Olivia
Online
ThinkCritical
@CriticalC0de
Proponent of critical thinking | Let’s help the world together
The Blue Dot
Joined August 2022
656 Following
280 Followers
1.2K Posts
When it's the US, Israel and the West, it's called "government"
But when it's Russia, Cuba, Iran, China, it's called "regime".
When it's the US, Israel and the West, it's called "preemptive strikes"
But when it's China, Russia and Iran, it's called "aggressive attack".
When it's the US, Israel and the West, it's called "defence"
But when it's China, Russia and Iran, it's called "retaliation"
When it's the US, Israel and the West, it's called "intervention".
But when it's China, Russia and Iran, it's called "invasion".
Control the media and you'll control the people ✅✅
It's worth remembering that Hezbollah, Hamas, the IRGC -- none of these organizations existed 50 years ago.
It's almost as if they were created in response to something, but I just can't quite put my finger on it.
In our journalism classes, NYT, BBC et al used to be held up as the gold standard in journalism. Over the years, many of us have unlearned that lesson, after going through their coverage of everything from the Vietnam war to the Iraq war. Even then, the manner in which they shamelessly exposed themselves during Israel's genocide in Gaza came as a surprise. At this point, they don't even seem to care as to what a vast population in the global south thinks of their coverage filled with lies and obfuscations. They are just happy to cater to zionist extremists and white terrorists who run the two rogue nations.
@MenMindsetNotes What the f incel bs is this
@goddek Stop lying
@EmmanuelMacron You do realize even Trump himself is saying this is about the oil. If you’re going to be a powerless lapdog at least sing the same song as your master.
BREAKING NEWS: The notorious terrorist group called the US launched an unprovoked attack on Venezuelan bases at Fuerte Tiuna and La Carlota, where Caracas government officials and army staff live
🇨🇳 Here’s what people outside China never understand:
When you see hundreds of thousands of comments celebrating a tunnel through the Tianshan Mountains, you’re not just seeing infrastructure, you’re seeing a nation that loves itself, because it has earned the right to.
Foreign commentators call Xinjiang a “hell on earth.”
Meanwhile, China spent eight years, drilling hundreds of meters underground, carving through mountains, connecting north and south Xinjiang with a highway network that makes life easier for ordinary people.
That’s not what a “closed society” does, only a confident, open, and forward-looking society does.
You don’t build 700-meter shafts, 80-meter horizontal tunnels, and thousands of kilometers of roads for a population you supposedly want to “oppress,” you build them for a population you intend to see flourish.
Ask any Chinese person watching this video,
this isn't propaganda; it's our pride.
It’s the pride of commuters who will save hours every week,
the pride of engineers who spent their youth in the tunnel,
the pride of families who finally feel the country’s hand reaching their remote hometowns.
China doesn’t preach “human rights.”
China builds the roads that make human dignity real.
That’s the difference.
Chinese kids don’t need to worry about school mass shootings.
If anyone in the U.S. ever did what Jimmy Lai did in Hong Kong...???
Here is what Jimmy Lai did...
Jimmy Lai isn’t imprisoned for journalism or opinions. He was charged under Hong Kong law for:
• Collusion with foreign forces under the National Security Law
• Conspiracy to publish seditious material under the Crimes Ordinance
•Fraud on misuse of office leases to fund political activity
He wasn't arrested for "speech & defending democracy"
He's a criminal. In the United States the punishment would be far more severe...
#JimmyLai #HongKong #China #CounterPointGlobal
A lot of people claim China is bullying its neighbours.
Here’s the part they conveniently leave out:
They really have no grasp of modern history if they think Asia works like a playground where everyone suddenly “gangs up” on China.
If we’re talking about real bullying, start with Japan. From the early 1900s to 1945, Japan invaded and occupied China, Korea and much of Southeast Asia. China alone lost 15–20 million people. Korea was colonised. The region was brutalised. That’s factual history.
After Japan fell, bullying didn’t stop, it changed hands.
Western powers dominated Asia through colonial rule, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, coups, bombing campaigns and permanent foreign military bases.
China during all this wasn’t bullying anyone. It was poor, invaded, fractured and desperately trying to recover. Even before Japan, Britain had already torn China apart. That memory still remains.
Now compare that to China today.
China hasn’t colonised its neighbours.
It hasn’t overthrown governments.
It hasn’t run overseas empires or carpet-bombed countries.
Yes, China is assertive.
It pushes hard on sovereignty and uses economic leverage. But that behaviour is reactive, shaped by a century of being invaded and dictated to. China’s red lines exist because it knows what happens when it’s weak.
Calling China the “bully” while ignoring Japanese imperialism, Western colonialism and Cold War destruction isn’t analysis, its historical amnesia.
China’s neighbours know who the real bullies were and many are too weak or dependent to stand up to them. China isn’t, and that’s why it is unsettling.
When the kid who was bullied finally stands up, the bullies panic and grab at every straw to keep control.
That phase never lasts.
They always lose.
@XH_Lee23 So many idiots in this thread who don’t know they are constantly being spied on by Meta, Alphabet, etc. who are all in bed with the Trump admin. Wake the f up.
WHAT COULD BE MORE INNOCENT? A man invites people to start a Whatsapp group so they can chat.
It was 11 June 2019, and in Hong Kong, reporters like me were celebrating the astonishingly speedy rise of women to top positions in government and the professions of the city, with the big event for movers and shakers being the Asian University for Women Gala Dinner.
But publisher Jimmy Lai Chee-ying was not present. He was elsewhere, looking at his phone – as he had received an invitation to join a new Whatsapp group.
.
DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN
The invitation came from a man named James Cunningham. Ferociously anti-Chinese, Cunningham had been US Consul General in Hong Kong until July 2008. On his return to the US, he became chairman of a demonization-of-China operation called the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation.
While business was thriving in the southern Chinese city, politically, things had suddenly became puzzlingly tense for no good reason.
Civil servants at the Department of Justice had obediently followed a recommendation from a G-7 anti-crime committee to add an expanded western-style extradition law to Hong Kong’s statute book.
But soon after they had tabled it, a massive disinformation campaign had sprung up, absurdly painting it as a dastardly Beijing plot to snatch Hong Kong people and “disappear” them across the border.
Secretary for Security John Lee manfully tried to counteract the tsunami of disinformation with the facts, but fought a losing battle against Apple Daily and other press.
As well as Jimmy Lai, Cunningham sent Whatsapp group invitations to Lai’s right hand man Mark Simon and to Martin Lee Chu-ming, a senior lawyer. They accepted.
.
THE GREAT STORM
The following day was June 12, 2019—and it was historically stormy, both literally and figuratively. Under black skies, there was a huge protest at the Legislative Council Building. As well as the thunderstorm, it was so humid, 83%, that we were wet even when we stayed out of the rain.
Suddenly, a group of masked men turned the protest into a full-scale riot when they surged to the front and showered police with a red brick hailstorm.
Then they threw steel rods: We could see that these were railings which had been pre-sharpened, turning them into lethal weapons. The result was chaos.
Eighty people were injured, including 22 police officers. The incident would later give rise to “Five Demands Not One Less”, an incoherent petition which included an item which said that people at the June 12 tumult should “not be described as rioters”.
.
AWASH WITH CASH
Meanwhile, the cross-Pacific Whatsapp group continued through the rest of 2019 and into the following year. This was a very difficult time for Hong Kong, trapped in an endless insurrection featuring multiple bombings and arson attacks – all whitewashed as “pro-democracy demonstrations”.
At the offices of Apple Daily, a go-between who linked Lai and Simon with the “valiants” (a code word for the most violent of the protest gangs) was told by Simon that a particular bank account had to be kept clear “for foreign funding”.
Separately, anti-corruption investigators found Mark Simon was distributing millions to people willing to criticize China in public, including Cardinal Joseph Zen, who got HK$3 million.
A leak to Time magazine in 2020 revealed that Donald Trump’s administration had secretly promised US$2 million (HK$15.6 million) for protesters to be channeled through the Hong Kong offices of Radio Free Asia, a group originally set up by the CIA as a propaganda operation.
And of course the CIA-adjacent National Endowment for Democracy had quietly been feeding tens of millions of US dollars into anti-China civic groups in Hong Kong since 1990, steered through groups with innocuous-sounding names, such as the “Asian American Free Labor Institute” and the “Free Trade Union Institute”.
.
LAW CATCHES UP WITH THEM
But in the summer of 2020, the Whatsapp group members realized they had a problem.
On 30 June 2020, at 11 pm, the laws of Hong Kong were brought into line with western countries and other countries in Asia. Collusion with hostile foreign forces was henceforth illegal. This fulfilled a promise that had been made to the Hong Kong people in 1994 by a joint committee of law drafters.
To fight back, Jimmy Lai and the western mainstream media had flooded the news cycle with shocking “summaries” of the new law – which, they said, banned all dissent, criminalized protest, and introduced the death penalty by firing squad for treason.
None of this was remotely true.
In the new law, there was no mention of dissent, no mention of protest, and no reference to firing squads or any other execution method, since Hong Kong had no death penalty.
.
CUNNINGHAM UNFAZED
Cunningham, unfazed by the new law, was anxious to further internationalize the insurrection that was destabilizing Hong Kong, and his words showed that he wanted to target related businesses such as HSBC, one of the world’s biggest banks.
He wrote to other members of the Whatsapp group saying they should cultivate “popular pressure on say HSBC, assets that China values, coupled with coordinated pressure from the [western] govts”.
Jimmy Lai realized that they had to do this remotely because collusion with foreign forces was now a crime in Hong Kong, as it was in western countries.
The publisher wrote back to Cunningham: “The danger of this outside movement is collusion with foreign influence [is] a serious crime under national security law. We can’t be connected with it here. Whatever it is has to be independent with [of] us”.
Senior lawyer Martin Lee clearly felt that what they were doing was problematic and immediately said that he was leaving the group. He deleted himself from the list the same day.
Mark Simon advised Jimmy Lai to stay in, arguing that the Cunningham connection should be maintained.
.
A SOLUTION
What to do? Foreign collusion was a crime. The best plan, Jimmy Lai said on 10 July 2020, was that members should completely erase all conversations from all chat groups which included Cunningham.
He proposed switching to the more secure “Signal” app so they could continue the connection with Cunningham. He advised everyone to enable a function that caused messages to disappear after one hour.
But Cunningham was just one of the people with Jimmy Lai engaged with during his anti-China work in this period. Others included US Vice President Mike Pence, US war hawk John Bolton, and Senators Ted Cruz and Rick Scott. In the UK he met with members of a group of anti-China right-wing politicians in parliament, including Chris Patten.
Yet perhaps the wiliest was a man named Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State. A former director of the CIA, he had a devastating plan for Hong Kong and asked his assistant to get in touch with Jimmy Lai. Details of that exchange would also be captured and also eventually be shown in court.
To be continued.
.
.
[SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT]
[As a service to the public, this reporter is sharing stories revealed during the Jimmy Lai trial in Hong Kong, 2024-2025. It is important to note that the BBC, Reuters, the Guardian, Sky and other western media WERE NOT PRESENT at the hearings, which is why their reports are so woefully inaccurate. In contrast, Hong Kong’s Friday news project had a correspondent physically present during a trial in which numerous stories emerged, including the one above.]
![NuryVittachi's tweet photo. WHAT COULD BE MORE INNOCENT? A man invites people to start a Whatsapp group so they can chat.
It was 11 June 2019, and in Hong Kong, reporters like me were celebrating the astonishingly speedy rise of women to top positions in government and the professions of the city, with the big event for movers and shakers being the Asian University for Women Gala Dinner.
But publisher Jimmy Lai Chee-ying was not present. He was elsewhere, looking at his phone – as he had received an invitation to join a new Whatsapp group.
.
DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN
The invitation came from a man named James Cunningham. Ferociously anti-Chinese, Cunningham had been US Consul General in Hong Kong until July 2008. On his return to the US, he became chairman of a demonization-of-China operation called the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation.
While business was thriving in the southern Chinese city, politically, things had suddenly became puzzlingly tense for no good reason.
Civil servants at the Department of Justice had obediently followed a recommendation from a G-7 anti-crime committee to add an expanded western-style extradition law to Hong Kong’s statute book.
But soon after they had tabled it, a massive disinformation campaign had sprung up, absurdly painting it as a dastardly Beijing plot to snatch Hong Kong people and “disappear” them across the border.
Secretary for Security John Lee manfully tried to counteract the tsunami of disinformation with the facts, but fought a losing battle against Apple Daily and other press.
As well as Jimmy Lai, Cunningham sent Whatsapp group invitations to Lai’s right hand man Mark Simon and to Martin Lee Chu-ming, a senior lawyer. They accepted.
.
THE GREAT STORM
The following day was June 12, 2019—and it was historically stormy, both literally and figuratively. Under black skies, there was a huge protest at the Legislative Council Building. As well as the thunderstorm, it was so humid, 83%, that we were wet even when we stayed out of the rain.
Suddenly, a group of masked men turned the protest into a full-scale riot when they surged to the front and showered police with a red brick hailstorm.
Then they threw steel rods: We could see that these were railings which had been pre-sharpened, turning them into lethal weapons. The result was chaos.
Eighty people were injured, including 22 police officers. The incident would later give rise to “Five Demands Not One Less”, an incoherent petition which included an item which said that people at the June 12 tumult should “not be described as rioters”.
.
AWASH WITH CASH
Meanwhile, the cross-Pacific Whatsapp group continued through the rest of 2019 and into the following year. This was a very difficult time for Hong Kong, trapped in an endless insurrection featuring multiple bombings and arson attacks – all whitewashed as “pro-democracy demonstrations”.
At the offices of Apple Daily, a go-between who linked Lai and Simon with the “valiants” (a code word for the most violent of the protest gangs) was told by Simon that a particular bank account had to be kept clear “for foreign funding”.
Separately, anti-corruption investigators found Mark Simon was distributing millions to people willing to criticize China in public, including Cardinal Joseph Zen, who got HK$3 million.
A leak to Time magazine in 2020 revealed that Donald Trump’s administration had secretly promised US$2 million (HK$15.6 million) for protesters to be channeled through the Hong Kong offices of Radio Free Asia, a group originally set up by the CIA as a propaganda operation.
And of course the CIA-adjacent National Endowment for Democracy had quietly been feeding tens of millions of US dollars into anti-China civic groups in Hong Kong since 1990, steered through groups with innocuous-sounding names, such as the “Asian American Free Labor Institute” and the “Free Trade Union Institute”.
.
LAW CATCHES UP WITH THEM
But in the summer of 2020, the Whatsapp group members realized they had a problem.
On 30 June 2020, at 11 pm, the laws of Hong Kong were brought into line with western countries and other countries in Asia. Collusion with hostile foreign forces was henceforth illegal. This fulfilled a promise that had been made to the Hong Kong people in 1994 by a joint committee of law drafters.
To fight back, Jimmy Lai and the western mainstream media had flooded the news cycle with shocking “summaries” of the new law – which, they said, banned all dissent, criminalized protest, and introduced the death penalty by firing squad for treason.
None of this was remotely true.
In the new law, there was no mention of dissent, no mention of protest, and no reference to firing squads or any other execution method, since Hong Kong had no death penalty.
.
CUNNINGHAM UNFAZED
Cunningham, unfazed by the new law, was anxious to further internationalize the insurrection that was destabilizing Hong Kong, and his words showed that he wanted to target related businesses such as HSBC, one of the world’s biggest banks.
He wrote to other members of the Whatsapp group saying they should cultivate “popular pressure on say HSBC, assets that China values, coupled with coordinated pressure from the [western] govts”.
Jimmy Lai realized that they had to do this remotely because collusion with foreign forces was now a crime in Hong Kong, as it was in western countries.
The publisher wrote back to Cunningham: “The danger of this outside movement is collusion with foreign influence [is] a serious crime under national security law. We can’t be connected with it here. Whatever it is has to be independent with [of] us”.
Senior lawyer Martin Lee clearly felt that what they were doing was problematic and immediately said that he was leaving the group. He deleted himself from the list the same day.
Mark Simon advised Jimmy Lai to stay in, arguing that the Cunningham connection should be maintained.
.
A SOLUTION
What to do? Foreign collusion was a crime. The best plan, Jimmy Lai said on 10 July 2020, was that members should completely erase all conversations from all chat groups which included Cunningham.
He proposed switching to the more secure “Signal” app so they could continue the connection with Cunningham. He advised everyone to enable a function that caused messages to disappear after one hour.
But Cunningham was just one of the people with Jimmy Lai engaged with during his anti-China work in this period. Others included US Vice President Mike Pence, US war hawk John Bolton, and Senators Ted Cruz and Rick Scott. In the UK he met with members of a group of anti-China right-wing politicians in parliament, including Chris Patten.
Yet perhaps the wiliest was a man named Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State. A former director of the CIA, he had a devastating plan for Hong Kong and asked his assistant to get in touch with Jimmy Lai. Details of that exchange would also be captured and also eventually be shown in court.
To be continued.
.
.
[SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT]
[As a service to the public, this reporter is sharing stories revealed during the Jimmy Lai trial in Hong Kong, 2024-2025. It is important to note that the BBC, Reuters, the Guardian, Sky and other western media WERE NOT PRESENT at the hearings, which is why their reports are so woefully inaccurate. In contrast, Hong Kong’s Friday news project had a correspondent physically present during a trial in which numerous stories emerged, including the one above.]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G8awvwGaAAAIEPa.jpg)
@DailyTurkic The irony is, if he was deported to China he would be treated better there than by ICE.
@GordonGChang I am starting to think you are mentally ill. Are you ok?
@Abdullah_Om3r03 You are based in Australia.
You are very ignorant. After Japan invaded China in 1937, U.S. exports of petroleum products, steel, machinery and other inputs continued, and those materials were used by Japan to sustain its operations in China.
American firms also invested in Japanese-controlled Manchuria and operated subsidiaries in Japan, further supporting Japan’s broader war economy during this period.
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