SPECIAL DISPATCH FROM HONG KONG
By ANDRE VLTCHEK
Text and photos by the author, unless otherwise noted. Please be sure to click on the images to appreciate the details. 

Westerners mingle with local protesters. Many questions and much incomprehension, side by side.

For decades Hong Kong has been a turbo-capitalist, extremely consumerist, and aggressive society. Its people are facing some of the most unrealistic prices on earth, particularly for housing…

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hat is it? It is not orange or green, and definitely not red!  It has an umbrella as its symbol. ‘That humble umbrella’, as many people in Hong Kong are often saying.

But is it really benign?

We are talking, of course, about the ‘democracy protests’ in Hong Kong, also known as ‘the Umbrella Movement’; the latest addition of the ‘popular uprisings’ promoted by the West!

At the North Point in Hong Kong, near Kowloon Ferry, a middle-aged man is waving a banner that reads “Support Our Police”. On the photo, the tents and umbrellas of the ‘pro-democracy’ ‘Occupy Central’ protest movement (also known as the ‘Umbrella Movement’) are depicted in sepia, a depressing color.

“Are you against the protesters?” I ask the man.

“I am not for or against them”, he replies. “But it is known that they have some 1 million supporters here. While all of Hong Kong has over 7 million inhabitants. We think that it is time to clear the roads and allow this city to resume its normal life.”

“On the 28. September”, I continue, “Police fired 87 canisters of tear gas at the protest site, and now this fact is being used in the West and here as some proof of police brutality and of Beijing’s undemocratic rule. Protesters even commemorated this event few days ago, as if that would turn them to martyrs…”

“They are spoiled”, a man smiled. “They mostly come from very rich families in one of the richest cities on earth. They don’t know much about the world. I can tell you that the students in Beijing know actually much more about the world… 87 canisters of tear gas are nothing, compared to what happened in Cairo or in Bangkok. And in New York, police was dragging and beating protesters, even female protesters, during the endgame of the Occupy Wall Street drama.”

Earlier I spoke to my friend, a top Western academic who is now teaching in Hong Kong. As always, he readily supplied me with his analyses, but this time, he asked me not to use his name. Not because of fear of what Beijing could do, but simply because it could complicate his position in Hong Kong. I asked him whether the ‘opposition movement’ is actually homegrown, or supported from abroad, and he replied:

“To answer the question as to foreign interference in Occupy Central, we would have to answer yes. As a global city par excellence Hong Kong is more than exposed to international currents and ideas and, historically, that has also been the case. Doubtless as well certain of the pan-Democrat camp have shaken hands with international ‘do-gooders’, a reference to various US or western-based ‘democracy endowments’ or foundations active across the globe. Taiwan may have a leg in. A British Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee seeks to wade in. But “foreign interference” is seen here as Beijing’s call echoed by C.Y. Leung and with the letter holding back from naming the culprits.”

The protesters have an alarmingly skewed view of “democracy”. Western propaganda has penetrated deeply.  Spitefully, they regard Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador as “dictatorships.”

Protesters may have some legitimate grievances. They want direct elections of the chief executive, and there is, in theory, nothing wrong with such a demand. They want to tackle corruption, and to curb the role of local tycoons. That is fine, too.

The problem is, that the movement is degenerating into a Beijing bashing mission, happily supported by both Western and local (pro-business and pro-Western) mass media.

Several students that I spoke to, at Admiralty and Mong Kok sites, did not even bother to hide their hatred towards the Communist system, and towards the government in Beijing. All of them were denying crimes that are being committed by Western nations, all over the world, or they were simply not aware of them. ‘Democracy’ to them means clearly one and only thing – the system or call it regime, that is being defined, promoted and exported by the West.

“China is surely on the right side of the history”, I tried, at Admiralty, when I met protesters on the 31th October. “Together with Russia and Latin America it is standing against the brutal Western interventions worldwide and against Western propaganda.”

I was given looks of bewilderment, outrage and wrath.

I asked students what do they think about Venezuela, Bolivia, or Ecuador?

“Dictatorships”, they replied, readily and with spite.

I asked them about Bangkok and those ‘pro-democracy movements and demonstrations’ conducted against the democratically elected government; demonstrations that led to the coup performed by the elites and the army on behalf of the West.

I asked about ‘pro-democracy’ demonstrations against democratically elected President Morsi in Egypt, and about yet another military and pro-Western coup that brought army back to power. In Egypt, several thousand people died in the process. The West and Israel rejoiced, discreetly.

But the Hong Kong students ‘fighting’ for democracy knew absolutely nothing about Thailand or derailment of the Arab Spring.

They also could not make any coherent statements about Syria or Iraq.

I asked about Russia and Ukraine. With those topics they were familiar, perfectly. I immediately received quotes as if they were picked directly from the Western mass media: “Russia is antagonizing the world… It occupied Crimea and is sending troops to Ukraine, after shooting down Malaysian airliner…”

Back to Hong Kong and China, two girls, protesters, at Admiralty, clarified their point:

“We want true democracy; we want rights to nominate and to elect our leaders. Local leader now is a puppet. We hate communism. We don’t want dictatorship like in China.”

I asked what do they really want? They kept repeating “democracy”.

“What about those hundreds of millions that China raised from misery? What about China’s determined stand against Western imperialism? What about its anti-corruption drive? What about BRICS? What about its attempt to rejuvenate socialism through free medical care, education, subsidized culture, transportation and mixed/planned economy?”

Is there anything good, anything at all, that China, the biggest and the most successful socialist country on earth, is doing?

Brian, a student at Mong Kok, explained:

“We want to express our views and elect our own leader. It is now dictatorship in China. They chose the committee to elect our leader. We want to have our own true democracy. Our model is Western democracy.”

I asked at both protest sites about brutality of British colonialism. I received no reply. Then I noticed quotes by Winston Churchill, a self-proclaimed racist and a man who never bothered to hide his spite for non-white, non-Western people. But here, Churchill was considered to be one of the champions of democracy; his quotes glued to countless walls.

Then I noticed ‘John Lennon Wall, with the cliché-quotes like’: “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one”.

The Hong Kong protest movement reeks of upper middle class bourgeois consciousness, including its cloying cheap sentimentality and unexamined worshipping of Western “heroes”, like Churchill.

What exactly were they dreaming about, I was not told. All I saw were only those omnipresent banalities about ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’.

There were Union Jacks all over the place, too, and I even spotted two English bulldogs; extremely cute creatures, I have to admit, but explaining nothing about the aspirations of the protesters.

While hardly anyone speaks English here, anymore, all cultural, ideological and propaganda symbols at the demonstrations and the ‘occupy’ sites, were somehow related to the West.

And then, on the 29 September, in the evening, near Admiralty, I spotted a group of Westerners, shouting and getting ready for ‘something big’.

I approached one of them; his name was John and he came from Australia:

“I have lived in Hong Kong for quite some time. Tonight we organized a run from here to Aberdeen, Pok Fu Lam, and back here, to support the Umbrella Movement. Several foreigners that are participating in this have lived in HK for some time, too.”

I wondered whether this could illustrate the lack of freedom and Beijing heavy-handedness?

I tried to imagine what would happen under the same circumstances, in the client states of Washington, London and Paris, in the countries that are promoted by the West as ‘vibrant democracies’.

What would happen to me, if I would decide to organize or join a marathon in Nairobi, Kenya, protesting against Kenyan occupation of Somalia or against bullying of the Swahili/Muslim coast? What would they do to me, if, as a foreigner, I would trigger a run in the center of Jakarta, demanding more freedom for Papua!

Thinking that I am losing my marbles and with it, objectivity, I texted a diplomat based in Nairobi. “Wouldn’t they deport me?” I was asking. “Wouldn’t they see it as interference in the internal affairs of the country?”

“They would deport you” the answer arrived almost instantly. “But before that, you would rot for quite some time in a very unsavory detention [spot]”.

I thought so…

 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andre Vltchek is a novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. The result is his latest book: “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”.  ‘Pluto’ published his discussion with Noam Chomsky: On Western Terrorism. His critically acclaimed political novel Point of No Return is re-edited and available. Oceania is his book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book about post-Suharto Indonesia and the market-fundamentalist model is called “Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear”. His feature documentary, “Rwanda Gambit” is about Rwandan history and the plunder of DR Congo. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and Africa. He can be reached through his website or his Twitter.

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(ANONYMOUS)

Here’s one Hon. Senator that richly deserves the Devil’s Country Club.

– See more at: http://www.thepolemicist.net/#sthash.nGNHEZSu.dpuf

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This election has set a new benchmark for fraud and deceit.

NY’s Governor Andrew Cuomo, a dynastic Democrat with  presidential ambitions, mirrors the facile and inalterable corruption that permeates the system. He recently returned from a trip to Israel to kiss Netanyahu’s ring, precisely at the moment when the Gaza population was being massacred by the IDF. Such “minor” matters do not preoccupy this kind of politician.

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]uesday marks the end of an election campaign in which billions of dollars have been expended in the effort to convince working people that there are significant differences between the Democrats and the Republicans. Nothing could be further from the truth.

On all essential issues, the two parties are united in defense of the interests of the super-rich—the billionaires who fund their campaigns and give their marching orders to senators, representatives, governors, state legislators and presidents.

US elections have long been manipulated by the corporate-controlled media and dominated by corporate money. Their democratic content has been increasingly vitiated by a political system monopolized by two right-wing parties of big business. They have become a means for the ruling class to adjust the personnel and party affiliation of those in power in order to better prosecute its offensive against the working class and advance its imperialist agenda internationally.

But this election has set a new benchmark for fraud and deceit. It has underscored the growing chasm between the broad mass of the people and the entire political establishment, revealing pervasive popular disaffection and outright hostility toward both parties and the electoral circus.

After six years of the Obama administration, which promised “change” only to continue and deepen the reactionary policies of its Republican predecessor, fewer and fewer working people believe that their votes will change anything. More and more recognize that the system is controlled by the wealthy. It is expected that Election Day will see record low turnout.

At a rally in Detroit Sunday, President Barack Obama summarized the issues in the election as follows: Democrats favor a minor increase in the minimum wage, which would still leave tens of millions in poverty; Democrats support equal pay for women, a claim that was not backed up by any concrete proposals; Democrats support slightly easier credit terms for students taking out loans to pay for college. These are differences in the second and third decimal point, the small change of capitalist politics.

Patrick Martin is a senior political analyst with wsws.org, an information branch of the Social Equality Party, which he naturally favors as an option to the captialist party circus. 

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Cashing In

Democratic party leadership: not the answer

ARUN GUPTA

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EMILY ATKIN |  THINKPROGRESS

This October 2010 photo provided by Penn State University shows the arms of a brittle starfish, red in color, clinging to coral damaged by the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico. // CREDIT: AP PHOTO/NOAA AND WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTE / click to expand

[dropcap]S[/dropcap]cientists have discovered yet another unforeseen effect of BP’s historic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico: a 1,235-square-mile “bathtub ring” of oil on the deep ocean’s floor.

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BUT THEY’RE SOOOO SORRY (Courtesy of South Park)

Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science on Monday showed that approximately 10 million gallons of oil settled and coagulated on the floor of the Gulf near the Deepwater Horizon rig, which spilled a total of 172 million gallons of oil into the ocean in April 2010. That oil left a footprint on the ocean floor about two times the size of the city of Houston, Texas, and approximately the size of the state of Rhode Island, the study said.

Study author David Valentine told the Associated Press that tests to determine the oil’s chemical signature were not performed because the oil has degraded in the four and a half years since the spill occurred, but also said it’s obvious where the oil is from, since it settled directly around the site of the damaged rig. BP disputes the claim, telling Fuel Fix  that the researchers need to chemically identify the source of the oil before they can credibly blame the company.

Still, the research serves to try and answer some of the lingering questions from the 2010 oil spill, the largest in U.S. history. One of those questions is where all the oil went — approximately 2 million barrels were never found — and another is how the spill impacted the health of the deep sea. In July, a scientist who led a study on the impacts of the BP spill and found a wider range of impact on the deep sea than previously believed, told ThinkProgress that he was worried about how much we don’t yet know.

“What we still don’t know, and what we need to all keep in mind, is that there’s the potential for sub-acute impact,” Penn State University’s Charles Fisher said at the time. “In other words, things that might have happened to corals’ reproductive system — slower acting cancers, changes in the fitness of the animal. These are very hard to detect and they’ll take a long time for us to see whats going on.”

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Commitment to the Gulf of Mexico
BP is committed to supporting economic and environmental efforts in the Gulf of Mexico We have spent more than $26 billion in claims payments and response, clean-up and restoration costs. BP has also committed to provide up to $1 billion to fund early restoration projects. Our Gulf Coast recovery efforts have focused on paying all legitimate claims stemming from the accident and supporting two of the regions most vital industries – tourism and seafood. SOURCE: http://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/about-bp/bp-worldwide/bp-in-america/commitment-to-gulf-of-mexico.html [/learn_more]

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REGULAR TEXT RESUMES HERE

BP has maintained that most of the unrecovered light sweet crude oil dissolved or evaporated before it reached land, and that it didn’t settle on the ocean floor. Indeed, just last week, Politico published an article written by BP senior vice president of communications Geoff Morrell titled “No, BP Didn’t Ruin The Gulf.” The article argued that the Gulf of Mexico has “inherent resilience” when it comes to oil spills and that environmentalists are overreacting about its impacts.

Geoff Morrell: Formerly a lying bastard for the Pentagon, now for his new masters at BP. These are the prostitutes that are sinking this nation and the planet. How do you reform such parasites? It’s what the system calls “success stories”.

On Monday, Politico ran a response to that article, titled “Yes, BP Did Damage The Gulf.” The article, written by the Ocean Conservancy’s Gulf Restoration director Kara Lankford, slammed BP for attempting to downplay the effects of the spill on the Gulf’s ecosystem.

“We would like to invite Geoff Morrell to sit down with us to discuss the scientific evidence of impacts from the BP oil disaster, as it seems he may be unaware of some important research,” Lankford wrote. “We look forward to the Gulf’s full restoration and hope BP will accept accountability for the spill — and will acknowledge the complete scientific evidence of the impact, not a few carefully selected data points.”

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