This is who is funding the Hong Kong protests, and no, they are not organic.

Here we look at the protests in Hong Kong and who is funding and training them. For they are using sophisticated urban combat techniques, as well as creating very sophisticated bombs, and handmade weapons. Obviously, some agent wants this group to cause damage and trouble in Hong Kong.

Who are they, and who funds them?

I pretty much sat down and wrote most of this after reading the onslaught of negative news reporting out of the USA after the Senate passed an anti-China resolution regarding HK and American businesses operating inside of China.

U.S. Senate Passes Hong Kong Democracy Bill, Drawing … 

I don't like lies and characterizations in general, but this affects me personally, and it thus pisses me off.

To quote Q;

Control of narrative = control of public opinion
Control of public opinion = power
How do you control the narrative?
Information warfare.
Q

Well for starters, for the most part, the most radical instigators are not Hong Kong citizens. The instigators are NOT the “figureheads”, they are educated agitators, with knowledge in urban warfare, and close combat strategies.

Those “leaders”, “trainers” and “agitators” that have been captured by police are neither students, nor (in most cases) Hong Kong residents. While the vast bulk of the protestors are indeed, HK residents, their leadership is not.

What’s going on?

The demonstrations in Hong Kong, now an open confrontation with the People’s Republic of China, have a global impact. So, as such, what are the forces behind this movement? Who provides the funds and who stands to benefit?

Who?

Protests in Hong Kong routinely carry the US flag and photos of Donald Trump.

The increasingly violent demonstrations in Hong Kong are completely embraced and enthusiastically supported by the United States government, including Donald Trump, the US Congress and the Senate. The American news media is having a near feeding frenzy over all this news, and the U.S. corporate media is eating it all up.

This should be a danger sign to everyone fighting for change and for social progress. U.S. imperialism is never disinterested or neutral. It’s always for a objective.

The protesters now use the same violent methods that were used in the Maidan protests in the Ukraine. The U.S. seems to hope that China will intervene and create a second Tianamen scene. 

That U.S. color revolution attempt  failed but was an excellent instrument to demonize China. 

A repeat in  Hong Kong would allow the U.S. to declare a "clash of civilization" and  increase 'western' hostility against China. But while China is prepared to intervene it is unlikely to do the U.S. that favor. Its government expressed confidence that the local authorities will be able to handle the issue. 

-Moon Over Alabama

That objective is almost always to institute a “puppet government” taking the form of a dictatorship under the disguise of “fighting for democracy”. It’s a model that has worked for many decades, and should be so well known by now to everyone…

The Vietnam war was for democracy.
The Kuwait war was for democracy.
The Iraq war was for democracy.
The Grenada war was for democracy.
The Panama war was for democracy.
The Libyan war was for democracy.
The Yemen war was for democracy.

Now, the war drums are for what? Democracy?

A war in Hong Kong for democracy…

Only this time it isn’t against a long tiny third-world back-water nation. It will not be Libya, Yemen, Syria, or Grenada. This would be a war against China, on Chinese soil.

And China will fight back…

…in a nuclear fashion.

Why does China want Hong Kong?  

Well, Hong Kong was always a part of  China.  The English seized the city during the Opium Wars, as part of a  treaty that put an end to one of the steps of English aggression against  China.  Even then, the English only got a 99 year lease.  That expired  towards the end of the 20th century.  

China was of course happy to see a  part of their country that had been stolen by the English returned to  them.  

Can't really think of an example where the USA has had a portion  of its nation stolen from them, but it isn't hard to imagine that they'd  want it back.  They were certainly willing to kill a lot of people just  to get back a part of America that seceded and tried to tell the  Yankees that they weren't all that into them anyways.
 
-Posted by: Who Dat | Aug 14 2019 15:51 utc | MOA

And make no mistake about it, parsing the details to confuse Americans will not work on the global audience. You would be dealing against a nuclear-armed global super-power. How do you seriously think it’s going to pan out? Are you willing to engage in nuclear war with Russia and China simultaneously? Because, that’s what’s going to happen…

China and Russia will share their resources.

And make no mistake about this either, China (even if alone) is no slouch in the ICBM, MIRV nuclear arena. They would “kick some ass” and have enough left over…

For decades, the United States has taken China’s ballistic missile capability for granted, assessing it as a low-capability force with limited regional impact and virtually no strategic value. But on October 1, during a massive military parade celebrating the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Beijing put the U.S., and the world, on notice that this assessment was no longer valid. In one fell swoop, China may have nullified America’s strategic nuclear deterrent, the U.S. Pacific Fleet, and U.S. missile defense capability. Through its impressive display of new weapons systems, China has underscored the reality that while the United States has spent the last two decades squandering trillions of dollars fighting insurgents in the Middle East, Beijing was singularly focused on overcoming American military superiority in the Pacific. If the capabilities of these new weapons are taken at face value, China will have succeeded on this front. — For decades, the United States has taken China’s ballistic missile capability for granted, assessing it as a low-capability force with limited regional impact and virtually no strategic value. But on October 1, during a massive military parade celebrating the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Beijing put the U.S., and the world, on notice that this assessment was no longer valid.

In one fell swoop, China may have nullified America’s strategic nuclear deterrent, the U.S. Pacific Fleet, and U.S. missile defense capability. Through its impressive display of new weapons systems, China has underscored the reality that while the United States has spent the last two decades squandering trillions of dollars fighting insurgents in the Middle East, Beijing was singularly focused on overcoming American military superiority in the Pacific. If the capabilities of these new weapons are taken at face value, China will have succeeded on this front.

Nothing is what it appears. It’s all manipulations and lies to mask the true purposes.

Those that want confrontation with Beijing are delusional, and you are, in a few short years, going to pay the price of their idiocy.

The official statement of the Chinese Embassy in the Russian Federation regarding the events in Hong Kong (in Russian).
 
The words at the end of the statement are very revealing, given the  recent intentional provocations and riots of a bunch of marginals (aka  "Russian liberal opposition") in Moscow:
 
A comprehensive partnership and strategic interaction have been  established between China and the Russian Federation in a new era. Both  countries have been unjustly charged for their level of freedom,  democracy, and human rights. We are confident that we will meet the same  attitude among the general public of the Russian Federation on the  issues of Xiangang. We are confident in the understanding by the  Russians of the determination and perseverance of China in protecting  state prestige and sovereignty.

- Posted by: alaff | Aug 14 2019 16:23 utc | MoA

Manipulation in Hong Kong

One of the most significant examples of US aggression against China is the instigation of a color protest or color revolution in Hong Kong.

The aim is to provoke China into reacting harshly and violently, which would reinforce the Western perception that China is heavy-handed, tyrannical and totalitarian.

China has already moved troops to its southern mainland border, just across the water from Hong Kong.

It is possible that another US objective is to push the protestors into declaring Hong Kong independent of China. There are some who say the Hong Kong protests are a grassroots affair. There is usually a grassroots element to many of these protests, but almost always the bigger factor in the shadows is US interference (or US-UK, or US-UK-Israeli, interference).

Here is a very telling comment about the Hong Kong protests found under the article Violent Protests In Hong Kong Reach Their Last Stage on the MoonOfAlabama.org website.

“The Extradition Law revision that started this was only a convenient proxy for those wanting chaos in HK to create chaos. The instigators behind the initial protest march are the same ones who started Occupy Central five years ago. They are the ones who huddle with operatives from US/UK Consulates, who travelled to the Washington/London/Brussel/Taipei, etc. to see politicians and plot strategies, to arrange for funding, and to recruit dare devils for the carnage.

Lucky for them that HK was ripe for such shenanigans because HKers in general are sullen over their loss of superiority complex against mainland Chinese, brainwashed subconsciously through schools and churches about CCP wickedness, and desperately stressed under HK’s economic realities. Most of the protesters don’t even know what the Extradition Law is all about …”

“The instigators, however, are well versed in all the intricacies. They know who they can easily recruit and order to do violence … they know the fifth column within the government and business … If large casualties result what do they care? … [T]hey know their foreign backers are only too glad to see Chinese killing Chinese …”

“By the way, the US Consulate in HK has over 1,000 on payroll (an estimated 200 CIA agents), UK’s is over 500 (among them MI6 agents). That size of consulate in a city of less than 400 sq. miles of land (over half of which mountainous) is a laughable anomaly, wouldn’t you think? What are they all there for?”

-The Freedom Articles

The disruptive actions involve helmeted and masked protesters using gasoline bombs, flaming bricks, arson and steel bars, random attacks on buses, and airport and mass transit shutdowns.

HK protestors are set on burning down the entire city.

Among the most provocative acts was an organized break-in at the Hong Kong legislature where “activists” vandalized the building and hung the British Union Jack flag. As well as burning down a university campus.

U.S., British and Hong Kong’s colonial flags are prominent in these confrontations, along with defaced flags and other symbols of People’s China.

The New York Times described the airport shutdown:

“The protests at  the airport have been deeply tactical, as the largely leaderless  movement strikes at a vital economic artery. Hong Kong International  Airport, which opened in 1998, the year after China reclaimed the  territory from Britain, serves as a gateway to the rest of Asia. Sleek  and well run, the airport accommodates nearly 75 million passengers a  year and handles more than 5.1 million metric tons of cargo.” (Aug. 14)

U.S. media have consistently labeled these violent actions “pro-democracy.”

But are they?

Even if the leaders of these reactionary actions decide to pull back from the brink and re-calibrate their tactics, there is pause for concern. For based on the Chinese government’s unequivocally strong warnings, it is important to understand a movement that has such strong U.S. support.

The protestors want “freedom”

This is a rally cry that evokes strong emotions with Americans.

Though it shouldn’t. Most Americans haven’t tasted freedom for at least one hundred years, and have no concept of what it actually is.

The cognitive dissonance has been overwhelming these past months.  "Pro-democracy protesters" who use black bloc tactics of arson and  vandalism. "Students yearning for freedom" who organize Molotov cocktail  factories. Complaints of excessive "police brutality" when by objective  international standards the police were remarkably constrained. 

"Hong  Kong is a repressive police state" says Joshua Wong, and yet it is  consistently near the top of the list in the Cato Institute world  freedom index. 

The protesters are "fighting for democracy" even though  Hong Kong is democratic, and demand a "universal suffrage" that in  practice very few jurisdictions, least of all their beloved US/UK,  enjoy. 

Add a dollop of uninformed virtue-signalling from the usual  clueless western cheerleaders, and it has been a festival of delusion  which somehow ends with the image of a petrol-bomb-wielding black bloc  protester as the new face of "freedom" (as seen on twitter).
 
-Posted by: jayc | Nov 22 2019 21:14 utc | 19

People, freedom is being able to drink booze, and smoke, and plop your dog Fido next to you in a public restaurant. It means that you can ride in a car without a seat-belt, drink large size coke’s and have sunny-side up eggs whenever you want. It means that you can hunt and fish without a permit, and buy most medicines without a prescription.

America had freedoms, but when FDR and Wilson removed the SCOUS defense of the ninth amendment, American became a nice, safe, gulag.

Today, most Americans can only have small brief glimpses on what freedom used to be like…

The Fitzgeralds arrived in New York in the early autumn of 1922—after a rocky start working as an ad man in his bachelor days, Scott was finally making headway as a celebrated author. They checked into the Plaza and began partying, not even sobering up to go house hunting, but then what was the point, they weren’t going to be sober while they lived there. Zelda was an incorrigible flirt when drunk and she also had a habit of taking her clothes off and dancing naked in fountains or parading down railway tracks. Scott, although less of an exhibitionist, was equally out of control. In December of the same year the couple’s ‘house rules’ for weekend guests at their home in Great Neck, Long Island included a polite directive “not to break down doors in search of liquor, even when authorized to do so by their host and hostess,” and warned that “the invitation to stay over Monday, issued by the host and hostess during the small hours of Sunday morning, must not be taken seriously.” They needed the occasional sober Monday, if only to write the letters of apology they constantly had to send excusing their drunken antics and bad behavior, but in many ways the Fitzgeralds could do no wrong. They were young, beautiful—Dorothy Parker described them as looking “as though they had stepped out of the sun”—and fast. In a complex case of life imitating art, and vice versa, they both typified and immortalized the Jazz Age—their extravagant lifestyle funded by the handsome payments Scott received from the magazines that published his flapper fictions and the publishers who bought his novels. That he plundered his and Zelda’s lives for his work is old news, so too is the fact that he’s widely acknowledged as the chronicler of the period, but in her new study of the Jazz Age couple, the Jazz Age novel, and the historical moment, American-born, British-based academic Sarah Churchwell proves herself a master mixologist combining meticulously researched historical detail, equally tantalizing biographical tidbits and a subtle reading of Gatsby—the resulting cocktail is an intoxicating biography of a novel. — The Fitzgeralds arrived in New York in the early autumn of 1922—after a rocky start working as an ad man in his bachelor days, Scott was finally making headway as a celebrated author. They checked into the Plaza and began partying, not even sobering up to go house hunting, but then what was the point, they weren’t going to be sober while they lived there. Zelda was an incorrigible flirt when drunk and she also had a habit of taking her clothes off and dancing naked in fountains or parading down railway tracks. Scott, although less of an exhibitionist, was equally out of control. In December of the same year the couple’s ‘house rules’ for weekend guests at their home in Great Neck, Long Island included a polite directive “not to break down doors in search of liquor, even when authorized to do so by their host and hostess,” and warned that “the invitation to stay over Monday, issued by the host and hostess during the small hours of Sunday morning, must not be taken seriously.”

They needed the occasional sober Monday, if only to write the letters of apology they constantly had to send excusing their drunken antics and bad behavior, but in many ways the Fitzgeralds could do no wrong. They were young, beautiful—Dorothy Parker described them as looking “as though they had stepped out of the sun”—and fast. In a complex case of life imitating art, and vice versa, they both typified and immortalized the Jazz Age—their extravagant lifestyle funded by the handsome payments Scott received from the magazines that published his flapper fictions and the publishers who bought his novels.

So, I find it very curious, and you the reader should as well, that a nation-state that is #1 in personal and economic freedom would want to be more like a nation that is #25 at best in the same category.

For the past 25 years, including this year, Hong Kong has been ranked No. 1 in the Heritage Foundation’s list of countries with the “greatest economic freedom”—meaning the least restraints on capitalist profit taking.

Why do the HK protestors want less democracy and freedom? The answer is that this is not really their goal. It is instead the mechanism from which they can instigate disruptions.

Hong Kong’s ranking is based on low taxes and light regulations, the strongest property rights and business freedom, and “openness to global commerce and vibrant entrepreneurial climate … no restrictions on foreign banks.”

That has not changed. No where has the mainland placed new laws, regulations or changes to that model of governance. When the HK local government wanted to open up extradition to other nations, the protests erupted, and the government backed down.

So what the heck is going on? The protestors are not asking for more. They are demanding less.

WTF?

China has a right to intervene

It must be strongly stated that China is not invading Hong Kong if it moves against these violent disruptions. Hong Kong is part of China. This is an internal matter, and the call for independence for Hong Kong is an open attack on China’s national sovereignty.

Hong Kong is a part of China.
The idea that any American military force will come to “liberate” or “save” Hong Kong is an invasion of China.
Any attempted invasion of China will result in the nuclear destruction of most major United States cities.

As it stands today, and what is NOT being reported in the United States media, is that under Hong Kong’s Basic Law, the constitution for the city, the government is legally allowed to request help from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.

China is not Syria.

China is not Bolivia.

China is not Venezuela.

China will fight back. They will not permit this, and frankly, I am quite surprised that they have permitted this to go on so long. They have been very polite and have kept causalities to a minimum. Were this kind and level of damage to have taken place in the United States, people would have been killed.

Here is an article that explains one key way that Washington is meddling in the affairs of Hong Kong:
 
https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2019/08/how-washington-is-meddling-in-affairs.html
 
While the ideals of democracy are admirable and desirable, Washington's  version of democracy is tainted by big money and has developed into a  system where politicians are for sale to the highest bidder.
 
-Posted by: Sally Snyder | Aug 14 2019 16:10 utc | MoA

China has announced that it will take action if things escalate.

The Chinese government has announced that it will intervene militarily to defend China’s sovereignty.

Top government officials have labeled the most extreme acts as “terrorism” and denounced U.S. support.
Several times officials raised the analogy to the Western “color revolutions” that violently overturned governments in Serbia, Ukraine, Libya and Haiti and were attempted in Venezuela and Syria.

China is aware of what is going on and they will take appropriate and measured action. the problem is that the United States people, haven’t seen measured and appropriate responses since the 1940’s.

Americans are not expecting military push-back. For if they were, they would be terrified of all the war-drum beating by the American press.

“The ideologues in Western governments never cease in their efforts 
to engineer unrest against governments that are not to their liking, even though their actions have caused misery and chaos in country after country in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. 

Now they are trying the same trick in China,” 

-China Daily explained on July 3rd, 2019

Liu Xiaoming, China’s ambassador to Britain, told reporters that their country was still acting as Hong Kong’s colonial master. (nbcnews.com, July 4)

“A spokeswoman for China’s Foreign Ministry claimed Tuesday that 
recent comments from American lawmakers [Nancy] Pelosi (D-Ca.) and 
[Mitch] McConnell (R-Ky.) demonstrate that Washington’s real goal is to incite chaos in the city,” according to CNBC. 

“By neglecting and distorting the truth, they whitewashed violent crimes as a struggle for human rights and freedom.” (Aug. 14)

Where is U.S. support for other resistance?

Hong Kong police are denounced in the U.S. media for violence, but actually have shown great restraint. Despite months of violent confrontations, with flaming bottles constantly thrown, no one has been killed by the police.

That is NOT going to last for long.

There are rumors that some Hong Kong oligarchs were originally behind the protests to prevent their extradition for shady deals they made in China. There may be some truth to that.

China's president Xi Jingpin is waging a fierce campaign against corruption and Hong Kong is a target rich environment for fighting that crime.

The former British colony is ruled by a handful of oligarchs who have monopolies in the housing, electricity, trade and transport markets:

The book to read is Land and the Ruling Class in Hong Kong (2010) by Alice Poon, which explains how the lack of competition law created outrageous wealth for the tycoons. It’s a complex subject but the key point is that in Hong Kong all land is leasehold and ultimately owned by the government, which uses it as a means of raising revenue.

This goes back to the days of empire when British policy required colonies to be self-funding. The system kept taxes down and attracted business – but one side-effect was that it gave the government an interest in rationing land to keep it expensive. That didn’t matter much when the local economy comprised a few traders but, in the modern technological world of 2012, it puts the government at odds with every person and business wanting affordable space.

Indeed, it induces the government to distort and damage the economy, and indeed society. This system paved the way for a handful of Hong Kong families to become unimaginably wealthy by getting their hands on cheap land back in the days before the city started to boom.

Rents and apartment prices in Hong Kong are high. People from the mainland who buy up apartments with probably illegally gained money only increase the scarcity. This is one reason why the Cantonese speaking Hong Kong protesters spray slurs against the Mandarin speaking people from the mainland. The people in Hong Kong also grieve over their declining importance. Hong Kong lost its once important economical position. In 1993 Hong Kong's share of China's GDP was 27%. It is now less than a tenths of that and the city is now more or less irrelevant to mainland China.

-Moon over Alabama

Demonstrations in Honduras. Americans haven't a clue or idea that any of this is going on. They only care what they are told to care about, at that time. Nothing else. — Demonstrations in Honduras. Americans haven’t a clue or idea that any of this is going on. They only care what they are told to care about, at that time. Nothing else.

There is no such favorable media coverage or support from U.S. politicians for demonstrations of desperate workers and peasants in Honduras, Haiti or the Philippines, or for the Yellow Vest movement in France.

There is never an official condemnation when demonstrators are killed in Yemen or Kashmir or in weekly demonstrations in Gaza against Israeli occupation.

Demonstrations in Haiti. Americans haven't a clue or idea that any of this is going on. They only care what they are told to care about, at that time. Nothing else. — Demonstrations in Haiti. Americans haven’t a clue or idea that any of this is going on. They only care what they are told to care about, at that time. Nothing else.

These struggles receive barely a mention, although in every case scores of people have been killed by police, targeted for assassination or simply just disappeared.

Demonstrations in the Philippines. Americans haven't a clue or idea that any of this is going on. They only care what they are told to care about, at that time. Nothing else. — Demonstrations in the Philippines. Americans haven’t a clue or idea that any of this is going on. They only care what they are told to care about, at that time. Nothing else.

Hong Kong has always been part of China. It was seized by the British  in order to facilitate the illegal drug traffic of the East India  Company. The Chinese government, concerned at the social and economic  mayhem caused by imported opium, paid for in silver, banned its import.  The British government, which relied on the revenues it got from  exporting cheap Indian opium, grown on stolen land, insisted that China  allow the trade to continue. And enforced its demands militarily-the  Opium Wars. Within fifty years of these wars and Hong Kong's occupation  by the British on a 99 year lease, a significant proportion, close to  20% of China's men were addicted to opium.

 That is why China wanted to regain sovereignty over Hong Kong. As to  the assertion that the local people don't want Chinese rule but long for  the British-now under US rule- to return, that is simply untrue.

As b has been pointing out the troubles in Hong Kong are almost certainly organised by the US government.  
  
Laguerre suspects that the same is true of the gilets jaunes. Does  anyone else believe that Macron is being attacked by the US government? 
  
-Posted by: bevin | Aug 14 2019 16:18 utc | MoA

Demonstrations in Malawi. Americans haven't a clue or idea that any of this is going on. They only care what they are told to care about, at that time. Nothing else. — Demonstrations in Malawi. Americans haven’t a clue or idea that any of this is going on. They only care what they are told to care about, at that time. Nothing else.

While Hong Kong protests receive widespread attention, there is no similar coverage of or political support for Antifa, Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the U.S. or the masses protesting racist Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and roundups of migrants.

It seems to be a narrow focus on China, and only on China.

U.S. pressure continues

Months of violence and chaos in Hong Kong have US dirty hands all over them.

 Orchestrated by the CIA in cahoots with other anti-democratic US  agencies and anti-government Chinese hooligans, there’s nothing  spontaneous about what’s going on endlessly.

 Days earlier, the Trump regime’s State Department (up to its ears in  what’s happening) expressed phony grave concern about violence and chaos  in the city — ignoring US responsibility for what’s ongoing.

 Pompeo threatened China, saying all options are on the table,  including direct US intervention, if Beijing’s military intervenes to  quell what’s unacceptable and must be stopped.

 Over the weekend, masked hooligans clashed with police at Hong Kong’s Polytechnic University.

 On Sunday, police surrounded the campus, warning elements involved in rioting and vandalism to leave or be dealt with harshly.

 The South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported that a “sedan without  license plates tried to ram a group of police officers,” a live round  and rubber bullet fired at the vehicle.

 “(M)asked radicals” occupying the campus clashed violently with police, dozens arrested, hundreds more involved.

 Highly inflammable “dangerous materials” that can be used for  explosives were seized from elements arrested — “stolen” from the  university’s labs, adding:

 “(R)adicals shot arrows and hurled petrol bombs and  bricks (at police) – sometimes from catapults mounted on the roof of  campus buildings.”
 “Police fired a large quantity of tear gas and deployed two water cannons and armored vehicles.”

 Clashes raged for hours, a police statement saying: “Anyone who  enters or stays on the campus and assists the rioters in any way will  risk committing the offense of ‘taking part in a riot.’ ”

 Hooligans arrested were not university students.Police called them  outsiders. On Monday, classes at all Hong Kong universities were  suspended — a Polytechnic Univ. statement saying in part:

 “All classes have been forced to be suspended and all operations on the campus have been halted,” adding:

 “The University is gravely concerned that the spiraling radical  illicit activities will cause not only a tremendous safety threat on  campus, but also class suspension over an indefinite period of time.”

 “They are concerned about the safety on the campus, and they do not want to see the campus being destroyed further.”

 A commentary published by Beijing’s official People’s Daily  broadsheet on Monday said ending months of violence and chaos in Hong  Kong “is a critical matter,” adding:

 In multiple parts of the city, “rioters have been rampantly  committing acts of vandalism and arson, paralyzing public transport,  trashing rail tracks, hurling petrol bombs at running trains,  indiscriminately causing bodily harm to civilians and even turning  campuses into battlefields.”

 If what’s going on isn’t stopped and the rule of law restored, “there  would be no guarantee for the peaceful life of residents, to say  nothing of Hong Kong’s future development.”

 On Monday, SCMP’s deputy executive editor Zuraidah Ibrahim said the following:

 “Hardcore mobs upped their violent game when they took  over tertiary campuses last week, as bureaucrats came under fire for  doing little and the police warned the city was on the brink of total  breakdown,” adding:
 “In the north, radicals occupying Chinese University took over the  Tolo Highway. At Polytechnic University, they have shut down the  Cross-Harbour Tunnel for five days, the longest forced closure ever.”

 “The mobs broke into the campuses’ chemical laboratories and set up  petrol bomb mills overnight and practiced throwing fire bombs with  catapults and arrows.”

 “Fiery battles between protesters and police spread across several  universities, as mainland and international students evacuated.”

 “The radicals finally withdrew, except at PolyU where a stand-off  continues as I write this. Last week, the People’s Liberation Army  soldiers took to the streets with brooms – not guns – to clean up, as  did volunteers fed-up with the violence and their pockmarked streets. We  still don’t see an end in sight.”

 US dirty hands are all over months of violence, vandalism, chaos in  the city, attacking China’s soft underbelly, trying to destabilize and  weaken the country.

 Beijing knows what it’s up against — US imperial rage challenging China’s sovereign independence. 

- US Dirty Hands Escalate Hong Kong Violence

Despite China’s warnings of possible martial law, strict curfews and military intervention to restore order, protesters have shown no signs of retreat.

The U.S. and Britain are determined to propel forward those hostile political forces they have cultivated over the past two decades.

This is really, really dangerous.

What a fucking mess the Empire has made over the last century. 
 
Trying to reconcile my belief in democracy with non-intervention  makes this one tricky. I have no desire to support the fascist United  States in attempting to subvert another country's government. 

The  cultural gap (and therefore lack of knowledge and understanding) between  the west and China is so vast it makes attempting to separate genuine  journalism from McCarthy-ist era style propaganda about the country very  difficult, thus making a merits based comparison between the 2 spheres  of power almost impossible. 

Most of the stories I hear about Chinese  repression are obvious pro-western propaganda, which makes it tempting  to dismiss other pieces of information out of hand. 
 
I can only wish the best for the people of Hong Kong and China, whatever they decide that may be. 

Laguerre hints at an interesting point I'd not considered with  regards to the yellow vests in France - are they US aided? I'm still  inclined to lean towards it being a more genuine grass roots movement  from the limited bits I've seen, though I'd be intrigued to see what  connections could be verified there. US state department attempting to  push Frexit would certainly be a new angle to think about for a lot of  us. 

-Posted by: Northern | Aug 14 2019 16:22 utc | MoA

Methodology

The escalating demonstrations are linked to [1] the U.S. trade war, [2] tariffs and [3] military encirclement of China.

Four hundred—half—of the 800 U.S. overseas military bases surround China. Aircraft carriers, destroyers, nuclear submarines, jet aircraft, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile batteries, and satellite surveillance infrastructures are positioned in the South China Sea, close to Hong Kong.

Media demonization is needed to justify and intensify this military presence. And it is ongoing and ruthless.

John Reed at Foreign Policy describes “how the U.S. is encircling China with military bases.”

The U.S. military is encircling China with a chain of air bases and military ports. The latest link: a small airstrip on the tiny Pacific island of Saipan. The U.S. Air Force is planning to lease 33 acres of land on the island for the next 50 years to build a “divert airfield” on an old World War II airbase there. But the residents don’t want it. And the Chinese are in no mood to be surrounded by Americans.

…In addition to the site on Saipan, the Air Force plans to send aircraft on regular deployments to bases ranging from Australia to India as part of its bulked up force in the Pacific. These plans include regular deployments to Royal Australian Air Force bases at Darwin and Tindal, Changi East air base in Singapore, Korat air base in Thailand, Trivandrum in India, and possibly bases at Cubi Point and Puerto Princesa in the Philippines and airfields in Indonesia and Malaysia, a top U.S. Air Force general revealed last month.

As I’ve written in the past, these Pentagon plans are part of the Air-Sea Battle strategy. The idea is to have enough US bases and Air Force capabilities peppered throughout the region so that China would be too surrounded to safely attack in the event of a conflict.

“Stealthy American bombers and submarines would knock out China’s long-range surveillance radar and precision missile systems located deep inside the country,” reports the Washington Post. ”The initial ‘blinding campaign’ would be followed by a larger air and naval assault.”

Not surprisingly, Beijing is none-too-pleased with the fact that Washington is planning contingencies to “battle” China, and militarily encircling China in the Pacific. Imagine the calls for war in Washington if China was backing various Latin American countries with money and weapons and building air and naval bases in the Caribbean with the explicit aim of bombing United States to smithereens.

I haven’t seen such demonization since World War II against the Nazi Germans.

Encouraging the demonstrations goes hand-in-hand with international efforts to bar Huawei 5G technology, the cancellation of a joint study of cancer and the arrest of Chinese corporate officers.

All these belligerent acts are designed to exert maximum pressure on China, divide the leadership, destabilize economic development and weaken China’s resolve to maintain any socialist planning.

The Trump Admin has come out with all guns blazing against Huawei,  China’s telecommunications giant, which is now the 2nd biggest  smartphone producer in the world, second only to Apple and within  striking distance of them.  

The USG has accused Huawei of assisting  Chinese Intelligence by placing backdoors in its software and hardware  that allow surveillance by Chinese authorities (but not the NSA). 

Trump has even pressured  allies like the UK to stop using Huawei altogether, despite the fact  that Britain relies heavily of Huawei for its infrastructure. 

The  attacks against Huawei escalated on December 1st 2018, when the US  orchestrated a totally illegal kidnapping and illegal detention of Meng  Wanzhou, Huawei’s CFO (Chief Financial Officer). Wanzhou is still being  held against her will in Canada on US orders. 

-The Freedom Articles

Martial law in Hong Kong, a major financial center, especially for international investment funds coming into China, would impact China’s development.

And that, my friends, is the objective.

Capitalist economic “freedom”

British imperialism, in the 155 years it ruled Hong Kong, denied rights to millions of workers. There was no elected government, no right to a minimum wage, unions, decent housing or health care, and certainly no freedom of the press or freedom of speech. These basic democratic rights were not even on the books in colonial Hong Kong.

The British were ruthless when they owned Hong Kong, and treated the native Chinese there with scorn and dismay.

For the past 25 years, including this year, Hong Kong has been ranked No. 1 in the right-wing Heritage Foundation’s list of countries with the “greatest economic freedom”—meaning the least restraints on capitalist profit taking. Hong Kong’s ranking is based on low taxes and light regulations, the strongest property rights and business freedom, and “openness to global commerce and vibrant entrepreneurial climate … no restrictions on foreign banks.”

For this Hong Kong is well considered the “freest society in the world.”

This “freedom” means the world’s highest rents and the greatest gap between the super-rich and the desperately poor and homeless. This is what Hong Kong youth face today. But the youth are consciously being misdirected to blame the city administration for the conditions Hong Kong is locked into under the “One Country, Two Systems agreement.”

Ah, if only HK was independent, free of China, would everything become equal, fair and just. Only if...

An unequal colonial treaty

Hong Kong is stolen land.

This spectacular deep water port in the South China Sea at the mouth of the Pearl River, a major waterway in south China, was seized by Britain in the 1842 Opium Wars.

Hong Kong was seized by Britain, and used as a staging platform to get the Chinese addicted to Opium so that the wealthy in Britain could profit.

After negotiations with Britain had dragged on through the 1980s, the British imposed another unequal treaty on the People’s Republic of China.

Hong Kong under British rule in the 1970's. — Hong Kong under British rule in the 1970’s.

Under the 1997 “One Country, Two Systems” agreement that officially returned Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories to the PRC, Britain and China agreed to leave “the previous capitalist system” in place for 50 years.

China, determined to reassert its sovereignty over land stolen by the British, also needed funds for development.

Most money in Asia moved through the Hong Kong banking system. So in 1997 China was anxious to reach a smooth transition that would not destabilize the transfer of investment funds into the 99.5 percent of China that had previously been denied development funds.

To understand this situation, you must realize that ever since the Chinese Revolution in 1949, China had been sanctioned and blockaded from accessing Western investment and technology.

China had been denied development funds for many years. The plan was to keep them backwards and primitive. So that they could continue to be a low-cost resource for the Western nations.

U.S. and British imperialism took full advantage of the 1997 concession that maintained their economic control of the former colony. Their hope was that Hong Kong could serve, as it had in the past, as an economic battering ram into China.

Their hopes were not realized.

In 1997 Hong Kong’s gross domestic product was 27 percent of China’s gross domestic product. Today it’s a mere 3 percent and falling. Much to U.S. and British frustration, the world’s largest banks are now in China and they are state-owned banks.

What confounds the capitalist class, far more than China’s incredible growth, is that the top 12 Chinese companies on U.S. Fortune 500 list are all state-owned and state-subsidized. They include massive oil, solar energy, telecommunications, engineering and construction companies, banks and the auto industry.
 
-Fortune.com, July 22, 2015

U.S. corporate power is deeply threatened by China’s level of development through the Belt and Road Initiative and its growing position in international trade and investment.

U.S., Britain built a network of collaborators

When Britain and China signed the One Country, Two Systems agreement, all foreign intervention and colonial claims on Hong Kong were supposed to end. Full sovereignty was to return to China.

However, U.S. and British efforts to undercut Hong Kong’s return began in advance of the signing.

Just before the transfer of sovereignty, Britain hastily set up, after 150 years of appointed officials, a partially elected, although still mainly appointed, government. They quickly established and funded political parties, composed of their loyal collaborators.

Millions of dollars were openly and secretly funneled into a whole network of protected social service organizations, political parties, media and social media, student and youth organizations, and labor unions established to undercut support for China and the Communist Party of China.

Think about it. Of course this would happen. Neither the USA nor the UK were stupid.

The Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (HKFTU) receives U.S. National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funding, along with British support. It promotes “pro-democracy, independent unions” throughout China. The HKCTU was established in 1990 to counter and undercut the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions founded in 1948, which is still the largest union organization with 410,000 members.

The HKFTU suffered years of brutal repression under British colonial rule as it fought for basic protection of workers’ rights. A strike organized by the HKFTU shook British colonial rule in 1967. The strike became a citywide rebellion sparked by mass layoffs of workers from the plastic flower factory.

 "They seem to want a Tiananmen Square outcome as success." 
 
The Tiananmen Square outcome was–media accounts to the contrary–that  the kids all left the square safely by 7:20 am, just as all the HK  demonstrators are unharmed. 

 There was a riot led by professional thugs elsewhere in  Beijing, in Chang'An Avenue, but that was a different matter entirely  and one with an interesting sequel. The leader of that riot was  exfiltrated to the UK by MI6 and subsequently convicted of robbing and  murdering an elderly Londoner. Sweet.

- Posted by: Godfree Roberts | Nov 22 2019 23:23 utc | 34

British colonial authorities harshly suppressed the uprising, resulting in 51 deaths and hundreds injured and disappeared. The HKFTU supports China and opposes the reactionary demonstrations.

NED funding = CIA support

Allen Weinstein, a founder of the NED, told the Washington Post in 1991;

“A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the  CIA.” (Sept. 21, 1991)

The NED funds, coordinates and weaponizes nongovernmental organizations and social organizations with the capacity to put tens of thousands of misdirected, idealistic and alienated youth on the streets.

Why neocons are so adamant on maintaining proxy wars all over the globe. This article connects hawkish neocons with outrageous theft of enormous amounts of money. They sponsor a war, people die, and they cart away pallet loads of money. This has happened time and time again, but few talk about it. But it's a real thing, and it's a real problem. Here we talk about it.

Funding from the NED, the Ford, Rockefeller, Soros and numerous other corporate foundations, Christian churches of every denomination, and generous British funding, is behind this hostile, subversive network orchestrating the Hong Kong protests today.

While you would NEVER hear about this in the mainstream American media, it of course makes sense. All you need to do is follow the money trail. 

In HK, for instance, when the protestors receive payments through the NED, or NID, they get a tattoo on their arm (to prevent multiple payouts),a nd you can see this clearly on the exposed skin of rioters.

The NED bankrolls the Hong Kong Human Rights Movement, the Hong Kong Journalists Association, the Civic Party, Labor Party and Democratic Party. They are members of the Civil Human Rights Front that coordinates the demonstrations.

This role of the NED in China is increasingly harder to obscure.

Alexander Rubinstein reported in “American Gov’t, NGOs Fuel and Fund Hong Kong Anti-Extradition Protests” (mintpressnews.com, June 13):

“It  is inconceivable that the organizers of the protests are unaware of the  NED ties to some of its members.” (tinyurl.com/y6nhmapz)

The goal is to promote a hostile and suspicious attitude toward China and toward communism and to foster the false concept of a past democratic Hong Kong with a distinct identity.

China Daily warns:

“In  recent years, there have been warnings that color revolutions are  emerging as a new form of warfare employed by the West to destabilize  certain countries.” (Aug. 12)

Which system works better?

The Aug. 13 New York Times refers to Hong Kong as a “bastion of civil liberties” to counter “Beijing’s brand of authoritarianism.”

British colonial past is deeply mythologized. Twenty-two years of constant nostalgia for this past, supposedly glorious time has influenced increasingly impoverished youth.

The most violent rioters, amongst them those who hold the US flag, have obviously the order or to kill somebody, better a policeman ( as the clear intend on the GT journalist shows... ) or to provoke some killing of a protester, or by accident of a journalist ( who, btw, astonishingly, remain in the middle of the melee always...

I find this very suspicious, which is their insurance company? I want it for my travels...Most probably not journalists themselves but rioters in disguise ), as these intends of assassination happened very timely, almost simultaneously with or consecutive to Trump´s Twitter on that he expected nobody will result with any harm.... obviously from his terrorists side...

BTW, this behavior have time ago passed from ghastly to straight criminal, under any country´s law.

In the US, none of these terrorists would still remain alive, they would never had been able to get so close to any policeman so as to grab his batton leaving him unarmed. They would had been shot in place, the whole bunch of them...as we so usually watch happens with black people there....

Why The Donald ( and Bannon, the Pepe Frog exposes him all the way, they already do not even try to conceal anymore...) thinks any country in the world would have to allow this?

I posted some of these videos yesterday in the week review thread ( and I am glad "b" gave them some greater visibility..) and to my view, some of these rioters, especially those who talk with the travelers seem to be on drugs....

It´s an appreciation on how their tongue slide so much plus the slowness with which they talk, in such stressant situation, very contrasting with, for example, the elder summoning the rioter in the subway. See the very thin guy talking with the Australian businessman in the video i posted in the week and review thread....

I wonder whether these could be people taken from jail or correstionals, as they were part of the ISIS recruits who flew to Turkey to be tarinned and then to Syria, their behavior is clearly antisocial, no wonder any real complaint they could have ...

In the video on "strangers" supplying the rioters, there are two totally masked and covered women ( all the way the ISIS handlers style...) who, by their physical complexion and hair, seem to not be Chinese women at all, but Westerners...at 2:21 footage....Most probably NED/CIA operatives...

-Posted by: Sasha | Aug 14 2019 16:06 utc | MoA

Listen up. Much of what you read is a myth.

Despite decades of multimillion-dollar Western funding, Hong Kong has a poverty rate of 20 percent (23.1 percent for children) compared to less than 1 percent in mainland China. In the past 20 years, mainland China has lifted countless millions of people out of poverty.

Poverty rate in HK = 20%
Poverty rate in mainland China <1%

Just across the river from Hong Kong sits the city of Shenzhen.

It is one of the Special Economic Zones established to lure Western technology. These zones, originally with thousands of labor-intensive factories and millions of workers earning low wages, were centers of capitalist exploitation and enormous profits for U.S. and other global capitalists.

Shenzhen grew from a city of 30,000 in 1979 to a megacity of 20 million, with the largest migrant population in China.

Shenzhen had a population three times the size of Hong Kong. With investments via Hong Kong, this new city became a massive polluted factory town with sweatshops spewing out clouds of dark toxic smoke.

In the past five years, through city and national urban planning, Shenzhen is today one of the most livable cities in China, with extensive parks, tree-lined streets and the largest fleet of electric buses in the world (16,000), along with all-electric cabs.

Shenzhen aims to have 80 percent of its new buildings green-certified by 2020. It is full of apartment blocks, office towers and modern factories with advanced equipment manufacturing, robotics, automation and giant tech startups.

For the last 10 years wages have been stagnant in Hong Kong while rents have increased 300 percent; it is the most expensive city in the world. In Shenzhen, wages have increased 8 percent every year, and more than 1 million new, public, green housing units at low rates are nearing completion.

United States Demands

The U.S. is demanding that China abandon state support of its industries, the ownership of its banks and national planning. But contrasting the decay, growing poverty and intense alienation in Hong Kong with the green vibrant city of Shenzhen across the river shows that there are two choices for China today, including the angry forces mobilized in Hong Kong: modern socialist planning or a return to the super-exploitation and imperialist domination of the colonial past.

For decades Britain and the U.S. used the people of Hong Kong for cheap labor. Now they are using the same population for cheap political propaganda. This cynical maneuver is just one more weapon in a desperate effort to disrupt China’s further development.

U.S. corporate power is incapable of meeting any of the desperate needs for housing, health care, education and a healthy environment for people here. Instead, in a relentless drive for profits, enormous resources are squandered on militarism to threaten countries around the world.

Today…

The Hong Kong protests are escalating, just as the US-China trade war is also escalating. None of this is out of the blue.

For quite some time now, the US has been shifting the focus of its hegemonic and imperial ambitions towards China, recognizing it – even more than Russia – as its main rival superpower.

Author Graham Allen published his 2017 book entitled Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? addressing growing US-China tension and the potential for a future US-China war.

James Corbett also offered his analysis.

The term Thucydides trap is derived from ancient  Greece to describe a situation when a rising power gains enough  strength to challenge and disturb the existing ruling power. With this  phenomenon in mind, let’s take a look at the background to the current US-China trade war (which is becoming more bitter and intense by the week) and the Hong Kong Protests.

Identifying the Enemy

Quotes from top US officials, military and non-military alike, show that China has gradually been replacing Russia as the #1 enemy, although this is not clear cut; there is still a lot of hatred towards and fear of Russia.

In 2018, the USA changed its official defense strategy.

Terrorism was no longer the #1 threat and was replaced by Russia and China.

The DoD report accused China of wielding predatory economics and building fake islands in the South China Sea to intimidate nearby countries.

“China remains our biggest long-term challenge.  Without focused involvement and engagement by the United States, and our  allies and partners, China will realize its dream of hegemony in Asia.”

- Admiral Harry Harris, former commander of the US Pacific Command, said this about China in 2018.

He also said this:

“China’s intent is crystal clear. We ignore it at our  peril. I’m concerned China will now work to undermine the international  rules-based order … China’s impressive military build-up could soon  challenge the United States across almost every domain.”

Earlier this year, DNI (Director of National Intelligence) Dan Coats said:

“[The] rule of law, international norms, and fairness  in trade and international engagements is not the Chinese model …  Chinese leaders will increasingly seek to assert China’s model of  authoritarian capitalism as an alternative—and implicitly  superior—development path abroad, exacerbating great-power competition  that could threaten international support for democracy, human rights,  and the rule of law.”

- DNI (Director of National Intelligence) Dan Coats said:

Previously in 2018 Coats had followed Trump’s lead by blaming China for interfering in US elections (where have I heard that one before?). He stated:

“[China is targeting] state and local governments and officials … It  is trying to exploit any divisions between federal and local levels on  policy, and uses investments and other incentives to expand its  influence.”

- DNI (Director of National Intelligence) Dan Coats said:

All this rhetoric comes against a backdrop of intertwined economies, where many US companies have outsourced and offshored their labor to China.

Targeting Chinese Institutions, Initiatives and Projects

The US has taken a dim view of practically every Chinese effort to develop itself in the last decade.

The US has opposed China’s gigantic OBR (One Belt, One Road) Initiative which has been dubbed the New Silk Road.
The US has directed propaganda against BRICS, China’s SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization), its development bank and many other trade initiatives.

The US accuses China of trying to control the world, yet such accusations must be difficult to receive with a straight face given that the US routinely threatens both its allies and enemies with economic warfare, sanctions, trade wars, governmental overthrow, invasion or even nuclear annihilation if they don’t toe the American line.

Funding and Training Muslim Uyghurs – Sometimes as Part of ISIS

You may not have heard of them, but there is a Chinese minority group known as the Uyghurs or Uighurs. Many are Muslim and of Turkic ethnicity. They live in the semi-autonomous region of north-west China in a province called Xinjiang.

Well, guess what?

The United States government has been funding them to aggressively fight against the Chinese government.

The funny thing is that a little bit of effort and the whole thing becomes apparent even through the traditional media reports. Recall that early media reports said there were 1.7 million protesters "according to the organiser's estimates". Once you remember that, then every time you hear millions is a hint to look up the Police estimate (150k) and estimates of maximum numbers in space available - also 150k or thereabouts.

More stories hint of high protester numbers but don't mention numbers -so check the accompanying pictures and videos - we a few thousand (ie well down on ever factual early numbers) and more recently just a few hundred. Police violence - yet every picture or video show large numbers of police acting very very peaceably (compare Paris). HK democracy - yet all the pictures recently have been exclusively of masked blackshirts and if you dig deep most of the violence has been blackshirt on passers by.

There must be picture editors who are stunned by the reports they run.

And obviously the story they are all looking for is the China overreaction that was never going to happen.

The whole thing runs in parallel with the obvious Ujghur 1 million in prison lie (it would be equivalent to every male aged 16-29) where the only witnesses to speak to western journalists have been fed to the press in Istanbul. We all know that Chinese muslims in Istanbul are going to or already in ISIS. James Le Mesurier doing a little extra press feeding in his spare time.

- Posted by: Michael Droy | Nov 22 2019 22:17 utc | 29

So when ever you hear, or read about the Chinese concentration camps and the imprisonment of those “poor” Uyghur Muslims, keep in mind that it is the Untied States that has the largest prison population in the world. China doesn’t even come close.

The United States is THE prison nation, and locks up more citizens than any other nation on the surface of the earth, and has put more people in prison behind bars than Hitler did in Nazi Germany, Stalin did in the Soviet Union, and Pol Pot did in Cambodia. Compared to China, it's not even on the "radar screen". — The United States is THE prison nation, and locks up more citizens than any other nation on the surface of the earth, and has put more people in prison behind bars than Hitler did in Nazi Germany, Stalin did in the Soviet Union, and Pol Pot did in Cambodia. Compared to China, it’s not even on the “radar screen”.

So America is great because of “freedom” and “liberty” and protections afforded by the “Bill of Rights”, Eh?

The White House has asked the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals to  place an emergency stay on a ruling made last week by a federal judge so  that the president’s power to indefinitely detain Americans without  charge is reaffirmed immediately.

On Wednesday, September 12, US District Court Judge Katherine Forrest  made permanent a temporary injunction she issued in May that bars the  federal government from abiding by the indefinite detention provision in  the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, or NDAA.  

Judge Forrest ruled that  a clause that gives the government the power to arrest US citizens  suspected of maintaining alliances with terrorists and hold them without  due process violated the Constitution and that the White House would be  stripped of that ability immediately. 

- White House demands military prisons for Americans under NDAA

The bullshit is amazing to me!

In America, you can get incarcerated for the tiniest of reasons, or commit enormous crimes and be totally immune from prosecution.

We all need to look at things objectively and at the “big picture”. Just why is the United States government pushing the anti-China narrative? Why are they making a big deal of “concentration camps for Muslim terrorists” when the largest number of inmates are in the USA itself? What is going on?

Follow the money trail…

Neocon Marco Rubio, and warhawk, sponsored this 2018 bill pushing the US to get involved.

Rubio, for those who don’t recall, was the very same guy itching for war with Venezuela earlier this year in 2019. War is so great with these people. They think that America will forever be isolated and protected and war can never come to roost inside the United States.

"I think China needs to stop interfering in the internal affairs of  the United States because our treatment of Hong Kong is an internal  matter," says @MarcoRubio.

 https://twitter.com/SquawkCNBC/status/1197511188092985345

He was also the one who mysteriously happened to find out before almost anyone else that Venezuelans’ power grid has been taken down.

Hmmm.

Hong Kong’s opposition unites with Washington hardliners to ‘preserve the US’s own political and economic interests’

While claiming to fight for “self-determination,” Hong Kong opposition leaders are collaborating with regime-change neoconservatives in Washington to “preserve the US’s own political and economic interests.” A new DC lobbying front has become their base of operations.

The Grayzone piece linked above misses the real man behind the lobbying. Andrew Duncan who is a main sponsor of Senator Marco Rubio who is the main promoter on the hill for "activist" and U.S. darling Joshua Wong. Duncan is also one of the producers (financiers) of a film about Wong.

Watchdog group files complaint in shadowy gift to super PAC aiding Marco Rubio

An election watchdog organization filed a complaint Friday with the Federal Election Commission over a $500,000 donation to a super political action committee aiding Marco Rubio from a mystery firm headed by a New York investor.

...

The complaint from the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, seeks an investigation into IGX LLC for masking the donation and to determine whether the Conservative Solutions PAC was aware of the origins of the contribution. The actual donor, Andrew Duncan, of Brooklyn, New York, acknowledged to the Associated Press earlier this month that he had routed his contribution through IGX, a business entity registered last year in Delaware.

- Posted by: b | Nov 22 2019 20:17 utc | 12

However, much of the funding is done under-the-table by the soft power network of NGOs, illustrious among them the National Endowment for Democracy of NWO (New World Order) insider George Soros.

The UHRP (Uyghur Human Rights Project) admits on its website that it was “founded by the Uyghur American Association (UAA) in 2004 with a supporting grant from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).”

 Got the following email today from my "representative" U.S. Senator  Jeff Merkley (for whom I have never voted) on the reason for his vote:  "The world is watching, and we must step up to hold the Chinese  government accountable. Please know that I will continue to fight for an  America that brings moral leadership to the international stage."

 Merkley remains the darling of self-styled Oregon "progressives", who  have no clue about the real meaning of moral leadership.  He pulled a  stunt a year ago trying to get into an immigration gulag and was refused  entry.  He conveniently forgot to mention that privatized corporate  immigration gulags were established by Democrats under President Obama. 

 I used to call his office to express my opinion, but no longer bother, he's just another war party flack.

- Posted by: Trisha | Nov 22 2019 22:22 utc | 31

Since when does the USG deeply care about oppressed minorities in other nations? It’s a rhetorical question, but I’ll answer it this time: if – and only if – US interests are aligned with that minority, and for the (usually short) time period the interests are aligned.

In his article Turkish-Uyghur Terror Inc. – America’s Other Al Qaeda, geopolitical author Tony Cartalucci writes:

“The alleged “struggle” by the Uyghur people in  Xinjiang, referred to by the terrorists and their foreign sponsors as  “East Turkistan,” consists of two essential components – a foreign  harbored political front including the Washington D.C. and Munich-based  World Uyghur Congress (WUC) and a militant front clearly backed by the  US and NATO through intermediary groups like Turkey’s Grey Wolves …  Encouraging separatism in China’s western Xinjiang region, if  successful, would carve off a substantial amount of territory. In  conjunction with US-backed separatism in China’s Tibet region, an  immense buffer region stands to be created that would virtually isolate  China from Central Asia.”

So, just as the US funded and trained Operation Gladio warriors to fight communism in Europe, Mujahideen fighters to battle the USSR, ISIS to battle Syria, it is also preparing for war with China by funding and training the ‘separatists’, whoever they may be, in this case the Uyghurs.

In another article, all the way back in 2014, Cartalucci quoted a Reuters article that admitted that ISIS was training the Uyghurs:

“Chinese militants from the  western region of Xinjiang have fled from the country to get “terrorist  training” from Islamic State group fighters for attacks at home, state  media reported on Monday.”

Initiating a Trade War

There is no doubt that it was the US under Trump who initiated the US-China trade war. As such, these series of HK protests are part of the negotiating strategy.

The U.S. does not understand China.  In addition to little Marco's bill We support HK rioters there is shoot them in the foot conflict on policy.

Over the last 4 days

Ban Huawei. 
No, we won't. 
Yes, we will.
No. License Granted to Microsoft to Export 'Mass-Market Software' to Huawei
Yes, Ban Huawei: FCC Votes 5-0 To Ban China's Huawei, ZTE From Gov't Subsidy Program

- Posted by: Likklemore | Nov 22 2019 22:32 utc | 32

Even before he took office, Trump took to twitter bashing China for its supposed economic exploitation of the US. Trump says the objective is a better trade deal with China to benefit all Americans, but this trade war is producing a massive fallout and host of negative effects for American consumers, farmers and manufacturers.

Chris Kanthan writes:

“How about China’s economy? Are Trump’s tariffs  crushing the Chinese economy? Not really. During Jan-May 2019, China’s  exports to the US fell about 5%, but China’s exports to the EU rose more  than 14%. And, guess what, EU is China’s #1 trading partner (and ASEAN  is the #2 trade partner), while the US is #3. So, China keeps growing at  a healthy pace — even the IMF predicts a healthy 6.2% real GDP growth  for China this year!

But here’s the kicker. While China’s exports to the US fell 4.8%,  the reverse — US exports to China — fell by a whopping 24% (for the  first five months of 2019). So, US exporters and farmers are hurting  real bad. And Trump cannot win re-election without the support of those  “great soybean/corn/pork farmers.””

Instigating a Color Revolution by way of the Hong Kong Protests

One of the most significant examples of US aggression against China is the instigation of a color protest or color revolution in Hong Kong. The aim is to provoke China into reacting harshly and violently, which would reinforce the Western perception that China is heavy-handed, tyrannical and totalitarian.

China has already moved troops to its southern mainland border, just across the water from Hong Kong. It is possible that another US objective is to push the protestors into declaring Hong Kong independent of China. But, you know what, they are going to hold back. They will not give the USA what it so obviously wants.

The idea behind the protests and the rioters In Hong Kong was all along to provoke another Tian An Men incident. This was quite obvious since the start of the protest. It now gets publicly acknowledged:

 BBC Newsnight @BBCNewsnight - 11:00 UTC · Nov 19, 2019 “Some of the protesters seem to have an objective to provoke a  military confrontation with China. They seem to want a Tiananmen Square  outcome as success.”

 Fmr Foreign Sec @Jeremy_Hunt says he is “concerned with the tactics” with some of #HongKong’s protesters.
 
 Had China moved troops to Hong Kong, or allowed more force to be used  against the protesters, the U.S. would have used that to press its  allies to put strong sanctions on China. The protesters' violence was  designed to achieve that outcome. The plan was part of the larger U.S.  strategy of decoupling from China.

 The plan failed because China was too smart to give the U.S. what it  wanted. Now it is Trump who is under pressure. He needs the trade deal  with China because the current trade war is doing harm to the U.S.  economy and endangers his reelection.

 Which is probably the real reason why the protests have died down.

- Posted by b on November 22, 2019 at 19:02 UTC | Permalink

There are some who say the Hong Kong protests are a grassroots affair. There is usually a grassroots element to many of these protests, but almost always the bigger factor in the shadows is US interference (or US-UK, or US-UK-Israeli, interference).

Here is a very telling comment about the Hong Kong protests found under the article Violent Protests In Hong Kong Reach Their Last Stage on the MoonOfAlabama.org website:

“The Extradition Law revision that started this was  only a convenient proxy for those wanting chaos in HK to create chaos.  The instigators behind the initial protest march are the same ones who  started Occupy Central five years ago. They are the ones who huddle with  operatives from US/UK Consulates, who travelled to the  Washington/London/Brussel/Taipei, etc. to see politicians and plot  strategies, to arrange for funding, and to recruit dare devils for the  carnage. Lucky for them that HK was ripe for such shenanigans because  HKers in general are sullen over their loss of superiority complex  against mainland Chinese, brainwashed subconsciously through schools and  churches about CCP wickedness, and desperately stressed under HK’s  economic realities. Most of the protesters don’t even know what the  Extradition Law is all about …”

“The instigators, however, are well versed in all the  intricacies. They know who they can easily recruit and order to do  violence … they know the fifth column within the government and business  … If large casualties result what do they care? … [T]hey know their  foreign backers are only too glad to see Chinese killing Chinese …”

“By the way, the US Consulate in HK has over 1,000 on payroll (an  estimated 200 CIA agents), UK’s is over 500 (among them MI6 agents).  That size of consulate in a city of less than 400 sq. miles of land  (over half of which mountainous) is a laughable anomaly, wouldn’t you  think? What are they all there for?”

And yes, there is proof. The senior US consulate member Julie Eadeh was photographed secretly meeting with the top 2 leaders of the Hong Kong protests, Joshua Wong and Nathan Law.

The senior US consulate member Julie Eadeh was photographed secretly meeting with the top 2 leaders of the Hong Kong protests, Joshua Wong and Nathan Law.

Remember – the NED now does overtly what the CIA did covertly decades ago. Allen Weinstein, one of the founders of NED, confessed that “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”

Update

Update 28JUN20. Donald Trump decided to stop funding the protests in Hong Kong.

Conclusion

NED has been equipping the HK protestors out of CIA enclaves inside of Hong Kong.

To an American, I sound like some kind of Chinese lover / Communist sympathizer. But the difference between myself and Joe and Suzy average is that I LIVE HERE. I see the changes and the differences FIRST HAND.

I can compare things directly, and I don’t need to be told what to believe by an actor playing a newscaster on television.

I'm a Hongkonger, so allow me to inject some perspectives here as a very concerned onlooker to what is happening. I'd admit my views are in the slim minority among fellow Hongkongers, and likely be laughed off as a conspiracy-theory monger or a Commie groupie.

The Extradition Law revision that started this was only a convenient proxy for those wanting chaos in HK to create chaos. The instigators behind the initial protest march are the same ones who started Occupy Central five years ago. They are the ones who huddle with operatives from US/UK Consulates, who travelled to the Washington/London/Brussel/Taipei, etc. to see politicians and plot strategies, to arrange for funding, and to recruit dare devils for the carnage. Lucky for them that HK was ripe for such shenanigans because HKers in general are sullen over their loss of superiority complex against mainland Chinese, brainwashed subconsciously through schools and churches about CCP wickedness, and desperately stressed under HK's economic realities. Most of the protesters don't even know what the Extradition Law is all about, but what the heck, it seemed like a good party to participate in, no?

The instigators, however, are well versed in all the intricacies. They know who they can easily recruit and order to do violence; they know the Basic Law and its fuzzy edges; they know the influences of clergy/university,high-school teachers; they know the fifth column within the government and business; they know HKers' irrational sensitivity towards so-called world opinions; they know that the foreign judges (which consist of 95% of the court) and foreign press are solidly behind them. Thus, they wanted to sock it to China; the more direly the better. If large casualties result what do they care? None of their own children were among the crowd and casualties would surely enlarge that blackeye they were to deliver. And they know their foreign backers are only too glad to see Chinese killing Chinese.

Like someone said in posts before mine, this incident is more similar to Maidan than any other color revolution prior. US/UK/Taiwan/Oz/Japan are enjoying their 5-minutes of glory and celebration at this point. The blowback, however, will come years and decades later.

By the way, the US Consulate in HK has over 1,000 on payroll (an estimated 200 CIA agents), UK's is over 500 (among them MI6 agents). That size of consulate in a city of less than 400 sq. miles of land (over half of which mountainous) is a laughable anormaly, wouldn't you think? What are they all there for?

-Posted by: Oriental Voice | Aug 14 2019 19:22 utc | MoA

The USA is collapsing, and like a snarling, rabid dog is snapping and thrashing about as it plummets further and further into the black, black abyss. The idea that somehow, the USA can wrestle back some of it’s old “greatness” by stalling the rise of China is a chimera.

America the ntation that was founded as a republic no longer exists. — America the nation that was founded as a republic no longer exists. it has been replaced with something different. First a “democracy”. Then after untold number of amendments, “mob rule”. Then with the consolidation of the mainstream press, an oligarchy.

It’s just an illusion. It’s not going to happen.

Evil Outlaw US Empire planners in their hubristic zeal to decouple  from China's economy erred massively in thinking China would be the one  harmed and come begging for a trade deal. Instead, China's geoeconomic  strategy is clearly working and is more potent than what the Empire can  bring to the table--Oops! China can now play Trump. 
  
- Posted by: karlof1 | Nov 22 2019 21:16 utc | 20

But in the meantime, these are dangerous times we live in, and Nuclear warfare is nothing to trifle with.

A reassessment of American republican democracy.

What the American media is showing are distortions and lies. They are dangerous.

To understand what is going on you need to see the FULL picture. Not only what the “deep state” wants you to see to the exclusion of all else.

Links about China

Here are some links about my observations on China. I think that you, the reader, might find them to be of interest. Please kindly enjoy.

The US involvement in the HK "Democracy Now" movement.

Chinese reaction to the Trump Tariff Wars.

When foreign interventionism goes terribly wrong; how the CIA botched up the integration of China into the USA sphere of influence.
Here we discuss the plan that the American empire had to ensnare the globe under the yoke of "democracy" which was really just serfdom under global oligarchy. We look at what went wrong and steps being taken to take control of the situation.

The logistics of relocating a facotry from China back to the USA.

When the SJW movement took control of China

How to get work in China if you have HIV.

China and America Comparisons

As an American, I cannot help but compare what my life was in the United States with what it is like living in China. Here we discuss that.

The Chinese Business KTV Experience

This is the real deal. Forget about all that nonsense that you find in the British tabloids and an occasional write up in the American liberal press. This is the reality. Read or not.

Learning About China

Who doesn’t like to look at pretty girls? Ugly girls? Here we discuss what China is like by looking at videos of pretty girls doing things in China.

Contemporaneous Chinese Music

This is a series of posts that discuss contemporaneous popular music in China. It is a wide ranging and broad spectrum of travel, and at that, all that I am able to provide is the flimsiest of overviews. However, this series of posts should serve as a great starting place for investigation and enjoyment.

Part 3 - The contemporaneous music of China.

part 3B - The contemporaneous music of China.

Part 4 - The contemporaneous popular music of China.

Part 5 - The contemporaneous music of China.

Part 5C - The music of contemporary China.

Part 5F - The contemporaneous music of China.

Post 6 - The contemporaneous music of China.

Post 7 - The contemporaneous music of China.

Post 8 - The contemporaneous music of China.

Part 9 - The contemporaneous music of China.

Post 11 - The contemporaneous music of China.

Parks in China

The parks in China are very unique. They are enormous and tend to be very mountainous. Here we take a look at this most interesting of subjects.

Really Strange China

Here are some posts that discuss a number of things about China that might seem odd, or strange to Westerners. Some of the things are everyday events, while others are just representative of the differences in culture.

What is China like?

The purpose of this post is to illustrate that the rest of the world, outside of America, has moved on with their lives. That while they might not be as great as America is, they are doing just fine thank you.

And while America has been squandering it’s money, decimating it’s resources, and just being cavalier with it’s military, the rest of the world has done the opposite. They have husbanded their day to day fortunes, and you can see this in their day-to-day lives.

Summer in Asia

Let’s take a moment to explore Asia. That includes China, but also includes such places as Vietnam, Thailand, Japan and others…

Some Fun Videos

Here’s a collection of some fun videos taken all over Asia. While there are many videos taken in China, we also have some taken in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea and Japan as well. It’s all in fun.

Articles & Links

You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.

You can start reading the articles sequentially by going HERE.
You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
You can find out more about the author HERE.
If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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