Your tax dollars at work

Hong Kong’s NatSec police arrest people for alleged ‘seditious’ social-media posts. With thousands of staff and a huge budget – and no genuine national security threats in sight – this establishment must be desperate for things to do. So scroll through Facebook we must. Day after day after day.

Meanwhile, another part of the government does something intelligent with taxpayers’ money: it is going to offer winter flu shots to over-50s at Covid vaccination places. Simple and obvious, but still a surprise: someone, somewhere in the bureaucracy, is using their brain.

Speechless with shock, we will have weekend links early…

A detailed Georgetown Law paper on how Hong Kong’s first NatSec case – that of Tong Ying-kit – falls short of international human-rights standards.

A London Times editorial blasting the Vatican for its squeamishness on Cardinal Zen.

Mediacorp vid on China’s housing woes. And the Guardian on the ‘Ponzi scheme where money taken from new investors is used to pay off existing clients in an ever-decreasing spiral to collapse’.

‘We also serve’: the Conversation on how Chinese celebrities are pushing Beijing’s line on Taiwan. 

National Interest item saying time is running out for China to invade Taiwan. And Inside Story on why it would be a disaster in any case…

Reunification has essentially zero support among Taiwanese. And even if the current leadership could somehow be eliminated, local replacements would be equally or more hostile.

…If an invasion of Taiwan is militarily impossible, why is it continually discussed? The answer is that it is in the interests of all the major parties to pretend that an invasion is a real possibility. 

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2 Responses to Your tax dollars at work

  1. wmjp says:

    Only in Fantasy Land
    National security police officers called up members of the League of Social Democrats asking whether they had any plans for the “sensitive date.”

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