Martial-Law Monday

Since Friday, when the big story was the death of student Alex Chow, we have had yet another weekend of impossible-to-keep-up-with mayhem.

An accusation that police gang-raped a teenager in a police station – her lawyers say they have DNA from aborted fetus. The police invasion of various shopping malls, including Festival Walk (hailed by media as the most ‘middle class’ retail complex to get the HKPF treatment so far). One of the ‘international experts’ brought in as advisers to burnish the toothless police watchdog goes rogue and denounces the body as incapable of doing its job.

Activists planned a ‘general strike’ for Monday and seem to have tried disrupting some transport connections. The police grasp the opportunity to maximize the potential chaos. They move in on several university campuses to fire tear gas and/or make arrests. And in Sai Wan Ho a cop shoots someone (apparently with a .38 revolver) in the abdomen and then fires a couple more times in a crowded street, hitting another person. Then pepper-spray everyone to be sure. More reports of similar things elsewhere. Also something nuts with a cop on a motorbike trying to ride into protesters. Oh, and groups of riot police are hanging around all over Central this morning, to add to the ambience.

More on the Martial-Law Monday Mess here and here.

This method of treating someone who’s just been shot in the abdomen seems an apt metaphor for the way Hong Kong is being run today.

I’m going back to bed. Will try again tomorrow.

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26 Responses to Martial-Law Monday

  1. firenuts says:

    It’s almost like, gosh, there really is no government if there is no real mandate and if none of the statutory bodies have any real power. British were smart to install a very strong judiciary. They saw the banana republic that was to come. I’m afraid Hong Kong is just going to get more sooty from today.

  2. charles says:

    When are these cops going to be charged with attempted murder? (Let’s hope it stays at “attempted” because the surgeons save his life)

  3. Henry says:

    @Charles….. haven’t you heard? The police only shoot people because their own lives are in danger. Official, within minutes of the incident, from some fuckwit who must have greased palms, shined shoes or licked arseholes to get somewhere near the top of “Asias Finest”

  4. PaperCuts says:

    Interesting treatment the shot guy got from the Stormtrooper. He must have a background in medicine or at the very least a Bachelors in humanitarianism or something. Watch yourself out there. These goons are right on the edge. Look sideways and you’ll be hogtied, shot, bashed, crushed or suffocated for challenging their supreme and glorious power.

  5. Reactor #4 says:

    I wonder what sort of nonsense the protester apologists will have for their charges dousing in fuel and then torching the green-shirted guy up at Ma On Shan earlier today?

    Presumably the arguments will be built around phrases extolling the ideals of free speech.

    Love it. Love it. Love it.

    They really have a winning case. Power to the people.

  6. HillnotPeak says:

    And where is Carrie (I am still in control) Lam? Buying toiletpaper at 7-11 I guess.

  7. dimuendo says:

    Setting a man on fire is completely indefensible.

  8. dimuendo says:

    For sake of clarity, am NOT suggesting burning was done by police.

  9. Delay no more says:

    The most pressing question now is when will the police abandon their monumentally stupid ego trip and admit that they everything they do is utterly useless and just makes the problem several magnitudes of order worse, and that basically by definition they cannot possibly ever win, because they are entirely the wrong tool for the job.

    Because that is the moment the smouldering remains of the city will get kicked back upstairs to the tone deaf retards that started the fire and can actually fix it, and every day they delay by hiding behind the police’s skirts, that solution gets further away and harder to achieve.

  10. Beentheredonethat says:

    Setting a man on fire is truly indefensible and the dictators in Beijing must be just loving it. Divide and conquer, eh? Some self-policing from the protestors over shit like this is needed. Conflict always brings out the bullies and the truly evil on both sides and the CCP will just adore them for creating exactly the psychological conditions that that they want.

    As for the police “tactics” these will have to change dramatically when the first high-powered rifle gets into the hands of radicals as the British military found out in Northern Ireland. No more looking tough like Robocop. The game will have changed. For everyone.

  11. dimuendo says:

    Reactor # 4

    Be careful of your choice of phraseology. You appear to be suggesting you”love it” that somebody is immolated.

  12. D3SH says:

    Each week the HKPF descends to new lows in its behaviour. The shooting of that kid today was bad enough, but of course, they had to compound it with their manhandling of his body, adding to the life-threatening nature of the kid’s situation. Truly reprehensible. Hopefully he pulls through without serious complications, but I’m not sure how likely that is.

    The man set on fire is also inexcusable. There are idiots on both sides. Hopefully protesters apologise for that like they have certain other mistakes.

    At least the cop who tried to run over protesters with his motorbike has already been suspended. I’ll wait to see what punishment he gets (probably a limp slap on the wrist) but at least *someone* is being pulled up for their idiotic and dangerous actions. Must mean he’s a local policeman rather than a PLA import.

  13. Mjrelje says:

    Can any one work out from the video what the man that was set on fire was saying? It seemed quite an unprovoked outpouring of lighter fuel. Luckily in the further video of the attack, the fuel flashed, but did not last. Once the t-shirt was off, he was pretty much unscathed. Inexcusable though, and he probably lost any hair he had.

  14. Guest says:

    @HillnotPeak: Lam is supposed to give a speech at 6 PM today.

    Maybe someone can ask her about the toilet paper.

    She once lamented about not being able to go to the beauty salon because of the protests.

    Boy, does she have problems.

  15. Reactor #4 says:

    @dimuendo: “Setting a man on fire is completely indefensible.”

    You just give it a couple of hours. You’ll be blown away by some of the worldviews your fellow species members hold.

  16. HillnotPeak says:

    What I do find strange is the fact that police in my area (the HillnotPeak area) mostly are middle aged mild mannered officers, combined with rather nerdy looking youngsters. So opposite the ones I see charging in the streets…

  17. Delay no more says:

    @ Mjrelje
    Only if by “unscathed” you mean 2nd degree burns over 28% of his body.

    @dimuendo
    Completely indefensible, but not to be dismissed either — the authorities should take it on board as the people reading the riot act to them: the people’s patience over the government pissing about and ignoring the 85% has now run out. It might start with petrol, acid and bleach, but they will get guns eventually, and the police haven’t got the numbers or the respect to handle that sort of gig.

    Only a political solution is going to work, and it had better be put in place soon. CLam’s presser filled with more of the same stale “stay the course” bullshit and “only once the violence stops” nonsense does not bode well. I swear they are actually thinking of holding out until police deaths hit double or triple figures. By that time it may well be lampposts all round for this administration.

  18. I haven’t seen the setting on fire incident yet, but agree with others that is going too far. Also indefensible is the person who threastened to do something nasty to the children of the cop who shot the kid. That’s a CCP tactic – the protesters need to be better than that, otherwise what are they fighting for?

    There are two things Carrie can do now to further inflame the situation: cancel the District Council elections and/or introduce Article 23 legislation. What’s the bettring she does both?

  19. Donny Almond says:

    Reactor #4 aka Mr Simon Hill from Sai Kung: why don’t you just fuck off. On behalf of everybody, thank you.

  20. PaperCuts says:

    It all comes back down to the complete and utter failure at Yuen Long MTR, when the Government demonstrated total loss of control .

    Thugs were permitted by law enforcement to beat and terrorize innocent civilians for up to an hour.

    What message does that send to even the most sane mind society, let alone impressionable adolescents and idealistic youth?

    The message is…there’s no law in this town…do what you want.

  21. steve says:

    Reactionary #4: Your attempt to implicate all protesters in the terrible actions of one person shows only your bad faith and complicity with the monsters in Beijing, the HK government, and the HK police. Good luck exercising the freedom of speech you enjoy here in the company of those people should you voice dissonant views (just as an experiment, of course).

    That is to say, you can place your vicious and hypocritical views where the sun does not shine.

  22. Twiglet says:

    Here are some differences, Reactor#4. 99.9% of protesters or people who support them would agree with the government that it was barbaric to set fire to someone, yet apparently this makes all protesters ‘the enemy’. But after five months of repeated police brutality, the government says what the police did today was ‘isolated incidents’. So all police are good! Now if you are too obtuse to notice the double standard there, or understand why this would make perfectly rational people want to despair about the leadership of HK, and worry that there is going to be no end to this, all I can hope is that you are just a retired nonentity.

  23. Mary Paterson says:

    So the poor little policeman today, carrying a gun and surrounded by his chums with their batons, guns, powers of arrest, ‘can’t put a foot wrong’ mandate, pepper spray, tear gas, and (one hopes) training in how to deal with situations like this, felt so threatened it was ok for him to shoot an unarmed youth. But the rest of us, unarmed, potentially facing the risk of being tear gassed, pepper sprayed, beaten up, shot or getting a criminal record just for going out of the office to get a sandwich, well, we aren’t even allowed to protect ourselves with a paper facemask.

  24. PaperCuts says:

    https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/11/12/wishful-thinking-believe-hong-kong-govt-will-yield-protesters-demands-leader-carrie-lam-says/

    “Wishful thinking” says Carrie and the rest of the children running this turd hole. Just like it was wishful thinking when innocent civilians had the gall to expect Hong Kong Police to protect them at Yuen Long MTR.

    The place is run by wildly…dangerously out of touch screeching infants with fingers in their ears.

  25. Ho Ma Fan says:

    @Donny Almond; whilst I am inclined to agree with you, regarding Reactor #4, I like to think that he is included for balance.
    To use the much quoted Voltaire, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”. He is still an insufferable troll though.

  26. Stanley Lieber says:

    @PaperCuts Excellent point re: all roads lead to Yuen Long.

    @Twiglet Excellent exposition of government hypocrisy.

    Apparently crisis brings out the best in some people.

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