Hong Kong: “Category 1 Insurgency”
Student demonstrations, new communication apps, Chinese threats, Hong Kong leaders to quit, and a plea to President Trump.
The pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong continue against the wishes of those in charge. High school students began the school year in gas masks and joining hands to form human chains. College students held a strike, waved flags, and chanted protest slogans.
After a summer of demonstrating in the streets, outside municipal offices and in the airport, students refuted the government’s wishful assertion that once they returned to school the months of pro-democracy protests that have roiled the city would come to an end.
“The government thinks it can quell the movement when students return to school, because we can only come out during the summer,” said Owen Lo, 16, a high school student. “But that’s not true.”
He said he was afraid of the repercussions he and other students might face but “seeing so many students selflessly gambling their future to express their demands to the government, it is infectious, and makes me want to come out and do something for Hong Kong.”
One of the challenges the protesters have faced has been Chinese censoring of the internet. It appears they have found a new system to use, Mesh messaging.
How do you communicate when the government censors the internet? With a peer-to-peer mesh broadcasting network that doesn’t use the internet.
That’s exactly what Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters are doing now, thanks to San Fransisco startup Bridgefy’s Bluetooth-based messaging app. The protesters can communicate with each other — and the public — using no persistent managed network.
And it’s led to swift growth for Bridgefy: downloads are up almost 4,000% over the past 60 days, according to Apptopia estimates (Apptopia is an app metrics company).
The app can connect people via standard Bluetooth across an entire city, thanks to a mesh network. Chatting is speediest with people who are close, of course, within a hundred meters (330 feet), but you can also chat with people who are farther away. Your messages will simply “hop” via other Bridgefy users’ phones until they find your intended target.
Famed writer, military expert, and photographer Michael Yon has been following the Hong Kong protests from the beginning. He asserts that Hong Kong is moving away from the “protest phase” and entering the “insurgency phase.”
1) Protest phase is finished. (Still protests daily, but that phase is finished. Simple protest are a thing of the past.)
2) General Civil Unrest: frustration/anger has blown through the roof. Civil unrest is fully involved.
3) We are at the front end of insurgency. On the continuum, this went from: Protests —> Civil Unrest —> Insurgency (all elements still contain protests as a tactic)
At this point, we are in Category 1 Insurgency — to use the Hurricane scale of Cat 1 to Cat 5.
Meanwhile, the Chinese state media has sent a warning.
On Monday an editorial in Chinese state media warned “the end is coming for those attempting to disrupt Hong Kong.”
It didn’t give detail on any specific upcoming action, but it could be referring to a potential crackdown by Chinese troops, who have massed both inside Hong Kong territory, and just across the border in southern China.
Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam would quit if she had a choice, according to an audio recording of remarks she made last week.
At the closed-door meeting, Lam told the group that she now has “very limited” room to resolve the crisis because the unrest has become a national security and sovereignty issue for China amid rising tensions with the United States.
“If I have a choice,” she said, speaking in English, “the first thing is to quit, having made a deep apology.”
Lam’s dramatic and at times anguished remarks offer the clearest view yet into the thinking of the Chinese leadership as it navigates the unrest in Hong Kong, the biggest political crisis to grip the country since the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.
Finally, a group of Hong Kong protesters on Saturday waved American flags, sang the U.S. national anthem and urged President Donald Trump to “liberate” the city from China.
More than a dozen men wearing masks to hide their identities carried the flags as tens of thousands of demonstrators defied a police order to rally in downtown Hong Kong. China has accused the U.S. of stoking the protests that began in June against a bill allowing extraditions to the mainland, and treats any calls for independence as a red line that could justify a harsher crackdown.
“We would like Mr. President Trump to liberate Hong Kong,” said Chris, a 30-year-old protester who declined to give his full name. He also called on Congress to pass the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, saying it was necessary “to give us freedom and defend our constitution and our economy.”
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check out the meme over at AoSHQ’s Morning Rant
“Be the America Hong Kong Thinks You Are”
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/383099.php
To end the Communist Chinese censorship of the internet means Facebook, Google, Twitter, big tech in general has to be taken down.
It would be good if you described level 1-5 of insurgency in detail.
Are we watching Hungary 1956 playing out again? Taking China to task means all those consumer goods cost more… if available.. with trade sanctions. Going beyond that is a whole bigger ball game. What happens with Hong Kong may be a precursor to how Taiwan is handled. I am betting the average American consumer could care less for liberty for others when that flat screen won’t be on sale.
I know my sentiments degrade by social credit score in Beijing big time… the question is … will they be counted in the shiny new credit score system wearing the label… “made in the USA”?
Just my personal beliefs but I’m thinking there is a 0.70 probability that the Commies will do a full-blown Tienanmen Square-tanks and everything massacre to Hong Kong eventually (within six months). I’m hoping I’m wrong, praying I’m wrong, but can we really imagine the Commies letting this slide and then shrugging their commie shoulders and saying, “Oh well, I guess the Hong Kongians are right”?
Then, what will the rest of the world do? What will we do? I suppose in the world of Commie-leftists, violently and brutally crushing a civil insurrection is a perfectly understandable thing to do, after all didn’t the US do that 150 years or so ago?
Do we want our sons dying to protect Hong Kong? There were countries on the side of the north and the south but none of them actually sent troops to fight.
I’m not advocating anything either way, just asking questions. Do we have the national will to be the type of country Hong Kong thinks we are?
Remember, the Red Chinese have about four or five times the population we do. When our military fights, we try our best not to hurt those not involved but China, with so many people, I expect would use their civilian population to hide behind just as the Japanese did in WWII. What would our young Soldiers and Marines do if each wave of Chinese attacks was preceded by a few thousand women and children?
Help, I’m headed down a hole here….
There’s zero chance that we’re going to send combat troops to Hong Kong, but there are other ways to put pressure on the Chinese – and Trump is (apparently, sometimes it’s hard to tell) already doing it for other reasons.
Per Breitbart, it seems that the protestors have won – at least on the surface. The proposed law has been withdrawn.
And what’s remarkable is that didn’t even slow the protest / insurgency down. It may have increased pressure to move to the insurgency phase, since the object of protest was taken off the table.
Why the Brits gave Hong Kong away, I have never been able to fathom.
Yes. As soon as they did that, the Chinese takeover of the former colony was inevitable. It’s what they do.
The Brits had a 99-year lease on Hong Kong that expired in 1997. They had no other legal choice.
Sure they did, they just made the mistake of making payments before then.
“Our lease was from the Qing Emperor, not the Communist Party. We won’t turn the territory over to a non-party to the treaty.”
China is a country that’s there (rather than thousands of miles away), a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and they have nukes. The famed British Navy of 1840 was no longer in 1997.
The UK could not take on China. The USA is another kettle of fish.
150 year lease on Kowloon. They had captured HK Island outright, but without even the land of Kowloon it was utterly indefensible, so it went back too.
Hong Kong doesn’t have a 2nd Amendment or the NRA. That means the Chinese can do pretty much whatever they want, including going full-scale Tiananmen on the protestors. Other countries will wag their fingers and their tongues, but the protestors will still be dead, and Socialism will have won out again over freedom.
Do I see a connection here with why the Socialists in American want to repeal the 2nd Amendment and declare the NRA to be a terrorist organization? Socialism is a natural precursor to totalitarianism, as has been shown in Russia, Germany, China, Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, etc. Socialism cannot survive where free people have the means to defend themselves.
That reminds me. I need to send the NRA a contribution to help them fight the Socialist forces in New York, San Francisco, and the House of Representatives.