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posted by martyb on Wednesday August 14 2019, @01:20PM   Printer-friendly
from the gunboats,-always-associated-with-diplomacy dept.

Hong Kong Airport Paralysed for a Second Day by Protesters:

The US is claiming its naval ships have been denied entry to Hong Kong, as Donald Trump suggests troops are “moving towards the border”.

A US Commander has confirmed China has blocked the Pacific Fleet’s naval ships from entering ports in Hong Kong.

Two US naval ships due to visit Hong Kong have been denied scheduled access to the city’s ports by China, the US Pacific Fleet confirmed today.

A US Navy spokesman today said two vessels had been blocked from entering the port, hours after President Donald Trump said China was moving its troops towards the border.

The president’s claims were made without specific evidence, according to The Australian

Commander Nate Christensen, the deputy spokesman for the United States Pacific Fleet, confirmed this morning the two US ships, USS Green Bay and USS Lake Erie, had been barred from entering the port. The first vessel, an amphibious dock landing ship, was due to stop in Hong Kong on Saturday, and the second was due in the city next month.

The last time the US Navy visited Hong Kong was in April.

Our Intelligence has informed us that the Chinese Government is moving troops to the Border with Hong Kong. Everyone should be calm and safe!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 13, 2019

[...]Hong Kong’s 10-week political crisis, in which millions of people have taken to the streets calling for a halt to sliding freedoms, was already the biggest challenge to Chinese rule of the semi-autonomous city since its 1997 handover from Britain.

But two days of protests at the airport have again raised the stakes for the financial hub.

Beijing is sending increasingly ominous signals that the unrest must end, with state-run media showing videos of security forces gathering across the border.

[...]All check-ins were cancelled on Tuesday afternoon after thousands of protesters wearing their signature black T-shirts made barricades using luggage trolleys to prevent passengers from passing through security gates.

[...]Demonstrators say they are fighting the erosion of the “one country, two systems” arrangement that enshrined some autonomy for Hong Kong since China took it back from Britain in 1997.

While Hong Kong is a sovereign part of China, the former colony has significant differences to the mainland, including separate legal and political systems, distinct currency, national sporting teams and a greater tolerance for freedom of expression.

Hong Kong also retains many of its pre-colonial features, including driving on the same side of the road as Britain and Australia but not China, the retention of many British place names and statues of British monarchs and dignitaries.

Those two different systems are supposed to remain in place for at least 50 years.

However, Beijing has sought to erode these freedoms in recent years through changes to the law, attempts to not allow pro-independence politicians to take their seats in the region’s parliament and even the disappearance of booksellers critical of the Communist Party leadership.

See also: Navy Times, Business Insider, CNN.


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  • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Wednesday August 14 2019, @05:59PM (4 children)

    by meustrus (4961) on Wednesday August 14 2019, @05:59PM (#880398)

    If we simply dismiss VLM as a racist, we will all lose the opportunity to deconstruct his motivations. This goes for anybody you disagree with. Racism is a valid opinion. Rather than recoil from it in horror, we must be prepared to attack it on its own merits.

    Which I won't do here, because I didn't pick up anything particularly racist about his post here.

    Now I'm left to wonder if AC is another Russian troll. AC might even be VLM trying to start the VLM-bashing party, because that would get us to form sides and stop talking to each other.

    At least on Soylent, the Anonymous Cowards tend to actually post according to their namesake instead of making meat puppets.

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    If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Wednesday August 14 2019, @06:47PM (3 children)

    by fyngyrz (6567) on Wednesday August 14 2019, @06:47PM (#880442) Journal

    Racism is a valid opinion.

    No, it isn't. It's pointless, irrational hatred given entirely unjustified additional life by according it the underserved stance of "valid opinion."

    Rather than recoil from it in horror, we must be prepared to attack it on its own merits.

    It has no merits. But yes, it should be attacked. Specifically because it is invalid opinion, and further, invalid opinion that has done great harm and can reasonably be expected to continue doing so.

    --
    Want about to a race conditions? hear joke

    • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Wednesday August 14 2019, @07:13PM (2 children)

      by meustrus (4961) on Wednesday August 14 2019, @07:13PM (#880461)

      Racism, as an ideology of preferring people of your own race over others, can be valid when everybody is a racist. You see this in prisons, where sometimes the only way to be safe is to fall in with the gang that matches your skin color because everyone else is going to attack you anyway.

      It intersects easily with xenophobia, which can be valid when you have some relationship with everyone in your community.

      Neither of these ideologies are valid in modern society...most of the time. But it's important to recognize when they are effective, because if, say, African Americans formed an explicitly anti-white organization - let's call it the Black Panthers - that would make anti-black organizations suddenly valid to most whites. Society easily devolves into conditions that make racism rational for a majority of people.

      The legacy of American racism involves wealthy plantation owners creating a distinction between poor blacks, who could be enslaved, and poor whites, who could not. This was a rational ideology for the plantation owners, because it kept the masses from revolting. It was rational for the poor whites, because they got special treatment. It was rational for slaves, then, to hate white people, because they were all complicit in the racist system.

      The system was evil! Regardless, it persisted for centuries. We still hear its echoes today. The moral argument of the abolitionists did not end slavery. Industrialization did.

      What I'm saying is: Don't be like the abolitionists. Don't try to convince people to join you because of your moral superiority. Be like the industrialists. Create a better system. Break the old system by targeting what made it useful. Make racism obsolete, and help the racists migrate to a better ideology.

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      If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
      • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Wednesday August 14 2019, @09:46PM (1 child)

        by fyngyrz (6567) on Wednesday August 14 2019, @09:46PM (#880548) Journal

        Racism, as an ideology of preferring people of your own race over others

        That's not what racism is at all.

        Racism consists entirely of the (bullshit) concept that people — so far, that means humans — of (whatever) race(s) are inherently inferior to your own race, or to some other race.

        We're not talking about "I prefer nordic blondes", we're talking about "I assert that black / white / asian / ainu / etc. people are inherently lesser human beings", gutter philosophies based upon no facts whatsoever other than the nature of oppressive cliquing mechanisms, the only function of which is to isolate and disadvantage others.

        There's a thing as trying way too hard to be even-handed, and that's exactly what you're on about here.

        There may be good reason to object to a particular set of social (or non-social) behaviors. There's no reason whatsoever to assign them as an inherent characteristic of any particular race. That stuff is tribal / clique-based. For instance, I'm not nasty because I'm white, I'm nasty because I grew up fighting the cliques in Spanish Harlem. Not because they were hispanic — but because they, meaning everyone in the clique regardless of racial heritage — were assholes to me.

        --
        I despise spelling errors. You mix up two
        letters, and your whole sentence is urined.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 15 2019, @05:09PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 15 2019, @05:09PM (#880649)

          The problem I see here is that commenters don't know what words like socialism, right, left, racism, and a whole host of other politically and socially charged words mean. They should all have to take remedial 8th-12th grade English.