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Saturday, August 24, 2019

We Should Hope Hong Kong Protesters Win

Actual Resistance against actual tyranny is going on in Hong Kong right now.

Michael Yon is still recording the resistance live. Right now.

The odds are against Hong Kongers.

But who knows? Maybe the mainlanders will see the Hong Kong resistance as an opportunity to leverage their own freedom.

UPDATE: One aspect of the Hong Kong protests I do not like is the practice by protesters of shining laser pointer lights at the police. That is no little thing because it can damage eyes. Do the protesters want to anger the police or get them on their side?

Shining them on objects is fine, of course. But the protesters had a symbol of resistance when a protester had an eye put out by a police non-lethal round. The protesters should not give the Chinese Communist Party a symbol of their own by destroying or damaging the eye of a police officer confronting the protesters.

UPDATE: It seems like bags of marbles scattered in front of protesters when the police charge and the protesters flee "like water" would be a more effective protest tactic.

UPDATE: My riot control training was limited. But it never involved raggedy charges as the Hong Kong police do in the video. Everything was phalanx-like or moving-diamond walking formations for blocking or moving protesters or for capturing protesters.

But tactics may have changed a lot since the late 1980s!

UPDATE: Related thoughts:

Will the demonstrations in Hong Kong come to be seen as the end of a 30-year period, beginning with the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, of the American-Chinese economic engagement and entanglement christened "Chimerica" by historian Niall Ferguson?

American pressure at a time of Chinese economic weakness and political opposition is well timed.

UPDATE: Is Peking setting the stage for a brutal crackdown?