So… things closed down again in Hong Kong

Siena Pool. Where I’ve been spending most afternoons. Now closed 

Clubs, pubs, restaurants, pools all, closed for a week at least. When will this virus call it a day?
Meantime, I saw in today’s Post that tourist arrivals in June were down 99.7% on the year before. Imagine! It can’t get any lower without being zero.

What to do, Hong Kong?

What to do?
You’re a protester. You’ve been on the streets of Kowloon and Wanchai for the last year, marching and trashing. Fighting, as you see it, against “oppression” and Chinese “encroachment”. And all you’ve achieved is Beijing unilaterally imposing a National Security Law on us One that is so vague and all-encompassing that it’s truly scary. One that has already had effects: pulling books from libraries, cancelling demonstrations, chilling free speech.
In short, what you’ve achieved is the opposite of your aims. Where there was no oppression, we now have oppression. Where there had been no encroachment there is now encroachment.
So what to do?
Do you regroup and reconsider your tactics?
Not if you’re this lot.
What you then do is double down. You threaten to block every piece of government legislation. You threaten to go back in the streets. You vote in primary elections (last Sunday) for the most extreme candidates, ones that want independence for Hong Kong.
No doubt this makes the activists feel worthy and brave. But is it sensible?
If not, does that mean we have to do nothing? To appease the dictatorship in Beijing? To kowtow to the tyrant? No it does not. Deciding not to take actions that are sure to be counterproductive is just the first step. The next is be a rather more subtle and nuanced, about some clear and achievable aims. That is: to open discreet channels of discussion with Beijing about two issues (a) continuing the One Country Two Systems (1C2S) beyond 2047 and (b) restarting talks on universal suffrage, now that the Security Law is in place.
Sadly nuance and subtlety is not a strong point of the pan Dems. They’d rather plan to block all legislation of the government come September, when the polls indicate they may get a majority in the Legco.
It’s their old play book. It’s failed before and will fail again. We need our own Hong Kong-grown version of Deng Xiaoping. A visionary. The one who gave us 1C2S. Where is they?

“We had to destroy the village in order to save it”. Part I

Thus spake a US marine when torching a village in Vietnam. And thus speaks Trump, to Hong Kong, signing the ‘Hong Kong Autonomy Act’, which does the opposite: reduces our autonomy.
It’s worth recalling that last year in the lead up to the mishandled introduction of the Extradition Bill, Beijing had no views on it. Hong Kong delegates to the National People’s Congress in March 2019 were given no “instructions” or “guidance” on the the I’ll-fated draft Bill that was promoted by our own C-E Carrie Lam. It was not until a delegation of pan democrats, led by former chief secretary Anson Chan, went to the US to urge Washington to oppose the Bill, that Beijing sat up and took notice. Even then it was simply to make a statement of support for the Bill, while urging Lam to note people’s fears.
IOW, Beijing had neither initiated, nor influenced, the proposed Extradition Bill. And only took an interest after international involvement.
You can imagine any government, certainly the US’, concerned at outsiders’ interference.
This seems to be the first instinct of the pan Dems when they see something they don’t like: to go pleading to the US. It fails every time. They keep doing it. They keep failing. It failed in these last twelve months of protests and riots. They threaten to keep doing it. Well done pan Dems.

The Independence Day Speech

A bit late to the party, this one....
Wandering past the German cable TV station Deutsche-Welle the other day, overheard the anchor woman saying that Donald Trump’s Independence Day speech had beeen “very divisive”. Full of “racism and white supremacy” she informed us. All in “support of confederate statues”.  Oh really, I thought. Must see this. So I hied me to a site and watched it in full. Not long, about half an hour. [Transcript]
He was reading from a teleprompter, so it was written for him and was not one of his extempore acts.

Casual bigotry at the swimming pool?

Our local swimming hole

Lounging between laps at the pool yesterday, I get chatting with a woman doing ditto.
She’s been here in Discovery Bay for 20 years.
“Same here” I say, “23 years”.
“So you like it here?”
“Sure, I like DB. I like Hong Kong.… And what about you?” I dare to ask, “are you optimistic about Hong Kong, or …?”
She’s cautious. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you know, with the new National Security Law and all…”.
“I’m Chinese,” she says, “so I’m optimistic. I think it’s good.”
It’s a lovely day. Clear, 30 degrees, cloudless. Central Hong Kong clean-cut to the east. It seems safe, lounging in this lovely pool, to be a touch contrarian.
“But there are many Chinese — over billion! Here in Hong Kong and on the mainland. And with many different views. You know, Blue and Yellow ‘n all. Some are optimistic. Some not.”
She avoids this. “What about you?” she asks.
“Yes, I’m pretty optimistic. Well… maybe more like… I’m hopeful.”
She doubles down. “I’m Chinese. So I trust my government”.
And I’m wondering, does she mean “Chinese” as in the nation? Or “Chinese“ as in the ethnicity? And is there any other place where anyone would say something like that? “I’m English, so I trust Boris”? Or “I’m Australian so I hate the Poms”?
I say I enjoy going to China and meeting Chinese, am married to someone born in Beijing, but I sure don’t trust Xi Jinping. Which she just lets pass.
“Where are you from?” she asks.
“Well, I like to say I’m from here. From Hong Kong.” Faint smile.  “I feel more Chinese than anything. And I’ve lived here longer than anywhere”.
She smiles, and we leave it at that, as she swims off.
And I’m thinking that that question — “where are you from” — has been deemed a “micro aggression” in the woke west, a kind of casual bigotry. It is said to delegitimise the person you’re asking. For me, I’ve had it a million times as I’ve lived in Asia 40+ years. I find it a touch niggling, but nothing to get hung up about. It’s understandable for people to be curious about anyone anywhere who doesn’t fit the mould of the majority. Sometimes I’ve had fun with it. In southern China I was asked “where are you from” and said “from the Northeast. I’m from Heilongjiang”, to their astonishment. “Oh… is that what they look like up there!” (Me, 6’3”, long nose.… which the Chinese call “high nose”).
And I wonder. The term “racism” has been expanded, at least by American-based progressives (the “woke”), to include the concept of “power”. Hence People of Colour cannot be racist because they don’t have power, whereas white people are innately and inevitably racist - whatever they say or do - because they have power. [ADDED: and here’s the wonderful Titania on that issue]
So I wonder. What about here in Asia, where white people are a small minority? Does that mean caucasians are innately “non racist”? Does that mean that the POC in this region are innately and inevitably racist?  Should white people complain about “micro aggressions” ? Are we now able to be victims?
Clearly not, but it’s the sort of nonsense you get by following the woke-west ideology ad absurdum.

The wonders of our universe

Astronomers have discovered that there is a vast wall across the southern border of the local cosmos.

The South Pole Wall, as it is known, consists of thousands of galaxies — beehives of trillions of stars and dark worlds, as well as dust and gas — aligned in a curtain arcing across at least 700 million light-years of space. It winds behind the dust, gas and stars of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, from the constellation Perseus in the Northern Hemisphere to the constellation Apus in the far south. It is so massive that it perturbs the local expansion of the universe.

But don’t bother trying to see it. The entire conglomeration is behind the Milky Way, in what astronomers quaintly call the zone of avoidance.

An international team of astronomers led by Daniel Pomarède of Paris-Saclay University and R. Brent Tully of the University of Hawaii announced this new addition to the local universe on Friday in a paper in Astrophysical Journal. The paper is festooned with maps and diagrams of blobby and stringy features of our local universe as well as a video tour of the South Pole Wall.

— From Beyond the Milky Way a Massive Wall of Galaxies

That tiny dot in the very middle is the whole
of our Milky Way Galaxy

This report is also at Althouse blog, with many interesting comments. Including one that says our most recent estimate of the likelihood that we are alone in the universe, is 38%. 

Coronavirus returns to Hong Kong

And the next two weeks will be critical in controlling what the experts are calling our “Third Wave”.
The measures are simple: For Individuals:: distancing, disinfecting, masking. For Government: testing, tracing, tracking.
Also: protecting the vulnerable. Which is people like me: elderly with conditions.
We may just have to adapt to this as the “new normal”. Which is what I said yesterday. We have to continue with life: work, play, study, sport. And my sense, at least here in Hong Kong, where we were in the front line and early into the virus, is that people are already into the “new normal”. People are getting out and about. They carry masks, put them on when needed. Disinfecting is universal. We are in the New Normal.
From ‘How serious is Hong Kong’s Third Wave of Covid-19 infections and what can we do to end it?’:

[HKU Microbiologist Dr] Leung Kwok-Young hoped a “1+1+X” formula for social-distancing measures would prevent an epidemic. Under the formula, residents had to “endure the pain for a week” and refrain from social gatherings, and then be prepared to do it for another week if the situation had not improved.

“I hope that through these two weeks, the invisible chain can be broken,” Leung said, adding that the situation could continue until next year without a vaccine.

But the Centre for Health Protection noted the coronavirus might not go away and people would have to learn to live with it and adapt to the new normal. It said the public should be prepared for small local outbreaks from time to time and that social-distancing measures might need to be tightened at times.

The WHO warned in May it could take five years to get the pandemic under control around the world. 

Sunday arvo, at home

Death threats to Post Senior Editor

This is a vid by Yonden Lhatoo of the South China Morning Post, from last year, about the protests. I’ve had a number of run ins with Yonden over the years, but I support him in those comments, even if I don’t agree that Hate Speech laws will help.
Today his weekly column in the Post talks of some horrid death threats he’s had from these brave pro-democracy supporters. In the comments we get the usual “it’s a false flag by China” excuses. And, TBF, who knows? Could be. But odds are, I’d reckon they’re actual threats. 

Hong Kong Coronavirus spike: a pause for reflection

Our coronavirus cases here in Hong Kong jumped in the last few days, after months of close to zero. So we’ve reinstated mild lockdowns, more distancing rules at eateries, clubs and gyms. Schools will close early for the summer.
What’s going on worldwide? Answer: nothing much. For three months, worldwide daily deaths from Covid  have been flat, at around 4,500.
Here is a chart of mine, to mid July:

From my spreadsheet based on Worldometer figures 

The figures May to July are flat, even as we’ve had worldwide easing of lockdowns. Is this the “new normal”?  Maybe so; if would make sense that we’ve managed to “flatten the curve”. If it is the new normal, then annualised deaths, based in the current average per month, would be around, let’s say, 1.6 million. How does it compare with worldwide deaths from other diseases? Answer: around the level of diabetes or liver disease. Serious to be sure. Not the worst, though, and surely one that can be endured, at roughly 2% of the 170,000 world’s daily deaths from all causes. Here are the annual figures of worldwide mortality, by cause:

Click to enlarge 

So the question remains: is it worth locking down whole economies, or to continue discussing the reinstating lockdowns (as they’re doing now in Melbourne, my daughter’s home town) for something at this level of human mortality?

My answer: NO, of course not.
It remains the case that there is no statistical link between strength of lockdown and Covid mortality. 

I showed this back in May. 

Critics of Sweden’s mild lockdowns who compare its death rates unfavourably with its Nordic neighbours, are left with the awkward question: then why has Sweden done better than Spain, UK, Italy and Belgium, all of which had stringent lockdowns?  

In the US, with the highest death rates, its 50 states have adopted widely different strategies, and again there is no correlation between stringency of lockdown and death rates. Nor is there, by the way, any correlation between death rates per Republican or Democrat-run state, despite what the US media would have you believe. 

So why keep talking lockdowns? Especially why continue lockdown of schools, given we know the virus only mildly affects the young, and that countries that have reopened schools have not suffered Covid spikes. 

We have to start treating the daily deaths from Covid as our new normal, somewhere towards the bottom of our morbidity and mortality pack. Protect the vulnerable, promote disinfecting and masks. And get back to work, to school and to play. 

‘Why US and China are both stalked by concerns about the Cultural Revolution’

Deng Xiaoping: “it doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white
as long as it catches mice”

All this talk of America’s Great Cultural Revolution and how it’s like China’s of 1966-77, reminds me of my days working at a People’s Commune just outside Beijing in 1977. This was part of our our “open door schooling” (开门办学), a Cultural Revolution idea that I thought, then and in retrospect, was not too bad. We were sent our to work with the peasants, to learn from them, to find out about real life and natural-born revolutionaries. We loved it. Especially after the frigid cold of our classrooms, which following the Tangshan earthquake of November’76, were tents on the sports field.
Of all the class study I did at the Peking Languages Institute during those epochal years of 1976 and 1977, my most vivid memories were of those early spring days in ‘77 working the fields, picking and packing Jiucai, a kind of garlic-flavoured spring onion. And how difficult  it was. And how hard to understand the guttural peasant accents, right there in rural Peking, right by the modern mandarins and their pure Mandarin, these earth-beaten folk, leathery skin, hard hands, quick, shy smiles, their Chinese, their peasant language of rolled “r”s and swallowed vowels, nothing like our classroom teachers queen’s Mandarin.
We didn’t sleep at the commune. I guess there wasn’t enough room for us, and in any case they’d not have wanted the peasants to pick up any bad thoughts from we foreigners. They were, by the way, called “peasants” in the Chinese of those days, part of the favoured threesome of “workers, peasants, soldiers”.  We took meals in the fields. After two months I got the bill - 2 yuan 20 fen. Fifty cents. Cheap, even in those days.
On the bus one day I spotted a slogan painted on a village wall. It said — or had said — “sternly criticise the arch unrepentant capitalist reader Deng Xiaoping”. In those days there were no advertisements in China, anywhere. The only things on walls were propaganda. After a while you ignored them, just as the Chinese did, especially our peasant hosts. What caught my attention was the the three characters of “Deng Xiaoping” had been painted over but were still visible. What was painted over was another set of three characters —四人邦 — meaning “Gang of Four”. “Deng Xiaoping” in black paint, the “Gang of Four” in red paint. Look, and you see one version; squint, and you see the other.  The capriciousness of Chinese politics in one graffito.
I took a photo which I sent to a mate of mine in the media and it duly appeared in the Economist, with a caption to that effect — rhe capriciousness of Chinese politics in one picture.
So what I’m wondering is: if the US cultural revolution continues along the path of the Chinese one of forty-odd years ago, could it, too, suddenly flip on a dime? Could the woke-erati be painted over, overthrown by some counter revolution?
I doubt it for two reasons. One, things were really a lot worse in China of ‘76 than they are in America of ‘20. What Mao called “contradictions” in society had to become “acute” before action — or re-action— took place. Two: I suspect that if one delves into what’s going on in the US now we will find more differences than similarities between that and China’s GCPR.
Related: Wang Xiangwei article in this very issue in today’s SCMP
Earleir Post: Mao and American revolutions.

Sound sense from Katharine Birbalsingh on Triggernometry

I like the way she comes to a full circle in the far Left and far Right meeting at the bottom of the circle, at 6 o’clock.  And the ultra-woke and Antifa being around 5 o’clock. With the racism of someone like professor Starkey coming from the other direction at about 7 o’clock. She’s not the first to have this observation, that extremes at either end of the political spectrum tend to converge, essentially on a form of totalitarianism, one of the Left, one of the Right. She’s not the first, but it’s not often enough said. And not often enough said, as she does, that you might consider someone like David Starkey to be racist, yet still like the man for his mind and interestingness.
Note that KK and FF — the hosts of Triggernometry— are stand-up comedians, men of the Left, who are nonetheless pissed-off with some of the inanities of the Left, especially of what Maajid Nawaz calls the “regressive Left”. There is nothing “progressive” about dividing the world into racial camps and insisting that all you are is about your race. Whatever happened to Martin Luther King’s “content of one’s character” being more important than one’s race? Answer, according to woke orthodoxy is: that’s racist!

BLM should be Cancelled

I’m talking of the organisation, BlackLivesMatter.com, of BLM in Caps. I’m not talking of the lower-case blm, the understanding, the acceptance, the strong belief that — of course! —  black lives matter.
The reason to cancel upper case BLM? Because it’s a Revolutionary Marxist organisation bent on overturning the state.
The three co-founders of BLM — Patrisse Khan-Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi — are self-described revolutionary Marxists who have a “deep understanding of Marxist theory”. Which theory includes choosing a target, freezing it and demonising it. Hence their target of police killing of black people. For who could not be against that?  And so people are enjoined, they proclaim “black lives matter” (lower-case) and are escorted into the agenda of the BLM, the upper-case Marxist outfit.
Alicia Garza says she is influenced by Assata Shakur, a Cuban-exiled Black Liberation revolutionary wanted on multiple murder charges in the US. /Snip:

When I use Assata’s powerful demand in my organizing work, I always begin by sharing where it comes from, sharing about Assata’s significance to the Black Liberation Movement, what it’s political purpose and message is, and why it’s important in our context.

The aims of BLM, from their website and writings of the co-founders:

• Overthrow the market economy
• Abolish the nuclear family
• Abolish the police

Enough there for cancelling? If not cancelling — too far a bridge? — then surely, at least, enough to give up our current fawning, our “taking a knee” for the upper-case organisation? Or is it too hard to make the distinction between the upper-case BLM and the lower-case black lives mattering? Because people might mistake your scruples for failure to acknowledge that, lower-case, black lives matter? That you might be labelled racist?

While America and others are busily shutting down China’s Confucius Institutes, teaching mainly Chinese language and culture*,  because they “challenge western values”, isn’t BLM, the upper-case, home-grown Revolutionary Marxist outfit, a much more dangerous organisation?  Isn’t BLM a much greater and more present danger to western values?
Given the aims above, of course it is.

********

* China’s Confucius Institutes sounded like a pretty good idea to me. Teaching Chinese language and culture. Great. And I’m a bit of a fan of Confucius. I’ve read his Analects in the original (论语). Many of his teachings are relevant through the ages. But I wasn’t surprised, especially after the ascent of Xi Jinping in 2012, to read credible reports that the Institutes were (sometimes) funnelling money and influence to try to ban western university studies of issues Beijing didn’t approve of.

Hing Kong: Security Law starts to chill

Hearing reports of journalists quitting  local media, activists leaving Hong Kong, leaving social media. Some is self censorship. Some appears genuine fears the new law will trap them and it’s up to life in prison for some “crimes”.
That said, criticism of Beijing, including Xi Jinping, is still happening. For how long?

(The new Hong Kong National Security Law was passed by China’s National People’s Congress on June 30, and foisted  on HK via Appendix 3 of the Basic Law, given that HK had been unable to pass the law itself, as required under a article 23 of the Basic Law.  The NSL is much tougher - some say “draconian” - than would have been the one local politician Regina Ip tried to pass in 2003. We have paid the price for being dilatory and pusillanimous).

Baby Bulbuls are alive!

Eating bread Arlene gave to mum Danni
who passed it on

Baby in my workshop

Remember we’d thought they’d been taken by a predator. Seems mum and dad must have picked them up as two-day-old chick and moved them to a better class of nest. Danni and Hector, our bulbuls.

Mum and Dad bulbul — Danni and Hector — were in our kitchen garden, lined up as if to show off the babe. The babe accepted a worm we offered.

Hooray for that! Made Jing’s day. Made our day all of us. To know it wasn’t a cat or snake or marauding bird of prey, as we’d thought when the chicks disappeared after a few days.

Chomsky supports free speech and opposes cancelling Pinker

I’ve never been much a a fan of Noam Chomsky. His comments post 911 were pretty awful, I thought. It’s always seemed to me that there’s nothing the United States has ever done, or could do, that Chomsky can’t find fault with. Even the victory in WW2.
ADDED: Let’s not forget, as I did, that he also supported the Pol Pot regime, even as the Killing Fields were happening. That’s pretty damned crazy hard-left crazy right there.
But he’s been spot on with this free speech issue. He’s been a strong supporter, even of views he despises. Good on him. And good on him for supporting Steven Pinker, who some numbskulls are trying to cancel. Journalist Zaid Jilani gives a good, fair account of the issue.
One of Pinker’s “crimes” was that he had linked to articles showing that the police brutality narrative is about more than just racism. Quoted Harvard professor Roland Frey, showing up some of the myths in that narrative. As I posted a while back myself.
By the way, the male anchor in this clip says towards the end that he “despises” Steven Pinker because he’s written books showing we’re living in the best of times. I’ve read those books (The Better Angels of our Nature and Enlightenment Now); they’re chock full of data to support the claim. I’d ask that anchor man: if not today, when precisely in history have we been better off? Been healthier? Lived longer? Been wealthier? When?

‘A Letter on Justice and Open Debate’

An Open Letter signed by 150 prominent people, all, it seems, on the Left. At Harper's Magazine:

Our cultural institutions are facing a moment of trial. Powerful protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue demands for police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and inclusion across our society, not least in higher education, journalism, philanthropy, and the arts. But this needed reckoning has also intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity. As we applaud the first development, we also raise our voices against the second. The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy. But resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion—which right-wing demagogues are already exploiting. The democratic inclusion we want can be achieved only if we speak out against the intolerant climate that has set in on all sides.

‘America’s cultural revolution is just like Mao’s‘

Waving their little “White Fragility” books

We have in our family here in Hong Kong folks who were in China through the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution and I was myself in China at its fag-end, just in time to be walking along a Beijing street on a balmy afternoon in September of 1976 when Mao’s death was announced… people around me started sobbing. Just in time to experience the wonders of late-stage Maoism, rationed food, rationed clothes, rationed movement, rationed space, rationed thought.

So we’ve got some collective memory in this household about the dangers of a full-on cultural wars. The very path that the far-Left in America want it to go down now. As if we have no experience of it. As if it had never happened. As if it hadn’t been a disaster.
Xiao Li talks of his father’s feelings about that long ago Maoist movement and the today movement in the US:

After leaving China for America two decades ago, my father only returned to his homeland once. I had turned 18, and I think he wanted to show me something of his youth, of which he spoke little. In the dusty village where he grew up, we met an endless stream of old men who wanted to see the village’s prodigal son. Gifts were offered and extravagant greetings were swapped. Then, after each visitor had departed, my father would tell me, matter-of-factly, what they did to him during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

HK: High degree of autonomy vs “Ongoing encroachment”

I’ve just heard Hanscom Smith, the American Consul-General to Hong Kong interviewed on RTHK, Radio 3.
He repeated a mantra: that Hong Kong must be allowed to maintain its high degree of autonomy as promised in the Joint Declaration. I agree. Who would not?
This he contrasted with what he said had been Beijing “ongoing encroachment” on Hong Kong’s autonomy since the handover. That’s where I don’t agree. As I showed here there was limited interference from Beijing in the 23 years since the handover, at least no more than you’d expect from a country that is, after all, the sovereign.
There is, however, interference now.
The new Security Law is, I fear, just the beginning.* But that was brought about directly by the street violence of last year. Violence arising from a deluded belief that they were fighting an encroaching tyrant. (The “Five Demands” were an outgrowth of that belief of China encroachment).
So what’s happened is: fighting a delusion of interference, they have brought forth the reality of interference. And in fighting for freedom have reduced our very real Freedoms.
I guess Consul-General Smith can’t recognise this because that would destroy the narrative the west and the Trump administration share with the protesters: “brave freedom fighters“ resisting the encroaching tyrant. And we must “Stand with Hong Kong”.

*ADDED (7 Jul): like police given sweeping new powers 

Whither Hong Kong?

Will Hong Kong “take a knee” to Beijing? Has it done so already? Is it already under the tyrants jackboot? Are we done for?
Or will we confound? As we’ve done for the 23 years since Fortune magazine wrote us off with the cover story, “The Death of Hong Kong”?
Since I live here I’m going to take this position: we will confound.
To do so, we need Beijing to implement the new Security Law with a light hand. That’s a big ask, to be sure.

Coronavirus: is it the Spanish Flu after all?

The Spanish flu didn’t originate in Spain. It was just that the Great War was raging and most countries censored news of the deadly new disease. Only Spain announced it, hence the name. Bad luck, bad timing.
Could it be the same for the virus causing Covid-19?
Researchers have found the virus in Brazil back to last November and in Spain back to March last year. March 2019! Nine months before it appeared in Wuhan. Maybe it was just China’s bad luck that it took off there, even if it may not have originated there.
/Snip

Researchers in Brazil say they have detected the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 in sewage sampled in November.The conclusion comes days after scientists in Spain found the virus in waste water samples collected in March 2019, and adds to suggestions that the virus spread quietly before the alarm was first raised in China in late December.“[The virus] was being shed within the community for several months prior to the first cases being reported by regional, national or Pan-American authorities,” Gislaine Fongaro, from the Federal University of Santa Catarina, said in a non-peer-review paper posted on the preprint server medRxiv.org on Monday.Fongaro’s study was based on samples collected from the waste water network in Florianopolis, a beach town in southern Brazil. [Link]

Meantime, a report from the WHO itself that makes it look pretty bad: that the news of the breakout in Wuhan didn’t come from the Chinese, but from WHO staff in Beijing.  Well… makes China look bad and makes the WHO look complicit.

Happy birthday, America!

Reflections from a mate in the States:

It is 244 years since the founders of the republic (recently labeled racist in the current orgy of wokeness) signed the declaration of independence. All running a real risk of hanging, John Hancock went out of his way to sign extra large so the King could see his signature, as he put it.

It is not clear whether this is a happy birthday. The pessimist in me drones on about economic in collapse as a result of the virus and the recent spike in cases, record budget deficits, public debt, public unrest, increasing crime (a direct result of the efforts to de-fund the police) and a highly contested political season not seen since the late sixties.  An increasingly unpopular president (according to most polls) and what appears to be a senile candidate to replace him, moving further to the extreme left of the political spectrum. If there was no shock absorber in the system, this could end badly!

But there is a shock absorber.

HK Security Law: more questions than answers

Beijing’s new national security law for Hong Kong has finally been unveiled. Rather than clear up uncertainties, though, it has raised fresh doubts and fears. The

passing of the law

 by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee on Tuesday sparked fresh protests and civil unrest the following day. The police were quick to use it, making 10 arrests under the law and hundreds overall on Wednesday.
The legislation, comprising 66 articles, is expressed in broad and sweeping terms. It is still not clear precisely what will constitute a crime under the core offences of secession,

Heather and Bret: warned us early on…

… about the inanities and insanities in our lands, that they would escape the Academy and infect the broader bodies politic and bodies cultural: the western Cultural Revolution.
Reminder: they were two professors at the very liberal Evergreen University, fifteen years in their posts, true-blue lefties (Bernie supporters), hounded out a few years ago for being insufficiently woke, for questioning a clearly racist “Blacks-only Day” on campus.
Net sum: they are bona fide people of the Left who have become alarmed at the dangers in super-woke leftism. What Maajid Nawaz has dubbed the “Regressive Left“.

‘US has been exposed for funding last year’s Hong Kong protests’

From the beginning of our protest movement here in Hong Kong, there have been claims of foreign involvement, especially from the US. I’ve looked for evidence and been told that “it’s obvious, don’t be naive”. We were to assume the involvement, based on US’ history of interference. Granted, that’s a reasonable inference.
The closest thing to evidence is the US’ National  Endowment for Democracy, (a CIA front), where you can find a line item in its budget, a bit over half a million USD a year, for HK. A decent amount, but hardly game-changing. My view was that, ok granted foreign funding, but the main thrust of the movement remains local. I think that this is still the case. A couple of million dollars funding to develop an App and support the Voice of America (who listens to that anymore?) is not up with protesters on the streets, throwing petrol bombs.
Time magazine has an article about the US funding of the protests. Assuming they report accurately, sure it’s “foreign involvement-interference”. But critical to the “movement”? I doubt it.
Here’s a report of the Time info, from Alex Lo:

Being David Sedaris: Music and Meeting… and mice

Emma Freud and David Sedaris

From BBC Radio 4 Plus. An hour of wit and wisdom.

“Obama’s defence chief said Biden has been wrong on every major national-security decision over the past four decades

 This statement below from Trump’s speech at the 2020 RNC is from a somewhat ridiculous NYT “fact-checking” operation that found Trump statements the Dems didn’t like to be “False” and the ones they did like to be “True”. The one below is an outlier, in that it’s rated “True” (“mostly”), about something that is very much not liked by the Dems. 

Namely that Joe Biden “has been wrong on nearly every major national-security decision over the past four decades”. Wow!

“Barack Obama’s own secretary of defense said Joe Biden has been wrong on nearly every major national-security decision over the past four decades.”

— Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas

This is mostly true.

Mr. Cotton is repeating a charge that Vice President Mike Pence made last night, regarding the 2014 book, “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War,” by the former Pentagon chief and C.I.A. director Robert M. Gates.

In his memoir, Mr. Gates offered a scathing assessment of how the Obama administration handled the war in Afghanistan. Of Mr. Biden in particular, Mr. Gates said, “I think he’s been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” But Mr. Cotton did not mention what Mr. Gates had written immediately before his criticism of Mr. Biden. “He’s a man of integrity, incapable of hiding what he really thinks, and one of those rare people you know you could turn to for help in a personal crisis,” Mr. Gates wrote of the then-vice president. [Link]

Reunification Day: a scattering of Democrats

UPDATE:
Policeman in Causeway Bay, stabbed by a protester, 5pm 1 July

July 1st is Reunification Day (回歸節) in Hong Kong. Celebrating — or bemoaning — the day on July 1, 1997 when sovereignty switched from Britain to China. We were here at the time. Watched the PLA troops cross the border at midnight. In recent years there have been demos, on this day, usually anti-government. Some we’ve taken part in. But not today. Because the protest movement long ago became self-defeating. The reason for Beijing implementing the Security Law (as required in the Basic Law, but not done by our local government), is precisely because of the protesters. Especially when they’ve pleaded for foreign interference. [eg, Apple Daily boss, Jimmy Lai].

Thus the antics of the protesters, the violence, the vandalism, have had exactly the opposite effect than the intended. We’ve moved no further along the path to universal suffrage, and have a Security Law foisted on us. That said, our stock market is up, real estate is buoyant and most people - those not at today’s demos - seem happy enough with it, or at least reconciled.
Even the pan-Dems seem to have made their peace with it. We might even get some movement on the suffrage issue, as it was always linked to the passing of a Security Law, at least in Beijing’s mind. And I don’t think it’s right for the western media to conclude One Country two Systems is dead. News of its death is much exaggerated. The indications are that Beijing very much wants to keep Hong Kong as a bridge to the west and as a common-law jurisdiction.
In sum, the feeling around the place are really quite jolly. Better than tanks in the streets, is one view…
Amazingly even veteran democratic activists have changed their tune.
Here’s a couple. Pretty much a who’s who of activist pan-Dems:

Martin Lee Chu-ming (Democratic Party co-founder): “The laam caau (self-destruct together) people, they haven’t got a clue. If you start the revolution, and then you’re completely defeated, many people will die with you. So how does that help Hong Kong?” 

Anson Chan Fang On-sang (former pro-democracy chief secretary): “I would step back from civic and political engagement and lead a quieter life. I urge young people not to lose hope for their future and continue to hold fast to the values that underpin our unique city but to do so in a law-abiding and peaceful manner.” 

Horace Chin Wan-kan (father of Hong Kong localism): “I am quitting the pan-democratic movement. For more than 10 years, I have had nothing but good intentions, hoping to improve relationships between Hong Kong and the mainland, to promote the prosperity of Hong Kong and the motherland. But our ‘good-relation’ localism has been hijacked by pan-democrats and those who advocate Hong Kong independence.” 

Wayne Chan Ka-kui (convenor of the Hong Kong Independence Union): “I have left Hong Kong but have not quit our movement. I hope you all will continue with the fight, though I can’t join you. I hope to meet you again when Hong Kong achieves independence.” [PF: this is not going to happen. You can bet the house in it] 

Claudia Mo Man-ching (opposition legislator): “If we win more than 35 seats [a majority in the Legislative Council elections in September], we can all sit down and negotiate at a moderate pace.”
Mo’s statement may be the least sensational but most significant, assuming she represents the views of other “moderates”. [Link]

ADDED: News from the front line:
Causeway Bay right now - a lot of “yellow vest journalists” and bystanders plus a lot of pictures photos taking. Cannot see hardly anything else.
***

About 15 minutes ago, Lam Cheuk-ting (the Democratic Party lawmaker involved in Yuenlong) standing in front of the raffle tickets desk raising money with a microphone shouting- then removed the desk and party flags upon the request by police. Then Wu Chi-wai another regular face from the opposition camp stood on a box with microphone started shouting but was quickly removed.. looks like they were trying to be arrested but not achieved anything..
***

Police has two flags (signs)- purple one tells the actions that may breach the new law; light blue one is warning for illegal assembly

'The controversy paradox'

Interesting reflections from James Bartholomew

It might seem puzzling that we have seen such a furore about racism and racial discrimination at this particular time in our history when all possible measures of racism indicate that there is less of it in Britain than at any time in the past 70 years.

A decade ago, 41 per cent of us ‘-strongly agreed’ that we would be content for our children to marry someone of a different race. That has now risen to 70 per cent. In 2006, 55 per cent ‘strongly disagreed’ that you had to be white to be ‘truly British’. That has risen to 84 per cent.

‘Cop out'

Some sobering views below from an ex-Cop. 

I was a borough commander in west London and come from a long line of officers — and I can tell you that it’s fast becoming impossible to police the streets. The police are attacked on all sides. They’re told both that they’re too aggressive and too politically correct; too understanding and too intolerant. They’re required to reduce the level of violent crime on the street and yet told they’re racist if they stop and search young black men and ‘put hands in pockets’ to check for knives.As a society we can shout and scream at the police, regulate them, scrutinise them, sack a few, bring in external bosses from industry. We can try to ‘re-educate’ them and have an independent complaints system. But unless we look clearly at the real problems street constables and junior detectives face every day, our cities will soon be lawless.