MORE SENSELESS ACTS OF BLOGGERY

You know Hong Kong has got COVID-19 under control when the protest movement kicks back into gear.

Granted, it’s mostly just been people singing the unofficial anthem in malls. But that hasn’t stopped the police from treating them like terrorists about to blow up the place.

Anyway, there are several key differences between last year and this year.

Mary Hui at Quartz lists most of them here, but essentially:

1. Beijing has more aggressively stated its right (and its intention) to dictate affairs in HK, even though the Basic Law (our mini-constitution defining One Country Two Systems) says otherwise.

2. The police has been using social distancing restrictions to harass businesses that support the protest movement, and to arrest protesters.

3. They’ve also been busy arresting top pro-Democracy activists and legislators.

4. In fact, the police are generally much more aggressive now in squashing any potential protest. No applications have been approved, and if so much as five people gather somewhere to protest, the police send in vans full of riot police to dish out gratuitous violence, pepper spray and body searches, And that’s just for the media.

We’ll likely be seeing much more of #4 – the Independent Police Complaints Council has issued its investigative report on police brutality and general handling of protests, and generally found that the police could maybe have done a better job in a few specific situations, but otherwise, keep up the good work.

This wasn't unexpected – the IPCC isn’t as independent as the name makes it out to be, and has no legal powers to investigate most of the complaints beyond comparing the police version of events with the complainant’s accusations. And as the IPCC is mostly run by former cops, you can already guess which side they’re going to give more credence to  (hence one of the Five Demands™ being a truly independent inquiry into police brutality and corruption).

Carrie Lam's official response was also as expected – as far as she's concerned, the report shows the police have been exonerated, and Hong Kong's biggest problem is lying protesters besmirching the police with propaganda and fake news. Naturally, the solution is to stop protesters from spreading fake news. I think we know what that will involve.

The fact that she gave this response whilst standing in front of a huge backdrop saying “The Truth About Hong Kong” kind of says it all, really.

The injustice of it all is heartbreaking. For months we watched the police fire off endless rounds of tear gas, rubber bullets, real bullets, bean bag rounds, pepper rounds and pepper spray not only at the hardline protesters smashing up stuff, but anyone who got in their way, including journalists, first aid responders, social workers, innocent bystanders and legislators trying to broker peace. Less-lethal weapons are supposed to be used to deter imminent threats – HK police are as likely to use them as an exclamation point to assert their authority over you if you so much as look at them funny. They’ve done nothing to keep the peace and everything to ensure violent confrontation.

They’re doing it still. The video evidence of police brutality, irresponsibility and unprofessionalism is staggering. The govt has chosen to pretend it is “fake news” and propaganda spread by the protesters. Now, thanks to the IPCC report, the police have essentially been given a green light to do whatever they want to protesters and anyone who supports them. At most they risk a reprimand (which may be issued with a wink, for all we know).

What happens now?

We don't know. Given that the police have been actively running propaganda campaigns attempting to label the protest movement as a terrorist organization, now would be a good time for the protest movement to shift gears, disavow violence as much as possible and use other tools to resist. I was never a fan of the violent wing of the protest movement, even if they were mostly limiting the targets to property and riot police – partly because I generally oppose violence, but mainly because it plays into the hands of the govt and the police. They WANT the protesters to be violent so they can justify their disproportionately violent response. It plays into their “terrorist” narrative, and the best way to counter that right now is to take no action that could be used to feed that narrative. 

Unfortunately, it seems the govt has a plan to make sure the protest movement stays angry.

Remember how all of this started with the extradition bill that meant HK citizens who just happened to be critical of China could be whisked off to stand trial in China’s notorious judicial system? That bill is now dead, but the govt seems keen to pass new laws that seem almost designed to provoke the same kind of angry reactions as the extradition bill.

For example, the pro-Beijing DAB party is finalizing a bill that makes it a crime to criticize or mock China’s national anthem.

There’s also been talk about solving the problem of the police assaulting journalists by requiring journalists to be accredited by the govt. How would this solve that problem, you ask? I could explain the official reasons, but they would make no sense. Suffice to say the police excuse for assaulting journalists is that a few of them are allegedly protesters pretending to be journalists to escape capture. Which (1) may not even be true, and (2) even if it was, the police are basically arguing that if a suspected criminal hides in a crowd of 100 people and you don't know which one is him, it's in the interest of law and order to pepper-spray and beat up all 100 people to make sure you get him.

The govt will likely follow that up with the infamous Article 23 legislation intended to enact laws in HK against sedition and treason – with the likelihood that its definition of what counts as both will be identical to Beijing’s (i.e. any criticism of the govt whatsoever).

The fact the govt is pushing for all of this at a time when tensions are already sky-high suggests to me they're hoping the protest movement will be angry and desperate enough to do what they did last year – only this time, the police will be under no obligation or pressure to show restraint. Which I reckon is just fine with Beijing. They don’t really want to send in the PLA to shoot protesters and make examples of them – they’d much rather the HK police do that for them, if only for the sake of optics. And the current police chief seems keen on the idea.

So that’s what we have to look forward to in the coming months. The past few months have been mostly quiet, and it was the opportune time for the HK govt to try and find a peaceful way out of this. Turns out they don't want one. 

Cruel summer,

This is dF

A clarification on my previous post regarding COVID-19 in HK, the difficulties of maintaining social distancing for long periods of time, and the role of govts in sustained social distancing:

In HK, we mitigate that with masks and hand sanitizer, etc. But it only goes so far. You need solid and consistent govt leadership setting the example and imposing limitations.

I should have added:

Not that we have that in Hong Kong.

The new social distancing regs that kicked in today are good in theory (if somewhat flawed). But a potentially bigger problem is enforcement – partly because the details are difficult to enforce consistently and fairly, and partly because consistent and fair enforcement is the responsibility of the HK police force, which is not especially renowned for being consistent or fair. 

In fact, the HK police is probably the most hated organization in Hong Kong right now, and most if not all police officers hate us back. That’s not a good mix when a squad of cops walk into a restaurant and start measuring how far apart diners are and making them move if they’re less than six feet apart.

It also doesn't help that the HK police are currently obsessed with the fact that protests still happen in HK (and still receive a lot of public support), which means not every protester is in jail, and they remain convinced the way to fix this is to continue to arrest, jail, beat, pepper spray, tear gas and harass as many protesters as it takes until the protests stop.

<tangent>

They’ve also been going out of their way in recent months to establish a clear narrative that the protest movement is in reality a terrorist movement. Stephen Vines has a concise write-up on this, but essentially police have uncovered several stashes of bombs, weapons and ammo that they say is intended to wage a campaign of bombing and cop-killing across HK. They frequently describe this as if the campaign is already happening, even though the handful of incidents they can actually point to – though certainly illegal – have caused minor damage and injured no one.

The police have, of course, produced no evidence whatsoever that these stashes have anything to do with the protest movement or that the people arrested intended to use them to target the police. But apparently, according to Vines, that hasn't stopped Carrie Lam and other govt officials from reportedly telling foreign diplomats in HK that the protest movement is either a terrorist threat in itself or providing cover for a fringe terrorist group (funded by foreign elements! Probably!).

One aspect the Vines column doesn’t touch upon is the fact that this is happening while a number of adamantly pro-govt/pro-police legislators are calling for Article 23 legislation.

Quick history lesson: Article 23 of the Basic Law – our mini-constitution established with the 1997 handover from the UK to China – says HK must establish a ‘national security’ law by 2047 that specifically covers terrorism, sedition and treason. The HK govt tried this in 2003 and was countered with what at the time one of the biggest street protests in HK’s history, for the simple reason that we knew perfectly well that the ultimate purpose of the law sooner or later was to allow the HK govt to define terrorism, sedition and treason the same way China does: literally anything that criticizes or challenges any govt action, policy or official in any way. Simply disagreeing with the CCP could bring you up on charges of attempting to overthrow the govt.

Imagine what the HK govt would do with such a law right now.

The pro-govt people are practically drooling at the prospect. So are the police. Luckily, we’re in no immediate danger just yet – the whole protest movement started with an extradition bill that would have enabled HK anti-govt activists to be extradited to China for whatever China felt like charging them with (“soliciting prostitutes” is a classic go-to charge). It would be beyond stupid even by Carrie Lam standards to pursue an Article 23 bill now.

On the other hand, the police have just arrested a pro-Democracy district councillor for sedition using an old Colonial law that hasn’t been used for decades. The “sedition” was allegedly forwarding a Facebook post that allegedly gave details of a police officer who some people think was responsible for half-blinding Indonesian journalist Veby Indah covering the protests last September.

A doxxing charge would be understandable (flimsy and arbitrary, but understandable). Sedition? Come on.

The arrest itself is fairly obviously petty revenge by the police (who decided to arrest her at her home at 1:45am). It’s also widely believed to be a test to see if they can actually make a sedition charge stick, and if the public will go along with it, which would pave the way for more sedition arrests and maybe bolster support for Article 23. The police narrative about protesters = terrorists might also possibly being crafted for that purpose.

</tangent>

So anyway, THIS is the police force that will be tasked with enforcing the new social distancing rules – and arresting anyone found violating them.

To be clear, I don’t think they’re going to equate sitting five people at a restaurant table with sedition. But there’s a running bet on Twitter that the police will use the social distancing law as another thing they can arrest protesters for (wearing a surgical mask is technically still illegal, although right now enforcement is, to say the least, impractical). Or – absent any actual protests – they’ll  use it as a pretense to shake down and arrest anyone they think might be connected with the protests – especially in restaurants and other businesses that have been openly supportive of the protests. And the police are widely expected to handle those situations the same way they handle anything protest-related – with lots of tear gas, pepper spray and gratuitous violence.

Or maybe they'll use common sense for once and realize that we're all in this together and if there's one thing we should be unifying over, it's this.

Ha ha. No. 

So, yeah, the social distancing law might have been necessary, but enforcement is likely to be messy in more ways than one.

All this because some people decided going to LKF to drink a lot of overpriced beer was more important than flattening the curve.

Hope it was worth it.

Don’t go out there,

This is dF

And so Trump has been acquitted by the Senate – inasmuch as anyone can be “acquitted” in a rigged trial in which everyone knows you’re guilty but the majority of the jury doesn’t care because you're their golden boy.

I have thoughts:

1. It’s hard to be disappointed in a result that we all saw coming all the way down 5^th Avenue. Mitch McConnell told you in advance how this was going to go. And while some liberals have complained about the Democrats’ overall impeachment strategy, the truth is it didn’t matter what their strategy was – the fix was in even before Mueller time.

2. It’s worth keeping a historical perspective – the outcome was ostensibly no different than any other impeachment trial. No POTUS has ever been removed from office via impeachment precisely because the trial vote inevitably splits along party lines without a two-thirds majority. (Okay, Mitt Romney is the sole exception, for all the good it did. And, you know, good for him.)

3. The other predictable outcome is Trump’s babbling, unhinged, free-verse “TOTAL EXONERATION” victory dance, which he will be performing every chance he gets from now until Doomsday. And of course, he will continue to do exactly what he’s been doing, only with the assurance that the GOP will cover for him and absolutely no one will be able to stop him. Characters like Lamar Alexander and Susan Collins who are going around saying “I think Trump has learned not to do it again” are either delusional or just trolling the libs.

You can also expect him to exact revenge on witnesses, Romney, Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, James Comey, John Bolton, CNN and everyone else he hates for disloyalty. (Note: by “revenge” I’m mainly thinking of rage tweets, empty threats and firing anyone he can have fired, not arrests and assassinations, but on the other hand, who really knows at this stage?)

4. In a way it’s just as well when you think about the outcome of a conviction result – namely, President Pence, who would inherit Trump’s cult, who in turn would be so apoplectically outraged as to make the Evil Godless Crooked Demos pay by doing God knows what. And you can pretty much bet Trump himself would pour as much gasoline on that particular garbage fire as possible.

5. Which is why I stand by my current prediction that Trump is very likely going to be re-elected. After everything he’s gotten away with, there’s no reason to assume his base will abandon him now. Also, the economy’s technically great, which generally helps incumbents (even whacky ones).

6. I’ve posted about this before, but all of this raises the valid question of the utter uselessness of impeachment as a control against corruption, and if we should resign ourselves to the notion that the President will always be above the law and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. If that’s not the country we want, we should probably give this some serious thought while there’s still a chance to do something about it.

Meanwhile, I'm just going to leave this Bloom County comic from 1981 here. Because Berke Breathed knows what time it is.



Scott free,

This is dF

Where’s the mushroom clouds? Where’s the nuclear winter? Where’s the radioactive mutants?

Et cetera.

So yes. Here we go again, eh?

Obviously it’s way too early to talk about what exactly is going to be the blowback from the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani. Predictions range from “Iranian people will now have freedom” to “World War III”. And I’m no expert on foreign policy, but I do have a blog and I do read other blogs, so here's a few unsolicited thoughts:

1. The US is effectively at war with Iran. Assassinating Soleimani wasn’t the equivalent of taking out some top-level ISIS or Taliban official. It was a direct and deliberate attack on a top official of a foreign govt. That’s an act of war by any standard.

2. The Trump admin has given official reasons for killing Soleimani, but there’s no reason to believe any of them are truthful – partly because the US govt in general has a history of exaggerating or outright lying to justify wars against podunk countries, but also because both Trump and Pompeo have a long track record of stating untrue things about Iran. In fact, Trump has a much longer and well-documented history of saying untrue things about all kinds of things several times a day, every day. Even Mike Pence is in on the act, claiming falsely that Soleimani was directly complicit in helping the 9/11 terrorists (see what he did there?).

As for the real reason, who knows? It’s possible Trump wanted a distraction from his impeachment, or a way to ensure re-election, or to justify a more hardline approach to immigration, especially regarding Muslims. It’s also possible Trump had no idea who Soleimani was until Fox News told him who he’d just had killed. But I don’t believe this happened now simply because Soleimani was an “imminent threat”. We’ve heard that one before – it wasn’t true then, and I doubt it’s true now.

3. Many of the Middle East experts who seem to have some kind of sense think the chances of this blossoming into a full-scale conventional war are not high – at least not right away –because for all the bluster and dick-waving, neither side wants one. The Iranian govt  knows it doesn’t have the military capability to beat the US, and Trump supposedly doesn’t particularly want another Iraq on his hands, if only because he’d rather spend the money building his wall. Also, as Suzanne Maloney, deputy director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, has told Vox, the current Iranian govt doesn’t have a whole lot of support at home right now, so they’re tasked with maintaining internal stability while trying to figure out how to respond in a way that hurts the US.

4. On the other hand, neither Trump nor Ayatollah Khamenei can really be counted on to be the voice of reason and restraint here, especially as they continuously provoke each other. Everything depends on what Iran does in response, how Trump responds to that, how Khamenei responds to Trump’s response, etc and so on up the escalation ladder until they’ve painted themselves into the very corner they were hoping to avoid. I’m not optimistic that either of these guys will make smart decisions that lead to any kind of truce.

If anything, Trump will be real wild card in this equation, because he has no sense of (or interest in) military strategy, doesn’t listen to advisers, constantly contradicts statements from his own people on Twitter, and generally makes decisions based on how it benefits/enriches him personally and how much applause it will get at his next rally.

Meanwhile, the supposed official strategy for killing Soleimani – the neocon wet dream strategy of escalation is a deterrent – tends not to work when the target has already attacked you in the past.

5. Even without a ground war, we’re in for rough times. Iran’s immediate response is likely to take the form of terrorist attacks, assassinations (regionally of not in the US) and – most importantly – cyberwarfare. The latter is probably the most underappreciated aspect of this – Iran has formidable cyberwar capabilities, and we know this because they’ve used them in the past. Their arsenal isn’t as massive as the US (or Russia or China), but they can still pack a punch.

How big a punch depends on how good our cyberdefense capabilities are and our overall cyber strategy. The bad news: the current National Cyber Strategy of the Trump admin emphasizes offense over defense. From a security standpoint that’s a bad idea, not least because pre-emptive cyber attacks (just like real world attacks such as, say, the one the Trump admin just pulled om Iran) typically invite retaliation – which means you need sufficient defense of your systems.

Which we may or may not have.

6. So all up, things are looking grim. Whether it results in World War 3 remains to be seen. Personally I think that’s overblown, but as I say, the wild card is that the commander-in-chief is an erratic ignorant egotistical blowhard who sees Muslims in general as the enemy of the US and tends to make snap decisions without thinking about them.

And that’s bad enough without the fact that Trump is (1) surrounded by neocon sycophants who thought Iraq War 2 was a great idea and would like to throw more American military might around, (2) backed by a compliant GOP who will go along with any cockamamie idea he gins up, and (3) championed by the biggest cable TV news network in the country who will do their part in cheerleading the war and labelling whoever second-guesses Trump as a traitor.

So it’s hard to be optimistic when your only hope is that Iran will be the voice of reason, because it’s a fair bet Trump won’t be.

Whee.

Your new favorite quagmire,

This is dF 

1. Mueller was indeed looking very narrowly at the Russian conspiracy part, but leaves no doubt that Russians were meddling in the election to help Trump, and Trump campaign officials were keen to get some help from them.
2. The reasons Mueller punted on obstruction were (1) he was working under the legal notion that a sitting president can’t be indicted, and he didn’t want to put that to the test, and (2) most of Trump’s attempts at obstruction were thwarted by his own people.
3. While Mueller didn’t think criminal indictments were feasible, he definitely hinted that impeachment was an option based on his findings.
4. The media, for the most part, got the story more or less right in terms of what happened.
5. William Barr's 4-page summary and pre-release press conference is so at odds with the content of the report that it's difficult not to conclude he was hoping to spin perception of the report in favor of Trump.
6. The report is a damning indictment of Barack Obama because he knew the Russians were interfering in the election and didn’t lift a finger to stop them. (Okay, the Mueller doesn’t say anything remotely close to that – that’s coming exclusively from conservative pundits because well OBVIOUSLY.)

1. FUCK YES
2. Well hold on, there’s an election on, see, and …