[demarq]

> The law was enacted without consulting the Hong Kong legislature and gave authorities broad powers to charge and jail people they deemed a threat to the city's law and order, or the government's stability.

The UK throwing a very big rock at a thin glass house.

I don’t agree with any such laws in any country, but I think it’s important to point out the hypocrisy here

[thenanyu]

When I was in my early 20s I used to think I was very clever for pointing out apparent hypocrisies. Now I realize how easily that devolves into “you are imperfect therefore you may never criticize anything”

Americans can never call out human rights abuses because of slavery. The British can never because of colonialism. Period. Forever.

If you find this line of argumentation compelling there’s no discussing anything with you.

[epolanski]

You can easily call out way more recent stuff such as what's happening in central America right now with Colombia and Venezuela.

Sinking half a dozen ships in international waters is a crime.

Sanity would ask for intercepting those boats in your waters, and that's it, controlling what's in them, who are these people and send them in front of a court if they breached your law, on your soil (or waters).

Yet we are at the point nobody raises the voice where sinking civilian ships on the basis it's drug smugglers (without providing a proof, let alone the fact that even if it was true it's still insane) has any leftover of decency or justice.

Or calling for the annexation of Greenland and Panama by any means.

Or bombing Iran on the basis that it's developing nuclear weapons on behalf of the Israeli government (which is an act of war if Iran could wage it, the US does not get to decide who can have a nuclear weapon and who does not).

The list of breaches in decency or law is basically infinite.

[wrs]

You're not wrong, but I just wanted to point out that this level of arbitrary executive behavior and blatant massive government corruption is pretty new to us (the many millions of decent US citizens who are appalled at it), and we're still trying to figure out what the heck we can do about it. So at least for now I really hope it's valid to ascribe this just to the current administration, not assume the US will stay like this.

[torstenvl]

> Sinking half a dozen ships in international waters is a crime.

Citation needed.

[rq1]

As much as I agree with you. Iran is signatory of the NPT with all its consequences.

Instead of letting more countries develop these weapons, we should work on denuclearizing all countries, starting with the US and Russia and their insane arsenals! And maybe build a unified international legal framework for civilian nuclear developments and applications from energy to medical outside of the "security council's" ferule!

A nuclear war cannot be won, thus never fought!

[epolanski]

There's a very precise protocol when a signatory of the NPT is suspected of breaching it: first it has to go through the IAEA which has to be able to inspect whatever site, then it gets escalated to the UN, then a decision is taken, at the UN level on the matter.

Not unilaterally by Israel calling the world's superpower for help.

Your logic is as sound as "since my neighbor makes something illegal at home, I'm gonna shoot him and then call my buddy sheriff for help". It is obviously illegal.

[rq1]

Well I never advocated the latter, so please. And my logic is very sound, better than yours. :)

I was replying to "the US does not get to decide who can have a nuclear weapon and who does not". As much as I agree with that... my previous comment.

We're not talking about a nuclear program.

[ufmace]

This isn't about things that happened decades or centuries ago though. It's about how right now, today, the UK is arresting 12,000 people a year, 30 a day, for supposedly "offensive" posts on social media.

https://freespeechunion.org/police-make-30-arrests-a-day-for...

[notahacker]

As your own article points out that stuff has been on the statute books for years (covering stuff which is generally illegal everywhere like death threats as well as stuff which was merely allegedly sent to cause others distress or anxiety) and convictions actually fell between 2015 and 2023. For all its much vaunted constitutional protections, the United States has also arrested a whole bunch of people for vague and difficult to call a crime stuff like Charlie Kirk memes or (nuanced or otherwise) criticisms of Israeli policy recently as well as more obviously menacing stuff that happened to take the form of social media communication.

Neither are quite the same thing as railroading a government critic for "sedition"

[RobotToaster]

The current UK government has arrested over 2000 people for holding signs on charges of terrorism, and is currently in the process of abolishing jury trials. This isn't about history.

[boplicity]

The UK is also not a single person, but a collection of millions of individuals and diverse groups with diverse opinions and actions.

[reactordev]

This is what they want. Everyone gasping at their actions but uninformed on what to do about it.

[boplicity]

My point is that a country may do reprehensible things, but that does not mean that the people in that country approve of those things -- or even that the people in government approve of them. Countries can be complex, with many contradictions, opinions, and opposing forces.

[0x3f]

Your examples are a bit weasely because they happened long ago, and so seem sillier. What I assumed was meant here is that, currently, the UK government is out to punish wrongthink.

[mc32]

I don't see slavery as an albatross. If anything, America accelerated its demise by its abolition at home --where America wasn't even the biggest enslaver of people; Brazil, The British empire (Caribbean), France (colonies), Russia (serfs), had way, way more slaves than the US. Today, India, China, Horn of Africa, NK have large slave populations.

[Dracophoenix]

> When I was in my early 20s I used to think I was very clever for pointing out apparent hypocrisies. Now I realize how easily that devolves into “you are imperfect therefore you may never criticize anything”.

What's the solution? The alternative, where we can't criticize our governments on account of their hypocrisies and imperfections, robs citizens of their check against an institution with a monopoly on violence.

> Americans can never call out human rights abuses because of slavery. The British can never because of colonialism. Period. Forever.

There's certainly a difference between holding countries responsible for events that have long since ceased and holding a government responsible for double standards practiced presently. The UK lacks credibility on Hong Kong when its own citizens are being jailed on the basis of overbroad hate speech regulations and when its government agencies attempt to claim extraterritorial jurisdiction over the operation of foreign social media companies. Westminister can't be so empty-headed as to believe that its actions will go unnoticed by other governments.

[avidiax]

It goes beyond just pointing out hypocrisy. This is a well known propaganda strategy called "Whataboutism." [1] It's unfortunately a tremendously effective smokescreen that divides the audience and shuts down meaningful debate.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

[janalsncm]

There is some nuance, because I’ve also seen genuine discussion falsely labeled as whataboutism.

If the point in bringing up the hypocrisy is to end or distract the discussion, it is whataboutism. However, if the point is to compare two instances of a thing to make a point it’s fair game imo.

[lotsofpulp]

>When I was in my early 20s I used to think I was very clever for pointing out apparent hypocrisies. Now I realize how easily that devolves into “you are imperfect therefore you may never criticize anything”

There is nothing logically wrong with hypocrisy. I tell my toddlers not to do stuff I do all the time.

The problem with hypocrisy comes when one party is assumed to have more rights than the other. In this case, why would Britain (or the US's) government be allowed to be more corrupt than China's?

I assume Britain is brought up due to the British government's historic role in Hong Kong and China.

[mig39]

Is it whatboutism?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

[buellerbueller]

Even bad people can be correct. Evaluate every claim on its merits, as opposed to its speaker. Only when you get down to resolving ambiguities is the evaluation of the speaker necessary.

[knallfrosch]

The British have a clear connection to Hong Kong. And they're right. And their rule would be freer.

[martythemaniak]

the wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke: "theres actually zero difference between good & bad things. you imbecile. you fucking moron"

-@dril, 2014

[ta20240528]

Nonsense, the currently alive young Britons are not the Britons that ran HK as a colony; they think the idea was terrible and have no desire to reintroduce it.

Its a common fallacy to accuse alive people of hypocrisy done by other people who came before them.

[andy_ppp]

Sigh, you know the UKs laws are much more complicated than right wing media in the US will explain to you.

[0x3f]

I don't think that's really true and I live here. People are convicted for saying 'rude' things online all the time, even if some of those stories are also hyped up in the news. Attempting to backdoor/otherwise break e2e encryption... also literally the case. I'm not sure where you think the nuance is.

[andy_ppp]

You can say pretty much anything so long as you don’t insight violence or religious hatred. Nobody is allowed to shout fire in crowded theatre. Nobody has been convicted for saying something rude.

With relation to the article + Grand parent, the government first of all does not write on behalf of the BBC and in fact both Labour and Conservatives especially have had massive problems with its editorial decisions.

The ideal the you cannot criticise the government in the UK and that our laws here are similar to the ones in HK is honestly not a fair parallel at all.

I think the government are extremely naive and the security services try to push them into extremely stupid decisions on encryption.

[0x3f]

> You can say pretty much anything so long as you don’t insight violence or religious hatred.

I don't think that's a fair characterisation. Recently we've convicted:

  - an ex-footballer (i.e. someone with the means to mount a proper defence) for calling someone a 'diversity hire'; and
  - someone burning a religious text in the street, as a protest.

Are these really meeting your bar for inciting violence and/or hatred? At a level might warrant imprisonment? For me, these things are not even borderline; they are well into legitimate free speech territory and the government shouldn't be trying its best to stifle them.

And those are just successful convictions, not initiated prosecutions, or the wider chilling effects of it all.

Even if what you said were true, those two things are largely legal in the US, so I wouldn't really say it's their tabloids over-hyping it as much as they legitimately find the actual standards here questionable.

[andy_ppp]

Haha - you aren't even allowed to say what you think about the US government on social media and then travel to the US despite what the constitution says. Donald Trump has also made flag burning a crime. So it's not as if the US is a champion of free speech anymore.

I looked up the case against Joey Barton and it looks like he was deliberately trying to antagonise and abuse people upset which yes is illegal here. He could have easily made any points he wanted without abusing people. Note that he was given a suspended sentence in the hope that he would stop abusing people and has served no jail time as yet. Seems like a sensible decision.

The Quran burning outside the Turkish Consulate was even more weak stuff from you. The guy was fined £240 and told not to do it again.

Neither of these are about freedom of speech are they, they are about abuse online and deliberately trying to provoke muslims.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c04vqldn42go

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce9v4e0z9r8o

[0x3f]

> you aren't even allowed to say what you think about the US government on social media and then travel to the US despite what the constitution says.

Does this matter? The question is whether the UK has a moral authority to tell China off over free speech. Nobody has said that different countries don't have varying types of restrictions on speech.

Even if I agreed with your characterisation of the US, you're talking about visitors, not residents or citizens. The UK also regularly denies visas for speech.

You're defending against whataboutism from China to the UK by invoking whataboutism from the UK to the US here.

> I looked up the case against Joey Barton and it looks like he was harassing people online which yes is illegal here.

No, harassment is a specific and different offence. He was convicted specifically for sending 'grossly offensive' messages, not harassing people. The definition of that crime is based on the content of the messages, not the pattern of their transmission.

> The Quran burning outside the Turkish Consulate was even more weak stuff from you. The guy was fined £240 and told not to do it again.

I don't really get how this refutes anything I've said. It's illegal to protest in this manner in the UK.

What is your argument here, that OK it's illegal but the punishment is not very severe so no problem? You understand that the specifics of _what_ is illegal is the criticism.

> Neither of these are about freedom of speech are they, they are about harassment online and deliberately trying to provoke muslims.

Neither of these is about harassment. Or they would have been convicted of harassment.

[buellerbueller]

And yet, none of that has anything to do with the conviction of Jimmy Lai.

[nutjob2]

Why is every political discussion boiled down to a whataboutism? Who cares what the UK does when the subject is HK's obvious slide in to naked authoritarianism.

Can we not simply condemn that?

[demarq]

Because once upon a time it was with pride you could point out all the ways your democracy was different than “theirs”.

Now you’re just condemning what you’ve already done. Why should anyone respect it? At some point you loose respect and eventually you just look confused.

[jimbokun]

So you support China's actions because UK also bad?

[nick486]

questioning someone's moral authority isnt equivalent to supporting his opponent.

[the_af]

> Why is every political discussion boiled down to a whataboutism?

Unfortunately, just like whataboutism can be a disingenuous rhetorical device, so is anti-whataboutism. Sometimes the comparison is relevant, sometimes it's not. In this case, I think it is.

[0x3f]

Whenever one 'side' makes a statement about the other it's often dripped in some kind of righteous indignation or other moralistic tone, so it's hard not to descend into whataboutism in those cases. The Chinese, of course, do this too, just with their own ideology baked in.

[the_af]

Great Britain is very directly involved in a whole bunch of relatively recent messes in the Middle East, China, etc.

It's not whataboutism to point up the current messed up situation is not unrelated to the behavior of the UK, and their fingerprints are all over it. Of course things aren't static and new actors have changed the conversation, but this doesn't absolve them and they shouldn't be pointing fingers.

[andy_ppp]

What on earth are you talking about? The UK has just done whatever the US wanted for about 40 years or more.

If you’re saying historically as an imperial power we’ve done terrible stuff we can all agree with that!

[the_af]

Yes to both things.

Since it fell from power, the UK does everything the US wants.

However, historically it set up a lot of bad things that happened in the Middle East, China, Africa, etc. The UK cannot untangle itself from it, "it's all in the past", because history is terribly influenced by things in the past, by definition.

[andy_ppp]

So do you think citizens of the UK should be held accountable somehow? I honestly don’t think the UK has done much to harm other countries since the Iraq War which obviously made everything worse.

[the_af]

The citizens of the UK in general? No.

Authorities and government? Yes. Even if the current ones weren't born when history was made, it's their duty to understand the history of the country they are governing, and of how past decisions shaped the world as it currently is.

> I honestly don’t think the UK has done much to harm other countries since the Iraq War which obviously made everything worse.

The history of Hong Kong itself is deeply influenced by Great Britain's actions (as well as other world powers, of course), and it doesn't start with mainland China's takeover.

Another example of UK's actions deeply influencing the current world, unrelated to China, is Iran (and well, the Middle East in general). So the UK cannot simply point fingers at others and forget about how they helped shape the situation.

[LudwigNagasena]

Why shouldn’t it boil down to “whataboutism”, aka comparison and putting things into context? Especially during UK’s obvious slide in to disguised authoritarianism.

One can also ask how HK ended up with English language and common law in the first place… though that wasn’t so recent.

[embedding-shape]

> let him who is without sin cast the first stone

And all that. We're all evil at one point or another, from someone's perspective.

[spankalee]

This is crazy logic. It leaves no one with the ability to critique another country when it abuses its citizens.

[nutjob2]

It really is crazy. A lot of people here seem to miss the relative nature of countries' behavior and think they're all as bad as each other when the difference is huge.

Especially when it comes to China and Russia, people seem to think they're about as bad as the West when nothing could be further from the truth.

Maybe thats due to more people from the hard right haunting this place, or the general shift of the tech crowd to the right. I'm not sure what it is exactly.

[AnimalMuppet]

Really? In my perception, the "US is evil so it can't criticize anyone else" more often came from the left.

[nutjob2]

I agree, I should have included the hard left which tend to be apologists for China and Russia.

[embedding-shape]

No, that's not the right takeaway, at least for me. For me it means that even if a country isn't perfect, doesn't automatically mean they can't be against others doing harm.

[kyralis]

I'm sorry, but "calling out apparent injustice" is not comparable to "literally throwing the first rock to stone someone to death".

That quote gets bent very far out of context. You could use it to justify any inaction under that interpretation, on the theory that you are not qualified to take it simply due to being imperfect.

[embedding-shape]

> rock to stone someone to death

Not sure where you get this from?

For me it means even "evil" people/countries can raise valid points, nothing more, nothing less.

[joe_hills]

That phrase originated from a story in which a lapsed carpenter stopped an execution.

Christ, we need more woodworking classes for kids on the tech path.

[embedding-shape]

Right, but you do realize that sentences can mean more than just the literal meaning it historically had?

Christ, we really need reading comprehension classes and ideally poetry classes or something similar, since people are unable to read more than the actual characters today it seems... Seems extra problematic in software/programming circles, maybe we need to add arts classes to science programs too?

[kyralis]

If you wanted to reference the saying about people living in glass houses throwing stones, you should have referenced that one rather than a different quote about stones. They're not equivalent.

[andrewflnr]

In fact they are referencing the phrase, of much later origin, "those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones".

[AnimalMuppet]

embedding-shape is quoting Jesus, who was in fact literally referring to killing people by throwing stones. (And, in fact, was talking to a mob that was literally about to do exactly that.)

[andrewflnr]

I'm thoroughly familiar with Jesus's words. By "they" I was referring to demarq, who I believe embedding-shape was misinterpreting.

[AnimalMuppet]

Ah, I see.