: Ming Chun Tang | Oct 1, 2014 4:26:00 PM | 130

xxx
Amrika needs her own color revolution. The kind that we like to meddle and instigate from the outside of target nations. It's almost a shame how many still respect the term sovereignty and do not habitually meddle in the internal affairs of others. Minding their own business now is clearly endangering the lives of their own citizens and way of life.

How easy it would be for foreign $$ to manipulate desperate and stupid Amrikans into fighting and killing each other on their way to toppling the USG. There are so many of the sheep that are better off dead than breeding...the Amrika Uber Alles crowd who think no matter who or what Amrika is killing overseas, that they somehow deserve it. Amrika Uber Alles. Never Wrong, Always Right Always Killing for the Good Of Mankind. So many who could be on fire and I would not stop to piss on them to put them out.

Posted by: Farflungstar | Oct 1, 2014 4:31:36 PM | 131

xxx
Okay, I figured out how to include a link to my blog. There it is.

@118 Fair enough. Hong Kongers have never had prior ownership - HK has essentially been colonized twice, once by Britain and once by China. Taking ownership would be a better way to put it, and by that I mean the people actually having a say in how Hong Kong is run, rather than it being dictated solely by Beijing and by local elites.

@122 Yes, I do consider myself to be on the left, and I agree with you about the US being a pseudo-democracy. But now, what's the lesser of two evils: having a vote, or having no vote and having policy imposed on you from above? You're suggesting that free elections lead to neoliberal orthodoxy, but that isn't necessarily the case, and nor do a lack of free elections in any way lead to socialist utopia. The purpose of free elections is to provide the OPPORTUNITY for Hong Kongers to rule themselves and thereby change the status quo. Whether we take that opportunity is another question.

@127 Again, I never mentioned independence. I'm also not American, I don't follow the Tea Party, and I wasn't aware that they use that language, but I'll take your advice.

Posted by: Ming Chun Tang | Oct 1, 2014 4:36:49 PM | 132

xxx
@112 Ming Chun Tang

the extreme neoliberal system in Hong Kong ("the world's freest economy")

The extreme neoliberal system in Hong Kong was created by the British. In the 90s, the big talking points in Hong Kong, what people were saying they were afraid of, were the terrifying "communist takeover" and losing their "economic freedom", and the Beijing government promised that it would not happen, that they would keep its hands off Hong Kong. Beijing is content to let the local elites run Hong Kong, but this does not necessarily imply that the local elites are "controlled by Beijing". Hong Kong does not even pay a cent of taxes to the central government, among other things.

I think democracy could be a way for Hong Kongers to take back their own territory, and the vote is just the starting point.

Has that been shown to actually work in places where there is the popular vote? How do you fight neo-liberalism by (NED-funded) neo-liberalism?

I am not denying that people in Hong Kong have real economic grievances. But grievances are enough to destroy and not enough to build. And they are easily turned to use by other forces. As for the "locust" talk, and the contemptuous attitude toward mainlanders (which I'm not sure is only on the part of the minority of protesters)--that does make one pause to consider about the suggestion that legitimate grievances are not the only reasons for the protests. How much of this sense of grievance is the grievance of losing one's superiority and privileged position, compared to the mainland? It is increasingly difficult to make a living in Hong Kong--how much of this is due to the fact that people now need to compete more and more with the rest of the country?

I was where you were 25 years ago. No, actually, you're way ahead of me at age 20: I certainly did not know what neo-liberalism was.

Posted by: Chinese american | Oct 1, 2014 4:38:03 PM | 133

xxx
@124 "I think we should treat Ming Chun Tang as an imposter and a troll. Someone here said that the real Ming Chun Tang has a blog. If a person with a blog makes a post at MoA, he will give a link to his blog."

That's pretty funny. Someone would actually impersonate me, a 20-year-old college student with a blog?

well, Demian has a bit of a habit of making a fool of himself with his unwarranted speculations

he seems to think he can bully others into silence by making false/ridiculous claims such as the one above

Posted by: yeowzaa | Oct 1, 2014 4:40:17 PM | 135

xxx
All I am saying is that, if one want to fight neo-liberalism, then it seems to me that one needs to realize that neo-liberalism is pervasive in this day and age--in the political "science" and economic theories they teach in the universities, and in the articles of faith that they tell you are cherished universal ideals.

That's how deep the rabbit hole goes. Once you've doubted an idea, every idea, then you can decide what it is good for.

Posted by: Chinese american | Oct 1, 2014 4:45:45 PM | 136

xxx
@133 It's true that it was created by the British - I don't deny that. I also don't think (and didn't say, mind you) that the HK elites are controlled by Beijing. What I said was that the HK elites are ALLIED with Beijing against the social movements because they're doing great under the status quo and the last thing they want is democracy.

On your second point, yes, there is. I'm sure I'll be slaughtered for saying this, but Venezuela has seen genuinely positive social change under a genuine democracy (unlike what the right-wing elites claim). But what makes you say Occupy Central is neoliberalism? They haven't got an agenda other than demanding the vote. And the declining standard of living has nothing to do with competition with China, because if that were the case, we would be seeing HK in economic decline. But that hasn't happened. What has happened is that wealth has been redistributed from the middle and working classes to the rich, as naturally tends to happen under capitalism. I think you're confusing two different issues - the issue of racism and the issue of class conflict. Hong Kongers aren't the type to protest over just anything, least of all that kind of resentment that you're talking about. Occupy Central is only happening because the middle and working classes are getting increasingly angry at the elites.

@134 So these American establishment papers are genuinely left-wing? Wow.

Posted by: Ming Chun Tang | Oct 1, 2014 4:54:33 PM | 137

okie farmer | Oct 1, 2014 4:56:51 PM | 138
The purpose of free elections is to provide the OPPORTUNITY for Hong Kongers to rule themselves and thereby change the status quo.
Fair enough. It'll be an uphill battle for sure, the HK plutocracy will pour money into the elections, run stealth candidates, with the aim to get a TRUE neoliberal in office.

For instance, in France, the Socialist Hollande has embraced neoliberal orthodoxy completely. His approval rating are now at 13%, but he doesn't care, he doesn't work for the people. Like Obomber, he's broken every campaign promise he made.

xxx
@138 Let me make it clear. I'm not optimistic about Occupy Central. Not at all. I don't think Hong Kongers are informed enough. But at the same time, I don't agree with your defeatism. When there are no good options, you've got to take the least bad option. Having a vote is, in my opinion, the lesser evil compared to having no vote when you look at who currently runs HK.

@139 Well, I would have signed into this site through my Twitter account, if only the site had allowed it. But good to see you now know I'm real.

Posted by: Ming Chun Tang | Oct 1, 2014 5:03:16 PM | 140

xxx
No, American establishment papers are way right wing, all of them, and supporters of neoliberalism. The only left leaning paper in US was a south San Francisco paper that got bought by some guy from Chicago who turned it into blah.

No, the reason I would like to see your article in NYT etc is because you would, first, get a larger audience, and second, because you would have established a yourself as a journalist.

Still, I'm glad your got your article in those 3 sites.

Posted by: okie farmer | Oct 1, 2014 5:11:30 PM | 141

xxx
Cy Leung seems to be the main hate figure. The next big event will be Friday morning when he tries to get into his office.....which happens to be next door to the PLA barracks. Lots of media will be there for that.

Posted by: dh | Oct 1, 2014 5:31:07 PM | 142

xxx
'Posted by: I take it back, all of you are dumbshits | Oct 1, 2014 3:25:46 PM | 129

but how much is 'democracy' a western concept? the american founding fathers (landed gentry) rejected it, and most states establish political parties who tend to ignore those that vote for them.

'rule by the people' is in no country on earth

Posted by: brian | Oct 1, 2014 6:29:32 PM | 145

xxx
'On your second point, yes, there is. I'm sure I'll be slaughtered for saying this, but Venezuela has seen genuinely positive social change under a genuine democracy (unlike what the right-wing elites claim). '
@137

i presume most people here support the Bolivarian revolution and the late Hugo Chavez!

Posted by: brian | Oct 1, 2014 6:35:25 PM | 147

xxx
Posted by: Ming Chun Tang | Oct 1, 2014 5:03:16 PM | 140

the problem with these movements is they way they get co-opted: witness what happened in Ukraine: grievances by people of euromaidan were used by shadowy forces to topple a legitimate govt, leading to chaos, fascist terror and war.

Posted by: brian | Oct 1, 2014 6:38:07 PM | 148

xxx
I would think that the very best thing for the HK protestors to do at this point is distance themselves as far as possible from the US Empire, and denounce it and its machinations. Otherwise, people will assume they are merely pawns.

Distancing oneself from the US Empire has to be the first priority of any genuine movement for justice. Even if the campaigns of protest are being waged outside of the US. Perhaps especially so, at this point.

Posted by: guest77 | Oct 1, 2014 7:12:49 PM | 149

xxx
@denk - thanks for the link to the '67 riots. Very interesting.

Funny to think that it used to be communism which put the fear of god into every government.

Riots, coups, strikes, real revolutions. Now the US has taken all those methods, injected them with millions of dollars and social and psychological research, and redeployed them.

The US is giving revolution a bad name. No doubt, that's part of the plan.

Posted by: guest77 | Oct 1, 2014 7:39:32 PM | 150

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Totally OT, but Hong Kong was former home of one of the most amazing human structures ever built.

Posted by: guest77 | Oct 1, 2014 7:42:18 PM | 151

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@151 The closest thing to that now is Chungking Mansions on Nathan Road...

http://arzucanaskin.com/2014/06/30/17-floors-five-thousand-people-friends-and-delicious-food/

Posted by: dh | Oct 1, 2014 8:16:16 PM | 152

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@152 Oh wow, that's still pretty amazing. Thanks for that.

Posted by: guest77 | Oct 1, 2014 8:23:43 PM | 153

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@153. Spent a couple of nights there some time ago. Didn't run into any university educated Hong Kongers.....:)

Posted by: dh | Oct 1, 2014 8:32:18 PM | 154

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Hong Kong plays a fairly substantial role in McCoy's The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia.

Its worth remembering the decrepit state the British maintained it in during much of their rule. Addiction to opium and heroin was staggering. A big moneymaker for the big boys.

Posted by: guest77 | Oct 1, 2014 8:46:47 PM | 155

xxx
Posted by: brian | Oct 1, 2014 6:29:32 PM | 145

Yes, I know. That doesn't justify the CCP's rejection of democracy, even back when it was still actually committed to Communism.

Posted by: I take it back, all of you are dumbshits | Oct 1, 2014 9:01:09 PM | 156

xxx
Hong Kong was built on the opium trade. Shanghai was part of the deal after the First Opium War. Beijing was sacked. A lot of Chinese haven't forgotten.

Posted by: dh | Oct 1, 2014 9:03:19 PM | 157

xxx
@124 demian quote "If a person with a blog makes a post at MoA, he will give a link to his blog." i was going to challenge this as i read down the thread just now, but i see i don't have to.. some folks posts here demian who don't feel the need to share their blog or website.. as a musician, i have a website, but i feel no need to share it.. i think you have to think a bit more out of the box then you imply in the quote of yours above..

@137 MCT quote - "@134 So these American establishment papers are genuinely left-wing? Wow." no.. those publications are propaganda central in the usa and for any bozo who thinks they want to understand the exceptional nation better and are stupid enough to digest these publications without a serious filter.

@147 guest77. ditto the first paragraph..

@150 guest77.. ditto the gist of that post too..

Posted by: james | Oct 1, 2014 9:17:49 PM | 158

xxx
guest 150

the hierachy of a fukus destabilisation op
[1] fukus embassy,aka cia, mi6 nest[a]
[2] the willing patsies doing the bidding of foreign masters
[3] the unwitting patsies who do not realise they'r doing the bidding of the foreign powers,
[4] the agent provocateurs who provoke violence when plan A fails
[5] the grunts who do battle with the police, the cannon fodders who got killed , not necessarily by the police, when the shit hits the fan.

i bet ming chun tang aint no [1] lol but he seem to be your typical wog,
tang is your surname innit ming chun ?

btw, is martin lee one of your mentor, is he your idol ?


[a]
why isnt there a real color rev in washington dc ? coz there aint no murcun ambassy in washington dc lol.

im still dying to know why aint fukus *diplomats* fitted with electronic tagging device to curb their monkey business.

Posted by: denk | Oct 1, 2014 10:59:53 PM | 160

xxx
China is currently overriding the FRB Cabal's funny money scam with real gold-backed RMB currency now - to help liberate the world from their scaly grip.

ANYTIME A COUNTRY tries to create its own gold-backed currency that would render the USD fiat crap obsolete - the US stirs up dissent and invades (Iraq, Libya, Iran, etc).

Soooo...right on cue...color protest in HK...

Posted by: backstrap | Oct 1, 2014 11:17:13 PM | 161

xxx
and you thought ebola was bad!

He [McCain] said, "A year ago, Ben-Ali and Gaddafi were not in power. Assad won't be in power this time next year. This Arab Spring is a virus that will attack Moscow and Beijing." McCain then walked off the stage.

Considering the overt foreign-funded nature of not only the "Arab Spring," but now "Occupy Central," and considering the chaos, death, destabilization, and collapse suffered by victims of previous US subversion, "Occupy Central" can be painted in a new light – a mob of dupes being used to destroy their own home – all while abusing the principles of "democracy" behind which is couched an insidious, diametrically opposed foreign imposed tyranny driven by immense, global spanning corporate-financier interests that fear and actively destroy competition. In particular, this global hegemon seeks to suppress the reemergence of Russia as a global power, and prevent the rise of China itself upon the world's stage.

The regressive agenda of "Occupy Central's" US-backed leadership, and their shameless exploitation of the good intentions of the many young people ensnared by their gimmicks, poses a threat in reality every bit as dangerous as the "threat" they claim Beijing poses to the island of Hong Kong and its people. Hopefully the people of China, and the many people around the world looking on as "Occupy Central" unfolds, will realize this foreign-driven gambit and stop it before it exacts the heavy toll it has on nations that have fallen victim to it before – Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Egypt, and many others.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-now-admits-it-is-funding-occupy-central-in-hong-kong/5405680

John McCain is the Typhoid Mary of the Occupy/arab springs/euromaidans. ..he needs to be quarantined preferably on Mars!

Posted by: brian | Oct 1, 2014 11:30:49 PM | 162

xxx
"why isnt there a real color rev in washington dc ?"

There was one moment in the post-war period when the US faced precisely the phenomenon that have come to define "color revolutions", that being to occupy the central square, bring huge numbers into the seat of government, live in protestors.

This moment was Martin Luther King's planned "Poor People's March" on Washington. DC at the height of the Vietnam War. MLK planned to bring one million people to the National Mall, and to hold a massive, open-ended sit in.

Knowing people's love for him, his charisma, and indeed the violence that erupted in numerous cities following his death, we can certainly assume that he had the "political capital" to bring the country to a standstill and effect a genuine, Second American Revolution. Or we would have witnessed unbelievable bloodshed in our nation's capital to unknown effect.

There is no telling what that event may have grown into. He was, of course, murdered in the planning stages. The violence that followed was extreme but directionless. The "Poor People's March" would not have been.

Since then, consider what the US has witnessed in terms of loss of civil liberties, surveillance, police powers, and media control. There is little chance for such an event now, but if there is one, it will repeat what King intended on the National Mall.

_______________________

I presume the US has modeled its own global warfare on this and similar events it faced at home during the 1960s. The Ukraine and Venezuela - both of which included mystery snipers - has been the nadir of all of this. Gone are the days (mostly) of military coups followed by mass repression. Now we see "the people" driven out of their minds by carefully orchestrated media campaigns, push onto the streets under the guidance of professionals, to overthrow governments and impose repression and austerity, or simply rip the society to shreds as in Syria and Libya.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall...

Posted by: guest77 | Oct 2, 2014 12:24:01 AM | 164

xxx
guess 164

The Times They Are a-Changin

http://12160.info/photo/mlk-i-have-a-dream-obama-i-have-a-drone-05-1?context

Posted by: denk | Oct 2, 2014 12:51:10 AM | 165

xxx
a possible solution is sugggested here:

'In truth, the ball is in Baba Beijing's court. They have the power and the ability to read the riot act to Hong Kong's elite billionaires and their corrupt, toady politicians. All Baba Beijing needs to do is say,

OK boys, it's time for a haircut. Your current inverted pyramid of wealth accumulation doesn't need to be re-inverted, but it sure needs to be flattened out enough to keep the peace. Make that apex angle more obtuse, much more obtuse.'
http://44days.net/the-skinny-on-hong-kongs-occupy-central-movement/

NOTE supposedly Beijing cant act directly till 2047 so HK people cant blame mainland china, only their local billionaire masters

Posted by: brian | Oct 2, 2014 1:14:07 AM | 166

xxx
44days is a serious resistance blog, no doubt. Here's an OT article about the EU which shows a EU flag with a wolfsangel centerpiece.

http://44days.net/europes-inglorious-ignimonious-infamy/

Posted by: okie farmer | Oct 2, 2014 2:58:08 AM | 167

xxx
The American deployment of double standards never ends:

Hong Kong protests: China warns US not to meddle in 'internal affairs'

"We believe human rights and the freedom of expression is [sic] something that's important not just in China but countries around the world," [Jen Psaki] insisted, asked about Wang's assertion that Hong Kong was an internal Chinese matter.

"We're continuing to urge dialogue between the authorities and protestors," she added.

I don't remember Psaki urging Kiev to engage in dialog with the people of eastern Ukraine, who only wanted a federal system of government and the ability to keep their children for being forced to learn a brain damaged form of Russian. Instead, she said that Ukraine had every right to bomb its own people with artillery and air strikes to preserve its "territorial integrity".

When are inside-the-Beltway types going to realize that Obama, with his neocon-infested State Department, has turned the US into a laughingstock as far as everyone but Americans and the English are concerned? America's persistence in this holier that though attitude is just lessening any remaining credibility it might still have as some kind of moral authority.

Posted by: Demian | Oct 2, 2014 5:13:25 AM | 168

brian | Oct 2, 2014 6:51:54 AM | 170
Andrew Korybko
1 hr ·

Gene Sharp's protégé, Jamila Raqib, coauthored an op-ed in Huffington Post advertising the fact that the 'Albert Einstein Institute's' destabilization tactics are being used in Hong Kong.

I've read every one of Sharp's major works and they are designed, even in his own words, to topple governments. He has written strategic guiding manuals on how to achieve this.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-shank/why-hong-kongs-occupycent_b_5906184.html

Hong Kong is not a protest, it is a Color Revolution. Well-intentioned individuals are being duped to join a movement aimed at overthrowing the authorities through a soft coup (for now), in a move that has never happened before in modern China. Legitimate grievances are being exploited by a revolutionary core and their cohorts to bring as many peaceful civilians into the fracas for use as human shields, in the hope that this will guarantee their own security amids the crackdown that some of them are trying to provoke.

My full analysis on this event will be forthcoming in the next couple of days on Oriental Review
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10104993491934055&id=12462833

xxx
i wonder why tang ming chun [1]

never appear in guardian, hell he'd get an army of cheerleaders from fukus, kinda like his home ground really.

what has he gotta say about this charge....

brian 103

*WEBMASTER ADDITION: "Evidence for Mr. Wong's close ties to the U.S. that the paper cited included what the report described as frequent meetings with U.S. consulate personnel in Hong Kong and covert donations from Americans to Mr. Wong. As evidence, the paper cited photographs leaked by "netizens." The story also said Mr. Wong's family visited Macau in 2011 at the invitation of the American Chamber of Commerce, where they stayed at the "U.S.-owned" Venetian Macao, which is owned by Las Vegas Sands Corp.*

im still waitin for his view on martin lee, the god father of hk democratic movement, is he your mentor, your idol , ming chun ?

[1]
i'd rather call deng xiao ping instead of the wog way like xiao ping deng.

Posted by: denk | Oct 2, 2014 6:57:58 AM | 171

brian | Oct 2, 2014 7:04:17 AM | 173

wonder who is the dumbshit here:

so:

'Under the revolutionary leadership of Muammar Qaddafi, Libya has attained the highest standard of living in Africa. In 2007, in an article which appeared in the African Executive Magazine, Norah Owaraga noted that Libya, "unlike other oil producing countries such as Nigeria and Saudi Arabia, utilized the revenue from its oil to develop its country. The standard of living of the people of Libya is one of the highest in Africa, falling in the category of countries with a GNP per capita of between USD 2,200 and 6,000."

This is all the more remarkable when we consider that in 1951 Libya was officially the poorest country in the world. According to the World Bank, the per capita income was less than $50 a year - even lower than India. Today, all Libyans own their own homes and cars. Two Fleet Street journalists, David Blundy and Andrew Lycett, who are by no means supporters of the Libyan revolution, had this to say:

"The young people are well dressed, well fed and well educated. Libyans now earn more per capita than the British. The disparity in annual incomes... is smaller than in most countries. Libya's wealth has been fairly spread throughout society. Every Libyan gets free, and often excellent, education, medical and health services. New colleges and hospitals are impressive by any international standard. All Libyans have a house or a flat, a car and most have televisions, video recorders and telephones. Compared with most citizens of the Third World countries, and with many in the First World, Libyans have it very good indeed." (Source: Qaddafi and the Libyan Revolution)

Large scale housing construction has taken place right across the country. Every citizen has been given a decent house or apartment to live in rent-free. In Qaddafi's Green Book it states: "The house is a basic need of both the individual and the family, therefore it should not be owned by others."

This dictum has now become a reality for the Libyan people.

Large scale agricultural projects have been implemented in an effort to "make the desert bloom" and achieve self-sufficiency in food production. Any Libyan who wants to become a farmer is given free use of land, a house, farm equipment, some livestock and seed.

"The standard of living of the people of Libya is one of the highest in Africa."

Today, Libya can boast one of the finest health care systems in the Arab and African World. All people have access to doctors, hospitals, clinics and medicines, completely free of all charges. The fact is that the Libyan revolution has achieved such a high standard of living for its people that they import labor from other parts of the world to do the jobs that the unemployed Libyans refuse to do. Libya has been called by many observers inside and out, "a nation of shop keepers." It is part of the Libyan Arab psyche to own your own small business and this type of small scale private enterprise flourishes in Libya. We can draw on many examples of Libyans with young sons who expressed the idea that it would be shameful for the family if these same young men were to seek menial work and instead preferred for them to remain at home supported by the extended family.'

http://blackagendareport.com/content/libya-getting-it-right-revolutionary-pan-african-perspective

so readers: ask yourself: who is the dumbshit here?

so my conclusion is mr dumbshit is either ignorant, of Gadafi and libya, and now is no longer
OR
he is a troll

xxx
While I've got no doubt that US and englander agents have been stirring up shit in Honkers it is naive and patronising to write off the entire situation as a mob of idiots being told what to do by USuk.

The root cause of the Honkers problem was the englander government's refusal to offer all the residents of Hongkong (remember they had been subjects of the englander queen for 100+ years), english citizenship when Honkers was returned to its legal owners.

If you actually listen to the occupy mob and the mouthpieces who support it, (journos and members of the legislative assembly), one quickly notices the prevalence of petit bourgeois englander accents.

Many of these types didn't require any encouragement from outside to be stirring shit.

It is disingenuous for Bernard to claim that the protests opposed to the Beijing screening then choosing candidates for Provincial Governor/Chief Executive or whatever it is called, are some sort of recent thing which HKers have only just picked up on. This issue was central to the demands of the HKers back when the english were running the joint and the english & chinese governments banded together to ignore the people's wishes at that time.

Since no one seriously imagines there is the slightest chance of HK becoming independant or even largely semi-autonomous it is equally silly to imagine USuk are seriously stirring up a colour revolution. It is in the interests of the globalists that HK stay exactly as it is - but this doesn't mean that USuk mind creating some chaos for the CP regime to have to deal with.

A minor prick into China's ass to remind Beijing that straying too far from the script at the security council will always result in payback.

So setting aside the deliberately provocative wind ups USuk has been engaged in, it is appropriate for normal humans to feel for the average HK shit-kicker. Many MoA habitues will be too young to remember when the englanders ruthlessly suppressed HK workers claims for equal wages with english workers back in the 1960's. At that time the englander government behaved exactly the same way - maybe worse than Beijing is currently alleged to be doing.
The englanders claimed that the workers were all 'Red Chinese' plants fighting for a commie takeover - The Harold Wilson Labour government was in power in england for much of this time, claiming to be fighting for trade unions and the working man, yet they were just another bunch of greedy white supremacists when push came to shove.

Instead of just mindlessly deciding 'my enemy's enemy is my friend', a self defeating and unsupportable cry which has been dragged out on MoA with gay abandon on most ME issues of late, how about recognising that all of these large states and their corporate puppet masters are a bunch of cunts who don't give a fuck about ordinary humans outside of the time us shitkickers' misery can be exploited for the greedheads' own ends.
The only way justice can be got for any of us is by way of a concerted push for decentralisation and the breaking up of these larger than can possibly be fair sovereign entities into much smaller units where there is only 2 or 3 degrees of separation between all citizens.

HK sure isn't the place where that can be advanced at the moment, because as I said earlier, the assholes in USuk plus the rest of the western neoliberals are just as opposed to and independent HK deep down as Beijing is.
Honkers works for them because it is part of China - break that relationship and the island's economic raison d'etre disappears.

amerika, england, france - most of western europe, in fact - including germany, have all got populations too large to be able to deliver the things that humans expect from their society.
These are the states in post industrial decline and the best candidates for the first wave of entropic decline and degeneration that would stir citizens into demanding then forcing decentralised political structures.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Oct 2, 2014 7:38:51 AM | 174

xxx
@137 Ming Chun Tang

Sorry, I am just going by what you write, but to be honest, from your posts, I can't help but get the sense that you don't actually know how the protests/the chief executive resigning/the popular vote will solve the neo-liberalism problem (or how these things are related to the problem at all), and as for most of the protesters, the have even less of an idea than you do, but just a sense of grievance.

So in what sense are you saying this is a fight against neo-liberalism?

Posted by: Chines american | Oct 2, 2014 8:04:56 AM | 175

xxx
So, Kerry is now making statements about US support of the protestors goals.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/10/02/380750/china-warns-us-over-hong-kong-meddling/

"As China knows, we support universal suffrage in Hong Kong, accordant with the Basic Law," Kerry told reporters, standing alongside Wang.

The Chinese official apparently meekly stood there and said something about China's internal affairs. Why? Why not bring up US treatment of the Occupy movement? Why not bring up militarization of US policing as seen in Ferguson? Why do these countries allow these schmucks to just spout off without calling them out?

Crazy.

Posted by: guest77 | Oct 2, 2014 8:34:47 AM | 176

xxx
"We believe an open society with the highest possible degree of autonomy and governed by rule of law is essential for Hong Kong's stability and prosperity," Kerry added.

At this point in world history, for the US to bring up a Chinese territories "stability", this is just an open threat.

Posted by: guest77 | Oct 2, 2014 8:37:44 AM | 177

xxx
amerika, england, france - most of western europe, in fact - including Germany, have all got populations too large to be able to deliver the things that humans expect from their society.

I don't think so. These countries have never in history been more capable of delivering peace, health, and a decent living standard to their peoples.

There is just an all out refusal to do so. This being on the part of those who own these countries and most everything in them.

Posted by: guest77 | Oct 2, 2014 8:42:12 AM | 178

Hoarsewhisperer | Oct 2, 2014 9:14:15 AM | 179
The Chinese official apparently meekly stood there and said something about China's internal affairs. Why? Why not bring up US treatment of the Occupy movement? Why not bring up militarization of US policing as seen in Ferguson? Why do these countries allow these schmucks to just spout off without calling them out?
Crazy.
Posted by: guest77 | Oct 2, 2014 8:34:47 AM | 176

The Chinese coined the term Paper Tiger having seen, first-hand, what the cowardly, incompetent, racist schmucks did in, and to, Korea and 'Vietnam'.

The Chinese, like the Russians, think defensive bluster is a waste of breath.

They prefer the Ugly Truth ...
Those who can, do.
Those who can't, talk.
... incessantly in America's case.

xxx
neocons in Hong Kong

Hongkong Upheaval is Classic Neocon Regime Change "Color Revolution"

Sept. 30, 2014 (EIRNS)-Although there are multiple foreign "Project Democracy" operations involved in the current mass upheaval in Hongkong (such as substantial annual funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, and open support from Chris Patten, the last British colonial Lord of Hongkong), the most instructive input comes directly from the right-wing "neocon" movement in the US, through Hongkong's one and only "pro-democracy" newspaper, the Apple Daily.

Apple Daily was founded and run by Next Media chief Jimmy Lai (Lai Chee-Ying), who launched the media chain after the 1989 Tiananmen mass demonstrations in Beijing. He has funded the "democracy movement" groups in Hongkong for years, a fact that was revealed this past spring when his emails were leaked to the press. Jimmy Lai is now holding interviews from the streets of Hongkong, where tens of thousands of students have shut down major sections of the city since the weekend. Since riot police used pepper spray to clear out the rioters who had occupied a govenment building over the weekend, the riot police have pulled back and the demonstrators have taken over three main squares, sleeping out and refusing to leave.

The key role is that of Lai's bag-man and top assistant, Mark Simon, an American from Falls Church, Virginia, who previously worked for the Pentagon, did an internship with the CIA (where his father worked), and is a sworn defender and collaborator of the neo-con crowd which ran the Bush Administrations. The South China Morning Post revealed on August 11 that Simon, Lai, and Paul Wolfowitz spent five hours on a yacht in Hongkong (on an unspecified date), and Simon brags in interviews that he is a dedicated neocon. He was introduced to Lai by Bill McGurn, a leading neocon and G.W. Bush's chief speech writer. Lai, himself, reports Simon, "was truly friends with Milton Friedman and Gary Becker."

Tomorrow, Oct. 1, is National Day in China, commemorating the founding of the PRC in 1949, but most celebrations have been cancelled. The demonstrations in Hongkong are being covered in the mainland press, although in a low key manner, calling on the protesters to go home, and the local government not to give in. The International press is all rah-rah, warning of another Tiananmen "massacre."

http://www.larouchepub.com/pr/2014/140930_hongkong_color_rev.html

Posted by: brian | Oct 2, 2014 10:09:45 AM | 180

xxx
forget hongkong

Ruptly ‏@Ruptly 7m7 minutes ago

Police clash with anti-#ECB protesters in #Napoli http://ow.ly/CcCWK

Posted by: brian | Oct 2, 2014 10:38:29 AM | 181

brian | Oct 2, 2014 10:40:36 AM | 182
a surprisingly decent piece on Putin in WSJ

'Russia has begun portraying the Hong Kong protests, too, as U.S.-inspired. Russian state-controlled television channels this week claimed that Hong Kong protest leaders had received American training.'

... ... ...

"Putin is a bold and decisive leader of a great power, who's good at achieving victory in a dangerous situation," said Maj. Gen. Wang Haiyun, a former military attaché to Moscow, in an interview with the Chinese website of the Global Times newspaper.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/why-russias-president-is-putin-the-great-in-china-1412217002

xxx
Is the BBC having second thoughts? Apparently not all Hong Kongers like the protests...

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-29460118

Posted by: dh | Oct 2, 2014 11:04:09 AM | 183

xxx
this is a repost about a less well known foreign instigated riot in tibet 1987. i want to highlight the modus operandi of fukus covert ops these days... sacrificing innocent dupes, children, women etc to further their nefarious scheme.

Hypocritical elegies

I learned of the participation of some 50 *foreign tourists* in the recent Lhasa riots with considerable outrage. But not exactly surprise.

I've been a foreign tourist in Tibet myself on three occasions since 1985. Each time, I met tourist after tourist who, in an interval of a few weeks at most, had become infatuated with a kind of vicarious Tibetan nationalism, Sometimes it was because of one or two conversations with inevitably pro- Western English-speaking Tibetans (there are many returnees from India now); [1] sometimes it was a rather thoughtless extension of genuine awe for Tibetan culture. But often enough it was something much more sinister. Many a blond, blue-eyed "Tibetan" nationalist with a backpack [1] was convinced that the Tibetans were nothing but a race of "noble savages," doomed to the same kind of extinction at the hands of the Hans that native Americans have suffered at the hands of the West.

Such hypocritical elegies are premature, to say the least. But there can be no reasoning with these bigoted "saviours" of the Tibetan people. They do not care that there are fewer than 100,000 Hans in Tibet and there were undoubtedly even fewer during the Cultural Revolution (actually, an anti-communist travel guide, the Lonely Planet Tibet Survival Kit, even admits that most of the damage was done by people who were ethnically Tibetan).

They do not care that there is not a single Chinese "multi-national" corporation in Tibet pumping the area of its non-existent wealth. They don't care that Tibet has never paid a fen in taxes and has on the contrary been richly subsidised for everything from education to industry to commerce. They don't care that the people's republic has waged a long, tough fight to modernise Tibet; in fact, they don't care at all about the modernisation of Tibet, as they themselves will tell you. They are beyond such arguments and mundane concerns; somehow they have all become fanatical vicarious Buddhists and are ready to lay down other people's lives to prove it,

What is really behind all this bornagain Buddhism on the part of foreign tourists to Tibet? Why do young Westerners who wouldn't waste 5 minutes on a religious fanatic in their own country and live in horror of Khomeini in Iran suddenly become devoted (if somewhat patronising) followers of the Dalai Lama, a kind of super-Khomeini who longs for the days when every pebble and tree in Tibet is his personal property. It is not simply ignorance, though there is plenty of that. It is, in a word, racism. Not just racist hatred for the Han people (though I have certainly
heard enough tourists describe Hans as "animals," meaning everything from their behaviour on buses to their alleged "occupation" of Tibet).
It is a particularly sickening kind of patronisation of the Tibetan people, who they see as a simple, happy, carefree race of child-like savages, free from the cares of the modern world and most in need of advice on how to remain so. I know this kind of patronisation. It is the sort enjoyed by native Americans when the reservations were set up and by Black people in the US as a way of keeping them out of White schools and successful careers that would only make them unhappy. It is this kind of patronisation which, in this world, is ultimately genocidal. There can be no better proof than the apparent willingness of large numbers of foreign tourists to bravely risk the lives of large numbers of Tibetan women and children in the name of the travellers' new-found convictions.
According to the REVIEW [15 Oct.], the mob used children to seize automatic weapons from policemen and set a car alight at the height of the violence. Of course, that is horrible, callous, cynical manipulation. But there are plenty of foreign tourists who would use the whole of the Tibetan people to take out their petty anti-communism and narrow-mindedness on China. Let Tibet forever remain closed to such cynical travelling "nationalists"! Or, better yet ... let them come, let them leave their money in the autonomous region, and let them take their idiotic notions of an "independent" Tibet (hopelessly dependent on the West) with them when they leave.
Canton David Kellogg

[1]
i wonder how many of these *tourists* had a desk back in langley ?

Posted by: denk | Oct 2, 2014 12:59:23 PM | 186

xxx
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/10/02/hong-o02.html

While a narrow layer of super-wealthy tycoons has prospered, the living standards of the majority of working people have fallen. Jobs in manufacturing have been replaced by low-wage positions in service industries that benefitted from a growing numbers of tourists from the Chinese mainland. Despite declining real wages, the cost of living, especially housing costs, have risen sharply. The waiting time for public housing has blown out to ten years, forcing the low paid into makeshift accommodation and what are known as "cage homes."[...]

These pressing social issues, however, find no expression in the perspective advanced by those parties and organisations dominating the current protests-the pan-Democrats, Occupy Central and various student groups-which are all, despite tactical differences, narrowly focussed on ensuring opposition candidates can stand in the 2017 election. This is a significant factor in the predominantly middle class composition of the protest movement and its failure to attract substantial support from the working class.[...]

The demand for full and open elections reflects the interests of layers of the Hong Kong elite who resent being marginalised by pro-Beijing tycoons and fear that the Beijing's control over Hong Kong's political affairs will undermine its competitiveness as an Asian financial centre. This wealthy stratum is determined to defend what it regards as Hong Kong's competitive advantage, particularly over Chinese financial centres such as Shanghai: the long-established defence of capitalist property that unpins all commercial and financial transactions and is entrenched in the legal system established under British colonial rule.[...]

Even if the opposition parties and organisations achieved their objective in full-an open election in 2017 for chief executive-the result would be a contest, dominated by big money, between candidates representing rival factions of the Hong Kong tycoons.

The pro-Western orientation of much of the official Hong Kong opposition leaves the present protests open to manipulation by the major imperialist powers. At this stage, the US and Britain have expressed concerns, but not called for the resignation of Hong Kong's chief executive or explicitly backed the opposition's demands over the 2017 election.

Posted by: okie farmer | Oct 2, 2014 1:04:04 PM | 187

denk | Oct 2, 2014 1:32:11 PM | 188
to recap what brian has reported so far....

http://www.sott.net/article/286488-Another-US-sponsored-revolution-Hong-Kong-student-leader-accused-of-US-government-ties

*Do you remember the "please help us" video clip from Ukraine?

Here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgpELf-0X8E

And here you have another "please help us" video. This time from Hong-Kong.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vvxlGUki7U

Did you notice any similarities? :)

xxx
Excellent article from Ambrose Evans Pritchard.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/11134755/Hong-Kong-crisis-exposes-impossible-contradiction-of-Chinas-economic-growth.html

Posted by: Willy2 | Oct 2, 2014 2:46:07 PM | 190

brian | Oct 2, 2014 5:44:16 PM | 193
@188

very interesting, as is this comment left by someone

Do you remember the "please help us" video clip from Ukraine?

Here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgpELf-0X8E

And here you have another "please help us" video. This time from Hong-Kong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vvxlGUki7U

Did you notice any similarities? :)

also its 'open' societies that are more prone to penetration/infiltration by foreign powers

xxx
This helps one understand the riots:

Hong Kong and China: One Country, Two Histories

Unlike pupils in most schools around the world, students in secondary school in Hong Kong will see history twice on their timetables. Chinese History to teach them about their national past and History to teach them about their local and global story.

In Chinese History, pupils study the long and glorious history of the Middle Kingdom. From the first people to inhabit the China, through the rise and fall of dynasties, to the first half of the 20th century and the mass movements that period produced. Students are taught the basis for their nation, and the foundation for a pervasive nationalism. The Hong Kong Education Bureau's syllabus makes quite clear that the aim of the subject is in part to "nurture a sense of belonging to the Chinese nation and ethnicity."

Compare this with the aims of History – a subject that teaches local and global history in English – to "prepare students for citizenship," "develop values and attitudes in relation to moral, civic, and environmental education," and crucially "relate the study of the past to contemporary life." It is in the syllabus of this course that we can see how Hong Kong's values, variously defined as a commitment to liberty, equality, rule of law, and democracy, are developed and reinforced.

With a colonial foundation and Western inspiration, the History curriculum frames the history of Hong Kong in the development of universal ideals and liberal modernity. …

In Form 2, students are taught the "Transition to Modern Times." With themes like the rise in living standards due to the Industrial Revolution, and the impact of the Enlightenment and French Revolution on the world, they learn about the origins of modernity. The individual is at the heart of these movements, and the modernity that students are being told of is decidedly Western and not all that Chinese. …

The splitting of Hong Kong and China's histories serves to illustrate how difficult it has been and how difficult it will continue to be to integrate Hong Kong, with a globally informed political view, into a China that is actively seeking an alternative path.

For "global", read Anglophone.

What people are taught about history and politics in high school certainly molds their ideology. That Ukrainians have been taught using a highly nationalistic and Russophobic curriculum for 23 years explains explains why they are willing to make cannon fodder of themselves for the glory of a unified Ukraine. An interesting Russian piece I read pointed out that unlike Americans, Europeans, and Russians, Ukrainians do not appear to care in the least about the death and maiming of their soldiers. The country has become zombified.

Posted by: Demian | Oct 2, 2014 6:02:12 PM | 194

xxx
Posted by: denk | Oct 2, 2014 12:59:23 PM | 186

lets not get carried away! i happen to be a student of Tibetan buddhism..tho not DL, and a quite aware of western infiltration into tibet in order tro surround china wih a ring of american steel

Posted by: brian | Oct 2, 2014 6:04:00 PM | 195

Demian | Oct 2, 2014 6:30:51 PM | 196
@brian #193:

Brilliant catch! The juxtaposition of those two videos tells you everything you need to know about the Hong Kong riots. That comment deserves to be front paged. (I still don't think that snipers will be used in Hong Kong, though.)

As is the case with ISIS, MoA is turning out to be my most useful source of information.

For the Euromaidan video, I used the Youtube comment translation feature for the first time: very nice. Since the vast majority of commenters are Polish, it comes as no surprise that most comments are very stupid.

@Ming Chun Tang:

I'm curious, what do you think of the Euromaidan? Do you know what Occupy Hong Kong people think about it? What the Occupy Hong Kong people are doing – camping out in the center of the city, causing much mischief – seems to be identical to what Euromaidan did. The only difference is that Occupy has not thrown Molotov cocktails at police or shot them yet.

@Chinese american:

I believe you are new here. Welcome!

xxx
I found out from thiis post at the same Web site as in #194 that International Relations actually has a concept of a revisionist power. How diabolically imperialist. When I read the following in a hit piece on Russia, I thought the author's use of the word "revisionist" in this sense was peculiar to him:
Nurturing Chinese distance from a revisionist Russia is especially important, as is fostering the independence of states in Central Asia and the Caucasus.
From Wikipedia:
Organski and Jacek Kugler defined status quo states as those that have participated in designing "the rules of the game" and stand to benefit from these rules. Challengers, or "revisionist states", want "a new place for themselves in the international society" commensurate with their power.
Given that Russia was one of the victors of WW II, and hence participated in setting up the rules of the game embodied in the UN, it is by definition a status quo state. It is the US that is the revisionist, since with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US started aiming for ""a new place for [itself] in the international society": that of unopposed world hegemon. Destroying nations, which the US began to do with Yugoslavia, thus violating the UN Charter, is not the behavior of a status quo power.

Posted by: Demian | Oct 2, 2014 6:57:14 PM | 197

xxx
@197 Demian- "Given that Russia was one of the victors of WW II, and hence participated in setting up the rules of the game embodied in the UN, it is by definition a status quo state. It is the US that is the revisionist, since with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US started aiming for ""a new place for [itself] in the international society": that of unopposed world hegemon. "

Wow. Damn. Dead on.

Thanks Demian. I'll be using that one.

Posted by: guest77 | Oct 2, 2014 7:01:34 PM | 198

xxx
@guest77 #198:

I just look at these things from Lavrov's point of view. ;-)

It all depends on what you take the status quo to be. Russia takes the status quo to be the end of WW II; the US takes it to be the period of Yeltsin's Russia.

That Wikipedia article is worth reading, since it helps one understand how US foreign policy types think.

Posted by: Demian | Oct 2, 2014 7:19:14 PM | 199

It would be interesting to see at what stage snipers will enter the picture in this color revolution. Here are some interesting comments from social sites:

Fern, September 30, 2014 at 5:17 am
...There's a never-ending, never-satiated appetite in the West for articles like the one by Lilia Shevtsova you deconstruct so well. It's a real cottage industry and one that probably pays quite well. These screeds are always fact-free zones but are received as though handed down on tablets of stone from the mountain and quoted and re-quoted as unimpeachable sources. A comment on the appalling intellectual vacuousness of the West as much as anything else – it's just supply and demand.

Today's going to be interesting. The mandarins of the EU are meeting to 'review' the ceasefire in Ukraine – if they're happy with it, they may lift some sanctions on Russia.

And, in other news, right on cue, HRW issues a statement calling on the Hong Kong authorities not to use force against the protestors there – a sure sign the latest colour revolution is up and running. Since CR@2 seem to involve far more violence than CR@1, so HK could be in for rocky times.

This has appeared on 'Moon of Alabama' but is worth repeating here – the National Endowment of Democracy's 2012 funding of the very subject that's now in the news.

National Democratic Institute for International Affairs
$460,000
To foster awareness regarding Hong Kong's political institutions and constitutional reform process and to develop the capacity of citizens – particularly university students – to more effectively participate in the public debate on political reform, NDI will work with civil society organizations on parliamentary monitoring, a survey, and development of an Internet portal, allowing students and citizens to explore possible reforms leading to universal suffrage.

(Extract from NED's 2102 Annual Report)

All a happy coincidence, no doubt.

marknesop , October 1, 2014 at 9:08 pm

Ummmm….who is the democratic freedomizer waiting in Hong Kong's wings? To the best of my knowledge there is no Chinese Navalny. Who have the "peaceful protesters" got in mind if Leung resigns (which I very much doubt he will)?

China better not dick around with this, because you know what's next if the street mobs don't get it done. Cue the rooftop snipers.

Moscow Exile, October 1, 2014 at 10:32 pm

So it's started!

Kerry has called on HK police to show restraint over the "pro-democracy" movement.

So I suppose they can start lobbing Molotov cocktails at them now, knowing that "the Americans are with us", as they liked to chant in the Ukraine.

China is not pleased.

The Grauniad reports a report by a press agency, and a French one to boot:

Hong Kong protests: China warns US not to meddle in 'internal affairs'

Moscow Exile, October 1, 2014 at 10:45 pm

And accusations in the comments of Putinbots metamorphosing into Chinabots are now already appearing.

Langleybots at work?

astabada , October 2, 2014 at 1:50 am

I think we'll see two key differences vis-a-vis the Ukraine:
1 – the difference between a country thoroughly infiltrated by Western agents and one which is not
2 – the difference between a true leadership and an oligarchy of crooks.

yalensis, October 2, 2014 at 2:33 am

Expect to see mysterious "snipers" show up at some point, to stir the pot.

Moscow Exile, October 2, 2014 at 2:44 am

Nay, before that happens that old fart McCain has to fly in and say to them "America is with you!"

yalensis, October 2, 2014 at 3:29 am

A cia-bot named "jecoz" posts this inane comment:

Here we go another home-grown rebellion against a dictatorship and the leftist faithful blame America instead of supporting those who dare to defy an unelected tyrant. Message to china and her guardianista lackeys: the US has nothing to do with this. Just try to resist the temptation to bring in the tanks and run over people please.

Which is responded to by "JiminNH" (2 OCT 3:51 AM), with supporting links, regarding the ties of the Chinese dissidents with U.S. State Dept.

Are you so sure about your assertions? Did you actually inquire into the facts before making that definitive statement?

If so, you missed the following articles from April 2014 regarding two of the foremost protest leaders (Anson Chan and Marin Lee) meeting with US VP Joe Biden:

http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1466666/beijing-upset-after-martin-lee-and-anson-chan-meet-joe-biden-white

http://www.worldtribune.com/2014/04/14/china-gets-vulgar-white-house-meeting-hong-kong-pro-democracy-leaders/

You also missed this about Occupy Central leader Prof. Benny Tai and his several year relationship with the US State Dept's National Endowment for Democracy and the National Democratic Institute: http://journal-neo.org/2014/10/01/hong-kong-s-occupy-central-is-us-backed-sedition/

(…)

In other words, this is CRC ("Colour Revolution Classic") at its best, Gene Sharp style.
With Jen Psaki mewing about the lovely winsome students seeking democracy, etc.

The18-year-old Chinese freshmen are admittedly a tad more winsome than grizzled old Ukrainian Nazis like Tahnybok; however, in the latter case, Psaki had to improvise and just toss in whatever debris she had in her scrap heap; whereas, the storyboard arc for the Chinese revolution seems to have been better plotted out over a longer period of time.

Jen, October 2, 2014 at 5:30 am

That bespectacled geeky student leader Joshua Wong and his Scholarism group are said to be receiving money from the US Consulate in HK and secret American donors. I've heard also that another of those Occupy Central leaders, Jimmy Lai, has met with Paul Wolfowitz in the past.

US Openly Approves Hong Kong Chaos it Created by Tony Cartalucci

Land Destroyer

Image: The US now openly supports chaos on the streets of Hong Kong, this
after condemning "occupy" protests in Bangkok earlier this year. The
difference being in Thailand, protests sought to oust a US proxy, Hong Kong
protests seek to put one into power.
September 30, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci - LD) - The "Occupy Central" protests in Hong Kong continue on - destabilizing the small southern Chinese island famous as an international hub for corporate-financier interests, and before that, the colonial ambitions of the British Empire. Those interests have been conspiring for years to peel the island away from Beijing after it was begrudgingly returned to China in the late 1990's, and use it as a springboard to further destabilize mainland China.

Behind the so-called "Occupy Central" protests, which masquerade as a "pro-democracy" movement seeking "universal suffrage" and "full democracy," is a deep and insidious network of foreign financial, political, and media support. Prominent among them is the US State Department and its National Endowment for Democracy (NED) as well as NED's subsidiary, the National Democratic Institute (NDI).

Now, the US has taken a much more overt stance in supporting the chaos their own manipulative networks have prepared and are now orchestrating. The White House has now officially backed "Occupy Central." Reuters in its article, "White House Shows Support For Aspirations Of Hong Kong People," would claim:

The White House is watching democracy protests in Hong Kong closely and supports the "aspirations of the Hong Kong people," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Monday. "
The United States supports universal suffrage in Hong Kong in accordance with the Basic Law and we support the aspirations of the Hong Kong people," said Earnest, who also urged restraint on both sides.
US State Department Has Built Up and Directs "Occupy Central"

Image: The US through NED and its subsidiaries have a long history of
promoting subversion and division within China.
Earnest's comments are verbatim the demands of "Occupy Central" protest leaders, but more importantly, verbatim the long-laid designs the US State Department's NDI articulates on its own webpage dedicated to its ongoing meddling in Hong Kong. The term "universal suffrage"and reference to "Basic Law" and its "interpretation" to mean "genuine democracy" is stated clearly on NDI's website which claims:
The Basic Law put in place a framework of governance, whereby special interest groups, or "functional constituencies," maintain half of the seats in the Legislative Council (LegCo). At present, Hong Kong's chief executive is also chosen by an undemocratically selected committee. According to the language of the Basic Law, however, "universal suffrage" is the "ultimate aim." While "universal suffrage" remains undefined in the law, Hong Kong citizens have interpreted it to mean genuine democracy.

To push this agenda - which essentially is to prevent Beijing from vetting candidates running for office in Hong Kong, thus opening the door to politicians openly backed, funded, and directed by the US State Department - NDI lists an array of ongoing meddling it is carrying out on the island. It states:

Since 1997, NDI has conducted a series of missions to Hong Kong to consider the development of Hong Kong's "post-reversion" election framework, the status of autonomy, rule of law and civil liberties under Chinese sovereignty, and the prospects for, and challenges to democratization.
It also claims:
In 2005, NDI initiated a six-month young political leaders program focused on training a group of rising party and political group members in political communications skills.
And:
NDI has also worked to bring political parties, government leaders and civil society actors together in public forums to discuss political party development, the role of parties in Hong Kong and political reform. In 2012, for example, a conference by Hong Kong think tank SynergyNet supported by NDI featured panelists from parties across the ideological spectrum and explored how adopting a system of coalition government might lead to a more responsive legislative process.
NDI also admits it has created, funded, and backed other organizations operating in Hong Kong toward achieving the US State Department's goals of subverting Beijing's control over the island:
In 2007, the Institute launched a women's political participation program that worked with the Women's Political Participation Network (WPPN) and the Hong Kong Federation of Women's Centres (HKFWC) to enhance women's participation in policy-making, encourage increased participation in politics and ensure that women's issues are taken into account in the policy-making process.

And on a separate page, NDI describes programs it is conducting with the University of Hong Kong to achieve its agenda:
The Centre for Comparative and Public Law (CCPL) at the University of Hong Kong, with support from NDI, is working to amplify citizens' voices in that consultation process by creating Design Democracy Hong Kong (www.designdemocracy.hk), a unique and neutral website that gives citizens a place to discuss the future of Hong Kong's electoral system.
It should be no surprise to readers then, to find out each and every "Occupy Central" leader is either directly linked to the US State Department, NED, and NDI, or involved in one of NDI's many schemes.

Image: Benny Tai, "Occupy Central's" leader, has spent years associated with
and benefiting from US State Department cash and support.
"Occupy Central's" self-proclaimed leader, Benny Tai, is a law professor at the aforementioned University of Hong Kong and a regular collaborator with the NDI-funded CCPL. In 2006-2007 (annual report, .pdf) he was named as a board member - a position he has held until at least as recently as last year. In CCPL's 2011-2013 annual report (.pdf), NDI is listed as having provided funding to the organization to "design and implement an online Models of Universal Suffrage portal where the general public can discuss and provide feedback and ideas on which method of universal suffrage is most suitable for Hong Kong."

Curiously, in CCPL's most recent annual report for 2013-2014 (.pdf), Tai is not listed as a board member. However, he is listed as participating in at least 3 conferences organized by CCPL, and as heading at least one of CCPL's projects. At least one conference has him speaking side-by-side another prominent "Occupy Central" figure, Audrey Eu. The 2013-2014 annual report also lists NDI as funding CCPL's "Design Democracy Hong Kong" website.


Civic Party chairwoman Audrey Eu Yuet-mee, in addition to speaking at CCPL-NDI functions side-by-side with Benny Tai, is entwined with the US State Department and its NDI elsewhere. She regularly attends forums sponsored by NED and its subsidiary NDI. In 2009 she was a featured speaker at an NDI sponsored public policy forum hosted by "SynergyNet," also funded by NDI. In 2012 she was a guest speaker at the NDI-funded Women's Centre "International Women's Day" event, hosted by the Hong Kong Council of Women (HKCW) which is also annually funded by the NDI.

Image: Martin Lee and Anson Chan belly up to the table with US Vice President Joseph Biden in Washington DC earlier this year. During their trip, both Lee and Chan would attend a NED-hosted talk about the future of "democracy" in Hong Kong. Undoubtedly, "Occupy Central" and Washington's support of it was a topic reserved for behind closed doors.

There is also Martin Lee, founding chairman of Hong Kong's Democrat Party and another prominent figure who has come out in support of "Occupy Central." Just this year, Lee was in Washington meeting directly with US Vice President Joseph Biden, US Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, and even took part in an NED talk hosted specifically for him and his agenda of "democracy" in Hong Kong. Lee even has a NED page dedicated to him after he was awarded in 1997 NED's "Democracy Award." With him in Washington was Anson Chan, another prominent figure currently supporting the ongoing unrest in Hong Kong's streets.


"Occupy Central's" Very Unpopular Agenda

If democracy is characterized by self-rule, than an "Occupy Central" movement in which every prominent figure is the benefactor of and beholden to foreign cash, support, and a foreign-driven agenda, has nothing at all to do with democracy. It does have, however, everything to do with abusing democracy to undermine Beijing's control over Hong Kong, and open the door to candidates that clearly serve foreign interests, not those of China, or even the people of Hong Kong.

Image: The National Endowment for Democracy and its various subsidiaries including the National Democratic Institute, are backed by immense corporate-financier interests who merely couch their hegemonic agenda behind "promoting democracy" and "freedom" worldwide. Above is a representation of the interests present upon NED's board of directors.

What is more telling is the illegal referendum "Occupy Central" conducted earlier this year in an attempt to justify impending, planned chaos in Hong Kong's streets. The referendum focused on the US State Department's goal of implementing "universal suffrage" - however, only a fifth of Hong Kong's electorate participated in the referendum, and of those that did participate, no alternative was given beyond US-backed organizations and their respective proposals to undermine Beijing.

The BBC would report in its article, "Hong Kong democracy 'referendum' draws nearly 800,000," that:

A total of 792,808 voters took part in an unofficial referendum on universal suffrage in Hong Kong, organisers said.
The 10-day poll was held by protest group Occupy Central.
Campaigners want the public to be able to elect Hong Kong's leader, the chief executive. The Hong Kong government says the vote has no legal standing.
About 42% of voters backed a proposal allowing the public, a nominating committee, and political parties to name candidates for the top job.
For a protest movement that claims it stands for "democracy," implied to mean the will of the people, it has an unpopular agenda clearly rejected by the vast majority of Hong Kong's population - and is now disrupting vital parts of the island, holding the population and stability hostage to push its agenda. All of this is being orchestrated and supported by the United States, its State Department, and its network of global sedition operating under NED and its subsidiary NDI.

While the Western media shows mobs of "thousands" implying that "the people" support ongoing chaos in Hong Kong's streets, "Occupy Central's" own staged, illegal referendum proves it does not have the backing of the people and that its agenda is rejected both by mainland China and the people of Hong Kong.

Exposing the insidious, disingenuous, foreign-driven nature of "Occupy Central" is important. It is also important to objectively examine each and every protest that springs up around the world. Superficiality cannot "link" one movement to another, one group to hidden special interests. Rather, one must adhere to due diligence in identifying and profiling the leaders, following the money, identifying their true motivations, and documenting their links to special interests within or beyond the borders of the nation the protests are taking place in.

By doing this, movements like "Occupy Central" can be exposed, blunted, and rolled over before the destruction and chaos other US-backed destabilization efforts have exacted elsewhere - namely the Middle East and Ukraine - can unfold in Hong Kong.

[Sep 29, 2014] Beijing reaps bitter fruit in Hong Kong By Peter Lee

atimes.com

It's becoming easier to understand why the People's Republic of China landed on Ilham Tohti, the Uyghur "public intellectual", like a ton of bricks.

Judging from the admittedly selective excerpts used at the kangaroo court to damn him to "indefinite detention", reported perhaps not inaccurately in the West as a "life sentence", Ilham had hoped to use his bully pulpit at a Xinjiang university to nurture a cadre of students with a strong sense of Uyghur identity, alienated from the PRC regime and convinced of the right and

need to agitate for greater Xinjiang autonomy in the face of an alien occupying power.

Then, perhaps, Xinjiang politics would have evolved into the politics of perpetual, continually aggravated, and burgeoning grievance and ever-more-entrenched spirit of resistance that one sees in Palestine - or on the streets of Hong Kong today.

The Hong Kong police showed a poor understanding of the street theater of populist politics in response to the provocations of the student vanguard of the Occupy movement, trotting out the tear gas and rubber bullets in a misguided effort to clear roads in the Admiralty district, and they have lost the public relations battle for now, and perhaps forever.

In retrospect, perhaps the strategists in Hong Kong and Beijing might have concluded it would be better for the police to stand by and allow the students to storm their way into various government offices - over the weekend, for goodness sakes! - and let public opinion chew for a few days over the issue of whether it welcomed this kind of confrontational politics. After all, that's how the much-maligned KMT government in Taiwan handled the Sunflower occupation of the Legislative Yuan a few weeks back; as a result, the PR gains of the students appear to have been relatively transitory, and the uneasy balance between "let's give the PRC the middle finger" and "don't rock the boat" factions seems to have been preserved.

Based on dismal results in places like Egypt, Pakistan, and Ukraine, I am not a big fan of the "student activists raise a ruckus in the main square" brand of democracy. If Hong Kong democracy activists had wanted to give voice to the popular mood, instead of driving the opinion process through confrontational street action, they could have organized boycotts of the 2017 polls (which, if the relevant bill passes the local legislature, will involve universal popular suffrage to vote for candidates screened by a committee of presumably PRC-inclined worthies).

However, the alienation of many Hong Kong people, particularly those on the younger side of an increasingly stark generational divide, toward the PRC and the disruptions that PRC citizens have brought to the economic and social life of the city, is profound; and the PRC's disturbing (and perhaps violent) efforts to put a tighter leash on local media indicate that Beijing is attempting to manage and restrain political expression in Hong Kong.

An unofficial civic referendum (actually offering democracy supporters a choice between three different pro-democracy options) attracted almost 800,000 voters, equivalent to about one-fifth of the city's electorate.

So there was a big fat fuse just lying there, and Occupy Hong Kong decided to light it, starting with a class boycott and demonstrations organized by the Hong Kong Federation of Students. And, since I'm never afraid to mix a metaphor, the Hong Kong government poured fuel on the fire by pepper-spraying and tear-gassing it.

Over at Reuters, John Pomfret provided some context for the police response:

Hundreds of pro-democracy activists stormed government headquarters [sic] late on Friday after student leaders demanding greater democracy urged them to charge into the compound.

Police used pepper spray as the protesters smashed barriers and climbed over fences in chaotic scenes in the heart of the Asian financial centre, following Beijing's decision to rule out free elections for the city's leader in 2017.

One student leader, Joshua Wong, a thin 17-year-old with dark-rimmed glasses and bowl-cut hair, was dragged away by police kicking and screaming as protesters chanted and struggled to free him. [1]

Wonder how much of that context will be remembered by the media, much of which has put on its Tiananmen! Today! goggles as well as teargas goggles to report the unrest.

The Tiananmen analogies are, in my opinion, a barrier to understanding what's going on.

Tiananmen 1989 was a remonstrance/petitioning movement that eschewed disobedience beyond passive resistance and had no political endgame beyond hopes that the regime would respond to its moral suasion by implementing democratic reforms. If there were political calculations to utilize the demonstrations to advance a concrete agenda, they came from reformers inside the elite.

Occupy Hong Kong is a carefully planned program of civil disobedience, escalation, and provocation meant to provoke a political crisis that will polarize Hong Kong opinion on behalf of the democracy movement and force the elite to support the demands of the movement in order to maintain their local positions of power and prosperity.

And, to make an observation that will probably not endear me to the democracy movement, the 1989 student movement was a popular response to a marked crisis of governance, economic management, and corruption by the PRC regime. On the other hand, it appears to me that the Occupy Hong Kong movement was sparked by the announcement of a proposed reform for the 2017 election - universal suffrage - and the calculation by democracy activists that the experience of actually voting for some candidate, albeit Beijing vetted, might fatally beguile Hong Kongers with the PRC's implementation of managed democracy and make agitation for full democracy more difficult.

It should also be said that Dr Benny Tai, one of the organizers of the Hong Kong movement, is no Wuerkaixi, the grandiose, self-aggrandizing, and ultimately feckless face of the 1989 movement. He is a law professor at University of Hong Kong, smart and savvy, and I think he has envisioned plausible endgames that don't involve Beijing sending in the army to crush local unrest a la Tiananmen and martyr his student activists - though I'm sure this is one of the critical scenarios he has to game.

For me, a key "tell" as to the fortunes and strategy of the democracy movement as the political crisis evolves will be whether and how it focuses its ire on the business elite that provides the local support and financial muscle for Beijing's control of the territory.

Will some tycoons be tagged as collaborators and find their local reputation and interests threatened? While others are quietly approached to suggest the advisability of hedging their bets between Hong Kong and Beijing? Time, as they say, will tell.

I imagine that the first reaction of President Xi Jinping and the CCP will be frustration with their local cats'-paws in Hong Kong for failing to keep a lid on the situation and, when things got out of hand, inflaming it. So I guess the Hong Kong portfolio will be handed to some clandestine crisis-management team.

As to the options available to Beijing, one is, of course, send in the tanks! - and endure international obloquy and the undying hatred of the citizens of Hong Kong.

Another, which attracts less interest among the Tiananmen-fixated, is to let Hong Kong stew in its own juice, allow the dysfunction to burgeon until a local backlash is triggered or, failing that, at least stew until the local worthies have had enough and publicly petition Beijing to help them out of the mess, perhaps through an ultimatum coupled with some post-2017 legal legerdemain relating to the electoral commission.

Western reporting seems to be all over the map, albeit with a heavy Tiananmen Redux overlay in many occasions.

There is a significant population of journos that Beijing has expelled or otherwise mistreated; some of them are in Hong Kong or itching to get there, and I suspect many of them, while maintaining the strictest standards of reportorial objectivity, will not be unhappy for this opportunity to put the boot in on the regime.

One of the most irritating canards that is presumably an Occupy Hong Kong meme that some journalists have picked up is "Xi Should Be More Like Deng" - ie adopt Deng's flexible, pragmatic ways in dealing with the Hong Kong situation.

As a reminder, Deng was not afraid to play the Hong Kong invasion card in his discussions with Margaret Thatcher:

The Chinese were ready to resort to "requisition by force" if the negotiations had set off unrest in the colony, said Lu Ping, who later headed negotiations with Chris Patten, the last governor.

[Then prime minister and later] Baroness Thatcher said later that Deng Xiaoping, then China's leader, told her directly: "I could walk in and take the whole lot this afternoon." [2]

Deng was also the architect of Hong Kong's managed democracy structure. And, of course, Deng green-lighted the entry of the armed forces into Beijing on June 3-4, 1989.

With Tiananmen on the lips of so many commentators, the assertion that Xi Jinping should take his grievance-management cues from Deng Xiaoping is borderline ludicrous.

Selective memory has also found its way into reporting (or at least headline-writing) Occupy's claims that the current democracy movement was triggered by Beijing "reneging" on its promise of democracy for Hong Kong by scheduling universal suffrage for 2017, but insisting that only candidates vetted by the commission could run for office.

As far as I understand it, the commission set-up was integral to Beijing's foundational plan for Hong Kong. In other words, the PRC would commit to 50 years of free rein for business/society only if the direct democracy genie could be kept in the bottle by controlling the list of candidates eligible for office.

I also suspect that the PRC told the Thatcher government that, if the UK tried to belatedly introduce full direct democracy in Hong Kong prior to 1997 (as Chris Patten championed) and burden the PRC with the unpleasant task of rolling back a democratic status quo when it claimed sovereignty over the territory, that would be a trigger for the real Occupy Hong Kong - by China.

As noted above, Deng Xiaoping was the conceptual architect of the strategy to install a "kill switch" on Hong Kong democracy and balance Hong Kong's economic and social freedoms under the "one country two systems" formula with political control by keeping hostile administrators out of the Hong Kong political mix.

Here's what Deng Xiaoping said about the Hong Kong rule in 1984:

Some requirements or qualifications should be established with regard to the administration of Hong Kong affairs by the people of Hong Kong. It must be required that patriots form the main body of administrators, that is, of the future government of the Hong Kong special region. Of course it should include other Chinese, too, as well as foreigners invited to serve as advisers. What is a patriot? A patriot is one who respects the Chinese nation, sincerely supports the motherland's resumption of sovereignty over Hong Kong and wishes not to impair Hong Kong's prosperity and stability. Those who meet these requirements are patriots, whether they believe in capitalism or feudalism or even slavery. We don't demand that they be in favour of China's socialist system; we only ask them to love the motherland and Hong Kong. [3]
And here's how that intention was implemented in Article 45 of the Hong Kong Basic Law, which became the effective constitution of Hong Kong upon reversion in 1997:
The Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall be selected by election or through consultations held locally and be appointed by the Central People's Government.

The method for selecting the Chief Executive shall be specified in the light of the actual situation in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and in accordance with the principle of gradual and orderly progress. The ultimate aim is the selection of the Chief Executive by universal suffrage upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee in accordance with democratic procedures. [4]

Clearly, the PRC's envisioned terminus (the "ultimate aim") of the democratic reform line is universal suffrage to vote for candidates put forth by a nominating committee, not universal suffrage in the nomination as well as election process, which is the Occupy Hong Kong movement's demand.

If the PRC government revised, promised to revise, or hinted it would revise this understanding to do away with its most important tool for controlling electoral politics in Hong Kong, the nominating committee, please let me know. Until then, I will regard the "China reneged/broke its democracy promise" line as a canard peddled to provide unnatural enhancement to the legitimacy of the Occupy movement.

"We don't like the Basic Law and want to overturn it after 17 years through street action" is, I suppose, a tougher sell than "China broke its promise" but, in my opinion, it's more honest.

But I have a feeling that legalistic quibbling has been overtaken by the outrage that "the Hong Kong government gassed its own people", which, perhaps, is the place that the democracy movement hoped the debate would end up in the first place.

Notes:
1. Hong Kong students storm government HQ to demand full democracy, Reuters, September 26, 2014.
2. China plotted Hong Kong invasion, The Australian, June 25, 2007.
3. One Country, Two Systems, peopledaily.com, June 23-24, 1984.
4. See here.

Peter Lee writes on East and South Asian affairs and their intersection with US foreign policy.

[Sep 25, 2014] US backed colour revolution in Hong Kong

Sep 25, 2014 | pravda.ru

'The leaders of the protest movement "Occupy Central", which organizes in Hong Kong various public events with the requirements of the democratization of the election system, were trained in workshops held in the "Hong Kong-American Center."

It is noteworthy that they were trained in the spring and in protests started in summer. Officially stated purpose of the nonprofit organization is "to promote mutual understanding between the Chinese and the Americans", ITAR-TASS reported.

Pravda.Ru, noted that it is a social movement in Hong Kong, which formally aims to reform the electoral system. All this reminds effort of Russian, but also financed by Americans, NGO "Voice".

During the workshops, some international experts taught them the tactics of protest actions, negotiation strategies with the authorities in a large-scale popular uprisings, stressed they key point that can't be compromised in the list of political demands points, says Chinese newspaper "Huanqiu Shibao".

Head of the "Hong Kong-American Center," Morton Holbrook appointed to this position at the end of last year, is in the words of the newspaper "an important spy," with about 30 years service in the American intelligence agencies, says "Huanqiu Shibao." As noted in the article, Holbrook, as well as Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai, the key sponsor of the opposition, are close to Paul Wolfowitz.

"One gets the impression that the United States-based "Hong Kong-American center "is trying to reuse the experience of Eastern European "color revolutions" in Hong Kong in order to influence the internal situation," - emphasizes the newspaper.

Pravda.Ru recalls that color revolutions are typically called "non-violent" regime change.


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