As Beijing’s authorized barbarian-handlers in Hong Kong, the Foreign Ministry’s local office has the task of slapping the Foreign Correspondents Club on the wrist if necessary. They have just done so in response to the FCC’s protests about the new HK Police We-pick-our-own-journalists policy. Using a distinctly ‘wolf-warrior’ tone, the office accuses the press club of endorsing rioters and ‘provoking trouble’ and demands it stop ‘meddling in Hong Kong affairs’.
A reminder that Beijing’s officials not only see restricting reporters as a key measure, but openly regard the HK Police as part of their jurisdiction and entitled to their protection. The Foreign Ministry wouldn’t take much interest if the FCC criticized, say, the health authorities’ social-distancing measures.
The FCC’s role in lobbying for press freedom locally puts it very much on Beijing’s list of evil foreign forces. At the very least, it will need to look for a new club house next time its lease on the government-owned Ice House comes up (and good luck finding a landlord willing to rent to a group considered hostile to the glorious motherland).
On a brighter note, a solicitors’ disciplinary body in London is going to give Junius Ho a good seeing-to.
A few interesting links you might have missed…
By Timothy Mclaughlin in Wired, an in-depth look at Beijing’s mission to eradicate any representative politics from Hong Kong and the subsequent ‘democratic stagnation’. Special focus on the younger generation of would-be candidates, the pan-dems’ primary election in July and Martin Lee.
An LA cable channel interviews Samuel Chu. (Did the Beijing officials who ordered Hong Kong to put him on the NatSec Law wanted list realise he is a US citizen? If so, why not seek Nancy Pelosi, Ted Cruz and others he colluded with? Of course, they’re not ethnic Chinese – so not the Emperor’s property.)
There is zero hope for democracy in Hong Kong so long as the CCP is in power. Some desperate/gullible/naive moderates pushing a third/middle way like to think otherwise, but they come back to swallowing Beijing’s rigged ‘universal suffrage’ – a pointless exercise. HKFP generously devotes a whole article to them. (‘Third-way’ is basically ‘pro-Beijing-lite’ in that its proponents have financial, social-standing or other personal interests at stake that prevent them from overtly conflicting with the regime.) Also, a piece in response to Henry Litton’s historically illiterate SCMP piece advising Hong Kong judges to serve the CCP.
It all reminds me of the percentage of local ‘teachers’ (for ‘teachers’ read ‘textbook presenters’) who blame the students for lousy instructional practises, poorly designed activities and crap learning materials. “They’re so naughty”, “So lazy laaah”, etc.
It couldn’t POSSIBLY be that the learners are unmotivated and perhaps don’t understand what the poseur is supposed to be teaching!
The HK Popo and the Masters of the Universe in the liaison office blame others as a matter of course, then repeat their lies while sagely nodding. Insecure and pathetic. Fearful of 12 year old girls who dare to go shopping for art supplies.
Keith Richburg, the head of the University of Hong Kong’s ‘Journalism and Media Studies Centre’ must now be rectified:
https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1551350-20200924.htm?spTabChangeable=0
“There is zero hope for democracy in Hong Kong so long as the CCP is in power.”
Obviously this is an issue if you think that democracy is the optimum way to select a group of people to run a jurisdiction. However, many of us are sick to death of it. Critically, we have reached this viewpoint based on a mass of evidence. Notably, we observe that a majority of Western countries are today going nowhere fast (and have been for 3-4 decades; UK, USA, France, Australia, Italy etc.). A good analogy is a gaggle of no-hopers out of their heads on skunk in square/gathering spot in a market town in Middle England. You look at them lying prostrate at the base of a cenotaph and think – I do not want any of that. Where did it all go wrong? And before anyone starts quoting Winston bloody Churchill, you should note that he reached his conclusion well before the experiment had run its course.
The FCC probably won’t need to look for new premises. They will be banned as a “subversive organisation” and the Ice House Street premises converted to a pleasure palace for senior party members.
@HKH – perhaps it is more a case of the poseur doesn’t understand what he/she is supposed to be teaching
Classic example of the limited potential of democratic countries: Why the US doesn’t have a high-speed rail network (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qaf6baEu0_w&ab_channel=CNBC)
Thankfully for the Brits, the Victorians built a lot of key infra-structure prior to the emergence of universal suffrage. Compare that with today. The modern day road system is held together with sticky-tape and string. Cross-rail (E-W line across London) still hasn’t been completed. HS2 might never be built.
@ Guess who… Thing is mate, you have become this forum’s equivalent of skunk-addled English flotsam spaced out beneath the monument of totalitarianism.
Rectum 4
I do not understand your need to constantly change your name, as you are clearly not (usually ) choosing to hide.
In so far as you have a point about the totally inadequate “leaders” democracy has currently thrown up in such as the USA and UK, the system you appear to advocate, namely strong man authoratarism, hardly has a good track record. I merely ask you to lok at the motherland between say 1956 and 1976.
At least democracy has in built the prospect of peaceful change, notwithstanding the mango moron’s “musings” to the contrary.
I can guess who – and he’s wrong. The most important benefit of democracy is not always getting good leaders – it is being able to get rid of the bad ones. Trump, Bolsonaro, Johnson are clowns, but they are not emperors for life, and can and will be kicked out in due course. Dictatorships are not necessarily more efficient – look at basket cases like North Korea, Zimbabwe, Venezuela,… And the rare exceptions (China) are not nice places to live for many of their population – Uyghurs, Tibetans, Falun Gong followers,…
Is it just me or has the troll’s screeching just gone up an octave? The governed should be suspicious of all forms of government, to a greater or lesser extent, since it only though such scrutiny that accountability can be ensured. As thoroughly messed up as the governance of both the UK and USA, in particular, appear to be I am quite confident that should either nation burn to the ground entirely it would shortly be built up, functioning again, with most institutions largely as they were. Authoritarian governments, on the other hand, are doomed to go tits up as soon as absolute control slips from the tyrants hands, which it always does sooner or later.
Hitler built a countrywide autobahn system and allegedly
made the trains run on time. look where that got us. We went through
totalitarianism in the 30 ‘s and it’s efficiency in production leads to
industrial type genocide. Ring any bells?
@Low Profile.
Your list of useless, if not dangerous, modern-day leaders of democratic countries demonstrates my argument perfectly. We now live in a time that corresponds to the late-stage development of a political system (for clarity “democracy”) in which elections are base popularity contests where the entire adult populations of a country have the opportunity to vote. You’ve got to remember that most of these people amuse themselves by watching vast amounts or reality TV or plain, simple shit. It’s proven to be a recipe for disaster. Moreover, I can’t see the system rectifying itself.
“A good analogy is a gaggle of no-hopers out of their heads on skunk in square/gathering spot in a market town in Middle England. ”
What is he drivelling on about now?
Rectum, in your latest guise.
Your latest objection appears to be the depth/width of the plebiscite. If it is to be restricted then to who? Whites or blacks, Jews or gentiles or muslims, women or men?
Or just quasi alcoholic right wing former coppers with chips on both shoulders?
@Low Profile: it’s not just the Uyghurs, Tibetans, fringe groups or “ethnic nationalities” that China is not a nice place to live…it’s most definitely also the majority of Han as well. Look at most of the school kid stabbings, arson cases to make a point or drivers purposely going off a bridge to kill kiddies out of abject frustration…helpless and hopeless Hans that know the system doesn’t work for them and have no recourse at justice.
The only people truly enjoying it all and lauding it are the connected billionaire leadership, their families, a minority of CCP members and the bootlickers underneath them collecting crumbs tossed at them by the former for propping up the dictator dujour…
Forgot to add:
Jews or gentiles of muslims or chinese (difference between big C and little c) or japanese.
So , rectum, who selects? Or is it simply the most powerful, however power is defined?
“Jews or gentiles of muslims or chinese (difference between big C and little c) or japanese.
So , rectum, who selects? Or is it simply the most powerful, however power is defined?”
Watch how that toolbag doesn’t even bother to reply.
Ooh ooh, I know, let’s go back to heridetary absolute monarchy. All of the benefits of authoritarianism with none of the succession crises!
@dimuendo – those who prefer rule by an elite are generally either part of that elite or submissive masochists. Since #4 appears to fall into the latter category, then for him it would be the most powerful.
@ Toph
So will the next leader in BJ be a queen?
@jet plane: Who’s to say there aren’t already a few Queens in Zhongnanhai??