Posts by mark taslov
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Hard News: Terror panics and the war imperative, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Thanks for this Steve, I appreciate this kind of analysis, so much language is absorbed without a second thought, next minute pacificism is not cricket.
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I’m off to drink
The work of GBSA is never complete. It's a twisted cycle.
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And not to discredit the motivations of most of the protesters themselves,but to strongly question some of the impetus.
Allegations of Jimmy Lai’s top aide; ex-United States Naval Investigative Service employee Mark Simon, whose father served 35 years in the CIA, helping to arrange a meeting between Lai and Sarah Palin in 2009, and further allegations that Lai had travelled to Myanmar with former World Bank president and former US deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz in 2012 and 2013, can't be easily ignored.
Reconsidering Russell’s comparison to a local protest and looking at the second photo in the original post, I have to ask did the Auckland Occupy movement block roads like that?
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willing to risk their lives to fight for something noble.
The question for me is, assuming Beijing – against all reasonable expectations – were to back down, and grant ‘democracy’, then what changes might this bring about? The CCP’s public nominations will become private, you will see ‘independent’ candidates emerge surreptitiously fronting for foreign and corporate interests. Instead of democratically elected officials advocating or implementing Beijing’s law you’ll see the advocacy of ‘foreign’ law as we have in NZ with the TPPA, the suppression of terrorism laws (laws that have been exploited to redefine the activist as the terrorist), you’d most likely eventually see increased pressure for young Hong Kongers to be sent to fight for oil or against ‘terrorism’, suppression of speech under new pretexts. Some may even argue that, as odd as this may sound, in many ways Hong Kong is currently in better democratic shape than a number of jaded democratic countries.
Our dogmatic histories teach us that democracy as an ideal is a noble thing to die for. If New Zealanders were as motivated and organised as the Hong Kong protesters I would feel immensely proud and have considerably more faith in democracy, in fact as DeepRed and Chris intimated, the mobilisation of Hong Kongers puts the constituents of most actual western democracies to shame.
Whether life is being risked comes down to Beijing’s resolve and whether their approach to large scale demonstration has evolved significantly since 1989. Some more experienced commentators may argue that the likelihood of violent response from the PLA is slim, and furthermore that drawing parallels with Gandhi’s fight for independence appears misguided, the respective contexts being irreconcilable: the embarrassment of ‘international incident’ that Ghandi manipulated could not be met with the same consternation, the international response to a June 4 like massacre would be muted at best, just as it was then, because they’ve the got the bomb.
Fighting for individual principles, issue by issue be it freedom of speech, press, or assembly would still seem to be well within the rights and capabilities for the Hong Kong citizenry. What has remained largely undiscussed is who has the most to gain from destabilisation in Hong Kong, and what manipulative role democracy’s™ largest exporter might be playing if in fact, as is so often the case, there’s more than meets the eye.
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Hard News: Terror panics and the war imperative, in reply to 81stcolumn,
While I would prefer not to be seen as an apologist for beheadings, I do despair at the one dimensional analysis of affairs in Saudi Arabia
I’m also reminded of the recent horrific developments in the US death industry; untested drug cocktails resulting in protracted executions, and these are the allies our PM claims it would be odd for us not to support.
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Speaker: “Foreign forces”, hope and Hong…, in reply to Seamus Harris,
Just to contextualise Seamus, Chris seemed to be specifically referring to Toi’s question to Nickita on Media Take (12:15):
"Do you buy into the the saying “one country two systems”, or would you like, like Taiwan; ’one country one system’?”
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Speaker: “Foreign forces”, hope and Hong…, in reply to Chris Waugh,
Yes it doesn’t work at all given the history, I’d initially glossed over that as a dig at Beijing’s cross strait propaganda but looking back it’s clearly a veiled attempt to gauge Nickkita’s thoughts on secession, Scotland’s recent vote would have been more appropriate.
Personally I’m tired of hearing China referred to as a ‘Communist’* country. In the same way that Judith Collins may one day be ‘Honorable’. Karl Marx has surely gone full rotisserie by this point.
*Disclaimer required.
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Speaker: “Foreign forces”, hope and Hong…, in reply to Chris Waugh,
And house prices? Somebody send Toi to Beijing, we’ll show him house prices.
I hear you and I can also appreciate Toi's cynicism, it is worth noting that, however marginal, there has been some impact, even in Beijing.
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Speaker: “Foreign forces”, hope and Hong…, in reply to mark taslov,
and of course 7 years ago today. The response of our Prime Minister:
On Monday Helen Clark stated that the people arrested on firearms charges have been using firearms, testing napalm bombs, and constructing Molotov cocktails– this before any evidence has been presented to court.
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Speaker: “Foreign forces”, hope and Hong…, in reply to Nickkita Lau,
We had an uncorrupted government
On Media Take Toi mentioned that you’ve only been in New Zealand five months. If you’re not already aware of this story, in its own way it may assist in informing your impressions of our ‘democracy’ and ‘CEO’:
Greens say Norman assaulted by Chinese security
MP’s Tibet protest flag removed
China accepts apology over Norman protest
I did, as I said I would, point out to him that we’ve changed our protocols and I wouldn’t want to see a repeat of that incident.”