I don’t think the protesters are winning at all. They got nothing but a withdrawal that never meant anything (China’s puppets will just reintroduce it.) Meanwhile hundreds have been arrested and police is actually beating people up in subways.

20, even 15, years ago the protesters would have had a chance because Hong Kong was truly indispensable to the Chinese economy then.

This is no longer true. Beijing has been investing in Shanghai and Shenzhen markets for decades to lower China’s dependence on Hong Kong for global capital access. Politically, the leaders of Shanghai and Shenzhen have also opened up in very limited ways (such as granting exceptions to allow major companies VPN access to American cloud services and Google.) Put differently, a lot of people in China would be happy to see Shanghai and Shenzhen take Hong Kong’s place as China’s financial center.

Hong Kong is done for. There is no winning for the protesters. Their best case is China compromises now but accelerates its efforts to render Hong Kong irrelevant. All the CCP has to do is basically push the financial firewall now surrounding Hong Kong back into Shenzhen or Shanghai and its GG for Hong Kong’s economy in a matter of years.

Juan is lecturing about words he doesn't understand? Fascism is literally the opposite of Communism.

Fascism and communism are not mutually exclusive. Historically in fact, communists (Mao and Stalin top the list) tended to be fascists too.

"Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come."

- George Orwell (1944)

From "What Is Fascism":
http://www.orwell.ru/library/article.../english/efasc


PairTheBoard

**** is most definitely still popping off in HK

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-h...-idUSKBN1WH019

Bigger guns are coming.

What is going on with the NBA now is crazy. They are bowing down and licking the boots of communist china leaders.

This is what happens when you deal with real totalitarian governments. People like steve kerr who feel perfectly happy and comfortable insulting orange man every day (completely within his right, i support that), when china comes up, he says "it is too complicated, i have no comment"



When it really comes down to standing with the people, when it costs them some money, its "no comment"

when they can freely go after orange man, because this is USA and we have freedom and trump isnt a dictator, he will say whatever he wants. extremely disappointed in the NBA, i have many non political asian friends who have been messaging me about this. They are scared the china type of censorship they have dealt with, will come to the USA.

That narrative has a few issues when the US president personally promised President Xi Jinping to keep silent on the Hong Kong protests, praised them publicly for 70 years of communist party rule and issued a gag order to officials to stop them from commenting publicly on the protest.

But by all means, enjoy your freedom of speech.

Also...

... this isn't 4-chan and you presumably aren't 12.

Ya man I think I'm gonna cancel my WoW Classic sub.

https://gallagher.house.gov/sites/ga...a%20Letter.pdf

We have corporations who save .02 on a $.18 plastic bottle by shipping that **** across the whole ****ing ocean ruining the environment and putting people here domestically out of jobs. We also have the bankster morons allowing the Chinese National Bank to fix its currency for the last 40 years with no repercussions. We have the people who declared multinational corporations people with the right to speak no matter their ownership. There's a list of special interests like 20 long full of people richer than anyone on this forum who all **** on their homeland to make an extra buck. Unregulated free market capitalism is almost as bad as whats going on in Beijing.

Reducing packaging costs by tens of millions of dollars is a pretty justifiable reason to outsource.

Everyone wants to buy American until they see the price tag.

Figuring out a way to actually enforce intellectual property laws would go a long way toward leveling the playing field in many industries. Until then, trying to keep your manufacturing 100% domestic is just a recipe for financial disaster. China will copy your product and put it out there for less than half the price, patents be damned. I saw this in action during my decade at a small manufacturer in the automotive space.


As an example, this 5" Backing Plate cost us about $2.75 from a manufacturer out of Detroit. By the time I left for my current company, we were getting them for $1.10 from a Chinese supplier. Effectively the exact same product. There are sometimes 3-4 middle men between manufacturers and the end user in a business like buffing, so who in their right mind would start the markup process from $2.75 when there's a $1.10 version available?

You can see by my other posts in this thread I am not anti China. And I'll say for the record that I am not anti outsourcing and you can just take my word for it or not. What I am anti is practices like currency fixing which ensure a sustained competitive wage advantage. If this same practice were made to form an unearned competitive advantage in steel or similar commodity an industry association would surely intervene and action would be taken in Washington. Note the specific example that I choose which has more than $0.02 in externality costs that are kicked down the road in china or somewhere else.

That China, Brazil and others are allowed to steal our intellectual property without fear of reprisal is another problem to be concerned about, not a reason to handwave the other issues away.

Steve coaches two players who have shoe deals in China. Is he supposed to throw Klay Thompson and Kevon Looney under the bus to make a comment that will have literally 0 positive consequences? Like, if Steve Kerr makes a comment about the atrocities going on in China or HK, do you think Xi will hear it and suddenly have a change of heart? Or do you think they will ban them like they did the Rockets, which would **** with his bosses money, and his players money.

Cool to see Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Ted Cruz signed the same letter.

Bummed about Trump's bullshit on this issue.

Kerr isn't the CEO of the Warriors, nor is he doing anything to directly assist atrocities committed.

If the article was about a middle manager at IBM speaking up and torpedoing IBM's chances of winning the bid, then outing a couple of employees at Dehomag as being Jews who were then punished by the Nazis, you would then have a situation slightly comparable to Kerr speaking up here.

I don't think Kerr would affect his bottom line by speaking up, unless he got fired for it, which seems pretty unlikely. It would affect other peoples bottom line, while providing nothing of value.

The whole thing reminds me of this anyways


I don't give one **** what Kerr has to say, or not to say, about anything outside of basketball.

Its just one more thing for people to be up in arms about that literally means nothing.

I don't know about the handwaving stuff. I heard he said something stupid. Most people do say something stupid every now and then.

He also has family over in China.

I tried to talk to my ex about HK and she just happened to be in Shanghai at that moment (shes from China). She blocked me for bringing it up, and didn't talk to me for a couple of weeks until she took her next position in the Bahamas. Maybe she was just being paranoid about it. It's hard for me to imagine it would actually be that bad over there, but here you are talking about millions of people in concentration camps. How hard would it be to make one more? Or to harvest their organs? Or just shoot them, or worse, torture them? They released a statement saying freedom of speech doesn't include anti nationalist statements in their eyes.

It's pretty easy for you to type about what he should have done, but its different when there are real world consequences for your actions, and how those actions can hurt people you respect and care for.

for the record, I know exactly what China is

Yeah Kerr is an idiot. Saying nothing is an option. You don't have to be political. This statement is offensively stupid

This is correct. People can try to justify it all they want.

How this issue is not getting more discussion, is beyond me. Especially in conjunction with Blizzard, who continues to botch it up (cancelled an Overwatch event, mostly like due to one of the characters in the game becoming a symbol for HK protestors).

There might not be a right answer, but his answer was definitely the wrong one (at least to pro-democracy people). Further, in subsequent statements, he tried to justify his silence using specious reasoning (those in glass houses, should not throw stones). He can take the communist orders, and stay quiet out of self-interest....but to lecture the media about the righteousness of his silence (when it's clear he is capitulating and abdicating to the Chinese government) should have destroyed his credibility to anyone other than communist.

Again, his answer was a capitulation to communist, and abdication based on self-interest. It's not really that he should has to support HK, but if you want to abdicate, you don't do it by capitulating to communist, then rationalizing that capitulation.


Yeah, if you can't speak up for a cause that promotes freedom of speech, freedom of press, democracy, opposition to authoritarian/totalitarian government persecution to which is only controversial to communist, it invalidates anything you've said about social justice.

Kerr bascially taught a **** load of kids, when it comes to your bottom line, you should capitulate and abdicate when it concerns your core values. The capitulation is the problem. Is there anyone here who thinks Kerr would oppose the Hong Kong protest, and the Hong Kong cause? There is only two reasons why he did not voice support, and it has to do with communist, and money.



LeBron said, hold me beer.

When you are a millionaire, that money makes it so you don't have to sell out your integrity. Kerr, and Lebron did. If you have to make money by capitulating to a communist government, there is an entire western world where you can find employment, and other opportunities.

Further, who does it hurt supporting HK protesters? The bulk of the money is going to the NBA, it's players, not some little guy.

LeBron telling Morey he should be quiet about supporting Hong Kong protestors (you know supporting democracy, and all) when it impacts his bottom line. Oh, he and the NBA are the victims of the HK media firestorm.

This man single highhandedly destroyed his legacy in regards to social justice.#HanoiJane

Lebron’s take upset me. He could have said something like “it’s a complex issue, I’m not informed on the subject so I don’t want to comment.” But instead he doubled and tripled down that Morey was the one that was uneducated.

I have been a pretty big lebron fan, we’re pretty much the same age, went to see him play a couple times when he was in high school, the cavs played games in Pittsburgh that we went to in his early days, but now I think I’m done.

When you have the ability to speak to the masses on human rights violations and stand up for good and you don’t because you want to make sure you capitalize on a few more million on top of the hundreds of millions you already have, it’s a disgrace. Especially to try and quote all the “when good men do nothing” type stuff on your social media.

JFC, just take the L and shut the **** up.

read through everything, as someone who's spent over a decade in and out of china first playing poker in tea houses then migrating to journalism and finally in tech... i feel like should comment

this is the smartest comment written here - people in china aren't idiots - they know what is going on and the overwhelming majority are ok with it

for reference, in the last two centuries, China has had dozens of governments and over a hundred million killed in war related famine/flooding (breaking damns/dikes to stall the enemy) etc

basically all recent history of China is of unstable governments, rebellion, warfare, disease, famine, etc - this burns a whole in your conscious - i'm not sure if any of you had grandparents who lived through the great depression - you may have noticed how such hardship had changed them even when times were great - the great depression lasted a brief moment - China has literally been through two centuries of straight hell until things finally began to stablize in recent decades - the generation in power today are the first generation in all that time to never experience any of those hardships - but the mentality is still deeply driven into the culture

all of this is very important - when you expect horrible things to happen then you don't mind a lot of things

for example, a lot of fat people end up dating and marrying other fat people, they properly prefer the SI swimsuit model but they've had their own expectations dashed by their own struggles

Yup, this is like if the latino population started demanding what we took from the spanish american war to be independent, same with florida, same with hawaii, same with russian descendants in alaska demanding independence there as well but not just that but the rest of the world taking that vocal minority very seriously and citing precedent that alaska used to to part of russia and signed over via treat etc etc

i think this is a major problem, everyone grossly exaggerates China and makes this look like a "dystopian nightmare" like that social credit score, i'm not getting into it but it's essentially the same as taking a look at all the sodomy laws in america and then having john oliver do an entire 30 minute segment that anal sex is forbidden in america and anyone who does it will go to jail - which you can do with china because nobody knows anything about china but you couldn't do with say England because too many americans would be able to say "hey I've been to England and I can speak English and I didn't see any evidence of that"

there are answers on quora that are highly upvoted about not being able to buy kitchen knives without a fake idea - i sometimes even message the guys asking why they are making things up like this and they say it's not about the truth so much as painting china as the enemy and everyone buys it

yup

again, this isn't even remotely accurate

i love you coordi, but have you considered maybe your ex blocked you because you're an ex? Or maybe she wasn't afraid but rather just didn't want to deal with your concentration camp bs?

this kerr statement is actually very accurate


in my time working in journalism i was working for a banned news agency, doing it illegally on a tourist visa and basically living a degen night life drinking and smoking most nights - we knew our phones were being bugged because sometimes we'd arrange an interview and then a few hours later the guy would call back and say he got a visit and decided it was a bad idea

but they didn't track or if they did, they didn't bother me - i got really annoyed when people texted me about drugs or whatever because I'm like "dude wtf you know my job" and all that - nothing ever happened

later transitioned to tech and was an early employee at a social network that got really big - social network like big brother censorship right? Yes, we had a massive staff only hired to cleanse the network but they were mostly just removing dick picks - I was friendly with a bunch of those guys and they were all super depressed because their lives were looking at dick pics the algorithms found and confirming it was indeed a dick pic and needed to be removed

if there was political discussion it was nearly always ignored unless it hit certain topics - but the bottom line is they'd just delete the stuff not investigate or prosecute or any of that nonsense, it'd just be treated the same way 2+2 treats dick pics - which is removing them and probably banning repeat offenders - it's literally no different and frankly, as I type this, I already feel like some people are going to say I'm lying or making it up or a shill or whatever but that's the reality

but... having said all of that, china is most certainly an issue people can't ignore

when you go past those two centuries of hell you basically have what was pretty much the wealthiest, most powerful and most advanced kingdom in the world from there on out so that's the light at the end of the tunnel of misery for them - they see what they were in recent history and then they see the glory of long before

with rome, greece, iran & egypt these prior eras of glory are more nostalgic and many of those people don't even truly consider themselves the same - a modern guy in cairo would laugh at being compared to someone in the time of the pharaohs and yet in China, they see themselves as the continuation of that history as they are one and the same it's there rightful place at the top of the global food chain that they need to reclaim

whether or not this happens in a mutually beneficial or zero sum game setting is still unclear - but China is most certainly focused on nothing other than doing that and it's basically a foregone conclusion - in many ways, it's possible to argue that it's already been achieved

after two centuries of pain, misery, humiliation and failure, the current population looks at this government with nothing but admiration for righting the ship and will stand by them through thick and thin and when we charicarize them with social credit score memes and absurd exaggerations about concentration camps and people getting locked up jail for nothing then we're never going to be prepared to speak on them on equal terms because when they deal with us, they know exactly who we are and don't go to absurd hyperbole

and for the record, in many ways, china has about some of the most personal freedoms in the world, when i am not in china I'm very conscious about all the rules and things I can or can't do

police here are unarmed and deal more like arbiters - if there is an issue, they'll show up and try to get both sides to agree to terms and end the situation then and there - which in many ways is far better than dragging two neighbors through a court battle over deciding whether or not they can cut down the tree right on the property line like we have in the US

in china, you can basically do anything you want and outside of violent crime or actively trying to overthrow the regime, there's zero chance anyhing bad would ever happen to you

but the main thing is, the people literally wouldn't want to take down the regime, this is the first good one they've had in centuries