One lesson from June 2019: every time you think ‘after the events of the last few weeks, probably not much will happen today’, humungous mayhem is about to break out. Hong Kong’s Great Extradition Uprising of 2019 shifted from 5th to 9th gear last night with protestors’ most stunningly audacious move yet – the Conquest of Fortress Legco.
Mature, calm, sensible, wise voices of reason react in horror. This doesn’t look good. This is playing into the government’s hands. This is what the CCP wants. This won’t end well. It’s a trap. Getting bad vibes…
The more flamboyant, reckless, ‘woke’ or just plain pissed off watched in wonder. In my case, it was on a split screen carrying nine feeds, including simultaneous views from both sides of the metal barrier as it was bashed in. They’re not seriously going to do this. Oh wow – they are! They’re flooding in. Oh no, please don’t spray graffiti. Oh that’s Rita Fan’s portrait? OK, carry on. You absolute geniuses.
At around 10.30 pm, we were on the edge of our seats begging them to get out before the cops (who to their credit had the sense to vanish earlier) came back.
The government’s initial instinct is to do its big Shocked Shocked Horrified at Unruly Violence Bad Youths Destroying Rule of Law act. But they wrung it dry after Occupy. Anyone receptive to such contrived righteous indignation has already bought into it. I don’t have an opinion poll to hand, but I would guess quite a lot of Hongkongers today are saying ‘well I don’t approve of vandalism, but…’ Graffiti is tacky and childish – but these were messages inscribed on an appropriate medium.
Even the most obtuse of our officials must be dimly aware that they got a well-deserved, long-overdue public stomping. The word is Carrie will fast-track a multi-pronged cross-departmental committee to identify possible ways forward in comprehending what people on Planet Earth are thinking.
Although opinions vary on last night, everyone agrees we are in (as the newspapers put it) uncharted territory. What will Beijing do now? Good question. Beijing has never been told to get screwed like this before. No-one knows.
I’m guessing McLane used “wonton” purposely as a play but the know-it-all anti that responded was too thick to catch it? Or am I reading too deep into this?
Wow, if I may be allowed to lapse into “steve-ish” (TBL 28 June), this is definitely weoponising the rhetoric of Hong Kongers’ articulations of their identities.
Carrie and CY trashed LegCo far more thoroughly with oath and electoral disqualifications.
The police are obviously thoroughly pissed off with the government as well (I don’t buy the monolithic organisation plotting a trap: we’re talking about the people who had 20 years to plan the Wanchai bypass and forgot to do the signage). Rather than beating the crap out of the bespectacled youth to protect the government, and then get thrown under the bus by their administrative overlords like last time, they decided to piss off early and show the government what happens if they go softly softly on the stick. The outraged sensible people and moderates is a bonus they hadn’t thought of.
As to the protesters losing the moderates support — the moderates had 22 years to do it their way and very little to show for it, so I wonder: how much use was it really anyway?
The revolution is being televised…and tweeted…and blogged…
The HK youth are so smart and sharp they are running rings around the Beijing PR quagmire. It’s authentic and mesmerising.
How great must it have been to deface Rita Fan’s face. Sweet.
@ Netizen You’re just a wanton troublemaker, you are.
@Chinese Netizen, I think you probably don’t understand how Twitter threads work.
As always, the simplest explanation suffices.
CCP and Hong Kong Swamp Bureaucrats do not govern for the people. They “manage” a bureaucracy of officialdom and declarations and reactionary-isms. We cannot expect anyone in the government on either side to have a keen wit, or a keen sense of how to lead people, because that would be too much of a threat to its dull ache of order. Hong Kong so much reminds me of really boring companies, run by very very boring middle managers, who have no idea how the product works, who buys it, or how much it costs, but who can tell you hours of data about widgets that only they control.
The Senior Plod, or Plods, who owned the Sunday crowd-control will be resigned shortly (or reassigned to training division).
July 1 was a total Force stuff up which they could have avoided with gas & grab of the window smashers immediately they started damaging property. Plus, followed through by parking them in front of the magistrate first thing on Monday.
It’s impossible that in the Critical Incident Contingency Plan (they still do run such things, hard to fathom) anybody wrote or approved the following plan, which is what actually unfolded:
a) keep the big boys INSIDE the LegCo building the whole day (some genius thought this was a win/win – cops are air-conned and no chance for thuggery v protestors, like Carrie wants)
b) there’s no way protestors can smash those fancy windows/fascia to gain entry. Just NO WAY.
c) but don’t worry, if on the outside chance protestors DO gain entry to LegCo, then the plan is watch them smash government property for most of the day, then at the last moment withdraw to the car park, surrender the whole freaking LegCo building for further destruction of government property, and call the cleaners for a Monday clean up.
” … Oh that’s Rita Fan’s portrait? OK, carry on. You absolute geniuses … ”
Brilliant.
Ever heard of agents provocateurs?
At the window-smashing stage, I thought the protesters had gone too far.
I was wrong.
So proud of our young freedom fighters. Cracking that metal barrier inside Legco was pure genius. Seeing the PTU inside retreating was pure Laurel & Hardy.
@Plod Wonton
It would appear to have been planned in advance: Eagle-eyed netizens noticed that the plod media spokesman who did the 10:30pm “protesters have taken over LegCo illegally: please vacate the area we are coming to take it back” broadcast was wearing a watch that said “6:05”. I reckon it’s “5:05”, but either way, that’s long before the protesters broke in. “Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to save on overtime.”
That crazy thing is that not only did the cops open the door to the smash-up, when they should have been stopping it, but poor old Legco is not even responsible for the policy.
The ratty head girl is probably thinking she has a two-in-one, with the kids looking bad to her constituency (as she believes, a derivative of the Reichstag Fire theory of politics) and her rude, faithless LegCo-ites getting their playpen soiled by the doggies.
Problem is, no HKer will believe the police simply got tired, and didn’t intend the smash-up.
But if the executive/head girl actually willed the trashing of LegCo, we really are ‘in uncharted territory…
If nothing else, this incident (as the CCp called the Tiananmen Square massacre) will assure that Queen Carrie Of The Bog Roll is going to be a One Term Wonder, just like 689.
@W. Beaver: sadly, I actually don’t. Have resisted successfully so far in getting entwined in the whole Twatter, Instacrap and whatever else is available out there quagmire. I’m wontonly unhip, sadly…
Does the early shut down of Legco mean that civil servants will have to wait for what many consider to be a very generous payrise? A small consolation to those battling to thwart their fake consultations and take over of public recreation facilities and parks to sell off the land to developers.
While not at the level of the Rita portrait, this would raise public morale.
What I don’t understand “Big Lychee” is that you’re a heart on your sleeve homosexual embracing, avid democracy fan and all round SJW lefty…which means that America, Britain, Australia, Canada etc…the colonies in other words are what you’d like HK to be part of so to speak…but these same colonies bed down with criminal Israeli thugs who control the US, getting its muscle into the mid east, Golam Heights oil frac Inc. etc etc etc for the benefit of international gangsters.
You’re blog needs to reflect that all ‘sides’ are con jobs. And that the kiddies storming Legco don’t know shit from clay. Or…you can just keep up the pantomime social engineering rubbish you usually post where team Red fights team Blue and you trot out your usual collection of snarky asides directed at Mickey Mouse characters like Carrie Lam.
Bob – SJW lefty? Please enlighten the illiterate
@Bob
Isn’t your name actually George? You definitely sound like Mr Adams.
@Bob – inserting a hyphen between “homosexual” and “embracing” would make your post a little easier to read. Unless you’re making other insinuations…
As for Hemlock’s political inclinations, the not-much-missed Dr Adams used to post here practically every day accusing him of being a right-wing CIA stooge. Having it both ways?
@ Let them eat wonton
Thanks, had not seen that. What the net can reveal!
But that, for me, still aligns with the total muck theory. Even if by sunset the police had worked out, later that night, they would likely surrender LegCo to the Youff Brigade, that cannot have been in their incident plan.
Plod, sad to say, they just didnae have a thought through plan to stop vandalism of the building. And that oversight opened the floodgates…
Gollum Heights?
A Poor Man: “Bob – SJW lefty? Please enlighten the illiterate”
“SJW”[1] is an abbreviation that reactionaries use to let you know that they’re saying nothing of any value. It’s a modern variant of “Political Correctness Gone Mad!”, and is used much the same way.
[1] Social Justice Warrior.
So, odaowai, you don’t accept that there have been instances of “political correctness gone mad” ?
C.Law
Can you define what you mean by the phrase?
The way I’ve heard it used is normally just shorthand for: “What do you mean I have to treat $GROUP with respect and tolerance? I never had to do that before! Madness!”, where $GROUP is any body of people who may be different from the speaker, whether by ethnicity, religion, culture, politics, gender, sexuality, etc.
odaiwai
The unreasonable restriction on free speech due to the fact that someone is, or maybe, offended by what is said.
For example: person (or group) A has the right to a particular religious belief and to preach that belief to others. Person (or group) B says, as it is his right to do, that A’s religious beliefs are silly in the extreme. Person A then complains about person B’s comments on the grounds that he is offended by them. Person A’s complaints are backed up by the media and person B is censured.
We have no right to not be offended.
We do need to respect a person’s rights to hold silly views but there is no requirement for us to respect those views. We have the right to express our opposition to such views and must not be prevented from doing so on the grounds that the person(s) holding them are offended by our opposition.