#also support hong kong protesters

[supersoftly]

Artist Sanmu Chan was stopped, questioned and taken away by police in Causeway Bay on Monday, the eve of the Tiananmen crackdown anniversary, as he sought to partake in some performance art.

A large police deployment had appeared near Victoria Park, a venue that once hosted mass remembrance vigils.

Dozens of uniform and plainclothes police officers were stationed across the shopping district, concentrated around East Point Road, Hennessy Road and Lockhart Road. An armoured police vehicle was briefly seen parked outside SOGO mall.

HKFP reporters witnessed Chan write the Chinese characters for “8964” with his finger in the air, referencing the date of the 1989 crackdown.

He also mimed pouring wine onto the ground to mourn the dead, per a Chinese tradition, before police moved in.

The Tiananmen crackdown occurred on June 4, 1989 ending months of student-led demonstrations in China. It is estimated that hundreds, perhaps thousands, died when the People’s Liberation Army cracked down on protesters in Beijing.

Over 30 police officers took Chan away for questioning and created a cordon to separate the artist from the media.

He was then taken away in a police vehicle a little before 9:30 pm, in a scene similar to his detention last June on the eve of the crackdown anniversary.

It is unclear if he was arrested. HKFP has reached out to the police for comment.

First anniversary since Article 23

Tuesday will mark the first Tiananmen crackdown anniversary since the city passed domestic security legislation, more commonly known as Article 23.

Police invoked the new law for the first time last week to arrest former Tiananmen vigil organiser Chow Hang-tung and six others over alleged sedition. They stand accused of using an “upcoming sensitive date” to incite hatred against the central and Hong Kong authorities through social media posts. Police made an eighth arrest in connection with the case on Monday. Hong Kong used to be one of the few places on Chinese soil where annual vigils were held to commemorate the people who died in the 1989 crackdown. But police banned the gathering at Victoria Park for the first time in 2020 citing Covid-19 restrictions, and imposed the same ban in the following year.

No official commemoration has been held since the vigil organiser, the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, disbanded in September 2021. Currently occupying Victoria Park – historically the site of Hong Kong’s vigils – is a five-day patriotic carnival organised by 28 pro-Beijing groups.

[5-7-9]

This panel is pretty funny 😂 just because of how wish fulfillment it is

Like, you wish this happened, huh?

I don’t like it when stories use their citizens as some kind of monolith hive mind, they just suddenly get inspired to do good or bad for no reason or the reason is too superficial. It bugs me, what can i say? 🤷

Interesting part to note is how they treated people taking up Joker's masks though.

Joker’s mask seems to be what gives these hooligans the freedom to cause mayhem. I’ve already said it before, but this comic treats Joker’s smile as insincere, something to hide, fake. As if being allowed to a secretive identity removes guilt over responsibility. Like when internet trolls can’t be tied to their face. This is expanded on through Alex Kayes the best. Although I don’t like her character’s existence, she highlights the part of Joker’s legacy that was perhaps misguidedly applied to Joker. Social media and public outcry.

Remember Logan Paul’s infamous apology video? James Charles? Etc. social media people? The comic even got the YouTube logo on it.

Red Flag is having a political podcast 🚩😙 sorry~ but if you’re anything like Andrew Tate, the alt-right pipeline is one you don’t want to stay in. Don’t believe everything you hear.

“It’s about sending a message” …was it hate speech? Jkjk. But this is exactly what Heath Ledger’s Joker’s mission in The Dark Knight Rises movie by Chris Nolan was like.

He was also described by Alfred as “Someone people just want to watch the world burn” with absolutely no reason to be evil, he just is evil 🙃 So there is some similarity to Punchline to this movie’s Joker.

Social media and the constant criticisms done by people reacting and adding their own stuff like idk tiktok i guess? Oh right, the comic said it, yeah. Idk any tiktok challenges like this one, so no video example 🤷

Joker War was also mentioned in other comics. I think it’s interesting how Bao Pham’s origins with Joker and Harley was, and his eventual rise to being Joker Hunter and protecting his city. Then i think he left eventually (idk). Huh.

More Punchline, this time from oftentimes copaganda and all times police commissioner Jim Gordon! More teenagers that support Punchline being bullies, what else is new. I totally forgot what I wanted to say, so I’ll just skip to the end of what I really wanted to comment on. Y’know I only recently learned about this so that’s why I’m talking about it but I think it was really awesome that Joker 2019 traveled all the way around the world because people were using his face masks in activism. That’s the positive side of having a brand, DC comics can go across countries and be recognizable. The more recognizable you are, the more people hear you. That’s what happened in the case with the Joker from the protests in Lebonon, Chile, Hong Kong, Bolivia, Colombia, Spain, Catalonia, and Ecuador (there may have been more but idk). (Warning! Talks of death and possible SA in this video!)

(I’d like to take a special time to acknowledge the Iraq Joker (mustafa makki kareem) since I found a rather in-depth interview video of his efforts). (This was 4 years ago, so I’m afraid the political landscape of Iraq has taken a turn… I hope he’s okay).

An interview with some Hong Kong protestors that wear masks to protect their identity. Interestingly enough, this video calls the mask similar to Batman :)

Also they mention reasons for hiding their identity, and methods!

There’s a few clips of Bolivia’s Joker too

Some faces of Lebonon Jokers (this video is edited with TDK Bane’s message but the original video isn’t allowed in my country?)

More edits of Chile Lebonon and Hong Kong (again, original video linked in description but unavailable to me)

In fact, that’s what happened to the Joker 2019 movie. Nowhere in the comics had Joker been depicted as he was in that movie, a victim of an oppressive system. That movie essentially took back a villain and made him this icon. That was the first time ever after Joker’s further evilization after “The Dark Knight Rises” and “Death In The Family” and “The Killing Joke” made Joker one of the evilest Batman characters (considering the ever so slightly sympathetic side to the rest of the rouges). Not to go off on it, but I think it really was a good thing for Joker. I think his criminalization crossed a line at some point, so in a way, this makes up for it.

Of course, even with all of this, it’d be unfair of me to not mention all the bad that did come from Joker. I will not discount that. And no- the 2012 Aurora shooter James Holms had orange dyed hair and is NOT inspired by Joker, he didn’t even know the movie was going on, fyi. • The Florida man Lawrence Sullivan who was arrested in 2017 for allegedly pointing a firearm at an officer. (I reached my 10 video limit 😭). • The recreation of Joker 2019 bus killing scene with suicidal 24-year-old Kyota Hattori in Tokyo train. • The “Gypsy Crusader” or Paul Nicholas Miller was a popular troll that liked to cosplay as Joker in the 2019 movie and comics Riddler while making jokes (i think he did offensive humor?) of the “radical” alt-right stance. (Ironically, the racists didn’t want a Roma descent racist on their side 💀). He was arrested for possession of an unregistered rifle and a lot of ammunition. He also lived in New Jersey…

• 2014 Jerad Miller from Las Vadas Nevada shot two police officers and one bystander dressed as the Joker with an accomplice. Essentially doing a murder-suicide when they then shot themselves. He posted videos to Youtube of his messages. (I think there was some mental illness going on? But idk) (there is also mentions of political stuff like angry at drug laws and the corrupted government and a swatsika?) (yeah idk, it was confusing).

Yes, the criminal turned devil turned sympathetic villain leads to multiple interpretations of Joker, who would’ve guessed? (sarcasm). Even London and Clermont mocked their presidents with the clown face. It’s not entirely black and white 🤷

Still, despite all the flaws in Joker 2019’s movie, all the good that came out of it… I feel as though it outweighed the bad. So, it’s not easy to hate it. Shout out to this video analysis essay that made me critically think about the Batman movies!

[mariacallous]

In 2024, increased adoption of biometric surveillance systems, such as the use of AI-powered facial recognition in public places and access to government services, will spur biometric identity theft and anti-surveillance innovations. Individuals aiming to steal biometric identities to commit fraud or gain access to unauthorized data will be bolstered by generative AI tools and the abundance of face and voice data posted online.

Already, voice clones are being used for scams. Take for example, Jennifer DeStefano, a mom in Arizona who heard the panicked voice of her daughter crying “Mom, these bad men have me!” after receiving a call from an unknown number. The scammer demanded money. DeStefano was eventually able to confirm that her daughter was safe. This hoax is a precursor for more sophisticated biometric scams that will target our deepest fears by using the images and sounds of our loved ones to coerce us to do the bidding of whoever deploys these tools.

In 2024, some governments will likely adopt biometric mimicry to support psychological torture. In the past, a person of interest might be told false information with little evidence to support the claims other than the words of the interrogator. Today, a person being questioned may have been arrested due to a false facial recognition match. Dark-skinned men in the United States, including Robert Williams, Michael Oliver, Nijeer Parks, and Randal Reid, have been wrongfully arrested due to facial misidentification, detained and imprisoned for crimes they did not commit. They are among a group of individuals, including the elderly, people of color, and gender nonconforming individuals, who are at higher risk of facial misidentification.

Generative AI tools also give intelligence agencies the ability to create false evidence, like a video of an alleged coconspirator confessing to a crime. Perhaps just as harrowing is that the power to create digital doppelgängers will not be limited to entities with large budgets. The availability of open-sourced generative AI systems that can produce humanlike voices and false videos will increase the circulation of revenge porn, child sexual abuse materials, and more on the dark web.

By 2024 we will have growing numbers of “excoded” communities and people—those whose life opportunities have been negatively altered by AI systems. At the Algorithmic Justice League, we have received hundreds of reports about biometric rights being compromised. In response, we will witness the rise of the faceless, those who are committed to keeping their biometric identities hidden in plain sight.

Because biometric rights will vary across the world, fashion choices will reflect regional biometric regimes. Face coverings, like those used for religious purposes or medical masks to stave off viruses, will be adopted as both fashion statement and anti-surveillance garments where permitted. In 2019, when protesters began destroying surveillance equipment while obscuring their appearance, a Hong Kong government leader banned face masks.

In 2024, we will start to see a bifurcation of mass surveillance and free-face territories, areas where you have laws like the provision in the proposed EU AI Act, which bans the use of live biometrics in public places. In such places, anti-surveillance fashion will flourish. After all, facial recognition can be used retroactively on video feeds. Parents will fight to protect the right for children to be “biometric naive”, which is to have none of their biometrics such as faceprint, voiceprint, or iris pattern scanned and stored by government agencies, schools, or religious institutions. New eyewear companies will offer lenses that distort the ability for cameras to easily capture your ocular biometric information, and pairs of glasses will come with prosthetic extensions to alter your nose and cheek shapes. 3D printing tools will be used to make at-home face prosthetics, though depending on where you are in the world, it may be outlawed. In a world where the face is the final frontier of privacy, glancing upon the unaltered visage of another will be a rare intimacy.

[beardedmrbean]

China underwent rare scrutiny of its human rights record at the United Nations on Tuesday.

The Universal Periodic Review (UPR), which all UN member states must undergo every five years, focused on Xinjiang, a remote region where China has incarcerated more than 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities and is accused of crimes against humanity.

The political situation in Hong Kong, where Beijing has imposed a strict set of "security" laws, was also taken into consideration. 

More than 160 countries addressed the hearing in Geneva, Switzerland, and each only had 45 seconds to speak.

China once again denied any allegations of human rights abuses.

"We embarked on a path of human rights development that is in keeping with the trend of the times and appropriate to China's national conditions and scored historic achievements in this process," China's UN Ambassador Chen Xu said through an interpreter at the meeting.

Uyghur and Tibetan groups each held small protests outside the UN offices in Geneva.

Western countries slam Beijing

Canada's representative to the UN, Leslie Norton, called on China to end "all forms of enforced disappearances targeting human rights defenders, ethnic minorities and Falun Gong practitioners" and to repeal the controversial security law in Hong Kong.

Danish UN ambassador Ib Petersen called on Beijing to implement UN recommendations in Xinjiang and to "release writers, bloggers, journalists, human rights defenders and others arbitrarily detained for exercising their right to freedom of expression, and guarantee this right, including in Hong Kong."

Meanwhile, Czech ambassador Vaclav Balek also urged China to "end the criminalization of religious and peaceful civil expression by ethnic and religious groups — including Muslim, Uyghurs and Buddhists, Tibetans and Mongolians — under the pretext of protecting state security" and "stop cross-border kidnappings and intimidating Chinese citizens living abroad."

Germany, Japan and Ireland also called for better protections of minorities in Xinjiang and Tibet.

Praise for China

Diplomats told Reuters news agency that China had pressured its supporters to fill up their allotted speaking time with praise.

First secretary Ilia Barmin of Russia's diplomatic mission advised China "to consistently improve the understanding and capacity of citizens to use standard spoken and written Chinese in Xinjiang."

South Africa's political affairs counselor Frankye Bronwen Levy called on China to strengthen laws against domestic violence that were introduced eight years ago.

The Indian representative, meanwhile, urged Beijing to "continue taking steps to ensure fullest enjoyment of basic human rights by its people, through inclusive and sustainable development."

Some African countries like Ethiopia and Cameroon lauded China's efforts on human rights.

Eritrea's representative for instance urged China to "to comprehensively promote ethnic unity and progress."

Iran also praised China's "national action plan for human rights," while Bolivia commended China's efforts against deforestation.

[dailyanarchistposts]

Daily Life in CHAZ

Tents have been pitched next to the abandoned police station and local medics, artists, civil servants and restauranteurs have flooded the zone in order to provide their services. It’s estimated that about 200 residents are currently occupying CHAZ and have come from all over the city of Seattle. On June 9th, they established the “No Cop Co-op”, which hands out free water, hand sanitizer, snacks, masks and kebabs. An intersection was cordoned off to provide “teach-ins” which are basically soapbox lectures on how to run a co-op and how to build effective communes. Other speakers educate people on police brutality and protesting tactics moving forward. A large screen outdoor cinema was set up with a large projector and portable toilets were donated from the Seattle Transportation Department. Additionally, homemade riot shields are being made and distributed to everyone in the commune. Going forward, local zoners also hope to build a cohesive labor movement that can spread across the Northwest. National organizations like CODEPINK support the commune stating “police are the real instigators.” Local activists in CHAZ have decided to use a pink umbrella as their symbol to show solidarity with those in Hong Kong whose techniques have been copied by protestors all over the world. As mentioned earlier, street medics have flooded the zone and play a major role. Many of them are college educated and have experience being in the field during protests. They also have created medic tents in order to deal with the future conflicts that they will surely have with the police.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Quid ergo dicemus, cum et silentii et orationis magna utilitas sit? *

- Sallust

What then should we say, considering that there is great utility in both silence and in speaking? *

Prof Kathleen Stock, a university professor of philosophy was hounded out of her post by trans activists for her gender critical views. In her work she tackled the relation between sex and gender identity, arguing among other things that: womanhood and manhood reflect biological sex, not gender or gender identity; the claim “transwomen are women” is a fiction, not literally true; sexual orientation (being gay, being lesbian) is determined by same-sex attraction, not attraction to gender identity; spaces where women undress and sleep should remain genuinely single-sex, in order to protect them; and children with gender identity disorders should not be given puberty blockers as minors. For holding such views she was subject to torrential abuse and subsequently hounded out of her academic position by a vocal minority of student trans right activists for holding such ‘transphobic’ views.

Stock was invited first by the Cambridge Union and later the Oxford Union to debate her views. At Oxford, trans activists tried to get her invitation rescinded on the basis that her views constituted ‘hate speech’. The Oxford Union was threatened by the Student Union to deny her a platform. To their credit, the Oxford Union held fast to their free speech principles while a petition signed by many Oxford academics, including Richard Dawkins and Nigel Biggar, came out in support for Prof. Stock.

Trans activists did their best to disrupt the event outside with a march while also offering ‘safe spaces’ for triggered Oxford students in a nearby college room complete with energy bars, ear plugs, and bottled water.

Inside the chamber, one activist, Riz Possnett, glued her hand to the chamber floor, in an attempt to disrupt Stock’s talk, until she was removed by police. The privately educated Possnett (£41,000 year private school in Hong Kong) reading PPE at Wadham College, Oxford, is no stranger to controversy as ‘they’ was known to be an Extension Rebellion activist and Republican agitator, having previously broken into Windsor Castle to frolic on King Charles’ bed with ‘their’ partner.

Prof Stock told the Union that some universities were “becoming propaganda machines for a particular point of view”. She said she did not find it “traumatic” to have protesters outside the event and said that students in her generation staged similar protests. “Generally what I find more worrying is when institutions listen to protesters and take that voice through into the institution and basically become propaganda machines for a particular point of view and then everyone else in that institution feels that they can’t say what they want to say,” she said. She said that had happened in some universities. She told the Union said it would “take courage” for people to realise that “the world does not end” when you have disagreements.

Photo: Prof Stock brought the severed head of a trans activist to display in an attempt to trigger her critics. Is there no end to this woman's evil?

[zvaigzdelasas]

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/thailand-too-close-to-china-says-reformer/news-story/a04dd90a1156e23e1a13d44f5f768997

Congrats to the Thai opposition, finally the good guys win for once

[panicinthestudio]

How Beijing targets Chinese Canadians through foreign influence operations, March 3, 2023

Alliance Canada Hong Kong executive director Cherie Wong joined Power & Politics Friday to discuss how Beijing targets Chinese Canadians. Akshay Singh and Dennis Molinaro, two experts in foreign influence operations in Canada, also weigh in on the scale and goals of foreign interference activities in Canada.

CBC News

@allthecanadianpolitics

There is an important distinction being made here that the foreign interference from China seeks to be pervasive by co-opting individuals, institutions, and community groups. The interest and influence is party agnostic and sees us in the Chinese diaspora as an entry point: whether in support of certain electoral and policy outcomes, controlling what information gets propagated into the communities, appropriating issues like discrimination and increasing distrust in our own systems and institutions, or directly and indirectly targeting people of interest.

***

It has been strongly implied in the recent reporting about Chinese interference in Canada that it has been a failing (if not to the benefit) of the Liberal government and Trudeau, rather than systematic attempts to influence Canadian politics and economics for decades coupled with our country’s complete underestimation of China and the United Front.

In my own experience the Chinese-Canadian media and political consumption has undergone an extreme shift into partisanship with clear pro-China and anti-China camps rather than aligning into our political parties.

The faltering of Hong Kong-based press, media, political freedom, and  ties with Taiwan and the greater diaspora community has seriously depleted any sort of moderate and critical voices in English or Chinese coming directly from the region, with writers and journalists re-immigrating or retreating from public view. 

Cold War rhetoric and posturing over Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, as well as exposed espionage and foreign interference operations is opening new fault lines within and directed at diaspora while deepening the isolation of the domestic Chinese population. 

The pop cultural center has moved with the economic affluence into the Mainland, catered to and directly influenced by a network of state-run broadcasters and private corporations ultimately answerable to the Chinese government. It can be difficult to engage with any of it as entertainment let alone to keep up with news without expending a lot of energy consuming it critically.

Tangentially but also related, many of Hong Kong’s pro-democratic political figures (the Hong Kong 47) that interacted with the outside and independent press or engaged other countries in the aftermath of the 2019-2020 protests and subsequent political organizing have been effectively silenced, charged, and/or jailed. They are only now being formally sentenced under the highly controversial Hong Kong national security law.

The political reverberations led to a postponed and then uncontested election for their legislative and executive body without any substantive opposition, the closure of multiple news organizations, civic rights groups and unions, the local polling institute, and the effective silencing of editorial independence at their public broadcaster.

Self-censorship and the chilling affect is extremely strong by those regions directly affected as well as the diaspora communities, out of fear or apathetic hopelessness it is eroding our ability to speak, associate, or engage with these issues freely no matter where we are.

[freedom-barricades-bighero16]

Sorry about painting my whole blog black yesterday. I think I should explain what exactly happened in a calmer manner...

So I'll take that you all know I am from the Chinese-speaking world right? I can tell you that you're basically not allowed to say you sympathise with Palestinians in a Chinese-speaking forum. In Hong Kong and Taiwan, people have decided to side with Israel because:

Israel is backed by the media and governments of the Western World.

As a result, China and Russia will back Palestine just to spite them. Many people believe in the "An enemy of a friend is an enemy" rhetoric so they would immediately side with Israel because the USA is our shared ally (when it comes to combating Chinese oppression)

The vast majority of people only knew about the Hamas attack on 7th October when you ask them about Palestine. So they will buy into the false narrative of "Israel is the one being attacked".

If you understand Chinese, you'll see tons of netizens saying things like "Taiwan should learn from Israel" etc, and repeating everything the IDF has said. There are a few exceptions where someone says Taiwan is actually more similar to Palestine (because they have a neighbour coughChinacoughcough who has been wanting to annex them for decades, and believe me China is already colonising Hong Kong, Tibet and East Turkestan), but everyone replying to them would say "stop comparing us with terrorists" and "no snowflake is innocent in an avalanche. Those with tragic endings must be despicable themselves!" The same thing happened to Namewee, one of my favourite Malaysian artists, when he voiced that he doesn't want Palestinians to suffer, and he was met with people ridiculing him. I'm glad he doesn't seem to be afraid of these comments.

Basically, they are saying that Palestinians deserve to be massacred because they attacked Israel and turned to China and Russia for support. And to make things worse, when it comes to other causes that I'm trying to support, such as Liberate East Turkestan, they say they support Palestine and tons of their followers have said they're a joke.

And, tho it's not really relevant to yesterday, there's the thing with many pro-Palestine netizens suddenly supporting Iran's theocratic regime because it backed Hamas. I've been trying to follow the Iran protests for a year now (in fact it's before I found out about I/P) and this is very demoralising to see.

I already feel alienated enough from my own people when I supported BLM, and everyone else, including my mother, became avid Trump supporters, and anyone who is pro-democracy but doesn't like him would be attacked for their views with nobody else standing up for them. And now with Palestine, I feel even more isolated, from both Hong Kongers as well as my new comrades.

I'm pretty sure that the same things that happened with my Mum will happen to me again if I tell other Hong Kongers that I support Palestine, and I'm afraid that if I tell my new friends that I also support the Iran protests, they will turn against me too... Which I'm sure will happen and I'll be all alone in the world.

[rtgame]

why does everyone hate overwatch and especially overwatch 2? i know ppl hate it but i never see anyone say why. if anyone else wants to offer opinions in the notes i'd love to hear them. i'm not defending the game(s) i'm just curious

ok so recovering from surgery has fucked up my sleep schedule so bad i'm actually up and at my pc to answer this at 7 am on a sunday bc i have a lot to say and i didn't want to type this all out on my phone lol. (also i have to take my antibiotics in an hour so i might as well get up) this is going to be LONG because i have a lot of thoughts and a lot of reasons

i think the biggest one, just to get it out of the way, is that blizzard had a MASSIVE scandal over sexual harassment. this basically changed everyone's opinions on every blizzard property, but from what i understand, the overwatch team actually didn't have a harassment problem (FROM WHAT I KNOW), but obviously it still affected people's perception of the game and i'm not defending blizzard on this issue. i think several people should die over this.

anyways, i think one of the big things was blizzard randomly announced overwatch 2 back in 2019 to distract from them banning a pro hearthstone player over supporting the hong kong protests in an interview. the development of overwatch 2 brought overwatch 1 to a COMPLETE fucking standstill like. there was literally no actual update for 3 years because they moved the entire dev team to overwatch 2 so overwatch 1 was updated by a skeleton crew, which a lot of people weren't happy about (me included). the only real difference between 1 and 2, when 2 was announced, was that it was gonna have PVE, which was already weird because in the past they said PVE was going to be in overwatch 1 and now it's not?

and then overwatch 2 finally comes out and it's like. there's no PVE. it's "coming later." they later admit that the PVE campaign was cancelled back in 2021 (remember overwatch 2 came out late 2022) BUT THEN KEPT ADVERTISING THAT OVERWATCH 2 WAS GONNA HAVE THE PVE CAMPAIGN? THEY LITERALLY JUST LIED TO EVERYONE FOR A FUCKING YEAR?

it took like 3 years for overwatch 2 to come out and at launch, all it had to offer was 3 new heroes and a few new maps and its like, if they just kept developing overwatch 1 we would've had way more by 2022.

overwatch 2 is also free to play, which is like, that's fine on paper, yay everyone gets to play it, but in practice it means that overwatch 2 is rife with microtransactions. skins cost like $26. new heroes cost AT LEAST $10 depending on when you buy them (or you can spend a ridiculous amount of time unlocking them for free) and its like. i fucking bought overwatch 1 for $40, these characters and skins would've been goddamn free in overwatch 1, i'm not spending money on this. ALSO I SPENT $40 TO BUY THIS GAME WHY THE FUCK AM I SPENDING MORE MONEY TO UNLOCK CHARACTERS???? there's some PVE missions available in game now but they're nothing like what was promised and they. also. obviously. cost. fucking. money. and i already spent $40 on the first game.

also there's a battle pass now for monetization reasons and i fucking hate most battle passes. the microtransactions in this game are fascinating because they make the overwatch 1 loot boxes look good.

also, they started the overwatch league in 2018, which is like, professional overwatch gaming, and i really liked watching it (and even went to some games irl) (i won a raffle there once!), but then they started balancing the game around the pro competitive scene which kinda made it hard for casuals to enjoy because they would keep changing the casual game mode (quick play) to be more in line with competitive, which was getting balanced around like 0.001% of players, which just made it less fun lol.

+ when they released overwatch 2, it went from 6v6 to 5v5 which was a change i never liked because my usual team was 6 people so this means that we have to rotate someone out, and they removed the 2nd tank role when switching the game to 5v5 which was uh... my main role was off tank... which they fucking removed.... because the game's 5v5 now. my main (dva) feels borderline unplayable in 5v5 because she kinda just sucks now lol. idk i don't really like the flow of the game or how short team fights are with 5v5 and i absolutely hate being the only tank. i think 6v6 was the perfect balance for overwatch but that's been thrown out the window.

ALSO they removed capture point maps which i actually did enjoy and im still salty over this

tldr basically it's like. overwatch 1 died for 3 years and blizzard killed its momentum for overwatch 2 but then overwatch 2 has literally nothing new to it and it's just overwatch 1 but worse. we waited 3 years for literally nothing.

although, i will say i saw a lot of people online make fun of the game when they announced lifeweaver because he's, iirc, a pansexual thai man, and honestly, that never sat right with me because like. it was a bunch of online leftists making fun of the game for being.... too diverse? or feeling like it was checking off a list and i was never comfortable with it because like, even just 6 years ago we would not have gotten a character like him in an AAA game. i think it's because one of the studios under blizzard posted their "diversity tool" that they used to diversify their game and it was really fucking weird and gave points to characters depending on their race and sexuality and etc, and i think they even used overwatch characters as an example, which was REALLY weird, because the tool was being used by king and not the team developing overwatch and even the dev team called it out like "we don't fucking use this, what is this shit lol, stop using our characters for this"

also lifeweaver was made by a thai person on the team to represent his own culture so i genuinely don't think he was made with the diversity tool lol.

idk i still think representation is important and i think making fun of him was weird since like. pan thai men definitely exist irl. idk. it was weird as fuck and this is probably the only thing i'll actively defend overwatch on. #LeaveLifeweaverAlone or whatever. i mean he sucks in game but that's bc his abilities are lame and his healing is shit, not because he's pan lol

but also why do they keep making their japanese characters ninjas lol. i like playing kiriko but man why can they all wall climb.

also like, the final thing, regarding everyone else hating it is like, im gonna be blunt, i think a lot of times the internet will just randomly turn on something it loved (marvel (rightfully honestly), borderlands, someone provide more examples) and say it sucks/its cringe/etc because loving something is #Cringe and hating everything is #Cool or whatever, and overwatch has reached that phase of its life, and all the issues i mentioned above really didn't fucking help. the internet adores its hate trains yknow

idk genuinely my relationship with overwatch is super fucking complicated as someone who loved/loves the game. i really do like a lot of the characters and i think the game is still fun SOMETIMES, but it's definitely lost that spark it had in 2016 thanks to shit management and blizzard focusing on the wrong things. i think a lot about a world where blizzard didn't suck and overwatch never had all this shit happen to it.

also WOW IM SORRY this is so rambly i've had like 4 hours of sleep and this is just something i do feel strongly about since the game is/was important to me and quite literally changed my life, so it sucks to see how it turned out. when i was 16 i really was enamored by this game where the whole premise was fighting for the future and it was just optimistic about the future, and i think that really was important for me at the time, as dumb as that is. a game being like "hey, the future's gonna be awesome" during a year that was really nerve-wracking for me was something i did need at the time. it really does suck that overwatch's own future wasn't as bright as the future it was envisioning.

[heir-less]

I would like to understand why people are pretending that the live-action Little Mermaid is going to be good when it's another terrible remake that will misinterpret and butcher the story and moral of the original like the 900 other remakes. Like, I swear there are people on Twitter making this movie their whole personality when it doesn't even look good. After Avatar, you'd think Disney would really devote money to make the water effects look impressive, but nope.

I don't really care if Arial is black, either. Disney did fuck all to defend Halle Baily from the wave racism she experienced (I believe Freeform spoke out back in 2019 and some cast members defended her, but it wasn't enough). Also, reading the behind-the-scenes, it seems like Halle was exploited on set and forced to work beyond her limits. Putting an actor in water for 13 hours a day is dangerous and not something that should be framed as resilient. It would be nice if people stopped acting as if the live-action Little Mermaid is something groundbreaking for Black women and girls when it's clearly just Disney trying to cash on diversity at our expense. They don't actually care about supporting us, based on how they treated their leading lady.

We need to stop supporting these creatively bankrupt pieces of shit. Look at the Lilo & Sitch casting, they clearly don't care honouring POC stories or valuing actors of colour. The Mulan remake was literally filmed within view of Chinese concentration camps and stared an actress who supported Chinese police brutalizing Hong Kong protesters. A lot of people like to pretend that people only have issues with The Little Mermaid, but it's a problem with all of these movies in general. It seems to be more of an issue with Disney as a company, not the actual people working on these films.

Like, I saw the live-action Lion King in theaters and now my sister wants to see this, too. Like, I genuinely think these films are bad on principle.

[warsofasoiaf]

What makes calling the various upheavals around certain parts of the world often collectively called colour revolutions color revolutions, such a sure way to spot someone who has no real knowledge on these events and why specifically russian disinformation? Were they the ones coining the term or is it their preferred line of tactics? I think I heard regular newspeople using it now and I thought it referred to revolutions fostered by the two sides in the cold war and I suppose since too.

The term color revolution specifically applies to revolutions in states like Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan, along with Serbia which was the most pro-Russian of the territories following the breakup of Yugoslavia. They were characterized by anti-authoritarian and pro-democracy sentiment against fraudulent and rigged elections and a push toward anticorruption. So while there were other democratic protests in other regions, "color revolution" specifically refers to these movements. The Hong Kong protests were very similar, but it was not an official color revolution. The term has been more broadly applied to any anti-Russia or anti-China protest, particularly pro-US or pro-European, but that's largely a term of convenience and almost exclusively used by disinformation peddlers and parrots.

Russia was primarily opposed to this because the regional autocrats in charge of these territories tended to be pro-Russian and increasingly looked to integrate their territories with Russia economically and militarily, allowing Russia to maintain a bit of its colonial pull that it enjoyed as the Soviet Union. So they promoted the idea that these revolutions were not organic and were exclusively funded by foreign influence operations largely as a means to preserve their own regional influence and prevent former puppet states from drifting westward. And some foreign influence definitely was the case, many of these regional autocrats saw foreign aid dwindle and be re-routed to NGO's that supported the opposition. But this largely falls to a fallacy that the dictators were owed foreign aid in the first place, and neglects the organic dissatisfaction that a lot of people in those countries felt. These countries suffered under corrupt regimes, with high levels of unemployment, official repression, and poverty. That *always* drive pushes toward opposition. Given the Revolutions of 1989 (which pro-Russians, tankies, and campists also largely describe without evidence as inauthentic), and the later Arab Spring, this appears to be a natural reaction to communications technology making organization easier and information more accessible.

By calling them "CIA-backed," disinformation actors were attempting to link them to CIA-funded, backed, or led coups that were a significant part of US foreign policy and truly did happen, particularly in Central and South America. But these accusations again lack evidence, there aren't any case officers named or operational plans found. It's largely an excuse fabricated out of whole cloth to describe an undesirable outcome, just like any other claim of voting irregularities when someone loses an election.

Thanks for the question, Santa.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[quotesfrommyreading]

Slogans, jokes, objects and colors can stand in for complex sentiments. In Hong Kong, protesters carried yellow umbrellas—also useful to defend against pepper spray—as symbols of their demand for democracy. In Thailand, protesters borrowed a gesture from The Hunger Games series, saluting with three fingers aloft in the aftermath of a military coup. Elsewhere, rainbow flags and the name “Solidarity” have signified the successful fights waged by proponents of LGBTQ and Polish labor rights, respectively.

In some authoritarian nations, dissidents craft jokes and images to build a following and weaken support for the regime. In the Cold War-era Soviet Union, access to typewriters and photocopiers was tightly controlled. But protesters could share news and rile officials with underground samizdat literature (Russian for “self-publishing”), which was hand-typed and passed around from person to person. These publications also used anekdoty, or quips of wry lament, to joke about post-Stalinist Soviet society. In one example, a man hands out blank leaflets on a pedestrian street. When someone returns to question their meaning, the man says, “What’s there to write? It’s all perfectly clear anyway.”

In the early 20th century, generations of Chinese writers and philosophers led quiet philosophical and cultural revolutions within their country. Zhou Shuren, better known by the pen name Lu Xun, pushed citizens to cast off repressive traditions and join the modern world, writing, “I have always felt hemmed in on all sides by the Great Wall; that wall of ancient bricks which is constantly being reinforced. The old and the new conspire to confine us all. When will we stop adding new bricks to the wall?”

In time, Chinese citizens mastered the art of distributed displeasure against mass censorship and government control. That was certainly the case during the movements that bloomed after Mao Zedong’s death in 1976. At the 1989 protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, participants used strips of red cloth as blindfolds. Before the tanks turned the weekslong gathering into a tragedy on June 4, musician Cui Jian played the anthem “A Piece of Red Cloth,” claiming a patriotic symbol of communist rule as a banner of hope for a frustrated generation.

After hundreds, if not thousands, were gunned down by the military, China banned any reference to the events at Tiananmen Square. But Chinese people became adept at filling that void, using proxies and surrogates to refer to the tragedy. Though Chinese censors scrub terms related to the date, such as “six four,” emoji can sometimes circumvent these measures. According to Meng Wu, a specialist in modern Chinese literature at the University of British Columbia, a simple candle emoji posted on the anniversary tells readers that the author is observing the tragedy, even if they can’t do so explicitly. In recent years, the government has removed access to the candle emoji before the anniversary.

As a survivor of the Tiananmen Square massacre spoke to the crowd gathered at Washington Square Park, the undergraduate who called himself Rick expressed concern for a friend who had been taken into custody by police in his home province of Guangdong. Given the government crackdown, Rick suggested that public protests were largely finished for now. Still, he predicted, the movement will “become something else”—something yet to be written.

  —  The History Behind China's White Paper Protests

[xtruss]

Analysis: The China-Russia Axis Takes Shape

The bond has been decades in the making, but Russia’s war in Ukraine has tightened their embrace.

— September 11, 2023 | By Bonny Lin | Foreign Policy

Alex Nabaum Illustration For Foreign Policy

In July, nearly a dozen Chinese and Russian warships conducted 20 combat exercises in the Sea of Japan before beginning a 2,300-nautical-mile joint patrol, including into the waters near Alaska. These two operations, according to the Chinese defense ministry, “reflect the level of the strategic mutual trust” between the two countries and their militaries.

The increasingly close relationship between China and Russia has been decades in the making, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has tightened their embrace. Both countries made a clear strategic choice to prioritize relations with each other, given what they perceive as a common threat from the U.S.-led West. The deepening of bilateral ties is accompanied by a joint push for global realignment as the two countries use non-Western multilateral institutions—such as the BRICS forum and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO)—to expand their influence in the developing world. Although neither Beijing nor Moscow currently has plans to establish a formal military alliance, major shocks, such as a Sino-U.S. conflict over Taiwan, could yet bring it about.

The cover of Foreign Policy's fall 2023 print magazine shows a jack made up of joined hands lifting up the world. Cover text reads: The Alliances That Matter Now: Multilateralism is at a dead end, but powerful blocs are getting things done."

China and Russia’s push for better relations began after the end of the Cold War. Moscow became frustrated with its loss of influence and status, and Beijing saw itself as the victim of Western sanctions after its forceful crackdown of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. In the 1990s and 2000s, the two countries upgraded relations, settled their disputed borders, and deepened their arms sales. Russia became the dominant supplier of advanced weapons to China.

When Xi Jinping assumed power in 2012, China was already Russia’s largest trading partner, and the two countries regularly engaged in military exercises. They advocated for each other in international forums; in parallel, they founded the SCO and BRICS grouping to deepen cooperation with neighbors and major developing countries.

When the two countries upgraded their relations again in 2019, the strategic drivers for much closer relations were already present. Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 damaged its relations with the West and led to a first set of economic sanctions. Similarly, Washington identified Beijing as its most important long-term challenge, redirected military resources to the Pacific, and launched a trade war against Chinese companies. Moscow and Beijing were deeply suspicious of what they saw as Western support for the color revolutions in various countries and worried that they might be targets as well. Just as China refused to condemn Russian military actions in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, and Ukraine, Russia fully backed Chinese positions on Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet, and Xinjiang. The Kremlin also demonstrated tacit support for Chinese territorial claims against its neighbors in the South China Sea and East China Sea.

Since launching its war in Ukraine, Russia has become China’s fastest-growing trading partner. Visiting Moscow in March, Xi declared that deepening ties to Russia was a “strategic choice” that China had made. Even the mutiny in June by Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin that took his mercenary army almost to the gates of Moscow did not change China’s overall position toward Russia, though Beijing has embraced tactical adjustments to “de-risk” its dependency on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Building on their strong relationship, Xi and Putin released a joint statement in February 2022 announcing a “No Limits” strategic partnership between the two countries. The statement expressed a litany of grievances against the United States, while Chinese state media hailed a “new era” of international relations not defined by Washington. Coming only a few weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, enhanced relations were likely calculated by Moscow to strengthen its overall geopolitical position before the attack.

It’s not clear how much prior detailed knowledge Xi had about Putin’s plans to launch a full-scale war, but their relationship endured the test. If anything, the Western response to Russia’s war reinforced China’s worst fears, further pushing it to align with Russia. Beijing viewed Russian security concerns about NATO expansion as legitimate and expected the West to address them as it sought a way to prevent or stop the war. Instead, the United States, the European Union, and their partners armed Ukraine and tried to paralyze Russia with unprecedented sanctions. Naturally, this has amplified concerns in Beijing that Washington and its allies could be similarly unaccommodating toward Chinese designs on Taiwan.

Against the background of increased mutual threat perceptions, both sides are boosting ties with like-minded countries. On one side, this includes a reenergized, expanded NATO and its growing linkages to the Indo-Pacific, as well as an invigoration of Washington’s bilateral, trilateral, and minilateral arrangements in Asia. Developed Western democracies—with the G-7 in the lead—are also exploring how their experience deterring and sanctioning Russia could be leveraged against China in potential future contingencies.

On the other side, Xi envisions the China-Russia partnership as the foundation for shaping “the global landscape and the future of humanity.” Both countries recognize that while the leading democracies are relatively united, many countries in the global south remain reluctant to align with either the West or China and Russia. In Xi and Putin’s view, winning support in the global south is key to pushing back against what they consider U.S. hegemony.

Alex Nabaum Illustration For Foreign Policy

In the global multilateral institutions, China and Russia are coordinating with each other to block the United States from advancing agendas that do not align with their interests. The U.N. Security Council is often paralyzed by their veto powers, while other institutions have turned into battlegrounds for seeking influence. Beijing and Moscow view the G-20, where their joint weight is relatively greater, as a key forum for cooperation.

But the most promising venues are BRICS and the SCO, established to exclude the developed West and anchor joint Chinese-Russian efforts to reshape the international system. Both are set up for expansion—in terms of scope, membership, and other partnerships. They are the primary means for China and Russia to create a web of influence that increasingly ties strategically important countries to both powers.

The BRICS grouping—initially made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—is at the heart of Moscow and Beijing’s efforts to build a bloc of economically powerful countries to resist what they call Western “Unilateralism.” In late August, another six states, including Egypt, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, were invited to join the group. With their growing economic power, the BRICS countries are pushing for cooperation on a range of issues, including ways to reduce the dominance of the U.S. dollar and stabilize global supply chains against Western calls for “Decoupling” and “De-risking.” Dozens of other countries have expressed interest in joining BRICS.

The SCO, in contrast, is a Eurasian grouping of Russia, China, and their friends. With the exception of India, all are members of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The accession of Iran in July and Belarus’s membership application put the SCO on course to bring China’s and Russia’s closest and strongest military partners under one umbrella. If the SCO substantially deepens security cooperation, it could grow into a counterweight against U.S.-led Coalitions.

Both BRICS and the SCO, however, operate by consensus, and it will take time to transform both groups into cohesive, powerful geopolitical actors that can function like the G-7 or NATO. The presence of India in both groups will make it difficult for China and Russia to turn either into a staunchly anti-Western outfit. The diversity of members—which include democracies and autocracies with vastly different cultures—means that China and Russia will have to work hard to ensure significant influence over each organization and its individual members.

What’s next? Continued Sino-Russian convergence is the most likely course. But that is not set in stone—and progress can be accelerated, slowed, or reversed. Absent external shocks, Beijing and Moscow may not need to significantly upgrade their relationship from its current trajectory. Xi and Putin share similar views of a hostile West and recognize the strategic advantages of closer alignment. But they remain wary of each other, with neither wanting to be responsible for or subordinate to the other.

Major changes or shocks, however, could drive them closer at a faster pace. Should Russia suffer a devastating military setback in Ukraine that risks the collapse of Putin’s regime, China might reconsider the question of substantial military aid. If China, in turn, finds itself in a major Taiwan crisis or conflict against the United States, Beijing could lean more on Moscow. During a conflict over Taiwan, Russia could also engage in opportunistic aggression elsewhere that would tie China and Russia together in the eyes of the international community, even if Moscow’s actions were not coordinated with Beijing.

A change in the trajectory toward ever closer Chinese-Russian ties may also be possible, though it is far less likely. Some Chinese experts worry that Russia will always prioritize its own interests over any consideration of bilateral ties. If, for instance, former U.S. President Donald Trump wins another term, he could decrease U.S. support for Ukraine and offer Putin improved relations. This, in turn, could dim the Kremlin’s willingness to support China against the United States. It’s not clear if this worry is shared by top Chinese or Russian leaders, but mutual distrust and skepticism of the other remain in both countries.

— This article appears in the Fall 2023 issue of Foreign Policy. | Bonny Lin, the Director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

[beardedmrbean]

The Chinese Communist Party escalated its persecution of Christians throughout 2022 as the country clamped down on churches and online religious content while demanding allegiance to Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to a watchdog group.

A report released last week by the U.S.-based non-governmental organization ChinaAid warned that the Chinese government is using charges of "fraud" to financially suffocate the house church movement, which consists of Christian congregations that have not registered with China's official Protestant church.

Authorities are using the traditional Christian practice of giving tithes and offerings to trump up charges against house churches under the "Measures for the Financial Management of Religious Activity Venues," which were updated last June, according to the report. The report noted that multiple house church pastors and elders have been jailed and potentially face years in prison.

CARDINAL JOSEPH ZEN, 90, BEGINS TRIAL IN HONG KONG ON CHARGES OF FOREIGN COLLUSION

ChinaAid president and founder Bob Fu said in a statement that his organization is also "gravely concerned" with how state-sanctioned churches are being treated in China, which has approximately 96.7 million Christians, according to persecution watchdog Open Doors.

"By using the new measures against religious content online and the infamous 'zero-COVID' policy, authorities limited or eliminated Christian gatherings," said Fu.

The Chinese government is also cracking down on Christian websites and apps in an attempt to "remove Christianity from cyberspace," according to ChinaAid.

Following the implementation of the "Administrative Measures for Internet Religious Information and Services" in 2022, censorship of online Christian content — including even in group chats — has reached an "unprecedented" level, the report warned.

PASTOR FACING 10 YEARS IN PRISON FOR PREACHING AT CANADA TRUCKER BLOCKADE PROTESTING VACCINE MANDATES

CathAssist, which became China's first Christian phone app in 2013, was among those that were shut down under the new regulations because they were unable to obtain a license. ChinaAid's report said the app "did not meet the government's requirements for the license, despite having taken various actions including suspending sharing, changing its name, and modifying content."

Fu also noted that while the Chinese government has long demanded sole allegiance to the Communist Party, in recent years it has been emphasizing allegiance to Jinping.

"Before, during, and after the opening of the Congress, China's state-run religious groups lavished compliments and praise on Xi with more extravagant words and phrases than China's state-run media, showing that religious Sinicization is evolving from supporting the CCP to worship and allegiance to Xi Jinping," the report said.

"Their goal is not only to curate a ‘socialist-friendly’ church; they hope to erase it," said Fu. "The international community needs to know about these trends and developments as China continues to rise on the global stage."

[bauhiniaxblakeana]

quite the way to spend the last 15 minutes of 2023 really.

i want to believe what i'm doing is enough somehow, that what i'm doing makes even just the tiniest sliver of a difference, but at the same time i have the unshakeable belief that nothing will ever be enough and it won't ever amount to anything. i'll keep trying and i'll keep doing things, but i never know if it means anything. i'll go down swinging if it comes to that, but i hope, so dearly, that it just means something. anything at all.

that's true for a lot of things right now. but most of those things aren't what this blog is about. but it's still true for what this blog is about too. i don't think i'll ever feel like i've ever done enough for hong kong. i don't even know what to do for it. i barely even know all the details at this point. 721, 831, the siege of polyU, so many more, all the details are slipping out of my mind and i'm afraid to go looking for it, because how much have i forgotten? and what if it's not there anymore? part of me wants to just stop caring, but i can't, i physically can't. i can't even force myself to stop caring. and i just. i wish anything i did meant anything. i wish i was brave enough to shout a little louder, so people would remember better, but i'm perpetually terrified of retaliation because i can't handle it. how can i when people have been suspended from their colleges for just being vocal about support in some cases? how do i talk about this cause that means everything to me when i barely know how to explain the situation to other people?

i mean, okay. i kind of know something. china lost the opium war and had to cede hong kong to the british tor 99 years. it was only not 100 because of some sort of law that would decree hong kong to be british property or something, so instead they did 99. so first we were colonized by the british; that's the only reason i know english. and then in 1997 the handover happened, and it was like we were supposed to forget 99 years of english rule, like it hadn't permanently etched the truths of our mixed culture into every wall, and we just had to pretend we were always chinese and nothing else. hong kong became its own homeland, hong konger became a cultural identity, and so we were colonized again. a second time. the only reason i know mandarin is because of this. my mother tongue is cantonese. i'm only trilingual because of colonialism. where do i go to speak about this? how do i yell it to the skies? it's afforded me so much but it's also cost me so much.

we were promised 50 years. 50 years to be independent, operate under one country, two systems, but the whole time we had china breathing down our necks until they finally snapped it. 2019 was like the beginning of the end, but it had been happening for a long time before then, too. and god, it's almost 5 years since 2019. and nothing has changed. if anything things have only got worse.

and, you know, it's hard to talk about this. hard to explain it in a way to get people to care. sometimes i question why i care at all. we haven't had people die, not really. a few, sure, but in the realm of tens. not hundreds, not thousands. and it's so easy to fall into the trap of sinophobia when explaining this to someone; no, i don't hate china for being chinese, i hate the chinese communist party for crushing anyone who dares to be anything less than the perfect han chinese. we had our protests, but then everything died out quietly. things are still getting worse, but there's no big boom. no great calamity, just a silent, steady march towards assimilation. i don't want to have to justify my identity every time i introduce myself, but no one even knows what hong kong is. how do i explain its history in two breaths? ten, even? it's taken me ten minutes to write this much and this is just barely the surface of it and i don't know more than this. what am i supposed to do?

i can't even ask people to carve out more of themselves to think about us anymore. i get it. think of the children being bombed, think of the actual bloody wars going on instead. it's immediate. it's a crisis. at least we're still alive. meanwhile our children will forget how cantonese sounds, but they still get to grow up, at least.

every day i fear i'll forget how to speak cantonese. that's half the reason i talk to my parents at all, despite everything. despite the fact my father literally threatened to kill a child for daring to hold a political belief that opposes his. the little pieces of the culture i never got to greet, lost further in just trying to stay safe. utterly fucking despicable, but what can i do about it?

i don't know what to do. a minute to 2024 and i'm crying. oh, and there it goes, 2024. i want to believe the new year will bring good things and it must for palestine and sudan and ukraine and congo and so many other places but honestly? truly, honestly, from the bottom of my heart? i don't really believe anything will change for hong kong. people have stopped looking our way, and i don't blame them. i still wish people cared, but i get it. i don't even know what to say to convince myself anymore.

i mean i hope i'm wrong. i hope at least the political danger of going home fades. but i don't believe it will. we'll just fade further into political obscurity until hong kong is no more.