The death of freedom
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has patience. The US changes its underwear every four years (and often every eight years). The CCP operates in 10-year increments, but truthfully its plans extend for many decades, if not longer.
For this reason, the CCP can accomplish its nefarious plans glacially, by destroying the very things it loathes, such as freedom, justice, human rights and democracy, in effect subjecting the free world to death by 10,000 cuts. The greed and avarice rampant in the free world today renders us all frogs, lolling in simmering water, slowly boiling away those things that distinguish us from the infamy of totalitarianism, from the likes of the CCP.
We open our doors to trillions in CCP cash. We allow China, or companies it controls (the CCP controls every company in China) to buy or invest in Western enterprises that have clout in key industries, such as entertainment, where subtle control can filter out any hint of problems in CCP land, where heroes do not fight against CCP evil, but where bad guys never come from China, where freedom, democracy, human rights and justice are never issues at play in their cinematic or social programming.
Confucian Institutes cover the world carrying with them CCP propaganda, where teaching Chinese language and culture comes with subtle lessons of the glory of communist China, creating an underlying belief that communist China is good and the West’s dislike of Chinese communism is misplaced.
Change that is imperceptible is the most dangerous kind and death of all we hold sacred by 10,000 cuts is almost impossible to perceive as the CCP slowly dissolves all boundaries between its evil oppression and the free world.
“Come,” the evil witch said to Hansel and Gretel, luring them into her cottage of confections, intending to kill them when Hansel was fat enough to eat. Like this, the CCP beckons with cash and support, with smiles and “cooperation,” all the time with strings, the wrong kind of horrible strings, not “thou shalt have democracy,” but “thou shalt support ‘one China’ and thou shalt support communist China’s control of the South China sea,” and “thou shalt support whatever communist China requests of you” and “thou shalt release your precious natural resources to China” and “thou shalt recognize that communist China is the No. 1 power in the world” and its socialism with Chinese characteristics is the only way forward for the world. In the end, Hansel and Gretel killed the evil witch.
It is not easy to contain evil. Evil has its ways, it plays on humanity’s self-loathing, on its weaknesses for material things, on its weakness and tendency to love anything willing to lead it.
The evil in China is unabashed. While it may masquerade from time to time as reasonable, the evil in communist China is the single most dangerous thing in the world today, because all of the other nonsense we deal with day in and day out, including the Islamic State group and a host of other aberrations, are relatively nothing compared with the death of our way of life by 10,000 cuts.
It is because we can see the evils of terrorism and extremism in all forms clearly, because they confront us, but the CCP’s brand of evil is insidious, nearly imperceptible, glacial, funded with mountains of cash we provide.
One might think we can never lose our way because the UN would not allow it, but that asylum is controlled by the inmates, with two of five Security Council permanent members with veto power charter members of the dictator’s club. Consider a situation where China waltzes into Taiwan and the Security Council cannot do anything over the Chinese or Russian veto.
The free world must wake up to this slow death. Hong Kong has now been silenced. So have a number of film companies through investments by Chinese companies that do the CCP’s bidding. So have news outlets around the world afraid to be excluded from reporting on China. So have recipients of CCP cash infusions and debt relief (watch out Europe, weak states are inches away from becoming CCP satellites, unable to resist).
The frog will never leap from the pot. The only way to save the frog is to turn off the fire or remove the pot from the heat, or pull the frog out. It is impossible to recover from 10,000 cuts. It is possible to stop the cuts by killing the executioner or somehow developing thicker skin.
By recognizing the design of the CCP’s untoward plans, by countering them, by publicizing the dangers at every opportunity, by opposing them, by calling them out, by restricting their imposition, by supporting each other against the evil, by throwing out political correctness and by most of all recognizing that the emperor’s new clothes are neither new nor clothes, and that the emperor is in fact a naked weakling, we can prevail.
Let us start by supporting Taiwan and Hong Kong and Tibet, and by opposing China’s adventurism in the South China Sea and its military buildup.
The world has sunk into political correctness and a “one China” hypnotic trance. Let us make this year the start of a new paradigm, the paradigm of telling the truth about the CCP and standing up to its infamy.
Lee Longhwa
Los Angeles
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under