by Ramin Mazaheri for The Saker Blog
I am not at liberty to divulge my source, but since The New York Times has no problem mongering war based on anonymous sources, I have decided to release a leak I received:
This is the unedited version of a recent column published by The New York Times which was written by a member of the ongoing anti-China protests in Hong Kong.
The leak is mainly the inclusion of points which The Times cut from their final version. I have published them here, and the reader can judge for themselves if the cuts were legitimate, or if they were perhaps made in order to obscure from the reader the author’s true political intentions and motivations.
The parts of the article published by The New York Times are in italics, while what they cut follow in a normal font and are in quotations.
HONG KONG — I am one of the Hong Kong protesters. I took part in the two mass marches earlier this month, the June 12 protest that turned violent and the blockade of police headquarters on June 21. Today I am among the tens of thousands of protesters on the streets outside of the Legislative Council and I witnessed a group of them storm the building. I am not optimistic that we can get what we are asking for.
“It’s not that my bad English forces me to use the word ‘I’ five times in four sentences – it’s that my political ideology has been schooled in Western individualism. I believe that Hong Kong must not only preserve an ‘island mentality’ but make ‘every human an island’, like in the West.”
If the extradition bill is passed, the Chinese Communist Party will start targeting and purging its perceived opponents here, one by one, group after group.
“For example, they will surely start with the tax evaders. Then they will go on to the corporate financial criminals. Pretty soon, Hong Kong will lose its status as a global tax haven. Hong Kong’s prosperity is built on freedom – freedom to tax evade – and this bill threatens our noble culture.”
Back in 2014, when I was 25, I participated in the Umbrella Movement and joined the call for real universal suffrage in Hong Kong. I would spend most nights at the sit-ins, after work. But when the protesters were removed after 79 days of peaceful occupation, with no concession from the government, I experienced an overwhelming feeling of powerlessness.
“And then many years later in 2016, when I had become a wizened and elderly 27, I watched France with envy at the way Nuit Debout protesters were being violently rousted every night for months. I thought, ‘This is the Western liberal democratic government to which I ardently aspire!’ That’s why I was sad to learn that France also does not have ‘real’ universal suffrage either – the signatures of 500 mayors is required to run for president, and that is how their political elite control their selection outcome. And then I learned about the Electoral College in the United States, and how it really makes our Election Committee look infinitely more representative, wow! I promise that if I am put into power that I will never mention any of this in public again.
By the time the current movement started, I, like many other young people, had been inspired by Edward Leung Tin-kei, a spokesman for Hong Kong Indigenous, a localist group that calls for the independence of Hong Kong — or that used to call for independence, before doing so publicly triggered reprisals from the government.
“Hong Kong Indigenous is, of course, so deeply rooted that our political culture is truly embedded in our very soil – this is why so many of us have English first names. Hong Kong Indigenous goes all the way back to 2015, when Hong Kong society lived as hunter-gatherers who worshipped a sun god – only extremely high usury rates could ensure that the sun would rise every morning. He was at eternal war with the ocean god, who threatened to submerge the island unless bloody sacrifices of virgin socialists were made. Like all far-right, rabidly anti-socialist parties, our party believes that the old ideas are truly the best ones. And like all nativist parties (Look at my byline – I didn’t want to be listed as some sort of leftist ‘activist’: Mr. Chan is a Hong Konger. What’s better than that?!.) – the best ideas come from the natives and not foreigners.’
At the same time, the police’s brutality helped bring out nearly two million Hong Kongers to the streets the following Sunday. That number, a record, surprised me. That’s about the size of the People’s Liberation Army of China or the population of Slovenia. When Israel became a country in 1948, it had fewer than 900,000 people.”
“What I am implying by choosing Slovenia – instead of other countries with 2 million people, such as Botswana or Bahrain – is that Hong Kong aspires to be considered as a European country. Furthermore, we also want to be like Slovenia in that we want to be a ‘Western’ nation which was ‘freed’ via a ‘humanitarian intervention’. I hope the subtlety is not lost on Pentagon/NGO readers? By comparing us with Israel the appeal for sympathy is obvious, and to deny us that sympathy is clearly now a crime of ‘anti-semitism by association.”
An important idea that has been circulating in online forums is now firmly planted in my mind. It is called the Marginal Violence Theory (暴力邊緣論), and it holds that protesters should not actively use or advocate violence, but instead use the most aggressive nonviolent actions possible to push the police and the government to their limits.
“It was very important to provide a Chinese-language link to this concept, which The New York Times never does anywhere else, because we simply must foment insurrection in all socialist-inspired democracies. I urge The New York Times to translate this into Farsi immediately, in order to show what good leftists they are.”
Though they have damaged property, they are not seeking to harm anyone.
Such actions are a way to make noise and gain attention. And if they prompt the police to respond with unnecessary force, as happened on June 12, then the public will feel disapproval and disgust for the authorities. The protesters should thoughtfully escalate nonviolence, maybe even resort to mild force, to push the government to the edge.
“The difference between ‘nonviolence’ and ‘mild force’ should not be attributed to my poor logic, but solely to my bad English. By ‘mild force’ I mean the mildest amount of human casualties which ‘humanitarian interventions” cause, of course. What could be milder than a sweet, sweet Western-led “humanitarian intervention”, which is sour only to tyrants? Such interventions have a taste of teriyaki to some, but teriyaki is a worthless Japanese, non-Hong Konger invention – which we will obviously ban – so I don’t need to elaborate here further.
That’s one reason that we, the protesters, should be careful not to make certain demands at this moment. Asking for self-determination or Hong Kong’s full independence from China are controversial ideas.
“But clearly… these are my real demands. I don’t want to make them yet, and I even want to admit that I just don’t want to make them “at this moment“… because… uh… because I think you are so stupid that you won’t realize that these actually ARE my demands which I WILL make as soon as humanly possible. Have I pointed out that I am the brainchild of a far-right, nativist movement?”
I distrust the older generation of pro-democracy politicians — those champagne Socialists who use fancy words to get votes, but whose actions over the years haven’t help Hong Kong make progress toward democracy.
“What I am trying to say – if I dispense with my usual East Asian delicacy – is ‘old people are untrustworthy’. All of them. And also: Socialists are phonies. And they use words and concepts that are too complicated and “fancy”. Basically, you are ok if you are young, anti-socialist and a native Hong Konger. That you are also a far-right capitalist is so obvious that I don’t even need to mention it.
We have traded the prolonged, organized mass sit-ins of the Umbrella Movement for spontaneous actions and momentary disruptions. The siege of police headquarters on June 21 lasted less than a day. Unpredictability makes us less vulnerable to repression. Bruce Lee’s advice, “Be water, my friend,” has become a motto of the movement.
“Without a doubt the single best source of political guidance is Hollywood. Of course, I don’t read Lenin, Mao or even the daily newspaper very often, but I doubt they were as cool as Bruce Lee. Old people are not cool; hardworking socialists are not cool; Bruce Lee is. I wish we could hang out – he’d show me some karate moves, and we’d just vibe and flow together, just like water. Which is why I end my column with this:”
But being water doesn’t simply mean being fluid and elusive. To be effective, we must also be everywhere. Sometimes very large numbers of us will march all together. But even when it’s just a few of us acting, it should be with the support of many.
Final note from Ramin:
Now that political ideology is as clear as water, but it’s about as deep as dew.
Fred ended his column there, but it’s up to the reader to see if he is ideologically worthy of being a member of the vanguard party he believes his group should be. Too bad Bruce Lee isn’t around to guide us to political enlightenment with some punching and kicking exercises.
Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China. His work has appeared in various journals, magazines and websites, as well as on radio and television. He can be reached on Facebook.
Great column. I am still laughing.
Good burn, Ramin. I hope both the NYT and the ‘protester’ feel suitable roasted by it.
Left out the very democratic way the British choose their prime minister, surely the brits are a beacon of democracy.
The unending reign of terror of ‘austerity’, the homelessness epidemic, the Brexit fiasco, the campaign to destroy Corbyn, the parasitism of the City of London’s global parasitism, the Skripal false flag, the lynching of Assange (so much for the fecking ‘Rule of Law’), the archipelago of overseas tax avoidance sites in ‘British Crown Colonies’ and the history of genocide and looting world-wide that killed more people than any other malign force in history, until the USA took that title, all show you what these compradore, Westernised Oriental Gentlemen, really stand for.
Removed. Off-topic. Stop making the same comment over and over from the same site under different articles. Mod.
I’m a bit ignorant on this topic but can someone explain why China agreed to a one country two systems policy when it regained Hong Kong in 1997? Obviously this path ensured that the inhabitants of Hong Kong would never show full loyalty to China. China should have implemented its own system on the island and given everyone the option to leave for England who they so dearly loved if they wanted to. I think China made a big mistake then.
One huge problem. The Brits didn’t want them. They only wanted to rich ones.
China made a deal, and as usual, they kept to their side of the agreement. Whereas the English, as usual, reneged on it and began using Hong Kong as a base to subvert China.
Let’s see: supporter of tax evaders, rabidly anti-socialist, favoring the extractors of wealth, money-launderers, prone to violence, c.i.a. Kind of a dyslexic bolshevic. The nyt edited, protecting their patrons.
I talked to a friend in China this morning about what is happening in Hong Kong.
Of course, both of us are from the ‘older generation’ (I, 64, she 56) so obviously our thoughts are not worth considering by those wise young people.
My wife is Chinese, born in 1966, into the heart of the cultural revolution. She knows a lot about China. We discuss Tiananmen Square, and she says that the gullible and naive students were being played by the political forces opposed to Deng Xiaoping. Long story, but not quite what we read in the western press.
I told my friend in Shenzhen that students are naive and gullible and easily led.
I agreed that the Chinese government would have had people in the protests to encourage the students to break the law so the Chinese government could crack down. I also said that Western governments would have had people in the protests in the hope of another ‘colour revolution’.
I told my friend that if you took out all the government people from the protests, there probably would only be two genuine students left, and they probably would argue about what they are trying to achieve. If, indeed, they had any real idea of what they are trying to achieve.
The 3 letter agency seems to always go for the student-class (why?) or children victim horror pictures
like its so one-trick pony?!! Like their ‘enemy’ won’t or can’t learn?! because by the west white filter, any other colour are sub-human and unintelligent?
Unlike the France – that bunch on display are real workers and family man –
be it in their expression of ‘France flavours’ – which is distinctively not oriental
Maybe there is a need for that in France to deal with their rulers?
Bottom line – we all want to be Free and Sovereign
Question is – by the wide road or the narrow path?
Arguably Mao/Deng has struggle in the revolution for decades – their entire life and no guarantee they will succeed
and in the path they were very careful to not harm the public (aka no collateral damage or sabotage the enemy’s family etc)
– How long has/can these umbrella-man last?! and their sponsors and handlers? What will they get back eventually?
Its seems from the reaction of China to Brits – looks like their assets are to meet the fate as with the USSA prior
Just observation and Monkey Guessing…
The 3 letter agency seems to always go for the student-class (why?)
The color revolution agencies always target students for the same reason that advertisers like to target twenty-somethings: because they are old enough to act but they aren’t old enough to act wisely. All advertisers know that young people are suckers. The color revolution instigators know this too.
Have they used up all the colors yet?!
The Colour Revolution blue-print, courtesy of Gene Sharp, emphasises the use of stupid, gullible, and, often, corrupt youth to spear-head the regime change operations. Ignorant through inexperience, easily manipulated by appealing to youthful arrogance, carried away with fervour (you might get your leg over, too, if you play your cards right) and, often, the spawn of reactionary, revanchist, ‘religious’ or, in this case, compradore anti-Chinese zealots, including those who fled the Revolution in 1949 and the Land Reform process, and subversive elements like followers of the Falun Gong CIA operation and the Uighur separatist jihadists and sundry parasites. The archetype of these creatures was the loathsome Liu Xiaobo, who declared that China would need 300 years of tutelage by westerners before it could become ‘civilized’.
Then they are indoctrinated, at US and other Western expense, by CANVAS and other professional regime change groups, or by trips to the USA for indoctrination, training and cheque presentation. Then give them 1000% propaganda support by the Western fakestream media machine, and, even if they fail, China’s image is further traduced, to prepare Western dullards for war. As far as I know, no Austfailian fakestream media presstitute has ever dared utter the words ‘Colour Revolution’, ‘regime change’ or the acronyms NED, IRI, IDI or CANVAS. THAT is a totalitarian propaganda system, ‘creating reality’, in operation.
The Hong Kong extradition issue is obviously a propaganda pretext to disguise a broader Anglo American “Color Revolution” destabilization … my bad … pro-democracy campaign against China, as the implementation of this extradition law has been suspended–yet these self-styled protesters continue to attack government buildings like the HK legislature.
Furthermore, the use of so-called “Marginal Violence Theory” in which these agitators employ “non-violent” direct action to provoke law enforcement and the HK government into an overreaction is a cynical and Machiavellian tactic that similar Pro-democracy provocateurs have staged in America-backed “Color Revolution” campaigns against Ukraine, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and elsewhere.
In fact, this supposed non-violence tactic in fact has been openly peddled by the American guru of Colored Revolution/Regime Change ops, Gene Sharp, who has been dubbed the “Machiavelli of nonviolence,” and his partner-in-crime US Col. Robert Helvey.
Gene Sharp: The “Father” Of Colour Revolutions Has Died, But Methods Live On
https://www.fort-russ.com/2018/02/gene-sharpe-father-of-colour/
Gene Sharp: CIA ‘Color Revolution’ Guru and Fraud
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2018/02/08/gene-sharp-cia-color-revolution-guru-and-fraud/
Gene Sharp and Neoliberal Nonviolence
https://apocrev.wordpress.com/2019/05/21/gene-sharp-and-neoliberal-nonviolence-marcie-smith/
Hong Kong’s Poisoned Chalice
https://www.greanvillepost.com/2019/07/02/hong-kongs-poisoned-chalice/
Removed. Off-topic. Mod.
Yeah, Ramin, the New Neocon Times completely changed the meaning of the article.
The original text was clearly satirizing the young, dumb Hong Kong protesters (very amusingly); the edits changed it to an angry rant against the mainland government.
This, unfortunately, is the level of honesty I have come to expect from New York’s most important fishwrap.
I guarantee you at least 99% of these anti-extradition mouth breathers in HK never even bothered to read the bill of the proposed treaty they supposedly fighting against: Extradition for political reasons is explicitly forbidden in the bill.
It allows extradition to all other countries, not just China, and Hong Kong already has an extradition treaty with the USA. None of this will EVER pass the lips of any Western presstitute hate-monger. Truly the most vile of the vile.
Forgot to add a link to the original article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/30/opinion/hong-kong-protests-police-violence.html
All power to the anonymous source!
… and the anonymous source is, Ramin!
Having read previous examples of Ramin’s satire, it becomes a reflex, ‘oh, it’s probably that creative genius testing reader’s grey matter again…’ It seems pretty clear that it is Ramin satirizing again, and on target.
and so
‘all power to the anonymous source, Ramin!’
Proper ‘democratic suffrage’ in action can be seen in the compradores’ spiritual (and financial) homeland, the UK. Voluntary voting. ‘Landslides’ like 2015, delivered on 36% of the vote on a 66% turnout, ie 24%, less than one in four, of the electorate. The media 100% Rightist, pro-Tory and vicious. The Opposition Labor Party subjected to the vilest, most protracted and relentless campaign of vilification imaginable, with the utterly despicable campaign of entirely fraudulent accusations of ‘antisemitism’ leading the way.
Massive inequality, public squalour and mass homelessness amidst ever burgeoning parasite class wealth and display. Unending ‘austerity’ ie one-sided class warfare targeting workers, the poor and welfare recipients, even the disabled who are, moreover, villainously attacked in the media sewer. Crumbling infrastructure as London sucks the rest of the country dry. Local Government euthanised closing day care centres, community centres and even libraries. And land ownership massively concentrated in the hands of hereditary parasites.
But, of course, what Ramin notes, England is the centre of the global financial parasitism Moloch, laundering drug billions, capital flight billions, corrupt overseas elite billions, tax evasion billions etc, all ending up as serious money in the trillions, used to enrich a tiny stratum of truly Evil global bloodsuckers while impoverishing billions. These Hong Kong compradore vermin ought to be rounded up, stowed away on a junk steamer or ten, and dumped on their English idols, post haste.
A Hong Kong protester would not write “teriyaki is a worthless Japanese, non-Hong Konger invention” because they consdier Japan democratic, rich and clean, a far cry from China. In fact Japan enjoys a status among the protesters at least equal to that of the US.
The New York Times article quotes Bruce Lee, but I doubt whether most protesters would consider him cool. It is likely that the author quotes Bruce Lee because of his ignorance. Lee’s Chineseness is obvious in his early movies, and any feeble sign of Chineseness is vilified by the protesters.
A redacted paragraph contains the sentence “Old people are not cool”. This isn’t satire but journalism. A lot of protestors do think so, as do the supporters of Taiwanese independence. They have joined forces for some time and the divisive strategy has been imported into Hong Kong.
Thank you Ramin for a great satire article!