A little ray of sunshine for Thursday

As well as a modest but still impressive haul of medals, the Olympics gives Hong Kong cause for celebration in the form of minor pro-Beijing politician Nicholas Muk, who manages to humiliate himself rather nicely over badminton shirts. Yet again we see: he who lives by the shoe-shine dies by the shoe-shine.

More on the Tong Ying-kit NatSec trial from Quartz… 

…the standard for criminalizing speech is now the possibility that a given word or phrase has multiple meanings, among which is at least one that authorities deem illegal, and not that the speaker specifically intended to make an unlawful expression. It also means that the onus is now on the speaker to prove that they did not mean something—an undeniably harder challenge than the prosecutor’s task of sketching out multiple interpretations.

Also Atlantic (for ‘home affairs’ here, read ‘security’).

David Webb comments on Financial Secretary Paul Chan’s appointment of a Financial Investigator into Next Digital. He points out that the role of FI has been superseded by other regulatory measures, so the move has no practical purpose (but it serves to persecute the CCP’s enemies, rather like weaponizing archaic conspiracy/incitement sedition laws against speech therapists).

Webb also wonders if the FS’s ‘political grandstanding’ could be aimed at impressing Beijing with a view to being in the running to be the next Chief Executive. Not that it makes much difference who occupies the post, but is Paul Chan – whatever else we might think of him – really that deranged? Maybe his intention is exactly the opposite: perhaps, by overtly kowtowing to Beijing, Chan is hoping the CCP will let him quit this hellish puppet administration and retire in peace somewhere far far away.

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21 Responses to A little ray of sunshine for Thursday

  1. Chinese Netizen says:

    “Maybe his intention is exactly the opposite: perhaps, by overtly kowtowing to Beijing, Chan is hoping the CCP will let him quit this hellish puppet administration and retire in peace somewhere far far away.”

    No way. These deranged, malevolent narcissists are all cut from the same cloth and Chan is no different (he, of the high school student terrorizing deranged). He WANTS desperately to be the CE.

  2. donkey says:

    Maybe one day Paul Chan will get to be Chief Executive. He keeps putting himself in positions where he looks more to be grandstanding and showing off his charisma and love of China than in managing a budget. Why is he all over public service messages telling people to be happy and enjoy life?

  3. Hugh Janus says:

    The most appalling thing about Hong Kong people is how easily so many of them became persecutors and Nazis: the police, the judges, the civil servants. So spineless, so obedient, so cynical. Not a single police strike. Not a single civil servant mass protest. And where are the mass judge resignations? Such a shower!

    Hong Kong people deserve these people of course. Not all of them but the vast majority is now getting what they deserve.

    Sad all the same but also glorious.

  4. HillnotPeak says:

    Whatever happened to Donald Tsang? Now he looks like a fine chap and reasonable too.

  5. D3SH says:

    So glad Timothy McLaughlin called the SCMP out on Twitter for describing HK’s silver medalist Siobhan Haughey as a “mixed-race mermaid”:

    https://twitter.com/TMclaughlin3/status/1420220462244630531

    Further hilarity ensued when the Daily Mail picked up on this and referred to the SCMP as a “Chinese state-run publication” before deciding it couldn’t go *quite* far and said the newspaper is merely “pro-Beijing”.

    One wonders if Gary, Tammy and Yonden and co. will be looking to take the same sort of (non) effective action they said they’d take against the Atlantic for similar such accusations?

  6. Toph says:

    Since [insert banned slogan] is capable of promoting secessionism, then “F**k you and the horse you rode in on” is capable of promoting bestiality.

  7. Mark Bradley says:

    @Hugh Janus

    Many civil servants did protest.

    A few police officers here and there resigned but not even close to enough and one even ran as a yellow ribbon district councilor. But I didn’t see anything different in other countries like Belarus that had such large scale protests with regards to police officers. A few resigned but most did not.

    Judges tend to always be the first to sellout to authoritarian dictatorships (see: Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany)

    And Hong Kong people deserve this? Why? They didn’t vote these people in. FUUUUUCCCK YOU. So easy for you to be a privileged cunt in your easy chair. You don’t have to face down a massive Empire with an army that guarantees they can crush HK. Shove your smug take up your ass.

  8. Putting the race in swimming race says:

    @D3SH
    Not only is “mixed-race mermaid” just ewww, the “mixed-race” is also grammatically completely redundant: a mermaid is pretty much “mixed race” by definition. So even worse editing than first meets the eye.

    SCMP seems to be using the wrong definition of “class” in the whole struggle to build a class-free socialist society.

    And let’s face it, if even the Daily Fail is calling you out for being racist, just try to get your whole head in front of the shotgun.

  9. Penny says:

    “Judges tend to always be the first to sellout to authoritarian dictatorships”
    Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and Pinochet’s Chile:
    “…the judiciary at the time had abandoned its role as protector of basic rights.”
    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2013/9/5/chile-judges-apologise-for-pinochet-inaction

  10. Proctologist#1 says:

    Urban Dictionaryhttps
    //www.urbandictionary.com ›

    Define Hugh Janus:

    Meant to sound like “huge anus” …

  11. Toph says:

    @Hugh: Who do you think went on strike to make the government close the border to save your ungrateful lungs from Covid? And then had their union leader thrown in jail and their pay docked? Mark Bradley has already given you a well-deserved telling off, to which I add, shut your mouth you smug little toad. Take your hero fantasies and go cosplay as Chuck Norris or something and leave the rest of us alone.

  12. Chinese Netizen says:

    @Mark Bradley: Thank you.

    From the NY Times article on the China GOLD machine (note: silver and bronze DON’T COUNT): “China’s sports assembly line is designed for one purpose: churning out gold medals for the glory of the nation. Silver and bronze barely count. By fielding 413 athletes in Tokyo, its largest ever delegation, China aims to land at the top of the gold medal count — even if the Chinese public is increasingly wary of the sacrifices made by individual athletes.”

    “We must RESOLUTELY ensure we are first in gold medals,” Gou Zhongwen, the head of the Chinese Olympic Committee, said on the eve of the Tokyo Olympics.”

    At least Gou didn’t call other nations “so called countries”.

  13. Pope Innocent says:

    Of course Hong Kong people do not deserve the current regime, nor do they deserve pity for their abject state. No-one “deserves” anything – after all, He upstairs helps those who help themselves, not those who spent the last 70 decades worshipping at the altar of Mammon. Hong Kong people had all the time in the world to make their desire for democracy and/or independence known. The British attempts to increase local representation were abortive primarily because China was against the idea while Hong Kongers didn’t care as long as they could make money. Even now most of those those who could leave choose not to for one reason alone, to accumulate more wealth.

    They do not keep quiet in fear of a massive empire with an army that could crush Hong Kong (though only someone who has not seen the PLA train would believe they could crush anything other than a grape). They keep quiet because they don’t care enough to fight. That is the choice every freedom fighter throughout history has made. There is always a choice.

    Certainly civil servants protested, at a time when it was the thing to do (and perceived a safe thing to do) – they swiftly learned their lesson and now swear fealty if they want to keep their iron rice bowl. The medical services knew better than any what atrocities were being committed by the dogs in blue, yet they did little of any impact to address the issue (they could at least have done away with the odd plod in their care). As for the police themselves, who would expect a sociopath who dons a uniform to oppress their fellow citizens to show integrity? The police were invented to beat up the poor, and they are still doing so all over the world in defiance of the gullible who believe they are meant to fight crime and keep the public safe. And judges … judges have nothing to do with justice, neither does the law – they exist to protect the powerful from the masses. Perhaps one’s position at the right hand of the All-Knowing makes one unduly critical, but it is truly astounding how well-trained the people down there have become.

  14. dimuendo says:

    So

    Not so. Just an extract from a dramatised film.

    Lost it with “God bless America”.

    It was the international tribunnal/court.

  15. Chinese Netizen says:

    @Pope Innocent: Amen. And well worded.

  16. Mark Bradley says:

    @Pope Innocent

    “(though only someone who has not seen the PLA train would believe they could crush anything other than a grape)”

    I think they’ve proven themselves when it comes to murdering their own people. Even the most incompetent army can get the job done if they have the guns and the resistance does not.

    It’s all about risk vs reward in the end. Even if every single HK man, woman, and child decided to oppose the CCP today, what do you think would happen when the rest of China thinks we’re a bunch of traitors? We would get crushed, turned into a province, and the only right they would have is right this way into the camps. (Paraphrasing the late great George Carlin)

    He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day. This isn’t over. In the future there may be a golden opportunity to stab the CCP in the heart but now isn’t the right time, and HK people never forget and never forgive.

  17. Pope Innocent says:

    Oh, dear. It appears a sermon is in order to dispel a certain innocence in these matters.

    Since the dawn of warfare no army, no matter how competent, has ever been able to hold an occupied city for the long term. Hong Kong is an insurgent’s dream, with urban warrens beautifully counterpointed by inaccessible countryside. Chinese tanks would look fine parading up and down Gloucester Road, until a roadside device spoils their day. They could destroy the infrastructure, of course, but would the international community continue to turn a blind eye when the reason for their complicity ceases to exist – i.e. the extraction of wealth from China via the Hong Kong Dollar?

    It’s all about risk vs. reward in the end. If every single HK man, woman, and child decided to oppose the CCP today, what would happen when the rest of China thinks they’re a bunch of traitors? The wumao army would rage on the internet, scream their hurt feelings into the ether, and rattle sabres as they have never rattled them before. Until the next American athlete mentions Taiwan, or a Five Eyes fleet cruises over their imaginary nine-dash line, or the new iPhone comes out.

    There may never again be such a golden opportunity to stab the CCP in the heart, given that it’s clearly in its death throes already. HK people have long demonstrated their ability to forget and forgive if the price is right, never more so than when the grandad and granny collaborators of today showered their love on the communists they fled to Hong Kong to escape in their youth. Hong Kongers flood the arwaves with helpful videos on which country to move to, in which cities the best Chinese supermarkets can be found, and which Hong Kong neighbourhood church groups to join – they do not exhort one another to keep alive the spirit of revolution in abeyance of the day when they shall return victorious to their homeland and oust the evil Pooh.

    He who does not fight but runs away lives to begin again somewhere else – nothing wrong with that, because why die for something that no longer exists? The Hong Kong that was is but a memory, and a rose-tinted one at that. This is over.

  18. HKJC Irregular says:

    Am I the only one left thinking that Papal not-so-Innocent spouts a load of tosh? Honestly, Rectum#4 is a bit of lighthearted relief by comparison.

  19. Toph says:

    @HKJC Irregular: it’s not just you, I’m not sure who Pope Tiresome Bit thinks he’s entertaining with these rants.

  20. Cardenio says:

    @Mark Bradley
    Someone once said: “we are all – though naturally to differing extents – responsible for the operation of the totalitarian machinery. None of us is just its victim. We are all also its co-creators”. That is you and me. We can’t pretend we are waiting. We are supporting.

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