Invisible Men

Do the Standard's caption writers actually look at the photos they are captioning?

An Idiot Unmasked

Tales of Terror

I turned on the TV the other morning, and within the space of a few minutes was confronted by all three of these terrifying characters.  I really don't think they should transmit horror shows so early in the day when impressionable children may be watching.

Uninformed

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam denies observing any police brutality during the past seven months of protest.  Strange - you'd think with her massive salary, she could afford to own a television.

Meanwhile in the UK, Home Secretary Priti Patel denies seeing any evidence that Meghan Markle has faced racism from the British press.  Also strange - surely a Cabinet Minister should read the newspapers?

Turning Point

Yesterday's dramatic storming of the LegCo building was hardly “extreme violence”, as Carrie Lam characterised it – few heads were bashed – but it was a hugely dramatic act of targeted symbolic property damage.  I know I am not the only one wondering whether Beijing agents were involved in stirring up the action with the aim of discrediting the protest movement - which might help explain why the riot police presence inside the building evaporated as soon as the protesters broke through the glass door.  

Be that as it may, over the past few years the Hong Kong government has been systematically narrowing the scope of allowable political discourse.  Consider for example:

• LegCo expulsions
• Election candidate disqualifications
• Anti-filibuster rule changes
• Basic Law “reinterpretations”
• Forced “respect” for the symbols of the ruling regime
• The ban on the Hong Kong National Party
• Expulsion of journalists
• Barring entry to Hong Kong by perceived opponents of the government – not just wild-eyed revolutionaries, but sober British Parliamentarians
• Pushing through highly unpopular legislation without adequate scrutiny
• Hysterical over-reaction to minor public order offences during protests (what we might call the fish sandwich syndrome) – contrasted with a completely spineless response to cross-border political kidnappings
• More restrictive conditions for protests
• Reining in of academic freedom
• Declaring various topics off-limits for discussion in schools
• etc. ad nauseam.

The problem with this strategy is this: the more that certain political views are excluded from normal channels of expression, the more their expression will take other – and almost certainly less peaceful and less controllable – forms.  Add in unaffordable housing and the totally unacceptable extradition bill, and the inevitable outcome is the shock of yesterday's kerfuffle.

So Carrie Lam, if you really want to get things back to normal, what must you do?  The answer is simple: stop it.  Everything on my list above, just stop it.  Drop the extradition bill completely.  Forget about the Lantau white elephant reclamation project, and use the money to give Hong Kong's senior citizens a dignified old age instead.  Face up to the vested interests of the property developers and the Heung Yee Kuk and get serious about housing.  And if Beijing won't let you do any of this, then at least you can regain the respect of the Hong Kong people for trying, and we can all stop pretending that One Country Two Systems still retains any shred of meaning.

CY's Lost Marbles

My immediate reaction to this headline was that Hong Kong's former Chief Executive - apart from confirming Godwin's Law - has lost his marbles.  Reading the article only confirmed this.  There are several layers of irony here - one being that the hysterical over-reaction of pro-Beijing forces in Hong Kong, and CY in particular, has done more to bring the ideas of Andy Chan and other independence advocates to public attention than they could ever have achieved unaided.

Another irony is that if you are seeking a genuine contemporary equivalent to Nazism, the current mass roundup, incarceration and brainwashing of Muslims in concentration camps in China's northwest would provide a much closer analogy than one young man freely expressing his opinion in the FCC.  But that is being done by the very government for which CY is such an ardent apologist, so we won't hear a word from him about this particular egregious abuse of human rights.

A third irony is that the pro-China camp's heavy-handed attempts to derail Andy Chan's planned speech reinforce his assertion that Hong Kong can only enjoy true freedom outside the suffocating embrace of the motherland.  While most of us don't regard Hong Kong independence as either likely or practical, those most determined to prevent it are inadvertently strengthening the case in support of it.

THE WHAT OF THE WHAT?

A contemporary view of world freedom

A couple of days ago I turned on the TV during the G20 summit just in time to catch the announcer saying, “…and [Russian President] Putin is now meeting with the leader of the free world”.

The what of the what?!! Back in the innocent 1950s of my childhood it was common in the west to view the world as being broadly divided into three zones: the free world (North America, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand – us, capitalist, mostly white, plus perhaps a place for Japan and Taiwan); the godless communist world (The Soviet Union, China, Cuba – them); and what was then beginning to be called the Third World (almost everywhere else, poor, brown-skinned, largely ignorable).

Even then this picture – focused almost entirely on economic freedom while social repression ran rampant – was overly simplistic.  Does anyone still believe it is adequate to represent the diversity and complexity of today’s globalised world?  Or that freedom is only found in the west?  Or that every western country genuinely embodies the ideal of freedom?  Or in particular that the USA, self-appointed champion of democracy, really values the principles it proclaims?  The US has, after all, been complicit since 1949 in the overthrow of elected leaders in Syria, Iran, Brazil, Guatemala, Chile, Haiti, Honduras, Egypt, Palestine, and Ukraine.

And most ludicrous of all, does anyone see so-called US President Donald Trump as any sort of champion of freedom?  Trump has shown himself an enemy of freedom wherever it rears its head: above all, media freedom.  And in order to be a leader, one must surely have followers – yet no other leader has shown any inclination to follow Trump into his fantasy world where global warming is a Chinese hoax and every trade deal is a conspiracy to steal American jobs.

Consequently, we are now seeing journalists coming up with stories asking: “who will be the new leader of the free world?”  As a way of looking at today’s world, this is about as useful as asking “Which nation will build a faster steam train?”  Yet when lazy reporters continue to use hackneyed and obsolete phrases like “leader of the free world”, you have to admit that Trump’s criticism of “fake news” is not entirely unjustified.  And applying that description to Trump himself is about as fake as you can get.

The Middle Way

 

Incidentally, does the Pro-China Morning Post have no competent sub-editors left after its recent purges?  The prepositions here are all over the place, and there's a definite article missing:

See also: The Middle Is a Lonely Place

The Invading Influenza Army

ATV demonstrated the other day - not for the first time - that they desperately need a numerate news editor.  Reporting on plans to give new flu shots to elderly residents of care homes, Arthur Urquiola stated that "Some 200,000 doctors will be on hand to administer the injections".  According to government statistics, Hong Kong had 13,203 registered doctors at the end of 2013 - about 1 per 550 members of the population - so either our medical schools have been extraordinarily busy in the past year raising that proportion to 1 in 35, or there's something seriously wrong with ATV's figures.  Furthermore, with only 57,200 people in such homes, that many doctors seems a little excessive for the purpose.

Perhaps all those thousands of people on the streets with wheeled suitcases are visiting medical volunteers bringing in urgently needed vaccine supplies.  But in that case, what are they taking back home with them?  I think we should be told.

[Picture: CNN]

If the Message Stinks, Repeat It Louder

When not blatantly brown-nosing China's leaders with an editorial (above) that could have been cloned straight from the front page of the China Daily, the South China Morning Post is usually sucking up to Hong Kong's business lobby.

Naturally, therefore, it joins the hysterical chorus demanding a third runway at Chek Lap Kok.  The public, it tells us, "can be excused for feeling confused about the development of the airport's third runway".  The Post suffers from no such uncertainty, assuring us with an air of smug superiority, "that the project is still challenged by different sectors at this stage underlines the need for better explanation."

That the project has failed to win public support is arrogantly assumed by the writer to be a mere failure of communication.  All that needs to be done, in his (or her) view, is to keep shouting the same message at the public until it gets across to them.

Does it not occur to these dumbclucks that the real reason the plan "has yet to get broad public support" may be that the case for the third runway is far from proven?  Perhaps the public is not convinced because the case for the project is not convincing.  For a start, even the editorial admits that it has not yet been decided who will pay for this grandiose mega-project, estimated to cost HK$136 billion -- though such massive infrastructure ventures typically end up costing far more than the originally budgeted figure.

Although the government conducted a public consultation exercise on the issue back in 2011, this was based on a highly selective presentation of the facts, and several trends have changed since then.  China's economy has slowed, along with the rest of the world's, probably leaving forecasts of future demand overstated.  Climate scientists' warnings of the dangers of global warming have become more urgent, though carbon emissions were not even considered in the original environmental impact assessment.  Even "pro-China" politicians are now calling for a cap on tourist numbers as Hong Kong creaks at the seams to accommodate too many mainland visitors.  And recent studies suggest that the beleaguered local Chinese White Dolphin population - whose habitat sits in the way of the proposed land reclamation - is under even greater stress than previously thought. All these have negative implications for airport expansion.

In fact so many factors are involved that it is doubtful that any forecast of future air travel demand can be more than a best guess, depending on what assumptions one chooses to make.  Economic developments, fuel costs, the ongoing movement of manufacturing away from the Pearl River Delta deeper into China, the adoption of larger planes like the Airbus A380, the effect on wildlife, the impact of China's expanding High Speed Rail network on demand for air travel, the shortage of local construction workers - so many uncertainties surround all these variables that any prediction is likely to be well off the mark.  In fact the only certainties -- increased noise and air pollution if the project goes ahead and the likely wiping out of our local dolphin population -- all support the cancellation of the expansion plan.

"Our status as a regional aviation hub" the Post argues "hinges on whether we can compete with other airports" -- but readers' comments beneath the original editorial question whether we can -- or need to be -- a regional aviation hub in a region with four other airports. Indeed, some suggest that the region's airspace is too crowded already to permit the number of extra flights required to make the additional runway cost-justifiable.

Of course those in the aviation sector -- with the Post as their cheerleader -- predictably insist that the third runway is urgently essential, because it will benefit them.  But is is by no means clear that it will benefit the community as a whole.

Making It Better:
Worldwide Fund for Nature

The Slow Painful Death of ATV

Amid all the hopeful talk of finding new investors to revive ATV's fortunes, no one seems to be paying much attention to one awkward fact: the station's licence expires later this year.  Since it has already failed to pay its licence fee on time and cannot even afford to pay its staff at present, the prospect that any sane broadcasting authority would renew its licence is virtually nil (though in Hong Kong's current crazy political climate nothing can be entirely ruled out).  Anyone putting money into ATV would be extremely unlikely to recover their investment in less than a few years, even if they could turn the station around and persuade people to watch it again, something which would require substantial additional investment in some decent programmes.  Meanwhile they would run a strong risk of the licence not being renewed, sending their investment straight down the drain.

Unless an insane investor comes along, therefore, the station is likely to expire completely within a month or two, opening the way for a renewed licence application from HKTV which the government would find it very hard to turn down this time.

Meanwhile the station still limps feebly along.  The English evening news, now curtailed to 15 minutes, shows little sign of being edited and turns up some entertaining bloopers.  Apparently all the pilots of the Taiwanese airline that had a crash recently are going to be "evacuated" (evaluated).  Even more surprisingly, the Costa Concordia was "a floating hotel 290 km long".  That being the distance from Hong Kong to Shantou, it's not surprising it was so difficult to salvage - unless they mean 290 m, the sunken ship's real length.

And as for the sports news, why does Bo Leung insist on referring to every goalkeeper as "the custodian"?  That's a pretentious word that sports hacks occasionally use for stylistic variety, but no ordinary football fan would do so - the goalie or the keeper will do nicely, thank you.

What does CY Leung have in common with al-Qaeda terrorists?

...apart, that is, from them being unlikeable people with rigid inflexible minds intent on forcing their own narrow ideology down everyone else's throat?

Well, neither appears to have heard of the Streisand Effect.

If at first you don't succeed, keep getting it wrong

The Pro-China Morning Post had three goes at getting the right headline for its lead story yesterday, and still failed each time.

Subtle - wrong!  Veiled - wrong!  Try "bleeding obvious".

Infinite Wisdom

Despite its generally pro-Beijing editorial stance in recent years, on the whole the South China Morning Post has done a fair job of covering the Occupy movement.  However, one sentence in today's account of the clearance of the Mongkok protest site defies the laws of physics:

Since Portland Street and Nathan Road run parallel to each other, they can only intersect at infinity!

Another thing I noticed in the Post's latest online poll - 3 of the responses here are favourable to the police, and only 2 unfavourable; there is no neutral choice on offer.  And while I don't believe most cops are bad, "Poor" is a very mild description of the stupidity, incompetence and brutality we have seen from a a few of them in the past three weeks.  "Bloody awful" should have been one of the offered choices.

I suspect the results (54% negative, 46% positive) owe more to attitudes towards the protests than directly towards the police.  There are some sociopaths on the pro-government side who would be perfectly happy for them to replicate the Tiananmen massacre on Hong Kong soil (well, tarmac).  If the police cut off Joshua Wong's and Benny Tai's heads and paraded them around Central they would consider it an excellent performance.

A Reader, Not a Leader

CY Leung's TV address to the Hong Kong people yesterday:

Look briefly at camera.
Blah Blah Blah.
Look down at Beijing-provided script.
Blah Blah Blah.
Blah Blah Blah.
Blah Blah Blah.
Look briefly at camera.
Blah Blah Blah.
Look down at Beijing-provided script.
Blah Blah Blah.
Blah Blah Blah.
Blah Blah Blah.
Look briefly at camera.
Blah Blah Blah.
Look down at Beijing-provided script.
Blah Blah Blah.
Blah Blah Blah.
Blah Blah Blah.

...and so on.  All delivered in that infuriating flat robotic monotone which he probably thinks indicates calm assurance but which actually signifies a lack of passion and emotional engagement.  The man has no personal warmth whatsoever.  And at a time of crisis, people want a leader who talks to them directly from the heart, not just a zombie reading a prepared statement which he has clearly not even looked at in advance.

As for the content of both his public appearances yesterday, it was just more reading from the same tired script.  "Beijing won't change its mind".  "Occupy Central is illegal" (we know that - what part of "civil disobedience" doesn't he understand?)  "Government won't tolerate illegal activities".  "Strictly in accordance with the Basic Law" (untrue, but that's for another post).  And Blah Blah Blah.

Clearly Leung - like his two predecessors - totally lacks imagination.  He looks increasingly like an actor who has learned his lines thoroughly but then finds himself on stage with someone like Spike Milligan or Robin Williams, doggedly trying to stick to the script while they improvise entire new plotlines all around him.

At this point, there are only two useful things that Leung could say to the Hong Kong public.  The first is "I misrepresented Hong Kong's views to the NPCSC and helped create this mess we're in.  I'm sorry."  I doubt he will do this, but there are still one or two of his government ministers who have a little integrity left - I'm hoping they will break ranks, admit they got it wrong, and say they don't want to be part of this sorry show any more.

The second is "I resign".


Video - I couldn't find a video of his second speech yesterday, which was in Chinese, but here's the earlier one in English where he's also obviously reading woodenly from his script.  It's hard to see why he needs one when he's repeated all these lies and half-truths so many times before.  Perhaps his handlers at the Liaison Office are scared he may stray off-message if they don't put the exact words into his mouth.

Much ado about much ado

South of the Border

ATV News headline: "Development Secretary tries to calm villagers affected by border development". [my italics]

Interesting choice of phrase there, considering there are suggestions in some circles that the North East New Territories development, as it's officially called, may in reality be less about Fanling North than Shenzhen South.  Paranoia?  See here also, then you decide.

Double Fault

In response to my last post, Troika says "Funny how the SCuMP never draws attention to its own gaffes".  I suggest the reason is that they don't even notice them.  Certainly yesterday's web page, where the same headline appeared twice, suggests that no one is actually editing (or even reading) their output.

What kind of fakery is this?

The grand arrival of the "Buddha's parietal bone relic" in Hong Kong last night, to be displayed at the "China-backed" World Buddhist Forum in the Coliseum, was certainly a colourful spectacle, but the whole event reeks of fakery.

Leaving aside the irony of an avowedly atheist regime sponsoring a religious event, the relic itself is of dubious provenance.  Claimed to be part of the Buddha's skull, it was apparently only unearthed in Nanjing, China, in 2010 (or 2008 - China's propaganda organ, the China Daily, does not even seem sure of the date).   I have seen no clear explanation of how a fragment of bone dug up in Nanjing can be positively identified as coming from a body cremated 2,000 miles away 2,500 years ago.  In fact the whole business of religious relics has historically been mostly about persuading the gullible faithful to part with their money - it has often been jokingly said that there was enough "wood of the true cross" in Europe to build a battleship.

Even if the relic is genuine, why are believers being invited to worship it?  This is surely contrary to the teachings of the Buddha that suffering is caused by excessive attachment to the material world.  Whatever remains significant about Sakyamuni, it is not his physical body.

Further evidence that the Forum is more of a propaganda event than a religious one comes from the presence of the so-called Panchen Lama.  In fact no one knows the whereabouts of the real Panchen Lama - or even whether he is still alive - other than the Chinese authorities who abducted him and engineered his disappearance after his recognition by the Dalai Lama.  The person attending the Hong Kong event is the fake Panchen Lama chosen by the Chinese government, who have no more authority to appoint the Panchen Lama than they do to select the next Pope. - which they would probably like to do if they thought they could get away with it!

Doublespeak to the max

An early contender for the Orwell Award 2014: proving yet again that every child should be given a copy of George Orwell's Politics and the English Language as an essential tool of life, Beijing mouthpiece the Global Times says this:
“The South China Sea disputes should be settled in a peaceful manner, but that doesn’t mean China can’t resort to non-peaceful measures in the face of provocation from Vietnam and the Philippines. Many people believe that a forced war would convince some countries of China’s sincerely peaceful intentions."
or in plain English, "if you don't believe in my sincerely peaceful intentions, I will use violent means to convince you that I am not violent."  More stuff you can't make up.