Sorry I'm late.
I had to stop by the Wax Museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America and by God we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it and I say it again, you've been had.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like Say Our Name been saying, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, you guys, introducing foreign correspondent, yours and mine, Reese Ehrlich.
And he is the author of a great many books, including his latest, The Iran Agenda, today.
Welcome back to the show.
How's it going?
I'm doing well.
Thank you, Sean.
Good to talk to you again.
Hey man, so you wrote this thing, What's Really Going On in Hong Kong?
And I was wondering, what's really going on in Hong Kong?
So maybe you're the guy I should be talking to.
Well, not surprisingly, there's a lot of misinformation in the mainstream media and coming out of Washington and London, in my opinion.
All right, well, let's start out with just the plain old information and then we'll get to counter in the spin from those factions you're talking about there.
Well, obviously people have read about the large demonstrations, some say up to 2 million, although that's disputed, in which people are demanding an end to an extradition agreement between Hong Kong and other countries that include mainland China, the PRC.
And people came out in the streets.
There were large demonstrations.
There was a police crackdown or several police crackdowns.
The demonstrators at one point seized a office building that housed the legislative offices.
They hung up a British flag.
They smashed the windows and sprayed anti-communist graffiti.
And in general, the media here portrayed them as pro-democracy demonstrators opposing the evil regime in Beijing.
Mm hmm.
Well, that sounds about right.
So first of all, you talk about in your article, you explain where this law originally came from.
And I hadn't heard a lot about that.
So can you take us back there?
Yeah.
In February of this year, a man and his girlfriend from Hong Kong flew to China, sorry, flew to Taiwan, and he murdered her quite brutally, strangled her to death, stuffed her in a suitcase, took her out into the countryside, dumped the body, and then hopped on a plane to Hong Kong.
Because apparently he knew that he could not be extradited back to Taiwan, even for something as horrific as that kind of murder.
The Hong Kong authorities tried him on a lesser charge, basically a charge of money laundering.
By the way, for the people who are even more amateur than me at Asian politics here, Taiwan, that's not mainland China.
This is just, this reflects Hong Kong's policy towards, as you're saying, quite a few of its neighbors here.
It's only China, mainland communist China, so-called fascist China, red China, gets involved later secondarily in the concerns of the citizens of Hong Kong when they see the reaction to this policy as in regards to Taiwan first.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
And the, so Taiwan, which is a, according to Taiwan, it's an independent country.
According to Beijing, it's part of China.
But it has no extradition treaty with Hong Kong.
Hong Kong only has an extradition treaty with some 20 countries.
So the same problem would arise if this guy had gone to some other countries as well, with which there were no extradition agreements.
So the government in Hong Kong, which is the judicial and legislative system is separate from that of Beijing.
They decided to pass a law that would solve that, resolve that problem.
And it was actually a very limited law.
It only covered a few, some 30 plus crimes.
It provided for judicial review, two different, very extensive judicial review by the Hong Kong authorities, by Hong Kong courts.
And in particular, it was interesting to me that in order for someone to be extradited to China, they would have to have both violated a Chinese law and a Hong Kong law.
And that's normal for extradition procedures.
You can't be tried and extradited for a crime that doesn't exist in the country where you live.
But all of that kind of got lost in the hubbub over the protests.
So many people demonstrated in the streets of Hong Kong, but there were also sizable numbers of people in the tens of thousands who supported the extradition agreement and also supported the government in Hong Kong.
So I think while certainly there's a lot of distrust about what Beijing's plans are for Hong Kong, there's also support on this particular issue.
So what about the Chinese paranoia that this is all a CIA or NED or USAID or George Sorosian plot to do something?
Because, hey, I'm suspicious of that too.
Anytime anything happens anywhere.
I've seen no indication that the CIA instigated these protests or any of those other people you mentioned.
I think generally the CIA does outsource to sort of softer, half official NGOs and Sorosian type groups and things like that.
There's really nothing like that.
Like you saw, say, for example, in Kiev in 2013.
Well, I think the CIA and other nefarious agencies always take advantage of these protests to spin things in a particular direction.
So if you're out marching just around the extradition issue, for example, the CIA or other folks of that type will try to turn it into a pro-independence movement to cause China even more grief.
So I don't doubt that whether it be through the media or through social media or mainstream media, they try to direct or influence the movements.
But it is, I think, a spontaneous movement much like has occurred in other parts of the world.
And now it makes sense.
I mean, if I was from Hong Kong, I'd be afraid of what Beijing's ruling regime would have the future look like there.
And you know what?
Oh, I'm sorry.
You don't have that much time.
I was going to ask you to tell the ancient history.
People are just going to have to read the history of Britain in China and the opium wars and the creation of Hong Kong in the first place.
It's all in the piece.
And it's really good.
We ran an antiwar.com.
What's really going on in Hong Kong?
So we can skip that.
But it is apparent why someone who lives in Hong Kong might be really worried that, well, like you were saying, gee, the letter of the law says this.
They might think that, you know what, the letter of the law doesn't mean much to these party officials who absolutely don't tolerate protest inside mainland China, right?
Yeah.
The core of the problem is that under the agreement when Britain returned Hong Kong to China, they set up what's called one country, two systems.
And that's to last for 50 years.
And the idea is that the world and the people of Hong Kong recognize that China is the sovereign power, that Hong Kong is part of China, but that Hong Kong could maintain its economic, political, social system while China maintained its.
And the Chinese hope that over time, the people of Hong Kong would come to understand the benefits of Chinese socialism and they would peacefully reunite.
It hasn't been working out that way in practice.
These are the biggest protests that have taken place since 1997, which is when the handover took place.
And so the Chinese government has a real problem, which is they want Hong Kong to be part of China, but the people of Hong Kong, at least a sizable number of them, are not going along with it.
So hopefully it will be resolved politically, not through force and violence.
That's my view.
Yeah.
And so how much opportunity is there for that?
Well, the Hong Kong people are very outspoken.
They have a vibrant press, some would say too vibrant, too subject to distortion.
You can march peacefully without being shot by the police or even attacked.
I think the Hong Kong police face a problem, which is there are some folks who are quite violent.
I should note also that over the weekend, there were these nativist demonstrations against mainland Hong Kong, sorry, mainland people living in Hong Kong, who come there as traders.
They buy in Hong Kong and resell in China.
And there was really right wing racist attacks on them as part of this movement.
So the idea that this is strictly a pro-democracy movement upholding the rights of people of Hong Kong, etc., is not quite right.
It's a very mixed movement and some folks are advocating independence, which is something that neither the Chinese government nor people in China will stand for.
Well, yeah, boy, it sure sounds like a lot of trouble.
But now, so what about negotiation between the two sides?
What are the opportunities for compromise here or for one side to give it up or what?
Yeah, I think ultimately the Hong Kong legislature is going to have to take this up seriously.
There are negotiations going on.
China is not going to leave Hong Kong.
And I think people realize that.
So the idea, in my view, would be to lessen the tension, to lessen the violence by both sides.
And the Hong Kong government has already agreed not to take up the extradition law, even though, as I pointed out earlier, it's not all that outrageous.
And hopefully that and possibly some other changes will calm the situation down and reduce the violence.
Yeah, I agree.
All right.
Well, listen, I really appreciate you making a little time for us on the show today, Rhys.
My pleasure.
Always glad to talk to you.
All right.
Everybody, that's the great Rhys Ehrlich, foreign correspondent.
And you can find him here at antiwar.com with this piece, What's Really Going On in Hong Kong?
All right, y'all.
Thanks.
Find me at libertarianinstitute.org, at scotthorton.org, antiwar.com, and reddit.com slash scotthortonshow.
Oh, yeah.
And read my book, Fool's Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan at foolserrand.us.
