This Hong Kong thing is getting to be a VERY big deal

[LuckyTheDog]

?list=PL50BDB9BCCFAF09CA

[marions ghost]

1. good encapsulation

of the issues...

Amy Goodman

[msongs]

2. like OWS national leadership will crush them. Democracy is just another word nt

[johnnyreb]

5. Word is, one of those consumers may have sneezed on a lamp post.

[11 Bravo]

3. The Chinese are known for many things. Backing down ...

is not one of them. I pray that this doesn't get Tiananmenesque.

[TBF]

4. Solidarity.

More here from a leftist perspective -- > http://www.democraticunderground.com/10246235

[OldRedneck]

6. Give it a week

Give it a week then the Army moves in.

[Blue_Tires]

7. Have Snowden or Greenwald commented on China's crackdown yet?

Just wondering...

I'm not an IT expert, but it looks to me like the Chinese government is directly conducting widespread manipulation of the internet to squelch dissent:

http://www.news.com.au/technology/online/hong-kong-protests-instagram-and-other-social-media-blocked-in-mainland-china/story-fn5j66db-1227075649941

[Bosonic]

9. They'll find squelching communication is difficult nowadays

FireChat – the messaging app that’s powering the Hong Kong protests

The internet is vulnerable to state intervention, but demonstrators have found a way around it

Joshua Wong, a 17-year-old student in Hong Kong, had a problem. You will have experienced a version of it yourself: you are at a football match or a gig and you need to find a friend. But the crowd means that the network is overloaded, and you can’t get a signal on your phone. The thing that means you need to call someone is the very thing that means you can’t.

For Wong, the problem was more serious: he wasn’t at a football match, but playing a leading role in the organisation of the pro-democracy protests that have shaken his city over the past week. And he wasn’t just worried the network would be overloaded – he was worried the authorities would block it on purpose.

Every major display of social unrest these days seems to come with a game-changing technological accompaniment. The London riots were narrated on BlackBerry Messenger. Twitter played an essential role in the Arab spring. Turkish protesters who found the internet blocked turned to censor-proof Virtual Private Networks. But none of those innovations was much use without a connection. For Wong and his allies in Hong Kong, the answer was an app that allows people to send messages from phone to phone without mobile reception, or the internet: FireChat.

When you download it, FireChat looks like an unexceptional venue for inane online chat about sport and TV. But it’s more than that. If the network is down, FireChat can use Bluetooth – really just a sexed-up radio signal – to talk to nearby users. The protesters may find something satisfying in the way the system works, gaining strength like a movement, or a radical idea, not through a top-down imposition, but from thousands of little connections. Every new participant increases the network’s range and strength. “Usually, the more people there are in the same location, the less connectivity you get,” says Micha Benoliel, one of the app’s creators. “But with our system, it’s the opposite.”

FireChat has already been used in protests in Taiwan, Iran and Iraq, but never on the scale being seen in Hong Kong. After Wong urged his movement to use it, FireChat got more than 100,000 new sign-ups in Hong Kong in under 24 hours; it has registered 800,000 chat sessions since. If the Communist party isn’t quite reeling, its opponents’ lives have at least got a little easier.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/29/firechat-messaging-app-powering-hong-kong-protests

[Blue_Tires]

12. Not sure how this helps those on the mainland

but good to see the HK protestors putting it to good use...

[quadrature]

8. where is Obama on this matter?

is Obama going to be 'flexible' ?
Is the Chinese Prez going to get another
invite to Palm Springs?

[LanternWaste]

18. U.S. Steps Up China Criticism Amid Hong Kong Pro-Democracy Protests

"White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest backed the protesters' calls for greater autonomy in choosing candidates for Hong Kong's chief executive, going beyond the administration's broad calls in recent days for greater democracy in China.

Mr. Earnest urged Beijing to allow "a genuine choice of candidates that are representative of the peoples' and the voters' will." The "basic legitimacy" of the Hong Kong chief executive, he said, would be diminished without a fair vote as laid out in the current law."

http://online.wsj.com/articles/u-s-steps-up-china-criticism-amid-hong-kong-pro-democracy-protests-1412027706

[MADem]

10. Tien An Men South, is what I've been calling it.

And I don't expect it to end well.

I'd like it to, but I don't think those poor bastards have a prayer; not an ice cube's chance in hell.

I think that the Chinese will crack down sooner rather than later, and put to bed the fiction of a "democratic" Hong Kong once and for all. It's been a frigging joke for years, now, anyway--might as well make it plain that Beijing is the boss, and they are vassals--because that's the sad truth.

You wanna see how a country can "manage" social media comms? Watch Beijing when they start getting serious. It will get very ugly, and odds are, we'll not see the half of it.

[customerserviceguy]

13. I agree

And Americans will keep obediently going to WalMart to buy Chinese made crap. Won't matter one bit to them, since it is 'over there'.

[PeoViejo]

11. Fake Occupy Central app targets activists’ smartphones with spyware

http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1594667/fake-occupy-central-app-targets-activists-smartphones


A fraudulent smartphone app claiming to coordinate the Occupy Central pro-democracy movement has circulated online, a group of programmers said on Wednesday.

The spyware is disguised as an application for Android smartphones or tablets, Code4HK, a group of coders trying to improve government transparency in Hong Kong, said.

A screenshot of the information requested by the application.

Activists first received a link to the application in messages from a phone number unknown to them on Tuesday. “Check out this Android app designed by Code4HK for the coordination of Occupy Central!” the message read.

Lau Sau-yin, a spokeswoman for Occupy Central, said the organisation had nothing to do with the spyware. Code4HK also said that none of its members developed or distributed the application. “None of the Code4HK community has done any application on [Occupy Central] at the moment nor sent the message,” the statement read.

The number that shared the software could not be reached on Wednesday.

[Cha]

14. Hands up don't shoot is being used by tens of thousands as a form of protest in Hong Kong. Powerful.

Alex Medina ✔ @mrmedina
Follow
Hands up don't shoot is being used by tens of thousands as a form of protest in Hong Kong. Powerful.
11:57 AM - 28 Sep 2014 1,630 Retweets 811 favorites

http://theobamadiary.com/2014/09/29/a-tweet-or-two-132/



Jim Roberts ✔ @nycjim
Follow
#HongKong update 4: Beijing-selected leader says protests must stop. Good luck with that. http://nyti.ms/1rpUczE
1:25 AM - 30 Sep 2014 24 Retweets 12 favorites



Ivan Watson ✔ @IvanCNN
Thunder, lightning and rain hit Hong Kong protest. Fortunately everyone seems to have an umbrella
1:35 AM - 30 Sep 2014 978 Retweets 587 favorites

White House supports Hong Kong protesters:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/29/hongkong-china-whitehouse-idUSL2N0RU1LC20140929

http://theobamadiary.com/2014/09/30/rise-and-shine-915/#comments

Yes, I've been following it on another site.. good to see something here about it, Lucky.

[Enthusiast]

15. This is inspirational.

And that is just what the Chinese government does not want—inspirational.

[pampango]

16. Beijing has already declared that US "magic cookies" are involved. Looks way too much like Kiev.

Kiev

How could the Chinese authorities have got themselves into such a mess? The answer can already be discerned in the way pro-Chinese media are describing the situation. There the blame is laid on foreigners and western intelligence agencies. There is stress on “illegality” and the culpability of citizens who “do not love China”. There seems no room in the official mind for the idea that it has made the wrong decisions.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/29/guardian-view-on-battle-for-democracy-hong-kong

[MattSh]

17. Kiev. A mess from the beginning and...

getting worse with each passing day.

[pampango]

19. Kiev's mass demonstrations were inspirational at the beginning, just as are Hong Kong's.

It is good to see people take to the streets in large numbers when politicians and governments don't live up to their word. We will see if Hong Kong's demonstrators are as tenacious as were Kiev's, who kept it up throughout a cold Ukrainian winter.

Few are optimistic that Hong Kong's will end with anything other than a violent government crackdown. Beijing cannot give in to HK's protesters without the fear that HK's spirit of democracy might spread to the rest of China. It has to show that it can control and eventually repress such expressions.