Obviously, the young Hong Kong woman who can hurl you to the ground and kick you senseless barefoot is called Grace.
By the same token, the guys running Hong Kong’s Justice Dept must be called Dick. Prosecutors change their minds and let Anthony Wong go (conditions apply, and alleged accomplice Au Nok-hin is in jail for various other spurious reasons).
Why arrest Wong and drag him into court in the first place? Is there a scriptwriter/choreographer masterminding things behind the scenes, who thought this charge was too ludicrous to bother with? Specifically, did the overseer realize that far more pro-Beijing election candidates are guilty of having singers help with campaigning? Is the US$1 billion-a-year NatSec enforcement force running ahead of itself and becoming (by authoritarian-regime standards) an embarrassment? Will they drop broadly similar charges (buying ads) against Benny Tai? Should the once-independent ICAC investigate itself for becoming corrupted as a tool of political oppression?
In other shocking we-might-still-have-rule-of-law news, Chow Hang-tung is released on bail (HK$100,000, but better than months in jail).
Whenever there seems to be a tiny sign of a return to sanity, it’s tempting to think we’ve reached peak NatSec malevolence. But more likely, the NatSec beast is choking as it gorges itself on people with the wrong opinions.
You can try and be nice, but good luck: a lame-sounding ‘centrist’ party wants to join in Hong Kong’s rigged all-patriot elections, but finds it’s not well-connected enough to find people to nominate its candidates. If you want to be a quisling, you’ve got to earn it.
Canada warns citizens that Hong Kong’s NatSec regime can trap you here. Ask the two Michaels how much help Ottawa will offer.
Weekend reading…
Hong Kong’s car-centric urban planning philosophy rushes headlong into the 1970s.
A HKFP explainer on a BBC explainer that annoyed the Chinese embassy.
Hyper-nationalist curses against the US. (Can we send Grace to sort her out?)
Will China adapt to Covid, since it can’t seal itself off from the planet, and its vaccines are kind of crummy?
“It may take them forever to reopen the border. They have no self-confidence and they don’t trust others. They know that their vaccines are not doing a good job in preventing infection,” Jin said. “They should have opened the border to Hong Kong [a long time ago] … However, they did not do anything even when we had zero cases for 50 days.”
Academic treatise on how Vitasoy became a national (or whatever) icon of Hong Kong.
How Xi Jinping became God.
Like trying to be accepted to an exclusive religious order – young Chinese people’s efforts to join the CCP.
Why would you invest in a country run by a Marxist-Leninist?
It’s hard not to conclude that Xi has decided capitalism just isn’t for China. The country’s leadership is effectively nationalizing certain thriving sectors—or leaping in that direction—and dictating what can be done with profits. Adam Smith has left the building when Xi’s team are telling Alibaba Group and Tencent how to reinvest their earnings. Or, strong-arming food-delivery giant Meituan to hike wages.
It’s over. The best stock investment I ever made was Petrochina at HK$1.46 – sold it for above HK$15. No more.
Why does Shenzhen have (by China standards) San Francisco-level housing prices? (Clue: they borrowed Hong Kong land policy.) Instead of ‘fishing village’, we get ‘sleepy swamp once populated by farmers’ for a change.
Another contribution to the debate on where Covid-19 came from. Mojiang. Phylogeographic. Something to do with bats. (For enthusiasts only.)
Some totally off-topic YouTube stuff…
Japanese TV show Wall of Boxes – probably the stupidest thing you’ve seen for ages, or at least since the HK Justice Dept last prosecuted an activist. I was riveted.
One of Ronald Reagan’s last TV roles – Kraft (yes, it’s cheesy) Suspense Theatre, from 1964. Reagan plays a judge held hostage by a prisoner he convicted and sentenced to death.
A bit more highbrow – a documentary on the intriguing Brendan Bracken.
And that time Prince Charles appeared as guest vocalist (‘Hong Kong people know best what is good for Hong Kong’) on a My Little Airport song.
If wall of boxes were an Olympic sport I might actually watch it. Images of ROC crashing into China would resonate with a lot of people.
As our blogger warns, it is an academic treatise on Vitasoy and so, unreadable.
My contribution:
I was once waiting for a bus in a north London suburb. In the grass verge at the edge of the pavement, I saw an empty, crushed carton of Vitasoy.
Hey, just want to alert you all that China is going to collapse and it is not going to be pretty my dudes!
When you have the single-minded vision of a single dictator deciding everything huge the country does, you basically end up with a smouldering heap of shit.
@donkey – are you the donkey from Shrek, or did a teenager hack your account? I’m fairly confident that the majority of humans who inhabit this message board are far smarter, and better connected, than either you or I, dude.
Shouldering heaps of shit aside, no one in their right mind should wish economic misfortune on a billion people, even if you really don’t like the management, for the same reason that no one sane should cheer on the use of nuclear weapons. Thinking that everything you care about somehow won’t be collateral damage is absurd.
@HO Ma Fan
I don’t think @donkey said anything particularly offensive. Donkey wants CCP gone and I can’t blame them considering that they are genocidal maniacs. And this isn’t nearly as bad as advocating for nuclear war, please get a grip. People are tired of the ccp
Also @donkey is not wrong that ccp is essentially a one man dictatorship at this point.
Unlike, say, North Koreans, the billion are fully aware of and thus complicit in the CCP’s actions.
No, we have not yet reached the peak of CCP’s malevolence. And unfortunately the NatSi beast will not choke. I am convinced, having witnessed similar brainwashing during two stints in SingaBore in 1981/82 and 92/93, what appears to us people with decent brains as stupid, nutty, arrogant, outlandish and incomprehensible, etc. etc. etc. is actually done deliberately if not carefully scripted.
The more we are inundated by the CCP and their minions with hair-rising, stomach-churning, bizarre, falsehoods, half-truths, twisted-truths, and lies, the more they will achieve their goal: Make us ever more turning away from, and stop thinking about politics. Ultimately we shall realize that it is totally futile to try to make sense of this all, and fight it. And forget about changing it. Until we ‘trouble makers’ come to ‘communist reason’, capitulate and finally succumb to the mantra, like every SingaBore taxi driver will tell you: They do what they want to do anyway, and there is nothing we can do about it!
And in support of this there are the broadly and vaguely defined, mushy laws and rules such that no one really knows what is, and what is not, leaving the overlords ample room for arbitrary arrests, kangaroo court hearings, and ridiculous sentences. Just to make sure everybody stays waayyyy clear of challenging or questioning any decision made by any authority.
This all was so deviously and brilliantly implemented for the first time by the CCP’s favorite schoolmaster, Lee Kum Kee (or something like that) who turned Millions of SingaBoreans into educated, polite ROBOTS running on LKY101 software, leaving them with three permitted things in life: Work hard, shut up, and obey the ruling ‘elite’. And definitely do NOT rock the boat, in CCP language ‘picking a quarrel and provoking troubles’.
Have you met a Singkie recently? Did you note how weird they have become?
We all should moan less, save our energies and wit, and start a discussion here about what we think are the CCPs real weaknesses, and how exploit such weaknesses to avoid Hong Kong having the same fate as the people down there in the ‘Little Red Dot’.
@KTB: What you have described also sounds very similar to the Firehose of Bullshit tactics employed by Putin. Russian propaganda makes no effort to be believable. It is often very stupid and ridiculous. The point is to flood the zone with so much garbage that it is not worth the effort to sort out the truth, making the population cynical and passive.
Most common Chinese comment ever: Mei you ban fa.
Translated (kind of): It is what it is.
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/mary-trump-reveals-her-uncles-callous-comment-that-sent-a-chill-down-my-spine_uk_610d0158e4b041dfbaa829f6