I declare the weekend open especially early with a little roundup of Quotes of the Day.
The Standard’s editorial blathers away unproductively about Hong Kong student leader Joshua Wong being turned away from Thailand, concluding that the high-profile activist’s career is – like that of all politicians, ultimately – now ending in failure…
Except the kid is 19 and still too young even to qualify as a Hong Kong legislator.
Speaking of politicians and failure, the South China Morning Post holds a debate on, for all practical purposes, Chief Executive CY Leung.
I had received an invitation suggesting that the discussion would work on such assumptions as ‘protests are the cause, not effect, of our problems’…
…and so didn’t go. It seems the event went the other way, with nearly everyone falling into line with the perhaps over-simplistic consensus spreading out into establishment circles that CY is a disaster and we would be better off without him.
Spreading a little happiness and sunshine, newly elected radical lawmaker Nathan Law (aged 23) expressed genuine delight at having found he can now call up officials and be taken seriously…
On a more sinister note, one participant did not express an opinion on CY – Holden Chow of the ‘tight-lipped’ DAB…
The SCMP is too coy to point out that members of the DAB, the core of the Chinese Communist Party front in town, do not have opinions of their own. They will ‘decide’ who they think should be the next CE when Beijing’s agents tell them what to think. Everyone else on the panel – and in Hong Kong – is in charge of their own mind and their own thoughts. This is what alienates local people from the sovereign power and its pitiful puppets like CY, Holden Chow, etc. Presumably, panelists’ detailed chat about filibustering or post-CY harmony obscured this fundamental fact.
Ironically, it is harder to escape such contradictions in Liaoning Province, where the authorities must try to rectify the rigging of a rigged election for a rubber-stamp legislative assembly. Perhaps the measures passed by the legislature should be invalid, as the rigged membership was itself rigged? But the procedures and outcomes are all rigged anyway, so the rigging of the rigged elections would not have affected the outcome…
Well that’s a relief, more or less. Any bunch of zombies would have produced the same results. But it gets worse. This is in a society where rule of man overrides rule of law. How does a rigged legal system take action against people who rig a rigged election?
The system works great against the innocent – but can’t handle it when the accused are genuinely bad.
“Handling the case strictly in accordance with the law is the last choice for the central authorities because it is too complicated and has never happened before.”
Quote of the year….
It’s what happens when the law is more flexible than Gumby.
You may have missed a more momentous event, “Ed” Leung’s petition to be allowed to stand after all in NTE, which may run and run.
As for CY, it’s finely balanced whether he will run, in which case he has to win. Overloaded bandwagons easily overturn.
Georgie, are self-plagiarism and self-cannibalisation illegal? (I never could get my head round the Moebius strip.)
Reading black on grey is never a pleasure. You can press a button on most Photo Editors and make any such press cutting into gorgeous BLACK AND WHITE to read…yes…Black on Perfect White. Such niftiness made NTSCMP the blog of blogs. It’s no longer all right to be a pissed old hack baffled by new technology.
The election fakers were removed by bribe takers.
And we were not yet pure.
The bribe takers were removed by profit makers.
The profit makers were removed by promise breakers.
The promise breakers were removed by shadow bankers.
The shadow bankers were removed by state-owned enterprise wankers.
The state-owned enterprise wankers were removed by land grabbers.
The land grabbers were removed by back stabbers.
The back stabbers were removed by asset stealers.
The asset stealers were removed by wheeler dealers.
The wheeler dealers were removed by people with US Dollar hoards.
The people with US Dollar hoards were removed by Communist landlords.
The Communist landlords were removed by shoe shiners and creepers.
The shoe shiners and creepers were removed by brothel keepers.
The brothel keepers were removed by the Standing Committee members’ sons.
The Standing Committee members’ sons were removed by hired guns.
The hired guns were removed by a secret police force.
The secret police force was removed by a new group of election fakers.
Of course.
And we were not yet pure.
Nice lyrics @Knownot. Your creativity shines once again.
I’d like to set them to music – should it nod to ‘Blowing in the Wind’ or more ‘Skeleton Dance’?
Ah, I have it: Sister Rosetta Tharpe – This Train
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOrhjgt-_Qc
Reader – Thank you! A wonderful song, new to me.
This train don’t pull no wankers
No crapshooters and no whisky drinkers.
This train is a clean train.
As she says, “I’m gonna see how many gonna ride on it!”
It does sound awfully like ‘wankers’, but in the context of the song, her gospel background, and the Ngram search on ‘wanker’ (it’s modern), I believe she’s saying ‘no anchors’.