by PETER LEE
Demonstrators sheltering beneath umbrellas during heavy rain as they protest on Tuesday outside Hong Kong’s central government complex PHOTO/Photograph by Lam Yik Fei/Bloomberg/Business Week
Chronicle of a Leak Foretold
[I was preparing to post this on October 24. If I had, I would have gained major Nostradamus cred, since I predicted the next shoe to drop from the pro-Beijing oppo research caterpillar would probably drop on Benny Tai’s head. That’s because the leaks seem to track the Occupy strategy and the central figure at each phase, and I figured it was time for Benny Tai to assume more overt direction of the movement–and get doxed. I wrote:
If Benny Tai has any skeletons in his closet—or even if he doesn’t, not really–I suppose the pro-Beijingers will try to bring it to our attention soon enough.
Instead, I got sidetracked by parsing the fuzzy reporting on the circumstances of the aborted Occupy referendum. Curse you, syntactically obtuse world media!
A couple days later the story dropped via leaked e-mails that Benny Tai had funneled HK$1.3 million in contributions to Hong Kong University to pay for the July 1 referendum (organized by HKU’s polling outfit) among other things. The money came to Tai from Reverend Chu Yiu-ming, who together with Tai and Chan Kin-man, is one of the “3 Occupy Guys. This umbrella-washing seems to relieve Tai and the University from restrictions on accepting anonymous donations, at least in their own eyes. But where the money really came from, well Tai and Chu ain’t sayin’. Here’s the piece, with a couple grafs on the Oslo Freedom Forum brouhaha. CH, 10/30/14]
In Peter Pan, Tinkerbell has apparently succumbed to the villainy of Captain Hook. In the book and in the play, generations of anxious children have been instructed to clap if they believe in fairies and thereby resuscitate Tink.
I think billmon coined the Clap Harder! meme to characterize the conviction that sufficient levels of will, determination, desire, and, if necessary, denial can overcome material obstacles to a goal, even if those obstacles are fundamental shortcomings in conception, capability, and execution.
The Hong Kong democracy movement seems to be getting the Clap Harder! treatment from the Western world.
But I don’t think it needs it.
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