Hong Kong has a large community of people bursting with anger after seeing (first-hand or, more frequently, on video) thugs attacking pro-democrats and cops bullying schoolkids, stomping on people’s heads, using crazy amounts of tear gas, pepper-spraying bystanders and even shooting protesters. It also has a fair number of (typically rather older) people equally outraged by transport stoppages, road obstructions, a guy being set on fire, the stabbing of a pro-Beijing politician, bow-and-arrow attacks on police, vandalism of shops and campuses and other nastiness.
These things are all undeniably horrible and disturbing. But to fixate on them as morally abhorrent or unacceptably disruptive is to ignore what is really happening. The legitimacy of Hong Kong’s government has largely collapsed. Look beyond the highly visible and sometimes traumatizing local strife, and set aside your own ‘yellow’ or blue’ inclinations, and what you have is a conflict between the people of Hong Kong and the Chinese Communist Party. The violence on either side is not ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ – it is just an inevitable side-effect of that (highly asymmetric) struggle.
Got that off my chest. Been hearing too much whining from expats whose daughters were late for their piano lessons.
(And I just received an article doing the rounds on blue-ribbon social-media headed ‘From Nury Vittachi, who works at Poly U’. A quick Google search reveals the same text posted on a Singapore forum called SG Talk, so I’ll just link to that: behold CITIZENS OF THE WORLD: YOUR MEDIA IS LYING TO YOU. A major rant about Western media finding Hong Kong sexier than Chile, people crying at bus stops, and then a descent into ‘National Endowment for Democracy financing guerilla vandals’ land. This is fixating squared.)
Back to the action…
Jerome Cohen adds his opinion on Beijing’s claim that Hong Kong courts have no right to rule on constitutionality of laws. As it happens, it seems Chinese state media have quietly toned down the mouth-frothing about the High Court’s rejection of the mask ban.
They have their hands mouths full
freaking out about the US Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which has
now passed in the House. A brief but cliché-packed Reuters
report (‘a person familiar with the matter’, ‘speaking on condition of
anonymity’, ‘a move sure to anger China’) says Trump will probably sign it.
In a move sure to impede the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to win Hong Kong’s hearts and minds, UK Consulate staffer Simon Cheng has opened up about his mysterious disappearance on the Mainland. (His account, and the BBC report.) Many astute observers vaguely guessed that he had: a) been nabbed by Mainland security at West Kowloon High-Speed Rail Station; b) confessed to the inevitable ‘visiting prostitutes’ charge; and c) been tortured to admit British involvement in the protest movement. And they were right. Surprise, surprise.
Maybe the reason US outlets report more on HK protests is because HK GDP is close to the same as the other three combined (with 1/6th the combined population). Maybe they report more about it because HK has not been subject to violent civil wars (US backed) or violent repressions, white terror campaigns, etc. before? Of course HK protests are more newsworthy due to the novelty of such a previously high functioning society collapsing into ruin. Just like everyone will heavily cover the first time the CCP actually abides by an agreement they’ve signed…
The protester monkeys are idiots.
We are two days away from the District Council elections and they choose to hammer-out a set of traffic lights at a major intersection in Sha Tin Wai. It’s all timed to screw up the morning rush-hour journeys.
Their cause cannot have benefited from this wanton act of vandalism. Why did they do it? Are they as stupid as they look and they sound?
Critically, you can guarantee that the 1000s of undecided voters (and quite possibly many of their sympathizers) who were walking by or were caught up in the resultant jam will not now be itching to stick it to Carrie Lam and her Government via the ballot box.
Initially I sided with the protesters (up until the storming of the Legco Building). Now I’d be more than happy to wave them off at Hung Hom Station as they board prisoner trains that are to take them up to the gulags in the really shitty bits of the Mainland.
Nury Vittachi Versace used to be a fighter for freedom and press freedom, or at least he
moaned about it when he was fired from his pariah position at SCMP where no one would talk to him.
He is and was a purveyor of trivia – and now he is a trivial Mainland CCP supporter and apologist. Let’s hope his students don’t find out.Or perhaps they have!
Poor litte Malteser! He has come full circle. Sad.
Nury has always been an attention-seeking whore. He started off as an unfunny “humourist” and has now found a niche shilling and bootlicking for the Communist Party. With him, it’s always about satisfying a desperate need for attention that his parents never gave him. And he hasn’t taught at PolyU in years so he’s a lying sack of s*** on top of all that
HK popo, who lost bladder control a long time ago due to ceaseless pressure, and who for the most part run around like chickens minus heads, are now equipped with brand new sub-machine guns. No: you cannot make this up.
The CE’s price tag is HKD120 mio plus, per annum, for a staff of more than 100 and to service the CE’s social appointments and attendances such as Chancellorship of HK Poly and Chinese U and the other 7 amongst more than 100 patronages by the CE . The Exco and Ministerial price tag’s are significantly higher. Their income and expenditure is secure, as is the CE’s.
Nury Vitacchi, plagiarising others work? Who’d a thunk it?
I doubt it’s still on the RTHK website, but years ago Nury was being interviewed on Radio 3 about literature and some doofus phoned in asking why Ayn Rand wasn’t part of the literary canon. Nury spluttered for a while, trying to mask the fact that he had no idea what / who Ayn Rand was. It was delicious. Always been a total fraud.
Reactor #4 – there are only really shitty bits of the mainland. Nothing else.
Only two or three weeks ago Nearly Versace was telling his FB sycophants that the protests were getting smaller and activists sidelined. Now he’s on a vile rant blaming Western media – I do miss the days when he’d spew forth endless misspellings on cafe menus
Joe Blow – If you really want to the po po blow their bladder stand outside the parking lot of any station, wait for them to pull up in their expensive European sports cars and pretend to take pictures of them. I don’t suggest actually taking pictures. Just look like you might be doing so.
I guess taking pictures of po po in public places, like when they show up for work or are leaving is not illegal. Does anyone know for sure? Also, do the po po have the right to demand you unlock your phone and show them what pictures you have stored on it?
reactor #4 – A Psychological Case Study
Research indicates #4:
1. Feels “inconvenienced” and “put out”. City wide strife has restricted his own movements resulting in sulking. Relates personal hardships proportionately and inversely with hardships and struggles of an entire city. The pettier the personal inconvenience, the more directed the hate towards those “causing the inconvenience” becomes.
2. Feels inadequate and pines for loss of youth, vim and vigor. Struggles with jealousy on seeing much younger individuals full of purpose. Full of resentment. Feels powerless. Feels small. Feels time has passed him by. Is prone to lashing out at targets perceived as easy beats.
3. May have married into the mainland or possibly the Philippines and feels trapped, unfulfilled and stuck. Feels something is missing and that filling a sense of emptiness with rage and spite will keep that wolf of “self reflection” from the door.
4. Has nobody to truly talk to. Is lonely. Derives pleasure from needling others. Rejoices in the pain and suffering of the “little man” in a gleeful deflection of his own wallowing and suffering…all while sidling bravely up to the side of the State as the role model he never had growing up.
5. May lack a father figure. Is a company man through and through. Needs a Big Brother. Respects State authority with all his heart…because he has no self-authority of any kind.
6. Atheist leanings. Lacks heart. Defers to science and Newtonian kookery. “Experts know best”. Morality measured according to might.
7. May have been cruel to animals in childhood. Enjoys kicking the loser after they’ve lost or while they are losing or while they might lose.
8. Spends a lot of spare time in Wan Chai treating indentured servants to drinks. Angry because it has been difficult getting to Wan Chai lately. (See point 1)
@A Poor Man – The quaint concept of something being “illegal” or whether police have the “right to demand” something of a citizen is very charming in its nostalgic quality for a bygone era in Hong Kong governance. It’s almost as if you think such considerations have some relation to what the policeman might do next with his baton or pepper spray canister.
Ive never thought much of Nury, but hearing he didn’t know who Ayn Rand was hes gone up in my estimation.
@PaperCuts:
1, 2, 4, 7 and 8 = Spot on.
3= Married CX Japanese trolley dolly who has been bringing home the bacon for the past 15 years while Reactor sits at home, waiting for Happy Hour at 5PM at his ‘local’ in Sai Kung.
The cancer in HK society is not just bent dealings amongst friends in influence, the private / public partnerships are guilty, too.
The cancer treatment industry in HK is growing.
Please refer to paragraph 4 of LegCo paper LC Paper No. CB(2) 198/19-20(01) published 18 November 2019 on the subject of “Diagnosis and Treatment of Cancer under the Public Healthcare System”.
Paragraph 4 contains the entire basis of the money behind the Paper.
“With the increase in new cases every year and the advance in technology, …expected to increase progressively.
The climax being, 140,000 diagnosed cancer cases a year, means HKD millions a case.
Who dies and who gets paid?
Who is legally in charge? The CE of HK, Patron of The Hong Kong Anti-Cancer Society!
The train is now arriving at ‘not right or wrong,’ next station is ‘the fetishization of non-violence.’
Deliciously entertaining aperçus regarding the Reactor johnny.
Equally splendid observations on dreary little Nury.
Two buttocks of the same bum, l’d say.
Shock Horror, videos of Simon Cheng visiting a massage parlour. Like most members of the Politburo, tycoons, politicians, academics, civil servants, cops and robbers, truck drivers, ageing uncles. And thats the men. Shenzhen is also famous for its duck houses, very popular with tai tais and hen parties.
If everyone who visited such establishments was to be locked up for 15 days afterwards massive detention centres would be required in all towns and cities and the chilling impact on an important sector of the economy could crash the economies of a number of districts.
@PaperCuts : This looks like a checklist to become a SCMP colonist.
@Mary : I would assume 10 % of disposable income of the average Joe goes into that sector. It can pay for the pig price increases.
Casira
I assume you mean SCMP columnist.
But then again, maybe you don’t.