Tag Archives: ethics

Decisions

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Hong Kong’s 34,000 policemen and the force as a whole are approaching a decision point—or perhaps, the People’s Republic of China’s President Xi Jinping is about to force a decision on them.

With Hong Kong’s summer of unrest escalating, its police are in a bind. The local population increasingly accuses them of inflaming protester rage by using excessive force, while mainland Chinese authorities are exhorting them to get tougher to resolve the crisis.

Violence? With the Hong Kong police, it’s becoming fairly routine to use tear gas and truncheons. Protestor-originated violence has remained isolated and rare.

Raising the stakes further are ominous hints that China could deploy its military to restore order if officials in Beijing conclude local authorities can’t handle a crisis….

Hence the approaching decision.  Those 34,000 police will have to make a decision when the 6,000 PLA soldiers garrisoned in HK make their move. On whose side are they?

one officer…said he is trying to tune out the politics. “It’s not my job to think too much about it. It’s useless what I think,” said the officer.

He may have no interest in politics, but politics has an interest in him.  And he remains a citizen of Hong Kong, for all that he’s also a cop.

In the end, it appears the police have chosen their side. This just yesterday:

In a shift of tactics, police in riot gear charged groups in several districts: In one subway station, they used batons to beat protesters who were running away and pinned several to the ground; in another, snatch squads grabbed protesters from the streets; barrages of tear gas and rubber bullets were fired in another clash outside a police station.

There’s Surveillance

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…and there’s surveillance.

The FBI is looking at ways to scan Facebook (and Twitter, et al.) postings with a view to proactively identify and reactively monitor threats to the United States and its interests.

In late 2016, following an investigation by the American Civil Liberties Union into social-media monitoring done by outside developers on behalf of law enforcement, Facebook and Twitter cracked down on those services and explicitly banned the use of their data for surveillance purposes….
Facebook’s ban allowed law-enforcement agencies to look at public profiles manually but not use software designed for large-scale collection and analysis of user data.

Because

the restrictions reflect a growing understanding that even information posted to a public social network can be misused when gathered in large quantities and paired with outside data sources.

But Facebook’s objections (and they’re not the only Big Tech objectors) are just a bit precious and not a little bit hypocritical. Facebook does exactly that sort of surveillance—with software, mind you—explicitly with a view to selling those connections to advertisers, and others.

The only difference is claimed purpose.

If such surveillance is a bad thing—and it most assuredly is—Facebook, et al., need to cut it out, too.

The People’s Republic of China Threatens

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Now they’re getting overt regarding the protests in Hong Kong against the local pseudo-autonomous government’s misbehaviors.

…those who play with fire will perish by it.

That’s pretty stark considering the overtly peaceful nature of the protests.  Yang Guang, speaking for the PRC’s Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of State Council:

[PRC] central government has “immense strength” and that punishment for those behind the demonstrations is “only a matter of time.”
…
“Don’t ever misjudge the situation and mistake our restraint for weakness.”

No, it’s the PRC’s fear of dissent that clearly demonstrates weakness. The PRC’s strength, such as it is, lies solely in its People’s Liberation Army, units of which are preparing for a move against Hong Kong.  Xi is the living embodiment of the rule from Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book that says that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

Guns and Deaths

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Here are some actual data—facts that the Progressive-Democrats running for President are pleased to ignore—as produced by Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra):

Average # of deaths per day in US:Abortion: 1,778
Heart disease: 1,773
Cancer: 1,641
Medical error: 685
Accidents: 401
Stroke: 401
Alzheimer’s: 332
Diabetes: 228
Flu: 150
Suicide: 128
Opioids: 115
Drunk driving: 28
Underage drinking: 11
Teen texting-and-driving: 8
All Rifles: 1

His sources:

Abortion: (link: https://nrlc.org/uploads/factsheets/FS01AbortionintheUS.pdf )
Heart disease/cancer/accidents/stroke/alzheimers/flu/suicide: (link: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm )
Medical error: (link: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/medical-errors-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-america.html )
Opioids: (link: https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/epidemic/index.html )
Drunk driving: (link: https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impaired-drv_factsheet.html )

Yet those Progressive-Democrat politicians want to control rifles, ultimately to take away all of our weapons.

And with the killings over which they cry their crocodile tears, they shed none for the babies’ lives lost to abortion. Instead they shrilly demand women’s right to kill those babies, pretending that those killings are matters of “health.”