Reviewing "Don't Tell the Newfoundlanders", a book about colonialism.

I posted a review of the book Don't Tell the Newfoundlanders on GoodReads.



The book was informative, but not what I expected. It was frustrating to read, and I had to put it down and do something else regularly.

Imagine a book about Xinjiang (New Frontier) that spoke as if all human history on that area of land started in 1955 (When Xinjiang was made an autonomous region by PRC) and made absolutely no mention of the Uyghurs. The book would be entirely quotes and discussion of jurisdictional squabbles between individual groups of Han Chinese politicians/bureaucrats, other Chinese colonies/autonomous regions/provinces, and the central People's Republic of China (PRC) government.

This is essentially what this book about is about, but for the British imposed colony of Newfoundland. The narrative is that Newfoundland was a "responsible government" in 1832 (a British colonial occupation is somehow claimed to be an example of self-determination), this artificial British granted legal fiction designation was rescinded in 1933, and Newfoundland became a province of the (also not self-determining, also not an example of "responsible government") Dominion of Canada in 1949.


Unlike with the Uyghurs who are relatively recent peoples to that region claimed by China, the Inuit, the Innu, the Mi'kmaq, and other Indigenous peoples have stewarded various parts of the lands some wish to call "Newfoundland and Labrador" for millennia.

The underlying policy discussed in the book is merely the British Empire consolidating debt and setting up protection of its British North American interests after the WW2, and yet this book claims there is something relating to "democracy" and "responsible government" involved.

Page 62 provides a good summary in the form of a quote from Hume Wrong:

"considerable interest in the House of Commons in the status of Newfoundland, adding that there was a strong feeling that the present system of commission of government over a people of purely British stock was repugnant to a great many members."

This book is helpful in understanding what White Supremacy is, and learning about individuals that remain loyal to those worldviews, policies, and institutions.

Newfoundland stands as a cautionary tale of why we should be concerned about what China is doing in what it calls Xinjiang, given how much more damage the British Empire (re-branded Commonwealth, FVEY, etc) is causing and has yet to be held to account in any way.

Michael Chong's biased motion: It's about Genocide of Indigenous Peoples, not "Religious Minorities in China"

I have written about UNDRIP and Uyghurs and China vs Hong Kong, Canada vs Haudenosaunee Confederacy., and how I consider the narrow focus on China to be misplaced whether we are talking about Hong Kong or the Uyghurs.

Michael Chong recently tabled a motion which he called "Religious Minorities in China" that I want to write about.  I first want to document some of the biases that caused me to initially form the opposite opinion to Michael Chong.

Michael Chong's biases

I have been following Michael Chong's political interventions since I met him in the context of his Conservative Party leadership campaign. I really liked what I heard so I re-joined the Conservative party (sorta - I had been a member of the Progressive Conservative party) and voted for him as #1 on my ballot.

I have noticed a growing focus on China in his interventions in the house, growing to the point where he seems to talk about China more than he talks about Canada.

While there are other sources, a little bit from his biography from Wikipedia helps to understand the bias.

• His father was born in British occupied Hong Kong, and immigrated to the British created Dominion of Canada in 1952.
• He attended Trinity College, a college founded by a Bishop, which kept a strong Anglican alignment after UofT severed its ties with the Church of England. He later served on the board of the Corporation of Trinity College.
  
• He was a founding member of The Dominion Institute

 

This hints at explaining his bias towards the British Empire, and the British occupation of Hong Kong (which finally ended in 1997) as well as the ongoing occupation of Turtle Island.

The Dominion Institute merged with the Historica Foundation of Canada to become Historica Canada.  As part of my Countering Stereotypes of Indigenous Peoples course we have been assigned to review some of Historica Canada's Heritage Minutes (see my comments), to recognize the pro-European anti-Indigenous biases embedded in them.

These Heritage Minutes regularly get the history wrong, and are misleading at best.

For the European genocide during the second world war, the symbol that most represented it was the swastika. Prior to the Nazi misappropriation of this symbol it was primarily used in India by Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.

For the Turtle Island genocide, which has been ongoing for hundreds of years, the symbol that most represents it is the Christian cross.  The Roman Empire promoted Christianity within the empire, and later the Bishop of Rome (also known as the Pope) created the Doctrine of Discovery though papal bull which authorized and encouraged subjects of Christian Monarchs to travel and steal lands and resources, and to subjugate (enslave, kidnap, convert, eradicate, etc) populations which were not already subjects of Christian Monarchs.

Canada, through institutions like the Dominion Institute and many more, has been promoting a specific biased version of Canada's history which seeks to continue to promote the genocidal values of Christian European empire building.

The three largest Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, have been at war with each other since each splinter group was formed from the others. After the second world war, Christianity started to work together with Judaism given it was complicity by Christians that allowed that genocide to be carried out as easily as it was.

In recent decades, following the religion focused fallout of September 11, 2001,  Christianity and Judaism has been offering similar with supporting Islam in specifically narrow circumstances.

It should not be surprising from all of this that Michael Chong's motion will be anti-China and pro-Islam/Abrahamic, and ignore any other aspects of this genocide.

 

My biases

I don't see Capitalism and Communism as all that different since they are based on the same world views, and differ only on who should gain the spoils from excessive exploitation of non-humans (land, animals, etc). I have been more concerned with socialism and communism as I worried that they might accelerate environmental decline as a matter of "equity". I have had that feeling for a long time, but was only able to articulate it recently.

The fact that China is currently Communist is not of great concern to me.  I also ignore (reject, oppose, etc) racist beliefs which suggest that non-Europeans are somehow automatically inferior to Europeans.

I am very concerned about religious empire building, with the largest empires being built by Abrahamic religions (primarily Christianity and Islam).

Due to this bias I incorrectly saw this as Abrahamic empire building against regions that were part of China, with Abrahamic empire building also being part of British colonialism against China.

 

Religion is a distraction in this case

I discuss in "Is religious freedom camouflaging ongoing colonialism and empire building", religion is regularly a distraction from understanding what is actually happening in a region.

I wrote earlier:

The Uyghurs are an indigenous peoples that have a history in that region dating back thousands of years. They call the region East Turkestan (or Uyghurstan), and reject the name Xinjiang (Sinkiang, meaning "New Frontier" in Mandarin Chinese). Many converted to Islam in the 10'th century, but that doesn't take away from their status as Indigenous peoples, and should not misdirect the focus of discussion toward religion.

Fixing the biases in Michael Chong's motion

Michael Chong motion, as tabled on February 18, 2021, reads as follows:

 

That,

(a) in the opinion of the House, the People's Republic of China has engaged in actions consistent with the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 260, commonly known as the "Genocide Convention", including detention camps and measures intended to prevent births as it pertains to Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims; and
 

(b) given that (i) where possible, it has been the policy of the Government of Canada to act in concert with its allies when it comes to the recognition of a genocide, (ii) there is a bipartisan consensus in the United States where it has been the position of two consecutive administrations that Uyghur and other Turkic Muslims are being subjected to a genocide by the Government of the People's Republic of China, the House, therefore, recognize that a genocide is currently being carried out by the People's Republic of China against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims and call on the government to officially adopt this position.

This motion contains Michael Chong's personal biases against China, and for the British Empire and Abrahamic religions.

• Narrow focus on China
• Narrow focus on Canada's historical allies (other CANZUS members, plus parent of Britain), with special prominence given to the United States
  
• Narrow focus on Muslims

If I were to amend the motion to remove those biases, one possibility becomes:

 

That,

(a) in the opinion of the House, several member states of the United Nations are engaged in actions consistent with the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 260, commonly known as the "Genocide Convention"; and
 

(b) given that where possible, it has been the policy of the Government of Canada to act in concert with the United Nations when it comes to the recognition of a genocide, the House, therefore, recognize that a genocide is currently being carried out by several member states against Indigenous peoples in regions these states claim as their jurisdiction, and call on the government to officially adopt this position.

This more generalized motion would focus on the actual problem, which is genocide against Indigenous peoples, and not try to carve out one specific country that is carrying out genocide, or specific methods used in genocide.

It is important to avoid any straw man fallacy by thinking that removing the focus on China means that anyone is excusing China, but recognizing that China is not remotely alone in what it is doing and that the focus must be on genocide.

Canada can't work with only with allies on this anti-genocide policy, as those closest allies have been engaged in genocide of Indigenous peoples for far longer than the very recent focus on China. Genocide can't be allowed to be normalized by having one group of nations committing genocide against Indigenous peoples to point fingers at another nation committing genocide against Indigenous peoples.

 

Without this amendment it is clear that Michael Chong, and fellow Conservative caucus members supporting it, as well as Bloc caucus members, are not interested in stopping genocide.  They are only interested in embarrassing China, but in the process they may end up further normalizing genocide against Indigenous peoples.

It is important to recognize that efficiency has never been part of the UN definition of genocide, so genocide does not have to be an "event" that starts and stops in a short time.  Recognizing that efficiency is not part of the definition, it is obvious that CANZUS (Canada, Australia, New Zealand and United States) are guilty (with long established documented evidence) of genocide against Indigenous peoples.  CANZUS states are clearly guilty, while China is at this point is merely accused of genocide against the Indigenous peoples of Uyghurstan.

We must become committed to stopping genocide, and that must include the UN member states that have been carrying out a "cold genocide" for longer than they have been members of the United Nations.

 

The Olympics

Mr. Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe (Lac-Saint-Jean, BQ) asked to add an amendment:

 

“call upon the International Olympic Committee to move the 2022 Olympic Games if the Chinese government continues this genocide.”

 

The Olympics has had an interesting history with host countries committing genocide. The first televised Olympics was hosted in 1936 by Nazi Germany, with Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler offering an extravagant spectacle televised globally.

The Third Reich alluded to the Nazis' belief that Nazi Germany was the successor to the Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and German Empire (1871–1918).

 

Nazi Germany must be recognized in that larger historical context of colonialism and empire building. We must abandon claims that this was some sort of one-off part of Europe's distant problematic history, as well as cease any narrow focus on a single individual who was a charismatic leader of a political party.

What happened with Nazi Germany was empire building, which inevitably leads to genocide. This has quite clearly been the case with other European empires, including the British Empire.

A more generic version of this amendment would be:

"call upon the International Olympic Committee to never again host the Olympic Games in a nation that is currently engaged in genocide."

 

This would ensure that China, as well as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and United States, could not host the Olympics until they ceased their genocide. We should be willing to use any tool we have to stop genocide, and embarrassing countries by disallowing them to host the Olympics is yet another tool in the International toolbox.

UNDRIP and Uyghurs, Genocide by Canada and China

I find discussions on these issues from many Canadians, including in the federal parliament, to be -- well -- irrational, and full of "I know you are, but what am I" type childish behavior.

I've already written China vs Hong Kong, Canada vs Haudenosaunee Confederacy, but the focus of certain politicians is now directed at the Indigenous Uyghurs rather than post-British-occupation Hong Kong.

The Uyghurs are an indigenous peoples that have a history in that region dating back thousands of years. They call the region East Turkestan (or Uyghurstan), and reject the name Xinjiang (Sinkiang, meaning "New Frontier" in Mandarin Chinese). Many converted to Islam in the 10'th century, but that doesn't take away from their status as Indigenous peoples, and should not misdirect the focus of discussion toward religion.

Even the type of name imposed by China should sound extremely familiar to Canadians, given we have a province called "New Found Land" on one coast, and another called "British Columbia" on the other.

If you take a closer look at what China is accused of, it should sound extremely familiar.  The re-education camps are the same as the industrial/residential/boarding schools used in the United States and Canada. Canada and the USA also used forced labour (both of Indigenous peoples as well as peoples kidnapped from other lands), and included women being forcibly sterilized.

In fact, I have yet to hear an accusation of China with relation to their "New Frontier" where there isn't large volumes of evidence of Canada doing the same thing or worse over a very long period (some dating from before Canada was "created" by an White Supremacist act of the British parliament).

Contrary to popular myth, the colonial and genocidal policies by Canada against Indigenous peoples is ongoing.

Video: Dr. Kim TallBear: Indigenous People "Very Clearly" Suffered Genocide
 

Do I believe that China is guilty of genocide?  I don't know that for certain, as there has only been recent attention to the ongoing tension between the Chinese government and East Turkestan.  If China did want to carry out a genocide under the radar of the global community, it would make sense that they would be trying to use the United States and Canada as the model.

 

UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP)

While CANZUS (Canada, Australia, New Zealand and United States) are the most offending foreign/foreigner created countries, UNDRIP is not uniquely targeted at them. I consider UNDRIP to be the eventual recognition that the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights was never universal, and was drafted at a time when Indigenous populations (nations, etc) globally weren't given an international voice.

Those who want to give support to the Ughurs need to recognize that the louder representatives of CANZUS countries are, the more obvious their hypocrisy will become, and the less ability to help any of the Indigenous populations whose basic rights are being attacked.

I've found it particularly interesting to watch yesterday as several Conservative caucus members claimed to be incensed by China, and then this quickly followed by various Conservative caucus members being critical of UNDRIP. They are likely so disconnected from what is happening on Turtle Island and other parts of the world that they don't recognize how silly they look.

 

Mr. Garnett Genuis even asked, "Very specifically, what plans does it have to ensure that Canadian pension investment dollars are never again complicit in acts of genocide?", which is impossible given it is a Canadian pension and Canada is engaged in acts of genocide.

They likely incorrectly see this as being about Abrahamic religions (Largest 3 being Judaism, Christianity and Islam), or something to do with Communism.  It is invalid to believe that colonialism and Indigenous genocide is limited to Communist governments, given the largest offenders claim to be Capitalist. The Conservatives were using standard White Supremacist assimilation language, not recognizing that what Indigenous peoples want is not to "fully participate in Canada's economy", but to have Canada stop blocking them from having their own governance and their own economy.

If Indigenous peoples on Turtle Island don't want to "fully participate in Canada's economy", and don't even believe Canada has legitimate exclusivity over this region, are there people in parliament who still believe they should be sent to re-education camps?

 

I understand wanting to help the Indigenous Ughurs, but the way Canadians do that isn't to ignore or erase the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island. We need to move forward as quickly as we can to help protect the rights of all Indigenous peoples globally, and that starts on this homeland.  Canadians don't have a legitimate voice condemning China until after we have made huge progress dealing with our own ongoing violations of human rights.

Let's make new friends

While not discussed within conversations around UNDRIP, I believe it is time for Canada to make new friends.

As an example, we are in a so-called "intelligence alliance" called the Five Eyes (FVEY).  This is made up of CANZUS members plus the country that the CANZUS members were derived from, Brittan (now called the "United Kingdom" after more local colonialism efforts).

This is not the gang to be hanging out with if we want to become a better country.  I consider the FVEY to be the axis of white supremacy.

We need Northern Turtle Island Defense, but we need to start to recognize that who we need to be defended from is the USA and other countries actively engaged in colonialism.  It seems obvious to me that as Canada becomes less of a human rights abuser that this will offend the USA as it will call attention to their ongoing human rights abuses.  We need to have better ties with other nations who can come to our aid if/when the United States threatens yet again to expand northward.

It should without saying that Canada needs to honour the treaties signed with their allies, including the Six Nations Of The Grand River, who were our allies the last time the USA tried to expand northward. Canada sent in the RCMP to depose the centuries old Haudenosaunee democracy and install a bureaucracy responsible to the Canadian crown.  This needs to be reversed, and the sooner the better.

It is embarrassing how Canada has been more worried about how it looks within a White Supremacy gang than how it actually looks to other nations.

Goodbye 2020: Who to direct anger to for COVID-19 economic hardships.

Many people are writing and talking about how they are happy to see the end of 2020. I posted a Goodbye 2018 as that had been a rough year for me personally. I hadn't been up to writing anything that year since April when I wrote about my new job.

Since then I have been thinking about my future in a different way than I had in the past. The year 2020 introduced changes greater than 2019.

This Gregorian calendar year I paid close attention to a series of events: Wet'suwet'en blockades, conspiracy theories about COVID and China, and the most recent Black Lives Matters protests.  This inspired me to learn more, and I started some self-directed anti-racism training. As I was born in a place recently called Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, this quickly lead me to learning about the indigenous civilizations and peoples of this homeland.

This has been a important turn in my own life. While there was some discomfort during this year due to the pandemic, I feel I am in a better position to be helpful in upcoming years.

I now see the events around me differently.

COVID-19

I have not suffered a personal loss from COVID this year, but I know other people who have. The people who are closest to me have been taking this pandemic seriously and following health and safety measures. This is regardless of what politicians have been saying, as I don't see politicians as a source of truth.

 

I have observed a selfishness with more distant acquaintances I interact with online. Given the fatalities have been considerably higher than terrorism, logic would suggest that the willingness to respond would also be higher.  This has not been the case, and I've noticed that some of the very people who are willing to take extreme measures to fight "terrorism" have been claiming that there are "civil liberties" concerns with the minor public health measures required to fight COVID.

Due to this childishness, various governments have been forced to step in and impose lock-downs: and there are people so oblivious to the world around them that they are protesting the lock-downs.

It has been a big lesson in how "privileged" some people feel, especially when I compare to what I've learned about how the civilizations that have existed in parallel with European colonialists and settlers have been treated since contact.  These Canadians feel like their rights are being taken away, while feeling no need to acknowledge or compensate First Nations, Métis, or Inuit for the many orders of magnitude greater infringements that are ongoing today.  It is hard not to file Canadian complaints under "white privilege" and leave it at that.

Its the economy, stupid

Or is it the stupid economy?

The non-medical hardships people are feeling from the pandemic are a matter of policy choice.  I wrote about this in April when people first started suggesting that public health measures were too strict, and it was gong to harm "the economy".

Western countries using western economic systems, and countries that have had flawed western economic theories forced on them by the Breton Woods Institutions (World Bank and IMF), are extremely fragile.  They superficially appear to be working while there are no emergencies, but the slightest problem (IE: unaccountable lending to home "owners") and you end up with a crisis.

We have known for a long time that due to travel patterns and ongoing human expansion that a global pandemic was inevitable. While avoiding the pandemic would have been hard (reducing population expansion, moving away from western worldviews which think of humans as separate from the natural world), reducing the fragility of the economy would have been comparatively easy.   And yet, nothing was done.

Ask yourself why we haven't had something simple like a Universal Basic Income for decades?  This is far less expensive to administer than the patchwork of subjective government programs currently being operated, and would have been an obvious part of emergency preparedness. People in countries like Canada have no legitimate reason to ever worry about paying for the necessities of life, no matter what external emergency exists.  If anyone is worried about these things, it is by design and those policy makers who are generating this crisis should be held accountable.

Instead we have dishonest misdirection, claiming it is public health measures that are causing personal financial problems rather than unaccountable policy makers.  Anyone who is feeling a hardship should be angry, but not at lock-downs but incompetent (or often corrupt) politicians who didn't put adequate emergency preparedness measures in place.

Those of us in Ontario will likely be in for some additional politician created economic hardships in 2021. We currently have a "Finance Minister" who thinks it is possible to "accidentally" travel to a Caribbean island during a global pandemic -- all while preparing early to have staff send social media posts to try to hide that vacation travel.  This isn't a person I would trust loaning $20 to, so obviously not something trustworthy enough to be a cabinet minister, and especially not trustworthy to be allowed anywhere near Ontario's finances.

China vs Hong Kong, Canada vs Haudenosaunee Confederacy

Michael Chong posted a video to Facebook of his discussion of an opposition day motion on China.

It included this quote:

It violates international law in its treatment of the people of Hong Kong and in its treatment of religious and ethnic minorities, such at the Tibetans and the Uighurs in China. In short, China is threatening our interests and our values.

I posted the following reply:

I would like Michael Chong to compare how Canada treats the Haudenosaunee to how China treats Hong Kong.

The Haudenosaunee are more legitimately understood as a separate nation from Canada, having founded their democracy back in 1142 and having signed treaties with the British. The British and Canadian governments have been working to eradicate that democracy for a long time, with residential schools and the Indian Act band councils being part of Canada's desire to remove democracy. The British and Canada even blocked the Haudenosaunee joining the League of Nations which later became the United Nations.

Hong Kong was "leased" by the British for 99 years, and apparently the western world wants it to remain British.
 

Why is Canada trying to hold China to a higher standard than it holds itself? Whatever one might think about Chinese domestic policy, I don't think it is appropriate for Canada to be critiquing it until it has its own house in order.

I didn't want to get into the role of the Catholic Church in ongoing colonialism, and how that relates to the Uighurs.  What I'm saying is that each of the bad things that Canadians like to criticize China for, Canada did first, did for longer, and continues to do.
 

As the Christians like to say (to others, but rarely themselves), “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”


A reply I received from another Canadian citizen was unfortunate, asking "How can someone form a democracy before that term even landed at it's shores?".

I replied:

The English and Greek languages might not be indigenous to North America (Turtle Island), but the concept of democracy is not European.
Many North American civilisations were healthy democracies back when the majority of Europeans were merely subjects of monarchies.

In the case of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy they are a participatory democracy, which is more democratic than the representative democracy which the Canadian governments use.
 

This is made worse by the fact that Canada is allowing itself to become more centralized, with the unelected PMO having power that previously was vested in the House of Commons. Michael Chong was co-editor of "Turning Parliament Inside Out: Practical Ideas for Reforming Canada's Democracy" which discusses these critical issues.

 

Many Canadians can't wrap their minds around the idea that the concepts behind democracy are not uniquely European.

I am aware it is uncomfortable for people to realize this, but this is actually how white supremacy works.   White supremacy isn't about individual skinheads fighting for "white nationalism", but primarily about systems built upon the notion that Europeans and their ideas are automatically superior to everyone else. The current concept of the Dominion of Canada, a British colony that continues to disrespect its treaty relationships with first civilizations, is founded on that notion.


Michael Chong went on to indicate that:

Four of the Five Eyes intelligence partners, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and the United Kingdom, have banned or put restrictions on Huawei's involvement in their networks. Canada is unilaterally alone in failing to take action.

So, the UK and the 4 British colonies where colonists currently outnumber indigenous.  In this context we should understand the FVEY as an axis of white supremacy, and not as an entity that has the best interests of North Americans, democracy, or human rights in mind.

---

December 11 update.

Michael Chong regularly intervenes in parliament to comment about China, and regularly posts videos to Facebook. It appears to be constant repeats of the same argument.

I couldn't figure out why he was so obsessed with China until I looked closer at his biography.  His father was born in Hong Kong and immigrated to Canada in 1952.  This was his father moving from a part of a country under a temporary British occupation (Hong Kong under 99 year lease to the British) to a country under apparent permanent British occupation.  The Dominion of Canada was created as a satellite government of the British Empire. This British dominion has been dishonestly trying to claim exclusive governance over lands the British signed treaties with First Nations to share.

When I hear Michael Chong talking about "human rights" with respect to China, he appears to really only mean "British". I believe it should be understood and respected that China is not British, and that Hong Kong is no longer British since that "99 year lease" ended in 1997.  The idea that being British is good and being not-British is bad is not something I think a modern politician should think or be promoting. The British Empire has had, and continues to have, a poor record when it comes to human rights -- so much that a special United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was required to clarify that colonies such as Canada must start to protect at least a bare minimum of human rights.

I suspect I wouldn't have to ask Michael Chong's opinion on the British Monarchy, and if Canada should mature to become a republic and no longer embarrassingly being part of the British Empire under the British Monarchy.  The ongoing harm of colonialism is something we should be trying to repair, not something to be proud of and promoting internationally.

Think globally to help reduce harm from global health issues

In my last post I offered a geopolitical reply to a geopolitical opinion I disagree with. I was told that I was ignoring the facts, even though I wasn't disagreeing with facts, only a political interpretation of current events.



I thought I'd offer some context for my thinking, in case it will help convince others to take a more positive approach to these global health issues.

While I have lived all my life within Ontario, a province of Canada, I consider myself to be a human being who happens to live in a specific geographic region. As much as I can I try to live by "think globally, act locally", and to understand the different context in which other people live when trying to offer any support.

The most critical issues we face as humans are not confined within the political boundaries drawn up by political entities (countries, provinces, etc), so trying to solve them cannot be confined that way.


When looking at disease outbreaks there are many reasons why certain regions are more statistically likely than other regions, but the largest factor is population and the many other issues that come with that such as poverty.

Another Worldometer page, population by region, is informative. If you divide the world into 6 regions, you'll find that almost 60% of the population is in Asia, 17% in Africa, less than 10% in Europe, 8% Latin America and the Carribean, less than 5% North America, and .5% Oceania.

It should come as no surprise that models that predict the source of viruses, such as what we now know as SARS-CoV-2, will predict the higher population areas.


So, if China contains a large portion of the predictions, why not "blame" them?

I consider that to be an example of "think local, act global" where there is a belief that some alleged solution to a problem that would be relatively simple to implement in a sparsely populated region such as Europe or North American can be directly applied to more populous and complex regions such as Asia and Africa.

While North America has a growing problem of "vaccine hesitancy", one of W.H.O's Ten threats to global health in 2019, more populous areas have far more issues to deal with. India doesn't have the funding to provide everyone who wants vaccines with vaccines, with the funding and distribution of medical supplies being an issue. In Africa we have examples of medical sites being blown up given there is ongoing warfare in the region.

China has been doing better on financing, with a huge push in recent decades in becoming a much larger player in the global economy. It is no surprise that their rise economically, which could lead to better health outcomes in the region, is seen as a threat from minority-world economies in Europe and North America. At a time when we need greater transparency and dialog between and within the different regions, some local governments are focused on trying to break existing ties with majority-world countries.

This is why I consider blaming the governments or individual people within the majority world for the start of inevitable outbreaks to be counterproductive, when we should be doing everything we can to support the local governments in the most populous regions in the world. As I said earlier, blaming will only cause governments to keep secrets which is itself a threat to global health. We need information to be more freely flowing, and that requires the help of local governments that must be seen and treated as allies, not opponents.

"X lied and people died" - how to help reduce harm from this pandemic and future crises

While most people are taking this specific crisis seriously, and coming together as communities and global citizens, there are still people who are wanting to play political games.  While we are all stressed, and not all acting as logically as we could, we need to all do our best to direct our energy towards helpful rather than harmful pursuits.


Everyone needs to recognise that this pandemic isn't human-made, and should be treated as a war against an invasion of this planet. The country that was attacked first was China, and from this every other country had warning that the battle had started. You might expect from having the least warning that China would be doing worse than everyone else, but they aren't. China has taken the fight very seriously, and has reduced war casualties in their region of jurisdiction.  They have also been actively engaged in information sharing with scientists and healthcare workers across the globe.  We need this global information sharing to continue.


There are some people who still want to try to point fingers at their global neighbours, and seek to blame them for deaths from this current pandemic. While scientists have been warning about pandemics for decades, and politicians largely ignored the warnings, blame is most often being deflected away from those who ignored the warnings and made us more vulnerable.



If you want to get an idea of how well different countries are doing in this global fight, and how accurate some of the blame-games are, I suggest the following. Go to the Worldometers Coronavirus website, and do a sort on the "Deaths /1M pop".  The number of deaths and population are two numbers that have more certainty than the other numbers presented.

At the moment the "World" number is 7.8.

I find it important to note that the two most populous countries, India and China, are both below this number. China is currently at 2, with India below 1. With India there is massive community support to fight this battle, and in China there are both community and central government initiatives.  Given that together they represent 1/3 of the world's population, we should globally be doing all we can to support them.

Canada is currently at 6, so close but still below the world number.

Countries which have a high percentage of angry finger-pointing are higher on the deaths/pop scale, suggesting they should be focused on helping resolve serious problems within their own country.

• USA is currently at 22.
  
• UK is currently at 64
  

These countries are not the worst off, with other financially rich western countries having higher numbers.

Countries whose politicians have been reducing funding to core infrastructure such as public scientific research, education and health have been making us more vulnerable globally.  The richer the countries the greater their contribution to global public research, education and health should be, but far too often the opposite is the case.



I agree that Canadian PM Justin Trudeau took a long time to close the borders with problematic regions, but it wasn't flights from China that I was worried about but people wondering across the Canada/US border. After generations of politicians and partisan media making people into science skeptics, it's the harm caused by those skeptics -- in Canada and elsewhere -- that I am most worried about.


My hope is that the survivors of this specific pandemic will start to take warnings from scientists more seriously. I am saying this specific pandemic as this is not expected to be a one-off event, and pandemics are not the only life threatening crisis that scientists have been warning about. The warnings about the climate crisis have also not been taken adequately seriously by politicians. We need to aggressively build up infrastructure to handle these crises, including making our economic and social infrastructure more robust, and stop pretending that outdated thinking is reasonable.