Occupy Central...News, Photos & Videos ONLY!!

[Blackstone]

Reporters roughed up in Hong Kong Saturday night? raw video-

[video=youtube;aawtGJ6rWAo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aawtGJ6rWAo&feature=player_detailpage[/video]

 

[SampanViking]

According to the BBC the vote proposed by the above article has now been cancelled.

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Protesters in Hong Kong have abandoned plans to hold a ballot over whether to accept several government concessions.

Protest leaders said they decided to "adjourn" the vote after disagreements over its format and apologised for a "lack of discussion" with protesters.

The vote was to be held electronically and was cancelled just four hours before it was meant to start.

Tens of thousands of protesters have joined a sit-in calling for full democracy in Hong Kong since September.

On Tuesday, student protest leaders and government officials held talks for the first time, but made little progress towards ending the impasse

The government, represented by deputy leader Carrie Lam, offered to send a report to Chinese government officials reflecting the protesters' views, and set up a platform to facilitate dialogue on future constitutional changes.
'Hasty' poll decision

Protest leaders initially rejected the government's offer before pledging on Friday to hold the now-cancelled vote.

"We feel we have been conducting the vote hastily," said Benny Tai, one of the founders of the Occupy Central protest group,

"We decided to adjourn the vote at the square but it doesn't mean the movement has stopped," he told AFP.

In a statement, Occupy Central said: "We apologise to the public for the lack of discussion among the participants before making the previous decision."

Though numbers have fallen significantly since the early days of the protests, a hard core of demonstrators - mostly students - have said they will not give up their occupation of central areas until China changes its mind on the rules for Hong Kong's 2017 election.

They also want Chief Executive CY Leung to stand down.

The Chinese government has ruled that candidates for the chief executive election must be vetted by a nominating committee dominated by pro-Beijing groups. The protesters say they should be allowed a wholly free choice of candidate.

Chinese and Hong Kong leaders say the street protest is illegal.

 

[shen]

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Hong Kong protests in disarray as vote on next move scrapped
AFP
By Dennis Chong 4 hours ago
Hong Kong (AFP) - Leaders of Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests on Sunday abruptly postponed a vote on their next steps due to differing opinions about how to move the month-long campaign forward.
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Four weeks after tens of thousands of Hong Kongers took to the streets demanding free leadership elections for the semi-autonomous Chinese city, weary demonstrators remain encamped across several major roads.

But the crowds have shrunk dramatically on most weekdays and leaders are struggling to decide how to keep up the momentum.

With Beijing insisting that candidates for the 2017 vote must be vetted by a loyalist committee -- an arrangement the protesters deride as "fake democracy" -- there is no end to the stalemate in sight.

The vote by mobile phone had been set to take place on Sunday and Monday evening to gauge protesters' opinions on what the next moves should be.

But just hours before voting was due to begin, protest leaders told reporters they had been forced to call it off because of differing views on how it should be carried out.
View gallery
A member of the pro-government 'Blue Ribbon group' …
A member of the pro-government 'Blue Ribbon group' holds a Chinese national flag during a ca …

"We decided to adjourn the vote... but it doesn't mean the movement has stopped," said Benny Tai of prominent pro-democracy group Occupy Central.

Organisers did not rule out rescheduling the vote, but were unable to say when it might take place or what it would be about.

- Retreat ruled out -

Leaders bowed in apology for disappointing supporters of a movement that has come to be known as the "umbrella revolution", after the umbrellas wielded in the face of police tear gas.

"There have been a lot of conflicts and different opinions," student leader Alex Chow told reporters.
View gallery
Pro-democracy protesters camp out in the Admiralty …
Pro-democracy protesters camp out in the Admiralty district of Hong Kong, on October 25, 2014 (AFP P …

Leaders refused to be drawn on the nature of the disagreements, but Chow said there had been concerns over how to ensure that only protesters took part in the vote, amid worries opponents might try to hijack the process.

The vote would have asked demonstrators how to respond to tentative concessions offered by Hong Kong's government last week.

At talks Tuesday senior officials offered to file a report to Beijing about recent events, and suggested both sides set up a committee to discuss further political reform beyond 2017. Neither plan met with much enthusiasm from protesters.

But frustration is growing among residents after a month of traffic gridlock caused by the roadblocks, with sporadic clashes breaking out between police, protesters and opponents.

In the latest ugly scenes, four journalists were roughed up by angry pro-government demonstrators on Saturday evening at a counter-rally calling for democracy protesters to go home.
View gallery
A pro-democracy protester wears a helmet and gas mask …
A pro-democracy protester wears a helmet and gas mask as he stands above a barricaded road in the Mo …

Police said a 61-year-old man had been arrested over the assaults, which the office of Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying condemned as a "savage act".

Protest leaders offered few insights into how they would proceed now the vote has been scrapped.

"At this stage of the movement every one of us is exploring which way to go," Benny Tai said.

A retreat was the only option that was ruled out, with student activist Joshua Wong saying it was "absolutely not the time" to quit the streets.

Surya Deva, a law professor at City University of Hong Kong, said Sunday's events showed the leadership was battling a "lack of clarity".
View gallery
College students in graduation attire carry yellow …
College students in graduation attire carry yellow umbrellas -- symbols of the pro-democracy movemen …

"It's the disadvantage any decentralised movement faces," Deva told AFP, adding that it needed to come up with a longer-term civil disobedience strategy.

Demonstrators had mixed views on the failed vote.

"I'm a bit disappointed," said Lily Su, an account executive at a technology firm.

"We're doing everything we can to try to get democracy, but nothing seems to happen."

But Matilda Law, an 18-year-old high school student, expressed relief. "I was worried that not many people would vote, and our opponents would use it to say, 'See? You have no support'."

There was a festive mood at the main protest site in Admiralty Sunday evening, with a few thousand people rounding off their weekend by listening to speeches and music in the city of tents that has sprung up outside government headquarters.

"Day 29!" one shouted from the stage, to a roar from the crowds.

 

[shen]

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香港2天内65万人签名反占中 网络签名遭欧美黑客攻击

Hong Kong Anti-OC petition receives 650,000 signatures in 2 days. Despite European American based hacker attacks against the petition website. Website shut down by hackers on the night of 25th, back in operation at noon 26th. 550,000 signed in person, 100,000 online.

 

[Piotr]

Occupy Central plots hatched 2 years ago: BBC

Occupy Central plots hatched 2 years ago: BBC
(Xinhua) Updated: 2014-10-27 09:18
LONDON -- Far from being "impromptu demonstrations," the ongoing Occupy Central movement in Hong Kong was plotted nearly two years ago with the involvement of overseas forces, the BBC has reported in an article published on its website.
It is an "open secret" at the Oslo Freedom Forum, which is referred to as "one of the biggest meetings of human rights activists in the world," that plans were hatched for the demonstrations nearly two years ago, wrote Laura Kuenssberg, chief correspondent of BBC Newsnight, in the article.

"Democracy activists" from around the world have helped "organize their struggle, gather together," said the article.

As early as in January 2013, "organizers" prepared a plan to persuade 10,000 people to occupy roads in central Hong Kong, it said.

"Their strategies were not just to plan the timing and nature of the demonstrations, but also how they would be run," said the report. Many of those involved in the demonstrations, perhaps more than 1,000 of them, have been given specific training to help make the campaign as effective as possible.

"Protesters were taught how to behave during a protest," Jamila Raqib, the executive director of the Albert Einstein Institution based near Boston, was quoted by the article as saying.

"How to keep ranks, how to speak to police, how to manage their own movement, how to use marshals in their movement, people who are specially trained," Raqib said.

Whether in Georgia, Ukraine, Egypt or Hong Kong "you can look at these movements - and see the set of rules," Serdja Popovic was quoted as saying.

Popovic was one of the student leaders involved in overthrowing Slobodan Milosevic.

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[bd popeye]

Discussion is not permitted in this thread!

Effective 1 November 2014 I will close all political threads and leave links to other forums that permit unabated political discussion.

Here's the first one;

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Our SDF forum is a private entity and we can set the rules as we see fit. And one of them is no politics.

It is my experience in over nine years in this forum that political discussion just brings out the worst in our fine well intentioned members.

bd popeye super moderator

 

[Brumby]

Xi Jinping Averts Tiananmen-Style Massacre in Hong Kong

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[delft]

Ambassador Bhadrakumar on Occupy Central, and one, interesting, reaction:

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Who cooked the Hong Kong broth?

The sensational report by the BBC that the protests in Hong Kong known as Occupy Central were in reality not spontaneous or indigenous, but were choreographed carefully two years ago and executed by foreign forces and that around 1000 Chinese activists could be “trained demonstrators” would corroborate the reports from Moscow to this effect a few weeks ago — expect that the Russian reports unwaveringly pointed finger at the US as mentoring the entire enterprise.
In retrospect, Beijing seems to have read the tea leaves correctly, having drawn a wealth of conclusions about the alchemy of the mysterious phenomena known as the “color revolutions” sponsored by the US in the recent decade. Of course, Ukraine is only the latest in a chain that began in Georgia way back in 2003 and it is more or less an established fact that these so-called democracy movements are actually geopolitical in character and inextricably linked to the US’ global strategies and regional policies.
Russia has been the principal target and it is interesting that now China has also been made a testing ground. Conceivably, the “color revolutions” make a topic in Russia-China security cooperation, especially in the Central Asian region.
The timing of the enterprise in Hong Kong might have had something to do with the APEC summit in Beijing scheduled to take place on November 10. The intentions could have been embarrass the Chinese government or even test its nerves and prompt it to use force to quell the protests.
On the outer side, there might have been expectations in the West that the protests might ignite the socio-economic fabric of “mainland China”. Some Indian pundits on state television even visualized such an apocalyptic scenario.
If so, the enterprise has failed to have the desired effect. The BBC report tarnishes the Occupy Central almost beyond repair and any foreign intelligence agency would know that the protests have become a “burnt-out case” from now on.
Indeed, it is most striking that the BBC featured such a report at all — bracketing the Hong Kong protestors with such discredited outfits like Russia’s punk group Pussy Riot and a North Korean defector. It stands to reason that Britain has drawn the conclusion that the Occupy Central has flopped beyond redemption and the right thing to do without further delay will be to distance itself from the protest.
Britain would know that no matter any aberrations in the political order in Hong Kong, the historical truth is that democracy in any form appeared for the first time in Hong Kong’s history only after the city changed hands and came under China’s control.
Indeed, Beijing has played it “cool”. There has been nothing of the crudity with which we scattered Baba Ramdev from the Ramlila precincts two years ago. Yet, Beijing’s approach is hard as nail in reality. Many factors worked in Beijing’s favor.
Indeed, Beijing let the mayhem run its course and estimated correctly that at some point sooner rather than later the public opinion in Hong Kong would incrementally militate against the ensuing mess and disorder. That approach stands vindicated today.
Beijing could afford to take such a calibrated approach for two reasons. One, Hong Kong is no longer the locomotive of growth for China’s economy. It is not even a lead wagons in the gravy train. Shanghai and several other regions in the east have overtaken Hong Kong in dynamism and prosperity. Suffice to say, Hong Kong’s importance to Chinese economy (and foreign policy) has considerably diminished and this trend may only get accentuated with the passage of time.
Second and more important, the “mainland opinion” has viewed the Hong Kong protests as an act of petulance by the city’s “spoilt children” (who already enjoy a surfeit of democracy) rather than as the harbinger of democratization of the Chinese society. Equally, there is a strong likelihood that the mainland opinion believes in the role of the “foreign hand”.
Beijing has indeed taken a hard line by refusing to negotiate its prerogative to determine the pace and direction of China’s democratization. It also underscores a level of self-confidence in scattering a US intelligence operation without going ballistic. (Interestingly, the calm composure with which Beijing took note of the Dalai Lama’s sojourn in North America on the eve of the APEC summit is also notable.)
As of now at least, the use of coercive methods in Hong Kong compares favorably with the massive crackdown on the Occupy Wall Street protests in the US two years ago. It seems the foreign devils on the Silk Road misjudged.

Posted in Diplomacy, Politics.

Tagged with Xi Jinping.

By M K Bhadrakumar – October 27, 2014


One Response

Mrya antonova says

The colour revolutions started in Belgrade in 1998, by the US NED trained “opposition” group Otpor against the elected President Milosevic. I know, i was there and saw people being offered money and free booze to participate. it was lead by an infamous Srdja Popovic who later exported and trained identical offshoots with identical logo´s the clenched fist, in first Ukraine then Georgia, supervised by the US embassies in resp. country.

Mrya.

 

[Blackstone]

Deleted

 

[Piotr]

News about how US is trying to cover its financial support for illegal Occupy Central movement.

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US Covers Up Support for Hong Kong "Occupy Central"
The US' clumsy balancing act between backing Hong Kong protesters rhetorically and hiding its support financially, comes to a head.
October 28, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci - LD) - For the United States, so-called "color revolution" used to be a specialty until recently. The Western media has delighted in exposing the US State Department's role in the wake of successful political subversion around the world via the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and a long list of subsidiaries including Freedom House, the National Democratic Institute (NDI), and the International Republican Institute (IRI) headed currently by US Senator John McCain.

For example, the Guardian would admit in its 2004 article, “US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev,” that:

…while the gains of the orange-bedecked “chestnut revolution” are Ukraine’s, the campaign is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes.

Funded and organised by the US government, deploying US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and US non-government organisations, the campaign was first used in Europe in Belgrade in 2000 to beat Slobodan Milosevic at the ballot box.

Amid the more recent unrest in Ukraine, Washington's role was less subtle, with US Senator John McCain of IRI literally flying to Kiev and taking to the stage side-by-side literal Neo-Nazis to lend the movement political legitimacy it desperately lacked.
The US State Department would also brag again toward the end of the so-called "Arab Spring" of its role in fostering the chaos that would eventually lead to deadly protracted warfare across North Africa, as well as within and along Syria's borders and now Iraq. The New York Times would report in its April 2011 article, "U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings," that:

"A number of the groups and individuals directly involved in the revolts and reforms sweeping the region, including the April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and grass-roots activists like Entsar Qadhi, a youth leader in Yemen, received training and financing from groups like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, a nonprofit human rights organization based in Washington."

The article would also add, regarding the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED):

"The Republican and Democratic institutes are loosely affiliated with the Republican and Democratic Parties. They were created by Congress and are financed through the National Endowment for Democracy, which was set up in 1983 to channel grants for promoting democracy in developing nations. The National Endowment receives about $100 million annually from Congress. Freedom House also gets the bulk of its money from the American government, mainly from the State Department. "

The New York Times minces no words - the US put those protesters out on the streets after years of careful planning with some of the training and preparations taking place as early as 2008 - however, it should be remembered that initially the United States disavowed any connection at all with the protests and at first attempted to feign surprise regarding the uprisings. In fact, it was US President Barack Obama himself who would disingenuously claim during a speech in May 2011 that:

The question before us is what role America will play as this story unfolds.

Of course, that role was already being fulfilled in the form of millions being channeled into political subversion years before President Obama would even take office. He would also claim:

...we must proceed with a sense of humility. It’s not America that put people into the streets of Tunis or Cairo -– it was the people themselves who launched these movements, and it’s the people themselves that must ultimately determine their outcome.

It must be remembered that President Obama made these patently false claims after the New York Times published its article. There was nothing genuine about President Obama's speech, nor anything genuine about the "Arab Spring" besides, perhaps, the good intentions of some of the protesters willfully exploited by Washington and its network of global political subversion.

Fast Forward to "Occupy Central," Washington's Latest Project
In the streets of downtown Hong Kong, a dwindling number of protesters carry on in vain. They hold a city and region hostage in attempts to carry out yet another US-funded and directed "color revolution." The ruse, however, has been fully exposed with each and every leader of the so-called "Occupy Central" or "Umbrella Movement" being tied to the US State Department's now familiar network of political subversion. Stalled and unable to materialize the momentum needed to replicate the success of foreign-backed subversion elsewhere, the US is now attempting to disavow any role in fostering the unrest in the first place.

The US NED website now has a page dedicated to disavowing evidence it is behind "Occupy Central." Titled, "The National Endowment for Democracy and support for democracy in Hong Kong," NED claims:

In the wake of recent pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong, state controlled Chinese news outlets have published erroneous reports that the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has played a central role in the protests.

NED would go on to admit that it is extensively funding political activity in Hong Kong. It would also claim:

Reports that NED Vice President Louisa Greve met with organizers of the Hong Kong protests are inaccurate, and while the National Endowment for Democracy is supportive of the goals of universal suffrage and genuine democracy, no leader of the current protests has sought assistance or counsel from the NED. On April 2, 2014 Ms. Greve moderated a panel hosted by NED featuring prominent democracy advocates Martin Lee and Anson Chan, and the full video of that event is available online. This was one of many appearances and meetings Lee and Chan scheduled during their trip to the U.S. in the spring of 2014 to discuss Hong Kong’s future. While Mr. Lee and Ms. Chan are leading democratic figures in Hong Kong, they are neither leaders nor organizers of the current protests; neither are they grantees of the NED. Lee was honored with NED’s annual Democracy Award in 1997 in recognition of his work to support freedom of the press, full democratic elections, the rule of law, and human rights in Hong Kong.

However, Martin Lee in particularly, is a regular speaker, supporter, and demonstrably a chief organizer of "Occupy Central," despite NED's insistence otherwise. He is a permanent fixture both vocally defending the ongoing unrest in the streets and in fact, on the streets himself shoulder-to-shoulder with other prominent "Occupy Central" leaders.

NED claims, "no leader of the current protests has sought assistance or counsel from the NED," however this does not explain why current protest leaders and the organizations they are affiliated with have in fact most certainly received NED assistance.

"Occupy Central's" self-proclaimed leader, Benny Tai, is a law professor at the University of Hong Kong and a regular collaborator with the US NED and NDI-funded Centre for Comparative and Public Law (CCPL) also of the University of Hong Kong.

In 2006-2007 (annual report, .pdf) he was named as a board member - a position he has held until at least as recently as last year. In CCPL's 2011-2013 annual report (.pdf), NDI is listed as having provided funding to the organization to "design and implement an online Models of Universal Suffrage portal where the general public can discuss and provide feedback and ideas on which method of universal suffrage is most suitable for Hong Kong."

Curiously, in CCPL's most recent annual report for 2013-2014 (.pdf), Tai is not listed as a board member. However, he is listed as participating in at least 3 conferences organized by CCPL, and as heading at least one of CCPL's projects. At least one conference has him speaking side-by-side another prominent "Occupy Central" figure, Audrey Eu. The 2013-2014 annual report also lists NDI as funding CCPL's "Design Democracy Hong Kong" website.

Civic Party chairwoman Audrey Eu Yuet-mee, in addition to speaking at CCPL-NDI functions side-by-side with Benny Tai, is entwined with the US State Department and its NDI elsewhere. She regularly attends forums sponsored by NED and its subsidiary NDI. In 2009 she was a featured speaker at an NDI sponsored public policy forum hosted by "SynergyNet," also funded by NDI. In 2012 she was a guest speaker at the NDI-funded Women's Centre "International Women's Day" event, hosted by the Hong Kong Council of Women (HKCW) which is also annually funded by the NDI.

These connections are not accusations concocted by "state controlled Chinese news outlets," but rather documented by the US State Department and its subsidiaries themselves.

What we find documented regarding the admitted US support for "Occupy Central's" various personalities and organizations is no different than what one would have found upon investigating the US State Department's backing of opposition fronts taking part in the "Arab Spring" before the US finally admitted its direct role in funding, equipping, directing, and backing the uprisings. The only difference is that widespread public awareness of Washington's role in Hong Kong's current unrest has occurred before such admissions were made, and more importantly, before the US succeeded in its goals.

The West's Weak Rebuttal

While NED itself has elected to outright lie about its role in backing "Occupy Central," both mainstream and lesser cogs in the West's propaganda machinery have attempted to attack and undermine the credibility of those exposing documented US backing of "Occupy Central." Hardly worth mentioning, these attacks focus not on the accusations themselves or any kind of sound, logical, or factual rebuttal, but tired logical fallacies and ad hominem attacks on the journalists, analysts, and causal observers simply directing readers toward this documented evidence.

Suffice to say, such attacks are entirely inadequate and had scarcely worked in 2011 when astute observers began pointing out US involvement in the allegedly "spontaneous" "Arab Spring." Evidently, they have an even lesser effect on salvaging the credibility of "Occupy Central" still cluttering Hong Kong's streets today.

One wonders if and when the US State Department will come clean on its destabilization efforts in Hong Kong, or if this is the beginning of the end for the entire strategy of covert political subversion ushered in under the cover of supposed "spontaneous" "popular" uprisings. For China, this would be particularly welcomed news, since Hong Kong is by far not the only region within its vast territory the target of US subversion. Far more dire conflicts simmer in its western Xinjiang province and across the Tibetan Plateau, all also undulated with US State Department backing in the form of NED's "assistance."