While Hong Kong’s student radicals are taking a break before moving on to the next scurrilous Outrage-the-Communists gimmick, the ponderous, officially contrived Great Campus Independence-Poster Mouth-Froth enters its next stage. Behold the Wow-So-Nuanced-‘Discussion-Not-Propaganda’-Angle. According to this finely crafted logic-mangling, you can debate independence, but not advocate it – because that ‘goes against’ the Basic Law, blah, blah.
Beijing’s shoe-shiners and puppets feel they are getting closer to the real issue by becoming obsessed with ‘independence’ as a concept and subject rather than as an alarming slogan on banners. Government officials, meanwhile, imagine they are being bold pondering the opening-up of Civic Square, a small specific concrete area where protests have occurred and could occur again if the fences are removed. In both cases, pro-Beijing forces think that the more strenuously they fixate on minor, irrelevant symbols, they less they need to worry about big bad reality. Focus on the symptoms, and the causes will go away.
Let’s seek truth from facts: Hong Kong people are unhappy because of bad governance (favoritism, cronyism, misallocation of resources, a semi-feudal domestic economy, arrogant mediocrities masquerading as leaders, etc). They want better, accountable government. The Chinese one-party regime expressly forbids them from having it. Hong Kong reacts through protests, which result in a heightened Communist Party clampdown in the city, bringing us to this current cycle of tit-for-tat action and retaliation.
Beijing’s supporters can’t or won’t go there. So let’s refocus our efforts on ‘discussing without promoting’ independence, and all will be fine.
I declare the weekend open with one of SCMP cartoonist Harry’s outstanding (presumably insufficiently politically correct) recent rejects…
Why doesn’t 777 dismantle that wall/ fence thing around Legco ? That would really set her apart from 689.
An excellent cartoon. No wonder it was spiked.
I quite liked this politically approved one today:
https://www.scmp.com/photos/harrys-view#&gid=1&pid=1
For the weekend.
Ronny Tong : barrister, politician, Executive Council member
Ronnie Yip (Veronica) : actress, prominent in Category III films in the early 1990s
The Two Ronnies
Let me introduce: Ronny Tong
And Ronnie Yip.
He will balance right and wrong,
She will strip.
He’s a model of finesse
In politics;
She’s a model of excess
In the flicks.
He is slow and queasy:
“Don’t go too far!”
She is free and easy,
Takes off her bra.
He’s a paragon of courtesy;
She is rude.
One of them, I’d like to see
In the nude.
He can rightly boast
Of bouffant hair;
She is gorgeous, almost
Everywhere.
For consensus, he will take
Northern direction;
For pleasure, she will break
Most convention.
He knows who to drop or lose
And who to keep with;
Subtle too, she can choose
Who to sleep with.
He says, “Well, they might be, though
They might not.”
She says, laughing, “Blow
The bloody lot!”
Now this group, now that, he will reprove,
Rebuke, dismiss.
She says, “Would you like me to remove
This, and this?”
A lawyer, he will deprecate
What someone said.
She says, “Do I have to wait
So long in bed?”
And so, how lucky, I declare
We really are,
Having such a brilliant pair
In the SAR.
In the past, a sex-bomb. Today
We have a sage.
Surely we are on our way
To a golden age.
I have met Ronny Tong. If he was ever on, sadly he has gone off.
Sadly, I never met Veronica Yip, on or off.
Another little something to raise ones spirits over the weekend: Dubious Ho has managed to look even more dubious than standing next to triads shouting “kill the independence activists”.
Following up on the Junius Ho saga, it has been revealed that he is not in fact registered as a solicitor in Britain. Interesting.
Thanks Hermes and LRE. Let’s see if the SCMP puts this on the front page. Or any page.