China 2

..i thought you had it right krop when you separated what was going on in hong kong. when you talked about the right in the streets. there will also be provocateurs. external influences. and the media focus is always to inflate the violence. to divide people.

..this struggle began as a peaceful majority and will continue to be that no matter the optics. this struggle has it's unique history but is not different then the other uprisings happening around the globe these days. imho.   

WATCH: The 'Unarmed and Peaceful' Hong Kong Protesters (and vid)

https://twitter.com/liamstone_19/status/1205569728497909760

Redefining mental health amid collective trauma

Hong Kong society has been undergoing an incredible upheaval and transformation since the million-strong protests in June against the extradition bill, and few residents of the city have been left untouched by the frequent protests, tear gas in every district of Hong Kong, violent clashes with police and brutal scenes of crackdown. Although the movement has united groups ranging widely in age, class, ethnicity, politics and religion, it has also introduced generational conflict into many families with the polarisation of society into a large supportive majority and an older minority in opposition. Given the government’s continued use of the police to repress social dissent and denial of a political resolution, despite overwhelming defeat in the recent District Council elections, there is no end in sight to the conflict.

Inevitably, social movements and upheavals of such widespread scale and impact trigger powerful emotions, particularly for supporters of the movement who face institutional oppression and police brutality. Fear, anxiety, rage, helplessness, and despair are completely natural responses to the collapse in trust in our institutions to ensure personal safety and deliver justice; those who are resisting anonymously on the front lines, with very real risks of injury and arrest and often without their families’ support, are especially vulnerable because of their exposure to traumatising situations.

Collective trauma

It is not an understatement to term what Hong Kongers are experiencing “collective trauma”—traumatic events that are directed at and affect whole groups and communities. More than diagnostic labels of depression, anxiety, or post-traumatic stress disorder, “collective trauma” highlights the inextricable link between state violence, sociopolitical oppression, and the psychological wounds they cause. Importantly, by defining the wound as one that is inflicted by the system onto a community, it allows us to connect to others who are similarly situated in solidarity and opens up the possibility of imagining collective solutions for healing.

Throughout the anti-extradition protests, old paradigms have been discarded and new ways of working together have revolutionised and vitalised the movement. Inspired by ideas such as “we all climb the hill, each in our own way,” “not cutting the mat,” “be water,” and through a leaderless/leaderful model, “the revolution of our times” has generated impressive demonstrations of mutual aid and solidarity between radicals and pacifists, old and young, and across numerous occupations—lawyers, construction workers, medics, social workers, housewives, teachers, financial professionals, etc. Critically, it has also triggered a rethinking within professions of their complicity with oppressive and dehumanising structures. The government has weaponised the legal, medical, and social care systems against protesters, engendering an emergent resistance—“activist” organisations of doctors, psychologists and social workers, dating from the Umbrella Movement, are an indispensable presence on the front lines, in underground clinics and Telegram counselling services, and mobilise to contest the official discourse from the government. A rallying cry of social workers exhorts, “Don’t become tools for ‘maintaining stability’!”

quote:

Throughout the anti-extradition protests, old paradigms have been discarded and new ways of working together have revolutionised and vitalised the movement. Inspired by ideas such as “we all climb the hill, each in our own way,” “not cutting the mat,” “be water,” and through a leaderless/leaderful model, “the revolution of our times” has generated impressive demonstrations of mutual aid and solidarity between radicals and pacifists, old and young, and across numerous occupations—lawyers, construction workers, medics, social workers, housewives, teachers, financial professionals, etc. Critically, it has also triggered a rethinking within professions of their complicity with oppressive and dehumanising structures. The government has weaponised the legal, medical, and social care systems against protesters, engendering an emergent resistance—“activist” organisations of doctors, psychologists and social workers, dating from the Umbrella Movement, are an indispensable presence on the front lines, in underground clinics and Telegram counselling services, and mobilise to contest the official discourse from the government. A rallying cry of social workers exhorts, “Don’t become tools for ‘maintaining stability’!”

quote:

Mental “health” and “disorder” have always been socially defined, closely tied to what is considered “normal” behaviour by the powerful, as the histories of homosexuality, gendered and racialised diagnoses amply illustrate. How can we begin to understand what “mental health” means when the threat of injury and arrest is ever-present and the social fabric is rent apart? How do we even define “normality” under such extreme conditions? The liberation psychologist Martín-Baró writes, “reacting to such [collective traumatisation] with uncontrollable anxiety or with some form of autism must be considered a normal reaction to abnormal circumstances, perhaps the only way a person can cling to life and withstand such a suffocating knot of social relations.” The state of student protesters at PolyU after a week of police siege serves as a disturbing echo of this. It is within such “limit situations” that the inadequacy of seeing human distress as individualised illness becomes clear.

More insidiously, by placing the pathology in individuals, the oppressive structures—state violence, human rights abuses, extreme inequality and poor living conditions, Hong Kong’s bleak future—that are causing such despair and anxiety in so many of us disappear from view, to be replaced by the double whammy of a responsibility on the person to somehow “fix themselves” through seeking help from doctors, taking medication, practicing self-care, avoiding the news; as well as the intense social stigma attached to the label of being “mentally ill.” This individualised definition of “mental health”—essentially, to be “functional” and content within a distorted and traumatising society—alienates us from others who are suffering in the same position. The stigma turns us inward in shame, and towards individualised solutions of pills and counselling that struggle to meaningfully explain our suffering.

If mental health workers are to commit themselves to justice, collective healing, and addressing the real needs of the people they serve, they must confront their own professions’ ideological allegiance to the established order and resist becoming tools of the state by uncritically propagating such discourses to the people they support. And once we reorient our collective understanding of mental health to be social as well as political, it becomes clear that any “cure” must address not only the symptoms that manifest in individual suffering, but the root causes of structural dehumanisation and social injustice.

Debunking Hong-Kong 'Protesters' Lies, Spin & Propaganda

https://twitter.com/Anonylyzer13/status/1213091321683906560

"Just how u imagined it? Take that Tyranny!'

It would do everyone well to remember that the latest election showed that Hong Kong people are almost evenly split between anti-government and pro-government supporters. Pointing out the assholes on either side is acceptable without having to say that not all Chinese people are assholes.

Sorry I am not sure of the stream you mean. All the streams seem to have vigorous debate, not one viewpoint.

Danny Haiphong: My Trip To China Exposed the Shameful Lies Peddled By The American Empire

https://www.blackagendareport.com/my-trip-china-exposed-shameful-lies-pe...

"...There is a broad consensus between the [North] American ruling class and the so-called [North] American left about China. The consensus position is that China is a tyrannical, oppressive and politically backward dictatorship. Fear of a globalized Yellow Peril often emerges whenever China becomes a political conversation in [North] America. My two weeks spent in the People's Republic of China with the China-US Solidarity Network's Silk Road delegation, led by Lee Siu Hin and former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, did not merely seek to challenge the many lies that the American Empire tells about the rising power in the East. The trip exposed the lies of the American Empire with a heavy dose of truth about actual conditions that exist for the people of China.

The importance of this trip cannot be underestimated given the US' ever increasing imperial aggression toward China. In fact, China has been labeled by the Trump administration's National Security Strategy document as the greatest threat to US imperial interests alongside Russia. US imperial aggression toward Iran, Syria or anywhere else in the Global South cannot be divorced from the Empire's larger strategic goal of overturning the People's Republic of China. The truth is that peace-loving people in the US would love China were it not for the plethora of racist, imperialist lies that have been programmed into the minds of Westerners. None of the Empire's lies held up in my travels from Beijing to Xian, then to Dunhuong to Urumqi - known as the capital of Xinjiang, Uyghur Autonomous Region.

I didn't see concentration camps for Uyghurs in Xinjiang. In fact it is difficult to walk more than a mile without running into a Mosque. Every street sign in the city is translated in both Mandarin and Uyghur languages. Security is more plentiful in Urumqi than in Beijing or X'ian and for good reason. Most Westerners are unaware that Xinjiang Province is the site of numerous terror attacks that have taken the lives of hundreds of people. As recently as 2014, the foreign-backed terrorist organization East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETM) committed several attacks in Urumqi, killing dozens and injuring hundreds more. It is important to note that the founder of the broader Uyghur independence movement, Anwar Yusef Turani, operates his 'government in exile' in Washington DC and that the World Uyghur Congress is funded heavily by the National Endowment for Democracy, a virtual branch of the CIA..."

NDPP wrote:

Pepe Escobar: Why the New Silk Roads Are A 'Threat' to US Bloc

https://www.asiatimes.com/2020/01/article/why-the-new-silk-roads-are-a-t...

"The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), as in the Chinese-led New Silk Roads, are a historical game-changer in infinite ways. Slowly and surely, we are evolving towards the configuration of an economically interlinked group of top Eurasian land powers, from Shanghai to the Ruhr valley, profiting in a coordinated manner from the huge technological know-how of Germany and China and the enormous energy reserves of Russia. The raging 2020s may signify the historical juncture when this bloc surpasses the current hegemonic Atlanticist bloc.

No wonder strategic fear was glaringly visible at the NATO summit in London last month, which called for ratcheting up pressure on Russia-China. What the New Silk Roads are proposing is wide-ranging economic, interlinked integration from East Asia through Central Asia to Iran, Iraq and Syria all the way to the Eastern Mediterranean. Just like the Ancient Silk Roads. No wonder vested War Party interests are so uncomfortable with this real peace 'threat."

I am not convinced that China's threat to the US and other powers is really this initiative. I think China poses a much more dangerous threat.

We all know about Trudeau's comment about admiring China's dictatorship for being able to get things done. This is the real threat.

China does not have a multiparty system and does not have changing governments. It has a centralized system. This allows the Chinese government the ability to do larger, and longer term projects (silk road is just one) without concern for local or national debate. This means that in many cases large initiatives that would be political are not. 

Technology and the environment are both changing rapidly. 

While I described China above, I can describe the present political situtaitons of most other countries like the US as fragmented and frozen. It is unlikely that any of the other countries can react in time either to compete with anything China is doing as they will debate it until after China is done.

My statments here are not about endorsing or criticizing either political or economic system. I am simply observing that the present context means that nobody can compete with China effectively on any large-scale project. Other countries can compete on small scale innovations and there are breakthroughs possible. However, if you turn any of these to the need for collective action, there is no country that can implement them in real time other than China.

Put simply, the silk road is a symptom of why the West cannot compete with China but not the cause.

Many people reacted angrily to Trudeau for his comment, perhaps in part becuase they were threatened by the strong element of truth in it. Many people here and in Canada support more consensus and political competition models. They know there is a price for each system. The cost of getting support and consensus is real. there is also a cost for not doing so. We are having a debate about pipelines along these lines. Neither system ultimately is better so much as it is different and faced with challenges each one does osme thigns better. Getting things done -- China for sure but they would not be down for a debate with the people living along a pipeline if they wanted one. 

As uncomfortable as it is, when the world finally realizes just how screwed we are on the environment, it may be China that will not only be able to offer some quick mitigation through a mass action and concentration of resources, but it might even be able to do it.

This is the double sided coins that represent both our system and theirs.

Watched, judged, detained

Leaked Chinese government records reveal detailed surveillance reports on Uyghur families and Beijing's justification for mass detentions

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/02/asia/xinjiang-china-karakax-document-intl-hnk/

NDPP wrote:

Inside the World Uyghur Congress

https://twitter.com/ajitxsingh/status/1235998067976896513

"THREAD:  Meet the World Uyghur Congress - The US-based far-right regime change network that is the source of nearly all Western reporting on China's Uyghur Muslims. Working with Western and Turkish fascists, the WUC's stated goal is 'the fall of China."

The Western backed propaganda arm of these nice people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkistan_Islamic_Party

NorthReport wrote:

Nnevvy: Chinese troll campaign on Twitter exposes a potentially dangerous disconnect with the wider world

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/14/asia/nnevvy-china-taiwan-twitter-intl-hnk/index.html

This is a great case-study in why we should be able to post even biased articles from biased sources. 

With a little critical thinking you can learn from them.

So in this article pause for a moment and look at it without regard for who the actors are and consider the dynamics. Consider that a verbal attack, that is unwarranted, on another country will produce a wave of anger that can start a rhetorical war and an "unreasonable" response. So in this case it was a claim that a part of China was not a part of China. But it could have been about any country. Would it cause blind outrage if it were claim that a part of Canada was not Canadian? How about if it touched the US Nerve on whether Texas was American or stolen Mexican land?

You think Canada and the US would respond in a balanced way? Why expect different from China? 

Apply this to the entire conversation and consider that if you value conversation between countries that it is important to avoid stupid rhetorical ignorant attacks on other countries becuase the response will be to trigger an uncontrolable inability to deal with each other.

We owe no loyalty to one country's fight with another. We owe no loyalty to one government or another. We can learn from this article -- read through its bias to see in fact that attacks on countries - particularly national pride -- will never get us anywhere. I am not defending nationalism. I hate it in all its forms. But I am aware of what happens when you trigger it. There is no need to engage in that here.

South China Sea: Vietnam approaches UN against China

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/ChanakyaCode/south-china-sea-vietnam-approaches-un-against-china/

Does brash, rash Zhao Lijian really speak for the Chinese government?

• China’s old-school diplomats, such as its ambassador to the United States, are being drowned out by new voices like the foreign ministry spokesman
• Mixed messaging is, of course, part of the diplomatic toolkit, but given the stakes in US-China relations, some tact and prudence would go a long way

https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3080339/does-brash-rash-zhao-lijian-really-speak-chinese-government

It’s unfair to blame China for coronavirus pandemic, Lancet editor tells state media

• Richard Horton tells state broadcaster CCTV the rest of the world should try to work with China rather than pointing the finger
• British medical journal’s editor-in-chief says ‘China is not responsible’ for the Covid-19 outbreak first identified in Wuhan

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3082606/its-unfair-blame-china-coronavirus-pandemic-lancet-editor-tells

Chinese embassy publishes 16-point coronavirus rebuttal

https://www.axios.com/china-embassy-coronavirus-disinformation-propaganda-c50db506-d84e-4418-bdcd-537bdff17615.html

The South China Morning Post was reporting about China's attempts to keep the COVID-19 outbreak secret months ago.  

Is Canada being a member of 5 Eyes, part of these reports?

China Lied, 240,380 (Updated) have Died

https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/blogs/tim-blair/china-lied-239888-and-counting-have-died/news-story/5debed09c90504bdc851c9df2d3ea1a3 

Coronavirus NSW: Dossier lays out case against China bat virus program

https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/coronavirus/bombshell-dossier-lays-out-case-against-chinese-bat-virus-program/news-story/55add857058731c9c71c0e96ad17da60

Trump Escalates Attacks on China Over COVID-19

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/02/usch-m02.html

"In his press conference on Thursday, US President Donald Trump stepped up his propaganda war and threats against China blaming it for the deadly COVID-19 pandemic...

As do the usual gullibles that never hear an imperial dogwhistle they don't answer and amplify.

Pressured by China, E.U. Softens Report on Covid-19 Disinformation

A revised report shows how Beijing reacts swiftly and effectively to tamp down Western criticism of its pandemic response.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/24/world/europe/disinformation-china-eu-coronavirus.html

This virus is not a China problem per say, it's a problem for all of us. And if there is nothing to hide, let's have an independent international investigation to ascertain as much as posible what happened, and take preventative measures to help reduce the likelyhood of a repeat performance. My hunch is just like the rest of us, most Chinese want to know the truth. 

DuFu: China's Greatest Poet

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000h3dq/du-fu-chinas-greatest-poet

Another personal attack from a usual suspect. Why not try debating the issues for example and attempt to counter the arguments made in the Wired magazine article?     

Inside the Early Days of China’s Coronavirus Coverup

The dawn of a pandemic—as seen through the news and social media posts that vanished from China’s internet

AMONG JOURNALISTS AND social critics in China, the 404 error code, which announces that the content on a webpage is no longer available, has become a badge of honor. “At this point, if you haven’t had a 404 under your belt, can you even call yourself a journalist?” a Chinese reporter, who requested anonymity, jokingly asked me.

https://www.wired.com/story/inside-the-early-days-of-chinas-coronavirus-coverup/

NDPP wrote:

"...What's important is not stigmatising a country or attacking a country, but standing in solidarity in fighting against the common enemy,' Tedros said."

That guy Tedros lol

China Online Museum!

https://www.comuseum.com/contact/

13 Movies to Help You Understand Mainland Chinese Culture

https://theculturetrip.com/asia/china/articles/13-movies-to-help-you-understand-mainland-chinese-culture/

China says detained Canadians 'in good health'

https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/china-says-detained-canadians-in-good-health-1.4916707