Kosher Eucharist / יוקאריסט כשר

Yesterday, I saw a fat man walking down fashionable Cuba Street, carrying a bag from one of its trendy little boutiques.

His T-shirt had a hammer and sickle on it.

I would be willing to bet you ten dollars (ten New Zealand dollars, they’re decorated with a kiwi bird and the Queen) that had someone run up to him and tried to explain why that was absurd, as I considered doing, he would not have understood. You could have brought in charts, graphs, statistical analysis, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Lech Walesa, whatever: he would have looked at you blankly until his concerned wife pulled him away. The wife would of course have on a Che Guevara T-shirt, ignorant of the likely fate of white, capitalist-society-embracing women who might have actually encountered Che Guevara’s forces. (Hint: it rhymes with “slang tape.”)

This is especially funny (in a “Look, there’s a German army on the lawn” kind of way) in light of Red China’s recent attempted encroachments on New Zealand’s sovereignty. China’s “development projects” in the Pacific have been nervously commented on before, considering the small likelihood that a brutal Communist dictatorship is genuinely worried about the people of Kiribati’s access to clean water, tuna without worms, and a well-rounded liberal arts-based education. Not content to try to seduce the small, poor nations of the Pacific into its web, the Red Menace has begun interfering in the internal politics of New Zealand. According to Radio New Zealand, the Red Chinese embassy has made phone calls to a number of mayors in the Auckland region “advising” them not to attend a cultural event sympathetic to the thorn in Mao’s side, the Falun Gong. The event has some Chinese-restaurant-menu name like “Celebration of Joyful Heaven” and is not wholly Falun Gong-related, but does contain one dance number dramatizing the persecution of the Falun Gong at the hands of the Communist authorities. (Yes, a dance number. I can’t wait until someone here does a musical version of the Maori Land Wars, complete with a tap sequence reminiscent of the Invasion of the Waikato.) Several of the mayors have, predictably, wet their panties and refused to go, throwing themselves on their canopy beds and squealing that they would never, never do anything to hurt Red China’s feelings, because then they might not get to be Princesses of the forbidden city. Most notable, and thus most cowardly, among these is George Wood, Mayor of North Shore City, New Zealand’s fourth largest and most densely populated city. Mr. Wood refused to defend his actions on New Zealand Radio, and has not published a statement on his website. Wikipedia quotes a barely coherent statement by Wood, claiming essentially “Oh, lawsey, Mistah Jintao! I don’t know nothin’ ’bout no consular pressure! I don’t know how come I tell such a lie!” This more or less jives with the terse refutation of responsibility he gave the presentrix to read on the air. Two area mayors who did intend to go appeared on the air, saying that, as mayors of smaller cities in the region, they had not received consular pressure not to attend, but did plan on going, Red Menace be damned. One guest speculated that the coward Wood’s refusal to go hinged largely on his fear that the Red Chinese government would refuse him a visa to visit the mainland of China. (Interestingly, North Shore City has a sister city, Taichung, in Taiwan.)

This all follows on the heels of another scandal: apparently, a couple of weeks prior to the Dance of Seafood Delights debacle, a Chinese diplomat had caused the expulsion from Parliament of a photographer - of Chinese descent but a New Zealand resident - known to be involved with - you guessed it - Falun Gong.

Now, my feelings about Falun Gong are mixed. I like that they frustrate and infuriate the Communists - boy, do I like that. Their founder has been quoted as saying that “The homosexual has a dark heart, turning demonic,” which sits rather less well with me. Yet, even if it’s grudgingly, I have to respect people who are willing to suffer punishment at the hands of the Communists for their beliefs, and who refuse to abandon them even under the greatest duress. They have often stood in front of the Red Chinese embassy here, and have informational sessions regularly on Cuba Street. I think they were behind the anti-Communist rally that cheered me so heartily a few weeks ago.

My feelings about Communist China are not mixed. That they would have the audacity to try to inflict their will on the citizens of a free country is unsurprising, given their conduct in Korea, Indochina, and the late, unlamented Tibet (nice job there, U.N., you really helped the cause of freedom on that one), but it is still infuriating. More infuriating is the willingness, even eagerness, of the leaders who willingly, even eagerly, bow to such pressure. George Wood has shamed New Zealand and the free world by his cowardice and his weak attempts to conceal it as incompetence or sound, considered judgment. In the classic novelWar and Peace, Tolstoy’s epic of the years and events surrounding Napoleon and the Grande Armee’s invasion of Russia and sack of Moscow. At one point, the Battle of Borodino has decimated both the French and Russian armies, making a long French occupation of Russian territory impossible, but also weakening the Russian army to the point that Moscow can not be defended, and the inhabitants flee the city. Tolstoy remarks that the old woman who realizes that she is not Napoleon’s to command, packs up her possessions, and takes her carriage eastward in order to escape the tyrant is no less a patriot than the soldier fighting in the army. By this reckoning, George Wood and those like him are no less of traitors than those who would throw open the gates of Moscow to Napoleon - or the harbors of Auckland to the Communists.

And if this doesn’t get us banned by the Great Firewall of China, nothing fucking will.