Tony Henderson

An icon of Mui Wo village on Hong Kong’s Lantau Island has ‘gone to the further shore’ and his popular product, Sweet Tao Fu (J. Tofu) or Soy Custard, will be sorely missed by so many people – local and visitors alike – Mok Kau Moon, aged 79, died 11 July, 2011, after only one night in hospital.There is no one to take up his business.

Tragically, a night before she arrived home for a brief family reunion before starting another contract as a domestic worker in Hong Kong, Florence “Dom-an” Macagne Manegdeg’s husband “Pepe” was assassinated. The perpetrator was alleged to be a military man. That was November 28, 2005, in the tobacco fields of San Esteban, Ilocos Sur, Northern Philippines.

Shek Kwu Chau is a restricted access island near Cheung Chau Island, off Hong Kong, reserved for volunteer drug rehabilitation affairs, but now figuring in a government zoning plan that would have a massive incinerator built 10 metres from its wonderful rocky shores to the destruction of its special wildlife features and in-shore fishing. Nearby islanders are protesting.

In his or her “AN OPEN LETTER TO ALL MANKIND” the web host at conspoetry.com defines the conspoetry title by telling that a ”CONSPIRACY is – a secret agreement between two or more people to perform an unlawful act, etc. And, that POETRY is [also] – any communication resembling poetry in beauty or the evocation of feeling.

“How to get each one of us or as many as possible to start thinking and doing Green? As a start we have our Green Ambassador project to form people with a Green Heart to bring into birth a green culture where people can rethink everything and come to understand what being Green is all about,” Albert Oung, Green Institute Hong Kong.

This day each year the citizenry of Hong Kong take to the streets and demonstrate in solidarity against a wide variety of ills and social injustices – July 1, 2011, was no exception. Hongkongers staged their biggest show of discontent with the government in seven years, taking to the streets in the largest numbers since 2004.

It is generally thought that separation of the powers of Church and State and an independent judiciary are new considerations and the universal humanists too may think that the Law of Political Accountability is quite new – think again – and look to Africa. Bereket Alemayehu, an organiser with Convergence of Cultures on the African Continent, introduces us to the Gada system.

An educational forum was held 10 June, 201l, according to its blurb intending to increase literacy on nuclear issues to help civil society in Hong Kong to discuss and debate the issues surrounding nuclear energy as a part of the current local fuel mix – others are coal then natural gas – with presentations and open discussions.

Peace March from Gujranwala in Pakistan,7th May 10 AM from Gujranwala Bar to terminate 8th May, 6PM at the Tomb of Allama Iqbal, in Lahore. People from different areas of life were called – including lawyers, figures from civil society, humanists, political activists, theatre players both male and female – to participate in the march, on foot, against all types of violence.

A recent Greenpeace initiative calling on the Hong Kong government Environmental Bureau to put a stop to ‘expansion’ of the present nuclear programme came under some criticism by supporting groups and politicians that called for a clearer anti-nuclear stand by Greenpeace but they were publicly reprimanded by the China-based organisation.(See Pressenza previous:Green Party…)