… and some interesting points. Also from phone-in calls:
No one expected what we now have going on in our streets. Surprise to all.
Maybe one of the reasons for the rioting is the pressure Hongkongers have been under for so many years: too much homework, huge exam pressure, long work hours, tiny apartments, no hope for younger ones to buy even a shoe box (some now just 12 sq.m, the size of a car park). So maybe part of it is just people having a collective mental breakdown.
Many people suffering a form of PTSD.
Many families are gravely divided over the protests. Young v old. Yellow v Blue. Pro-protests v pro-government.
A phone in with latest HKU polls: increasing tolerance for violence “if the government doesn’t listen” (61%). About 52% have “zero faith” in police.
That last one is lunacy. In thirty years we’ve had various run-ins with the police, both ourselves and on behalf of local friends. The police are always strict, stern and by-the-book. They are a good disciplined force. Before the riots 84% admired the police. They were “Asia’s finest”. They haven’t changed! Except that they now have to deal with daily threats to themselves and to Hong Kong. They’ve had to learn to be a riot police force. Let there be no doubt: what’s happening each weekend are riots. Nothing less.
ADDED: that figure in support for violence, 61%, I find alarming. For what use can it be to trash MTR stations? So people can’t get to work? What possible help can that be to anything or anyone? To imagine that it will help bring Universal Suffrage is a fantasy, a delusion. The opposite is the case. The more the violence, the less likely this government can even offer to restart talks.
That’s so for reasons within the Basic Law, which I won’t go into right now. Maybe later. The BL is our constitution. It can’t be gainsaid.
And if “Free Hong Kong” means independence, then that’s even more delusional. There is no way this side of a frozen hell that Beijing will stand by as HK declares independence. Xi will indeed “shatter bones and crush bodies”. It’s crude and horrifying, but true.
Forgive me if I don’t support the violent destruction of Hong Kong by anarchists for the sake of insane illusions.
ADDED: a listener says why not worry more about the mental health of the “oppressed" than the oppressor. This too is loony. Who are the “oppressors”? What oppression? This is the freest, safest city in Asia, if not the world (at least it has been, till these riots). In what precise, exact, factual way are the people “oppressed”?
I sometimes think we’re seeing a mass hallucination here.
Alex Lo: Condemn those who don’t condemn the violence.
No one expected what we now have going on in our streets. Surprise to all.
Maybe one of the reasons for the rioting is the pressure Hongkongers have been under for so many years: too much homework, huge exam pressure, long work hours, tiny apartments, no hope for younger ones to buy even a shoe box (some now just 12 sq.m, the size of a car park). So maybe part of it is just people having a collective mental breakdown.
Many people suffering a form of PTSD.
Many families are gravely divided over the protests. Young v old. Yellow v Blue. Pro-protests v pro-government.
A phone in with latest HKU polls: increasing tolerance for violence “if the government doesn’t listen” (61%). About 52% have “zero faith” in police.
That last one is lunacy. In thirty years we’ve had various run-ins with the police, both ourselves and on behalf of local friends. The police are always strict, stern and by-the-book. They are a good disciplined force. Before the riots 84% admired the police. They were “Asia’s finest”. They haven’t changed! Except that they now have to deal with daily threats to themselves and to Hong Kong. They’ve had to learn to be a riot police force. Let there be no doubt: what’s happening each weekend are riots. Nothing less.
ADDED: that figure in support for violence, 61%, I find alarming. For what use can it be to trash MTR stations? So people can’t get to work? What possible help can that be to anything or anyone? To imagine that it will help bring Universal Suffrage is a fantasy, a delusion. The opposite is the case. The more the violence, the less likely this government can even offer to restart talks.
That’s so for reasons within the Basic Law, which I won’t go into right now. Maybe later. The BL is our constitution. It can’t be gainsaid.
And if “Free Hong Kong” means independence, then that’s even more delusional. There is no way this side of a frozen hell that Beijing will stand by as HK declares independence. Xi will indeed “shatter bones and crush bodies”. It’s crude and horrifying, but true.
Forgive me if I don’t support the violent destruction of Hong Kong by anarchists for the sake of insane illusions.
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| Graffiti at the Airport. The Chinese says the same as the English In Cantonese characters. Note: “Chinese communist party is capitalist”! (and therefore bad) |
I was in China in the 70s when it really was Socialist.
Barely able to feed and clothe its people.
We all had ration cards for rice, meat and cotton.
Barely able to feed and clothe its people.
We all had ration cards for rice, meat and cotton.
Post-Deng, China became successful to the exact extent that it became capitalist.
ADDED: a listener says why not worry more about the mental health of the “oppressed" than the oppressor. This too is loony. Who are the “oppressors”? What oppression? This is the freest, safest city in Asia, if not the world (at least it has been, till these riots). In what precise, exact, factual way are the people “oppressed”?
I sometimes think we’re seeing a mass hallucination here.
Alex Lo: Condemn those who don’t condemn the violence.
