Thursday, September 30, 2021
Monday, August 23, 2021
The Lion Rock Spirit Lives
The picture shows a group of people who rushed to lift the taxi that crashed in Taipo yesterday (at a spot where I've crossed the road hundreds of times) to free victims trapped underneath.
This is far from the first such case in Hong Kong. Years ago I helped to lift a car that knocked down a young boy in North Point. Meanwhile it has been widely reported that in mainland China, most people will steer well clear of helping accident (or worse) victims rather than get involved in potentially messy consequences.
There would be scope for an interesting master's thesis on why mutual aid thrives in a supposedly competitive capitalist society while being conspicuously absent in a supposedly collectivist one. Suffice it to say here that "one country, two systems" is not just about politica and economics.
Monday, August 09, 2021
Saturday, July 03, 2021
A Centenary Worth Celebrating
There is a lot of bally hoo at the moment about the 100th anniversary of a certain organisation, but we won't talk about that. Meanshile there is a local centenary which many Hongkongers may perhaps consider more worthy of celebration.
Three times in my life I have found stray animals and handed them in to the SPCA - a rabbit roaming in, of all places, the Academy of Performing Arts garden; a puppy unable to escape from a concrete drainage channel in Jardine's Lookout; and a desperately sick kitten, its eyes two pools of pus, dumped in an alley in Kowloon Tong. Without the SPCA, life for these, and many thousands more lost, sick and abandoned animals every year, would be immeasurably worse. Their valuable work costs money - why not become a member and give them your support?
Thursday, July 01, 2021
Thursday, June 24, 2021
Saturday, June 19, 2021
I Ran
Watching BBC News earlier today, I was struck by some key characteristics of the current Iranian election:
- The ruling elite selects the winner in advance and ensures that their selected candidate receives the most votes.
- To make sure of this, many popular opposition figures are barred from standing for office.
- The government also puts pressure on the media to suppress dissenting voices.
- However, the government does not exercise ultimate authority; on all major decisions, it defers to the dictates of a self-appointed higher power that tolerates no defiance.
- In the face of this situation, many citizens are becoming disillusioned with the prospects of achieving change through electoral politics and are not bothering to vote.
Now, where else in the world does this remind me of?
Friday, June 04, 2021
Lest We (Are Forced to) Forget
Few people in Hong Kong take the South China Morning Post seriously as a news source any more, but one of the few remaining points of excellene in the paper is Harry's cartoons. With the Victoria Park candlelight vigil banned for the second consecutive year, the June 4th Museum closed on the bureaucratic pretext that it requires a public entertainment licence (massacres are so entertaining, aren't they?), and organisers of the vigil being arrested or already in prison, today's cartoon is particularly poignant:
The Hong Kong Free Press also has a number of articles marking the date. And Hemlock is incisive as usual - pointing out that the aurhorities' clumsy efforts to suppress remembrance of the 1989 events are merely bringing more attention to them (the Streisand effect at work).
P.S. A valuable resource: How to Respond to Tiananmen Trolls.
Saturday, March 06, 2021
Quack Doctor
No one can deny that HKU professor of microbiology Yuen Kwok-yung has made a major contribution to Hong Kong';s fight against the Covid-19 virus - but really, what's with the duck's beak mask?