Here’s how you obfuscate 1000 years of history. You animate it into an unintelligible eight minutes for an expo in Shanghai because certainly those Chinese are interested in how the Poles won their freedom. But the real problem with this animation that seems to place Poland’s entire history squarely into an Xbox game is the ending. All that history brings us up to the overbearing and rather creepy final images of the great corporate towers ascending into the heavens, completely taking over and creating the corporate citadel of wonder that houses only cubicle workers and offers relaxing courtyards where business people can take a mandatory lunch. It’s as if the only thing the western world can figure out to do with cities anymore is to turn them into gargantuan corporate business parks unfit for any human habitation.
Tag Archives: China
Animation: The Cowherd’s Flute
Chinese animator Te Wei made this film, The Cowherd’s Flute, in 1963. The boy plays a magnificent flute, then he falls asleep in a tree and dreams about losing his water buffalo. How does he find his friend again?
I found this via Cartoon Brew.
Freedom of Expression? Really? When Was the Last Time You Heard a Slave Speak Freely?
I found this Amnesty International video over at Silliman’s Blog today. It’s about the power of words to help defend freedom of expression around the world. I’m all for that. But can you take me seriously as a wealthy member of the Western world’s corporate structure? The Amnesty video mentions a journalist jailed for ten years in China simply for sending an email. So let’s stop and think for a bit about this ‘freedom of expression.’ Take China as an example. The Chinese are essentially slave labor for the entire Western world. They make our shirts, pants, toys, radios, shoes, dinnerware, jackets, telephones, etc. They produce almost every single solid object you will touch during your day. Everything. They take their instructions from our corporations and they build these things for pennies a day. They are slaves. No doubt about it. Their government is simply middle-management working for us. So, while we may pretend to be interested in freedom of expression, we most certainly do not want our slaves talking freely. Slaves who can speak their minds will gain their freedom and their hourly wages will increase. They will no longer be our cheap labor – our slaves. They will become expensive free thinkers just like us. Our corporations and our politicians do not want freedom of expression for China under any circumstances whatsoever. Morgan Freeman’s blazer was quite possibly made by a Chinese slave making 30 cents an hour. When the Chinese decide that they want to fight for their freedom, they will be fighting us. The world will change when the Chinese people shoot their leaders and lift their wages. You think you’ve seen a global economic crash? Just wait until our corporations can’t pay for their slaves in China anymore. The bottom line has not changed for at least three hundred years: the world economy cannot function without slavery.
So the Amnesty video asks us for our words to help in the cause of freedom. I’ve just written some.
20-Year Anniversary of China’s Public Massacre
Twenty years ago, on June 4, 1989, the Chinese government ordered its military to kill the unarmed peaceful student protesters for democracy gathered in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The army then shot the students and ran them over with tanks. In its murderous effort to suppress any form of free expression or protest, the Chinese government and its military murdered the people in Tiananmen Square while the entire world watched. China is now preventing any sort of commemoration or discussion of those events or the twenty-year anniversary by almost completely shutting down internet access to any material that could possibly mention the murder of Chinese people in Tiananmen Square.
You can see the police with umbrellas blocking the view of the BBC news cameraman in the embedded video. The entire square is closed to the press on this important day in Chinese history. The government does not want anyone in China to know anything about or understand what happened in 1989.
It is an honor to have a web site banned in China. Candlelight Stories receives a large number of visits from China and is actually used in English classes there. However, Candlelight Stories urges the citizens of China to wake up in the morning and completely overthrow and eliminate their oppressive government. It would be enlightening to see the government officials of China dragged by Chinese citizens into the middle of Tiananmen Square where the world could serve as witness to the end of this horrendous period in Chinese history. Why any company or country does any business at all with the brutal despots ruling China is a complete and pitiful mystery to any rational thinker. And people who site see in China would have probably been perfectly comfortable touring concentration camps in 1944.
Now, China, press the red button and ban me.
Online Novels Boom in China
In China, there’s a revolution in online novels. Writers are uploading their books to be read by millions of Chinese readers who pay a small amount for each book. The leading company offering online novels in China is Shanda Literature. Their site, Qidian.com, is the most popular destination for novel readers. Even regular bookstores are now offering print versions of online novels. Apparently, the online universe is China is relatively free of censorship and authors find themselves with more freedom to criticize.
Here’s a CNN article about the online publishing boom in China.
