Michael Yon in Hong Kong

18 Replies to “Michael Yon in Hong Kong”

1. “Sorry, something went wrong.”

   Yes, it did.

   Zuck married a Chinese sow, for starters, and wants his heirs and successors to be Chinese.

   1. His battery was low. They’ll be back if something interesting happens.

      1. My point still stands, but I see he’s back online—for now.

   2. However much you disagree with a nation’s politics, and I violently disagreed with Russia’s, past and present, as an example, to call someone a pig merely because she belongs to that ethnicity is racist.
      You have proven you are a racist over and over, and you are the single biggest reason for me to have reservations about this site, as you seemingly go merrily on with no hindrance on it … except for my calling you out.

      1. You aren’t the only one.

2. That was a good piece. I think the narrative was accurate and truthful. I have spent some time in HK and can empathize with their resistance. If western democracies (continue to) ignore this, they’ll find its only the thin edge of the wedge. HK is one of the most vibrant and dynamic communities on Earth and is in grave danger of being extinguished.

   1. I emphasize with the Hong Kong resistance. I understand their longing for the good old colonial days, though most of them were at most little kids in 1997.
      I just don’t like them choosing to wear black. I hope they are not copying antifa in other ways. Don’t illegitimize their legitimate protest.

      1. “I just don’t like them choosing to wear black.”

         They’re Asians. Antifa, no. Victor Charlie, yes.

         1. Victor Charlie, from people who raise the British Colonial flag and the American flag as symbols of freedom? I find that hard to believe.
            If I take your post correctly, the C for Charlie stands for Cong, which is shorthand for “Communist” in both Vietnamese and Chinese.

            1. That’s one way of looking at it. Another way is that the VC were fighting to free their country from foreign occupiers and their domestic toadies who denied Vietnamese culture. Freedom fighters.
               Did you know that the French handed Vietnam over to the tender mercies of the Japanese Empire without firing a shot, but the Vietnamese fought and won their own freedom from the Japanese, then had the Americans take away their arms and hand Vietnam back over to the French?

               Did you know that Ho Chi Minh wanted to give the Vietnamese a Constitution patterned on the U.S. Constitution? Yeah.
               But after being disarmed by the Americans and handed back over to the French, the only place he could turn to get the support needed to free his country from France was the Russians.(China was still fighting their civil war)

               The U.S. did a lot of despicable things at the end of WWII.

            2. to Oz:
               Yes, and the South Vietnamese welcomed the conquering Ho Chi Minh with such open arms that they braved the open sea and pirates in rickety boats (which more often than not sank with all hands) in order to escape them.
               I know people who went through that ordeal.
               You should also explain to the Hmongs how the Viet Cong are freedom fighters.
               What a bunch of revisionist nonsense. That plays about as well as what the Communists in the Roosevelt administration said about the Chicoms being agrarian reformers. How well did all that turn out? In that period of time, the Soviets formented Communist revolutions anywhere they could. Before the fall out, the Chicom called them the “Great Older Brother.” But I guess to the Viet Cong freedom fighters, the Russians were not “foreign”.

            3. “Yes, and the South Vietnamese welcomed the conquering Ho Chi Minh with such open arms that they braved the open sea and pirates in rickety boats (which more often than not sank with all hands) in order to escape them.”

               They had to escape them. They were Collaborators with the enemy. The Vietnamese lost millions fighting the French and Americans to free their country from foreign occupation. We in the west called it “the Vietnam War”. To the Vietnamese, it was a civil war to unite their country.
               I knew some of the boat people too. The ones that survived sold tickets to passengers to get on those boats, then they killed the passengers through privation and took everything that they had. They were the worst kind of snake heads.

               The common people of Vietnam were Buddhists. The Collaborators were French speaking Catholics. The Catholics had all of the best land, just as they did in Mexico, Central America, South America. Fighting to free up the land from foreign placed collaborators was a good reason for peasants to rebel.

               ” But I guess to the Viet Cong freedom fighters, the Russians were not “foreign”.”

               Sure the Russians were foreign. But they were just a few advisors.
               Unlike South Vietnam which was occupied by over 500,000 American combat troops.

               This is not revisionism. You, Old Bruin, are ignorant of the true history of Indochina.

            4. “In that period of time, the Soviets formented Communist revolutions anywhere they could.”

               Well Duh! The Russians fomented revolution everywhere since the beginning of their consolidation of power in 1921.
               Saying puerile drek like that is like saying “water is wet”. It wasn’t just in that period. It was, however, the period when the book “the Ugly American” was written. It was also the period when a book entitled “Our Own Worst Enemy” was written.

               Neither of those books would have been written if the U.S. had acted responsibly and settled the Communist problem right then and there when the Western World had all of their Veteran Armies in Europe in 1945 and North Pacific.
               Then there would have been no Vietnam War, no Cuban Revolution. With American backing the Kuomintang would have defeated Mao’s Communists, and the communist scourge would be no more.

               But where’s the money in that, eh?
               Not only wouldn’t $trillions have been spent on war, the $multi-trillions wouldn’t have been spent on preparing for war.
               We have always been at war with East Asia./

            5. “To the Vietnamese, it was a civil war to unite their country.”
               To the North Vietnamese, it was a civil war to unite Viet Nam under them. To the South Vietnamese, it was invasion by the North Vietnamese.
               Historically, China occupied the area around Hanoi periodically, but never as far south as Saigon. You could call the North Vietnamese Chinese collaborators, huh? Or were they really Chinese, and the South Vietnamese true Vietnamese. In any case, the north south divide is real. To show they are the conquerors, the North Vietnamese heavy-handedly renamed Saigon Ho Chi Minh city. But no ex-pat South Vietnamese ever calls it that. Westminster, California is called Little Saigon, not Little Ho Chi Minh City.
               To add to the north south divide, the French had conquered Saigon first, and it was the base from which they eventually conquered the rest of Viet Nam. No doubt this added to the enmity of the North against the French. But in the intervening years, the French had turned Saigon into the “Paris of the East.” Altogether, the French were in Saigon some eighty, ninety years. That is a long, long time, and the people learn to adapt and accept, if the reign is benign. Even the Hans did so with the Manchurian emperors by the time of Kangxi, who really took upon the mantle of emperorship twenty some years after the Manchu conquest. Kangxi turned out to have been one of the few truly beneficial emperors in Chinese history.
               You call them collaborators as though they were turncoats during a war. But for a long time, many of the Saigon upper class had adopted western ways, even as say Shanghai did in much less time. French speaking and Catholic South Vietnamese did not prosper because they adopted western ways, they were prosperous first. Yes, the boat people were mostly Catholic and previously well off, but that was because the conquering North Vietnamese persecuted the wealthy, especially if they were Catholic.
               You justified the persecution on nationalist grounds, but fail to recognize the invasion of the south by the north. You promulgate the Marxist mythology of class war. You revealed your religious intolerance. And you buy into the fable that a people ruled by one of their own (as though a South Vietnamese Catholic would accept that even) is better off than one ruled by a foreign power. As the people of Uganda, the erstwhile Garden State of Africa, who suffered under Idi Amin whether they would prefer British rule. Better yet, go back to the topic of this thread, Hong Kong. Ask the people who wistfully display British colonial and American flags what they think. You don’t have to ask. At the time of the turnover, a plebiscite in Hong Kong overwhelmingly voted to retain the status quo of a British Colony.
               I am done with this thread. You can have your last word.

3. Vancouver looks like its getting dangerous.

4. Oz:

   “Sure the Russians were foreign. But they were just a few advisors.”

   Having worked in Viet Nam on and off since 1990, I beg to differ.

   Post 1975, the Russians, and many of their East European ‘associates” were EVERYWHERE in Viet Nam. It got to the point that the jaded Southerners referred to them as “Americans without money”.

   Russian became the default “foreign” language taught in schools.

   They WERE active participants in the war, training the locals on the air-defence missile systems they supplied, for starters.

   The North Viets went with “the Bear” in preference to “the Dragon”, because they were all too familiar with the Chinese, having been occupied by them for a lot of the previous thousand years. Their worries were justified: When, in 1979, the Viets went into Pol Pot’s Cambodia to stop the incessant raiding across their border by the Khmer Rouge, not to forget the systematic harassment of non-Khmer ethnic groups in the country, the Chinese sent a large punitive expedition across the border into northern Viet Nam. Having been involved in serious shooting wars for most of the preceding few decades, the Viets took a fearsome toll on the Chinese. The stripped hulks of shot-out Chinese armoured vehicles were still to be found in parts of the north, just a decade ago. Sure, the Chinese provided an immense amount of logistical support to Ho and Giap, especially during the siege and ultimate investment of Dien Bien Phu and they absolutely expected “eternal gratitude” for the service.

   Part of the “game” is the constant Chinese pressure on people with old familial links to the “Central Kingdom”; and NOT just in Viet Nam.

   1. What part of HALF a MILLION American combat troops do you imagine you can pretend is matched by the Russians during the conflict?
      So what if Russians and Eastern Europeans showed up afterward and didn’t have much or any money compared to the Americans?
      Which other nation in the world can throw money at any perceived problem like the Americans do? -None that I know of.-
      What have Russians and Warsaw Pact agents showing up later got to do with the Vietnamese having finally gotten control of their own country.
      And if you disagree with and have reason to gainsay the Viets finally getting control of their own country then Link?

      “North Viets went with “the Bear” in preference to “the Dragon”, because they were all too familiar with the Chinese”

      The ChiComs were embroiled in a civil war. Capiche? People, any peoples, in a civil war cannot give aide even if they wanted to.
      The Viet Minh were formed in the early 1940s. The Chinese civil war lasted until 1950. I knew people who were there at the time.
      The woman who gave me my first Bible was a missionary in China in the late ’40s until 1950. In fact, she and her husband were among the last Christians to be allowed to leave China in 1950. The rest of her missionary group were crucified by the ChiComs.

      Did the PRC give aide to the North Vietnamese after their civil war was over? YES. Yes they did, and you saying the Vietnamese didn’t work with the Dragon(ChiComs) to win their civil war against the non-Asian southern collaborators is Historically just FALSE.

5. Oz, you seem a bit twitchy about all this.

   In 1949 China effectively fell to Mao and his minions; you know, the communist ones.

   In 1954, their : fraternal” aid to Ho’s uprising in Viet Nam climaxed with the meat-grinder at Dien Bien Phu. The Chinese provided all of Giap’s artillery. MOST of it was US-built M2, 105mm guns that had been taken by the Chinese invaders in the Korean war, a VERY short time before. These guns and their ammo, along with a prodigious amount of anti-aircraft weapons, most of which were of Soviet design and gifted to the Chinese. All of this stuff was carted through the mountains from the Chinese border using Viets as carriers and with Chinese “logistical support” I did NOT say that the Chinese were UNinvolved in the war against the south. There most certainly were, up to and including building armaments and munitions factories in the country.

   The catch was that of getting too close to the dragon.

   Remember, also, that Ho Chi Minh City used to be called “Saigon”. However, before that, it was a Cambodian trading post and river-port called Preah Nkor. A “creative” bit of intermarriage saw it excised from the Khmers and incorporated into “the South’.

   Note also that, before the French turned up, “Viet Nam” as a unitary country DID NOT EXIST. There were THREE parts, North, South and “the middle bit”, each under different rulers. The old “Imperial” capital was in the once lovely city of Hue. The taking and tenacious, but brief holding of Hue during the “Big Tet” operation was politically and psychologically important for the North’s ultimate aims.

   The majority people in modern Viet Nam are the Khing. They were, historically, coastal folk who were not inclined to mix socially with the “mountain folk”, mainly in the central highlands and mountains in general. There are something like fifty officially recognized ethnic minorities in Viet Nam today. One of these is the Cham people who are pretty much Indo Malay in origin. Indo-Malay to the point that most of them practise a variant of Islam that would get them instantly killed as utter heretics in many places in the Middle East. There used to be an entire Kingdom of the Cham, In central Viet Nam. There are still Cham stone city ruins to be found in Viet Nam. What happened to them? When they were squeezed out of their remnant turf, they basically walked to north-easy Khampuchea. Find a decent map and look for “Kompong Cham”, literally “Town of the Cham”, in modern Cambodia. In one of those interesting twists, the big Kahuna in Cambodia after the assisted demise of the Khmer Rouge was a chap called Hun Sen. He was born and raised in and around Kompong Cham. We’ll quietly skip over his dalliance with the KR for the moment.

   Back to Viet Nam, being a member of the VC or their “political wing”, the National Liberation Front was a dicey proposition. When the much talked about “Tet Offensive” occurred in 1968, it was MUCH bigger than previous such efforts, because there was a LOT of logistical and training fed in from the North. Why Tet? It is the annual Lunar New Year and a time when, traditionally folks tried to forget their woes AND tried to get back to their place of birth or home town; a huge family shindig. A party that runs for quite a few days, even today.Thus the roads and transport system would be strained to the max, as would accommodation options. In the middle of a serious war, all those hundreds of thousand travelers. “Fish in the water” and all those other guerrilla sayings. It was, despite the hype from the usual suspects, a dismal military failure, as was intended. A lot of VC units had NEVER before operated on such a scale and so operational preparedness and communications were patchy. The US and SVN air Forces had a field day or two.

   However, the entire operation had several objectives, as defined by “Northern Command”; 1. Enter as many villages, towns and cities as possible and do as much killing and damage as possible. 2. (Not on the clue-sheets handed out to the sandals on the ground) Get killed in vast numbers in the attempt. Aim two was the big one. With all the disgruntled VC / NLF southerners dead, wounded, captured or scattered, operations could then be handled by actual Northern troops who had the hardware, logistics, training and tactics to do some REAL damage. The third aim involved a lot of “offshore” work; setting the “narrative” for the willingly gullible scribes of the world, and in particular, US media. Chatting to some of these characters thirty years after the event was interesting.