My only cryptic comments vis-a-vis the recent events in Hong Kong...following the ghastly violence. But methinks all may well not be quite what it appears...and that, just as an emailer queried yesterday's RNZ National Radio Panel - and as this particular punter anyhow has long since well suspected - there may indeed be secret Chinese plants/agitators/*'agitprops' even amidst the riotous protestors who've been wreaking merry mayhem throughout the territory, including especially at their well-traversed international airport of late...
Thankfully the people (1.7 million odd of them, anyhow) turned out en masse the other day to defend their cherished, longstanding democratic traditions...
Hong Kongers certainly put today's complacent Westerners to shame, many of whom these days apparently have no idea, no clue whatsoever of what the 'democracy' their forefathers fought so hard to defend in WW11 is all about, and sadly no intention evidently to find out...
But the people of Hong Kong are jealously guarding - at great cost - that precious hand-me-down, and are thus a wonderful example to us here in NZ and elsewhere; and quite frankly a stern, severe rebuke to us in our endemic apathy...
**Long may that continue...
*A great little word borrowed from the recesses of my memory (of Soviet-era communism); or - of very recent times - one of the numerous unbelievably inventive and memorable terms created/coined
by George Orwell in his inimitable classic of 20th Century literature, 1984; a book, incidentally, becoming all the more relevant and poignant by the year...
Which, according to my handy 'ole Chambers Concise Dictionary, is defined as: '(department, person, engaged in) agitation and propaganda, esp. pro-communist.'
On that matter - i.e. parallels and resonances with Orwell's dystopian future - it occurred to me the other day, whilst reflecting upon the ongoing unrest and tumultuous events in Hong Kong, that the occasional references to it being a leaderless uprising corresponded precisely to not only that ***brilliant line in Peter Jackson et al's cinematic remake of J R R Tolkien's own classic Lord of the Rings trilogy, but indeed the very modus operandi of the resistance movement in 1984...leaving one to wonder whether or not some sage somewhere borrowed that idea deliberately - or even subconsciously, having read and reread the foregoing over the years - from Orwell's own 'playbook'...
**No, I don't mean (and am not including) kiwis' aforementioned apathy!
***I.e. probably by Gimli (John Rhys-Jones) about the orcs, I recollect, being "a leaderless rabble."
P.S. Refer to my earlier blogpost a little while ago for more on the subject...
P.P.S. And on a not altogether unrelated matter, I was heartened this evening in inadvertently reading a news release while roving here and there on the web, stumbling upon the following little snippet on my computer whilst awaiting a highly inconvenient and uninvited update:*Qatar Withdraws Support of China Over Its Treatment of Muslims'(i.e. the concentration-camped Uighurs) [Bloomberg]
Oh that the 'democratic West' would be so brave, even reckless in their support for liberty!
Thankfully the people (1.7 million odd of them, anyhow) turned out en masse the other day to defend their cherished, longstanding democratic traditions...
Hong Kongers certainly put today's complacent Westerners to shame, many of whom these days apparently have no idea, no clue whatsoever of what the 'democracy' their forefathers fought so hard to defend in WW11 is all about, and sadly no intention evidently to find out...
But the people of Hong Kong are jealously guarding - at great cost - that precious hand-me-down, and are thus a wonderful example to us here in NZ and elsewhere; and quite frankly a stern, severe rebuke to us in our endemic apathy...
**Long may that continue...
*A great little word borrowed from the recesses of my memory (of Soviet-era communism); or - of very recent times - one of the numerous unbelievably inventive and memorable terms created/coined
by George Orwell in his inimitable classic of 20th Century literature, 1984; a book, incidentally, becoming all the more relevant and poignant by the year...
Which, according to my handy 'ole Chambers Concise Dictionary, is defined as: '(department, person, engaged in) agitation and propaganda, esp. pro-communist.'
On that matter - i.e. parallels and resonances with Orwell's dystopian future - it occurred to me the other day, whilst reflecting upon the ongoing unrest and tumultuous events in Hong Kong, that the occasional references to it being a leaderless uprising corresponded precisely to not only that ***brilliant line in Peter Jackson et al's cinematic remake of J R R Tolkien's own classic Lord of the Rings trilogy, but indeed the very modus operandi of the resistance movement in 1984...leaving one to wonder whether or not some sage somewhere borrowed that idea deliberately - or even subconsciously, having read and reread the foregoing over the years - from Orwell's own 'playbook'...
**No, I don't mean (and am not including) kiwis' aforementioned apathy!
***I.e. probably by Gimli (John Rhys-Jones) about the orcs, I recollect, being "a leaderless rabble."
P.S. Refer to my earlier blogpost a little while ago for more on the subject...
P.P.S. And on a not altogether unrelated matter, I was heartened this evening in inadvertently reading a news release while roving here and there on the web, stumbling upon the following little snippet on my computer whilst awaiting a highly inconvenient and uninvited update:*Qatar Withdraws Support of China Over Its Treatment of Muslims'(i.e. the concentration-camped Uighurs) [Bloomberg]
Oh that the 'democratic West' would be so brave, even reckless in their support for liberty!
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