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.

Peers of. Social Media

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

Head Notes

Four regular (not fake) news stories:

BBC news: Coronavirus Doctor’s Diary: “Fake news makes people think we want them to die.” (link)

Abc news: Due to social media “news,” people are attacking 5G communication masts (towers) across Europe, so then sometimes loved ones cannot speak to dying relatives in isolation in hospital. (link)

Sun news UK, with photographs: celebrities are advising followers that 5G towers are dangerous, as of 18 April social media followers have attacked 53 masts. (link)

Aljazeera news: Yes, it’s a Russian conspiracy: SOMEONE wants us to believe that masts cause corona. (link)

Hello Reader,

Got social peers?

Everybody likes having peers, everybody. A man once told me he bought a heavy metal concert T-shirt so that other fans of metal would find him. Not all peers are so obvious. It was E.M. Forster, in his oft-reprinted essay Two Cheers for Democracy, (link) who said that he belonged to an unspoken society of people who silently recognize each other. I suppose we can belong to overlapping groups, some vast and public, some small and quiet. 

As for those who are unthinking, unreflective, and reflexively trying always to conform as much they can, I wonder if they feel special, perhaps comforting themselves that by being so much in the majority they are so much more special than nerds and folks less classy. I really don’t know. 

A computer nerd, Paul Graham, once wrote that if you find yourself agreeing with absolutely everything believed by your surrounding culture, then you might want to think about that… I’ve read every one of Paul’s essays on the web. Read them without commenting, that is, as I don’t like his commenting peers. (On sites like Reddit and Ycombinator)

Yet I often comment for musician and computer programmer Derek Sivers, another original web writer. His peers I like. On one of Derek’s comment threads someone complimented him by saying Derek had done like Cameron in the teen movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Derek replied, “Huh?” (link to blog) So I joined in. I said I didn’t get the compliment either, but at least I enjoyed the excuse to watch the movie, on DVD, and I provided a link for everyone to a review by critic Roger Ebert, a review with a thread of eight comments. (link to review)   

I reflected on how (except maybe once on VHS with a few university students) 

I hadn’t seen the movie since I had first caught it in the theatre. Around that time, speaking of conformity, I had noticed that folks would rush out the instant the credits started. So I would tell my movie companion that if we had a good reason to rush, such as to get to a car park, then OK, but let’s not rush blindly for no reason. So I saw the end of the Ferris credits. This would have been back when only funny guys like Peter Sellers or Jackie Chan added anything at the end, decades before Marvel started adding treats. 

It was on the Web, on some thread I’ve long forgotten, that I found several people saying that Ferris comes out of the bathroom at the end of the credits. How distasteful. I privately thought, “No way, the movie is not that low!” But who was I to disagree with social Internet media?

Now I’ve rewatched it. My memory has been right all along, the “several people” who are not my peers are not correct. Who are these people? I will tell you what I imagine: They are the sort who forward social media. Who write social media. Whose peers are each other, a low sort who carelessly play the stereo louder than they know their neighbors would like, drive with a fuzzy regard for the two second rule, cheat at solitaire and murmur vague obscenities. (Janis Ian) They are people who innocently pass on social fake news as truth, innocently get alarmed at what’s on social media, and then tell folks right away about the COVID social news they just read… while seeing their peers, with self-satisfaction, as being worldly.

I wonder: Do these guys mean to lie about the ending of Ferris Bueller? I can’t say, but I can say they don’t mean to take pains to be honest about everything they say or write. I get it: As long as many people are most comfortable around peers who believe in “careless, fuzzy truth” there will always be a place for fake social media.

Meanwhile, in the regular, traditional media where any reporter’s peers, including her editor, demand “journalism ethics,” comes this COVID story: According to a hospital doctor in the UK, social media fake news is causing people to avoid hospitals. (see the first link at the head notes) I can sympathize with the doctor. 

I’m sure it’s hard to explain to a patient’s distraught wife “the theory and practise of social media” with only a quick sound bite—better to try to discredit a specific falsehood— hard to explain that her beloved brother-in-law, meaning no disrespect to him, is mistaken when he endorses and forwards something on social media. 

In everyday life? Perhaps a good compromise is to say to your brother-in-law: If the social media story is true, and if we can wait for a day, then ethical journalists will pounce on the story and report to us in detail. 

Furthermore, if real media does not show 5G towers causing any COVID, then please don’t attack the towers! Don’t attack based on social media. Let’s remember that real journalists practise “real journalism,” while many people cannot even define proper journalism. 

My not-so-common sense is: If from social media you hear something such as electrical towers causing a virus, or white vinegar curing COVID, or alien flying saucers have just landed on the Washington Mall, and if you wait just one day… and then all you hear from the eager capitalist reporters is crickets… then you might want to think about that…

In my own life—where “I don’t do Facebook,” because I despise the ethically-challenged company director, Mark Zuckerberg— …my secret peers remain homely everyday folk who would act, speak and write with the same self-respect as a journalist.

Sean Crawford, 

as COVID fake “news” infects social media, 

Spring, 

2020

Footnotes: 

~A Texan who has a “bachelor of science degree in mass communications” was arrested and lost his job after his fake COVID news on social media. He is now out on bail. (link)

~Mark Manson on his blog says something similar to me, and he even provides a URL for you to re-post it on social media.

~My recent social media piece is archived March 25.

~I documented how Russian Trolls Meet Social Media, archived December 2019.

~Gordon Corera, BBC News Security Consultant, recently recently reported on an EU report:

The authors also say there is "significant evidence of covert Chinese operations on social media", citing reports of networks on Twitter with ties to the Chinese government.

The report also singles out Russia for spreading disinformation, saying pro-Kremlin sources and Russian state media were continuing to run a coordinated campaign with the aim of undermining the EU and its crisis response and sowing confusion about the origins and health implications of Coronavirus.

~Janis Ian sang At Seventeen back in the seventies. I don’t suppose there’ll ever be a remake of her piece. Some songs, like Mac the Knife, and some movies, like Casablanca and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, just can’t be remade.