Given how hard Hong Kong’s pro-democracy activists have been fighting to establish true democracy in Hong Kong, you’d think they’d also be happy at the news that the US has managed to survive Donald Trump’s attempt to destroy democracy there, and that Trump has been denied a second term.

And you’d be not entirely correct.

Some pro-Democracy ( Read more... )

One thing many of us in HK have noticed over the past couple of years is how public statements from the HK govt - whether it’s chief executive Carrie Lam, department heads or other senior officials - were sounding increasingly similar to public statements from Beijing officials, especially when it came to discussing the 2019 protests, the pro- ( Read more... )

ITEM: Joe Biden has selected his Veep.

In my opinion, he has chosen well - not least because it’s encouraging Tucker Carlson to make an even bigger fool of himself than usual.

However, I know people who are very unhappy with Biden’s choice of Kamala Harris.

Most of the reasons I’ve heard fall into the usual categories: sour grapes, DNC conspiracy ( Read more... )

When I first saw the Twitters light up about the “Intellectual Dark Web”, I thought they were talking about the “dark net” - the fabled part of the internet where hackers and child pornographers and 409 scammers and the like all hang out. (Not that the internet works that way, but why ruin a good metaphor?)

Turns out it’s not that. It’s a collective ( Read more... )

And I for one think it’s pretty cool.

The NRA and Fox News of course thinks it’s a bunch of dumb kids paid by George Soros and coached by George Clooney or whoever to wave a bunch of signs.

Well, they have to, don’t they? The old arguments are no longer working, the sponsors are fleeing, and ever since the Parkland kids decided enough was enough, ( Read more... )

As you may know, Mike Pence went to the opening of the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang. As you may also know, it got a bit awkward. More than once. Several times, actually.

Most of the awkwardness, of course, had to do with North Korea - both the fact that the North and South Korean teams came together for the event, and the fact that Kim Jong Un’s ( Read more... )

When Trump gave his SOTU address, some news media inevitably tried to rate it in terms of “Was it Presidential?” Which in this case means, “Did Trump give a reasonably coherent speech that focused on problems and solutions instead of his usual shambling improv performances where he spends most of the time praising himself, insulting his enemies and ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

I linked to this article in the previous post, but I thought it was worth highlighting in a separate post because I think it really best sums up the problem I’ve tried to describe regarding how social media, blogs and the internet in general has resulted in alt-reality bubbles for people on different sides of the political fence - one consequence ( Read more... )

Donald Trump’s “shithole countries” comment about other countries that are not Norway appears to have been the last straw for the NYT, who has finally declared in a couple of op-eds that Donald Trump really is, yes, a racist.

I agree with that statement.

Some people believe that this description also applies to everyone who either defends Trump or ( Read more... )