Blogs

Watching the Olympic new on T.V, I laughed until tears came out.

The news about the Olympic torch is never ending. Details like whether our chief executive Donald Tsang’s arm is strong enough to hold the torch and run for 200km are reported in length. As for Hu Jia, who has been sentenced to 3.5 years imprisonment because of “sedition of the state power”, has been sidelined by piles of Olympic public relation news. The International Olympic Committee and T.V station want us to see a colourful Beijing, with grand spectacles. I looked at the smiling face of the news anchor, it looked like the Olympic symbols – Fu Wa.

The darkest day

It is cold and dark, not only because of the weather but because of the crazy crack down of internet and massive arrest of netizens.

On Dec. 8th, 1995, a sodium leak and fire at the Monju fast-breeder reactor in Fukui prefecture, Japan, threatened to spark an explosion which could have sent deadly plutonium into the local environment. The original incident and a subsequent attempted cover up by the operator in charge of Monju, the Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corporation (PNC), left a lasting trace on the nuclear power industry in Japan.

Decadence of an ideal

Since the nationwide lift of Martial Laws in 1987, the voices for reform that came from "outside the party" had surged in coalition for the establishment of the "Democratic Progressive Party." For quite some time, the DPP was not only a party demanding political democracy, it had also allied itself with numerous social movements, from whose support the party gradually thrived.

During the weekend, Hong Kong In-Media organized an off-line salon on “Noise amidst of the Politics of Harmony – bloggers who eat river crabs”. [和諧政治中的雜音--吃河蟹的博客們] (The Chinese pronunciation of river crab is similar to Harmony.) We have invited Beifeng from Guangzhou and Roland Soong for sharing their experiences in the Chinese blogosphere. Beifeng applied mobile SMS to report on the Xiamen Anti PX demonstration. Roland is a most awesome translator of Chinese internet discussion and a major news source for foreign reporters.

Time Race

Beifeng has a most systematic account of the censorship of traditional media and internet media. As the traditional media has a strong control in the editorial room, some of the news, such as mass incidents or social unrest would be banned from publishing, whereas in the internet BBS and blog, censorship only happens when the news or information sources have been published and taken effect in the public. Usually a nationwide censorship would only take place 2 to 3 days after the publication of the first post; netizens can use the time gap to disseminate information as wide as possible. The tactic is to write the story without spelling out the political implications and to wait for the politics to reveal itself in the dissemination process.

(Originally in Chinese published at inmediahk.net - Author/Gilles Deleuze (alias)

I want to talk about the recent development of several newspapers in Hong Kong.

In terms of capital and ownership structures, the biggest change is about Ming Pao. Ming Pao Ltd is going to merge with two listed companies in Malaysia, Sinchew and Nanyang. But the plan is not yet implemented. According to this plan, Sinchew and Nanyang, no longer listed in Malaysia, will be owned by Ming Pao. Ming Pao might be listed in the stock markets of Hong Kong and Malaysia.

by judy a. pasimio

“Pasalubong ha?” said Alvin John, 4 years old, to his mother, Marylou. Pasalubong is a gift one usually brings home from a trip.

This was Marylou’s latest conversation with her only son, when she called home, with the help of Saligan, the law group assisting her. “Namingaw na mi.” I miss home. “I want to go home now,” said teary-eyed Marylou.

Entire MTU leadership arrested

On Tuesday, November 27th, the entire executive of South Korea’s Migrant Trade Union was arrested by immigration officials in three co-coordinated morning actions targeting these migrants at their places of work and residence.

The MTU is a courageous union of undocumented migrant workers, supported by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) that has been active for three years in advocating for migrant workers rights. In recent months they had held a mass memorial service for migrants that had died in Korea, whether on the job or off. They also won a precedent-setting case at the Seoul High court which had ruled that the government must accept the legal registration of the Migrant Trade Union, something which the government failed to do, preferring instead, it seems, to arrest the union’s leadership rather than recognize it legally.

Recently, a labour activist has been assaulted and injured seriously in Shenzhen. The incident happened after the labour group has been successively smashed by local gangs. A number of Hong Kong organizations jointly held a press conference in the weekend and expressed their concern and anger towards the violent incident. They condemned the illegal acts of violence planned by a certain vested interested groups against the national policy on labour rights and protection.

Korea celebrates two 'May Days': the actual international day of worker's protest and an indigenous holiday commemorating Chun Tae Il, who immolated himself in the early seventies in protest of the regressive labour relations that animated the sweatshops of the textile boom of those days.