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Interesting. Are the images shared from this article suggesting that protesters are destroying property and engaging in other such behavior fake or somehow bein

by rjf72 7y ago

Interesting. Are the images shared from this article suggesting that protesters are destroying property and engaging in other such behavior fake or somehow being taken out of context?

JumpCrisscross 7y ago
> Are the images shared from this article suggesting that protesters are destroying property and engaging in other such behavior fake or somehow being taken out of context? Yes. Some protesters destroyed property. But the Hong Kong protests have been overwhelmingly peaceful. Almost shockingly peaceful. Millions of people are mobilizing in cramped quarters. Very few cultures have the restraint to coördinate so massively with barely any mistakes. Contrast this with the counter-protesters, in Hong Kong [1] and overseas [2]. Pro-Xi protesters are violent at about the same frequency as (if not higher than) Hong Kong's protesters. This despite there being far fewer pro-Xi protesters on the ground. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-49066982 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-49066982 [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/30/world/australia/hong-kong-china-queensland-protests.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/30/world/australia/hong-kong...
- spectramax 7y ago
  I was educating myself of Kashmir protestors in Srinagar and found a stark contrast between Kashmiri protestors (with their ISIS banners: https://i.imgur.com/ib8OVE4.png https://i.imgur.com/ib8OVE4.png) and HK protestors who are peaceful, educated in the issue and careful with sparking any kind of violence. It is amazing really and one of the most well organized large scale protests in the modern history of mankind.
jazzyjackson 7y ago
Well it is certainly a willful misrepresention of the protest movement as a whole, to share the window smashing and say "radical people of hong kong" "complete violent behavior" - the context is peaceful revolution, the context is riot cops showing up and applying violent repression of crowds. You're asking questions of concern without taking a side by the way, suggesting that maybe the mainlanders are right to see the protesters as violent and deserving of violent repression by a dictatorship. I would urge you to be a little less willing to take the dictator's side on this.
- rjf72 7y ago
  I try to not take sides, but rather to simply evaluate evidence. As the evidence shifts in one direction or another, so do my views. To see why judging issues by the groups involved instead of evidence, one doesn't need to go back far. The Iraq war ended up costing hundreds of thousands of innocent lives, trillions of dollars, and helped accelerate a rapid destabilization of the entire Mideast setting the stage of the rise of groups such as Islamic State and its ongoing reign of terror. The mainstream media were all, in orchestrated unison, arguing loudly for the war. And the government provided lots of allusions to evidence and appeals to authority, demanding support for it. And this was a conflict with the 'good guys' versus a literal dictator who was undoubtedly a horrible person. Yet the consequences of that war far dwarfed the atrocities of that man. And it was all based on lies. There was no WMD, the secret high level insider source was a taxi driver who had no connection to the government, the 'mobile weapon labs' were helium generating stations for use in conventional artillery, etc. Throughout history it's not infrequent that such things happen. We'd like to imagine that when the 'good guys' win good things happen, but reality is often not so kind. --- Attaching this as an addendum since I've now been throttled for getting downvoted: I am referring to things such as the single word title piece ran by the Washington Post, "Irrefutable." [1] On the same day the New York Times published this [2] piece entitled "Irrefutable and Undeniable". And there were many other such pieces being run as well. It's just a tad tedious to dig up these articles now from 16 years ago. It was bad. Note in these articles the complete and absolute lack of any sort of critique or even consideration of the possibility that evidence might not hold up to scrutiny. Instead the media condemned and proclaimed with absolute certainty. That was not, is not, journalism - it is propaganda. Consequently I find it important to always remain critical of anything that has substantial political undertones. And so I prefer to take information that both sides agree to and judge it for myself while giving the arguments a distant secondary interest. And while it may ultimately leave me drawing the wrong conclusion, I'd rather be able to justify my logic based on evidence I personally felt compelling beyond any doubt, rather than on parroting others' analysis. I don't really understand why more people don't think this way. [1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/02/06/irrefutable/e598b1be-a78a-4a42-8e1a-c336f7a217f4/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/02/06/i... [2] - https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/opinion/irrefutable-and-undeniable.html https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/opinion/irrefutable-and-u...

by rjf72 7y ago

Interesting. Are the images shared from this article suggesting that protesters are destroying property and engaging in other such behavior fake or somehow being taken out of context?

JumpCrisscross 7y ago

> Are the images shared from this article suggesting that protesters are destroying property and engaging in other such behavior fake or somehow being taken out of context? Yes. Some protesters destroyed property. But the Hong Kong protests have been overwhelmingly peaceful. Almost shockingly peaceful. Millions of people are mobilizing in cramped quarters. Very few cultures have the restraint to coördinate so massively with barely any mistakes. Contrast this with the counter-protesters, in Hong Kong [1] and overseas [2]. Pro-Xi protesters are violent at about the same frequency as (if not higher than) Hong Kong's protesters. This despite there being far fewer pro-Xi protesters on the ground. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-49066982 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-49066982 [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/30/world/australia/hong-kong-china-queensland-protests.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/30/world/australia/hong-kong...

spectramax 7y ago
I was educating myself of Kashmir protestors in Srinagar and found a stark contrast between Kashmiri protestors (with their ISIS banners: https://i.imgur.com/ib8OVE4.png https://i.imgur.com/ib8OVE4.png) and HK protestors who are peaceful, educated in the issue and careful with sparking any kind of violence. It is amazing really and one of the most well organized large scale protests in the modern history of mankind.

jazzyjackson 7y ago

Well it is certainly a willful misrepresention of the protest movement as a whole, to share the window smashing and say "radical people of hong kong" "complete violent behavior" - the context is peaceful revolution, the context is riot cops showing up and applying violent repression of crowds. You're asking questions of concern without taking a side by the way, suggesting that maybe the mainlanders are right to see the protesters as violent and deserving of violent repression by a dictatorship. I would urge you to be a little less willing to take the dictator's side on this.

rjf72 7y ago
I try to not take sides, but rather to simply evaluate evidence. As the evidence shifts in one direction or another, so do my views. To see why judging issues by the groups involved instead of evidence, one doesn't need to go back far. The Iraq war ended up costing hundreds of thousands of innocent lives, trillions of dollars, and helped accelerate a rapid destabilization of the entire Mideast setting the stage of the rise of groups such as Islamic State and its ongoing reign of terror. The mainstream media were all, in orchestrated unison, arguing loudly for the war. And the government provided lots of allusions to evidence and appeals to authority, demanding support for it. And this was a conflict with the 'good guys' versus a literal dictator who was undoubtedly a horrible person. Yet the consequences of that war far dwarfed the atrocities of that man. And it was all based on lies. There was no WMD, the secret high level insider source was a taxi driver who had no connection to the government, the 'mobile weapon labs' were helium generating stations for use in conventional artillery, etc. Throughout history it's not infrequent that such things happen. We'd like to imagine that when the 'good guys' win good things happen, but reality is often not so kind. --- Attaching this as an addendum since I've now been throttled for getting downvoted: I am referring to things such as the single word title piece ran by the Washington Post, "Irrefutable." [1] On the same day the New York Times published this [2] piece entitled "Irrefutable and Undeniable". And there were many other such pieces being run as well. It's just a tad tedious to dig up these articles now from 16 years ago. It was bad. Note in these articles the complete and absolute lack of any sort of critique or even consideration of the possibility that evidence might not hold up to scrutiny. Instead the media condemned and proclaimed with absolute certainty. That was not, is not, journalism - it is propaganda. Consequently I find it important to always remain critical of anything that has substantial political undertones. And so I prefer to take information that both sides agree to and judge it for myself while giving the arguments a distant secondary interest. And while it may ultimately leave me drawing the wrong conclusion, I'd rather be able to justify my logic based on evidence I personally felt compelling beyond any doubt, rather than on parroting others' analysis. I don't really understand why more people don't think this way. [1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/02/06/irrefutable/e598b1be-a78a-4a42-8e1a-c336f7a217f4/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/02/06/i... [2] - https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/opinion/irrefutable-and-undeniable.html https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/opinion/irrefutable-and-u...