Occupy Central: Civil disobedience in Hong Kong

wondering whether there are interesting comparisons to be made to the Sunflower student movement in Taiwan?

Following Occupy Central’s Twitter account (@OCLPHK) is a good way to keep up to date with developments.

Good on them for trying. It’s interesting they’re basing the protest on the Occupy Movement – is it me, or is that very weird?

Occupy notorious failed to achieve anything in the West, it was deeply anarchist and opposed to democratic politics. OCLP is a little different, they’re actually making demands, calling for more democracy, and are probably less connected to the academic left and fantasies of Paris 68. Still, I can’t help but think adopting Occupy tactics and branding is a bad sign and counter to what they’re trying to achieve.

I interviewed a Chinese journalist while he was visiting the United States in 1989. Looks like the same old problems remain. But I’m no expert so maybe things have improved in 25 years.

They’re not demanding leftism, just democracy, and the movement they identify with for that is Occupy. That should speak volumes about what Occupy was (or is).

“They’re better off devoting their efforts to escape.”

This is pretty over the top, Brett. Hong Kong isn’t exactly a penal colony.

I suppose anarchy is to democracy as democracy is to totalitarianism.

“Hong Kong isn’t exactly a penal colony.”

Yet. But the point of Chinese fake ‘democracy’ is to deprive the people of Hong Kong of any say in whether that changes. We all know that much.

I would put it somewhat differently: The problem posed for the ruling classes by democratic political forms are still in the process of being solved in the West. (Which is why elections still sometimes matter here.) China prefers not having them, to finding some way to circumvent them.

“No reporter has gone to jail for reporting on the crimes of the central government.”

Not yet, but I’d say it’s coming. Certainly those who provided reporters with the evidence of crimes have been charged, tried, and convicted. And journalists have been named criminal co-conspirators as a means to secretly monitor their activity. No, we’re not China, but we do have our problems.

Reporters aren’t going to go to jail for reporting on the crimes of the central government, but I wouldn’t be surprised if reporters who report on the crimes of the central government end up with a remarkably high probability of being found guilty of an utterly unrelated crime. Which won’t be traced back to the NSA, because the local police will engage in parallel construction to conceal how they found out about the crime.

As I have remarked in other places, we are allowing the government to construct all the apparatus of a police state right before our eyes. We’d better put a stop to it before it’s finished.

At least we won’t be subjected to pundit analysis explaining why “a lack of demands is the whole point.” Telling people exactly what you want–what a concept!

Brett @21,

And who are they erecting this police state for? Capitalists and the capitalist system. It’s being done to protect and defend their “private property” and the system of exploitation that makes it possible.

Rich Puchalsky; “It’s you. Perhaps you could tell us about the left social movement that meets your standards of approval that happened recently.”

I know this is a deliberately snotty putdown I should dignify with a serious response. But there is one: the Color Revolutions have sucessfully built mass movements and pushed for reform of and engagement with the electoral process. While Occupy style anarchism and abstract hostility to the state have never asked for or achieved any government reform.

So, I think it’s weird because first I’m surprised Occupy is being resurected – I honestly thought it was dead and buried. Second, there is an obvious alternate model yet the one they’ve picked, Occupy, has never been about or ever achieved what they want. The only argument in favour of Occupy I can think of is that it’s non-threatening for the authorities.

Plume; “Do you mean big D Democratic politics? Because Occupy was all about democracy and small d democratic politics.”

While it went to great length to develop communities and a horizontal culture, it just refused to engage with actual government and democracy. I’m also not sure that OWS extreme total-agreement consensus building is actually democratic. As David Graeber claimed, the movement was fundamentally anarchist because of its “refusal to recognise the legitimacy of existing political institutions [and] the existing legal order”. There’s a big difference between OWS style posturing and engagement with government and the state.

@27 – I would imagine that the language of the color revolutions would be a lot more threatening/concerning for members of the Chinese state watching this unfold, compared to the language of occupy. Utilizing that language would also suggest a series of analogies between the situation in HK and certain situations seen in Eastern Europe, and I am not sure that those analogies are apt. I think that the analogy drawn between NYC/Urban America and Chinese HK using the Occupy language is a lot more fitting. Granted, most of my knowledge of HK life/politics is 2nd hand and a few years out of date.

Revealed: how the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, in a groundbreaking scoop that should once more shame major US media outlets (why are nonprofits now some of the only entities in America left breaking major civil liberties news?), filed this request. The document – reproduced here in an easily searchable format – shows a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police, regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the Domestic Security Alliance Council.

Thank GOD we have FREEDOMâ„¢ in the U.S. of A.!
~

But the Color Revolutions are DoS/CIA projects. They take years to construct, with billions of dollars in budget each. No wonder they are well-organized and effective.

Watson Ladd 09.27.14 at 3:16 pm @ 18 —
‘Anarcisse, only someone complete ignorant of Chinese politics and US politics could say that….’

Well, I may be completely ignorant of Chinese politics, but I probably know something about US politics, since I live there. I agree that (from what I read) conditions are very different in China than in the US, there are important differences of culture and history, etc. etc. etc. Yet human beings are probably not that terribly different from one another, and if the US ruling class can successfully manage formally democratic procedures and institutions in the US — without really breathing hard — I would think the Chinese r.c. could do the same thing in China by similar means. And then everyone would be happy.

Indeed, Plume, contrast the Occupy and Tea party movements. One moved into public spaces, and denied their use to the public. The other routinely got parade permits. One was made a mess of things. The other left the sites of their protests cleaner than when they arrived.

One violated the rules, the other worked within them. Which would you expect the people in charge of enforcing the rules to go after?

@38: This is spot on. A lot of people in the West seem to think that political liberalization would improve things in China, and for some issues it might. But an inevitable result of real democracy coming to China is that large geographic areas of the country would split off. There is just no way that Tibet and Xinjiang would elect to stay part of China if anyone asked them. Even Inner Mongolia might hive off and join their brethren across the border. And everyone knows this! Certainly the CCP knows it. Thus, one alternative is that the hypothetical future democratic society inherits a Chinese rump state, perhaps not unlike Russia after the breakup of the USSR and just as resentful and unhappy about it. Or else Chinese “democracy” is actually an apartheid government where only Han get to vote and everyone else gets clubbed in the head if they have a problem with that. (Han are over 90% of the population, so the math works pretty well.)

And those are the best possible outcomes! Far more likely is that the transition process spins out of control and coups and plots topple any government that even attempts such a liberalization process. So if you are sitting in Zhongnanhai, what do you do? Do you allow Hong Kong to run their own election? Not if you want the country to a) maintain its current borders, and b) avoid massive amounts of unrest on the mainland. I think the CCP is trying to be patient in the hopes that these protests will burn themselves out. But if not, they will come down on the protesters like a ton of bricks. The stakes are just too high.

@ Palindrome: The way demographics are going in Xinjiang, a democratic referendum on staying in Beijing’s orbit might not go the way you want. Its not as if the Han Chinese aren’t wiping out the native Turks…

“I would think the Chinese r.c. could do the same thing in China by similar means”

Someone should tell them about ‘designated free-speech zones’. And absolutely no mercy to the terrorists who defy The Rule of Law by coming out of the designated free-speech zones. A-la 1999 Seattle.

“There is no evidence that Occupy denied public space to others, and none that it ever made a mess of things.”

That’s called “denial”. You want to believe the police had no reason to shut down the camps, so you just ignore all the evidence that the camps were keeping other people from using public areas, and were turning into ugly ghettos.

I suggest you do a google image search, or just look up the meaning of the word, “occupy”. Could you walk your dog, or play a game of Frisbee, in this? No, the public was denied use of the places the Occupy movement occupied, and that was the point of their doing it, much as protesters chain themselves across doors, not next to them, because they mean to obstruct the door.

The occupy movement took public spaces, and seized them long term for their private use. You can’t expect the police to ignore that forever, even if they did let it go on far longer than they should have. Or, rather, YOU can expect that, but you must routinely have such expectations shattered.

I don’t think it’s so much that they think the Tea Party “harmless”, or else the IRS scandal would never have happened. Rather, right wing organizations are usually careful to avoid giving the authorities any excuse to physically attack them, while left wing organizations go out of their way to provoke attacks.

Partly this is a difference in strategy; The left wants to discredit the powers that be, by persuading the public that those in authority are violent maniacs, and provoking them to attack helps with this.

The right are being portrayed as violent maniacs, and need to fight that portrayal by avoiding anything that would provide the media with an opportunity to reinforce that narrative.

Partly it’s a difference in media environment; The left knows they will get somewhat sympathetic coverage, the right knows they’ll be portrayed negatively. Partly it’s chosen strategy. But there are reasons that right wing groups behave themselves in public, and left wing groups do not, and they have to do with the groups, not the police.

“Obviously, that was not the case and the authorities felt quite threatened. They mounted a huge police-state counter-offensive, bashing in (OWS) heads…”

Occupy was a global movement active in fifty odd countries. The US authorities violently supressed OWS, and I can how you can interpret that as a threat to the system that was destroyed. But almost everywhere else there was a hands off security approach, and the movement still didn’t achieve anything, and still petered out and collapsed because of its own internal problems in a similar manner.

So I think widespread non-achievement in the face of indifference from the authorities indicates there was no actual threat and the US response was an localised overreaction.

Brett@47

‘Partly it’s a difference in media environment; The left knows they will get somewhat sympathetic coverage, the right knows they’ll be portrayed negatively.’

I would be fascinated if you could provide any evidence, from a fairly impartial source, that shows the Occupy movements received more favourable coverage than the Tea Party protests. It certainly didn’t seem that way to me at the time, but as I say, I’m open to persuasion if you can demonstrate it.

Brett @38 – the PRC isn’t concerned about the consequences of Hong Kong democracy in Hong Kong. They’re concerned with the consequences of permitting Hong Kong democracy *outside* Hong Kong: Everybody else in China thinking they were entitled to it.

Which is a mistake on the part of the PRC. Residents of Hong Kong already enjoy far greater rights than do residents in other regions of China. The additional measure at issue is hardly one that would spark unrest elsewhere.

Moreover, by acting with flexibility and foresight here, the PRC can actually enhance its legitimacy elsewhere in China by demonstrating good judgment and responsiveness.

They’re not a federation, they’re an empire. They’d fall apart if everybody who wants out tried to get out at the same time. So they can’t show weakness, they can’t let people think that if they protest, they’ll get anything out of it but run over by tanks.

The issue here is not whether Hong Kong is to secede from China. Were it to attempt to do so, there is no doubt that the PRC would respond with force. So it’s not a matter of showing weakness at this stage.

They’re not trying to get Taiwan to surrender by convincing them they’d remain free if China took over, nobody there is stupid enough to buy that line. So leaning on Hong Kong doesn’t hurt them with Taiwan.

Realistically, the PRC needs the acquiescence of the Taiwanese people to effect a reunification, and to a large extent this will require persuading them that a reunification can occur without drastically changing those aspects of Taiwan’s law and culture that are viewed positively. Anything that causes additional resistance to the idea is, all else being equal, not in the interests of the PRC.

The worst-case scenario for reunification, from the PRC’s vantage, would be one which required a full invasion and then continuing suppression of an unwilling population. Such a scenario has the greatest chance of causing external intervention, with all the attendant dangers of escalation. In this scenario PRC success is far from assured, and is one that the PRC would prefer to avoid.

Andrew, I think the Chinese plan for “reunification”, (AKA, “conquest”) is to persuade the rest of the world to treat Taiwan as already part of China, and keep ramping the pressure up until permitting the Chinese to take over looks like the less bad of a nasty set of options. But China would have to change greatly for anybody in Taiwan to be stupid enough to trust promises of partial independence, and China isn’t yet willing to change in that way.

Brett,

There is just so much wrong with what you say, it’s hard to know where to begin. It’s like a greatest hits of right-wing misinformation — the last word being chosen out of a sense of decorum.

First, I attended Occupy rallies, and they were nothing like they were portrayed in the media. Second, I followed them on live-streaming when I could. Again, actual observation tells us they were nothing like media representations, especially of the Fox News variety.

Third . . . the right has been whining about their own media coverage for fifty years at least, and for the last forty plus years, it’s been like a certain college basketball coach who plays the refs like a violin. For several decades he’s managed to get the vast, vast majority of calls to go his way, in game after game, and his usual method is to claim they never do. A classic passive-aggressive success story. Conservatives owned the media even when there were a few “liberals” reporting it. Now, while they’ve consolidated their ownership and their hold on media many times over, those few liberals have disappeared even from the ranks of reporter. America media decidedly tilts to the right. It has for several decades now.

Oh, and that supposed IRS scandal?

The IRS scrutinized the applications for 501C from all political groups. They targeted everyone, left, right and center, as was their job. The law actually says these groups must engage exclusively in “social welfare” activities, which mean none of them should have qualified for the tax exemption. But the IRS hasn’t gone by the letter of that law for some time, and granted pretty much every applicant the status. Left, right and center. The tea party wasn’t targeted. That’s just their persecution mania coming to the fore.

But that part of the non-scandal wasn’t even the most absurd part. The surreal aspect of the whole thing was to assume a president would bother trying to hassle these groups via that method at all. As if the risk/reward dynamic would naturally make that happen. That dynamic being, on a scale from 1 to 10, a 10 for risk and a zero for reward. There is no political advantage garnered from making these groups jump through normal hoops and then granting them exemptions anyway. No political group needs (or deserves) those exemptions in order to participate in the political process . . . yet I heard or read countless conservatives screaming to the rooftops that this was a purposeful strategy to steal the election. But if one needed a tax-free status before engaging in our politics, then we’d have just thousands of people involved, rather than millions.

It was the same kind of invented faux-scandal as Benghazi, Birthgate, Lattegate, Lapelpingate, Solyndra, Fast and Furious and any of the other nonsense that rises from the fever swamps of the right.

“knew.”

“The IRS scrutinized the applications for 501C from all political groups. They targeted everyone, left, right and center, as was their job. ”

Not to make this about the US, instead of Hong Kong, (Where the PRC have begun the crackdown I anticipated.) but that’s just a total BS talking point, contradicted by the reality that the liberal groups that got ‘targeted’ were treated much differently than the targeted conservative groups.

If you tell the doorman, “Call the police if Bob shows up, and escort Tom right up”, one could say they were both ‘targeted’. If one were an idiot.

“and like almost all Tea Party types he doesn’t really believe that people who he disagrees with still have a right to protest and petition the government for a redress of grievances. ”

I absolutely believe they do. Like most on the right, I don’t believe they have a right to do it by taking over a public park, or invading somebody else’s property. But I’ve taken part in plenty of protests of the right-wing sort, where we didn’t deliberately screw with people to get on the evening news being arrested.

Now, back to Hong Kong, where I will maintain that, if you live in Hong Kong, and want democracy, your best bet is to find a way to get out of Hong Kong. Because there’s no way, no how, the PRC is going to permit it.

Though I have nothing but respect for the people who are willing to force the PRC to actually get vicious, rather than knuckling under to the threat.

“Like most on the right, I don’t believe they have a right to do it by taking over a public park, or invading somebody else’s property.”

Surely this is just a consequence of your disagreement with their aims. A public park is, after all, public, and members of the public have a right to assemble there. I’m not aware that Occupy took any steps to prevent others from using the places they assembled, other than to assemble there themselves and by occupying space prevent others from occupying the same space. If this is ‘taking over’, then millions do it in subways every day.

Once you start down the path of granting licenses for assembly, you’re asserting the power to withhold such licenses, and by so doing you’re choosing who can and who can’t assemble.

In other words, they have a right, as long as they don’t exercise it in space and time. This sort of mental trick is what inspires me to think that the Chinese ruling class would do well to look and see how the U.S. ruling class does its thing.

Well said. But I imagine they have done just that. They’ve learned a great deal about how we once practiced capitalism before leftist activists managed to get a few checks put on their virtually unlimited power. America (and Europe) once ran things quite a bit like China’s Foxconn, until they weren’t allowed to any longer. And now American capitalists (and Europeans) get the benefits of their own legacy being instituted by the Chinese and elsewhere overseas. The horror never goes away. It’s just relocated.

Ironically, our activists also learned from the Chinese in Tienanmen square, and it looks like our government learned from the Chinese on how to counter that.

“I’’m not aware that Occupy took any steps to prevent others from using the places they assembled, other than” occupying those places for weeks on end. But I suppose you genuinely can’t tell the difference between visiting the park for an afternoon, and setting up a tent there and living there.

Brett,

First of all, they weren’t allowed to occupy parks for weeks on end. The police, in most cases, very quickly shut them down and kicked them out of public spaces. Again, notice the word “public.” And they were all unarmed, btw, while the police came revved up in their SWAT gear.

Now, contrast that with the open carry brown shirts (and likely tea party members or supporters), who parade their ignorance and intimidation tactics in front of schools, inside restaurants, in bars, at political rallies, while the police do nothing.

Unarmed (OWS) kids get their heads bashed in and pepper-sprayed, dragged by the hair out of their protest lines . . . while armed thugs are left alone.

You have no business complaining about the difference in treatment, as it so obviously tilts in your favor. Police and media-wise.

Jamie K. now has a post about the role of Occupy and others in HK at Blood & Treasure.

@plume

>The IRS scrutinized the applications for 501C from all political groups. They targeted everyone, left, right and center, as was their job.

the IRS has repeatedly admitted , that it disproportionately investigated right wing groups. If persecution mania is making this claim, then that mania seems to have infested the IRS.

>But that part of the non-scandal wasn’t even the most absurd part. The surreal aspect of the whole thing was to assume a president would bother trying to hassle these groups via that method at all.

No one who knows anything about the government thinks that there is a presidential memo in a desk somewhere ordering the IRS to persecute tea party groups. It would actually be more comforting if such a memo did exist, because the reality is much worse. What we have a system that can be counted on to discriminate against one political party and not the other without anyone having to order them to do it. our supposedly apolitical civil service is anything but, and that is extremely dangerous.

“I do not understand the mindframe of these officials who order police crackdowns on public protests.”

History shows that it works. As in the U.S., authorities are not willing to tolerate long-term mass protests that don’t go away on their own. And, as in the U.S., there really is no long-term penalty for using force.

I highly recommend sociologist Randall Collin’s blog post TIPPING POINT REVOLUTIONS AND STATE BREAKDOWN REVOLUTIONS: WHY REVOLUTIONS SUCCEED OR FAIL. A quote:

We like to believe that any government that uses force against its own citizens is so marred by the atrocity that it loses all legitimacy. Yet the 1990s and the early 2000s were a time of increasing Chinese prestige. The market version of communist political control became a great economic success; international economic ties expanded and exacted no penalty for the deaths in June 1989; domestically Chinese poured their energies into economic opportunities. Protest movements revived within a decade, but the regime has been quick to clamp down on them. Even the new means of mobilization through the internet has proven to be vulnerable to a resolute authoritarian apparatus, which monitors activists to head off any possible Tiananmen-style assemblies before they start.

@plume

>The IRS repeatedly denied that it had targeted anyone, including right wing groups.

I just linked you to two statements by the IRS that say exactly the opposite. to quote directly from louis lerner:

However, in these cases, the way they did the centralization was not so fine. Instead of referring to the cases as advocacy cases, they actually used case names on this list. They used names like Tea Party or Patriots and they selected cases simply because the applications had those names in the title. That was wrong, that was absolutely incorrect, insensitive, and inappropriate — that’s not how we go about selecting cases for further review.

>repeatedly said it flagged progressive groups as well as conservative for close scrutiny, which is its job.

It has repeatedly said that while it did flag those groups, it did so at much lower rates. truly you are a monument to the power of denial.

>Unless by “persecution,” you mean asking these groups to fill out legal forms, detailing information about their political activities, their donors, etc.

bullshit. if there were a republican president in office, and the IRS got caught insisting progressive groups fill out extra paper work and give more information, you would absolutely call it persecution. Is it the worst thing in the world? No, but let’s call a spade a spade and drop the double standard.

> The absurdity and surreality is to think that what the IRS did could possibly harm the tea party or conservative politics in the first place.

Well, for one, courts seem to disagree, becuase the IRS has been sued over this, and lost.

> One would think the dastardly deeds of the IRS would have shifted the balance.

it very well might have. had this not happened, the conservatives might have raised even more. the fact that democrats donate money in different patterns than republicans proves nothing.

“It has repeatedly said that while it did flag those groups, it did so at much lower rates.”

And

“if there were a republican president in office, and the IRS got caught insisting progressive groups fill out extra paper work and give more information”

I’m confused. In the first sentence, you admit that the IRS targeted both sets of groups; while in the second, you imply they singled out one rather than the other. Both can’t be true.

As for ‘lower rates’, what is it you think they mean? That numerically fewer progressive groups were subjected to extra scrutiny, or that proportionally fewer progressive groups were subjected to extra scrutiny? I’m guessing you have no idea.

@Plume

Seriously, what part of ” They used names like Tea Party or Patriots and they selected cases simply because the applications had those names in the title. That was wrong, that was absolutely incorrect, insensitive, and inappropriate” are you finding difficult. those are the words straight from louis lerner’s mouth.

> even though they run the show and have run it for well over forty years in official circles

if that were the case, you would think the IRS would have gotten caught discriminating against progressive groups, not conservative. that fact that they didn’t tells you everything you need to know about who is running the show. the continued ability of progressives to cast themselves as underdogs despite being in charge for decades will never cease to amaze me.

>And, again, putting those groups through scrutiny does them no harm. Zero harm.

again, the courts disagree, which is why the IRS had to pay damages. but you don’t seem much interested in the facts.

> Second, the tax exemption adds zero political benefits when it comes to winning elections or getting your agenda passed.

if this were true, groups would not be seeking such exemptions. the status is self evidently desireable.

>Third, no one has a “right” to a tax exemption, and when filthy rich individuals and their groups take them, they are the epitome of a “moocher,” a word they all too often used to describe the poor, the elderly, the vet, or the college student. You know, the famous 47%.

So if the republicans passed a law that said that no group that advocates for abortion rights gets TE status, you’d be fine with that? Somehow, I doubt it.

You also said:

So if the republicans passed a law that said that no group that advocates for abortion rights gets TE status, you’d be fine with that? Somehow, I doubt it.

If the law were across the board for all political groups, yes. I’d be in favor of it. No exemptions for any of them, left, right or center. However, if it singled out just women’s health and autonomy advocacy, no. I’d be dead set against it. That would actually be a slam dunk example of selective “persecution.” Which reminds me of a recent decision by the Supreme Court involving Hobby Lobby.

There is a demonstration today for Hong Kong outside the State Library of Victoria. The signs I can read say “Hong Kong – Be Safe” , people must be concerned for loved ones there.

Aside from the fact that they looked at groups from both ends of the political spectrum, your very sentence is funny: “which is exactly what they did, single out groups with particular names that just happened to be republican.”

The whole point is that clearly partisan groups were claiming tax-exempt status.

I would note that it would be difficult for the Tea Party to be attacked in the media for taking over public parks and trashing them, specifically because the Tea Party movement is careful not to do anything remotely like that. –bellmore @52

Come on Bellmore, you know why that’s the case. The tp couldn’t occupy a mall past 5pm because the protesters would need to pick up a few things at Walmart before getting home to watch Hannity. Can’t miss Hannity.

I think the last time I watched Hannity was while changing channels three years ago, and it was for about a half second.

“Subsequent investigations have proven that the IRS rightfully scrutinized political groups of all persuasions when they sought tax exemption. ”

And then put the conservative groups through a couple years of hell, asked illegal questions of them, and passed on their confidential donor lists to liberal groups, while giving the liberal groups a quick pass.

But this can’t have happened, because Lerner is a Republican. A Republican who is registered as a Democrat, has expressed hatred of Republicans in her emails, and is married to a Democratic fund raiser, but still, a Republican. In the alternate universe Plume inhabits.

Andrew F said – “Which is a mistake on the part of the PRC. Residents of Hong Kong already enjoy far greater rights than do residents in other regions of China. The additional measure at issue is hardly one that would spark unrest elsewhere.
Moreover, by acting with flexibility and foresight here, the PRC can actually enhance its legitimacy elsewhere in China by demonstrating good judgment and responsiveness.”

I’m really not sure how you can make a statement like this which such certainty. I mean, it’s a plausible argument that it wouldnt ‘spark unrest elsewhere’, but far from a gaurantee. And if you’re the Chinese elite (taking as given the assumption their *only* concern is with preventing unrest develping elsewhere) why would you risk it ?

“Obama had nothing to do with the IRS practices, no matter what the IRS actually did. ”

I think that’s entirely possible, and frightening. I would find this being a result of Obama ordering it to actually be reassuring, because the thought that the IRS is so relentlessly partisan that it doesn’t NEED orders to attack conservatives is so much worse.

OTOH, he sure didn’t move Heaven and Earth to punish it. That’s enough to make him retroactively guilty, in my opinion.

Brett,

You keep using your false premises as an answer to other points. It’s like you’re a flat-earther, and someone shows you pictures from NASA satellites showing a spherical world. You say, “Those pictures can’t be right because the earth is flat.”

You stick doggedly to your errors in the face of overwhelming evidence against them. And recent science tells us conservatives are especially dogged in this way.

And then put the conservative groups through a couple years of hell, asked illegal questions of them, and passed on their confidential donor lists to liberal groups, while giving the liberal groups a quick pass.

This is you telling us the earth is flat again.

Plume, it’s actually hilarious, being accused of being a flat earther by folks who can’t even be bothered to look at what the IRS has admitted to doing, and being confirmed to have done. It’s like being called a flat earther by follower of Immanuel Velikovsky.

Here, contaminate your mind with actual facts.

Quick addendum to the above.

The reason the victim’s view is important? Because that’s pretty much all we got. That’s all the Republican witch hunt machine presented. And, they narrowed it down still further. They presented zero progressives or other left-leaning groups who were also scrutinized in the process. Their sole focus was on the delicate sensibilities of right-wing millionaires and billionaires, who would have to be put through the Gestapo-like torture of filling out forms in order to legally mooch off the rest of us.

Most media covered all of this from the point of view of those moochers, I mean victims. When they did talk to the IRS, it was generally to those politically whipped higher officials who waiting to fall on their swords. The better organizations dug deeper, and that’s when we learned that Occupy and Green groups, etc. etc. were also scrutinized heavily. They just don’t do the smelling salts thing. Unlike too many conservatives, it would appear they’ve never seen Gloria Swanson in action.

Abbe,

But they also “flagged” groups with “Occupy” in the title, or references to the Environment, or to women’s health issues. It wasn’t just the Koch brothers’ useful idiots in the tea party, or Glenn Beck’s useful idiots in his 9/12 movement, or the KKK’s useful idiots in the “patriot” movement.

Left-wing, environmental, Occupy and minority rights groups were flagged, too.

But, yes. Your larger point does make sense. Flagging likely tax resisters does make a lot of sense for the IRS.

I read Brett’s link and found this gem:

“The IRS also asked for transcripts of radio shows where her group had mentioned political candidates by name — a job she figured would have cost her group $25,000. And it asked whether her group had “a close relationship” with any candidates or parties, a question she considered especially vague.”

Huh. Tax-exempt status, in the U.S., can not be given to organizations that support particular political parties or candidates. I wonder why the IRS could conceivably have been interested in this information? Of course, groups need not apply for tax-exempt status in order to exist. They only need to apply for it if they want contributions to the group to be tax deductible.

Imagine what Brett could have said if he’d started with something like “They did this to Occupy groups and environmental groups too! We’re not only saying this for ourselves, these questions about donor lists rise to a level of intrusiveness that affects everyone.” But that wouldn’t let them have the element of victimization that it’s only happening to them, and would require that they actually commit to a worldview in which everyone has the same rights. And it would remove the element of conservative paranoia that says that Occupy and Obama are in it together, along with Alinsky and Clinton — all one big indistinguishable mass, all with the same goals and pulling together.

> Not try to claim selective persecution which never happened.

Dragging it a bit closer to the original topic, but it strikes me that a lot of Falun Gong complaints are framed as being about the application of normal-but-horrific measures to them, Falun Gong, rather than the more-general “how dare you do the sorts of things you do to us to anybody”.

[again, empathy problems. And cults [among other groups] are notorious for preying on “weak” or “vulnerable” people, people who want “simple” answers to the “problems of society”…]

Interesting article in The Diplomat about a Chinese Central Committee conference this past weekend on how to head-off ethnic tensions in minority regions in the near term:

“The statement emphasized that the ‘theory and direction’ of the Party’s ethnic policies are ‘correct,’ but at the same time listed numerous areas where there is room for improvement. For instance, the conference called for ‘perfecting’ the autonomy of ethnic regions, which would include Xinjiang as well as the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Inner Mongolia, and Tibet. The main goal for governance in these regions continues to be boosting economic development, which China believes will cure the vast majority of ethnic discontent.”

I doubt the underlying theory is correct, seeing as how no region of China is more economically developed than Hong Kong, yet discontent remains. Still, seems quite apropos.

Abbe Faria 09.29.14 at 6:47 pm @ 106 —
If I were an IRS ferret, I would go ferreting where I smelled the most money, which I understand is a characteristic of right-wing as opposed to left-wing organizations.

However, there is another curious aspect to this, which is that the Democratic Party organization is thought to like the Tea Party, for obvious reasons, and to dislike insufficiently subservient leftist organizations.

So the IRS apparatchik confessions, abasements, and apologies must be a clever ruse.

Alan White,

“I get the sinking feeling of Tienanmen II, this time abetted by world market forces, instead of those forces merely standing idly by, as in Tienanmen I.”

I have read the organizers have said the occupation is only expected to continue to national day – and they will develop other following steps for after that. I think this should avoid a Tienanmen I hope.

There was another demonstration of support outside the State Library today – people there said they hope to maintain a supportive presence until national day here too. They were giving out yellow ribbons for hope and a bright future for Hong Kong. I think they were very concerned for safety at home.

I think Hong Kong though wealthy has some issues balancing fitting in with China and maintaining its own ways and community. I have heard that mainlanders go to Hong Kong to avoid the 1 child or 1+1=2 children policies. And I saw a film once called Bird Land about rural immigrant workers going to seek informal work there from the mainland. Also I think maybe Hong Kong has some issues with maintaining agricultural land and nature – but I have heard young people are interested in permaculture and organic farming there.

“But expecting reform while the Obama administration is in a position to block it is like expecting the PRC to extend real democracy to Hong Kong. ”

First you say the IRS is endemically partisan and neither got nor needed direction from Obama to mistreat conservative groups; then you say that it is Obama who causes the IRS to be partisan, by preventing any other behavior. Doesn’t your head ever hurt?

Anyone wanna take bets as to how many times Brett has used the name “Barry Soetoro”?

Brett,

When the events in question occurred, a Republican was in charge of the IRS, and the IG was a Republican, too, appointed by Bush. The events also occurred in the context of the Citizens United decision, which you no doubt approve of. This decision created a tsunami of requests to gain tax exempt status, contrary to the existing law — a fact you keep ignoring. The civil servants at the one IRS location in question reacted to that avalanche of new requests in a very, very logical, non-partisan way:

They flagged obvious political groups for further scrutiny. Again, left, right and center.

If they had wanted to hurt conservative groups, they wouldn’t have used this method, and they wouldn’t have held all obviously political groups, left, right and center, to that scrutiny.

1. It does no one any harm, politically, to fill out paperwork. All of these groups received the exemption anyway.
2. This impacted Occupy groups, “Green” groups, and women’s rights advocates as well. Progressive and liberal political groups were all held to increased scrutiny.
3. Receiving a tax exemption is completely unnecessary when it comes to participating in our political process. It is icing on the cake, and merely helps the people running these organizations keep a bit more of the money collected, while allowing their very rich donors to cut their own taxes — thus cheating the rest of us.

Please, for once, acknowledge that you understand that this exemption is irrelevant. You get that, right? It doesn’t matter when it comes to the political process. It only matters when it comes to helping the very rich cheat the rest of us.

A thought experiment for you, Brett: If you could devise some truly partisan scheme from within the IRS, one that would actually do harm to Republicans and conservatives in general, what would that be? If you respond by saying you’d add some extra paperwork to the process before handing out tax exemptions — all of those groups received it, remember — then you need to turn in your political machinations merit badge. No one will ever hire you to help in a political campaign.

Forget it Plume, it’s Brett Town.

/He never bothers to read anyone’s comments anyway. He just skims to get the topic and then vomits up right wing talking points.

MPAV @125,

I fear you are correct. He keeps ignoring the central point(s).

This is also the case when the discussion turns to things like inequality. I (and others) post all kinds of data showing the obscene concentration of wealth at the top, the percentages, the dollar amounts, and they (conservatives) ignore this entirely. The key facts of the matter are ignored.

It makes political conversations difficult, to say the least.

“He’s in it to score points, not to have a conversation.”

If by “score points”, you mean keep this place from becoming a total echo chamber, sure.

I’m trying to crack open your epistemic closure. Granted, likely an impossible task, but unless I essay it, I can hardly regard it as your fault that you’re delusional on so many subjects.

Facts, like the FACT that the IRS has itself admitted to inappropriately targeting conservative groups? Like the FACT that the IG confirmed they did this? Look, I’m not the one refusing to acknowledge facts in this case.

Plume’s argument seems to be that the IRS could not have targeted conservatives because it was led by a Republican who was donating money to the DNC, which is certain proof that somebody is a hard line conservative in Plume’s world. And conservatives didn’t get treated in a discriminatory manner, because while conservative groups took two years to get approved, liberal groups took a whole two weeks, and we all know that a non-discriminatory policy would have involved the conservatives being taken out and shot, and the liberals being given a parade.

Basically his position is that nothing the IRS did was bad, because it fell short of what he would have done to them.

‘If by “score points”, you mean keep this place from becoming a total echo chamber, sure.’

No, I’m guessing that by ‘score points’ he meant score points. Call me crazy.

“My impression was that the government of China had larger issues to consider than the possibility that the mainland populace would take to the barricades to support greater civil liberties for the people of Hong Kong.”

Well, yeah: That they might take to the barricades to support greater civil liberties for themselves.

Anyway, thank goodness for modern information technology; In a more opaque era, they’d already have been massacred.

Alas, I don’t think there’s much prospect for a positive result, given that the Chinese rulers saw what happened to the Soviet Union when they had a failure of nerve, and are determined not to go down that path. They know they’ll never be loved, so they’re bound and determined to be feared. The only positive thing I see coming of this is the scales being lifted off a few peoples’ eyes, the illusion that the Chinese government isn’t a tyranny shattered yet again.

Also worth noting: right now it is the morning of October 1st in HK, China’s ‘birthday’ so to speak. So stay tuned.

Palindrome @80: But you are wrong if you think that citizens of the mainland would not increasingly agitate for diffusion of the rights enjoyed by HK to the rest of the country. The dream of many liberal Chinese is that as the country becomes wealthier, ‘one country, two systems’ will fade away, and the entire nation will be able to enjoy the same rights as HK-ers. The CCP knows and fears this. That’s why the CCP’s goal is to push it the other direction: instead of all of China becoming like HK, HK must become like the rest of China. One country, one system. Because the other path would lead to the fall of the CCP, and perhaps even the breakup of the country.

But HK isn’t the driving force behind any unrest, or any democratic aspirations, elsewhere in the PRC. HK could turn into just another region tomorrow without affecting the ethnic/nationalist unrest in Xinjiang or Tibet nor the democratic aspirations of persons across China.

To address that unrest, and those aspiration, the PRC will need to deal with the source of the problem. From their perspective, that means addressing lack of economic development and it means addressing corruption – but to gain the trust of the people, their cooperation, and their understanding as measures aimed at economic development and anti-corruption unfold, the PRC will need to show itself to be responsive, credible, trustworthy, and willing to act with respect towards the desires, needs, and expressions, of the people.

Making a concession here – provided they do so with the appearance of having consulted with, and listened to, the leadership figures among the protesters – would greatly improve the PRC’s reputation with the people.

It would moreover, perhaps, begin to neutralize the potent symbol of another encounter between the PRC and student protesters.

Now, as you say, the CCP undoubtedly knows more than I do about Chinese politics. But not being a member of the CCP can provide its own advantages of insight when viewing China.

The bold move, but the correct move, is for the PRC to show that it is a credible and true partner of the Chinese people, able to listen and make concessions where they are prudent and in the best interests, whether that be voting in Hong Kong or less corrupt local government in Chongquing.

To grip tightly to control here is to ignore the long game, and the need to address the causes of social unrest, rather than merely attempting to suppress the symptoms.

I fear that the leadership will fail to see through the fog of present trivialities and appearances to the deeper currents which they must use to guide themselves – but, one never knows.

Ronan @97: I’m really not sure how you can make a statement like this which such certainty. I mean, it’s a plausible argument that it wouldnt ‘spark unrest elsewhere’, but far from a gaurantee. And if you’re the Chinese elite (taking as given the assumption their *only* concern is with preventing unrest develping elsewhere) why would you risk it ?

The PRC must continue to build legitimacy for themselves over the long term. Acquiescing here can enable them to present credible arguments about their intentions elsewhere.

@140 Andrew F.: “I’m not saying that Xi should do a full Gorbachev, but he should leverage the unique characteristics of this situation to make concessions that he would not elsewhere.”

Well, I think you have correctly identified the one individual Xi Jinping would most NOT seek to emulate, Mikhail Gorbachev. For years, the USSR/Russia has served as the abject lesson to CCP leaders of how not to proceed: don’t allow political reforms before (or simultaneously with) the economic. Gorbachev pursued glasnost as well as perestroika, and the resulting instability toppled his regime and shattered his empire. The CCP will NOT allow that to happen. You seem to think that if they just granted the legitimate demands of the people of HK that the protests would end and the government’s prestige would soar:

“The bold move, but the correct move, is for the PRC to show that it is a credible and true partner of the Chinese people, able to listen and make concessions where they are prudent and in the best interests, whether that be voting in Hong Kong or less corrupt local government in Chongquing [sic].”

What, then, will the CCP say to the people of Chongqing five years from now when they point to Hong Kong and say, “Why them and not us?” On what basis will the CCP be able to deny electoral rights to citizens of Shenzhen (right next door to the Hong Kong SAR)? Is crying ‘one country, two systems’ going to be viewed as an acceptable response? Highly doubtful. You argue that the disruptions in HK are not the cause of unrest in other parts of China. No one disputes this. Uyghurs and Tibetans will still seek autonomy no matter what the result in Hong Kong. Peasants whose land has been polluted or stolen will still seek justice whatever happens. But Zhongnanhai knows that fulfilling their 1997 promises can do nothing but feed the demands for greater political participation on the mainland that they have sought to tamp down for the past three decades.

The inescapable fact is that the CCP does not wish to give up power. They don’t want to transition to democracy, and they don’t want to be overthrown. Their problem is legitimacy, since the regime is now ideologically bankrupt. In order to maintain power, they can buy off some of the people (either through broad-based growth or through crass corruption) and intimidate the rest. It is all very well to talk about enlightened self-interest and good governance, but as Chairman Mao once said, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” That is what the CCP has, and that is what it will use.

“the repressive measures they will probably take vis. Hong Kong will almost certainly cause a huge hit to GDP growth”

Not historically true: see my quote from Randall Collins upthread. All indications are that repressive measures basically have no effect as long as the repression works.

What is certain is that, after the fact, people from all sides will say that Occupy Central did something wrong. If they destabilize the country, they will be blamed for all the deaths and misery due to that; if they are repressed, they will be chided for challenging the CCP without a proper plan, or emulating the proper model, whatever that would be; if the protest blows over, they will be called ineffectual. After they are safely historical someone may look back at some iconic picture and say “Oh, how inspiring” just like the guy in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square, but mostly people will tacitly agree that they were naive and that it would have been better if they’d never rocked the boat at all. You can see various people in this thread trying various of these out already.

(Sorry, hit submit too soon.)

Which is to say, I really don’t see how Collins can claim that

“The market version of communist political control became a great economic success; international economic ties expanded and exacted no penalty for the deaths in June 1989; domestically Chinese poured their energies into economic opportunities.”

Several lost years of growth is hardly ‘no penalty’! And there was great uncertainty until 1992 whether Deng Xiaoping’s backing of the hardliners against the reformers indicated that he was giving up on economic reform along with political reform. In the long run, obviously the Chinese economy has done unimaginably well. But China in 1989 was on the cusp of a period of take-off growth, whereas in 2014 that great run of growth is obviously losing steam no matter what happens in HK. Considering the many, many structural problems in the Chinese economy that have accumulated year by year, one big shock might be enough for it to really stall out.

Im sure not going to blame Occupy Hong Kong for anything. I do however understand that many in China find the Sovjet example very scary. It is an ongoing catastrophe. The former USSR countries would be much better of if they had just kept the old system. Thats quite something to achieve, considering the old one was also pretty bad.