Welcome to Hong Kong, where – in a barely surprising plot twist – 15 of 47 people who haven’t done anything illegal are given bail but stay in jail anyway. Who wrote this show trial script? It’s corny and predictable. Or as Jerome Cohen puts it, an ‘unthinkable travesty of justice, apparently about to get worse’. Some pics.
Nor exactly coincidentally, Hong Kong is ejected from the Heritage Foundation’s Economic Freedom Index, on the grounds that the city no longer enjoys autonomy and is run directly by Beijing. (Taiwan ranks at number 7.)
I remember back in my Company Gwailo days, representing the Big Boss – who had more important things to do with his lithesome masseuse in a Mid-Levels penthouse – at one of these occasions. Must have been late 90s. The mutual fawning was unpleasant to behold and there was much surreptitious use of air-motion sickness receptacles. Who needs an anal swab when you’ve got Hong Kong’s top bureaucrats’ tongues in such close proximity to Heritage Foundation bulky-white-guys’ rear ends?
The Foundation labelled Hong Kong the world’s ‘freest economy’ even though the Hong Kong government owned all the land, accommodated cartels, systematically excluded public opinion from policymaking, and squeezed genuine entrepreneurs and innovators with red tape and cronyism. Meanwhile, Hong Kong’s Beijing-appointed leaders overlooked the think-tank’s papers calling for tougher US military preparedness against the PRC – long before it was fashionable.
So now it’s whiny hurt-feelings time. Everyone hates us. Not fair. Complete with a panty-wetting press release that goes on and on.
From the Reuters report – those anal swab tests take Barbarian-trolling to a new level. They are…
…performed with a sterile [well, gee, thanks] cotton swab, which looks like a very long ear bud, that is inserted [a rather breathtaking] 3 cm to 5 cm (1.2 inches to 2 inches) into the anus before being gently [we hope] rotated out.
And in case you were wondering.
Next Big Thing: the improvements to the HK electoral system. By ‘improvements’, we mean ‘more zombie-like puppets if we can find them, since even we thought we were scraping the bottom of the barrel with Elizabeth Quat and Holden Chow’. With LegCo elections postponed until 2022, or thereabouts, there’s still time to dredge them up.
A Google search for panty wetting led me here. I leave disappointed and frustrated.
All this would be a farce if not for it being rendered a tragedy by the fact that it is destroying the lives — not just spirit and hopes — of so many people.
And, as you seem (unusually) to have missed it, our “loyal opposition” rubber-stamped the Immigration reform bill yesterday, too, granting the director blanket power to refuse exit.
The Heritage Foundation is a grift and always has been.
P.T. Barnum inspired its founding.
“There’s a sucker born every minute.”
He said that.
I’m almost curious about the collection of malevolents, bootlickers, lunatics and nonentities that they’ll curate for us next September, and whether any of the usual DAB and tycoon seat-fillers will fail to make the cut. Not that curious though.
I read an opinion piece in the SCMP today (why oh why did I bother?), where Maria someone was actually arguing that the right way to deal with Myanmar was to ‘have a dialogue’ with the junta about ‘sharing power’….Apparently all these young people are just being naive and led by social media to think that it’s realistic to kick out a bunch of crooked, thieving, lying, murderous tyrants, and should instead be having a cup of tea with them and asking if they could not be shot in return for allowing them to continue looting the country.
I fear that’s the only kind of political thinking we are going to get from now on.
On top of everything else, isn’t this new political set up in HK completely vulnerable to corruption on a massive scale?
The chief magistrate no doubt has an invitation to tea scheduled for Monday for daring to allow bail for anyone.
@Mary McBain
From the Rohingya’s perspective the previous government were also a bunch of murderous tyrants. Didn’t see too many young folks on the streets then.
Re the ‘panty-wetting Press Release’: as mentioned before, overly-long rebuttals, full of technical details, are often a sign that the author(s) know they are on the wrong side of the argument. The need for defensive and lengthy self-justification indicates a lack of self-confidence: it’s almost an admission that the other side is right. (It is, therefore, also a mark of authoritarian regimes).
A more effective response is either not to react at all; or, at most, nonchalantly wave away the perceived snub, dismissing it in a short paragraph, a nicely worded ‘f off’.
For the very first time, the Heritage Foundation’s annual fantasy wankfest actually connects with lived reality.
But we have had rule by patriots for years, they have always had the majority in Legco, and look where it got us. Lazy, Incompetent and Dumb are terms that come to mind. When we still had a functioning Legco I was involved in a number of complaints, usually efforts to stall plans that were detrimental to the community. The LIDs rarely deigned to attend the meetings. For the open panel meetings they would wander in, check their mobiles and leave. The presentations by members of the public, many of whom had given up a day’s pay and traveled distances to get to Tamar, were ignored.
The move to shake up the system and bring in innovation, energy and better response to the community, as achieved in the DC elections, is at the core of the current crackdown.
How drafting in even more LIDs can lead us to Nirvana is a mystery.
I dreamed. How many?
I dreamed I saw . . I dreamed . . .
A crowd of furtive sinners,
Sinners, so they seemed,
Rotting, in a prison pent,
Guilty, man and women, guilty,
Back to cages sent.
Every puppet, every person
Served a foreign power,
Planned subversion.
I took no part
But still, I think, I think,
I sinned at heart.
Conspirators against our Heaven
And our State, our State.
How many? – 47, forty-seven.
In my dreamy mind –
Recall, a grumpy voice said,
Others are confined.
It might be you next time, be you.
How many in that doleful crowd?
52, fifty-two.
@Mary Melville
LIDDs may be a better acronym – lazy, incompetent, deaf and dumb.
Or maybe DILDs?