RTHK, HKU in New Year clean-ups

Music by pro-democracy artists including Denise Ho, Tat Ming Pair, Dear Jane and Charmaine Fong is now apparently barred from RTHK’s programming. 

And after 33 years, the June 4 slogan on HKU’s Swire Bridge gets the Pillar of Shame treatment. Thread on the removal work here.

On a brighter note, the government confirms that it will not imprison you for debating the effectiveness of the ‘Zero Covid’ policy:

In response to media enquiries about whether discussions on the effectiveness of the “zero infection” target in the fight against the epidemic would violate the Hong Kong National Security Law, a spokesman for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government said today (January 30) that making general remarks and discussion is not illegal…

Well gee, thanks! This follows an outburst from DAB lawmaker Junius Ho, who seemed to think he was patriotically defending national policy, and a tentative shift in the Hong Kong government’s stance in the form of pushing ‘dynamic’ Zero Covid.

In another slap in the face for the DAB, Home Affairs Secretary Casper Tsui looks set to be ‘let go’ for his Party-gate embarrassment. The regime is also cleaning up its dim-witted loyalist trash.

A damning must-read essay by Jerome Cohen in Academia Sinica Law Journal on ‘Hong Kong’s Transformed Criminal Justice System: Instrument of Fear’…

The CCP, the NSL agents it sent from the mainland, and its minions in the SAR government promptly demonstrated that the power to arbitrarily deprive people of their personal liberty, as well as their freedoms of expression, is the power to silence a dissatisfied community by destroying the careers, families and civic support systems of the targeted resisters.

It particularly covers the depressing impact of the NatSec regime on the judiciary. 

A lovingly curated selection of regional and international reading, viewing and listening to usher in Tiger Year…

Human Rights Watch hails the Beijing Winter Olympics.

Chinese state media whine about Taiwan classifying Taiwanese/Hoklo as an indigenous language. (Some background here.) Note the underlying fear of what the CCP sees as de-Sinicization.

The Top 10 Rumours about China’s demographics. 

Some extracts from a 1973 trade meeting between Mao Zedong and Henry Kissinger, in which the Great Helmsman becomes obsessed with the possibility of exporting thousands of Chinese women to the US.

A long interview with Michelle Garnaut on the closure of M at the Bund, where I dined around 20 years ago alongside Shanghai’s ‘most lovely and terrific people’, apparently. As with her previous M at the Fringe in Hong Kong, a more-memorable-than-average restaurant thanks to the founder’s personality. Contrast with today’s cookie-cutter dining ‘concepts’.

A long and prurient fascinating look at the comings and goings of Thailand’s (now King) Vajiralongorn, who has for years spent far more time in Germany than in his home kingdom (where family and harem are ‘cooped up in the same palace’). Everything you could possibly want – from German quack clinics to uniform fetishes to assassination plots to chinaware-splurges. 

David Corn on that Tennessee school board’s banning of Maus – it’s ‘dumber than you think’.

On other neolithic peoples – thoughts on the Beaker Culture’s arrival in Britain…

It’s possible that Stonehenge was a crisis led cultural response to this demographic disaster. Isotopic and other evidence shows that animals were brought from all over the British Isles for the communal construction.

Slightly less ancient history – memories of interoffice mail (like email, but on paper, with the inbox and outbox made of wood and sitting on your desk).

Many many years ago, I worked at one of Hong Kong’s esteemed and venerable hongs. Messages (often with attachments) from people in other parts of the company landed on my desk in a reusable string-sealed envelope. Addressees’ name were written consecutively on a grid, so you could see that Mary Wong, Accounts Manager, 6th Floor had previously sent something in the envelope to Fred Chan, Marketing Flunky, 3rd Floor, who had then sent something on to Me, Company Genius, 7th Floor. Sometimes, you would notice that Mary and Fred had sent messages back and forth to each other several times. Endless possibilities for traffic analysis.

Although I was just a young minion, my corporate duties often involved senior management, so I received memos from The Chairman, 8th Floor, The CEO, 8th Floor, The Financial Director, 8th Floor and similar top executives – sometimes in envelopes I had previously sent to them. The grids on these envelopes often showed an earlier succession of memos circulating among these demigods. I reserved these as ‘power envelopes’ and used them when sending polite requests for action or whatever to peers in other departments if I needed to subliminally intimidate them. If the medium (ie envelope) was the message, the message was ‘I work with the Chairman, so don’t mess with me’. Especially useful when dealing with Personnel or IT.

It was a huge relief to move from that colonial hierarchical corporate culture to the more informal feudal atmosphere of the Chinese family-run mega-business, where everyone knew the Company Gwailo worked directly for the Emperor and kowtowed instantly.

And finally, after groveling to the CCP, the WHO gets into Neil Young and Crazy Horse in the documentary A Band A Brotherhood A Barn. Scenes from Colorado and rehearsals (or actual takes – hard to tell with NY) for the new album.