The death of Hong Kong's freedoms (part 1)

Sat, 10 Oct 2020 02:56:00 +0000

Democracies die. If you lived or live in a well adjusted country where the probability of an authoritarian leader can rise in a few years and the instituitions are solid enough, this death may not be so easy to grasp. People living in such places more or less take for granted that their rights will not be arbitrarily striped. But, even so, there is always a risk that given enough time, such tragedy will happen. Those democracies slowly may fade away, turning first in semi-democracies, where authoritarism and nullification of many freedoms will be accepted under the guise of “protecting the children” or “counteract terrorism” (we all have listened such excuses before), and then one day you realise you are living under an authoritarian rule.

For Hong Kong, that never was a true democracy, the day when it will become part of a totalitarian state is already set to July 1st, 2047. But, kind of unexpected, this city-state have had a taste of limited democracy, but still something to be proud of, and it is sad to see that so quickly this place, that saw many of freedoms and rights unthinkable to anyone in China, has dived into semi-totalitarism. How could it came to be, under millions of silicon eyes and in the era of instantaneous flow of information? This is the thing I want to think along this two posts, because I already typed 8 Word pages and filled only half of the things I wanted to say, so I split in two because I can.

The Modern (Weeb) Book Burning [Update]

Fri, 31 Jul 2020 03:19:00 +0000

UPDATE:

GO FUCK YOURSELF AUSTRALIA!

Good morning/afternoon/evening everyone. Let’s start with a… hmm… not so happy post (sorry). If you are a real weeb/otaku/smelly person, you may have paid attention to the following news (reproduced in a few pop culture outlets, like ANN or Nichiban): a Australian politician, tired of fighting kangoroos and gigantic spiders, gathered her energy, time and infinite knowledge to fight a evil and clever enemy.

Mangas.

I can imagine your disappointment reaction, but if you didn’t know about this, now you do. In a TL;DR version, she asked (demanded? threatened?) a major Japanese book seller in Sydney to remove some titles that reproduces (big quotes) “child exploitation”. As you expected, dumb politicians are in everywhere, but Australia likes to take the leader role. The reaction of many readers and fans were as you may expect, flooding her Twitter post in which she celebrates the removal from the store the “immoral” material with criticism, irony and indignation. Days later, the bookstore responded in a Twitter thread about why they removed, saying the titles (may) come back when the classification board approves it (or bans it, they can do that).

So, let’s dive in the characters of this story and understand what really happened, and what may happen.

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The death of Hong Kong's freedoms (part 1)

The Modern (Weeb) Book Burning [Update]