The EPD website tells us that we spent the majority of the last three months breathing 'high levels' of pollution:

General Stations
Distribution of Hourly API for General Stations for the period January 2006 - March 2006

Roadside Stations
Distribution of Hourly API for Roadside Stations for the period January 2006 - March 2006

The EPD also tells us that "Long-term effects may...be observed if exposed at [high] this level persistently for months or years."

We've had some clear air over the last few days. The SCMP reports a EPD spokeswoman as sayinng that "The 'golden week' (when most mainland factories close during the holiday) is not part of the explanation - the air stream is the primary cause." Unfortunatly, the HK Observatory website's past weather information doesn't give wind directions so I can't call bullshit.

My lungs hurt. Worried yet?

...seen in Causeway Bay on Saturday, besides these two:

The text:

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SuJiaTun - The Auschwitz in China

Sujiatun Death Camp and Organ Harvest Farm

• Thousands of Falun Gong practitioners at ANY given time since 2000
• Organs taken from LIVING practitioners on demand of foreign buyers
• Dead bodies Eliminated in the On-Site Crematorium
• No Falun Gong practitioner can get out, dead or alive

-----

Really? Religious oppression, detainment, beatings, deaths in custody: yes, yes, yes and yes. But killing Falun Gong prisoners just to get their organs? That's another whole step. It's a pity when the message is ruined by questionable information.

Falun Gong has a reputation beyond what it deserves. We shouldn't confuse (deserved) sympathy for the belief-system's repression with sympathy for what the system actually is. Via religioustolerance.org:

According to the New York Times, Li Hongzhi said that: "...interracial children are the spawn of the 'Dharma Ending Period,' a Buddhist phrase that refers to an era of moral degeneration. In an interview last year, he said each race has its own paradise, and he later told followers in Australia that, 'The yellow people, the white people, and the black people have corresponding races in heaven.' As a result, he said, interracial children have no place in heaven without his intervention."

Not to mention its views on homosexuality, and its reinforcement of some practitioners reluctance to go to hospitals when they're in need.

And then it gets downrigiht ridiculous... (also copied straight from religioustolerance.org)

• A person with qigong training can walk through solid objects, like a wall.
• Individuals with some qigong training can exhibit super-human abilities: clairaudience, telepathy, precognition, etc. But it takes a qigong master to achieve certain functionality, like alchemy -- the ability to transform one type of substance to another. The latter could tear down a large building using mental power only. They would never do this in practice, because it is forbidden for them to demonstrate their powers. Also, such destruction would cause harm.

And my favourite:

• There are many living entities on earth that appear to be humans, but in fact are aliens.

Of course, other religions must look this ridiculous to the unaccustomed.

Today’s SCMP reported police complaints that Disneyland is obstructing their duties (unlinkable, but snippets at the bottom). Some officers are saying that they are being delayed waiting for Disneyland escorts and by being required to enter through remote side-entrances.

This follows a claim last month that an ambulance was delayed in collecting a woman who later died, after Disney staff allegedly demanded that the ambulance staff enter through the backdoor of the hotel. Disneyland denies responsibility. Further back, hygiene officers were refused entry to a restaurant until they removed their caps and badges.

None of this should come as too much of a surprise.

Richard Foglesong, an expert on the politics of Florida’s Walt Disney World, called Disney an “insular, defensive and somewhat arrogant” company during a talk at HKU late last year. He said they were “arrogant, aloof and secretive.”

Walt Disney started this company culture began in 1927 after a bad experience with the ownership of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit - he was surprised by a clause in a contract that gave ownership to Universal. He stopped creating Oswald cartoons after refusing to take a pay cut. Foglesong said that this was a formative experience for Walt Disney and the company. (It seems that the paranoia stopped after Disney re-acquired Oswald in February this year.)

After developing the first Disneyland in California on a relatively small site and having the surrounding areas built up with bad motels, the Florida Disney World was built on 104 square kilometres of land in order to put space between the park and the surrounding areas. The park has taken advantage of local governments for infrastructure, but controls other services through its quasi-government, the Reedy Creek Improvement District. The RCID was set up to control the planned Epcot experimental community, though Epcot was never fully developed. (Foglesong said that records show that they never intended to develop Epcot as promised, calling it “the biggest lie in the 20^th century in the state of Florida.”) The powers of the RCID go so far as to allow the issuing of tax-free bonds. It also controls Disneyworld’s private fire and emergency medical services. Also, police officers entering Disney World are required to remove their guns.

It should be no surprise that Disneyland is trying to set the terms for how the government and its services operated inside the park.

Foglesong’s book about the history of Disney World is titled Married to the Mouse. He describes Disney World and Orlando as mutually dependent, a marriage. The city benefits hugely from the jobs it provides, the tax it pays and the money that guests spend outside of Disney World. The park relies on the state for infrastructure and the education of the workforce.

“Divorce is costly,” Foglesong said, so conflicts don’t go too far. But parks and governments are not your normal marriage; the park can’t up and run. The government needs to realise this. Disney might not be used to playing by the same rules as everyone else, but there’s not much they can do if Hong Kong makes them.

__________________________

Bits from today’s SCMP:

Disneyland dictating police work, say officers

Frontline police have accused Disneyland management of trying to dictate their operations at the theme park and obstructing them when handling incidents.

They said senior police management had been pressured by Disneyland. Subsequently, middle management and frontline officers were asked to “do better next time.”

…

The accusations come six months after Disney caused public outrage by demanding hygiene officers inspecting a restaurant remove their badges and caps before entering the park.

…

The officers felt theme park staff were more interested in ensuring police did not “disturb” guests than in cooperating and offering assistance to police.

The officers had to be “escorted” in the park, even though they could lose valuable time waiting for designated Disney staff to show up.

They were asked to take detours – such as entering the park through remote staff entrances while the incident was just inside the main gate – so guests did not see them.

Disney was also accused of asking police to arrest protesters outside the theme park’s gates. And in cases of traffic complaints that could easily be resolved, the park operator insisted officers press charges.

News wires are fast. I came straight home from the protest against the blasphemous Danish cartoons in Kowloon, put some photos up on Flickr and already there’s an AP story up.

According to the AP report, there were between 2000 (police) and 3000 (organisers) people, which would seem right to me.

Most of the protesters were very cautious to avoid being confrontational. Most of the signs were targeted against the abuse of free speech and blasphemy rather than the people who they saw as guilty of these offences. Only a few signs mentioned Denmark, the USA or Jews. Some expressly distanced themselves from terrorism: "We are against 9/11 and 7/7. We are against slandering our Prophet, too." There were no truly radical signs.

After being temporarily held up near the start of the protest, some protesters at the front appeared to push past where they had been asked to wait. A man with a loudhailer, behind the first few rows of people, stopped the rest from following. “If you love the Prophet you will obey the laws!” They sat and waited until the police told them they could move forward.

Almost all of the protesters were men. Most of the women marched together behind the men. The protesters appeared to be largely Pakistani or south Asian. I recall seeing just one Chinese protester (though in retrospect they could have been Malaysian).

I talked to a journalist who interviewed an Egyptian Muslim leader. Apparently the Muslim community is quite split about whether they should protest. Peter Gordon at The Standard asked “at whom, exactly, would their protest be aimed? … Any march runs the risk of being an empty gesture and counterproductive.” I imagine some Muslims will be asking this themselves.

Some are predicting that up to 50,000 will gather on Sunday. I can’t find a firm figure for Hong Kong’s Muslim population, but it seems to be around 70,000. I think you can add a lot of the Indonesian domestic helpers to that number.

A visitor arrives in Hong Kong, intending to take in most of its sites plus make a quick side trip to the mainland. In Hong Kong, they visit the Buddha of the Po Lin monastery, enjoy the nightlife at Lan Kwai Fong, absorb the local culture of the Man Mo temple, and even find time for a few rides at Disneyland. On their side trip, they manage to visit the mainland’s Great Wall and Forbidden City.

But something is strange. The floors in the Lan Kwai Fong bars aren’t sticky, and no broken glass litters the street. The incense in the temple isn’t that pervasive. And where are the 268 steps between the buses and the Buddha?

The explanation for these mysteries is simple. Instead of spending many hours on the Hong Kong transit system and on a trip to the mainland, the visitor has sampled much of Hong Kong and the mainland, without leaving the Disneyland resort on Lantau Island.

It’s just an hour from Central on a convenient subway line – and the final few minutes are spent on a cushy train with windows in the shape of Mickey Mouse ears..

Professor Richard Foglesong , the author of a book about the way the Disney company works its magic, warned recently that Disney might grab more of the money tourists bring to Hong Kong by recreating the territory’s – and even some of the mainland’s – main attractions.

They could offer Lan Kwai Fong, but cleaner, safer, and better, he said. And the incense of the Man Mo temple is “something they might want to fix.”

The Hong Kong government invested $25 billion to obtain a 57% stake in the Disneyland resort, hoping that the park would attract tourists, especially mainland tourists, to Hong Kong. In return, Hong Kong hopes to see benefits to the local economy of $148 billion over the next 40 years and the creation of 38,500 jobs over the next 20 years.

However, some have doubts about the revenue distribution of Disneyland’s profits, and it is not clear how much the Hong Kong government will see. If further expansion of the park is aimed at keeping visitors there, local businesses that rely on tourism may suffer.

Foglesong, a political scientist who spoke recently at Hong Kong University, drew on his research of Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, to give an idea of how Hong Kong’s Disneyland might develop.

Walt Disney, founder of the Disney company, was annoyed by the “ticky-tacky” development of cheap motels and fast-food restaurants that arose around the original California Disneyland in the 1950s. He also knew few people from the East coast of the United States were making the trip to the West coast to visit the park.

So when he decided to expand in Florida, he sought to develop a larger park that would be largely self-contained. The company bought 104 square kilometres of land, an area greater than Hong Kong Island, that would be used to insulate the park from outside development and allow huge expansion.

Walt Disney World’s development has aimed to keep people within the premises, “to spend their money with them,” Foglesong said. In 1984, Walt Disney World targeted local business that benefited from the park. Within ten years, Disney had moved from owning two hotels to providing for one-third of the hotel market of Orlando. Disney also directly targeted its competition, building two night-time entertainment complexes and extending their attractions, such as building three water parks.

Foglesong described the Disney attitude as believing that the customers were theirs alone, and that other companies should not benefit from Walt Disney World tourists. The park has effectively killed three proposals to build a train-line between the Orlando airport and Walt Disney World by refusing to allow a station at the park after non-Disney hotels demanded intermediary stops that would allow fast access to the park for visitors staying at these hotels.

“That’s the game they play,” he said.

But so far, the culture at Disneyland in Hong Kong is almost entirely that of Disney. The rides and attractions do not reflect Chinese culture, and the entrance to the park opens into Main Street, U.S.A. Only the food and some gift-shop figurines have made a concession to local culture.

Below the surface, they have made smaller allowances to Chinese culture. Feng Shui experts were consulted in the planning process, and incense was burned after the completion of each building. The main ballroom is 888 square metres, and the hotels do not have a fourth floor, in acknowledgement of the number eight signifying fortune and four being unlucky.

But such small allowances are only to make the park compatible with local culture, which is entirely different from a replication of what Hong Kong has to offer.

The plans for the second phase of development are not clear to the public. However, complaints about the lack of attractions has led to widespread rumour that park will concentrate on extending with attractions similar to those seen at other Disney parks.

With the Hong Kong Disneyland extending to just 2.8 square kilometres with phase two of the development, it will remain just a fraction of the size of Disney World in Florida. Such a small area means that the Hong Kong Disneyland will not have much room to go beyond these attractions in phase two.

But it is difficult to predict what Disney plans with their development. Hong Kong has already had a taste of their secrecy with their reluctance to release visitor numbers, and such secrecy is typical of the Disney company throughout the world.

Fogleson calls the Disney company “insular, defensive and somewhat arrogant.” With such attributes, it’s difficult to predict how the Hong Kong Disneyland will develop.