The sacred torch, the cross and the earthquake

First, Catherine and I want to make it clear that we are not gloating over the suffering caused by the earthquake in China.   We will ask our local Catholic Priest to offer a special prayer for the earthquake victims at mass next Sunday.

But that throws all the recent babble about the “sacred” Olympic torch and Jin Jing the “angel” into clearer perspective, doesn’t it.

For all of the Chinese PR babble about the “sacred” torch and Jin Jing the “angel”, how many victims of the earthquake are now taking the slightest bit of comfort, consolation or spiritual sustenance from contemplating the Olympic Torch?

All it takes is a reminder of the essential human conditions of vulernability, suffering and death, for false idols like the Olympic Torch to be revealed as deaf, dumb, mute and impotent gods, powerless to inspire faith, hope or charity.

Meanwhile the truly sacred symbols of the Buddha, the Koran and the Cross of Christ continue to inspire those three “great things that last” – faith, hope, and charity – among the Chinese believers in those true faiths, in ways the Communist Party is revealed, once again, to be impotent to do.

True, neither the Buddha nor the Koran nor the Cross of Christ could prevent the earthquake.    But the spiritual power in those truly sacred symbols is the power to inspire transcendence of suffering and death, a power which does not reside in the “sacred” torch or in its corporate sponsors.    Call the Christian eucharist (the consecrated bread and wine, the “body and blood” of Christ) a superstition if you will, but those who believe in it are sustained mentally, spiritually – and thereby even medically, to some extent – by its symbolism of transcendence of suffering and mortality.    The same will never be true of Coca Cola, and Lenovo’s computers will never inspire righteous moral struggle in the way the Holy Koran does.

 

Jin Jing, Batman, Zhang Ziyi and the Three Stooges

Food for thought from Tom Legg:

No one could have possibly dreamed up a story line about attacking a lady in a wheelchair to tug at the audience’s heart strings. That would be unpossible, right?

Go take a look at the video Tom links to in that post, of a woman being thrown out of a wheelchair in a fake “professional wrestling” stunt.

That got us thinking about other kinds of staged acts of apparent violence.   It should get the rest of you thinking too.   Beijing’s Western PR whores have been asking you to believe what your eyes tell you about the apparent “attack” on Jin Jing.   They have asked you, rhetorically, “how could it have been staged?   Don’t you believe your own eyes?   Isn’t it obvious?”

Well actually, no, it’s not obvious.   No more obvious than the staged stunts in Batman, or Zhang Ziyi’s ability to fly, or any stunts performed by the Three Stooges.   Did you know that the sounds of violence in all the Three Stooges movies were artificially produced, on machines?   That’s called “special effects”.   Please – Roland, Richard and Dave – please teach your children the difference between special effects and reality.   The real Three Stooges understood the difference, and expected their audiences to do so as well, unlike those PR machines who have nothing but contempt for their audiences.

Dramatis personae:

Moe, the alpha stooge = Roland Soong

Larry, the mumbling fair and balanced stooge = Richard Panda

Curly = could only be the incoherent, petulant, prolix Dave

Lenovo exploits a racist smear. Whose yak is gored?

Does anyone out there remember the infamous Willie Horton tv ad of George Bush’s 1988 Presidential campaign?    Here it is again, to refresh your memory.    It’s only 28 seconds.

Now you might recall that rightly or wrongly, the American Left widely perceived the Willie Horton ad to have been a racist smear upon Black Americans, because Willie Horton was, after all, Black.

So now I wonder where are all those same self-described “liberal”, “multicultural”, “anti-racist” American voices now that the propaganda campaign surrounding Olympic Torch-bearer Jin Jing has relied just as cynically upon racial stereotyping as did the Bush campaign’s Willie Horton ad.    Or has anyone even noticed?   The grimacing face of her putative Tibetan “attacker” - whose name and nationality conveniently remain unidentified – has been published all over China, playing upon Han Chinese racial fears of Tibetans.

Further evidence the Jin Jing “attack” was staged

It was obvious to me that Jin Jing’s putative “attacker” was posing for the camera in a staged performance, but until now I had not noticed what this incisive observer has noticed:

…look again. Something is missing from all the photos. Where are the police during the attack on Jin?  …The goon squad is missing! Probably millions of people have seen these photos and nobody picked up what you did.

…The Chinese police were sticking like glue to the torch carriers. Look even at the long shots. Not one of the blue-and-white jogging suits is around before, during, or after the attack.

 

Canberra Torch Relay: 50 Chinese Terrorise Little Girl

Loathsome bloody cowards.

One woman called Marie said she was mobbed by screaming Chinese students as she tried to watch the relay go past. She had to be rescued and escorted away by police….

…

Alistair Paterson, 52, from Lake George outside Canberra, said he was standing with his seven-year-old daughter on Limestone Avenue with an older couple, their teenage son and two other young women when they were attacked by a group of about 50 people draped in Chinese flags….

…”I got a flying kick in the leg, another bloke was hit in the head with a stick with a Chinese flag attached to it and our banners were torn down,” Mr Paterson said….

…”This gang of thugs rolled right through us and we had kids with us. My daughter was still shaking an hour later and is very quiet even now.

Will Roland Soong or Richard of The Peking Duck – or Xinhua – call this a “PR victory” for pro-Tibetan protesters?   Will they call this terrorised seven year old girl the “Australian Jin Jing”?

Pigs will fly first.   And I don’t expect to see Dan Harris of CLB flying by my window anytime soon.

Bart Simpson and Jin Jing’s spin-doctors

Will the FBI need to investigate Lenovo, Ketchum and Roland Soong?

As we have written previously, the Tibetan-American man who has been tormented by cyberstalking and threats of violence for his alleged role in attacking Jin Jing in the Paris Olympic Torch relay, has turned out to be a victim of mistaken identity.

One person who played an instrumental role in publishing that man’s name, address, and even maps of his house’s location, is the blogger named Roland Soong, aka “ESWN”. Another blogger, Tom Legg in Hong Kong, has written that in the past few days, Roland Soong has “erased his role in the stalking of an American Tibetan from the internet.”

Now Catherine and I are here to say that we, too witnessed Roland Soong’s article in which he published the name and contact details of that falsely accused man, consequent to which that man received threatening messages and widespread calls for his death among angered Chinese nationalists on the internet.

Roland, if you later delete that information (as you ought to), it is not going to go down any Orwellian “memory hole.” If ever necessary, my sworn testimony and Catherine’s will corraborate Tom’s, that you did indeed publish that man’s personal information. Personally I view this as prima facie evidence of a crime of incitement to violence, or perhaps even incitement to murder. But of course that would be up to America’s FBI to decide; I’m not stating any expert legal opinion here.

Meanwhile, as we’ve written, there remains troubling evidence indicating that the attack on Jin Jing might have been staged by China’s government. Granted, the evidence is not conclusive. But neither has it been refuted; this is not to mention the aggravating evidentiary condition of the PRC’s deservedly low level of credibility. And unless and until the currently reasonable evidence (no matter how inconclusive) indicating a possible Chinese-sponsored PR stunt is refuted, questions will remain open concerning what role, if any, was played by China’s Lenovo corporation – the sponsors of the torch – and/or by their American public relations agents, Ketchum in Beijing. What, if anything, did they know, or should have known, about any such staged event or its consequences which now include incitement to death threats against an innocent American citizen? As the owners of and public relations agents for the torch, they would be at the top of the list of “persons of interest” to investigate, if not as criminal suspects then at least as sources of evidence regarding the perpetrators.

Of course, don’t expect the Chinese government to cooperate in any such investigation. Nor should you expect much cooperation with the FBI from anyone – including any US citizen – who lives in China and serves the PR interests of Lenovo’s torch, as Jin Jing does as well. At this point, any American citizen in that position could probably be said to have been swallowed by the dragon, and digested by it too.

UPDATE: As of now, the personal information about the innocent Tibetan-American is still on Roland’s site. Thanks to Danwei for pointing that out. This fact, of course, renders Roland all the more contemptible.

How do you know she’s a witch? “She looks like one!”

There is mounting evidence that the Tibetan-American who lives in Utah, who has become a target of cyber-lynching due to rash accusations of having been the man who assaulted the crippled torch-bearer Jin Jing in Paris, is a victim of mistaken identity.   Evidently he was not even in Paris when the incident happened.

There is also new evidence, discovered by Oiwan Lam at Global Voices Online, indicating that the attacker may in fact have been an ethnic Chinese who was paid to play the role as part of an orchestrated performance, and that Jin Jing was aware of the plot.   This relevant article is in Chinese, but my co-blogger Catherine might translate it into English later.

And here is another question about the now infamous photo of the apparent attempt to seize the torch:   Why is the “attacker” taking so much time to grab the torch?    Anyone (such as I) who has had ample experience living among, and being targeted by street-thieves – wallet snatchers, camera snatchers, etc – knows that for practical reasons, they move very quickly.    Usually like lightning.    If someone intends to snatch an item and run away with it, he moves as fast as possible, without bothering to pause to grimace.   This photo looks like it was staged, and the histrionic grimace is one of the tip-offs, as well as the fact that he moved slowly enough for this photo to be taken.   

As for the witch-hunt which has rashly accused a Tibetan-American of being the assailant, in the famous words of Monty Python, “How do you know she’s a witch?”   “She looks like one!”

Jin Jing, Beijing’s Parody of Martyrdom (re-posted)

Due to the mysterious disappearance of this article from Google, we are re-posting it under the same title as before.

Our speculations about the probable reasons for the sabotage of this article are indicated in our above linked post and its comments.   The comments posted on this article to date, are here.

Here follows the re-posted article:

If you’re in a wheelchair, stay the hell out of China. There are virtually no facilities for the disabled in China, let alone any traditional ethos of compassion for them. The Great Hall of the People – the seat of government in Beijing – is inaccessible by wheelchair. Contempt for the physically weak, as well as for the politically weak, runs deep and flows long through Chinese history. In China, the disabled are regarded as freaks and expendable weaklings.

Yet here comes Jin Jing in a wheelchair, sent to Paris by China’s propaganda organs to be a Torch-Bearer. She was, alas, jostled by a Tibetan protester who attempted to take the torch from her – mind you, while she was surrounded by heavily armed French Police. Now China’s propaganda agents, both Chinese and Western, are re-presenting her as (in the words of China Daily and other Chinese organs), the “angel in a wheelchair”, a cynically devised parody of martyrdom. The internet is all abuzz about this “public relations” coup for Beijing, “The Martyrdom of Jin Jing”. But how many have asked the simple question:

WHY did Beijing send a disabled Chinese woman to be a torch-bearer in a foreign country (this is contrary to custom; traditionally, all torch-bearers in France ought to have been French), especially when they knew she would probably be subjected to some kind of (I admit, criminal and objectionable) assault?

Using Occam’s Razor of parsimony of logic, it is obvious that Beijing – whose regime neglects and excoriates the disabled – sent Jin Jing to be a torch-bearer in Paris as a provocation for exactly this kind of “public relations” stunt.

Now, Beijing’s hypocrisy in re-presenting a disabled woman as a symbol of Chinese Nationalism is nauseating enough per se. But what is even more objectionable is the Propaganda Department’s exaggeration of what she suffered. Granted, the assault was illegal and objectionable. But she suffered virtually no bodily harm, precisely because she was surrounded and protected by some of the toughest, and heavily armed, Police in all of France.

Take a look at this photo; what stands between her and one of her assailants is a French Policeman bearing a firearm. And then in this photo, her assailant is right next to a French Police van, surrounded by armed, tough as nails French Police.

Granted, the assailant’s deed was a crime. But the legal definition of the crime of “assault” does not include any element of actual physical harm. An “assault and battery” can be an illegal physical contact as gentle as an unwanted kiss. The point is that being assaulted does not make a Martyr – least of all when the putative “martyr” is being protected by some of the toughest armed cops on the planet.

China’s conflation of the Torch with religion – Beijing’s propaganda organs call the torch “sacred”, and in this photo, Jin Jing holds the torch in a posture reminiscent of Christian martyrs holding a Cross while being fed to the lions (Jin Jing’s closed eyes in that photo are an especially brilliant touch of sinister semiotics) – is, simply, profane. It profanes the names and memories of all real martyrs throughout history, and not just Christian martyrs. This corruption of words like “angel” and “sacred” and “martyr”, as applied to Jin Jing, profanes – if nothing else – truthfulness itself. Even an atheist, or at least an atheist who love truthfulness and integrity of language and symbols, must object to this abuse of the semiotics of “martyrdom”, if only for the sake of clarity of language and of mind.

When Jesus of Nazareth was crucified, he was not defended by heavily armed police. And mutatis mutandis, Jin Jing’s “martyrdom” did not involve torture or death, to say the least.

Or take any martyr of your choice, of any religion, or none. Consider the many atheist Communists who were tortured and murdered for their principles by Germany’s Gestapo. Remember the many, and mostly nameless, beautiful Jewesses of the Middle Ages who chose suicide rather than submit to rape by their so-called “Christian” captors. Or – and perhaps with especial regard to Beijing’s current depredations upon Muslims in Xinjiang – remember the Muslim martyr, Hallaj (855-922), a Sufi whose unorthodox way of professing Islam resulted in his martyrdom through having all his arms and legs cut off until he bled to death.

No, Jin Jing is not one of them. What she has been chosen by Beijing’s propagandists to “re-present”, profanes the names of all true martyrs.

And you don’t have to be a Christian to understand that as Jesus Christ was a martyr, this attempt by Beijing’s Central Propaganda Department to posit Jin Jing as a “martyr” is, literally, a symbol of an “Anti-Christ.” And anti-Marxist too, insofar as Marx excoriated all “false consciousness.”

UPDATE: This article’s title has suddenly disappeared from Google, under any and all searches.   Apparently someone out there is displeased with it, and has the resources to have it removed from Google.   More about this mystery, here

Our article on Jin Jing disappears from Google

Now here’s a mystery.   Yesterday our article criticising China’s PR agents’ cynical exploitation of Jin Jing was on the second page of Google under the term “Jin Jing.”    It has received more traffic than any other article on our blog has ever received.

Now, mysteriously, it has entirely disappeared from Google – disappeared from AMERICAN Google, not Chinese – under any and all search terms, including its full title, “Jin Jing, Beijing’s Parody of Martyrdom.”   Oblique references to it can be found, but the article itself has disappeared from Google.   Entirely.

The fact that the man who attempted to take the torch from her has become the victim of a worldwide cyber-lynching with Chinese nationalists calling for his murder, does make us wonder what has gone on behind the scenes.  

And cui bono?   Who benefits from this?   The Torch’s  corporate sponsors, Lenovo, and their PR agents, have the most to gain or to lose from how the torch is perceived.

 UPDATE:    “(Lenovo) is working with Google Inc. to launch a blogging site, www.2008.lenovo.com, that will host blogs by Olympic athletes from all over the world to create a sort of online Olympic village.”