Hong Kong Uprising: How to Read Your Daily Newspaper

I'd like to point out that face masks were banned and curfews imposed within 24 hours of the "Battle in Seattle" WTO protests, not months, as is the case in Hong Kong (see "Hong Kong police get more powers, masks to be banned in bid to end crisis: media"):

“To impose an anti-mask law in the current social condition is to further infuriate the people and will definitely be met with escalating violence,” lawmaker Fernando Cheung told Reuters. “This is no different than adding fuel to fire. The result will be riots.”

Goldman Sachs estimated this week that the city might have lost as much as $4 billion in deposits to rival financial hub Singapore between June and August.

On Thursday, Lam Chi-wai, chairman of Junior Police Officers Association, urged the city’s leader to impose a curfew to maintain public order.

“We cannot work alone - clapping only with one hand - without appropriate measures and support from top level,” Lam said.

I'm not disputing the legitimacy of the Hong Kong protests. What I am saying is that gigantic media outlets like Reuters and The New York Times lavish significant daily attention on the civil unrest in Hong Kong while feeding their readers scraps about the far more lethal ongoing uprisings in Haiti and Iraq.

Clearly there is a double standard at work here. What is it?

China is an official enemy. A primary purpose of mainstream media is to articulate official enemies, to foment hatred. Any opportunity to mobilize popular opposition to Beijing will be fully exploited by Western media. We're back to the cold war. Russia and China are to be seen as implacable foes with whom the West is locked in a death match.

That's why the coverage of Hong Kong 2019 reminds me of Kiev 2014.

We'll find out soon enough how close the comparison is. My experience of the 1999 Seattle WTO is that the overwhelming majority of protesters, like 95%, are peaceful and that the number of people who come to an action armed with projectiles, let alone firearms, is tiny. So once the Hong Kong government begins its crackdown in earnest, which appears likely now that the parade for 70th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party has concluded, we'll be able to judge the extent of foreign penetration and support for the protesters by the armed response to the Hong Kong police.