Before today’s election, Hong Kong had dropped out of the frontpage news while the city took a deep breath without any tear gas in the air, and both sides seem to have worked together to have smooth elections. Even Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s CEO, when asked what she thought about the election prospects said that she “hoped elections could continue as planned.”
It seems everyone else had the same idea, especially the 400,000 new young voters who ran the ballot count to almost 3 million votes − a 71% turnout. This gave a sweeping win to the pro-democracy advocates who won an incredible 389 of the 452 district council slots, up from only 124 in the last election. The government’s allies held just 58 seats, a remarkable collapse from 300. A handful of independents got the rest.
No violence was reported, a sign that the city may begin healing its wounds. While this was a major political shift, we must keep in mind that these are the lowest elected offices in Hong Kong, dealing with community level issues only.
But from an egg grows a chicken, and once upon a time, a dinosaur. The democratic election success provides a solid foundation for expanding citizen involvement in Hong Kong affairs, but in no way is a path for vetoing Beijing’s control. Such an event was anticipated when the Hong Kong arrangement was set up, to prevent mainland China from ever losing political control other than through a revolution.
Signs of a potential pro-democratic majority win were already evident during the street clearing, despite a small band of protesters still being holed up in the Polytechnic Institute, scene of some of the biggest and most violent battles, with the students making massive use of Molotov cocktails against the police.
In the US if you threw one of these at a cop you would get shot on the spot, all perfectly legal under the “I feared for my life” police officer defense, which grand juries have upheld endless times.
Both sides seem to tire out at the same time
Days after the riots, protesters have been helping clean the streets and getting 600 polling-station areas ready for lines around the block. Voters showed up today to wait an hour to vote. Small groups of riot police were visible, but they had an uneventful day.
Several long time pro-Beijing districts were won by young pro-democracy candidates in their 20’s, purely due to the losers having backed the extradition issue for criminal trials, which I suspect that Beijing looks back on as a big mistake. Although it canceled the initiative, the political damage already had been done. It lit a fire in Hong Kong, as the democracy groups expanded their demands to have broader wish list to draw supporters, and it worked.
Roy Kwong Chung-Yu, who won the Pek Long constituency claimed, “The voice of the public is loud and clear: Five demands, not one less. If Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam “doesn’t listen to our voice, she must still not be awake.”
The tale of the other city
The tragic irony is that the pro-democracy groups had a strong wind in their sails due to Beijing’s extradition-act blunder. With the mass protests and escalating violence, the US’ exploitation of the situation to make China look “repressive” was not only wrong, but unnecessary.
Despite all the US huffing and puffing warnings to Beijing to not use violence against the protesters, Hong Kong authorities showed tremendous restraint in the face of increasingly violent tactics. Man retired intel vets people saw signs that the increased violence was being orchestrated by outside infiltrators to trigger harsher tactics against the protesters which could be used for US anti-China propaganda.
Protesters roast political opponent alive
The real victims were those we watched on video being savaged by college age protesters. The most famous victim of their cruelty will be the unfortunate and anonymous Mr. Lee, who finally has been awakened from his induced ten-day coma to learn he has the become the face, or what is left of his face, of the barbarity of the US-backed protesters in Hong Kong.
Fortunately, the monsters that did this to him wanted full credit for the deed, so they videoed it all in HD for us so see, similar to how ISIS filmed its beheadings for propaganda. I knew when I watched Mr. Lee running away in flames that the extremist protesters had just signed their political death warrants. We pray that they are disclosed to the police for proper punishment.
Mr. Lee has a female victim companion, also unknown at this time, a middle-aged woman that was savagely beaten by college age young men with construction rebar steel clubs, while being videoed. What is not shown in both of these videos is the “Made in the USA” stamp on all of this. No Chinese political protester would ever do such a thing to a Chinese woman. Only hired thugs, the kind typically used by intel agencies to trigger harsher response from the authorities would perform such acts.
My research found that even some of protesters had also joined the horribly burned legacy of the riots by fumbling their Molotov cocktails and lighting themselves up. They are now forever entwined on a two-headed memorial coin for these riots.
Hong Kong riot police refused to overreact to protester violence
The Hong Kong authorities showed tremendous professionalism and restraint in preventing injuries and death to both protesters and civilians. Although Mr. Pompeo got on the record this summer saying that the US did not advocate violence in the Hong Kong protests, he must think we can’t remember the US-inflicted carnage on Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya.
In Syria, the US total number given for civilians killed by US bombings, (1300), is being found in single mass graves, over and over, just inside Raqqa alone. There is a drone video tour online that takes you around the city showing you the sites and the body counts.
When the interrogations of those arrested in Hong Kong are completed, we may learn a lot more about how independent the rioters really were. In my research today, I found many statements for their asking US to intervene on their behalf this summer. I suspect that the Hong Kong authorities will have extensive intelligence files on the birthing of these fire-bombing riots, timed to take place at a critical phase of the US-China trade talks and just before the election.
Interference in other countries’ affairs and elections is just another day’s work for many US embassies. We can look at what is going on in South America, once again, as the descendants of the Spanish conquistadors are being supported by the US against the native Indian populations who were decimated in the early colonial period, with millions dying in the silver mines alone.
There has been little protesting by the American left against this current wave to reconquer South America and economically enslave the natives in a new round of exploitation and poverty.
We have all been here before
As Senior VT Editor Gordon Duff has mention in his articles, since the Vietnam War protests there has really been nothing of consequence that grabbed the attention of the whole country since then to end another useless war. But we did have a major poll published last week that 60% of the US soldiers and officers that fought in Afghanistan and Iraq felt neither was was not worth it, a late admission, but one that is public now.
The anti-Vietnam war protests were covered over by historically calling them “campus protests”, inferring they were civilian-student run. They were actually done by the Vietnam veterans who poured into America’s colleges on the GI bill and became the heart and soul of the anti-war movement.
There were 8000 Vietnam War vets at Michigan State when Gordon was there for his graduate work. If word went out that there was a war protest at noon the next day, 6000 of them would be there; and the terrified campus police never messed with the PTSD vets.
The organization of these campus protests were typically done by officers, Special forces officers. Today the officers are basically nowhere to be seen fighting against the fake war scourge, rolling over for the proxy terror wars. If you don’t think the US was willing to play with fire in Hong Kong, I will try to get Mr. Lee on the phone to explain it to you.
Jim W. Dean, managing editor for Veterans Today, producer/host of Heritage TV Atlanta, specially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.