Tag Archives: WorldNews

Lam: HK security law does not spell doom and gloom

Issuing rear view glasses for everyone so they can see who is about to grab them up for breaking up society…

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HONG KONG • Hong Kong’s national security law does not spell “doom and gloom”, its leader Carrie Lam said yesterday, as she tried to calm unease over legislation that critics say could quash freedoms that have underpinned the city’s success as a financial hub.

The sweeping legislation that Beijing imposed on the former British colony punishes what China defines as secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces, with up to life in prison.

It came into force at the same time it was made public, just before midnight on June 30, with police arresting more than 300 people in protests the next day – about 10 of them, including a 15-year-old, for suspected violations of it.

“Surely, this is not doom and gloom for Hong Kong,” Mrs Lam, the city’s Beijing-backed Chief Executive, told a weekly news conference. “I’m sure, with the passage of time… confidence will grow in ‘one country, two systems’ and in Hong Kong’s future.”

The legislation has been criticised by democracy activists and Western governments for undermining freedoms guaranteed under the “one country, two systems” formula agreed when Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

Hong Kong and Chinese officials say the law, which gives mainland security agencies an enforcement presence in the city for the first time, is vital to plug holes in national security defences, exposed by the city’s failure to pass such legislation as required under the Basic Law, its mini-Constitution.

Mrs Lam said cases involving the new mainland agents would be “rare”, but nevertheless, national security was a “red line” that should not be crossed.

The law was not harsh when compared with that of other countries, she said. “It is a rather mild law. Its scope is not as broad as that in other countries and even China.”

Critics say the aim of the legislation is to stamp out a pro-democracy movement that brought months of protests, at times violent, to the city last year.

Late on Monday, Hong Kong released details of how the law would be implemented, outlining police powers over the Internet, including the ability to ask publishers to remove information deemed a threat to national security.

Internet firms and their staff face fines and up to one year in jail, if they do not comply and police can seize their equipment. The companies are also expected to provide identification records and decryption assistance.

But Mrs Lam said she had not noticed widespread fears and the law would restore the city’s status as one of the safest in the world after last year’s violent pro-democracy protests. Despite her assurances, the law has had a chilling effect.

“If Hong Kong police and the government do not get information from Facebook, they may have other means,” said 45-year-old playwright Yan Pat-To.

“The fear has spread over freedom of expression.”

Shortly after the law came into force, pro-democracy activists disbanded their organisations.

Many shops have removed protest-related products and decorations, and public libraries have removed some books seen as supportive of the democracy movement.

Protesters have quickly learnt that actions that were not worthy of police attention a little more than a week ago could now warrant an arrest, a DNA sample and search of their home.

Ms Janet Pang, a lawyer for several protesters arrested for acts of inciting or abetting subversion or secession, said she believes it is the first time genetic data has been taken from protesters arrested for minor offences.

“It is unnecessary, intrusive and disproportionate,” she said. “I don’t know why they had to take DNA samples. We don’t know what kind of database they’re trying to build which might be sent back to the central government in Beijing.”

Police said the samples were to prove – or disprove – that those held had committed the offences.

The final power of interpretation of the law lies with the authorities in mainland China, where human rights groups have reported arbitrary detentions and disappearances. China has been clamping down on dissent and tightening censorship.

Mrs Lam, asked about media freedom, said if reporters could guarantee they would not breach the new law, she could guarantee they would be allowed to report freely.

“Ultimately, time and facts will tell that this law will not undermine human rights and freedoms,” she said.

REUTERS, BLOOMBERG

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Donald Trump launches baseless attack on Bubba Wallace over noose ‘hoax’

Full on racism by the President

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Donald Trump has launched a baseless attack on Bubba Wallace, Nascar’s only black driver, over an incident in which a noose was found in his team garage last month.

“Has @BubbaWallace apologized to all of those great Nascar drivers & officials who came to his aid, stood by his side, & were willing to sacrifice everything for him, only to find out that the whole thing was just another HOAX?” wrote the president on Monday morning. “That & Flag decision has caused lowest ratings EVER!”

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The black lives matter backlash is generating its own fake culture war | Chaminda Jayanetti

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A panicked right spurs controversy where there is none in order to discredit a perfectly reasonable set of demands

Pity the poor culture warrior, their mental gymnastics burning far more calories than pre-corona gym sessions ever could.

A statue was torn down, and they demanded people follow the proper channels. Statues were taken down via the “proper channels”, and they decried the panicked response. Reviews were announced to avoid a panicked response, and they raged against the reviews. When all else fails, they just conjure controversy out of thin air.

Take the Telegraph. Last week it claimed that the future of a 22-year-old statue of the Roman emperor Constantine outside York Minster was being “looked at”, after church officials “received complaints that the Roman emperor supported slavery”. The story was then picked up by the Daily Mail.

There was one problem. York Minster swiftly clarified it had not received a single complaint about the statue, and ruled out removing it.

This is part of a pattern. Shortly after Edward Colston’s statue was torn down in Bristol, Boris Johnson played up the threat to the Westminster statue of Winston Churchill. Hardly anyone was calling for its removal, but Johnson made it the centre of his response to the Black Lives Matter protests, and the Telegraph duly plastered it across the front page.

Write-ups of the Churchill statue also focused on the role of London mayor Sadiq Khan, a go-to hate figure on the nationalist right. This tactic was repeated recently, when newspapers roped Meghan Markle into their coverage of Prince Harry’s “support for a ban” (actually a review that almost certainly won’t lead to a ban) of the song Swing Low, Sweet Chariot by the Rugby Football Union.

The drivers of this dynamic are not hard to identify. Black Lives Matter is a movement, larger and broader than the organisations that bear its name. It challenges the privileges of the majority who do not experience racism, and the image that majority has of Britain and its history. And some of that majority take at least some of the movement’s arguments on board – while others lash out against it.

Those who lash out are less numerous than you might imagine. Polling conducted days after Colston’s statue was removed found most respondents agreed with the stated aims of the Black Lives Matter movement. Only 15% disagreed – around one in seven. Respondents were more evenly divided on the removal of slavery-related statues, and displayed outright hostility to removing Westminster’s Churchill statue.

But the one in seven who oppose even Black Lives Matter’s broad aims are overrepresented in the rightwing press, on talk radio and the broader network of rage merchants on social media. The organisations they work for claim to represent the unheard British majority, but they do not. They are aghast at the concept of structural racism, which implicates people and institutions far beyond their comfort zone of condemning neo-Nazis and football thugs.

Their interests are not served by tackling racialised economic inequality. The notion that unequal outcomes have structural causes affronts their smug certainty that it’s all about “personal responsibility”. And, of course, their bottom lines are not harmed by whipping up rage.

The problem is that they cannot win fighting against the basic principles of this movement because the public are broadly in favour of them. So their answer is to focus on what people are against, find examples of that, no matter how tenuous, and use them to discredit an entire political project.

The irony is that these critics of Black Lives Matter call it divisive. Given that the campaign challenges Britain’s self-image, its understanding of its history, and structural discrimination against a minority, what is notable is how little division it has provoked – contrast the support for BLM in both the US and the UK to the widespread antipathy towards Martin Luther King in the United States of the 1960s. It makes angry people very angry, but they are in the minority.

Instead, it is supporters of the populist right who are desperate to stoke division by reducing issues of fundamental importance to ephemeral noise and fake news. Their careers, and their ideology, depend on it.

• Chaminda Jayanetti is a journalist who covers politics and public services

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