CHINESE NEW YEAR 2021
“THE OX ON THE ROAD”
© Malvin Artley
| Topics: The Iron Ox Previous Iron Ox years Common themes from the past Keeping essentials in mind A pandemic avoided? The pandemic in the East Our imaginary threats The propaganda list The bottom line |
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Gong Hey Fat Choy Everyone!
And welcome to the year of the ‘Ox on the Road’, the White/Metal Ox. It is also known as the Iron Ox. Following on from last year, the Year of the Rat on the Crossbeam, we now come to a year where we move out of our period of impasse and indecision, represented by the Rat on the Crossbeam. Last year was indeed a crossroads experience, where various paths were chosen by nations and individuals alike, in response or reaction to the numerous challenges that were present, some of which had been growing for some time, and some for which we were caught unprepared and unawares. 2020 was a challenging year, to say the least. And now, we all want a sense of stability and a renewed sense of direction. In remembering the motto for the Rat on the Crossbeam, there were possibilities last year that may have loomed large for a select few (which we will cover later in this letter). But for the majority of us, basic decisions about even how we live our lives, especially looking to the future, were presented to us in bold relief. And for the majority of us, the following sentences from the year still hold true: “Adequate precautions will prevent future calamities. A balanced mind is the best assurance of a good outcome.” So, we look forward now with a more sober view of our world situation.
The Iron Ox, in distinction to the year we just had, is seen as stable, reliable, methodical, sometimes practical to the point of dullness. The Ox in general is not known to be a flashy, spectacular, or even a sexy kind of expression. That said, however over time, the methodology of the Ox can produce spectacular and lasting results. Yin Metal, as we find with this Ox, can exhibit as being inward, passive, nebulous, and cool, as well as being progressive, vigorous, strong and direct.
This particular Ox has the following mottos: “There is much to be gained in constant movement. Attention to a good diet never goes astray, either. Though health problems might be present, a change of climate often brings a cure.”[i] In addition, the combined element for the year states that “adequate precautions prevent future calamities.”
On top of these statements, a further motto for this year reads as follows: Youthfulness: All things new, experience is wanting. Small-mindedness brings only small things (results).” The latter is from the nighttime reading for the 12th tetragram of the Tai Hsüan Ching, an alternative I Ching, the former having a particular connection with geopolitical changes. In parsing that tetragram, its Chinese name is T’ung, the Young Boy. The meaning is as was stated before – we have entered into a youthful phase, but experience is lacking. Young boys will typically rush forward into life, often learning painful yet valuable lessons along the way, immersed in the wonder of every new experience. However, in this particular instance there is a sense of timidity, but also of conflicting images, like a deer seeing its reflection in a rippling pond, from which it will run, confusing issues and ideas and not giving a clear reflection until ‘the water is still’, meaning emotions are calmer. This state of affairs is perhaps obvious enough in these days, when emotions run high, opinions run strong and beliefs reign implacable.
Previous Iron Ox years: With this background in mind and before we go too much into interpreting the portents for the present year, we need the context of the year just passed as well as the previous Iron Ox years – 1961, 1901, 1841, 1781, 1721, etc. We start with the main events in previous Iron Ox years, events in which we find echoes today.
1721: There was a smallpox epidemic in Boston, which resulted in the 1st public inoculation campaign. The Russian Empire replaced the Tsardom of Russia.
1781: America was embroiled in its Revolutionary War. Immanuel Kant published his “Critique of Pure Reason.” There was a smallpox epidemic in the Mandan tribe that wiped out 90% of their population. Uranus was discovered.
1841: Britain occupied Hong Kong, the Canadian Act of Union was enacted, President William Henry Harrison died in office, the 1st Opium War started, there was the 1st multilateral treaty banning the African slave trade and there was the 1st Anglo-Afghan war. Russia created its first savings banks.
1901: Queen Victoria died, ending the Victorian Era in the UK. There was the Panic of 1901, Iran began Western involvement in resources, Cuba became a US protectorate, Roosevelt uttered his “Speak softly and carry a big stick” mantra, President McKinley was assassinated, Teddy Roosevelt started his trust busting and ushered in the Progressive Era, and the 1st radio transmission was received. The first recorded powered flight took place. A team was sent to Cuba to find the cause for Yellow fever. The White Australia policy was introduced.
1961: Kennedy was inaugurated, Eisenhower gave his military-industrial complex speech, the Bay of Pigs fiasco happened, the 1st human made it into space (Yuri Gagarin), there were race riots during the Civil Rights Movement, the Berlin Wall went up and fallout shelters became vogue in the United States, and there were escalations of tensions over Vietnam, which was an earlier attempt to encircle China.
Common themes from the past: We see there are common themes in those other recent Iron Ox years with what is already emerging in this one in a few instances. We might list those common themes as follows:
- Epidemics and efforts to eradicate them, as well as research into their causes
- Changes within Russia, leading to social improvements
- Turmoil in the United States
- Western meddling in Chinese affairs and in Southeast Asia
- US meddling in the Caribbean
Keeping essentials in mind: With these points in mind we now take a look at the year that was, giving us the fuller context in what we can likely expect this year. In looking at last year there is one event in particular that needs to be parsed before we move on, and that applies to the pandemic. That in turn leads to another consideration, one that is actually essential to understand if we are to avoid a greater disaster than even the pandemic. We will see why when we examine the New Year. There is a bit to say, so bear with me here while we unpack what has happened, what is happening and where it is leading us. There is one concept to keep in mind as we go along in reviewing 2020:
We are being conditioned to accept something we would not ordinarily accept, something other than a so-called ‘Great Reset’. That ‘something’ has nothing to do with a virus, either. The pandemic is just a sideshow.
So to start, and since this is the Chinese New Year letter, China has played a big part in this pandemic, but not in the way many people think. In fact, the East in general gave good examples on how to handle such an event, without knowing the best treatments for it, without vaccines and with simple protocols in place. With those examples in mind, and looking at the East now, we in the West could have avoided much of the misery we are experiencing at present.
A pandemic avoided?: The West could have avoided a pandemic in the way we have experienced it. We looked at how and why in the Taurus letter for last year. We could have adopted a uniquely Western model for handling this event. In our rich Western societies – the ones that were touted as being the best-prepared to tackle a pandemic according to the World Economic Forum (WEF) – governments could have easily paid people to stay at home for six weeks or even twelve, placed a temporary tax on capital gains wealth to support doing so, at least for that period, or adopted measures like we saw in Taiwan and South Korea (who kept running in the midst of it) and we would be in a far better situation than that in which we find ourselves at the moment. Instead, most of those nations listed as best by the WEF did far poorer than some of the nations listed as worst-prepared. If our governments had been more sensible, had been prepared (they weren’t) had acted quickly and decisively and had invoked emergency measures to support their people, we would only be looking at isolated pockets of the virus in the worst affected areas, easily controlled and with confidence in government boosted instead of the protests and antagonisms we are seeing in the news these days. Keep in mind as we go along that it was the WEF that was saying we in the West would do just fine with the pandemic back in February last year, and then take into account their much-hyped talk of a ‘Great Reset’, which we will look at here later. If their predictions for their ‘reset’ are anything like their predictions for the pandemic, then we probably shouldn’t read too much into their plans.
For comparison only, of the top ten contenders for best performance in 2020’s pandemic, the US is #1, as in having the most cases, most deaths, food shortages, etc. – in other words, a good example of what not to do in a pandemic situation. The UK is a case in point, where the government deliberately took the advice of the naysayers against the quick and decisive approach and instead initially advocated for ‘herd immunity’ in the absence of vaccines. Here’s the real standing of the top ten, to drive home a realization later: The US (1st), the UK (5th), the Netherlands (21st), Australia (110th, and actually did well, but worse in other areas), Canada (22nd), Thailand (114th, and also did pretty well), Sweden (29th and a major fail), Denmark (57th, behind Egypt, Greece and Ethiopia, as in worse than) and then the last two of the WEF shining examples, South Korea and Finland, who actually did well in their handling (86th and 99th, resp.) This is in a scale of 1 – 221, with #1 being the worst-affected in case numbers and deaths. Here in Italy, we are at #8, just behind Germany (10th). China sits at #83 in that list, just behind South Korea (86th). I won’t quibble over the numbers, as in the wider view exact numbers are not the issue, nor is this to hold up any nation as a good example or bad. We are looking here at what worked and what didn’t and why. It is the relative performance we are interested in here.
There are several considerations to take away from the listing above: 1) a nation’s wealth, prestige and technological advancement is no measure of how it will use those assets in a time of emergency, 2) the wealth of those nations who did poorly in the face of the pandemic was not appropriated to support their people in a truly meaningful way until the pandemic had already taken a firm hold, if even then, pointing to another problem, and 3) there was a distinct lack of leadership in the nations that were supposed to be so well prepared but instead weren’t. As stated, that could have been avoided, but was instead used for domestic political gain and by the oligarchs to increase their wealth via capital gains. Government performance among some of the nations listed was less than stellar and even pathetic in a few cases and has only served to further disadvantage the public. And here is why:
The nations under neoliberalism (US, UK and EU) – free market capitalism – did more poorly in general than nations with mixed economies and/or universal health care. In the neoliberal nations, wealth was funneled to the top by pumping money into the markets instead of public health. The wealth gap widened sharply during the pandemic.
What was in evidence in the US-led West was a combination of factors, the most prominent of which was particularly in evidence in the US and UK – domestic political expediency, along the lines of “never let a good crisis go to waste.” Trump in the US was a weak leader anyway and easily swayed by his donors, hoping for re-election that year and seeking to keep his voter base rallied in support of his non-aggressive and ill-founded approach to the pandemic. We see the results of his approach there now. The same was also pretty much true of Boris Johnson in the UK. Where was Boris, anyway? What we saw in those two nations was political theater instead of leadership, and misinformation spread by those very leaders, either deliberately or out of ignorance. What appears to have happened is that on the one hand, the public has been kept divided as to the effects of the pandemic and the response to it, with part of the populace believing it is a hoax or only a mild flu, another part knowing the dangers of it, notably for people over 65 and with another part notably confused as to what and what not to do. What this has done is to greatly prolong a response that should have seen this disease more or less firmly under control months ago and playing havoc with economies and supply lines. And on the other hand, we observed what happened mostly in the East, who followed the WHO guidelines, more or less.
The pandemic in the East: Instead, what happened in the East regarding the pandemic is seen by many people in the West as authoritarian, dystopic, violations of people’s human rights – always a favorite – or worse, communism. Forget voluntarily putting one’s own comforts aside for a few weeks and doing something for the public good. We can’t be like the Chinese – or the South Koreans or Taiwanese, though we never here about them these days. We respect people’s individual rights in our bastions of freedom and democracy. The Chinese caused this mess anyway, right? If you detect a little sarcasm in these last statements, you would be correct. The lack of support people have felt and the lackluster performance of governments across the West in the nations worst affected are seen in the growing protests against COVID measures, as in Germany, France, Spain, Denmark, Belgium, Hungary, Austria, in the Middle East and North America. And the primary reason we are seeing those protests is because of financial hardship, precisely because emergency financial support was not instituted in our capitalist West and in poor nations who did not have the wherewithal to do otherwise, as in Lebanon, for instance. It could have been handled much better, but the vested interests in the affected nations would not agree to giving up anything for the greater good. Instead, we all watched as the 0.01% grew richer to the tune of almost a trillion dollars in the US alone.
Our leaders in legislatures and executive branches of government in the neoliberal nations basically stood by and said to the billionaires, “Do you need a little bit more? We can print more money for you. We’ll throw the peasants a bone at some point.” And as to the people who like to think the Chinese are to blame for the pandemic and caused it – well, no, they didn’t. There is not a shred of solid evidence this was a deliberate act by the Chinese, that it was a supposed bioweapon or that it escaped from a lab. All we have in that regard is inference and innuendo which would never stand up to scrutiny in a reputable court of law.
The pandemic has rocked the Western world. Are we frustrated, angry, disappointed, to mention a few emotions concerning 2020? Yes, understandably, undeniably. Could we have been more humanitarian, supported our people, mobilized our economies and even sent aid to troubled countries instead of fighting over PPE, vaccine availability and pointing fingers at everyone else? – most definitely. Well, while we were told to put the masks on, the mask has come off the face of our respective governments. The emperor wears no clothes. We are suddenly paying a lot of attention to the ‘man behind the curtain’. Because of what has happened and the way in which it has happened, many people have begun to believe that the whole thing has been planned and there is a one-world agenda behind it all. That’s too easy, though, and it buys into another agenda that we see emerging more strongly these days.
Our imaginary threats: Because we see that our governments have dropped the ball and have not in reality supported us until it was too late, if at all, there is a concerted attempt by the vested interests, trumpeted throughout the media, that our present system is under threat (it is, but from inside) and that foreign actors are doing their best to keep us destabilized and want to see us fail. I have a bridge to sell you, too. It’s an old propaganda trick, being rolled out in earnest with the pandemic as cover, to demonize ‘the other’ in order to manufacture consent for a conflict that is undeserved and unwanted and to keep us distracted from what is going on right under our noses. And three countries are the whipping boys in this piece. We all know who they are by now. Does this sound conspiratorial? If so, read on. This brings us to consider something about which we should all be very wary and suspicious and which needs to be called out at every turn for what it is. It is outlined for us in the following:
Many years ago, the Jewish-American political commentator Walter Lippmann realised that political ideology could be completely fabricated, using the media to control both presentation and conceptualisation, not only to create deeply-ingrained false beliefs in a population, but also to entirely erase undesirable political ideas from the public mind. This was the beginning of not only the American hysteria for freedom, democracy and patriotism, but of all manufactured political opinion, a process that has been operative ever since. Lippmann created these theories of mass persuasion of the public, using totally fabricated “facts” deeply insinuated into the minds of a gullible public, but there is much more to this story…
…Bernays [the father of American propaganda] was apparently stunned by the outstanding success of his democracy slogan and hate campaign in swaying public opinion in favor of war [WWI], and so immediately began to apply his model to peacetime enterprises. “In applying his uncle’s Freudian theories to deal with public conceptions, Bernays realised that provoking a fear of communism and then manipulating the public’s emotions toward it, could be a sure recipe for success in the widespread engineering of popular opinion and control of the population. This theory was so powerful that it became a weapon of its own during the cold war.” The term ‘propaganda’ had acquired a poor reputation so Bernays created and promoted the term ‘Public Relations’, but of course his processes were no such thing. Bernays’ PR ethic involved psychological manipulation and control of the public mind through cleverly-devised – and thoroughly false – propaganda.
We need to pay attention to this, because it is being rolled out ever increasingly as issues get worse in our home countries and other countries grow in strength. And there is a clear correspondence: The more exposed the powers-that-be become, the more intense becomes the propaganda aimed at alleged external influences. Such propaganda efforts were used by the Nazis against the Polish prior to the invasion of Poland, for example, and were quite effective. The same methods have been used on us:
Before the German attack on Poland on September 1, 1939, the Nazi regime launched an aggressive media campaign to build public support for a war that few Germans desired. To present the invasion as a morally justifiable, defensive action, the German press played up “Polish atrocities,” referring to real or alleged discrimination and physical violence directed against ethnic Germans living in Poland. The press deplored Polish “warmongering” and “chauvinism,” and also attacked the British for encouraging war by promising to defend Poland in the event of German invasion.
The Nazi regime even staged a border incident [false flag operation] designed to make it appear that Poland initiated hostilities. On August 31, 1939, SS men dressed in Polish army uniforms “attacked” a German radio station at Gleiwitz (Gliwice). The next day, Hitler announced to the German nation and the world his decision to send troops into Poland in response to Polish “incursions” into the Reich. The Nazi Party Reich Press Office instructed the press to avoid the use of the word war. They were to report that German troops had simply beaten back Polish attacks, a tactic designed to define Germany as the victim of aggression. The responsibility for declaring war would be left to the British and French.
If we think our governments and press are too righteous to do such a thing, think again. Two recent examples have been the ‘babies in incubators’ tale prior to the 1st Gulf War, and Saddam’s supposed weapons of mass destruction prior to the US-led invasion of Iraq. There is actually a long list of such efforts that are used to mold public opinion to the point where we accept invasion or intervention in a foreign land in the name of ‘humanitarian intervention’, or as we know it now, the ‘responsibility to protect’ doctrine that saw the destruction of Yugoslavia and Libya. And this brings us to a summation of the preceding points:
Neoliberalism, as practiced across much of the West, is at its end and is failing. Everyone can see it that has an eye to do so.
There is no more wealth to be extracted from the public by the few without the whole Ponzi scheme – which is otherwise illegal – being exposed and coming undone. In order to avoid a collapse, someone else must be blamed for it, as in nations who are strong, stable and have vast wealth, and who stand in the way of accessing that wealth.
Our modern media: When it comes to foreign policy, our mainstream media today is little more than a collection of ‘news’ outlets who propagate the stories the vested interests want us to hear. This is largely to be found in liberal media, though right wing media is equally complicit. Even papers like The Guardian in the UK, once one of the most trusted truth-telling news services among liberal readers, has fallen into the same company of the purveyors of ‘truth-telling’ by intelligence services. For the Guardian, this has been the case since the middle of 2013. They were also complicit in taking down Corbyn in the UK under trumped up charges of anti-Semitism. The New York Times has long been a mouthpiece for propaganda in the US.
US media is particularly difficult to watch these days and unreliable for any reporting on foreign affairs. Even in domestic affairs it is highly polarized, with ‘bombshell’ reports and ‘breaking news’ keeping people glued to media devices in an effort to keep their ratings boosted. Clickbait is the new normal for ‘news’, sensationalized and frequently negative, ‘Bombshells’ have become ‘bombholing’ in liberal media, while right-wing media has its efforts like the Lincoln Project. The NYT had their ‘1619 Project’ in response to the BLM protests in the US. And all along, last year there have been sensationalized stories and testimonies about the pros and cons of pandemic responses. The media in all its forms is manipulated constantly in an effort to shape public opinion.
The propaganda list: What follows is a quick listing of the major propaganda to which we are exposed in our mainstream media almost on a daily basis. All of these are either false, misreported to fit an establishment narrative or are amplified out of proportion. The hyperlinks take you to rebuttal or counter-narrative sites. My reason for listing these memes is twofold – firstly because we are lied to by our media on a regular basis and secondly because this sort of propaganda is intended precisely to engender fear, hatred, disgust and other negativity toward the nations in question. It is not aimed at the target countries. It is aimed at Western audiences. The reason for the negative reporting is to make it easier for an unsuspecting populace to agree to military or other conflicts with said nations. In other words, this type of negative propaganda is aimed precisely at manufacturing consent for conflict and separating nations and peoples. We don’t have to agree with the governments (regimes, in Western reporting) of the target nations. We just need to know the truth so we don’t involve ourselves in senseless and often bloody conflicts, ones that most often benefit only the 0.01% at the top of the food chain at the expense of misery and debt at home and abroad. The following list is a heads-up, neither for nor against nations, but rather anti-war.
We have the following propaganda memes which are constantly thrown at us, all of which are false, starting with China, since they are now seen as Public Enemy #1 in the US – China’s debt trap diplomacy, China placing bounties on US soldiers in Afghanistan, the Uyghur ‘genocide’ (also here and here, as well as eyewitness), the fight for ‘freedom and democracy’ in Hong Kong, The Tiananmen ‘massacre’, the brutal suppression of Tibetans, China hiding initial reports on the virus, the ‘China virus’, horror tales about Falun Gong practitioners, even to the extent of China’s interference in US elections. Then, with Russia we have Russia-gate and Russian interference in US elections, the tragic tales of the Skripals and Navalny, the routine murder of journalists, Putin as the richest man in the world, Putin as the latest ‘Hitler’, Russia about to collapse, Russia nothing more than a gas station masquerading as a country, Russia’s ‘malign activities’, Russia’s invasion of Crimea, Russia as a dark and dystopic land, Russia placing bounties on US soldiers in Afghanistan.
Then, with Iran, we have their rush to get the bomb, the brutal and repressive regime, their desire to destroy Israel, being a state sponsor of terrorism, as a supporter of Daesh, and Iran placing bounties on US soldiers in Afghanistan. Note: that very last item has been listed twice before. There were no US deaths in Afghanistan last year. We probably don’t need to go on. We find very similar stories about North Korea, Venezuela, Syria, Bolivia, etc., yet almost no mention of Israeli apartheid, the brutality of the Saudi regime and other Gulf kingdoms, and US/UK support for reactionary and repressive regimes worldwide, and so on. Every nation produces its own propaganda, true, but we need to pay attention to our own and why. We need a good dose of truth these days now more than ever. For myself, I don’t particularly like being lied to or attempts at being emotionally coerced into bad decisions that cost a great deal of blood and treasure, and on all sides.
The propaganda campaign against China in the US has been very effective. Anti-China sentiment in the US is the highest it has been in a long time, at some 70% of the population against. That is true to a lesser extent across much of the West, with Australia and the UK being close behind. Building on what Obama started, Trump took tensions with China to a higher level, to the point where China expected the US to act against it militarily. The esoteric motto for China is “I indicate the way”. Well, they did indicate a way to handle the virus and their epidemic lasted just over a month, with no second wave. That was their way, being a more collectively inclined culture. We in the West chose not to take that road, and here we are, facing a bad recession at the very least, closed businesses, rental defaults, bankruptcies, food shortages and so on. But the causes of those factors in the West lie within our own borders. If these statements arouse anger for you, I’m with you, but maybe not for the reason you might feel anger.
The bottom line with the discussion of the pandemic and propaganda, preceding, is that next year (2022) will mark what may be a major crisis, as in military, and it is being prepared this year. We see it, for instance, in the Biden cabinet picks in the area of foreign affairs, populated now with people known for their Russia/China hawkishness – Blinken, Austin and Haines – to point out a few. Now that we have this background, we can move on to a consideration of the year ahead, the Year of the Iron Ox.
Featured pic from Dazzling Coins
[i] Walters, Derek, The Secrets of Chinese Astrology, London: Octopus Publishing Group (2003) p.67