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Comment by mothballed | Hacker News Reader

Mr. Lai is the real deal. He started out as a child laborer and worked his way up from nothing to owning a clothing brand and then Apple Daily pro-democracy publisher. He had the option to leave Hong Kong, but stayed and kept up the fight.

He's facing life in prison right now, so this conviction puts everything on the line.

Glad to see this hitting the front page. I posted an article earlier with not much movement which was really worrying for the HK free thought movement; happy that this turned out to not be the case.

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I did some consulting for Jimmy at Apple Daily, and he took me out to the best street-food lunches I ever had. His car took us to a busy street corner, where four of us had a huge lunch for two hours while the car disappeared. When the car magically showed up at the end, Jimmy told me that he paid ~$20 for that amazing food for all of us. No pretense. A lovely man. Very sad.

Alexei Navalny’s death, leaving behind his wife and two children, showed the harsh reality that martyrdom isn't always worth it. Sacrifice is not always rewarded. Sometimes the tyrants win. Unless you believe in karma or divine retribution.

Well it’s not martyrdom if you aren’t sacrificing and we don’t know the true outcome of Russia soon after his death.

Do you think, were you to talk to Alexei now, you could convince him that his life fighting dictatorship wasn’t worth it?

I think Navalny was counting on the Russian people to respond strongly. Unfortunately after his death, everything carried on as normal. Western governments continue to be a soft touch and buy oil from Russia. I'm not sure he would still give his life after seeing how the world failed him.

Depends on what price you have to pay in order to avoid martyrdom. Who are you willing to become in order to live?

The US is currently expelling students, firing professors and college presidents and so on, not because they aren't US aligned, but because they allow people on campus to criticize Israel.

CBS just got taken over by the same cabal.

Amidst ICE grabbing people out of Home Depot parking lots in the US, China is just doing the same thing over there.

One can care about both

ICE doesn't grab citizens out of Home Depot parking lots.

It looks like they may be doing so.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-08-15/home-dep...

No one in that article was a US citizen.

The emphasis on "citizen" was not clear in my original comment. The OP I was replying to did not make this distinction clear with "expelling students".

teacher from daycare so far was pretty much the "best"

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