Fairy Story

A little far-fetched, perhaps, but rather more credible than NPC member Ng Leung-sing's nasty little smear in LegCo yesterday - for which he has since half-heartedly apologised - which sounded as though he was reading it direct from a script drafted by some underling in the Liaison Office.  Ng is the idiot who asked in LegCo a few months ago if there was any health benefit from drinking lead-poisoned water.

In other fallout from this case, Page One books has, presumably under pressure, pulled anti-Beijing books from its shelves.  Time for a boycott of Page One?

What does CY Leung have in common with al-Qaeda terrorists?

...apart, that is, from them being unlikeable people with rigid inflexible minds intent on forcing their own narrow ideology down everyone else's throat?

Well, neither appears to have heard of the Streisand Effect.

Torah 2.0

The Book of Exodus

The Book of Benjamin

...and rising, based on the latest reported death toll of 1,000 Palestinians  (mostly civilians) and 42 Israelis (mostly soldiers).

The continuing slaughter gave rise to what must be one of the most meaningless utterances ever by a prominent politician, when US Secretary of State John Kerry said

"They may have rejected some language or proposal within a framework of some kind of suggestion at some point in time, but there was no formal proposal submitted from me on which there should have been a vote or which a vote was ripe."

If this means anything at all, I think it means something like "I am embarrassed to be standing up here making excuses for our Israeli allies continuing to shoot at schools and hospitals despite the various ceasefire proposals being put forward, but I suppose I have to say something that doesn't sound too negative, so er...er..."

Wall of Shame

A government that fences itself off from the people it governs is a government that no longer feels part of, or accountable to, those people.  The irony here is that protests will still be allowed in Civic Square on Sundays and public holidays - in other words, people will be allowed to deliver their message against the government only when the government is not there to hear it.

This is yet another sign that Hong Kong is gradually being transformed from reality to fiction.  Those who have read Catch-22, one of the last century's greatest novels, will remember Major Major Major Major, who only allows people to come to his office to visit him when he's not there.  The character's resemblance to the Hong Kong government is heightened by his total ineptitude.

However, from ancient Jericho to Berlin, all walls will one day fall...

It's About Time

In a nice bit of synchronicity, I decided to read a couple of pages of the book I'm currently working through - Thief of Time by Terry Practchett - this morning after being up half of the night watching Germany win the World Cup, when within a few sentences I came upon this:

"Lu-Tze had long considered that everything happens for a reason, except possibly football."

The Chronic Blogger

In his Not the South China Morning Post blog today, George Adams takes the opportunity to promote one of his books: Le Retour de Suzie Wong (The Return of Suzie Wong) in French.  My schoolboy French being pretty rusty, I put the linked review through Google Translate.  The sentence " Il tient aussi un blog satirique, The Not South China Morning Post, où il chronique l’actualité locale." is saying, I believe, that his blog chronicles local news (when not busy sniping at other local bloggers) - according to Google, however, "It also takes a satirical blog, The Not South China Morning Post, where chronic local news."

Many would agree that the local news is indeed chronic these days, but I think if I'd turned in that translation, my old French teacher, the diminutive but formidable (say that word the French way) Miss Adams, would have marked it "must try harder". 

So Far So Good

I saw a furniture shop in Hong Kong called Sofa So Good.  Quite witty, but puns are not my subject today.

English is a wonderfully ambiguous language.  This notice appears beside the lifts in the Taipo Public Library.  That's on the fifth of eight floors, so if I followed its advice, I would end up in the basement car park - that being the farthest possible destination accessible by the stairs from the fifth floor.  But I only wanted to go to the ground floor!

Alternative History

As Mo Yan accepted his Nobel Prize for Literature this week - the first Chinese author to receive it -  while carefully attempting to stay out of political controversy, it may be appropriate to post this, which I wrote a couple of years ago but never got round to completing at the time:

Beijing, 8 October 2010 - Foreign Office spokeswoman Jiang Yu, her characteristic beaming smile even broader than usual, today expressed the Chinese government's pleasure at the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo. "The entire nation shares in congratulations on the award of this great honour to Liu, whose tireless work for human rights and democracy in China has endeared him to so many of our people" Jiang said. "A prestigious international honour given to any Chinese citizen is a matter of national pride for China."

Sadly the above is of course not the way it went - instead the stern-faced Jiang delivered her usual predictable  lecture about not interfering in China's international affairs, and how it was shameful that such an honour should be given to someone China regards as a criminal. (Curious how many Nobel Peace Prize winners have been regarded as criminals by their own country's governments in their time - Nelson Mandela, for example - not that I agree with all the Prize Committee's dubious decisions.)  Incidentally, if China considers Tibet part of China, then wouldn't that make Liu not the first, but the second Chinese national to receive the Nobel Peace Prize - the first being another notorious "criminal", the Dalai Lama?

Reach out and touch...

A fundamentalist Christian church in the US is planning to mark the anniversary of the September 11 World Trade Centre attacks by burning copies of the Koran - thereby ensuring that more Muslim fundamentalists will be enraged into carrying out further acts of terrorism.

This is pretty much the kind of intolerance and mutual lack of understanding one expects from religious fundamentalists on both sides of the Muslim/Christian divide. What makes it noteworthy is the name of the church concerned - the Dove World Outreach Centre. They certainly know how to reach out to the Muslim world, don't they? Perhaps some Muslims should reach out to them by burning copies of the Bible outside their church. All in the spirit of peace symbolised by the dove, of course.

Fact: Islam also recognises the Bible as a holy book - though fundamentalists on both sides seem unaware of this. Or indeed of anything much except their own bigotry.

Author, Heal Thyself

The publication of a book on parenting by Lynne Spears, mother of role model Britney Spears, has been postponed indefinitely after it was announced that Britney's younger sister, 16-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears, is pregnant.

However, other new books expected soon will appear as planned, including:
- Staying Sober by Amy Winehouse
- Monogamy by Elizabeth Taylor
- Peacemaking by George W. Bush
- How to Be Nice to Everyone by Simon Cowell
- The Fast Road to Democracy by Donald Tsang

So It Goes

The death was announced yesterday of the writer Kurt Vonnegut Jr, aged 84.

Vonnegut's later work was uneven, with some of his stylistic tricks wearing thin, and he has rather gone out of fashion these days, but I believe several of his early novels will in time be seen as among the great masterpieces of 20th Century literature.

Cat's Cradle (1963) introduced the world to the fictional religion of Bokononism, which proclaims its own untruth while asserting the value of foma, the comforting lies that make humans happy. Isn't that essentially what all religions provide?

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965) was prescient in its early identification of what has become a central question in the post-industrial economy: what to do with people who are no use. Rosewater's (and by implication, Vonnegut's) answer is simple: love them. Makes sense to me.

Though I doubt if it qualifies me as a member of Vonnegut's karass, I do have a slight link to him in that my late uncle was, like Vonnegut, a PoW drafted as what Vonnegut calls a "corpse miner" following the controversial 1945 bombing of Dresden in World War Two. Unlike Vonnegut, he was not able to exorcise his horrific memories through writing, and suffered attacks of depression throughout his life.

Having achieved some sort of catharsis through writing Slaughterhouse Five (1969), based on his Dresden experiences, Vonnegut never again reached quite the same heights, though all his later works, however patchy, contain some interesting ideas. His last book, A Man Without A Country (2006) was, he said, driven by his contempt for President George W. Bush.

"When you're dead, you're dead." (Vonnegut, Mother Night) So it goes - but his books will live.