May 30, 2020
Day 70
First the good news…
The Zeroes say it all on this day. For the first time ever we are one zero away from there being nine out of nine total zeroes on the board. 1 Active case. Zero recovered cases. Ratio of recovered (or otherwise) cases to confirmed and probable cases is 99.93%
Now for the bad news…
So, you tell me. Are we as a species doomed to repeat the same tired, tragic and timeworn tales generation after generation? Is it impossible to stop the cycle of the rise of totalitarian governments and the wars necessary to ensure they do not take over the world with their poisonous ideologies?
If you would like to know what the peoples of the world thought and felt while Hitler and the cancer of Nazism was growing in Europe, look around you as China takes over Hong Kong and destroys a tiny remnant of freedom clinging to the shore of Asia’s mainland. Eighty some years ago it was Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland, the Anschluss, Norway, Belgium, France, Italy….
Now it’s Tibet, Nepal, the South China Sea and Taiwan. The concentration camps have already been built and the Uighurs, an ethnic minority, are imprisoned there by the millions for the simple crime of being ‘other’. They have no champions and no hope. Those not yet in the camps live under mass surveillance and the threat of imminent arrest. Once inside, the inmates are subject to re-education, torture and possible organ harvesting. Outside, systematic oppression includes the destruction of graveyards and the disappearance of entire communities from the land, maps and eventually, memory. It is happening now and we tolerate it.
Toasters are cheap here because life is cheaper there.
It is not only lives in the balance, but judgement of history as well. Just as Hitler had a plan for South and North America, the Chinese Communist Party has a plan for you. When all is said and done they’ll rewrite the curriculum of all schools, dismantle statues, destroy landmarks and erase history all while rebuilding the world as they imagine it should be. To the victor go the spoils.
Watch Hong Kong in the coming weeks. There is a reason the CCP placed their boot on the neck of the island two weeks before the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. When the former Hong Kong is a couple of news cycles in the past, watch Taiwan. Watch Australia, the South China Sea and Africa. Read your history books and learn, because if all you do is watch, there will come a time when you will see your children march off to a war that you let happen because you could not be bothered to stop it.
Bring manufacturing home to your own land or to countries that do not support totalitarian dictators. Stop, by whatever means, the conducting of business with China. Stop listening to their wolf diplomats scolding the west for interfering in their sovereign right to whatever they like. Stop thinking you can do nothing. Do a little bit each day. Open your eyes. Study your enemy. Speak out. Speak up. One battle is over. The next is well underway.
ironwoodwind 