To me the Danish story was less a story about Chinese influence and more about our democracy's separation of powers or lack thereof. How our most powerful politicians and their minions basically can have our police do anything even if it is obviously wrong.

Best New Yorker cartoon ever.

The police exist to protect the property and station of those in power. It's why New York City was able to function without a police department until the 1840s while the New York Fire Department can trace its history back to the 1640s.

Pretty suggestive that in this case, the police were able to demonstrate a binding order from someone who was not an 'officer'.

I'd say no countries dare to not please China. Blatantly attacks the people who risk their lives to say.

I don't think he's been executed yet?

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/05/08/asia-pacific/ca...

1) I'm ASTOUNDED that "insulting" was in there from 1986-2014. 2) This is extremely vague and seems like it could be used to arrest any protestor.

> (b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening [or abusive],

> within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress thereby.

Seriously? Causing people distress is a crime? Distress with words? We're not allowed to make direct threats of violence either, but this seems like a substantially lower bar.

So from [1] the lawyer has to argue that the conduct was reasonable? This is extremely subjective too.

This just seems weird to me, coming from a country where freedom of speech is so highly regarded (and here it has been a little controversial lately). It just feels undemocratic to me.

I understand my neighbors across the pond may not feel that way and I'd be curious about their thoughts. Is this just an abuse of that law? Does that law also feel undemocratic? Other more nuanced position?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_5_Public_Order_Act_198...

[1] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64/section/5

I'm from Europe, though not from the UK. That law feels abhorrent.

You'll often hear the claim that "other countries have a more nuanced view of free speech". It's certainly true free speech protections are weaker elsewhere, but using that to imply all the citizens agree with that is extremely misleading. Plenty of us subscribe to a more 1st Amendment style view on free speech.

>Article 19.

>Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

The British public (and especially press) is quite conservative, and prefer the maintenance of "order" to the extent of cheering on violence against demonstrators.

The practical use of S5POA is not for criminalising random swearing, but specifically to give police a pretext for arresting people who haven't committed a crime but are otherwise upset at being stopped by the police.

Peak silliness may have been the 1994 attempt to ban raves, characterised by "repetitive beats": http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1994/33/part/V/enacted (s63). Peak violence may have been the "kettling" of thousands of demonstrators in Oxford circus for hours in the early 2000s.

Judges will say if you're in the job as a police officer that you need to be a bit robust about the language you hear.

They also say that we're not a nation of nuns and schoolgirls and so the everyday "man in the street" won't be aghast at the occasional swear word.

The public order act is problematic, and it does need to be reformed, but it's not as catastrophic as it appears.

We've just had a popular musician leading a chant of "Fuck off Boris" [Johnson], and that was broadcast on BBC tv. There are no arrests.

The other thing that causes real confusion on HN is that police and crown prosecution service have discretion about when to arrest and when to prosecute and they're too busy dealing with criminals to go around arresting people who've only sworn.

The more the West is condemning China without any results, the more we normalise this kind of behaviour, which in turn makes Westerners tolerate unfreedom.

That sounds like a different spin on the exact same narrative to me. Which would appear to contradict your claim about this being a false narrative.

This is why projects like the EU, NATO, & NAFTA that require compromise for the sake of mutually beneficial cooperation should be supported. This is why continuing any policy of exploitation in the developing world is unacceptable. This is why countries must be actively engaged in the rest of the world, instead of selfishly retreating inwards. This is why making sacrifices in good faith, with no expectation that rivals will reciprocate, is necessary.

Otherwise, these previously powerful countries will quickly discover that when the shoe is on the other foot, there's no reason to believe that China, Russia, or even India will treat them any better than Westerners treated those at their mercy during their own centuries of supremacy.

Also, these trade agreements tend to come with 'intellectual property' agreements which is the government handing out monopolies to the large companies. Also, when trade is governed by treaties of 10000 pages length this is quite the opposite of free trade.

Can you more concisely (or just differently) elaborate on why you think this is the case? I'm not sure I got it from what you said.

The EU is both undermining the separation of powers in its member states and also is in itself weak as a democracy. The council of ministers is the executive branch in the member countries but in Europe they write law. As such this would not be that bad if the parliament could change this law. It looks like they can but after parliament is done the law goes back to the council of ministers that has the option to undo what parliament has done. After that it returns to parliament again but now parliament has to reach a 2/3 majority to do something about it. 2/3 is quite hard to get so this procedure severely limits the power of the parliament.

If it doesn't yield a better life for it's citizens, what is the merit of the system you are espousing?

However, in both cases there are worrisome trends. It is as if they got it organized reasonably well and then stopped improving and started backsliding. There are many things that the western democracies could do better.

To name one, the huge and ever-expanding regulatory state is severely harming democracy in both Europe and the US. This tends to be seen as a talking-point of what is called the 'right' (but, indeed, mostly a talking-point, as opposed to an action point) and as such does not need more elaboration but it could be a talking-point (but often is not) for what is called the 'left' as well by noticing that much lobbying is involved in creating regulation and that the outcome is therefore not going to be in the citizens interest. Regulation is where the executive branch is sitting in the chair of the legislative branch and because of this the citizens have little influence.

To name another point, western countries have been far too friendly with countries that have a very bad human rights situation. I think that taxes on import should be proportional to the amount of human rights violations and other failures in democracy that a country has. That way every improvement that a country makes regarding to human rights immediately leads to a financial gain. The US being so very friendly to Saudi Arabia is just terrible. I think this is a thing that if you keep it up for a few decades it would enormously improve the lives of people all over the world. Note that this is also something that takes away discretionary and rather arbitrary power from the executive branch by basing the policy in a very simple and objective law instead. I think one could gain votes by campaigning for this. And this is what law should be. Simple rules that feel like they are discovered rather than invented as opposed to rules so convoluted that only the executive branch has the means to write them.

You talk about the difference between the US and other western countries. Many things could be said about this but one thing that seems to be on most peoples mind in regard to this is that the US has less social security and some European countries have quite a bit more. Well, I think that is mostly an orthogonal issue to the point of democracy. The respective peoples of respective countries can choose for themselves the amount of social security that they consider to be correct. Let me say that from a democratic point of view it is much more acceptable to 'bail out' citizens that get into trouble than to 'bail out' banks that get into trouble. The latter being a prime example of where lobbying has led to a situation that is in the interest of the sector being regulated and not at all in the interest of the citizens.

The first time you compromise your principles is hard. Extraordinary circumstances, a special request in a special relationship, etc. The second time is easier…

> The term is most often applied to the foreign policy of the British governments of Prime Ministers Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain towards Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy between 1935 and 1939.