OUT TO LUNCH
I’ve been watching YouTube videos on Shanghai with increasing fascination over the past few weeks. These are, I should add, not videos released by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to justify their adherence to their policy of Zero-COVID.
They are videos made on smart phones by those, mostly ex-pats, who have been locked up in their homes for the past month and a half and which find their way onto YouTube. They present a horrific image of the shut down of one of the most modern and densely populated cities in the world.
As the Shanghai lockdown drags on and with a similar situation now threatening Beijing one can only wonder at the crass stupidity of those running the whole show in China.
That would include the power crazed General Secretary of the CCP Xi Jinping who is up for an unprecedented third term as chief robot and the flanks of mindless party robots who clap him in the hall of the great despots in Beijing.
Xi Jinping has made it a mission to achieve ‘Zero-COVID’ and there aint nothing gonna stop him. Not science, not the experience of non commie countries and certainly not common sense.
Which is why twenty five million unfortunate residents of Shanghai are effectively under house arrest and forbidden to even venture out of their front doors.
Now, I have never visited Shanghai but I used to be a frequent visitor to Hong Kong and in the days before it slipped from the grasp of Great Britain it was already a pretty crowded place.
Landing at the old airport one flew between huge blocks of flats at close enough range to see women at kitchen sinks rinsing the noodles for that evening’s dinner. ___STEADY_PAYWALL___
The new airport was a vast improvement as was the Mass Transit system which took you into the centre of Hong Kong. Not a drop of litter anywhere and everything ran smoothly back then.
However, it was perfectly clear that the majority of the people of Hong Kong did not live in glamorous apartments with a harbour view but in very poky high rise apartments with no view at all.
And most of them worked as soon as the sun came up until well after it had set. It was a fabulous place to visit back then and I returned from my first ever trip with two immaculately tailored suits and five hand made shirts. My HK tailor optimistically sent me a Christmas card for the next ten years.
For a visitor with money to spend it was heaven; for the locals trying to make a living not so much.
Shanghai looks very similar and the mile upon mile of soulless high rise buildings don’t suggest much in the way of quality of life to me. But that’s something you can probably live with if you can get out and about into some of the city’s open spaces and make a living.
Unfortunately, that is no longer possible and other countries which were recently flagellating themselves over the harshness of their lockdown conditions can now count themselves very fortunate indeed.
To all intents and purposes we South Africans got off very lightly. If you couldn’t access booze and cigarettes during the harsher lockdowns then more fool you; you have no right to identify as a South African.
So bearing in mind the majority of the residents of Shanghai are locked in tiny apartments and gradually going mad what is the real thinking behind Xi Jinping’s ‘Zero-COVID’ strategy?
Well, it’s obviously got nothing to do with the prevention of COVID. For some reason we are led to believe that the Omicron variant is far more deadly in China than it has proved to be in the rest of the world.
This necessitates regular testing and if somebody on the floor below you in the high-rise tests positive then the whole building has to be shut down.
As we all now know this Omicron variant is a cunning little bugger and can disappear down plug holes, travel through the plumbing system and pop out of a cold water tap twelve floors up. Is it possible that the CCP is over-reacting just a bit?
The real clue that this is just a well planned obedience test for millions of terrified Chinese citizens is the regime of regular testing.
Having been cooped up in your rabbit hutch for hours you are then commanded to join a long snaking queue with no social distancing to have some anonymous figure in a head-to-toe Haz-Mat suit stick something up your nose and down your throat.
Who knows whether they are medics or just loyal party vassals? If you hadn’t already got COVID the chance of getting it is greatly increased by standing in that long queue for a couple of hours.
Then, if you test positive (of if that’s what they tell you) you are carted off to a quarantine centre with a couple of thousand similar unfortunates with 24 hour lighting, inadequate toilet and bathroom facilities and given a bed two metres at most away from the next COVID sufferer. Quite how this stamps out COVID I’m not certain but I’m sure the commies have an answer.
If you’re lucky enough to be allowed home to your rabbit hutch and are feeling the pressure of not being able to earn a living or getting enough food you are welcome to join an anti-lockdown demonstration outside your building whereupon some of your fellow countrymen, also dressed in Haz-Mat suits and with no means of identification, can beat the shit out of you with batons and rifle butts. Freedom of expression and the right to peaceful protest have yet to catch on in China.
OK… time for a conspiracy theory and as we all know from COVID, many of the ‘conspiracy theories’ of two years ago have now turned out to be scientifically proven facts much to the fury of the vaccine zealots.
So, if this turns out to be factual remember you read it first on Politicsweb.
Who says that what the Haz-Mat kids are sticking up your nostrils is a COVID test? Obviously the Chinese Communist Party say it is but they are to truth what Amber Heard is to a newly made bed.
What if the nose and throat swabs are harvesting a vast range of human DNA for the development of biological weapons? What if the nose and throat swabs are introducing a new and terrifying virus to the Chinese population to reduce numbers?
What if the nose and throat swabs are an excuse to demonstrate the state’s control over a vast chunk of the population and serve no purpose at all?
What if the nose and throat swabs are just a sign that Xi Jinping and the CCP haven’t a clue what they are doing but are too arrogant to admit it? At least one of those has to be right.
******
I’ve just finished reading Douglas Murray’s excellent ‘The War on the West (How to prevail in the age of unreason)’ and I warmly recommend it as essential reading for anybody trying to fathom the wokist lunacy that seems to be a more dangerous global pandemic than COVID.
Murray is an author who thoroughly researches his subject matter (unlike some of the shrill lefties he writes about) and he painstakingly points out all sorts of inconsistencies that the left simply don’t want to hear.
For example, the toppling of statues of those with even a vague connection to slavery, the selective distancing of certain musical works (Handel apparently invested in a company that owned slaves), the decolonisation of English literature syllabi because of ‘problematic’ authors like Shakespeare and the countless diversity, inclusivity and equity initiatives adopted by elite schools and Christian churches which cheerfully ignore reality.
Murray makes the point that upwards of ten million male African slaves were shipped off to Eastern countries (by their own people) where they were castrated to prevent them reproducing.
He also makes the point that China hardly has an unblemished record when it comes to human rights but the woke left don’t seem to find that nearly as problematic as the dreadful atrocities committed by white colonialists almost 400 years ago.
It can surely only be a matter of time before the more woke members of the Catholic church, nudged by blameless organisations such as Black Lives Matter, declare that the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel needs ‘decolonising’ and the whole myth of God being a bearded white ZZ Top lookalike surrounded by a lot of naked white kids is finally put to bed.
As for the muscular Adam that he’s reaching out to… well the slightly limp wrist can stay as a nod to the LGBTGI+ alphabet soup lot but he’d need to be repainted in a darker colour to redress all the hurt and pain the white man has caused since the beginning of creation.
From Michelangelo to Robin DiAngelo in a manner of speaking. Who ya callin’ fragile bitch?
