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Hong Kong Protests & The Umbrella Movement

The conspiracy factor is 'who initiated all this'?

Was it genuinely HonKongese who we sufficiently worried that extradition would lead to this being used as an excuse for China to target anti-China dissidents, or was it some extreme Chinese faction who saw an opportunity to stir up the masses. Many of whom are too young to have grasped the Tienanmen situation. And don't really know how privileged they are in HK.

Or was it some western power that saw a chance to create a situation where Hong Kong would not be able to bring the crowds under control and would have to send for help from the mainland ?

Said western power would then be able to point at China's probably draconian method of crowd control and use it as a weapon against them. 'See, China can't be trusted to keep out of it'.

It should be remembered that the Hong Kong government has virtually withdrawn from the initial cause. But the mob now want more.

It looks like an attempt to de-stabilise the area.
 
INT21 said:
It should be remembered that the Hong Kong government has virtually withdrawn from the initial cause. But the mob now want more.
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If a senior police officer told you that he had a legally issued warrant for your arrest and possible torture in an undislosed and likely unregulated location but had generously decided to store it in his safe with no current intention to act on it, would you feel content?

Or would you prefer that he destroy it?

Oh, and the senior police officer is a stool pigeon of an oppressive state with a demonstrable history of murder and worse.

Would you sleep soundly?

It looks to me like a very prudent 'mob'.
 
"But the mob now want more."

A rather shameful way to describe the pro-democracy protesters.

The Hong Kong citizens have enjoyed freedom for generations and, quite rightly, won't give that up without a fight.

The term "mob" would be better employed to describe the thuggish mercenaries working for the Chinese Communist Party.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
"But the mob now want more."

A rather shameful way to describe the pro-democracy protesters.

The Hong Kong citizens have enjoyed freedom for generations and, quite rightly, won't give that up without a fight.

The term "mob" would be better employed to describe the thuggish mercenaries working for the Chinese Communist Party.
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Looks pretty much like mob behaviour to me.

They are not giving up their freedom, they are throwing it away.

However, as they say...

'One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist'.
 
Loads of mainland Chinese celebrities post nearly identical messages about Hong Kong on the same day. Proof of telepathy?

Sorry screenshot from my phone, didn't know how to download.

Screenshot_2019-08-16-21-58-38-345_com.reddit.frontpage.png
 
Women's Romanization for Hong Kong
(misleading title)
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=44034

To nitpick: the article isn't very well thought-out and the connection between this orthography and Nushu is completely spurious. The 'women's writing' thing seems to be a red herring – this is text speak. However, this is a clever technique to weed out mainland spies and infiltrators within the protest movement. While Cantonese written in Chinese characters is legible to Mandarin speakers, written with improvised roman orthography - no chance. So it effectively becomes a cipher - for the time being.



ECLa0L7VAAYyav1


FTR I have no idea wtf this says. I think it is basically a test: you write this phrase on a piece of paper. It says something like 'can you fucking read this?' If they can't, they're a 'ghost' (infiltrator) and you can hit or otherwise eject them. If you're interested in this type of thing, this also demonstrates the level of code-switching with English that happens in vernacular Cantonese ('If u', 'ghost', 'write on a piece of paper').

EDIT: Here's a poster for today's march, using this style of writing. 'Wai Dor Lei Ah' is from the Cantonese transliteration of 'Victoria'.

j9olnkrgp4h31.jpg
 
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Li Ka-Shing, one of the world's richest people, puts his commentary on the front page of all the papers. The only problem: it's a poem about melons and ambiguous at best.

https://www.businessinsider.my/li-k...hong-kongs-papers-heres-what-it-really-means/

On the surface, it dispenses advice about picking ripe melons: Picking one can improve the taste of the rest, but picking too many can cause the vine to cease producing fruit.

In reality, the poem was an analogy for political casualties, and was used by Li Xian – an exiled crown prince – to rebuke his mother, Empress Wu Zetian, for plotting the death of his brother and himself to secure the throne.

Overall, the phrase can be interpreted as a warning to those in power not to persecute their own, or risk destroying their legacy.
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EDIT: and another one of his messages gets an enthusiastic exegesis from someone on twitter: the last character from each sentence spells 'let Hong Kong rule themselves'. Coincidence? Maybe. I wonder if the phrase sounds natural or if it's a bit of a stretch.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1162225710200569857
 
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Now here's a conspiracy theory for you:

Mainland Chinese dissident Li Yi-Ping warns that #China has been sending special agents to #Hongkong to kill police officers during nighttime standoffs so that the regime can frame militant protesters as "terrorists". https://youtu.be/pOQBpY2rbx4
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This is being connected to an (anonymous) source working on the border (who did attempt verification by posting a picture of his official card along with some text) saying that several youths have been crossing the border into Hong Kong with protective gear and Chinese flags. There are also photos that allegedly show these 'agents', though how anyone can tell I don't know. They all show tanned young men wearing white T-shirts and sporting buzzcuts, but tanned young men wearing white T-shirts have existed in Hong Kong since whenever the T-shirt was invented.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1162538023348609024
 
skinny said:
China but has its tendrils extending strongly outside China through the actions of its expatriate citizens, a strategy they call huaren canzheng or "ethnic Chinese political participation". This manifests most candidly in foreign political and business influence, but is also heavily engendered in the control of Chinese student learning at foreign universities, where CCP plants keep a close eye on the students both in and out of classrooms.
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Fake Chinese police cars spotted in Perth and Adelaide amid pro-Hong Kong rallies
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08...e-cars-spotted-in-adelaide-and-perth/11426850

Foreign affairs commentator Keith Suter said while the car appeared to be "fake", he was concerned about the presence of Chinese agents infiltrating the protests in Australia.

"It has no jurisdiction in Australia, but there certainly is an issue of the Chinese Government having its students spy on other students to make sure they're not supporting the protests," he said.
 
Chinese military runs intimidating simulation drills in Shenzhen, across from Hong Kong

It was like any other Saturday evening on the promenade outside the large stadium in Shenzhen, a large Chinese city on the bay that forms the northwestern border of Hong Kong.

The throbbing bass of Chinese dance music blasted from portable loudspeakers as competing groups of mostly middle-aged square dancers, commonly found after sunset in most Chinese cities, battled with dance moves.

Yet on this night, the music was competing with roars coming from inside the nearby Shenzhen Bay Sports Center. Families walking by with young children stopped, gawked and listened. Then a stern voice came over the loudspeaker:

"Attention civilians, it is our responsibility to ensure social stability and to protect people's lives and property," the voice shouted in Mandarin Chinese. "Respect the law," the disembodied voice continued. "Your actions have now initiated our operation. For your safety, please leave the area immediately."

The People's Armed Police, the paramilitary wing of the Chinese military, has been running daily simulation drills inside the sports stadium just across the Shenzhen Bay from Hong Kong.

Shenzhen-stadium-bridge-ap-ps2-190827_hpMain_4x3_992.jpg


Beijing has massed troops here for the last two weeks as a response and veiled threat to the increasingly violent protests just over the border in neighboring Hong Kong now entering their 12th week with no end in sight. A nearby bridge could bring the troops into one of the world's financial centers within 10 minutes.

ABC News caught a glimpse inside the Shenzhen Bay Sports Center, seeing members of People's Armed Police in civilian clothing, role-playing the Hong Kong protesters, complete with yellow headgear, laser pens and long rods on the soccer pitch, facing off with their uniformed compatriots, who were advancing with riot shields and flags.

Meanwhile, the parking lot was filled to capacity with armored vehicles and troops transports. ABC News counted at least 130 visible vehicles with many more inside the stadium, including earth movers and water cannon trucks that were being tested, sending powerful jets of water shooting through the air.

https://abcnews.go.com/Internationa...lation-drills-shenzhen-hong/story?id=65215326

maximus otter
 
I offer this as a snapshot of what was hoped and what was feared in 1997.

 
Purported leaked government document says that it's ok to kill Hong Kong police officers and let protestors take the blame, inciting public opinion against them. In other news, a police officer was stabbed by unknown assailants last night.
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Petrols bombs thrown today, by people wearing protestor clothing. Know who doesn't have guns? All civilians in Hong Kong. Know who does? Cops.

69403678_125634068783776_2906968547517267968_n.jpg
 
James_H said:
Purported leaked government document says that it's ok to kill Hong Kong police officers and let protestors take the blame, inciting public opinion against them. In other news, a police officer was stabbed by unknown assailants last night. View attachment 19859
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There seems to be increasing incidents of protesters attacking the police with bricks, iron bars and Molotov Cocktails. This doesn't appear to be defensive but rather an attempt to provoke the police. If this happened in RoI, UK or US the police would respond in a very heavy handed manner and indeed have done so when protests have been far less violent. I take it that those involved in the attacks can't all be Chinese agents. Protest leaders interviewed on the BBC today certainly made no such claims and while they didn't agree with the violence did not condemn the use of it.

I see that the HQ of the People's Liberation Army in HK was also attacked today. Is there a crazed element of the protest movement? Perhaps the equivalent of the Black Bloc who are just out to seek violent conflict with the police?
 
A BBC report.

Tear gas, rubber bullets and barrows of bricks
Danny Vincent, BBC News, Hong Kong

A sea of young people gathered on the streets surrounding the government headquarters. Like most weekends many came prepared. Protesters pushed wheel-barrows full of broken bricks to the front lines. They were thrown and pushed to the front over barricades in an attempt to slow the police's advance.

Rounds of tear gas, now the go-to weapon of the police, hung in the air, followed by rubber bullets fired towards the ground and in some cases nearly horizontally.

But police projectiles were met with rounds of petrol bombs thrown over police barriers and into the makeshift no-man's-land which separated the police and protesters. Many young protesters have become battle-hardened by nearly three months of demonstrations. They are strategic, organised and increasingly willing to resort to violence.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-49534439
 
The protesters may be falling into a trap. Maybe they need to back off a bit. The ones doing the violence can be exposed as agents provocateurs.
 
Mythopoeika said:
The protesters may be falling into a trap. Maybe they need to back off a bit. The ones doing the violence can be exposed as agents provocateurs.
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They can't all be agent provocateurs. Large numbers of people are taking part in the violent protests. It's worth noting that the main protest organisers are no accusing them of being agents. They can't win in a battle of arms with the Chinese State.

As you say it would be better if they backed off.
 
Odd how it seems acceptable for people to throw bottles of petrol at the police. The aim being to seriously burn them,and to try and blind them with lasers.

But it is almost a crime against humanity for the police to crack a few skulls with batons when being attacked by overwhelming odds.

I freely admit to wanting to see the mainland army and police go in and sort out these idiots. The more violently the better.

INT21.
 
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