Cross linked with 44 Days
The Great Western Firewall vs. the Great Firewall of China: different methodologies, identical results.
A truth untold is a lie. A fact hidden is censorship.-- The Author
When I recently signed off of Reflections in Sinoland, saying I was not going to do any more columns for the time being, so as to write my third book, Red Letters -- The Diaries of Xi Jinping, I really meant it. But an interesting and thought provoking series of events happened over the last couple of weeks, which has inspired me to write a non-fiction piece again.
This is a plea to everyone reading, that we Westerners had better wake up before it's too late. If we don't, we are going to continue to have many repetitions of Ukraine, Serbia, Georgia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan, Libya, Mali and the list goes on, non-stop, since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. That was when the West's elites perceived a genuine global threat to the status quo of capitalism and their dominion over Earth's resources. Now with the world being more multipolar than ever, we come to China and Russia. As Western Empire's decline accelerates, in desperation, America is trying to take down these two colossal civilizations. This, even as Russia and China work openly and secretly to interlock their cooperation and resistance. It is clear they are creating a unified front in the face of Western bellicosity. Yes, the United States is delusional and megalomaniac, but it's frightening to know that if carried to its logical conclusion, it will mean the end of humanity as we know it.
A big part of this plea to my readers is for Westerners to quit using the mainstream media and to start seeking out alternative news sources, as frustratingly fractured as they are, and to invest a modicum of time to do some research and investigation along the way. A good place to start would be all the hyperlinks below and then take advantage of the list of resources at the end of this article. The other plea is to come to terms with just how evil and corrupt our Western governments and capital are, in spite of what we learned in school text books. All of our lives and future absolutely depend on it. You will see what I mean after reading this.
An author friend of mine sent me a hyperlink about Hillary Clinton and her possible political downfall. This is due to America's decision to destroy Libya, using France and the UK as proxies. It was also a major slap in the face to China and Russia, who did not veto the US led, 2011 UN Security Council vote for a "no fly" zone over Libya. "No fly" as in bombs away, baby, much like Slim Pickens' Major Kong riding bronco in Dr. Strangelove. We know how this flagrant disregard for international law is playing out. Under the guise of "humanitarian" wars, the West pushes its fatuous, well-worn R2P (so called "Responsibility to Protect"), to overthrow, or at least control, resource rich governments. In reality, R2P really means the West's "Right to Plunder".
According to this article series, Hillary apparently went over the heads of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CIA to push through the bloody regime change. I replied to my friend that given Americans' predilection to cheer on their government's slaughter and maiming of millions of dark skinned, mostly Muslims, across the planet (not to mention, by current Kiev proxies, thousands of fair skinned Ukrainians as well), then surely this macho orchestration of Kaddafi's murder might actually help her win the White House. I then said that even if Queen Clinton is not the Democratic candidate, her replacement will just be another Wall Street-Anglozionist-Russophobe one percenter, so what difference does it make? Think Joe Biden or John Kerry. His closing comment was that I was probably right, but "he despises Bill and Hillary Clinton with a passion".
That got me to thinking about how much my thinking has evolved and grown in the last 4.5 years of living in China. In 2010, I thought Bill and Hillary were good leaders and capable politicians. I voted for Clinton twice and Obama the first time. By 2012, I futilely wrote in the Green Party presidential candidate on my Oklahoma ballot, as my awareness of the truth was growing. But I still thought that Hillary would make a great president. Not anymore. Being a dual national, that same year, I also voted for Franà §ois Hollande, thinking that he, as a so called Socialist, would be different than Mini-Me Nicolas "W." Sarkozy. Wrong again and if I have to, I'll write in a name on my ballot for France's elections in 2017.
Working as a school teacher affords me a lot of personal time. We work about 190 days a year and I can usually leave my professional life on campus, so I have my evenings and weekends to myself. As a result, since 2010, I have spent thousands of hours writing books, columns and more importantly, doing the necessary research to generate my work as accurately and as truthfully as possible. It is this massive amount of investigation that has opened my eyes about how the world really works. Especially revealing has been the West and its 500 years of brutal colonialism, with its exploitation of our planet's human and natural resources. The myth is that the West has nobly done all this in the name of progress and the pursuit of knowledge. But the impetus has been and continues to be profit, Empire and global domination. To legitimize it all in the eyes of its citizens, throw in God, Country and King. Voil, the annals of history as told by the Princes of Power.
The second thing that happened these last few days was an exchange of emails with another writer friend of mine. This time, it was to congratulate them for having an article published in a heavyweight American newspaper. In their article, they forcefully condemned a Communist country's use of censorship to control its version of history. To get published in this newspaper is a quite an achievement. It is one of those news sources which is so well respected, that if they print something, it's the truth. And if they don't write about an event happening in the world, it never occurred. So, my friend can now stake claim as a mainstream "made" (wo)man in the news establishment world, and I am truly happy for them and their success. It is a dream that many a writer and journalist fantasize doing.
Yes, this Communist country's censorship is more overt compared to what I like to call the West's Great Western Firewall (GWF), but the aims and results are identical. Why do countries like Cuba, China, Vietnam, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Ecuador and countless others not have faith in the West's tried and true GWF, where the state and capital know that merely controlling the mainstream media is enough to define what is true, not true, what happened and didn't happen? That the alternative media is too diffuse, too fractured and ultimately only constitutes feeble background noise, attenuated over time?
The difference is that for 80% of the world's people and their governments, they have been the victim of five centuries of Western colonialism and exploitation. And all these countries continue to be ceaselessly assailed by so called Western "civil society" and "democracy" NGOs, to effect psyops, destabilization and ultimately, regime change through assassination, coups and armed uprisings (not to mention the economic and social predations of the IMF and World Bank). With these examples of "superior" Western virtues and civilization trying to tear the 80%'s countries apart, one can empathize with their belief that they need to be more controlling and heavy handed than maybe they would like to be. Being the aggressor and not the victim, the West plays by a different, privileged set of rules. For 500 years, the West has had and continues to own the copyright to the human race's history books and current events. These other countries must battle against this massive, distorting prism of perceived reality.
A long time ago, I had a girlfriend who had been savagely raped at a young age. She kept a loaded pistol in her purse 24/7, even taking it to the bathroom, and slept with it under her pillow. She was paranoid and trusting of nobody, even in our intimate relationship. Can't say that I blame her. And she reminds me of China, Vietnam, Cuba and all rest of the 80% of the people of the world, who have been and continue to be savagely raped during 500 years of Western colonialism. Like my old friend, I can empathize with their paranoia and lack of trust.
In any case, the West can be just has heavy handed at censorship as these more criticized countries. Westerners who criticize Baba Beijing for setting up thousands of social media accounts to help control the official government narrative don't realize that their governments spend billions doing exactly the same thing. If you think all those thousands of comment trolls who haunt mainstream and alternative websites across the planet work for free, think again.
I have learned over the last 4.5 years that my friend's mainstream acceptance can sometimes come at a cost. They replied to another email I had sent. My original email contained a link for an article that explained the background history of this very same Communist country that my friend wrote about. The revelations in this article that I sent were written by a non-establishment journalist who researches FOIA released documents, testimonies, court documents, interviews, etc., and has contacts in the dark, dank netherworld of spydom. I was very surprised to get back a reply from my writer friend, saying that this investigative journalist is, "a nut case conspiracy theorist". I wanted to reply to this riposte that I wasn't sure who was sending it, the friend I've known for 30 years, or the one who wrote the article for that high powered, establishment newspaper. I joked to myself saying maybe they wrote it, knowing that the NSA and America's 15 other spy agencies would store a copy for future reference.
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