What Kills Us this Week!

We're back! Hong Kong has put aside the recent strange stoic maturity, born of the financial crisis, to again indulge in a first-rate panic.

What's happened is that a local drug company - a real one, not the more-usual bogus-medicine factory - has accidentally mixed a toxic fungus into a batch of their leukemia drugs and, since leukemia-folk have no immune systems and thus can't fight toxic fungi, all the patients died.

Hong Kong is naturally very cross about this, but they're demanding all 39 drugs manufactured by this company be recalled and tested, and no matter what the result, all be removed from the marketplace. And maybe, since China is coming over all creepy and insidious again, they'll even demand we put the screwing-up CEOs to death, like wot they do!

Mind you, it would be really interesting to find out HOW toxic fungus got into the medicine batch? I can see no logical scenario where that could happen - unless it involved employees with advanced Alzheimers and keys to a local poisons silo! Mmmm, I think I'll be following this Public Inquiry with great interest and let you know too.

But since people have died I don't want to laugh about this, so I'm going to have to go elsewhere to find this week's Threatdown.

Three possibilities:

1) Over in Macau, Hong Kong people (university professors, thinkers, journalists etc) are being turned away at Macau's entry points ... which appears to point at China finally activating Article 23.

If so, it's a real worry. You no doubt know all about "The Basic Law" and "One Country: Two Systems" which China signed with Britain and Portugal before our respective Handovers. What this means is that, although we are part of China, we are both SARS and thus China can do nothing in either country for 50 years.

However, back in 2003, China went all sneaky and sinister and tried to introduce another Article into our Basic Law. This is Article 23 and a more sinister document would be hard to find. I won't go into what it's about here, because, when I first read it, I bored everyone to tears with my furious rants about what China could get away with under this piece of legislation. Read it yourself sometime and tremble in fear at the ramifications!

Well, HK read it and you will recall that when China tried to bring Article 23 into Hong Kong, 500,000 people took to the streets in protest and so China immediately took it off the table. However, Macau wasn't so clever and, during China's second swoop, let it pass into Law ... and then nothing happened for three years so we all forgot how frightening it is ... and now that China is suddenly coming over all sinister and creepy again - WHY??? And Prince Charles needs to hear about this! From something I overheard, I think he's the one who stopped its bullying last time, back in 2004, as he promised during his Handover Speech! - it appears they've now shown their hand by starting to use Article 23 the way it was always intended.

Anyway, Long Hair and Pro-Democracy Cohorts plan a mass-crossing to Macau to see if they too get turned away, and if so, questions have to be asked. And hopefully the entire world will be asking along with us because it's going to take a concerted effort to get Beijing to back off again!

Do take an interest because, well, China can be a lovely country when it pulls its head back in, and it looks like it needs to be told to back off again! Oh, and Macau needs to revoke Article 23 too, so how about everyone doing something about that as well?

2) The truly insane spin-doctoring going on regarding these "50 Years in Tibet" celebrations, with China saying self-congratulatory stuff like "Since we took over, the population has doubled" and Tibetans saying "That's because you massacred so many of us and brought in your own citizens to populate our land." Lots and lots of that sort of stuff which would be hilarious if it wasn't just so desperately sad.

Actually, when you look at what's happening in Tibet and Mongolia, and if you factor in Article 23, I think we should all be thinking "Lebenstraum!!!" and getting kinda a bit more than a little concerned.

3) The gorgeous meeting they're having up in Beijing at the moment to reorganise their political system in order "to make it more democratic". Do read what's coming out because it's a non-stop giggle. Like, although they are "desiring to move towards Democracy", they've forbidden any talk of "a multi-party system", "having an Opposition to the Communist Party", and absolutely off the agenda, and death to any one who mentions it, is "any talk of separation of the powers".

Since, as we all know, the cornerstones of Democracy are "Multiple Parties", "A Strong Opposition" and "Separation of the Powers", if you don't have those, isn't it obvious that you simply don't have a Democracy. China soooo doesn't get it!

Do you love it?

So those are the big stories happening around here. And which one should be this week's choice?

Threatdown

Article 23.
Nothing else happening here is
more seriously in need of panic!

Update: Regarding the mass-crossing to Macau on the weekend to challenge the ruling, twenty eight Pro-Democracy activists were allowed into the SAR, and five, including Long Hair, were barred. The ones allowed in then all went to a Portuguese/Macanese seafood restaurant for a nice meal. Dangerous folk, these Pro-Democracy activists!