I don’t want to sit around arguing about geopolitics because I am no expert. I got off Facebook to save myself the headache of political arguments. Yet something I feel strongly about is ignorance and prejudice. They can work hand in hand for any number of ends. If someone is ignorant, normally that is forgivable because they know no different. If someone is prejudice then it becomes a different story. Although I have noticed that ignorance breeds prejudice especially if the ignorance seems to be a fact when in truth it is a lie. If major news outlets can bend the truth, which they can if they choose who and what are they trying to please or do?

For example, the CCP made a series of advertisements asking citizens not to waste food. When I was in China we had a lot of ‘family style’ banquets and they do lead to a bit of food waste. An American news organisation ran a story based on this advert saying that people were starving in China. They basically played around with the facts and manipulated the story to suit an agenda that was pro American. Is it because of the trade war? Is this news agency following a nationalist agenda? I don’t know and can only guess. Although you could say the story was highly manipulated.

The Chinese will also run anti-American stories but normally they will highlight police shooting civilians or gun violence in general. Both sides will try to make each other look bad especially since the trade war. There was an article in an Australian newspaper saying that the Chinese were having blackouts because they were no longer buying Australian coal. When I was in China and basically in the middle of nowhere we had blackouts and China was buying Australian coal then. Why would news organisations want to breed ignorance and prejudice? Not all of them do it but in general there seem to be stricter nationalist agendas than ever before in the media. 

I could conclude and say we have entered some kind of dark age which isn’t far from the truth. People for example feel that the American invasion of Afghanistan with its emphasis on growing poppy fields for the flooding of codeine into western countries was the best thing that had happened to the country. Was it? The Taliban are not terrorists and they may seem pretty backwards to westeners but it is their country not ours. The Taliban fought coalition forces for twenty years so you could at least say that they are capable fighters who have suffered great losses and deserve to be able live freely from imperialist forces.

Could you guarantee that Afghanistan’s gold reserves are still sitting in the country? Or did they just magically disappear? Who is the criminal? Who is the theif? Who is the manipulator? Are the Taliban roaming the streets of Sydney asking me to grow a beard or put my children in a burqa? Ignorance and prejudice are the two main sources that colonialism and imperialism tap into. To keep everyone pointing the finger at everyone except ourselves.