Hong Kong Crisis: Made in America

August 25, 2019 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - Claims that Western interests are driving unrest in Hong Kong to undermine China have been decried across the Western media as "fake news," "disinformation," and even grounds for censorship from platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

Yet a look at the organizations directly involved in leading the unrest and those supporting it reveals unequivocally that it originates in Washington DC - not organically from within Hong Kong itself.

In order to conceal this fact, the Western media has attempted to portray the unrest as "leaderless." Yet coordinated protests most certainly have both leaders and organizations directing the majority of the movement's decisions as well as providing the logistical support necessary for the sustained unrest Hong Kong now faces.

Who is Leading Hong Kong's Unrest

Despite repeated and unrealistic claims that Hong Kong's recent protests are "leaderless," they are clearly being led by a combination of opposition political parties, supporting fronts posing as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and foreign-funded media organizations.

Even partial admissions of this fact can be found throughout Western coverage of these supposed "leaderless" protests.

Hong Kong Indigenous: A July 2019 Quartz article titled, "The leader of Hong Kong’s leaderless protest movement is a philosophy student behind bars," would admit:

...there is one person to whom many protesters have turned to for inspiration and guidance, even though he hasn’t been physically present at any of the demonstrations: jailed activist Edward Leung.

The article also reports:

Over the past two to three weeks, protesters have also begun to march with placards of Leung’s face. Meanwhile, Leung’s 2016 election slogan (link in Chinese)—”Reclaim Hong Kong! Revolution of our times!”—has roared back in full force, quickly becoming the clarion call of the current wave of protests.

Edward Leung is a leading figure of the Hong Kong Indigenous political party which holds zero seats in either of Hong Kong's elected legislative bodies.

While Quartz describes Leung's "localism" movement as emphasizing "Hong Kong identity as separate to mainland Chinese" and openly advocating "Hong Kong's independence from China," the "localism" movement itself is by no means independent.

In a 2016 South China Morning Post article titled, "‘Not some kind of secret meeting’: Hong Kong Indigenous leaders meet with American diplomats," Edward Leung and fellow Hong Kong Indigenous member Ray Wong would attempt to explain why they were caught secretly meeting with US consulate staff in Hong Kong.

The article would claim:

The photos, published by news website Bastille Post on Wednesday night, showed three members of the group – including Edward Leung Tin-kei and Ray Wong Toi-yeung – meeting two consulate staffers. The quintet reportedly chatted for around an hour and a half, speaking in Putonghua at times, before going their separate ways.

Some mainland media and Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying have both claimed that there were foreign forces behind the city’s pro-democracy protests of 2014.

Today, Edward Leung encourages protesters from jail, including members of his political party to continue sowing unrest across Hong Kong.

Hong Kong Free Press - itself a foreign-backed media platform admittedly partners with US-UK government-funded fronts including PEN Hong Kong - would admit in an article titled, "Jailed Hong Kong activist Edward Leung urges protesters to focus on convincing those who oppose them," that Leung has been writing letters addressed to the protesters - who in turn carry his portrait around in the streets and have used his 2014 protest slogan during recent unrest. 

Ray Wong has since fled Hong Kong being granted asylum in Germany, the South China Morning Post would report in their article, "Hong Kong activists wanted over Mong Kok riots granted asylum in Germany."

In every instance, Hong Kong Indigenous has been supported by the United States and its European partners. Holding no elected seats in Hong Kong's government and thus in no way representing the will of the people of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Indigenous instead represents Washington's ambitions of maintaining Hong Kong as a foothold in and a pressure point against China.

Demosisto Party: Having held only one seat in Hong Kong's elected legislative bodies - Demosisto is also playing an active role in leading and directing recent protests. Its secretary general - Joshua Wong - is openly involved in leading current protests.

Wong was also a prominent figure during the 2014 "Umbrella Revolution," and was invited to Washington DC by National Endowment for Democracy (NED) subsidiary - Freedom House - to collect an award for his role in leading the unrest .

On Freedom House's own website, a post titled, "Freedom House marks its 75th anniversary by honoring three generations of Hong Kong democracy leaders: Joshua Wong, Benny Tai and Martin C. M. Lee," would praise Wong, claiming:

Wong rallied over 200,000 peaceful protestors in 2014 during the Umbrella Revolution. For his efforts, he has been recognized by notable media outlets including Fortune, Time Magazine, Foreign Policy, and London’s The Times. He has been arrested by Chinese authorities on a number of occasions, which sparked international outrage and further protests in Hong Kong.

Wong is now center stage amid current protests with his name regularly appearing in articles like The Times' "Hong Kong protests: Joshua Wong says British police commander ‘must pay price’," directing the agenda, focus, and tempo of the unrest.

While platforms like Google, Twitter, and Facebook delete accounts attempting to expose the West's role in backing unrest in Hong Kong, the Strait Times in an article titled, "Google warns Hong Kong's Joshua Wong of government-backed hackers," suggests US-based tech giants continue to provide assistance to Western-backed opposition groups and figures - including Wong - just as they were exposed doing in 2011 during the so-called "Arab Spring."

US "Color Revolution" Struggles in Hong Kong

June 27, 2019 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - The Western media has been boasting over recent protests in Hong Kong. Western headlines have claimed the protests have "rattled" Beijing's leadership.

The protests have been organized to obstruct Hong Kong's elected government from moving forward with an extradition bill. The bill would further integrate Hong Kong's legal system with that of mainland China's, allowing suspects to be sent to the mainland, Taiwan, or Macau to face justice for crimes committed anywhere in Chinese territory.

The protests oppose the extradition bill as a wider means of opposing Hong Kong's continued reintegration with China - arguing that the "One Country, Two Systems" terms imposed by the British upon Hong Kong's return under Chinese sovereignty in 1997 must be upheld.

Uprooting the Last Vestiges of British Imperialism 

The story of Hong Kong is one of territory violently seized by the British Empire from China in 1841, being controlled as a colony for nearly 150 years, and begrudgingly handed over to China in 1997.

The "One Country, Two Systems" conditions imposed by the British were a means of returning Hong Kong to China in theory, but in practice maintaining Hong Kong as an enduring outpost of Western influence within Chinese territory.  The West's economic and military power in 1997 left Beijing little choice but to agree to the terms. 

Today, the Anglo-American international order is fading with China now the second largest economy on Earth and poised to overtake the US at any time. With economic and military power now on China's side, it has incrementally uprooted the vestiges of British colonial influence in Hong Kong - the extradition bill being the latest example of this unfolding process. 

Beijing has reclaimed Hong Kong through economic and political means. Projects like the recently completed Hong Kong high-speed rail link and the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macao Bridge have helped increase the number of mainlanders - laborers, visitors, and entrepreneurs - travelling to, living in, and doing business with Hong Kong. With them come mainland values, culture, and politics.

Hong Kong's elected government is now composed of a majority of openly pro-Beijing parties and politicians. They regularly and easily defeat Hong Kong's so-called "pan-democratic" and "independence" parties during elections. It is the elected, pro-Beijing government of Hong Kong that has proposed the recent extradition bill to begin with - a fact regularly omitted in Western coverage of the protests against the bill. 

US Color Revolution Masquerades as "Popular Opposition" 

Unable to defeat the bill legislatively, Hong Kong's pro-Western opposition has taken to the streets. With the help of Western media spin - the illusion of popular opposition to the extradition bill and Beijing's growing influence over Hong Kong is created.

What is not only omitted - but actively denied - is the fact that the opposition's core leaders, parties, organizations, and media operations are all tied directly to Washington DC via the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and corporate foundations like Open Society Foundation. 

Hong Kong’s opposition has already long been exposed as US-sponsored. 

This includes the entire core leadership of the 2014 so-called “Occupy Central” protests, also known as the “Umbrella Revolution.” Western media has portrayed recent anti-extradition bill protests as a continuation of the "Umbrella" protests with many of the same organizations, parties, and individuals leading and supporting them. 

The West's Losing Battle for Hong Kong

June 24, 2019 (Joseph Thomas - NEO) - Another pivotal battle is being fought over Hong Kong between Beijing and political forces backed by the special administrative region's former British colonial masters.

At the heart of the battle is a proposed law that will allow suspects to be extradited to mainland China, Taiwan or Macau.

The BBC in its article, "Hong Kong lawmakers fight over extradition law," would claim:

Critics believe the proposed switch to the extradition law would erode Hong Kong's freedoms.

By "critics," the BBC is referring to US and British-backed opposition, with the article specifically linking recent protests against the proposed law to the US-funded "Umbrella Movement" demonstrations in 2014.

The BBC would also remind readers of the conditions the British imposed on China as a condition of returning Hong Kong:

Under a policy known as "One Country, Two Systems", Hong Kong has a separate legal system to mainland China.

Beijing regained control over the former British colony in 1997 on the condition it would allow the territory "a high degree of autonomy, except in foreign and defence affairs" for 50 years.

The BBC would also quote the last British governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten, as if to dispel any doubts over how the fault lines of this most recent political controversy formed, and the interests really driving opposition to the recently proposed law.

Patten would claim the proposed law was, "an assault on Hong Kong's values, stability and security."

Hong Kong's "values, stability and security" in this context reflects Western desires to maintain the region as a foothold not only for its interests in Asia-Pacific, but within China itself. The slow, incremental erosion of Western influence in Hong Kong and elsewhere across Asia-Pacific appears to be ending what has been centuries of European and then American primacy over the region.

The West's Losing Battle for Hong Kong 

Colonised by the British Empire in the 1800s, Hong Kong served for over a century as an Anglo, then Anglo-American outpost in Asia-Pacific. Since its handover in 1997, Beijing has incrementally reasserted control over the territory.

More recently, as China rises economically and militarily, Hong Kong has served as an indicator of waning Anglo-American domination over China and its peripheries.

Beijing's strategy has been to avoid direct political confrontations with Hong Kong's dwindling US-funded opposition parties and to instead patiently develop surrounding territory, inundating Hong Kong with mainlanders who bring with them culture and politics aligned with Beijing and economic influence that is slowly displacing Western-leaning leftovers from British colonisation.

Beijing's completion of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge and the opening of a Hong Kong-mainland high-speed rail link, along with the subsequent political and media backlash from the US and UK are recent examples of major setbacks for Washington and London in this ongoing battle for influence and the West's ungraceful retreat amid it.

The extradition law, if passed, will set a precedence further eroding British demands imposed during the 1997 handover and will lead to an accelerated political and economic integration of Hong Kong.

Beijing is set to maintain many of Hong Kong's unique economic and political characteristics, as it has done with other regions across the mainland. But it is clear that it will do so on its own terms, as China's own interests require. It is also clear that digging out Anglo-American influence from Hong Kong, root and stem, drives China's side of this ongoing political struggle.

Despite the see-sawing nature of this struggle, unless global economic factors change drastically, China's continued rise along with the continued erosion of Washington's and London's unipolar international order all but ensures the inevitable and complete marginalisation of Western-backed political and economic forces based in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong's gradual integration into Beijing's wider plans for China as a whole is a microcosm of what to expect in regards to other holdouts of Anglo-American influence, including those forces in Taiwan determined to continue using the island as a point of leverage for Washington against Beijing.

The degree of patience and fairness exhibited by or absent from Beijing's approach to Hong Kong will serve as an example either fostering cooperation across the rest of Asia, or aiding Western efforts to fuel paranoia and division across the region and around the world in a bid to contain China's further rise.

Joseph Thomas is chief editor of Thailand-based geopolitical journal, The New Atlas and contributor to the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

China's Hong Kong Mega Bridge Riles Former Colonialists

November 4, 2018 (Joseph Thomas - NEO) - Officially called the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macao Bridge, the 55 kilometre-long bridge-tunnel is an engineering marvel physically connecting Hong Kong and Macau to China's mainland.

Beyond providing links to the mainland, the bridge helps form a wider bay area, connecting several cities, spurring the movement of tourists, workers and goods. 

Like the recently opened Hong Kong-mainland high-speed rail line, the bridge's completion has been met with widespread derision across Anglo-American media. No fault, real or imagined, escaped mention.

It is the political implications of the bridge's construction in particular that have riled China's former colonial concerns. The bridge is yet another very tangible example of Beijing exercising its sovereignty over all of its territory, including Hong Kong, taken back from the British and Macau taken back from the Portuguese.

Moscow has done likewise with the construction of the Crimean Bridge, exercising its sovereignty over the Crimean Peninsula reunited with Russia. A similar storm of derision swept Anglo-American headlines.

Western Media Decries the rise of Chinese Sovereignty 

Encapsulating Anglo-American protests is the Washington Post's article, "The world’s longest bridge-tunnel brings China even closer to Hong Kong. Not everyone is pleased," which claims:

The bridge’s completion comes as China under Xi is extending its grip over Hong Kong, a city of 7.4 million that was given special status when it was handed back from the British to China in 1997. 

Under the “one country, two systems” policy, Hong Kong’s economic and political systems are supposed to remain untouched for 50 years — until 2047 — and distinct from mainland China’s, allowing the territory to retain its own government, judiciary, currency and so on. 

A flurry of infrastructure development, however, has served to physically bind the regions in a more tangible way. In late September, an $11 billion high-speed rail link opened between Hong Kong and mainland China, cutting the time between the territory and major Chinese cities.

Beijing is undeniably consolidating its control over these territories. They were taken from China by force by European, and later American invaders, occupied and only handed over once China began its rise to economic and military parity with the West. To this day, Washington and London attempt to exert influence over Hong Kong and more consequentially, through it, in efforts to politically undermine China's mainland as well.

But in according to the West's own maxim of might makes right, China's mega bridge represents a steel and concrete band tying these former colonial territories tighter to the mainland, squeezing out the last dwindling influence of these foreign interests.

The Washington Post and other articles across Anglo-American media referred to their reliable stable of "pro-democracy" politicians in Hong Kong to provide the illusion of local displeasure. As with the recent Hong Kong high-speed rail link, Claudia Mo, a Hong Kong politician and former AFP reporter, would decry the new bridge as Chinese encroachment on Hong Kong.

West Decries Mainland-Hong Kong High-Speed Rail

September 28, 2018 (Joseph Thomas - NEO) - China recently opened yet another high-speed rail line, this one linking Hong Kong to China's mainland, cutting the trip to Beijing from 24 hours to just 9.

Yet progress made by China in expanding what is already the largest high-speed rail network in the world, has been decried by Western media organisations. AFP in their article, "Fear and fanfare as Hong Kong launches China rail link," would transform the accomplishment into controversy, claiming:

A new high-speed rail link between Hong Kong and mainland China launched Sunday, a multi-billion dollar project that critics say gives away part of the city's territory to an increasingly assertive Beijing. 

Chinese security have been stationed in semi-autonomous Hong Kong for the first time at the harbourfront West Kowloon rail terminus, as part of a new "special port area" that is subject to mainland law.

AFP would further complain:

Under Hong Kong's mini-constitution -- the Basic Law -- China's national laws do not apply to the city apart from in limited areas, including defence.

Hong Kong also enjoys rights unseen on the mainland, including freedom of speech, protected by a deal made before the city was handed back to China by Britain in 1997. But there are growing fears those liberties are being eroded. 

AFP's story is part of a wider US-European narrative aimed at driving a wedge between Hong Kong and Beijing, the latter of which resumed control over the territory after nearly 140 years of British colonial rule.

Hong Kong's Paradoxical "Independence" Movement

June 21, 2018 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - Prominent Hong Kong opposition leader Edward Leung was sentenced to 6 years in prison for assaulting police and his role in leading riots in 2016.

The Guardian in its article "Hong Kong jails independence leader Edward Leung for six years," would report:

Hong Kong’s leading independence activist has been jailed for six years for his involvement in some of the city’s worst protest violence for decades.

Edward Leung was convicted in May of rioting over the 2016 running battles with police, when demonstrators hurled bricks torn up from pavements and set rubbish alight in the commercial district of Mong Kok.

Western pundits decried the jail sentence as the breakdown of the "rule of law" in Hong Kong. Yet the riots were violent and destructive, and most certainly against the law. For Hong Kong not to jail Leung for his role in criminal activity would constitute an actual breakdown of the rule of law.

Edward Leung had been serving as spokesman and by-election candidate for the Hong Kong Indigenous political group. The group seeks the unrealistic goal of stopping influence from mainland China as part of a wider Western-sponsored political movement to maintain Hong Kong as a pressure point vis-a-vis Beijing.

The movement also attempts to hold Beijing to the parting demands made by British occupiers in 1997 including the "One Country, Two Systems" principle which serves as the legal framework Western-sponsored agitators use to justify their activities and notions of "independence."

Hong Kong "Independence" = Dependence on Washington  

And while the Hong Kong "independence movement" claims to represent the "indigenous" people of Hong Kong and its autonomy - it is in reality a creation of Washington and in no way represents the people of Hong Kong or the concept of "independence" in any way.

Other groups among Hong Kong's opposition have already been exposed as US-sponsored agitators. This includes the entire core leadership of the 2014 so-called "Occupy Central" protests, also known as the "Umbrella Revolution."

Hong Kong: Anglo-America's Struggling Foothold in China

March 22, 2017 (Joseph Thomas - NEO) - Prominent American propagandist Howard French recently published a lengthy editorial in the Guardian titled, "Is it too late to save Hong Kong from Beijing’s authoritarian grasp?," in which he attempts to buttress an otherwise categorically false narrative surrounding an alleged indigenous struggle for democracy and independence within Hong Kong.

French attempts to hold China accountable for backtracking on an agreement made with Britain over the return of its own territory taken from it by force in 1841. He also attempts to portray Beijing's crackdown on US-UK subversion in Hong Kong as "authoritarian," never making mention of the extensive funding and meddling both the United States and the United Kingdom are engaged in within Chinese territory.

The article documents only one side of the so-called "independence" movement in Hong Kong, sidestepping any critical analysis of the colonial background of the ongoing political crisis or the neo-colonial aspects that shape current events even now.

The lengthy piece was paid for by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, a Washington D.C.-based front that collaborates with the New York Times, PBS, NPR, Time Magazine and other mainstays of US propaganda. These are the same media outlets that helped sell the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as US-led attacks on Libya and US meddling in Syria beginning in 2011. By supporting French's work, they now help sell to the public a narrative that undermines Chinese sovereignty an ocean away from American shores.

The entire editorial, its contents, author and the special interests that paid for it as well as its placement in the Guardian, represent a continued and concerted effort to maintain an Anglo-American foothold in Hong Kong, part of the last vestiges of Western hegemony within Chinese territory.

The Truth About Hong Kong 

Had Howard French penned an honest account of Hong Kong's recent political crisis, he would have included the extensive, some may say exclusive, control the United States and the United Kingdom exercised over an otherwise fictitious and impossible pro-independence movement.  Quite literally every leader of the so-called "Umbrella Revolution" is either directly funded and directed by the US and/or UK government, or possesses membership within an organisation, institution or front funded by Anglo-American money.

The notion that a teen-aged Joshua Wong was single-handedly defying Beijing is preposterous even at face value. He was but one cog of a much larger, well-documented foreign-funded machine aimed at stirring up conflict within Hong Kong, undermine Beijing's control of the territory and infect Chinese society as a whole with notions of Western-style "democracy."

Just months before the 2014 "Umbrella Revolution," one of its leaders, Martin Lee, was literally in Washington D.C., before members of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), pleading for material and political support for upcoming demonstrations. Toward the end of that same year, and despite NED denying Lee was a protest leader, Lee would find himself in the streets of Hong Kong leading the protests from the front shoulder-to-shoulder with Benny Tai and Joshua Wong.

Why is a Hong Kong "Activist" in Bangkok?

Joshua Wong's arrest at a Bangkok airport is portrayed as a slight against "democracy," yet the US-funded and backed agitator undermines his own principles of "self-determination" by meddling in another nation's politics. 

Joshua Wong.

October 5, 2016 (The New Atlas) - Thai PBS in its article, "HK democracy activist Joshua Wong detained in Bangkok," would claim:

Wong, 19, famed for his galvanising role in the city’s 2014 pro-democracy “umbrella movement”, was held as he landed at the airport late Tuesday, his party Demosisto said in a statement, citing a Thai student activist, Netiwit Chotipatpaisal, who was due to meet him. 

Wong was invited by Thai student activists to take part at an event marking the anniversary of a military crackdown in October 1976. 

Demosisto “strongly condemns the Thai government for unreasonably limiting Wong’s freedom and right to entry, and requests the immediate release of Wong,” the statement said.

What Thai PBS fails to mention is that Joshua Wong and his party, "Demosisto," are US-funded and directed, and represent Western interests attempting to subvert Chinese control over its own territory of Hong Kong, as well as undermine national sovereignty across the entire Asian region.

Indeed, the entire "Occupy Central" movement, also referred to as the "Umbrella Revolution," was led by US-backed opposition figures, including Joshua Wong, Benny Tai and Martin Lee, the latter of which was literally in Washington D.C. lobbying for backing just months before the 2014 protest began.

Hong Kong Gets New US-backed Party

April 18, 2016 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - Hong Kong saw the formation of a new "political party," headed by 19 year-old student Joshua Wong - a young man with no experience and no explanation as to who is funding him or backing him politically. The party, called "Demosisto," was described by the BBC in their article, "Hong Kong student leader Joshua Wong forms political party," as demanding "self-determination" for Hong Kong - an ambition pushed primarily by US and British interests, not the people of Hong Kong.

The BBC would report that:

Mr Wong was a leading figure in the so-called Umbrella Movement in 2014, which aimed to secure greater voting rights for the territory's residents.
"Street activism is not enough if we want to fight for a better future," Mr Wong told the BBC.

"We have to enter the system, create a political party and shape the political agenda, in order to drive forward our movement for self-determination."
Although Mr Wong is too young to run for office, Demosisto will put forward candidates in Legislative Council elections in September.

The BBC is clearly and intentionally omitting obvious questions and answers regarding the new party, "Demosisto," such as who is funding it, who is backing it, and who really is running it when clearly the 19 year-old Joshua Wong is merely a figurehead incapable of conjuring up a political party from scratch in Hong Kong's otherwise highly competitive sociopolitical environment.

Obvious Western Proxies 

Hong Kong, seized by the British in 1841 and handed back - tentatively - to China in 1997, still suffers from the influence and ambitions of both London and their hegemonic successors in Washington and on Wall Street. The latest manifestation of this influence and ambition was the "Occupy Central" movement that sprung up in 2014 among a milieu of US and British-backed agitators with direct financial and political ties to the West.

The foreign ties driving the protests were quickly exposed despite immense propaganda, denials, and deception from the foreign-funded movement's leadership. The 2014 "Occupy Central" mobs attracted only a minority of Hong Kong's population, before finally fizzling out in the face of not government crackdowns, but growing public backlash.

Besides Joshua Wong, other "Occupy Central" leaders including Benny Tai and Martin Lee had obvious and direct ties to the United States government, with Tai's political and academic activity almost entirely subsidized by the US State Department, and with Lee having literally traveled to Washington just ahead of the protests to speak before the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to lobby for aid he would soon receive.

Image: Martin Lee in Washington D.C. in 2014, speaking before NED ahead of the "Occupy Central" protests.

In the wake of the protests, Joshua Wong, Benny Tai, and Martin Lee would all be invited to Washington by their US sponsors to receive an award from NED-subsidiary, Freedom House.

Occupy Hong Kong, Take Two

February 4, 2015 (Ulson Gunnar - NEO) Were Hong Kong's street demonstrations a movie, the director's chair would certainly be placed in Washington D.C. Several independent researchers have exposed the shockingly large number of direct links between funding and political backing from Washington and nearly every prominent leader organizing street demonstrations in Hong Kong.

The yellow umbrellas winding through Hong Kong's streets, whose numbers are inflated by American and British media's expert use of tight angles and close ups, could be considered "take two." Take one wasn't fit for Washington's vision for Hong Kong, which is ironic considering the protests claim to be fighting for Hong Kong's self-determination. Regardless, the last round of protests fared poorly, with the majority of Hong Kong's residents turning on protesters who blocked roads for weeks, hurting local businesses and disrupting the lives, peace, and prosperity of the majority.

A loud, disruptive minority, disrupting the peace and prosperity of the majority, all while shouting "pro-democratic" slogans presents another irony and one that seems lost on some.

Washington's Studio Faces Stiff Competition 

The problem for Washington is that its ability to manage public perception has been drastically diminished. This, all while the ability of others, particularly nations targeted by Washington's schemes, now have the ability to bring their side of the story to a larger audience. The balance of power struck means that attempts to portray crooked, clumsy criminals, awkward academics and washed up politicians as another iteration of the global "occupy" phenomenon were destined to fail from the beginning.

US-backed Mobs Back in Hong Kong's Streets

February 1, 2015 (Tony Cartalucci - LD) - The bad taste left in the majority of Hong Kong residents' mouths from America's last attempt at subversion in the Chinese special administrative region, has barely begun to fade as the US State Department and its mobs of "umbrella revolutionaries" take back to the streets in a verbatim reprisal of "Occupy Central" which ended in humiliation and defeat just months ago.

Led by the exact same exposed, corrupt opposition leaders, the clearly diminished movement was unable to "occupy" any part of downtown Hong Kong. The number of protesters was put at around 5,000 by Hong Kong's police, while the movement's leadership claimed their numbers were more than double that.

The South China Morning Post would admit in a recent article that:

 Leading the charge were key figures of the Occupy Central movement including Benny Tai Yiu-ting, Chan Kin-man and Reverend Chu Yiu-ming. Others at the front included Democratic Party founding chairman Martin Lee Chu-Ming as well as Daisy Chan Sin-Ying.

Benny Tai, who poses as the founder of the "Occupy Central" movement, has been sufficiently exposed as a proxy of the US State Department with nearly every organization he is associated with a direct recipient of US government funding. Also mentioned by the South China Morning Post is Martin Lee, who was literally in Washington D.C. before the US State Department's foreign-sedition funding arm, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), appealing for aid ahead of planned unrest earlier last year.

Image: Google search results for "Hong Kong protests" are topped by sponsored ads posted by the US State Department's Freedom House - raising the absurdity and transparency of American meddling abroad and their attempts to misinform and manipulate people's perception at home.

This most recent street demonstration featured protesters carrying custom-made umbrellas in matching colors, a US gimmick used in sowing political upheaval that has earned such demonstrations the titled, "color revolution."

This latest attempt by the US to divide and subvert political order in China is particularly absurd - with Google searches returning sponsored results by the US State Department's "Freedom House" covering the "Hong Kong Protests," a clear attempt at spearheading the information war waged to confuse and misinform the general public about the true nature driving current street demonstrations.

Hong Kong: "Pro-Democracy" Protesters Reject Will of the People

Occupy Central deliberately ignores overwhelming public demands to end protests, resorts to clashes with police, violence.  

November 29, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci - LD) - Fully qualifying claims that the so-called "Occupy Central" or "Occupy Hong Kong" movement is little more than US-backed political subversion dressed as "pro-democracy," mobs remained in the streets, creating chaos as police worked to reopen streets and return order to downtown Hong Kong. A recent poll carried out by one of the movement's own collaborators - the Public Opinion Programme (HKU POP) of the University of Hong Kong - revealed over 80% wanted the protests brought to an end with over 60% advocating police action to clear the streets if necessary.

In direct defiance not of the government in Beijing, but the will of  Hong Kong's people themselves the "Occupy" movement claims to represent, protesters have vowed to continue disrupting order and remain in the streets as long as possible. The Western media and Western corporate-funded foundations remain the movement's only significant advocates.  
The Epoch Times would report that protesters began breaking down into smaller groups to evade police, throwing objects at officers and clashing with them, then darting in and out of businesses and roads to escape arrest.

Selfish Antics of a Dead Movement 

Occupy Central's troubles began almost with the protests themselves as the questionable nature of the movement's leadership and its funding was fully exposed as emanating from the US State Department and channeled to various organizations involved in the movement by notoriously corrupt media tycoon Jimmy Lai. 

The opacity of the movement's funding and its leadership's connections with the US State Department revealed what was supposed to be a "pro-democracy" movement as nothing more than a bid to extort from Beijing through the use of street mobs the parting demands made to the Chinese government regarding the administration of Hong Kong by the British Empire. 

Aspirations for "democracy," or the ability for Hong Kong to nominate and vote for its own politicians is in all actuality a bid for what remains of pro-Wall Street and London political movements in Hong Kong to carve out a foothold in the region and use Hong Kong as a springboard to create greater division across Chinese society. In other words, to create a neo-imperial colony for the West to use once again to influence mainland China. 

However, the degree to which the "Occupy Central" has been exposed as a foreign-backed political destabilization is so complete that there is little likelihood that such a destabilization will be possible in Hong Kong, or anywhere else inside of China well into the foreseeable future.

Leaders including Benny Tai and Joshua Wong have all been linked to US State Department funded organizations, projects, and campaigns. "Occupy Central" leaders including Martin Lee and Anson Chan literally were in Washington D.C. earlier this year lobbying for US support in front of the very organizations funding the political activity of virtually every prominent "Occupy Central" leader. Even HKU POP has been implicated in "dirty money" used to qualify an ad hoc referendum carried out by "Occupy Central" ahead of the recent protests.

"Occupy Central" was Always Driven by a Foreign, Self-Serving Agenda 

The decision to remain in the streets and create as much chaos as possible despite the desires of the local population for the protests to end clearly illustrates the true, self-serving nature of the protests and their purpose of creating chaos, not facilitating progress for Hong Kong or greater China.

Resorting to clashes and violence perpetrated against police is designed to trigger injuries or fatalities designed to justify further disorder and chaos. Hong Kong, like many other cities and nations targeted by Wall Street and London for destabilization is being led down a dangerous path toward costly division and conflict. The residents, police, and government of Hong Kong must exercise extreme caution and patience to deny the US-backed movement any opportunity to capitalize on the chaos it is now attempting to create.

For genuine supporters of what they believed was a "pro-democracy" movement, what more evidence does one need to conclude "Occupy Central" has nothing to do with democracy? The people have overwhelmingly called for the protests to end, and yet they continue on, deliberately ignoring the will of the people - the antithesis of "democracy."

Hong Kong's People Have Spoken - End the Protests

Will Hong Kong's "pro-democracy" movement heed the voice of the people and leave the streets indefinitely? Or remain there, revealing their true, self-serving agenda?  

November 20, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci - LD) - Despite an ongoing media circus in the West portraying a "popular uprising" in Hong Kong, China - in reality the Chinese people and particularly the citizens of Hong Kong have grown tired of the unrest.


After popular demand, the Public Opinion Programme (HKU POP) of the University of Hong Kong conducted a poll asking whether or not the "Occupy Central" movement should come to an end. An overwhelming 80% said yes with HKU POP stating specifically, "almost 80% called for an end to the occupation."

Bloomberg in their article, "Most Hong Kong People Want Pro-Democracy Protests to End Now," would also admit:

About 68 percent of 513 respondents said the government should clear the protesters immediately, according to a survey conducted by the University of Hong Kong Nov. 17-18.

Surely, with "Occupy Central" claiming to be a "pro-democracy" movement, it will heed the will of the people and voluntarily withdraw from Hong Kong's streets indefinitely. However, despite the wording of Bloomberg's headline, those blocking up Hong Kong's streets are not "pro-democracy." The backlash against "Occupy Central" is not the Hong Kong public turning on "pro-democracy" protesters but rather the Hong Kong public understanding "Occupy Central" has nothing at all to do with democracy in the first place.

The degree to which the "Occupy Central" has been exposed as a foreign-backed political destabilization is so complete that there is little likelihood that such a destabilization will be possible in Hong Kong, or anywhere else inside of China well into the foreseeable future.

Leaders including Benny Tai and Joshua Wong have all been linked to US State Department funded organizations, projects, and campaigns. "Occupy Central" leaders including Martin Lee and Anson Chan literally were in Washington D.C. earlier this year lobbying for US support in front of the very organizations funding the political activity of virtually every prominent "Occupy Central" leader. Even HKU POP has been implicated in "dirty money" used to qualify an ad hoc referendum carried out by "Occupy Central" ahead of the recent protests.

Heed the Will of the People? 

Perhaps greater evidence of "Occupy Central's illegitimacy resides not in its documented financial and political ties to foreign interests, but rather the utter contempt in which "Occupy Central" leaders hold the Hong Kong public's interests.

Before street unrest even began, "Occupy Central" held a "referendum" to gauge public interest in their "proposals." Only a fifth of Hong Kong's voting public turned out for the "referendum" which intentionally left out any possible vote to condemn the entire process or the "Occupy Central" movement promoting it. With this paltry "fifth" tentatively "behind" the movement, they took to the streets to disrupt life for the entire special administrative region.

"Occupy Central's" Dirty Money, Dirtier Leaders

November 7, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - A torrent of leaked documents and e-mails have exposed the already questionable "Occupy Central" leadership as engaged in unethical, opaque funding. Millions of Hong Kong dollars have been shifted around secretly without "Occupy Central" supporters' knowledge, concealing the source of the funding and the true nature of "Occupy Central's" agenda.

For weeks, Beijing, the local Hong Kong government, and analysts around the world have suggested that "Occupy Central" was far from the "spontaneous" "grassroots" movement it claimed to be and that special interests both within Hong Kong and beyond China's shores were guiding the movement. Leaked e-mails and documents, now confirmed by "Occupy Central" leaders and supporters to be authentic, have proven many of these accusations to be true.

Dirty Money, Dirtier Leaders  

The South China Morning Post (SCMP) has revealed these leaked documents and emails in an ongoing series of articles. This includes their article, "Apple Daily head Jimmy Lai donated millions to pan-democrats, leaked files show," which states:

Hundreds of records detailing millions of dollars in donations to pan-democrats by the Apple Daily's founder have been leaked to the media, a move the camp slammed as a "smear campaign".

According to the 900 leaked files, Jimmy Lai Chee-ying has donated more than HK$10 million to pan-democratic parties and politicians since last year. The donations included HK$5 million to the Democratic Party and HK$3 million to the Civic Party. 

Other donations detailed in the files include amounts totalling HK$900,000 to the Hong Kong Civic Education Foundation and Hong Kong Democratic Development Network, both co-founded by Reverend Chu Yiu-ming, an organiser of the Occupy Central civil-disobedience movement. 

Some media reports suggested the total donations since April 2012 could have been as much as HK$40 million.

Of course, "Occupy Central" co-organizer Martin Lee, is in fact a founding chairman of the Democratic Party, linking Jimmy Lai to yet other organizers of the unrest.

US Covers Up Support for Hong Kong "Occupy Central"

The US' clumsy balancing act between backing Hong Kong protesters rhetorically and hiding its support financially, comes to a head. 

Image: The US "not" supporting color revolution in Ukraine in 2013-2014. 

October 28, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci - LD) - For the United States, so-called "color revolution" used to be a specialty until recently. The Western media has delighted in exposing the US State Department's role  in the wake of successful political subversion around the world via the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and a long list of subsidiaries including Freedom House, the National Democratic Institute (NDI), and the International Republican Institute (IRI) headed currently by US Senator John McCain. 

For example, the Guardian would admit in its 2004 article, “US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev,” that:

…while the gains of the orange-bedecked “chestnut revolution” are Ukraine’s, the campaign is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes. 

Funded and organised by the US government, deploying US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and US non-government organisations, the campaign was first used in Europe in Belgrade in 2000 to beat Slobodan Milosevic at the ballot box.

Amid the more recent unrest in Ukraine, Washington's role was less subtle, with US Senator John McCain of IRI literally flying to Kiev and taking to the stage side-by-side literal Neo-Nazis to lend the movement political legitimacy it desperately lacked. 

Image: US State Department's Michael Posner would admit on multiple
occasions that the US was backing, funding, and even equipping opposition
groups around the world to carry out political subversion. 

The US State Department would also brag again toward the end of the so-called "Arab Spring" of its role in fostering the chaos that would eventually lead to deadly protracted warfare across North Africa, as well as within and along Syria's borders and now Iraq. The New York Times would report in its April 2011 article, "U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings," that:

"A number of the groups and individuals directly involved in the revolts and reforms sweeping the region, including the April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and grass-roots activists like Entsar Qadhi, a youth leader in Yemen, received training and financing from groups like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, a nonprofit human rights organization based in Washington."

The article would also add, regarding the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED):

"The Republican and Democratic institutes are loosely affiliated with the Republican and Democratic Parties. They were created by Congress and are financed through the National Endowment for Democracy, which was set up in 1983 to channel grants for promoting democracy in developing nations. The National Endowment receives about $100 million annually from Congress. Freedom House also gets the bulk of its money from the American government, mainly from the State Department. "

Hong Kong’s Umbrellas are ‘Made in USA’

October 24, 2014 (William Engdahl - NEO) - The Washington neo-cons and their allies in the US State Department and Obama Administration are clearly furious with China, as they are with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. As both Russia and China in recent years have become more assertive about defining their national interests, and as both Eurasian powers draw into a closer cooperation on all strategic levels, Washington has decided to unleash havoc against Beijing, as it has unleashed the Ukraine dis-order against Russia and Russian links to the EU. The flurry of recent deals binding Beijing and Moscow more closely—the $400 billion gas pipeline, the BRICS infrastructure bank, trade in rubles and renminbi by-passing the US dollar—has triggered Washington’s response. It’s called the Hong Kong ‘Umbrella Revolution’ in the popular media.



In this era of industrial globalization and out-sourcing of US industry to cheap-labor countries, especially to China, it’s worth taking note of one thing the USA—or more precisely Washington DC and Langley, Virginia—are producing and exporting to China’s Hong Kong. Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China has been targeted for a color revolution, one that has been dubbed in the media the Umbrella Revolution for the umbrellas that protesters use to block police tear gas. 

The “umbrellas” for Hong Kong’s ongoing Umbrella Revolution are made in Washington. Proof of that lies not only in the obscenely-rapid White House open support of Occupy Central just hours after it began, following the same model they used in Ukraine. The US State Department and NGOs it finances have been quietly preparing these protests for years. Consider just the tip of the Washington Hong Kong “democracy” project. 

Same dirty old cast of characters… 

With almost by-now-boring monotony, Washington has unleashed another of its infamous Color Revolutions. US Government-steered NGOs and US-trained operatives are running the entire Hong Kong “Occupy Central” protests, ostensibly in protest of the rules Beijing has announced for Hong Kong’s 2017 elections. The Occupy Central Hong Kong protest movement is being nominally led by a 17-year-old student, Joshua Wong, who resembles a Hong Kong version of Harry Potter, a kid who was only just born the year Britain reluctantly ended its 99-year colonial occupation, ceding the city-state back to the Peoples’ Republic. Wong is accompanied in Occupy Central by a University of Minnesota-educated hedge fund money man for the protests, Edward Chin; by a Yale University-educated sociologist, Chan Kin-man; by a Baptist minister who is a veteran of the CIAs 1989 Tiananmen Square destabilization, Chu Yiu-ming; and by a Hong Kong University law professor, Benny Tai Yiu-ting, or Benny Tai. 

Hong Kong Strikes Back - West Attempts to Spin Growing Anti-Occupy Movement

October 4, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci - LD) - The tides are turning against US-funded mobs in the streets of Hong Kong amid the so-called "Occupy Central" protests, as increasingly impatient residents and business owners come out into the streets to confront protesters. At times outnumbering and overwhelming the "Occupy Central" protesters, the movement represents residents, business owners, and by-standers attempting to restore normality to Hong Kong's streets after the government and police have so far been unable to do so.

Image: Within articles claiming an ongoing and growing backlash against
Occupy Central protesters is led by "triad" gangsters, are pictures of angry
residents who are clearly not triad members. 

In response, both US-funded Occupy Central leaders and their backers across the Western media have attempted to claim thousands of anti-Occupy Central protesters are in fact "paid triad" gangsters. In the Sydney Morning Herald's article, "Violent mobs with triad links threaten Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters," it is claimed without evidence that:

Pro-democracy protesters were besieged by violent mobs looking to break up their occupation of one of Hong Kong's busiest districts on Friday, leading to chaotic skirmishes on city streets, accusations of police bias, and the shelving of negotiations with the government. 

Nineteen people were arrested, at least eight of whom had "triad backgrounds", police said early on Saturday, lending weight to furious accusations from pro-democracy groups that the violence was instigated by gangs who had been paid to provoke trouble and break up the demonstrations

The Herald fails to cite any evidence confirming these arrests, as well as provide any context to what "triad backgrounds" actually means. Attempting to discredit thousands of anti-Occupy Central protesters as "triads" using nebulous and baseless accusations equates to overt propaganda. Worst yet, the Herald's own article featured an AFP photo of anti-Occupy Central protesters - middle-aged and elderly men most likely business owners and local residents - but clearly not "triads." 

Image: Triad gangsters across Chinese society including mainland China, Hong Kong, and Singapore, generally sport large conspicuous tattoos on their upper bodies, are young, and very easy to spot, even when they attempt to blend in when attempting to put their days of organized crime behind them. In Singapore particularly, public awareness campaigns ask employers not to judge former triad members on their appearances. It is unlikely that thousands of "triads" could come out onto the streets of Hong Kong and the Western press failed to capture any pictures of them - meaning their claims of "tirades" confronting Occupy Central protesters is a fabrication.

So conditioned is the ordinary reader of Western newspapers that headlines directly contradicted by the content of the article as well as accompanying pictures goes unnoticed. However, for a growing number of increasingly astute segments of the global public, such discrepancies are beginning to stand out with startling conspicuity.  

They myriad of growing lies surrounding the US-engineered chaos in Hong Kong's streets is but one part of a much larger, long-term campaign to contain, co-opt, or collapse China's political order, and replace it once again with Balkanized colonial proxies. 

US Now Admits it is Funding "Occupy Central"

October 1, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci - LD) - Just as the US admitted shortly after the so-called "Arab Spring" began spreading chaos across the Middle East that it had fully funded, trained, and equipped both mob leaders and heavily armed terrorists years in advance, it is now admitted that the US State Department through a myriad of organizations and NGOs is behind the so-called "Occupy Central" protests in Hong Kong. 

The Washington Post would report in an article titled, "Hong Kong erupts even as China tightens screws on civil society," that: 

Chinese leaders unnerved by protests elsewhere this year have been steadily tightening controls over civic organizations on the mainland suspected of carrying out the work of foreign powers. 

The campaign aims to insulate China from subversive Western ideas such as democracy and freedom of expression, and from the influence, specifically, of U.S. groups that may be trying to promote those values here, experts say. That campaign is long-standing, but it has been prosecuted with renewed vigor under President Xi Jinping, especially after the overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych following months of street demonstrations in Kiev that were viewed here as explicitly backed by the West.

The Washington Post would also report (emphasis added): 

One foreign policy expert, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive subject, said Putin had called Xi to share his concern about the West’s role in Ukraine. Those concerns appear to have filtered down into conversations held over cups of tea in China, according to civil society group members. 

“They are very concerned about Color Revolutions, they are very concerned about what is going on in Ukraine,” said the international NGO manager, whose organization is partly financed by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), blamed here for supporting the protests in Kiev’s central Maidan square. “They say, ‘Your money is coming from the same people. Clearly you want to overthrow China.’ ”  

Congressionally funded with the explicit goal of promoting democracy abroad, NED has long been viewed with suspicion or hostility by the authorities here. But the net of suspicion has widened to encompass such U.S. groups as the Ford Foundation, the International Republican Institute, the Carter Center and the Asia Foundation. 

Of course, NED and its many subsidiaries including the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute do no such thing as "promoting democracy," and instead are in the business of constructing a global network of neo-imperial administration termed "civil society" that interlocks with the West's many so-called "international institutions" which in turn  are completely controlled by interests in Washington, upon Wall Street, and in the cities of London and Brussels.