An anonymous and enigmatic full-page ad in the South China Morning Post suggests that exercising your rights can have negative consequences for others. It is an obvious statement that could apply to open-carry inadequates or old women dancing noisily in parks. But, although there is no clue as to who bought the space, we can guess it is part of the erratic and even bizarre not-wholly-United Front campaign against Hong Kong’s pro-democracy Occupy Central. It mentions ‘civil 
society’, an all-round term favoured especially in pan-dem and progressive circles, and seems to contrast it with ‘civic society’, which is actually the same thing but seems here to imply something respectful of others. (The copywriters perhaps tripped up over the fact that the word ‘civil’ can mean ‘respectful’ as well as simply ‘public’.)
Of course, the ad could be aimed at the activists planning to demonstrate outside the Legislative Council later today against the government’s plans for new towns in the Northeast New Territories. The Tamar area has been turned into a ‘fortress’ following last Friday’s mayhem.
Pro-government and pro-Beijing forces have eagerly portrayed the NT protest as an off-shoot of Occupy Central, specifically tasked to experiment with various methods of confronting the police, damaging property and creating turmoil. While there may be some overlap of participants, the NT mob is an unwelcome diversion for Occupy Central. Its youthful hotheads are – you could argue – putting the interests of a small number of squatters on government land ahead of the interests of far larger numbers of people who need affordable homes. They are certainly talking crap by claiming a link between the development plans and the city’s food supplies. And they are giving the police a perfect opportunity to adopt and justify a tougher and more intimidating stance on public order ahead of whatever Occupy Central might do later. Kids today…
For true desperation in the service of the patriotic cause, a medal should go to the pro-Beijing shoe-shining media outlets reporting pro-dem media boss Jimmy Lai’s meeting with former US deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz as ‘not [we mean definitely] sinister’ and ‘nothing [we mean everything] to do with foreign funding of local subversives’. I declare the weekend open with some free advice to these amateurs: to do a real smear, you would say ‘Jimmy Lai hangs out with this creepy-looking licker of combs’…