Dispatches from the State Ministry of Truth

[Monoriu]

Man you Civil Servants are ruthless.

I thought it is normal to conduct security and background checks on prospective employees?  We can't have someone who thinks it is morally wrong to pepper spray people employed as a police officer, whose job includes pepper spraying those who occupy roads.

[Valmy]

Man you Civil Servants are ruthless.

I thought it is normal to conduct security and background checks on prospective employees?  We can't have someone who thinks it is morally wrong to pepper spray people employed as a police officer, whose job includes pepper spraying those who occupy roads.

I guess I thought meant something more than you just weren't going to hire them

[Razgovory]

Check out the haole copper.

From The Economist: a recent poll showed c. 60% support for the terrorists.  So perhaps not a minority position.

My friend was in HK when it went down, and was staying in the area where it happened. She said there was broad support from the locals she talked to, to the point of professionals getting time off from work to go there, people bringing home cooked food, etc.

I've talked to a lot of civil servants.  Their reaction: we should photograph all the participants, build a database, and use a computer system to check each and every future applicant for the civil service against the database.  We'd know what to do with them if we found that any of them participated 

We will be sure to send links to this website to whatever government happens to be in power in the future.  After all, they can't have civil service employees who may have made statements that could be termed "unpatriotic".  Or someone who has been talking to people in US army psyops and Navy intelligence.

[Valmy]

We will be sure to send links to this website to whatever government happens to be in power in the future.  After all, they can't have civil service employees who may have made statements that could be termed "unpatriotic".  Or someone who has been talking to people in US army psyops and Navy intelligence.

What the hell Raz?

[Razgovory]

If he's going to be evil, so can I.

[LaCroix]

mono didn't say he planned to do it, he just said that's what some people suggested. plus, i don't think a single person has ever used when he seriously planned to do something menacing or evil.

you're threatening people's lives over internet comments again, raz. 

[Eddie Teach]

plus, i don't think a single person has ever used when he seriously planned to do something menacing or evil.

You're so naive. 

[Razgovory]

mono didn't say he planned to do it, he just said that's what some people suggested. plus, i don't think a single person has ever used when he seriously planned to do something menacing or evil.

you're threatening people's lives over internet comments again, raz. 

I did no such thing.  Besides Mono feels safe in his position, and I take him at his word.

[Martinus]

I really hope Mono's life is ruined, one way or another, by this. Perhaps he will try to congratulate the riot police on their another brutal purge, get mistaken for a terrorist and shot?

[Martinus]

Beijing has stepped up the attack on the rioters, now calling them idiots and separatists.  There is also a threat that if this continues, HK's status as Asia's financial centre will decline.  I don't think that is merely a prediction.  That's an actual threat, because our status as a financial centre depends on Beijing's monetary and financial policies.  If they deliberately punish us, we are done. 

Collective punishment?  How delightfully tyrannical and arbitrary.

I would hope that is all bluster to try to encourage the Hong Kong government to end this.

We only have ourselves to blame if it happens.  Hong Kong's position is very much like the guy in the Life of Pi.  We are unarmed and stuck with a tiger on a boat in the middle of an ocean.  We gotta learn how to co-exist with the tiger.  The tiger has been reasonable so far, and there is a mutually beneficial relationship.  But if the tiger says some lines must not be crossed, you don't cross them, especially if it isn't a life and death matter.  We have sailed without democracy for decades.  We aren't going to die without it. 

I am pretty sure that Beijing now calls the shots on how to deal with the riots, so they don't need to encourage the HK government to do anything.

Is there a chance the Hong Kong civil service will be made redundant with no right to pension?

[grumbler]

I think Mono is right, in a way, but I think that his predictions about the future of Honk Kong are completely independent of the actions of either the rioters or the protesters.  The Chinese occupation Government needed HK at one point, as they lacked people with the financial skills and credibility to negotiate production contracts with the outside world.  Thus, they accepted something as foreign to them as Hong Kong because they needed it.  They don't need it any more.  The COG is going to drain HK of money for as long as it can, but is also going to promote Shanghai as the "real" financial center of China and allow HK to dwindle in significance and prosperity.  Shanghai is more "Chinese" from the viewpoint of the COG, even though they (like the people of HK) speak funny.

The fact that HK has a huge cash reserve fits the needs of the COG perfectly; hence, the COG will make sure that the government of HK won't spend it.  After the 50 year transition period is over, we can all probably guess where that money is going.

So, while I agree with Mono that the protesters are not going to accomplish anything, I think the protesters are smart to get this out of their system, and make at least a token effort to save their city.  The rioters will eventually win, and the city suppressed back into its status as a cash cow for the COG (and, especially, the elites that make up the COG and can afford HK property), but at least they won't have to sit back, thirty years from now, by their fireside with their grandson on their knee and, when he asks, 'What did you do in the great struggle for HK's future?' they won't have to cough and say, 'Well, your granddaddy shoveled shit in his government office.'

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

We will be sure to send links to this website to whatever government happens to be in power in the future.  After all, they can't have civil service employees who may have made statements that could be termed "unpatriotic".  Or someone who has been talking to people in US army psyops and Navy intelligence.

That's enough of that shit.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

I really hope Mono's life is ruined, one way or another, by this. Perhaps he will try to congratulate the riot police on their another brutal purge, get mistaken for a terrorist and shot?

That's enough of that shit, too.

[DGuller]

Crap, I was about to post an alternative scenario to that of Mart's.  It would've been more amusing too. 

[Razgovory]

Okay.  Sorry.