For a couple of weeks after the District Council elections, and the appointment of a new Commissioner, it seemed the Hong Kong Police were sort-of mellowing out. But they returned to mall-rampaging/‘hardcore protesters smashing glass panels’ and rounding up kids on tear-gas-filled streets over the weekend, so maybe it was just a pause for breath.
Or maybe they had been busy with their curious rapid succession of multiple exciting terrorist weapons finds. Here’s a discussion on this, and here’s another, mentioning how it all looks rather too neat and easy and not-hugely-convincing. There is something unreal about how the authorities themselves seem unmoved about what is purportedly a possible campaign of mass-slaughter in the making.
On the subject of ‘neat, easy, and not-convincing’, we should also mention another recent development: the HK Police’s new-look cool-and-hip Twitter presence. If a PR company is involved, they are keeping it quiet. Out with the old clunky officialese, and in with trendy memes, jocular aren’t-kids-terrible stuff, and mawkish mock-heroics and self-pity. Plus of course, lots of bomb seizures.
It suddenly occurs to me that maybe the announcements about finding terrorist caches are not aimed at us at all, but are designed to boost the cops’ own morale. By Jove, I think I’ve got it!
Unfortunately, no-one told them that Tweeters can reply.
At the risk of sounding like that Radioactive foreskin who also occasionally replies here, what to make of the tiresome smashing of glass panels at an atrium in New Town Plaza (a dangerous act), the overturning of tables at a dimsum restaurant, and the spray-painting: both of the mall’s floors and that lady’s face?
There is a nihilistic tendency among the hard core, which the cops have clumsily attempted to combat both with their own inept thuggery, and latterly via Twitter.
Looks like the Legco elections next September will be preceded by another long, hot CS-gas ridden summer during the course of which the narrative will fall snugly into the hands of the Popo/Govt/CCP once the populace are increasingly alienated by the nihilists.
#Regular: it’s probably hard to imagine to you in White Expat Bubble Land, but you would be surprised how much support the ‘nihilistic’ yoof have among the middle class. The ‘front liners’ who do all the dirty and dangerous work are part of a large communal effort.
But @Blow Joe – aren’t you very much part of that bubble?
Hmmm, not sure, Joe. Were I in a pre-Christmas shopping mall on a Sunday with kids in tow (fat chance, but still), not sure I’d be cheering on masked black-clad atrium glass bashers.
Vital to keep overwhelming societal support (24 November) to the cause. And laying-off smashing up the MTR might also help in that regard.
” The ‘front liners’ who do all the dirty and dangerous work are part of a large communal effort.”
^ This
@HKJC Regular
Are they protesters or agent provocateurs? No one knows anymore.
The really good thing about HK’s current political system is that it denies many of the commenters on this blog having a meaningful vote in the way our city is run.
Could you imagine the loons they would elect if the city had a Western style democrazy, where in effect anyone could stand for office and every adult had access to the balloting process?
What a dreadful thought.
@pie-chucker: The MTR earned the wrath of many Hong Kongers months ago. Yuen Long, 7/21; Kwun Tong and Kowloon Bay, 8/24; Prince Edward, 8/31, etc.
Admittedly, I still take the MTR from time to time. But I actually find myself having visions of what happened in Prince Edward MTR station on August 31st when I’m in the MTR — it doesn’t help when I catch sight of squads of riot police in there from time to time — and they’re strong enough to make it so that I absolutely have not been able to go on the MTR at night since that date.
I march in every demo, usually near but not at the front. If 2 million take to the street to petition an undemocratic ‘government’ and the government simply shrugs it off, then violence is the only thing left.
@Reactor #4 – the Basic Law provides for universal suffrage and specifies that everyone is eligible to run for election. Are you suggesting it is a good thing that the current government fails to comply with the law? In that case, why should anyone else respect it?
Parents of primary age kids (in chat rooms) are looking to enrol their kids in international schools or send them overseas to boarding schools. Elite schools are on the nose as it is assumed the current turmoil is part of a cycle doomed to repeat itself in the future.
@private beach reactor #4 is a certified toolbag
“If 2 million take to the street to petition an undemocratic ‘government’ and the government simply shrugs it off, then violence is the only thing left.”
Or as Martin Luther King said:
” … riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met.”
“Democrazy”. Well at least we now know Rectum#4 takes his cues from the infamous Pierce Lam formerly of the regular letters page at SCCPMP.
Oh police twitter team (AKA Social media suicide squad), you know Hong Kong is just going to read your tweets for all of three seconds before laughing merrily and going straight over to https://help.twitter.com/forms/report_self_harm.