Warm Fuzzy World

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Blog note: During these COVID days, with shuttered wi-fi cafes, I am posting on Tuesday mornings.

Hello Reader,

Got warm fuzzies?

I first encountered the terms “warm fuzzies,” —not to mention “cold pricklies” and the “hip woman,” who had big hips— in an allegory, obviously from the ‘safe-to-be-creative’ late 1960’s. (Here’s the story)

The wee story was a warning against “zero sum” thinking, or “fixed pie” thinking, or “not enough human worth to go around for all the common people” thinking, a warning badly needed because such crazy thinking was so prevalent in certain less functional families, communities and work sites. I’m glad things have gotten better since the 1950’s.

(Note: Even today, some males don’t want to allow equal rights to females, out of some wimpy fear of getting less of the respect pie) 

In the real world, of course, while we can’t all have a special first place blue ribbon, we can all receive ordinary compliments, hugs and smiles. Why not? Why not be bountiful with giving warm fuzzies? When reading the allegory of warm fuzzies for the very first time I thought, “Wha-what? Wow! What a concept!” 

Since I grew up on an emotional ice burg, and then initially found employment in frozen toxic places, I was surprised by the hip woman’s message. But it sunk in, and since then I have tried to be bountiful with my appreciation for all God’s children, and lavish in my praise.

In fact, several store clerks have said I was their favorite customer. To me, being positive to clerks, besides the joy of giving warm fuzzies, offers a way of feeling like “I am paying my way on the human scene…” I don’t mean “pay,” rather, I mean I am crew not passenger, host not guest, giver not beggar, while feeling gracious in my bounty. It’s a lifestyle choice. 

Last month I was with millionaire blogger Derek Sivers. As he checked out of his luxury hotel it was natural to him to compliment a desk clerk on her spectacles. As did I. Then she said she liked mine too. A week later, during an e-mail, when I referenced this incident as being like in my Kind to Clerks essay, Derek had forgotten about his compliment. Because his appreciative lifestyle was so natural to him.

(By the way, Derek liked my Clerks essay, archived November 2019)

Parting thought: Of course I still have my bad hair—I mean, bad heart days when I am feeling witchy, or small, or ungiving, or waiting for someone else to smile first… I’m only human.

Sean Crawford

Chestermere,

made in March, 

released in May, 

2020

Sidebar: 

Speaking of “being kind,” I am proud that (link) Canada is kindly pushing for Taiwan to be allowed observer status with the World Health Organization. Especially since Taiwan, with only six—count ‘em, six— COVID-19 deaths, has something to teach the world… if allowed freedom to speak. (Now at seven)

If the United Nation’s WHO is reluctant to grant observer status, when doing so is surely a “no-brainer,” then it can only be because the WHO is under secret orders from communist officials in Beijing, lest Taiwan then desire “freedom from China.” Canada needs warm fuzzy allies to help push for justice for Taiwan, over in the Asian corner of the world, because the communist officials no longer believe in their doctrine of equality. Instead, it’s as if “‘All countries are equal,’ but China is more equal than others.”

If I would say that, “Yes, China morally deserves to rule Taiwan,” then I would have to face up to explaining why there have been not just days, not even weeks, but in fact months of demonstrations by so many idealistic young and old men and women on the streets of Hong Kong… I can face facts: China is not even morally fit to rule China, let alone a democracy like Canada or Taiwan. 

See my essay China Molests Canada archived May 2020.

Blog Administrator’s Note:

President Ronald Reagan asked for, “a kinder, gentler America.” 

Doctor Who said, “Always try to be nice, but never fail to be kind.” 

I said, “Inspired by Peter Capaldi’s Doctor Who… I could simply add “kind” to my blog site labels…” 

(Labels are on the right, that people can click on) 

So I did add “kind,” putting three posts under that label. 

Mind you, just as the label “humor” is for those few blog posts that advise, in part, on how to be funny, not simply for posts that have jokes, so too will the label“kind” be used for essays that advise, in part, on how to be kind.

As Reagan said, God bless America.

Contemptuous Coffee Table Books

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Last week’s post ended with a contemptuous: “You know what? The Chinese can keep their thought police. It’s time to recognize Taiwan.”

Now, speaking of contempt, in these quarantine lockdown times, here is a nurturing paragraph, but with righteous swear words, from the blog of best-selling writer John Scalzi: (Whatever, for April 26, 2020)

• All the above, incidentally, is why you have my official permission to tell all those people who are saying that you should develop a new hobby under quarantine and/or if you’re not doing six different things all very well, then you are wasting this precious gift of time, to fuck right off. Motherfuckers, I released a bestseller in quarantine and promoted the crap out of it and am negotiating some genuinely breathtaking business deals and I’m still mostly feeling like sleeping until 3 fucking pm in the afternoon and then going back under the covers an hour and fifteen minutes later. If you’re getting out of bed these days, you’re ahead of the game.

One of our local National Hockey League coaches would concur. “I’m pretty good,” Matt Brown replies. “And I keep telling people, ‘Pretty good is the new great’” 

Wes Gilbertson, in a sports article for page C1 of the Calgary Herald, May 9, writes ‘Sadness. Frustration. Boredom. Fatigue.’ 

He then quotes coach Matt Brown: 

“I think probably the most universal theme is that everyone, almost every day, goes through some sort of low-grade grief, and the reason is just that the emotion of sadness is always in response to loss…. 

If you look at our Flames players, for instance, the two things that they love most are playing hockey and being together. Both those things are taken away. Every day that you wake up, it’s another day that you’ve lost those things, so it’s a bit of a Groundhog Day of grief right now.

“As a result, what sadness does is it causes a drop-off in energy…. (By design) 

So we can process loss, so we can wrap our head around it…. So what people find unnerving is that you get high-functioning, very motivated people that suddenly have no energy. They know what they want to be doing…”

So, dear reader, let’s not have self-contempt. Note: The article covers the whole front page of the sports section, having much practical advice for coping with COVID-19.

Hello Reader,

Got pretty books?

Of course I’m proud to be a member of the human race—not like being a Martian—but still, sometimes I have contempt.

Oh, how I wish humankind could learn two simple things, just two: 

First is: ‘Don’t invade other countries,’ 

Second is: ‘Don’t introduce invasive species.’

So while the pretty peacenik with a guitar sings “Where have the native flowers gone?” hoping her fellow civilians will get a clue, I know the truth: 

All we learn from history is that we don’t learn from history.

… Here’s a poem from my Tracing the Martians of H.G. Wells poetry manuscript:

Coffee Table Books

Before I was born

there were books made for boys,

boys who wondered, “What’s it like on the inside?”

I saw how in a bomber fuselage

rivets and structural lines stretched along through rings,

with the turret gunner’s seat dangling like a swing.

The bombardier had a mattress to lie belly down on

looking through rings of plexiglas.

In a big cramped submarine

bunks lined the torpedo room,

with a sack of potatoes hanging inches

from a sailor’s nose.

They called their subs pigboats

as diesel fumes clung to their clothing.

A boy wants to see into the corners

of an airplane, submarine, battle-tank:

“What’s it like on the inside?”

An adult only wants to view the whole machine 

at a long glance,

posed clean and pretty on a stage,

in a coffee table book.

A grownup has trouble imagining 

the wreckage of war,

as I learned when they did a product-recall 

of a G.I. Joe battlefield command post: 

Toy soldiers with their map table and walkie-talkies 

were set in a jagged corner of an open brick building.

Grownups prefer their toys on a clean flat coffee table.

As a boy reading The Martian Chronicles

I learned that when adults saw newsreels of wars in China, 

they saw the footage as dim and unreal, too far away.

I felt war as a child 

during a nightmare in darkness.

I was with Danny Beck and Bobby Johansen 

and we were all crying.

We were soldiers by the black barn, 

and across the field was a creek.

And down in that dark creek, we knew, unseen, 

were the Germans. And we were in utter despair.

Adults live in their bright world of sunny 

coffee table pictures,

with no shadowed corners, 

never asking, “What’s it like on the inside?”

Sean Crawford

Calgary

May

2020

Beauty and The Art of War

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“Every overseas Chinese is a warrior!”

China’s leaders, in 2020, writing to useful idiots and secret agents—call them prostitutes—who are physically living in Canada, but without love of Canada.

Hello reader,

Got beauty?

Leaving last week’s land of thought police, (Part One)

I go to (Part Two) seeing beauty, with Asia in the background.

I’m feeling contemplative.

Before me is a thing of beauty. 

Here is traditional Chinese bookbinding, a method developed during the Ming dynasty. (1338-1644) Scarlet ribbons are stitched across the spine, the thick-stock pages folded in half with the printing on the outside only, pages with both nice calligraphy and print. The cover is black with gold lettering; yet not as stark as that sounds, being offset by a red plaque, with gold calligraphy, pasted into an indentation.

The volume, from the Amherst press, is The Art of War by Sun Zu. (Sunzi) I’ve long owned a paperback copy, in English. This new translation, 2011, is by James Trapp. Does the world need yet another translation of this 2,500 year old text? Actually, yes. I’ll explain below. For now, I’m just contemplating this piece, dipping into it, and thanking another James, one James Clavell.

Clavell, once a starving prisoner of war of the Japanese, is best known to the TV watching public for the mini series Shogun, of old Japan, featuring the handsome actor from the weekly TV series Doctor Kildare, Richard Chamberlain. A huge tome, Shogun is about as thick as a paperback can ever be, a best seller, a book that might especially appeal to fans of Star Trek or history, with its intricate fantastical depictions of a lone Englishman cast ashore, a stranger in a strange land: Castles, ninjas, even great public bathhouses—it’s all good.

I remember, in the 1970’s, lending the book to two brothers still living on our old homestead. When I returned I found my book battered and wilted, like it had been through a whirlwind. “What the heck happened?” I asked. “We both read it, twice.”

I never did return to Shogun, but I read Clavell’s Tai Pan (colonizing Hong Kong) and King Rat (P.O.W.s of the Japanese) twice each. 

Remembering how the Chinese have a cradle-to-grave belief against democracy, and against the democracy of Taiwan… what I also have read twice—later as a little book, first as a Reader’s Digest article—is James Clavell’s grim and controversial The Children’s Story. It’s set down home in the USA. They called Clavell a communist for that one. 

I dimly recall the Readers Digest people having to defend themselves in the next issue. They said the story of poor Johnny, who’s father had been taken away for re-education, was only to dramatize how easily children can be led, and not for any other purpose. This would have been during the good old Kennedy or Johnson years. (Wikipedia mistakenly says 1981) 

For me, it’s nice to contemplate the beauty of Clavell’s idealism. Besides his best sellers, he also took time to write independently, to do what he thought was right. 

As I see it, Clavell wanted to help inform his fellow citizens, realizing that many people know about only their own town and family, and maybe don’t care to know much more. In contrast, I remember when some of us, at least, cared about South Africa’s practice of apartheid, (apart hate) and we helped to stop it, with college students arguing over sanctions. Caring may not be the default, yet it readily follows after efforts by others who do care. 

Clavell realized something: The average educated Chinese housewife knew The Art of War as well as she and her American counterpart both knew a work of English literature, but the American housewife, at the same time, had never heard of The Art of War, and she didn’t have any of its classic concepts as part of her vocabulary. Over here, no one did. 

In the west, as best I can judge by the writings before-and-after World War II of Captain Sir Basil Liddell-Hart, even army officers did not read the book. Not even during the conflicts in French Indochina and Vietnam. 

(Nor during the war in Malaysia, where the British would ultimately defeat the Chinese communist guerrillas, partly because the British cared enough to design their armoured cars to fit between rows of rubber trees, mostly because the Chinese insurgents were too chauvinist to convert the surrounding nonChinese to communism) 

What the Europeans did read, unfortunately, was a famous book, On War, by Karl Von Clausewitz, a Prussian staff officer who encouraged “blood.” 

Westerners, when I was a boy, would have thought I was crazy if, agreeing with Sun Tzu, I tried to say the highest form of generalship is to get the opposing army to surrender without any bloodshed. 

It’s queer to contemplate how—I’m thinking of the US Civil War and the First World War— the westernmost powers might have avoided so many, many sorry casualties if only the husbands and wives, in the U.S. North and among the Allies, had chosen an “anaconda plan” (as one lonely Union general did in fact advise) of naval blockade and sanctions without fighting. 

(Note: At the end of both the Civil War and WWI, both losing armies were starving—as were, come to think of it, the WWII Japanese armies in the Pacific. Out there, awful things happened. An imperial soldier was ordered to report to the cookhouse without his rice tin: He promptly deserted—he didn’t want to be cannibalized)

But about the only translation, in the west, was by a Jesuit priest long ago. And so matters remained, even when I was a boy. 

Then something happened. Today there is a mainstream movie, starring Wesley Snipes, called Art of War, and the business section of a bookstore stocks Sun Zu’s classic as surely as it stocks books about samurai businessmen (‘swords’ and ‘rings’)… such books as would never have sold during my boyhood, by the way. Not back when “made in Japan” meant poor quality. 

(As in Back to the Future where the 1950’s professor says something (I forget) like, ‘No wonder your time machine broke down, Marty, this part is made in Japan.’ 

One of my friction cars from Christmas, when I was a boy, was from a tin can showing fruit and Japanese writing within, but turned inside out and painted like an automobile)

Over in the social studies area of the local big box store, one evening last April, while I don’t remember if I specifically counted the actual number of translators, I know I counted eleven different editions of the work. Well! The western world has sure heard of it now! 

What happened was classic: One man made a difference. Someday I will read again James Clavell’s desperate forward to the first modern Art of War. I would have read it at a community college around 1981-ish. (Wikipedia has the date wrong) First Clavell began having various characters, in his various best selling “Asian novels,” mention the book. And he worked on a translation. Then he had to persuade an otherwise sane editor that a book ostensibly about warfare, about long dead guys with bows and armor, would sell enough copies to break even. The rest is history. The irony, to me, as I looked in vain, was that not one of those eleven editions I found that April evening was the first one with the introduction by James Clavell. How sad. He knew Chinese communism, and he had seen close up what happened to Japan in defeat, and so he desperately told how important national survival is, and how the book of Sun Tzu could help. Poor Prometheus!

Never mind the bows and armoured horses. What makes Sun Tzu’s (Sunzi’s) work suitable for the business section, and other parts of the bookstore too, is, as James Trapp puts it: “…the elegance of the prose and the underlying Daoist principles.” 

James Trapp has crafted an elegant translation, a much more humane one than the old standard translation on my shelf. Yes, plainly there is room in the world for a translation as clear and lyrical as this one. 

I think I would like to meet Trapp, with his interesting artistic past, a past that must have fed his soul, not just his bank account. His specialties include Bronze Age art and early Buddhist sculpture. Today he works part-time at the British Museum, and also as a consultant to the UK school system for integrating China studies. 

Dipping into the piece before me, I like Trapp’s choice of footnotes, useful yet concise. In a footnote to page one of the final chapter, Using Spies, Trapp writes, “Sunzi’s understanding of the necessity of an effective intelligence network, its efficient organization and the various levels of expendability of its agents is chillingly calculating…and modern.” 

James Trapp’s introduction ends, “In the eyes of Sunzi a general is no mere jobbing soldier: he is a scholar, gentleman and philosopher. The depth of meaning which this element of mysticism imparts is undoubtedly responsible for the work’s continuing and universal appeal.”

Now I contemplate citizenship; I cherish the responsible competence of James, James and Sun Tzu… And I truly appreciate the beauty of the work of art before me. 

Art and Music Of Japan and Germany

As for Asians knowing The Art of War, tonight I was watching the Japanese animated (anime) series Ghost in the Shell, (2^nd Gig) dubbed with English subtitles. In one episode the major shows up at a den, with luxurious furniture, of three wealthy old criminals. She is there to retrieve something stolen. Three angry young hoodlums are there too. One of the old men asks the major, “Are you the same race as Roh?” 

She answers, “Can’t you tell?” Meaning: Yes, the major has a full prosthetic body. So formidable! 

The major backs away with her prize and the hoodlums want to chase after her. The old man forbids them, and quotes Sun Zu: When you know your enemy and you know yourself (voice over as the major flees into a taxi) you can fight a hundred battles without defeat.” The implication being: The hoods can’t know how powerful the major’s prosthetics are.

Beauty onscreen: 

Did you ever see the 1980’s German art-house movie, with Peter Falk as a human, filmed in black and white, called Wings of Desire, about invisible angels on the roofs of East and West Berlin? In the very next episode of Ghost In the Shell, Battou is in Berlin, on stakeout on the roofs, near the major, using his invisibility thing—but a girl in a wheelchair can look up and see him. In homage, the TV episode was given the movie title. I thought the whole episode, with an angel motif, was well done. 

The Americans once attempted a remake of the German movie, for mainstream audiences, starring Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan: Film critic Roger Ebert wrote, “But it's not really a remake. It's more of a formula story that benefits from some of Wenders' imagery (solitary angels standing in high places, solemnly regarding humanity) and his central story idea…”

At least the remake was better than the live action remake, (2 stars) staring Scarlet Johansen, of the anime feature movie (3 stars) Ghost in the Shell.

I like the artful words of Roger Ebert, a pulitzer prize winner, as he reviews Wings of Desire. “The film evokes a mood of reverie, elegy and meditation. It doesn’t rush headlong into plot, but has the patience of its angels. It suggests what it would be like to see everything but not participate in it…. For me, the film is like music or a landscape: It clears a space in my mind, and in that space I can consider questions… ”

Review of the Peter Falk movie (4 stars)

Review of the Nicolas Cage movie (3 stars)

Music: 

The Japanese, once fascist, now welcome the world. Here the incomparable Origa sings in Russian, graced with Latin, over graphics for the TV opening of the Ghost in the Shell series. 

Here Origa sings in half Russian, half English, a song of determination, over the opening of the second series—anime truly not intended for the “Saturday morning cartoons” of children, nor for adults on their couches wanting a relaxed evening cartoon sitcom.

I like how the joy of music, like a thirst for peace, is worldwide. In Japan, here is a choir like in Bulgaria, and instruments like in my local philharmonic. For 18 minutes of something completely different, a Japanese symphony plays music of the original Ghost in the Shell movie. (which I still haven’t seen) 

I’m no passive angel up high, I walk down in the world, a world where a sadder, now wiser German said, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

This week, I see beauty. 

Last week, I looked at the ugly Chinese leaders being un-truthful, with their agents operating secretly in dirty shadows in Canada. 

This day, my eyes are clear… in my own words, after John Keats, 

Truth is beauty, and beauty is truth. And that’s all we know, or need to know.

Sean Crawford

Alberta,

May, 

2020 

Footnotes: 

~“Remember Taiwan.” Here’s what the various liberal party Members of Parliament don’t want you to see. “Speak truth to power.” 

~Are you still thinking of last week’s post? I am. You know what? The Chinese can keep their thought police. It’s time to recognize Taiwan.

China Molests Canada

essaysbysean.blogspot.com 

New up to the minute  “now generation” quotations

An adult: 

“Taiwan (population 24 million, Chinese-speaking) has had only six COVID-19 deaths. SIX! But we are censored from knowing how they did it, and when they started doing it. This while their COVID progress graph line is never included on world graphs in the media, not like South Korea’s line, because the World Health Organization is ordered by China not to recognize Taiwan as existing.”

(National Post story with fun video of reporter quizzing the WHO)

A child in Canada (not Taiwan): 

“How come when fascists lie, we stop believing what they say, but when communists lie, we always hit the reset button and go back to believing?”

Someone on twitter: 

“China lied, people died.”

Hello Reader,

Got “shelter in place?”

I suppose I really should attempt a COVID-length post: long and leisurely, complete with music and art reviews.

But no. So here is only part one,  with links to THIS WEEK’S JAW-DROPPING NEWS. (see below)

Part One:

Old rerun

China and Communism

Next week:

Beauty and the New Art of War

Art and Music Of Japan and Germany

Old Rerun

China is on my mind, being twice in the media "this week" (in 2015) I will review The Art of War, but first:

China and communism

As a baby boomer, I still think of students as being longhaired idealistic “peace and love” types. At Harvard University’s model-United Nations this week the students from China were not peaceful, just hateful. They truly didn’t like Taiwan being called a free country. Their belief that Taiwan, covering the island of Formosa, “belongs” to China is, of course, part of their cradle-to-grave communist propaganda they are so used to hearing.

(In the dystopian Asia of the movie Cloud Atlas, the propaganda was “womb to tomb”)

We forget how powerful propaganda is, especially in a controlled environment, as do the students. For example, my buddy Blair once had a Chinese student, here on a student visa, tell him the followers of Falun Gong kill their parents. Blair paused for thought, and then pointed out that Canada doesn’t allow violators of human rights, such as parent killers, into the country as refugees. “But Falun Gong refugees are allowed in, right?” (Right) 

“Your government,” Blair said, “has been lying to you!” Blair told me this “really stopped him in his tracks.” 

As for Taiwan, never mind what Chinese schoolchildren are told, I have a Canadian viewpoint: A baby boy can come to Canada in 1919 from Germany or Japan and when he grows up, he will love Canada and then, if he becomes an adult during World War II, he will go off to fight against those fascists. Perhaps alongside my dad who advanced from the beaches of Normandy to Bremen.

Later, when Canadian troops fought and died in Korea, in the Commonwealth Division, my father was not pressured to rejoin: He remained a civilian, raising preschool children. From that war, I have an idea why China so fiercely resents Taiwan. 

I will tell you what I know: You may recall that during the Korean War China did not declare war on South Korea. The Chinese armies in Korea were not sent by China, at least not officially, but instead were officially "volunteers" from the People’s Liberation Army." These official volunteers, as prisoners of war, while being held behind barbed wire by the United Nations forces, told the UN they did not want to go “home.” No, they simply wanted to be released from the wire, set free, as soon as the war was over. Perhaps to make their way to Taiwan. 

To the UN this sounded fair but… No! Nay! Never!—peace negotiations dragged on, casualties mounted, the war prolonged—because the Chinese rulers insisted the volunteers be forcibly repatriated against their will… This would have been a few years after the western communists had built the Berlin Wall as part of an iron curtain across Europe. 

At last, to make peace, the UN agreed to force those innocent soldiers to disappear forever behind the bamboo curtain. A win for China… but I guess the Chinese Communist Party officials have never forgiven Taiwan for existing.

I am reminded of South Africa, back during my student years, when we might hypothetically say that “guest workers” are not citizens, AND we would surely say that any of their babies born and raised to adulthood in South Africa must given full rights and responsibilities to vote and love their country. 

In Taiwan the hopeful soldiers and idealistic young students who had escaped the communist takeover of the mainland in the late 1940’s would today be as old as my father—in their nineties. Their children, (baby boomers) and their children’s children, (Generation X, Generation Y and millennials) would have grown up loving the green hills of Taiwan, without any belief in communism.

(Writer’s note: My father, born 1919, who came to Canada when he was five, has since died)

Taiwan grandparents my age may, like me, own the Quotations of Chairman Mao, AND they relish their golden safety. Meaning: Safe to read the Common Sense of Tomas Paine, safe to think about the republican Sun Yat-Sen, and safe to speak with any Falun Gong… as I have. Near the British Museum, the Falun Gong handed out information brochures not just about their sunny religion, but also the dark oppression by the Chinese Communist Party/the regime/ Beijing—call it what you will. 

Late breaking news: From April 25 2020, comes this story of an imprisoned Hong Kong bookseller who escaped from China and safely opened a bookstore in Taiwan: A happy ending for folks who want life to be fair. 

Back in Canada, where my writer’s group meets at the old King Edward school, there were big beautiful paintings of gentle angels looking down as the communists harvest organs from the Falun Gong.

The other mention of China this week is in Maclean’s magazine (February 16, 2011?, p 74) where book reviewer notes a man “offers a rather frightful look into the mindset of China’s rulers.” The book is The Hundred Year Marathon by Michael Pillsbury. 

“His book would appear to be his attempt to make up for the neglectful advice he offered America’s leaders over the years. It concludes with a number of straightforward recommendations for the U.S. to adopt.” 

I read Michael Pillsbury’s Chinese quote: 

“Don’t let the enemy know you’re a rival until it’s too late for him to stop you,” Then I immediately thought of similar advice in The Art of War.

—WHOAH! Late breaking news MY GOD! 

This week, the Chinese quote is:

“Don’t let the Canadians know there will be a pandemic until it is too late for them to stop you from buying up all their Canadian PPE, while also accepting a donation from them of quote tons unquote of PPE.” (personal protective equipment, such as gowns and masks)

When China did that, they molested Canada..

Here is a link from Canada’s Global News for April 30. There are other links in cyberspace too.

If, dear reader, just like Canada’s Liberal Party folks who are Members of Parliament, you cannot “take in” this shocking news, and instead you just have to close your eyes and instantly forget, then I forgive you… Too bad the liberal MPs in positions of responsibility won’t exert themselves to keep their conscience-eyes open, won’t STOP believing in China. 

I feel like it’s again the 1930’s, my dad sees Adolph Hitler on the cover of Time Magazine as “man of the year,” and no one’s brain will retain anything bad about the Nazis. So I forgive you and me. Just as back when we bully-worshipped the Germans, I know in advance that (Hello to anyone reading this in some future year) this story of Chinese immorality will be as forgotten as a nightmare from yesterday morning. And for that, I am sorry.

Sean Crawford

Alberta,

May, 

2020 

Cloud Atlas movie review, 4 stars, “…a repeated motif is that all lives are connected by a thirst for freedom.”

Footnote for liberals: The patriots of Taiwan are just as much members of the Mongolian race as people in China: While trusting the one nation and distrusting the other, don’t let your local Liberal Party MP escape his conscience by calling you racist, not if he or she flatly refuses to watch this Global TV news report by an investigative journalist. Never mind the liberal party, the price of freedom is the rest of us having eternal vigilance.

You know what? The Chinese can keep their thought police. It’s time to recognize Taiwan.