Subscribe to Gonzo Weekly http://eepurl.com/r-VTD Subscribe to Gonzo Daily http://eepurl.com/OvPez Gonzo Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/287744711294595/ Gonzo Weekly on Twitter https://twitter.com/gonzoweekly Gonzo Multimedia (UK) http://www.gonzomultimedia.co.uk/ Gonzo Multimedia (USA) http://www.gonzomultimedia.com/ Gonzo Daily Blog https://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/ LEST WE FORGET John Brodie Good Dave McMann Mick Farren 3 aack and spear to death any outsiders who have been unlucky enough to visit the island), most of my energies in recent weeks have been focussed upon the bloody coronawhatsit! And so, when I came to decide what I was going to write this editorial about, I inially couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t directly to do with COVID-19. As I have wrien elsewhere, one of the most interesng factors about watching the ongoing apocalypse unrolling around us is that the advances in personal electronic devices over the past few years have made it possible to view the events – Dear friends, as they happen – from a vantage point Welcome to another issue of this that would have been unthinkable even increasingly peculiar magazine. fieen years ago. I don’t have a mobile phone (well, I do, but I never worked out Of course, like prey well everyone else how to use it), mainly because we have on the planet (with the possible excepon damn all signal here, where I live, out in of the naves of North Sennel Island in the boondocks. But for the last six years, I the Indian Ocean, who are prey much have had an iPad (I’m now on my second uncontacted, and so fierce that they one) and it has revoluonised my life 4 “Come inside, the show's about to start Guaranteed to blow your head apart Rest assured you'll get your money's worth” completely. So, feeling a lile like the There is a blogger called Yvonne, who protagonist in ‘Karn-Evil IX’ by Emerson, posts under the name ‘Ytsl’, who runs a Lake and Palmer… blog called ‘Webs of Significance’, which I first discovered because she writes “Come inside, the show's about to start regularly about her hikes in the wilder Guaranteed to blow your head apart parts of Hong Kong, and the animals and Rest assured you'll get your money's worth plants that she sees there. This, as anyone who knows me will aest, is exactly the The greatest show in Heaven, Hell, or sort of thing which I devour. But, she is Earth” such an engaging writer that when she writes about subjects that otherwise ...I am able to watch sociees all around would not have interested me, like the world potenally crash and burn from gourmet cooking and Asian cinema, I read the comfort of my armchair. them. As regular readers of this magazine will, no However, sadly, over the past couple of doubt, be aware, I have been retreang years, a lot of what she has been wring from the horrors of the contemporary about has been polical. And the pictures world, and finding a certain amount of that she paints so dely with her wring, solace in revising my childhood in Hong are not prey ones. Kong. A childhood spent as part of probably the last generaon of children On Monday, April 27th, she wrote this: brought up under the Brish Empire. You “Last week saw three days during which will, therefore, not be at all surprised to Hong Kong reported having zero new know that Hong Kong is a subject of Wuhan coronavirus cases: a prey major immense and ongoing interest to me, and I feat when you consider that this deadly have been following events in the former and super infecous coronavirus connues Brish Colony with a heavy heart. 5 to claim many vicms -- as in fatalies as All the people she had murdered well as infected individuals -- around the All the victims of corporate greed globe, but notably in the USA. And today, Prisoners of conscience never freed Hong Kong went on to record zero new For all she did and all she said cases again; the first me it's done so in We should all rejoice when Thatcher’s consecuve days since January 27th and dead” 28th. All in all, it's tempng to suggest that It could well be argued that Margaret things are geng back to normal in Hong Thatcher is directly responsible for the Kong. Except that things haven't exactly current state of the naon. People like been normal in Hong Kong for so many Andy T, and – I am afraid – yours truly months now. Also, as an unnamed graffi think that she was a horrible woman, who, writer presciently pointed out some me because of her own rather nasty ideology, ago: "We can't return to normal, because encouraged all that is most selfish and the normal that we had was precisely the unfortunate about the Brish psyche. But problem".” she not only shaed the United Kingdom, she shaed Hong Kong. There is a record by Andy T, that came out on Crass Records back in the day (1982, I Whatever your views upon the polics of think), called ‘I Sll Hate Thatcher’ and he empire are, the legislaon which provided re-recorded it thirty years aerwards, with for Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule in updated lyrics: 1997 were completely misjudged, and the idea of “One Naon – Two Systems” was “I despise George Bush, I never trusted never going to work. The Sino-Brish Joint Blair When it comes to David Cameron, be a Declaraon, which was signed in Beijing in little bit scared 1984, fully thirteen years before it came But I still fuckin' hate Thatcher into force, stated that: I still fuckin' hate Thatcher “The Government of the [HKSAR] will be For the Unions, the squaddies and the composed of local inhabitants. The chief unemployed execuve will be appointed by the Central For all the lives that bitch destroyed People's Government on the basis of the For all the souls she bought and sold results of elecons or consultaons to be The miners left out in the cold held locally. Principal officials will be Close communities torn asunder 6 nominated by the chief execuve of the by the Naonal People's Congress and will [HKSAR] for appointment by the Central remain unchanged for 50 years.” But it has People's Government. Chinese and foreign only been twenty-three years (oh bloody naonals previously working in the public hell, twenty-three again) since the Brish and police services in the government le, and everything has gone completely departments of Hong Kong may remain in ts up. Whether or not the Chinese employment. Brish and other foreign government had any intenon of scking naonals may also be employed to serve to the terms of the joint declaraon, I as advisers or hold certain public posts in would not like to speculate, but they are government departments of the [HKSAR].” certainly not scking to it now. The forces The final clause of the agreement stated of “law and order” (and I use that term that “Those basic policies will be reservedly) have been heavy handed (to spulated in a Basic Law of the Hong Kong say the least) in their response to the mass Special Administrave Region in the PRC 7 demonstrations which have taken place as a the pending expiration of the lease of land result of what the people of Hong Kong known as the ‘New Territories’ in 1997. The perceive to be undemocratic strictures upon lease was negotiated between the UK and their civil liberties. There have been deaths, the Guangxu Emperor of China, and was for a and there will likely be many more to come. period of 99 years starting from 1 July 1898 But why do I say that Margaret Thatcher is under the Second Convention of Peking. At directly responsible for this? Well, despite the time of the lease signing, Hong Kong the fact that she knowingly put her name to a Island had already been ceded to the UK in negotiated settlement that the Chinese perpetuity under the Treaty of Nanjing in government were never going to stick to, the 1842 after the First Opium War, and the most important parts of the territory did not southern part of the Kowloon Peninsula as have to be handed back to the Chinese at all, well as the Stonecutters Island had also been and – if they had remained British, or had ceded to the UK in perpetuity under the been given some semi-autonomous Convention of Beijing in 1860 after the international status – it could have remained Second Opium War. a very useful international financial and Leaving aside questions of the morality political settlement. surrounding the Opium Wars (morally, the The background of the joint declaration was 8 Hong Kong, Gordon Giltrap, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Liam British were completely in the wrong), as one Gallagher, Styx, Scorpions, Covid-19, Alan Dearling, Bev Short, Liz Hall-Downs, Kim Hall-Downs, Marcia Israilides, Playground Theory, can see there was actually no need to give Margaret Greenfields, Thom the World Poet, Alan W. Moore, Britt- Marie Lindgren, Richard Stellar, Jethro Tull, Ian Anderson, Friday the most important parts of the British Night Progressive, Canterbury Sans Frontieres, The Merrell possession back to China. And as a large Fankhauser Radio Show, Mack Maloney's Mystery Hour, Robert "Bootsie" Barnes, Frederick Thomas, Mike Huckaby, Philip Douglas chunk of the New Territories was wilderness Broadhurst MNZM, Raymond Robert Repp, Alan Abel, Alton "Big Al" Carson, Obediah Donnell "Obie" Jessie, Scott Taylor, Lynn of no economic importance, and protected Harrell, Steve William (known by his stage name Stezo), Robert Alan Lewis, Jonathan Kelly(born Jonathan Ledingham), Hamid Cheriet, from development by various international Will Theunissen, Ranu Devi Adhikari, Tony Oladipo Allen, Martin Lovett OBE, Cady Groves, Richie Cole, Bob Lander (born Bo treaties, it is not difficult to imagine a position Starander), David Paul Greenfield, Landon "Sonny" Cox, Dionisius Prasetyo (popularly known as Didi Kempot), William Daniels (aka where at least some of the New Territories, Kiing Shooter), Millicent Dolly May Small CD, Ciro Pessoa Mendes as well as Hong Kong Island and the Kowloon Corrêa, Aldir Blanc Mendes, Florian Schneider-Esleben, Rick Wakeman, The Waterson Family, The Fall, Richard Wright and Dave Peninsula remained British.