BF2S Forums DAST Chat

uziq wrote:

calling a woman politician a ‘dumb bitch’. stay classy. really betraying your unreconstructed blue collar attitudes, there, jay. do people at the yacht club talk like trailer trash too?

I was using his words.

Most of the ones I've seen question her intelligence and her fitness to propose vast sweeping legislation when her background is that of a bartender.

I'll agree that it's crass and classless, but plenty of people who call various male politicians assholes (or worse). It's always mystified me why the 'bitch' insult for female politicians is somehow much worse. Is it about the fact that it's female specific?

Anyway basketball is the biggest sport in China. The NBA has billions of dollars tied up in China. Didn't know that.

I wonder if conservatives would be more supportive of a sports league's business rights if the NHL surrendered and not the black NBA. You would think Americans would be happy that the Chinese adopted one of our sports and not soccer.

uziq wrote:

Jay wrote:

Most of the ones I've seen question her intelligence and her fitness to propose vast sweeping legislation when her background is that of a bartender.

she has a vastly better education than you and came from a more disadvantaged background.

plus surely you see the irony of republican trump supporters picking on a person who held down a menial job, whilst also rallying against political elites. so which form of governance do you fucking want? washington technocrats with georgetown law degrees or salt of the earth citizens?

nope, sounds like it’s racist and misogynist bullshit to me. would a straight-shooting cattle rancher from texas get the same flak online because of his non-intellectual employment history?

How does she have a better education than me? You really need to check yourself. You're a fucking dimwitted cunt with a degree in reading.

Larssen wrote:

uziq wrote:

you’re really going for a streak of obtuse and stupid posts lately. teenagers in HK deserve to get shot in the chest at point blank range. what’s wrong with crass terms? el

I never argued that point, perhaps it's your reading comprehension which is giving out? I said I'm apprehensive of supporting the protests now because I can't agree with the more violent tendencies that have developed. Primarily because I don't see a positive end result. Perhaps it's a hard swallow for the idealists but what do you think will happen when the threshold is crossed and the HK regional government rescinds control of the situation to Beijing?

I'm sure there will be many a westerner who've been egging on the situation from their living room chairs standing on the sideline crying foul. In the meantime, people will disappear and the fragile autonomy HK enjoys will end. This is not a winnable fight and the international community will turn a blind eye.

You seem awfully quick to draw stupendous conclusions whenever a post of mine is less than a paragraph in length. Personally, coming across as an idiot every once in a while is fine by me as I'm not omniscient and in order to learn you have to be willing to be stupid. You painstakingly avoid this and resort to ridicule as soon as something strikes you as 'obtuse', bearing down on some perceived inferior intellect. Seems to me as though there's typical English upper class insecurity in you that you're compulsively trying to obscure. I suppose it's only natural when one grows up in a society where social norms are defined by avoiding shame and embarrassment. Nothing worse than ridicule. You have my sympathy.

He's not upper class, only striving for it.

Larssen wrote:

You seem awfully quick to draw stupendous conclusions whenever a post of mine is less than a paragraph in length. Personally, coming across as an idiot every once in a while is fine by me as I'm not omniscient and in order to learn you have to be willing to be stupid. You painstakingly avoid this and resort to ridicule as soon as something strikes you as 'obtuse', bearing down on some perceived inferior intellect. Seems to me as though there's typical English upper class insecurity in you that you're compulsively trying to obscure. I suppose it's only natural when one grows up in a society where social norms are defined by avoiding shame and embarrassment. Nothing worse than ridicule. You have my sympathy.

ah yes, nothing like defending your intelligence by making generalisations about entire countries. you do a good service for the european project when you talk so definitively about ‘the english’. well done! can you psychoanalyse the french next? tell me how everything the italians do comes from their mama-madonna complex!

all i’ve questioned is the wisdom of you um’ing and ah’ing about a system that has 1.3 million chinese muslims in re-education camps. and how you are trying to twist the HK demonstrations into a ‘hijacked’ movement, which is precisely the propaganda line being spun out by hundreds of thousands of paid servants in china, to discredit them. teenagers are taking to the streets to face inevitable beatings and you’re posturing with your ‘objective’ commentary about, well hey, some really are asking for it don’t you know. i just wonder what actually is your point?

your circuitous analysis seems to be: by their actions they are taking hong kong towards a loss of autonomy. but that’s happening anyway, and was the cause of protests several years ago. so what is your point??

Last edited by uziq (2019-10-10 09:21:58)

uziq wrote:

Jay wrote:

He's not upper class, only striving for it.

you’re either born in the upper class or you’re not, that sentence makes literally no sense to anyone at all from europe.

and weren’t you just gloating the other day that you’ve officially given up caring about certain causes and concerns, now that you’ve got your patch of alfalfa and 2.4 kids? you sounded awfully pleased with yourself for arriving at middle-class normalcy.

this whole gruff-talking, national review-reading charade is just your latest reinvention now you fancy yourself as an established bastion of middle-class rectitude. parroting the most ludicrous right-wing babble because you think you’re part of some establishment america that doesn’t take shit from no lefties etc etc. it’s really tiresome. you had your food bowl out for the government slop saying ‘please sir, i’d like some more’ not 10 years ago.

Not everyone is born with a wealthy benefactor uncle that made his money from producing shitty pop music in the 60's.

uziq wrote:

Larssen wrote:

You seem awfully quick to draw stupendous conclusions whenever a post of mine is less than a paragraph in length. Personally, coming across as an idiot every once in a while is fine by me as I'm not omniscient and in order to learn you have to be willing to be stupid. You painstakingly avoid this and resort to ridicule as soon as something strikes you as 'obtuse', bearing down on some perceived inferior intellect. Seems to me as though there's typical English upper class insecurity in you that you're compulsively trying to obscure. I suppose it's only natural when one grows up in a society where social norms are defined by avoiding shame and embarrassment. Nothing worse than ridicule. You have my sympathy.

ah yes, nothing like defending your intelligence by making generalisations about entire countries. you do a good service for the european project when you talk so definitively about ‘the english’. well done! can you psychoanalyse the french next? tell me how everything the italians do comes from their mama-madonna complex!

all i’ve questioned is the wisdom of you um’ing and ah’ing about a system that has 1.3 million chinese muslims in re-education camps. and how you are trying to twist the HK demonstrations into a ‘hijacked’ movement, which is precisely the propaganda line being spun out by hundreds of thousands of paid servants in china, to discredit them. teenagers are taking to the streets to face inevitable beatings and you’re posturing with your ‘objective’ commentary about, well hey, some really are asking for it don’t you know. i just wonder what actually is your point?

I'm not trying to twist anything. I'm hoping people would be willing to step back and to stop looking at this only through a western lens of righteous indignation at the mistreatment of individuals and minorities. Not because it's so very wrong, but because reality is more complicated (especially in other cultures) and because the consequences ought to be considered. It's a gigantic stretch to then equate what I'm writing to the actions of 'paid servants in china discrediting the protest movement'. I absolutely will not ever defend the maltreatment of ethnic minorities, but simultaneously I won't be there to wave a flag for their independence in China.

As for your first point: stop being so uptight. We can agree that Dilbert irrefutably is an idiot, but you seem to feel a need to at some point 'question' the intelligence of any one person who posts here. Stop projecting so much and I'll stop poking fun at stereotypes.

uziq wrote:

your circuitous analysis seems to be: by their actions they are taking hong kong towards a loss of autonomy. but that’s happening anyway, and was the cause of protests several years ago. so what is your point??

The initial protests were very effective in achieving their goals. It's fallacious to think there is no other way than to continue into escalating protests - to what end? The bill has been scrapped.

because I'm post limited:

uziq wrote:

i’m not sure i questioned your intelligence. in fact i have been openly complimentary about some of your posts. i said you’ve been on a stupid streak, which is why i’m asking for more explanation. it seems like debate society sophistry to me to caveat and cavil so much in the face of atrocity and human rights abuses.

and neither me, nor KJ for that matter who was very well worded about it, are naive enough to think it won’t get worse anyway. just questioning your calculus on the matter. it was getting much worse without opposition and is only going one way. are you suggesting it would be better for them to be quiescent and not protest at all? i don’t buy the line that they are ‘provoking’ a worse outcome. china have aiming for the worst outcome in the long game all along in any case.

Noted, read and appreciated. Though 'stupid streak' kind of contradicts that notion.

I would suggest being at peace with the few victories you can secure and try to maintain the status quo. If you believe some of the current protests do not mean to provoke the response they're incurring you're naïve. The organisers know what they're up against and I hope they've figured out a plan that goes beyond 'let's gather in the street until China gives us what we want'. In fact, I'm certain they know very well that's not what's going to happen. Does that make it wrong? Not necessarily, though I question their wisdom in that strategy.

Last edited by Larssen (2019-10-10 10:03:17)

Larssen wrote:

KEN-JENNINGS wrote:

Larssen wrote:

The moment carrie lam withdrew the bill there was an opportunity for diplomatic engagement. Instead, the protests evolved. Over time the message changed, the demands expanded, the rhetoric became more confrontational. There's a conscious effort by some to spark actual violence. They want the Chinese to respond with excessive force.

I'd be interested to see how this all plays out once the protests die down.

The protest demands evolved based on the HK government's reaction to the protests. It's incredibly misleading to paint the message coming from the protests as a nebulous set of demands. Don't forget the use of triad and police violence as the protests escalated. It seems like you only want to criticize the protesters for not like, being all diplomatic as their heads are getting bashed in by new-wave Pinkerton thugs.

The most recent protesting coalesced around the opposition to a proposed extradition bill, but the roots and key players trace back to the Umbrella Revolution and Occupy Hong Kong movement from 2014. The movement has always been about increasing HK autonomy/limiting Chinese influence on Hong Kong politics. The very election of Carrie Lam is seen as illegitimate through this lens, so it's disingenuous to scold the protesters for not engaging on a diplomatic level. If you recall the result of that movement, diplomatic engagement led to essentially zero concessions by the Hong Kong/CPC establishment. Meanwhile, people were arrested and served jail time, and a few have supposedly gone missing, which is a pretty good fucking reason to protest against an extradition bill in my opinion.

For someone obviously steeped in international politics, this is a hard swing and a miss for you - the protesters NEVER saw Carrie Lam as legitimate, because she was elected through a change in the electoral structure which gives China oversight on who can actually run for Chief Executive of the SAR, which triggered the movement these protesters are borne from. The extradition bill is a very real threat to any present and future protest and an erosion of liberties, based on the results from the 2014 Umbrella Revolution/Occupy movement.

The fact that I didn't add a treatise in my post on the historical context to the protests doesn't mean I'm unaware. Of course there's a cause and effect relationship between how the protest movement evolved and how China / the HK government handled the situation. The grievances can be traced back much further than 2014 as well. It's not that the protestors don't have a right to be angry, it's that continuous escalation on this level will fail.

It's important to see through the (conflict) narratives for a minute and just look at the social dynamics. The current protest movement is very fragmented and some factions seem powered by ideologues on the extreme end of the spectrum - they want independence for HK. They push people to be violently confrontational because an excessive response on the part of the police increases their base of support and allows them to shape an us vs them narrative (even though they are a small group of the whole protest movement). Controlling the narrative here is extremely important and these moments are ideal opportunities to them.

The 18 year old who got shot is an example. He ran with people throwing molotov cocktails, though that is often glossed over. The shooting was quickly seized upon by many news outlets, especially english-language ones, to underline the overarching story of the repressed HKer vs the Chinese evil empire. Be aware that this is the whole point to that part of the movement, and that they are very invested in disseminating their message in english language publications as well. Many of the protest actions are intended to ellicit  more violent responses. An airport occupation would've been beat down by riot police anywhere in the world.

And yes, the Chinese response is excessive, and triads didn't help, though arguably so far they've also been very restrained if compared to their handling of other protests & minorities.

I took issue with your statement that the protests evolved as if there's no context to that - in fact, your comment I quoted makes it sound like it's the protesters' fault in the first place for not engaging diplomatically, as if you don't recognize that the protests are/were the result of failed diplomacy between the movement and HK legislature back in 2014. You seem to think they should just keep banging their head against the diplomacy wall until China acquiesces (lol). 

You don't need to write a treatise but you should at least be cognizant of the reasons the protests evolved, especially if you're going to critique and chastise said escalations. It's important to understand that the protests aren't simply a response to the current extradition bill, and it's really not conducive to lump general grievances before 2014 into this protest movement, because this specific movement was borne out of China passing legislation in 2014 that allowed for the CPC to influence elections, which went directly against one of the main tenants of the British handover of HK in 1997, that is the idea of universal suffrage under the Basic Law (which is also one of the 5 demands of the current protest...).

Yes, there are factions that are using this movement to further their own aims, including the independence movement. There are also pro-China factions that are masquerading as protesters and purposely escalating violence - something common in these types of scenarios. I don't think you have to highlight that narrative is important - it's kind of a common sense look at protests in general, and in this case I don't think saying "well what about the violent extremists" is really relevant to this particular discussion. Your position seems to be that the protesters should push against those factions and seek calm, nonviolent protests, which sure, yeah, of course. The reality is that China will not negotiate, so the protests aren't so much to gain a seat at the negotiating table as much as trying to garner international support. This is why you see iconic western imagery in these protests, like the American Flag, or even the British flag!! This is also why you see China trying to control the narrative by painting the protesters as violent thugs...something you seem to be captivated by despite recognizing the importance of shaping that narrative in international media.

FYI, when the "muslim ban" was enacted in the USA by the Trump admin, people occupied many airports in the US and riot police didn't beat down the protesters. It's not normal! It's also not normal in the western world for governments to use gangs to suppress nonviolent protests. It's also not normal for police to beat protesters. When it happens in the west, it rightfully gets a lot of media attention.

I'm not sure why you are hand-wringing about the violence of the protest movement without holding China to task. China holds all the power in the negotiating, China is disproportionately engaged in violence and force, yet you are chastising the protesters? Yeah, why aren't the protesters making sure everyone on their side is engaged in civil disobedience as they are getting shot and thrown off buildings and beaten by police and thugs? Why aren't the protesters peaceful as they get funneled into choke points as the police run away? Why aren't the protesters pushing back against violent factions (they are) if they really want to engage in diplomacy?

If your goal is to highlight the bias in international media coverage, or to point out the narrative as portrayed by western media, holding the protesters to task is an incredibly dumb way to achieve that goal in my opinion.

larsen i think the protestors see something which is painfully obvious to them, but for some reason isn’t to you: that there IS NO status quo for them to try and ‘respectfully’ maintain. china has designs on hong kong’s future and aren’t going to allow ‘business as usual’. they have made moves in the legislature and in their political appointments to effect these ends. how can you be so naive? the withdrawal of this latest bill, which really is a small point of extradition law, isn’t anything like the last HK’ers are going to hear of an overweening chinese power.

uziq wrote:

KEN-JENNINGS wrote:

Jay wrote:

In America they are synonymous.

only to stupid people like you, Jay. Don't lump us all into your stupid little myopic view of politics. "Conservatives call liberals socialists so it must be true."

indeed. i read several left american journals that spend the vast amounts of their effort critiquing liberalism specifically. i don’t know a single educated person in america who would claim they are the same. only fox news types.

It's become a lot more common lately - a push by the American left to chastise and hold to task classical liberals in the US. I look back to a comment I made a while ago about the overton window shifting in american politics - and this back and forth with Jay is a good example of that.

KEN-JENNINGS wrote:

Larssen wrote:

KEN-JENNINGS wrote:

The protest demands evolved based on the HK government's reaction to the protests. It's incredibly misleading to paint the message coming from the protests as a nebulous set of demands. Don't forget the use of triad and police violence as the protests escalated. It seems like you only want to criticize the protesters for not like, being all diplomatic as their heads are getting bashed in by new-wave Pinkerton thugs.

The most recent protesting coalesced around the opposition to a proposed extradition bill, but the roots and key players trace back to the Umbrella Revolution and Occupy Hong Kong movement from 2014. The movement has always been about increasing HK autonomy/limiting Chinese influence on Hong Kong politics. The very election of Carrie Lam is seen as illegitimate through this lens, so it's disingenuous to scold the protesters for not engaging on a diplomatic level. If you recall the result of that movement, diplomatic engagement led to essentially zero concessions by the Hong Kong/CPC establishment. Meanwhile, people were arrested and served jail time, and a few have supposedly gone missing, which is a pretty good fucking reason to protest against an extradition bill in my opinion.

For someone obviously steeped in international politics, this is a hard swing and a miss for you - the protesters NEVER saw Carrie Lam as legitimate, because she was elected through a change in the electoral structure which gives China oversight on who can actually run for Chief Executive of the SAR, which triggered the movement these protesters are borne from. The extradition bill is a very real threat to any present and future protest and an erosion of liberties, based on the results from the 2014 Umbrella Revolution/Occupy movement.

The fact that I didn't add a treatise in my post on the historical context to the protests doesn't mean I'm unaware. Of course there's a cause and effect relationship between how the protest movement evolved and how China / the HK government handled the situation. The grievances can be traced back much further than 2014 as well. It's not that the protestors don't have a right to be angry, it's that continuous escalation on this level will fail.

It's important to see through the (conflict) narratives for a minute and just look at the social dynamics. The current protest movement is very fragmented and some factions seem powered by ideologues on the extreme end of the spectrum - they want independence for HK. They push people to be violently confrontational because an excessive response on the part of the police increases their base of support and allows them to shape an us vs them narrative (even though they are a small group of the whole protest movement). Controlling the narrative here is extremely important and these moments are ideal opportunities to them.

The 18 year old who got shot is an example. He ran with people throwing molotov cocktails, though that is often glossed over. The shooting was quickly seized upon by many news outlets, especially english-language ones, to underline the overarching story of the repressed HKer vs the Chinese evil empire. Be aware that this is the whole point to that part of the movement, and that they are very invested in disseminating their message in english language publications as well. Many of the protest actions are intended to ellicit  more violent responses. An airport occupation would've been beat down by riot police anywhere in the world.

And yes, the Chinese response is excessive, and triads didn't help, though arguably so far they've also been very restrained if compared to their handling of other protests & minorities.

I took issue with your statement that the protests evolved as if there's no context to that - in fact, your comment I quoted makes it sound like it's the protesters' fault in the first place for not engaging diplomatically, as if you don't recognize that the protests are/were the result of failed diplomacy between the movement and HK legislature back in 2014. You seem to think they should just keep banging their head against the diplomacy wall until China acquiesces (lol). 

You don't need to write a treatise but you should at least be cognizant of the reasons the protests evolved, especially if you're going to critique and chastise said escalations. It's important to understand that the protests aren't simply a response to the current extradition bill, and it's really not conducive to lump general grievances before 2014 into this protest movement, because this specific movement was borne out of China passing legislation in 2014 that allowed for the CPC to influence elections, which went directly against one of the main tenants of the British handover of HK in 1997, that is the idea of universal suffrage under the Basic Law (which is also one of the 5 demands of the current protest...).

Yes, there are factions that are using this movement to further their own aims, including the independence movement. There are also pro-China factions that are masquerading as protesters and purposely escalating violence - something common in these types of scenarios. I don't think you have to highlight that narrative is important - it's kind of a common sense look at protests in general, and in this case I don't think saying "well what about the violent extremists" is really relevant to this particular discussion. Your position seems to be that the protesters should push against those factions and seek calm, nonviolent protests, which sure, yeah, of course. The reality is that China will not negotiate, so the protests aren't so much to gain a seat at the negotiating table as much as trying to garner international support. This is why you see China trying to control the narrative by painting the protesters as violent thugs...something you seem to be captivated by despite recognizing the importance of shaping that narrative in international media.

FYI, when the "muslim ban" was enacted in the USA by the Trump admin, people occupied many airports in the US and riot police didn't beat down the protesters. It's not normal! It's also not normal in the western world for governments to use gangs to suppress nonviolent protests. It's also not normal for police to beat protesters. When it happens in the west, it rightfully gets a lot of media attention.

I'm not sure why you are hand-wringing about the violence of the protest movement without holding China to task. China holds all the power in the negotiating, China is disproportionately engaged in violence and force, yet you are chastising the protesters? Yeah, why aren't the protesters making sure everyone on their side is engaged in civil disobedience as they are getting shot and thrown off buildings and beaten by police and thugs? Why aren't the protesters peaceful as they get funneled into choke points as the police run away? Why aren't the protesters pushing back against violent factions (they are) if they really want to engage in diplomacy?

If your goal is to highlight the bias in international media coverage, or to point out the narrative as portrayed by western media, holding the protesters to task is an incredibly dumb way to achieve that goal in my opinion.

Thanks for the post. I agree with most of your analysis. I'll also concede I could've made a better effort in navigating the nuance and explaining my reservations. Don't accuse me of hand-wringing though as I'm patently not.

The strategy of trying to appeal to the international press and western involvement in the aim to maintain (or rather) expand democratic governance / independence in HK does not appear as one that's bound for success. In fact, what I worry for and the trends we're all seeing is that the situation is slowly spiralling out of control. You know it, I know it, uziq knows it, and we all recognise that there's a conscious effort to steer this escalation. The Chinese should be held to the task, sure, and factions in the protest have their part to play. I'm not some shill for Chinese governance for pointing that out - the implication is pretty insulting. The efforts of the Chinese trolls haven't really reached me and I'm pretty sure most of it is confined to HK news outlets and Chinese publications, the former of which I don't read and the latter of which I can't. I'm also hardly chastising the protesters if I'm pointing out the fact that some seem to deploy a strategy chasing escalation (which I can't support). It's curious that this invites both your and uzi's disapproval, almost as if it's a sin to not be on 'their side'.

I'll add on to what makes this complicated to me. At some point 5 years ago I spent an extended time in China and had to be in HK as well. The minute I saw a banner out over a street which read 'Mainlanders don't you shit in our streets', after hearing the general opinion on Hong Kongers elsewhere, was when I realised that escalation seemed very likely. There's the official reasons for why the protest started and how the relationship between both parties is complicated, but there's also a deep aversion in many HKers and Chinese for one another on a more personal level. Sure, democratic governance could've been maintained after 1997 or developed even further, though I'm quite sure that would've been a route to civil unrest as well. Not to mention that the existence of two almost entirely contradictory forms of governance within one country and expecting stability is a fantasy. Which, I'm sure, is how the Chinese view their 'long game' - a country which could not exist if it were a democracy.

Last edited by Larssen (2019-10-10 11:17:26)