Hong Kong....Occupy Central Demonstrations....

pla101prc said:

yup, walking away from the table was a major blunder. i think a couple months later when we reflect on why this movement failed, that moment will come up as one of the reasons.

bragging about being leaderless is an indication that one lacks basic understanding of politics. the moderate leaders of this movement successfully averted a potential violent development on the night of the 2nd. unfortunately "leaderless" is where this movement is heading if current trend is to continue.

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The reason they were bragging it was a leaderless movement is make people assume this was something that hit a cord with the average person and not a political agenda by individuals. But when they get their meeting that was demanded, it's everyone for themselves and they want their agenda not excluded by someone else.

airsuperiority said:

Well that's what they are angry about the whole time and I sympathize with them. But I highly doubt most are attackers, save for that business owner who grabbed a high school female student's leg. I was trying to find the picture because last night before I slept I saw a picture of that a-hole, then this morning there's a link my friend posted which identified him as a restaurant owner somewhere

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That's what happens when you go outside the legal means and take your politics to the streets. In the chaos, despite the best effort and intentions, people will get hurt. Look at what happened in Ukraine, how many thousands dead? Are they better off now?

[video=youtube;HzrJJ_FljFo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzrJJ_FljFo&feature=youtu.be[/video]

$300 for moving the fences (you can hear it around 0:50)

Bltizo said:

Not to sound callous, but I think taking the position that "normal" people wouldn't commit acts of violence, and thus antiOCers are not actual HKers or whatever, is not a very firm position to make a case on.

Obviously I don't condone the violence, but frustration and elevated emotions (especially between opposing groups) usually has a tendency of leading to violence, even sometimes what could be perceived as sadism.

But like I said, there seems to be differing confrontations between OC and anti OC, it'll take time to see how representative and persistent the perceived "organised and violent" anti OC subgroups are.

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It goes back to what I've always been arguing before. It's always blamed on mainlanders. Hong Kongers would never act this way. Just like when thugs threw an air conditioner at director Michael Bay's head for not giving them money for filming Transformers in the neighborhood. I read comments blaming mainlanders. No that's the typical Hong Kong gangster tactic of extorting money. Organize crime don't like the communists and that's why they joined up with Chang Kai-shek and the Nationalists in the Chinese civil war. So where's the connection to blame the mainland?

airsuperiority said:

The anti-OC crowd isn't made up of legitimate small business people. The video link up there shows a group of youths with masks smashing things. And to believe anti-OC crowd does things like these means these anti-OC people are violent and barbaric, which will not make sense because they are supposively just normal HK folks, and normal HK public wouldn't/shouldn't go to THAT extremes of continuous physical attacks on students.

No matter how frustrated one can be, I don't see continuous physical attacks and beatings on students as something a normal citizen would do. I mean, would you beat literally start people beating people up on and on?

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Looks like normal residents tearing down protestor tent.

shen said:

That's what happens when you go outside the legal means and take your politics to the streets. In the chaos, despite the best effort and intentions, people will get hurt. Look at what happened in Ukraine, how many thousands dead? Are they better off now?

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The police prevented the original protest area from being entered, which was what forced the people into the streets.

I watched the video and I cannot see any 'smoking gun'.

I see a bunch of young men clearing a path through barricades with the inevitable scuffles. Now true enough those guys looked organised, but the scale of it and degree of violence, and even the objects are all far too small scale and petty to have been micro-managed by Beijing.

Trust me, if Beijing wanted those streets cleared, those streets would be cleared.

Claims of those guys being government hired thugs and 'touching up women' just seems like a carbon copy of the claims from the Egyption clashes with no evidence to back it up.

As others have said, this group are far more likely to have been a gathering of local business people and their relatives, and/or organised crime enforcers.

Claims that the police were standing asside is plainly untrue. The most that could be said is the police used the same kid-gloves tactics as they did when dealing with the OC demonstrators.

The video of OC demonstrators attacking police with umbrellas put paid to the lie that they are a non-violent movement, and the police reaction to those repeated attackes were restrained to the extreme.

In any other city, I would have expected, at a minimum, for batons to have been deployed en mass after the first couple of charges, and police snatch teams to counter-charge and arrest the ring leaders and most enthusiastic attackers.

When no arrests were made when protestors directly attack police, how could anyone reasonably cry bias and favouritism when police don't arrest anyone for a few scruffles?

Gotta commend HKPF for their professionalism ether way.

This is the best that I can come up with. I couldnt find the picture anymore. But whatever you guys probably dont really care anyway

AssassinsMace said:

The reason they were bragging it was a leaderless movement is make people assume this was something that hit a cord with the average person and not a political agenda by individuals. But when they get their meeting that was demanded, it's everyone for themselves and they want their agenda not excluded by someone else.

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well we ought to avoid looking at the protesters as a unitary actor. there could very well be many on the streets now who believe that negotiations must continue, but no one wants to take the job because it carries a risk of being marginalized within an increasingly radical movement.