Fearsome new Customs Commissioner Louise Ho (seems Hermes has gone) is on a mission to protect the glorious motherland from subversive lobsters. She explains…
“On the face of it, it’s just a normal smuggling case, smuggling lobsters. But actually these smuggling activities would undermine the country’s trade restrictions on Australia. Therefore, tackling lobster smuggling activities is an important task in safeguarding national security.”
This is like Security Secretary PK Tang’s confusion of 1911 Revolution commemorations with Taiwan independence. It seems disciplined services chiefs are so robotic and/or uninformed in enforcing the NatSec Law that they attack irrelevant targets. Beijing has put up barriers against Australian goods like lobsters – against WTO rules – to express frustration and rage at not being obeyed by a smaller regional state, not as a measure to protect the nation from harm.
More evidence that Commissioner Louise is taking things way too seriously…
…officers will be on the alert for people resorting to ‘soft resistance’ to spread messages endangering national security, through books, magazines or everyday items.
Can she give examples of books that threaten the PRC’s national security? Is Hong Kong going to join Saudi Arabia and a few other select places where men in uniforms flick through arriving passengers’ copies of, say, The Economist in search of offending articles to cut out? Excuse me sir – do you have any ‘soft resistance’ in your luggage?
Elsewhere in NatSec regime… How the CCP deals with free elections: overturn the result. The pan-dems won over 380 of 450 elected seats in the last district council polls; after various measures to disqualify or otherwise get rid of them, there are now just 60 left. Some of the councils themselves now have so few members that they are defunct.
The only candidates you may now vote for are people who support rigged elections in which you have no choice.
More disqualifications, because a Leninist system can never have too much control: Beijing is also tightening its grip on already-subservient Macau.
Some weekend reading…
George Magnus on China’s property-market woes.
The BBC on ‘Ziganwu’ – China’s young xenophobic patriots…
More recently, top medical expert Zhang Wenhong became a target… A suggestion that children should drink milk for breakfast was taken as a sign that he was rejecting traditional Chinese breakfast – and values. “Isn’t this too much worship of the West and fawning over foreigners?” wrote Pingminwangxiaoshi.
(This just in: Commissioner Louise orders Customs officers to intercept all boxes of cornflakes entering Hong Kong.)
How Taiwan is making itself more popular around the world, partly with China’s help.
From Taiwan Insight – the politics of Hong Kong immigration in the UK and Taiwan. Interesting comparisons.
The “Taiwan Insight” article comparing the approaches adopted by the UK and Taiwan in dealing with Hong Kong immigrants is pithy and insightful. Thanks for the link.
Methinks Commish Louise is doing what all bureaucrats do to ensure steady budget if not more: Make mundane shit sound like borderline, life or death importance. Like the fight against foreign lobsters in the name of NatSec. Also helps her chances come medal distributing time.
I sincerely hope western nation agencies are keeping close tabs on these lapdog enablers and their families to ensure they can never again enter their “home of property ownership record” (should they have any) one day should HK become *too* red for even them, assuming they have passports squirreled away someplace secret.
Once a again a top tune!
Step by step, inch by inch we are getting there. The more outlandish, bizarre, stomach churning, heartbreaking, and totally silly our ‘ruling elite’ acts, the more we just give up even reading their crap, and stop taking an interest what they are actually doing:
B E C A U S E T H E Y D O W H A T T H E Y W A N T T O D O A N Y W A Y A N D T H E R E I S N O T H I N G W E C A N D O A B O U T I T !
Straight from the books of SingaBore’s Lee Kum Kee (or whatever his name) School of Policing the Public!
Bravo Carrie Lam and consorts. An order of Lenin, with Chinese Characteristics, Diamonds, Oak Leaves, and Double Swords, for all of you!
Could you imagine if a lobster were to explode at the Peninsula? My god!
Also, I usually enter and exit, oh errrrr, Hong Kong with some soft resistance lube in a tube. Please don’t judge. It’s the only thing that makes anal play less painful.
Sympathy for the Civil Servant
“Officials who obediently worked for the British government are
clambering over one another to prove their nationalist credentials
to Beijing.”
“If they are complicit and demonstrate loyalty, they get to keep
their job, the salary, the perks of office that go with it.”
I willingly admit
I am not very brave or strong.
You think I am a hypocrite
But you are wrong.
This is my job and I am doing it.
Some men pose as heroes
As if it’s easy to protest.
A man who has a family knows
To stay is best.
I test the wind. I measure how it blows.
By serving the UK,
Did I dis-serve the motherland?
I serve the PRC today.
Right hand, left hand,
I’m both. I’m doing what the masters say.
Know not
As always, balanced and accurate.
Although a little less keenness by police and NSL prosecution would not come amiss.
So Yundi Li is being held and his career, at least on mainland, in tatters because he………………………….. paid a prostitute.
This should put the wind up a large chunk of the Honkers ‘patriots’.
The early retirement of Hermes, a guest at the hot pot dinner, could be a warning shot that goose stepping may soon be the only blow off steam activity permitted.
Might have to see if I can get some ‘Australian Lobster’ T-shirts made up to replace the black t-shirts for next year