An American Father and Son Exporting Tear Gas to Hong Kong | Hacker News Reader

An American Father and Son Exporting Tear Gas to Hong Kong

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180 pointsjohnny31376 comments

Hmm Lockheed Martin, Raytheon etc. have being exporting weapons system to brutal dictatorships for decades

I remember a cartoon from 45 years ago Nixon and Brezhnev are sitting at lemonade stands, but selling bombs. With lines of petty dictators, strongmen and despots waiting to buy.

Why would strongmen need bombs?

Smaller ethnic groups, stronghold cities of political enemies...

They need weapons to oppress their own people. Which is why foreign arms sales are problematic.

Tu quoque...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

Your point doesn’t change the validity of the article, the poor working conditions for the employees, or the fact that perhaps such exports need to stop.

Edit: What’s with the downvotes? So now HN is yet another forum where Whataboutism reigns? Shouldn’t we point out logical fallacies in arguments when we see them, or at least offer something constructive to the conversation? And, yes, this reply is constructive, since it points out that the parent reply is illogical and should be discounted.

The OP wasn't whatabouting, just pointing out that it's business as usual.

Whataboutism as an accusation only take makes sense when it's whatabouting something from the accuser's camp, which doesn't seem to apply here.

The OP was clearly trying to throw shade at the article. The argument of the article is that they shouldn’t be exporting this gas. The comment was saying “well these other guys do worse.” That’s the exact definition of Whataboutism, and I urge you to read the Wikipedia articles to understand why that type of moral relativism is a logical fallacy.

Otherwise why point out it’s “business as usual”. It’s not like the comment was adding information anyone didn’t already know. Trying to paint the comment as something else is just being purposefully obtuse.

Note that when exporting weapon systems they need approval from DoD and other federal agencies. But tear gas is not covered by those export laws. Just DoC which isn't a big deal.

People always bring the DoD thing up as if it's a valid excuse, or that it somehow transfers moral responsibility to the DoD. Like there being legal loopholes to get what they want makes it OK to flaunt their psychopathy.

> Like there being legal loopholes

It’s not a loophole. It’s the point of the law. We export weapons under the guidance of our government. There is a political check on munitions. Not everyone likes the defense industry, but banning weapons exports polls terribly.

In this case, that democratic check is released. That makes it different from traditional weapons exports.

*moral/ethical loophole.

If a large public corporation does it, it's a statistic, if it's a small business, it's a tragedy.

You're just using those deeds you also don't fight against to shrug this off, as well.

I wish the article would shed some light on why the police doesn't use domestically produced tear gas. I don't understand how it can be feasible for them to import tear gas to Hong Kong from the US.

Previously working for a company that did create some less than lethal equipment, I can say few main reasons. One being proprietary knowledge into the devices as well as capabilities to get specific chemicals required to manufacture some of which are highly regulated. The other and probably the largest reason is the margins (profits) and quantities produced are not that large. This is normally why you see defense contractors who have other means of profits do this since its something they can bundle into a sale for law enforcement. That would be my main guess for import low need and cheaper to just import stock vs setting up an entire factory not to mention the requirements necessary to store the chemicals safely. The image in the article does do a good job of showing how they have physically separated the buildings on the property.

It doesn't matter if the USA blocks exports of tear gas to HK. They will just buy from other countries. If you really want to stop what is going on in HK then stop buying Chinese made goods.

I fail to see how if we stopped buying Chinese made goods it would lessen either China's interest in or power over what happens in Hong Kong.

The Chinese would rather be poor than lose Hong Kong. Better way would be to encourage civil societies/ democratic reform in China

It's about more than just HK. It is about the Uighurs being put in concentration camps. It is about the harvesting of organs from political prisoners. It is about illegally occupying Tibet. It is about illegally occupying the South China Sea. It is about many things.

https://chinatribunal.com/final-judgement-report/

Nobody on Hacker News will do that! They love their iPhones and MacBooks too much.

Who sells tear gas to US police departments? Who sold the bullets that shot the kids at Kent State? How about we hold the actual people giving the orders to fire the tear gas accountable instead of random vendors?

That's exactly the difference between your examples and this: your examples are easily within reach of US accountability, foreign governments not really, so their suppliers are the closest target.

Anyone remembers when Bayer stopped selling the chemicals to kill prisoners to the US?

I liked that pretty much.

yeah this is all about hate and power. companies make a business by tearing down others and spewing hate to build platforms of clicks and advertisements.

Why outdated one which might release cynaide etc are used if it is so easy to be obtained and so cheap? Our tube and Neigbourhood are affected by these indiscriminate use of TG.

Do these not fall under arms dealing laws?

That's a big fat maybe, but AFAIK if they got permission it's probably fine?

The Department of Commerce regularly approves exports of tear gas products and formulations considered "dual-use" (military or police), and the State Department handles other forms. The government of Egypt was able to purchase American tear gas in the late 00s and early 10s.

According to a number of other sources tear gas for Hong Kong is produced by Chemring Group, UK?

https://graphcommons.com/graphs/f042fe57-cf19-458b-b390-8cf6...

https://twitter.com/Omega_RF/status/1138752537878781952

https://theferret.scot/chemring-hong-kong-tear-gas/

Is there a list of companies who make money on violence? I'd like to ban them on using my products. I could find only this https://wikileaks.org/hackingteam/emails/emailid/31778

Why is this comment downvoted?

They are only investigating this company because they don't like the government cracking down on protestors in HK.

Tear gas is better than bullets.

No tear gas is best.

The best is not to use and provoke violence at all.

What should people do if they form a consensus that they are being oppressed and asking politely fails to yield the desired result?

They should grow first as much as possible before considering to fight with much bigger enemy so that the winner would be unknown. To do so they should define a problem as time-space independent one. It is global problem here that we still haven’t developed tools to force countries to comply with their own laws to stop violence. We need worldwide consensus here what everyone should do in this case before he hits the same problem.

Is your argument that the solution to violence is no violence? I believe that assertion is self evidently useless and harmful to the discussion. We would do a lot better to try and raise the tenor of the conversation by discussing interesting viewpoints, not asserting that the solution to something is to simply stop doing it

My answer to violence is to be smarter. It is global problem here that we still haven’t developed tools to force countries to comply with their own laws to stop violence. We need worldwide consensus here what everyone should do in this case before he hits the same problem.

These blanket statements about “violence” are mostly devoid of meaning. What are we defining as violence in this context such that someone could be “smarter” to avoid it? Is the suggestion that someone getting assaulted should be “smarter” to solve their problem? What about protesters that are being attacked by the police? What about a country that is being invaded? I don’t understand how intelligence can fix “violence” or what “violence” even is in this context.

Moreover, asserting that we need “world wide consensus” strikes me as an incredibly naïve point. Is there anything that everyone agrees on? Are we stuck with violence until everyone agrees? Grand statements about getting along don’t seem to chip away at the problem at all. In fact, I would assert that they are fiercely counterproductive; one can say we all need to get along and until then we have no culpability.

What I mean is to fight back with your brain but not with your body. Someone getting assaulted should be “smarter” to not fight back physically with much bigger opponent. You should look how Edward Snowden or Julian Assange fight back.

“world wide consensus” means to create big enough entity who is ready to act when law is violated anywhere in the world so that its actions can hurt violator. Imagine the world where open-source is replaced by such entity.

How does one get from these

https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/d10k4e/dont_let_t...

https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/cv9y4c/protesters...

https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/d0iqpy/2000_medic...

to these

https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/cutlyk/who_is_mor...

https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/d0re3y/police_doi...

https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/cxz64b/300_uncut_...

https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/d0yl4g/police_dep...

https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/d10ewo/8_seconds_...

https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/cp0gb2/hk_police_...

https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/c04o32/french_journa...

? Now consider that's just the tip of the iceberg, the result of a few minutes of searching and scrolling. I know there's instances of protesters being violent, but it's

a.) not possible for 30% of a city to be on the streets at the same time, without even more supporting them, and it's not possible for all these brave, peaceful, beautiful people to be singing songs like they do, for a protest that's just instigated by a bunch of hooligans or Western intelligence agencies, or however the attempts to smear them go.

b.) not possible to explain most of the police brutality by any action on behalf of the protesters. Which some police apparently call "cockroaches", instances of that being caught on video, too.

Violence is justified when you are under an oppressive government. See american revolution and similar violent uprisings. That's the reality. The whole non-violent activism only works when your government isn't oppressive and can actually be reformed through non-violent movements.

I agree violence is justified when someone violates rules. China did violate ‘Article 5 of the Basic Law’ before 2047. So it is global problem that we still haven’t developed tools to force countries to comply with their own laws to stop violence. Or is USA trade war kind of punishment for China?

HKPF throwing tear gas at journalists with no protesters even around:

https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/d1b4kg/hong_kong_...

Yeah, leave the labour extorting weapons manufacturer alone, guys!

The workers are paid over minimum wage.

Working conditions might suck, but why is this any different than any small company with poor working conditions?

Workers of the world unite!

Seize the means of production!

The only thing the working classes have to lose are their shackles.

You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you.

> why is this any different than any small company with poor working conditions?

Because what they manufacture is a weapon that's being exported and used against civilian protesters?

Couldn’t the HK police buy it from somewhere else? Or domestically produce?

If so, that doesn't excuse American citizens profiting off the suppression of civilians in other countries.

> If so, that doesn't excuse American citizens profiting off the suppression of civilians in other countries.

If the product can be trivially sourced elsewhere, what's the point? Do you believe it might hurt their image and sales elsewhere? Or is this just a moral line you hold dear?

What does this change? "Someone else would do it anyway" has never been a valid excuse for doing shitty things.

Yes, but every little thing that increases their costs in time or money slightly reduces their symmetrical advantage.

Journalists investigating current events? Huh.

Next you’ll be telling me scientists only investigate results of experiments!

Police only investigate results of crimes!

What’s next? Washing laundry after it’s dirty?

Where will it end!!

Yes? That's how news works, finding a local angle on a foreign story?

Bullets are better than hauling everyone off to secret prisons where they are tortured to death over months. So I guess bullets are cool!

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