Thursday, October 9, 2014

Color Revolution targets China through Hongkong

20 International EIR October 10, 2014
Oct. 4—Following a week of mass demonstrations in
Hong Kong, effectively demanding the overthrow of
the Basic Law upon which the former British colony
was turned over to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, People’s
Daily, the official paper of the ruling Chinese
Communist Party, issued an editorial Oct. 4 denouncing
the Western attempt to overthrow China through a
“color revolution,” starting in Hong Kong.
Called “Unswervingly Uphold Rule of Law in Hong
Kong,” it says that the ongoing shutdown of portions of
Hong Kong by “a minority of radical groups,” is creating
“all sorts of chaos that have drawn the concern and
indignation of the majority of Hong Kong people.” It
concludes: “As for the ideas of a very small minority of
people to use Hong Kong to create a ‘color revolution’
in the interior of China, that is even more of a daydream.”
The demonstrations have been carefully scripted by
various wings of the Anglo-American “Project Democracy”
apparatus, trying to create another “Tiananmen
Square” crisis in China, this time centered in Hong
Kong. The ostensible demand of the thousands of
(mostly) students is that the 2017 election for Hong
Kong’s Chief Executive, which will be the first to be
based on universal suffrage, must also allow for a Western-
style choice of the candidates, with no restrictions.
Ironically, this is an explicit rejection of the Basic Law,
despite the protesters’ (and their foreign backers’) repeated
appeal to “the rule of law.”
To be clear: The Basic Law for Hong Kong, agreed
to by both China and the United Kingdom in 1990 in
preparation for the 1997 turnover, says the following
about the selection of the Chief Executive: “The ultimate
aim is the selection of the Chief Executive by universal
suffrage upon nomination by a broadly representative
nominating committee in accordance with
democratic procedures.” I.e., the selection of candidates
by an election committee is the law. The demand
that some other form of selection of candidates must be
adopted is explicitly against the law.
Until now, the Election Committee has chosen the
Chief Executive itself; now it will choose the candidates
to run in 2017. It is, indeed, “broadly representative,”
composed of 1,200 members—300 from the industrial,
commercial, and financial sector; 300 from the
professions; 300 from labor, social services, and religious
institutions; and 300 from the legislature, district
councils, and other government officials.
Chris Patten on ‘Democracy’
The most disgusting irony is that Chris Patten, the
last “Governor and Commander-in-Chief” of colonial
Hong Kong (in whose selection, of course, the people
of Hong Kong had no say whatsoever), wrote an op-ed
in the Financial Times Sept. 4, demanding that London
intervene on behalf of the protesters. Baron Patten
wrote that “the UK has a continuing moral and political
obligation to ensure that China respects its commitments
to guarantee Hong Kong’s way of life [!] for 50
years from 1997.”
There are multiple foreign “Project Democracy”
operations involved in orchestrating and supporting the
demonstrations in Hong Kong. These include substantial
funding and “democracy training” from the National
Endowment for Democracy, the leading U.S. institution
implementing subversion and “regime change”
around the world, composed of both Republican and
Democratic neo-cons. Their most recent role in funding
the neo-nazi coup in Ukraine is infamous internationally.
Both the White House and Secretary of State John
Kerry have given their support to this subversion.
Kerry, in a press conference Oct. 1 with Chinese Foreign
Minister Wang Yi, who visited Washington after
appearing at the United Nations, backed the protesters,
demanding that Hong Kong must be an “open society
with the highest possible degree of autonomy and governed
by rule of law.”
Color Revolution: British Empire
Targets China Through Hong Kong
by Mike Billington
October 10, 2014 EIR International 21
Minister Wang Yi responded bluntly: “Secretary
Kerry mentioned Hong Kong. Hong Kong affairs are
China’s internal affairs. All countries should respect
China’s sovereignty. And this is also a basic principle
governing international relations. I believe for any
country, for any society, no one will allow those illegal
acts that violate public order. That’s the situation in the
United States, and that’s the same situation in Hong
Kong.”
The White House joined the imperial intervention.
Obama’s spokesman, Josh Earnest, told the press Sept.
29, “The United States supports universal suffrage in
Hong Kong in accordance with the Basic Law, and we
support the aspirations of the Hong Kong people,” as if
the thousands of mostly teenagers represented “the aspirations
of the Hong Kong people.”
Wolfowitz, Again
One of the most instructive cases of the character of
the “democracy” movement in Hong Kong is Jimmy
Lai, who is an asset of the most extreme right-wing
neocons in the United States. Jimmy Lai (Lai Chee-
Ying), a media mogul who runs Hong Kong’s “prodemocracy”
newspaper, the Apple Daily, is a financier
and propagandist for the color revolution, and is now
holding court on the street, granting interviews to the
eager world press whores about the high principles of
the movement.
Apple Daily, part of Jimmy Lai’s Next Media, was
launched after the 1989 Tiananmen Square mass demonstrations
in Beijing. His funding of the protesters was
revealed this past Spring, when his e-mails were leaked
to the press. The key role is that of Lai’s bag-man and
top assistant, Mark Simon, an American from Falls
Church, Va., who previously worked for the Pentagon,
did an internship with the CIA, and is a sworn defender
and collaborator of the neo-con crowd that ran the G.W.
Bush Administrations.
The South China Morning Post revealed on Aug. 11
that Simon, Lai, and neocon Paul Wolfowitz, an architect
of the illegal and genocidal Iraq War, spent five
hours plotting the “color revolution’ on a yacht in Hong
Kong harbor (date unspecified), while Simon brags in
interviews that he is a dedicated neocon. He was introduced
to Lai by Bill McGurn, a neocon and G.W. Bush’s
chief speech writer. Lai, reports Simon, “was truly
friends with Milton Friedman and Gary Becker.”
Lai also has business in Taiwan, and has funded the
“black shirt” movement there, which occupied the Parliament
in March, demanding that the Taiwan government
end its efforts to establish strong economic and
political ties with mainland China.
What Next?
Beginning on Oct. 3, groups of older Hong Kong
residents have been attacking the demonstrators’ sites,
tearing down their tents and banners. Press reports
claim they are associated with the Triads (organized
Creative Commons/Citobun
Protesters in Hong Kong, Sept. 28, 2014: funding and training courtesy of foreign “Project Democracy” networks.
22 International EIR October 10, 2014
crime gangs), but the press also acknowledges that
many residents are cheering them on. Police have arrested
dozens of them, but the attacks continue. The
demonstrators cancelled a planned meeting with the
government, claiming the government is behind the attackers.
Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying said on Oct. 3
that the street must be cleared by Oct. 6, or “all actions
necessary” would be taken to ensure that government
workers could go back to work.
The People’s Daily editorial of Oct. 4, referenced
above, elaborates the government’s view:
“The so-called Occupy Central is using illegal methods
to pursue the political goal of contravening the Basic
Law. No matter what clever talk and gloss the organizers
and inciters of Occupy Central use, whether civil disobedience
or peaceful nonviolence, the illegality of Occupy
Central cannot be changed. The result is a trampling underfoot
of the law, seriously disturbed social order, major
economic losses, even perhaps injuries and deaths, and
other grave results. . . . The measures taken by the Hong
Kong police in dealing with Occupy Central are the inevitable
demand of protecting the law. . . . A democratic
society must respect the opinions of a minority, but that
does not mean that a minority can do illegal things; a society
based on rule of law must include different voices,
but that does not mean that it can appease and connive at
illegality. . . . As for the ideas of a very small minority of
people to use Hong Kong to create a ‘color revolution’ in
the interior of China, that is even more of a daydream.”
mobeir@aol.com
‘Color Revolutions’ Are War
The strategy of the “color revolution” as a form of
irregular warfare against states targeted for dissolution
or regime change by the British Empire, is identified
most closely with the work of Gene Sharp, an
Oxford-educated political science professor, now
emeritus at the University of Massachusetts. From
Sharp’s manual From Dictatorship to Democracy,
comes the concept of organizing upheavals around a
symbolic color, a tactic which has been taken up by
such institutions as the National Endowment for Democracy
in the United States.
The rash of such “color revolutions” has been
well publicized over recent decades, starting with the
“yellow revolution” against President Ferdinand
Marcos of the Philippines (1986), the “orange revolution”
against the Ukrainian government (2004-05),
the “rose revolution” against the Georgian government
(2003), and many others.
On May 23 of this year, the Russian government
and military leadership specifically took note of the
significance of the “color revolution” tactic, as a
form of warfare. At the Third Moscow Conference
on International Security, Russian and Belarusian
military speakers gave detailed presentations on the
strategy, and how it has played out around the
world.
According to the Voice of Russia coverage of the
conference, President Vladimir Putin’s message to
the conference identified the color revolution tactic,
saying, “Obviously, modern challenges and threats
make it necessary to stop the archaic logic of geopolitical
games with a zero sum game, the attempts to
force your own methods and values on other peoples,
including by color revolutions.”
Later on, according to notes provided by Americans
present at the conference, Russian and Belarusan
generals spoke on on the strategy and its history.
Russian Chief of General Staff Gennadi Gerasimov
emphasized that military force is concealed behind
the color revolutions. If the protest potential turns
out to be insufficient, military force is then used to
ensure regime change. Libya was cited as a textbook
example. In Syria, the West is using mercenaries and
military assistance in an effort to overthrow the government,
he said. What began as a purely internal
conflict has turned into a battle between religious
radicals and the government.
Given the increasingly close security cooperation
between Russia and China over the intervening
months, including within the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization, it is to be expected that the Russian
view has been shared, in depth, with their Chinese
colleagues.
See EIR’s archive at www.larouchepub.com, for
more depth.
—Nancy Spannaus

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