Yesterday, I listened to the Silk and Steel podcast in which there was a long
description of the very complex situation in Hong Kong. Among other things,
Martin Lee was mentioned. He was the person whom Amy Goodman featured as the
"father of democracy" in Hong Kong and an expert on the situation. He is
actually backed by the US National Endowment For Democracy, the CIA affiliated
organization that creates upheaval in all the countries where the US wants to
create regime change. Up until 1995, the government in Hong Kong was completely
colonial. Then, in preparation for the handover to China in 1997, changes
toward democratic rule were made so that the handover to China would appear to
be a change from democracy to autocracy. Martin Lee was one of the people
involved in those changes. This morning, I awoke to NPR which was filled with
anti China propaganda. It was amazing. I've been to China. I know what China
is. They have their autocracy. We have our's. But the version of what is
happening in Hong Kong was a simplified tale of good protestors against evil
China. It is much more complex than that. There are protestors, protesting
against real injustice. But what they're protesting against has little to do
with Mainland China or rather, not in the sense that is being portrayed by US
news. One of the things that NPR kept saying, I suppose to cover themselves,
was that there's a great deal of disinformation being spread about Hong Kong.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Thursday, September 05, 2019 1:10 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: more frustration with news coverage
Well, at this point in time, Amy Goodman is the best morning world
news reporter on my radio, along with Flash Points. But when I have
the opportunity, I tune into RT TV. I do get Free TV...I think that's the
name...with Thom Hartmann and Amy Goodman, and others. I quit listening to
MSNBC TV long ago, and almost never turn on the former big three network
channels.
The truth is that most news has been compromised by mega corporation dollars.
Even operating a small local radio station is expensive, so the average working
class folks do not now, nor ever have had the news slanted their way. Most of
us who grew up with the daily paper delivered to our door, became accustomed to
the soft bias toward the business community. In Seattle we had the PI, a
Hearst owned paper...yellow journalism. This made the rather stuffy,
conservative Times look almost Liberal. But it wasn't. Even as it shaped the
thinking of many working class people.
Well, I'm supposed to be on a conference call at ten o'clock...hmm...so I'd
better clear the deck.
Carl Jarvis
On 9/3/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Democracy Now did a piece on the Hong Kong protests today with a Part
2 of their interview with someone who is, according to them, a
representative of the democracy movement in Hong Kong. What this
report was, is a sort of whitewash of every bit of mainstream media
anti China propaganda which has substituted for information ever since
those protests began. I have listened to two people reporting on the
situation on Flashpoints, a two part report on Moderate Rebels, and a
very confusing report on The Real News. Then I heard two reports on a
podcast called Silk and Steel. The person from that podcast, Carl Sha,
was the one interviewed on Moderate Rebels. And the more I hear, the
more complicated the situation becomes. But to understand it, one must
know the history of Hong Kong as a British Colony, the fact that it
never had democratic rule before reverting to Chinese ownership in
1997, the fact that it has an extremely wealthy elite and a majority
of very poor workers, and therefore, there has been great discontent
for a very long time. Very wealthy people in Hong Kong and in mainland
China, make a great deal of money from the Hong Kong economy and there
is no incentive on the part of the elites to change the government.
But the US sees China as a huge economic threat. The supposed
democracy leaders in Hong Kong, have just been meeting in Washington
with supporters of democracy like Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo, and The
National Endowment For Democracy has been fomenting unrest in Hong
Kong for years, just as it has done in Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua,
Ukraine, etc. The Chinese experts say that the young Hong Kong
demonstrators do not actually know what they want, but they are angry
because they feel cheated economically. They say that the people have
never had direct representation in the government.
You can hear all this on Moderate Rebels, Flashpoints, and Silk and
Steel, and you can hear Mark Steiner's somewhat confused interview of
a Hong Kong woman on The Real News. The sad thing is that like their
reporting on Syria, Russiagate, and Venezuela, Democracy Now has
fallen short, once again on doing complete reporting on this subject,
which would involve giving deep background and several viewpoints.
You'd think that she never heard of max Blumenthal, Ben Norton, Aaron
Mate or John Pilger, people whom she once welcomed on her programs.
Carl talks about the day he stopped trusting NPR, the day that Bob
Edwards left. Well, my trust in Amy Goodman's willingness to provide
information that isn't approved by government censors, is just about
gone. She's still doing OK with Palestine, although not nearly as well
as she used to. But Palestinians are becoming more acceptable to
liberal Jews these days.
Miriam
