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An American Father and Son Exporting Tear Gas to Hong Kong
- sebow 7y agoAgitprop 101 article. Rhetorically asking: what's the end goal?Ban the company?Big-ass fine? I mean for sure you can "whine" at the US government for exporting such crowd-control equipment to the HK gov.But why shit explicitly on the company itself? I mean after all it's buzzfeed, and it's kind of sad to see such "journalism" on this portal.And just because it's a new branch with "News" in their title doesn't suddenly make it quality journalism that's somehow different from their tabloid branch. Reading this makes me think the author had a bad experience with tear-gas up close and wanted to rant a little.
- btown 7y agoCompanies who don’t care for the safety of their workers can and should be called out by media. One can debate about regulations, but transparency should never be controversial. To your second point, BF News is relatively independent from the main business and has been nominated for a Pulitzer: https://www.pulitzer.org/finalists/staff-buzzfeed-news https://www.pulitzer.org/finalists/staff-buzzfeed-news
- GordonS 7y ago> I mean for sure you can "whine" at the US government for exporting such crowd-control equipment to the HK gov.But why shit explicitly on the company itself? Because companies that do ethnically shitty things should be called out on it - just because it's legal, doesn't necessarily make it "right" by default.
- anigbrowl 7y agoWell, now anyone who cares a lot about HK or is hostile to authoritarian policing in general knows about it. Knowledge is power and all that.
- mikeash 7y agoWhy not shit on a company supplying tear gas to an oppressive regime?
- _bxg1 7y agoDo these not fall under arms dealing laws?
- microcolonel 7y agoThat's a big fat maybe, but AFAIK if they got permission it's probably fine? The Department of Commerce regularly approves exports of tear gas products and formulations considered "dual-use" (military or police), and the State Department handles other forms. The government of Egypt was able to purchase American tear gas in the late 00s and early 10s.
- remotecool 7y agoThey are only investigating this company because they don't like the government cracking down on protestors in HK. Tear gas is better than bullets.
- senthil_rajasek 7y agoNo tear gas is best.
- meshr 7y agoThe best is not to use and provoke violence at all.
- anigbrowl 7y agoWhat should people do if they form a consensus that they are being oppressed and asking politely fails to yield the desired result?
- meshr 7y agoThey should grow first as much as possible before considering to fight with much bigger enemy so that the winner would be unknown. To do so they should define a problem as time-space independent one. It is global problem here that we still haven’t developed tools to force countries to comply with their own laws to stop violence. We need worldwide consensus here what everyone should do in this case before he hits the same problem.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- wbronitsky 7y agoIs your argument that the solution to violence is no violence? I believe that assertion is self evidently useless and harmful to the discussion. We would do a lot better to try and raise the tenor of the conversation by discussing interesting viewpoints, not asserting that the solution to something is to simply stop doing it
- qaq 7y agoHmm Lockheed Martin, Raytheon etc. have being exporting weapons system to brutal dictatorships for decades
- Gibbon1 7y agoI remember a cartoon from 45 years ago Nixon and Brezhnev are sitting at lemonade stands, but selling bombs. With lines of petty dictators, strongmen and despots waiting to buy.
- NullPrefix 7y agoWhy would strongmen need bombs?
- lallysingh 7y agoSmaller ethnic groups, stronghold cities of political enemies...
- NullPrefix 7y agoSwoleshaming is not ok
- Gibbon1 7y agoThey need weapons to oppress their own people. Which is why foreign arms sales are problematic.
- NullPrefix 7y agoSwoleshaming is not ok
- NullPrefix 7y agoStrongmen are power lifters. Swoleshaming is not ok.
- crazydoggers 7y ago
- lancebeet 7y agoI wish the article would shed some light on why the police doesn't use domestically produced tear gas. I don't understand how it can be feasible for them to import tear gas to Hong Kong from the US.
- humantiy 7y agoPreviously working for a company that did create some less than lethal equipment, I can say few main reasons. One being proprietary knowledge into the devices as well as capabilities to get specific chemicals required to manufacture some of which are highly regulated. The other and probably the largest reason is the margins (profits) and quantities produced are not that large. This is normally why you see defense contractors who have other means of profits do this since its something they can bundle into a sale for law enforcement. That would be my main guess for import low need and cheaper to just import stock vs setting up an entire factory not to mention the requirements necessary to store the chemicals safely. The image in the article does do a good job of showing how they have physically separated the buildings on the property.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ivanhoe 7y agoAccording to a number of other sources tear gas for Hong Kong is produced by Chemring Group, UK? https://graphcommons.com/graphs/f042fe57-cf19-458b-b390-8cf6fc2a2cca https://graphcommons.com/graphs/f042fe57-cf19-458b-b390-8cf6... https://twitter.com/Omega_RF/status/1138752537878781952 https://twitter.com/Omega_RF/status/1138752537878781952 https://theferret.scot/chemring-hong-kong-tear-gas/ https://theferret.scot/chemring-hong-kong-tear-gas/
- meshr 7y agoIs there a list of companies who make money on violence? I'd like to ban them on using my products. I could find only this https://wikileaks.org/hackingteam/emails/emailid/31778 https://wikileaks.org/hackingteam/emails/emailid/31778
- joelx 7y agoWhy is this comment downvoted?
- ngcc_hk 7y agoWhy outdated one which might release cynaide etc are used if it is so easy to be obtained and so cheap? Our tube and Neigbourhood are affected by these indiscriminate use of TG.
- imgabe 7y agoWho sells tear gas to US police departments? Who sold the bullets that shot the kids at Kent State? How about we hold the actual people giving the orders to fire the tear gas accountable instead of random vendors?
- detaro 7y agoThat's exactly the difference between your examples and this: your examples are easily within reach of US accountability, foreign governments not really, so their suppliers are the closest target.
- Krasnol 7y agoAnyone remembers when Bayer stopped selling the chemicals to kill prisoners to the US? I liked that pretty much.
- autokad 7y agoyeah this is all about hate and power. companies make a business by tearing down others and spewing hate to build platforms of clicks and advertisements.
- newguy1234 7y agoIt doesn't matter if the USA blocks exports of tear gas to HK. They will just buy from other countries. If you really want to stop what is going on in HK then stop buying Chinese made goods.
- tzs 7y agoI fail to see how if we stopped buying Chinese made goods it would lessen either China's interest in or power over what happens in Hong Kong.
- Leary 7y agoThe Chinese would rather be poor than lose Hong Kong. Better way would be to encourage civil societies/ democratic reform in China
- tomohawk 7y agoIt's about more than just HK. It is about the Uighurs being put in concentration camps. It is about the harvesting of organs from political prisoners. It is about illegally occupying Tibet. It is about illegally occupying the South China Sea. It is about many things. https://chinatribunal.com/final-judgement-report/ https://chinatribunal.com/final-judgement-report/
- fortran77 7y agoNobody on Hacker News will do that! They love their iPhones and MacBooks too much.
- teslaberry 7y agomaybe that dad and son would be making more money waiting for riots in europe and the united states. plenty of money to be made selling for the mobocracy that is coming to the united states. courtsey of leftists who want more control by the state.......count me in for a krate.