PRESS RELEASE
Hongkong Upheaval Is Classic Neocon Regime Change `Color Revolution'
Sept. 30, 2014 (EIRNS)—Although there are multiple foreign "Project Democracy" operations involved in the current mass upheaval in Hongkong (such as substantial annual funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, and open support from Chris Patten, the last British colonial Lord of Hongkong), the most instructive input comes directly from the right-wing "neocon" movement in the US, through Hongkong’s one and only "pro-democracy" newspaper, the Apple Daily.
Apple Daily was founded and run by Next Media chief Jimmy Lai (Lai Chee-Ying), who launched the media chain after the 1989 Tiananmen mass demonstrations in Beijing. He has funded the "democracy movement" groups in Hongkong for years, a fact that was revealed this past spring when his emails were leaked to the press. Jimmy Lai is now holding interviews from the streets of Hongkong, where tens of thousands of students have shut down major sections of the city since the weekend. Since riot police used pepper spray to clear out the rioters who had occupied a govenment building over the weekend, the riot police have pulled back and the demonstrators have taken over three main squares, sleeping out and refusing to leave.
The key role is that of Lai’s bag-man and top assistant, Mark Simon, an American from Falls Church, Virginia, who previously worked for the Pentagon, did an internship with the CIA (where his father worked), and is a sworn defender and collaborator of the neo-con crowd which ran the Bush Administrations. The South China Morning Post revealed on August 11 that Simon, Lai, and Paul Wolfowitz spent five hours on a yacht in Hongkong (on an unspecified date), and Simon brags in interviews that he is a dedicated neocon. He was introduced to Lai by Bill McGurn, a leading neocon and G.W. Bush’s chief speech writer. Lai, himself, reports Simon, "was truly friends with Milton Friedman and Gary Becker."
Tomorrow, Oct. 1, is National Day in China, commemorating the founding of the PRC in 1949, but most celebrations have been cancelled. The demonstrations in Hongkong are being covered in the mainland press, although in a low key manner, calling on the protesters to go home, and the local government not to give in. The International press is all rah-rah, warning of another Tiananmen "massacre."
