What Kills Us This Week!

On the grounds that a picture paints a thousand words, here are two pictures that will save me a very long and aggressive rant:

 

Oops!

No, sorry, wrong picture.  That's the one I took to taunt certain people who think Kylie's the most amazing and wonderful piece of wonderfulness ever - there are a great many of them - and wanted to tease them a little by letting them know she'll be in HK on tour shortly. HERE, not there! 

No, the pictures I'm talking about are these ones:

I've left them big on the chance you'll be able to read them.

Beijing is demanding HK students study a subject of their own creation ... Brainwashing 101.

Yup, our poor time-stressed kiddies are to get compulsory patriotism lessons in order to overcome our foolish tendency to want to hang onto our Constitutional Rights and Freedoms.

It's part of the "Ol' Heart 'n' Minds" rigamarole that China's been banging on about whenever we Hong Kongers are a little assertive on the subject of NOT surrendering our Constitutional Rights and Freedoms!

It's not Patriotic, so it seems, to want Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Assembly, Freedom to Lawfully Protest, Freedom to Not Suck-up, Freedom not to want PLA running our lives, Freedom to be Free of Bull-horned and Bellicose Patriotism, Freedom to be Free of Hegemonic Manipulation masked as Education!

And I could say something about how, in a city where 1 in 5 kiddies is Mensa, where Tiger-Mothers pressure every hour of day and night into Advancing Your Advancement, their eyes constantly on the prize of those big scholarships so "Big Bang Theory" isn't just a TV show you aren't allowed to watch but is your own future writ large, with every nano-second filled with brain-straining serious study of seriously serious subjects ... there really isn't time or inclination for hours of fluffy-fuzzies that undoubtedly involves dress-ups, marching and shouting slogans through bull-horns ...

But I promised not to rant so I won't.  Just letting you know how things are currently going down in HK.  I said it wasn't pretty, and now you can see for yourself.

But, looking on the bright side, at least it's not tanks in Statue Square ... although, you know, the streets of HK are so narrow and winding, PLA would be hard-pressed to get any tanks through Central. Hong Kong really isn't set up for tyranny!

THREATDOWN

In a country where 1 in 5 children are Mensa,

imagine them having to give up 

 Advanced Calculus 

for

"Becoming What Beijing Wants You To Be!"