The refugees who sheltered Edward Snowden in 2013 in Hong Kong
global.handelsblatt.com
global.handelsblatt.com
And I hope this finally lays to rest all those BS accusations that Snowden's a 'russian spy' and how he 'partied at the Russian consulate in HK'... like Washington Post disinfo kept on repeating for years. [1] There are people still on Twitter who are smearing Snowden and they claim he's a spy and everything he did was to somehow 'help Putin' and they bring up this nonsense.
[0] http://news.nationalpost.com/features/how-edward-snowden-esc...
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/report-snowden-stayed-a...
If simply presenting the truth stopped the spread of rumours, lies and conspiracy theories, there would be no rumours, lies and conspiracy theories spreading.
The last thing, about the Oliver Stone movie, what a shame.
They have a donation page under "Take Action".
-- Edward Snowden
Truly worth the read. I encourage everyone to do so.
'The refugees who harbored him three years ago still live in miserable conditions in a wealthy city that doesn’t want them'
I believe there may even be some economic, sociological, psychological, anthropological studies to this effect.
As I recall, one argument is that a lack of resources requires greater cooperation.
Or, people without portable, fungible wealth, are required to trade and cooperate with those in their immediate vicinity.
However, I feel all this misses the heart of the matter: Human connection.
One way in which the "modern" world often feels increasingly sterile.
Though that human connection works both ways: Great kindness, and great exploitation. Though the latter may be limited both by geographic reach and the ability of local society to simply "cut you out" should your transgressions exceed the pain of doing so.
Personally, in the "middle class" here in the U.S., I have struggled for that connection. I've found it with select friends I've made over the years, but not with neighbors. A few neighbors respond kindly, but many are indifferent and a few outright hostile.
Contrast the 33% tax bracket in America @ $190k (then you add on medicare taxes and social security and state taxes which would be about 10% in California) with Hong Kong's maximum of 15%. I don't know what it's like in the country in Asia you come from.
Many of them were sufficiently smart to do well in school but the curriculum was only designed for people who are fluent in Chinese. For example, the Math homework was all in Chinese but many of the kids could barely spoke Chinese, let alone read (they spoke English reasonably well though). It's no wonder that many of them didn't want to do homework and (presumably) not doing well in school, even if you don't consider the situations at home.
Hong Kong has good public education but the local schools are all designed for the local population. The expats (and well off families) send their kids to international schools which are expensive. I am really not sure what's the best way to help those kids.
Even if those special classes existed, you have to realize how much of a daily discouragement it is to be asked to do homework everyday in a language you don't understand. I ended up translating the Math problems into English for one kid and she had no problem doing them afterwards. (Another kid though couldn't do basic additions even though he was already at 2nd grade. Not trying to say that language is the only problem they have)
Apart from that there are free Chinese classes at some churches, that's about it.
Outside classes are simply not enough though, there's no way a foreign child could catch up to local children who've been immersed in Chinese since birth. And the public Chinese curriculum is a challenge even for locals.
Lastly, Hong Kong people speak Cantonese which is considerably more difficult that Putonghua which most of China speaks. (More complex characters, more than double the tones)
Sometimes I wonder if Gibson himself is surprised at the similarities between his 1980's fantasy world and our current reality. The world is a strange place...
I've seen a quote attributed to him along the lines of "Cyberpunk as a genre died out because if became real life", but I have not been able to track down any source or proof of that attribution.