New Media

A little shameless plug for my new website — check out the WRITEIMAGE blog for the latest trends and tips for writing, web copywriting and social media.

As an aside, for those who have been wondering what the glamorous working day of a writer looks like, the following video may illustrate. Cheers!

Remember, repetitive stress typing injuries are not just a myth perpetuated by lazy teenage essayists on a deadline. Take it easy out there, fellow wordsmiths.

Apropos of nothing, I really, really like Apple songs. Whoever actually selects them just has a good ear for what makes me happy. Here’s the new MacBook Air Song, New Soul by Yael Naim, for your listening pleasure. Cheers.

An embarrassingly talented Vancouver writer who is clearly destined for greatness will get his due in an upcoming Paul and Ben Film Festival. For more than three years, Kevin Spenst has written a short story every day. The documentary of his fifty readings in a single day around Vancouver promises to be a literary-cinematic triumph.

Check out the trailer.

And check out his stories — funny, sad, poignant and just plain silly — which he cranks out every single day. You’ll be glad you did.

UPDATE: One Thousand Stories won best picture at the Paul and Ben Film Festival on Friday night. Screenings at film festivals around the world, from Beijing to Berlin, are in the works. A star is born.

Buddhist spiritual leader and Vancouver speaking-circuit favorite, the Dalai Lama, is condemning Chinese security forces for swarming into the Chinese province (and formerly, the independent nation) of Tibet. The move from Beijing was sparked by violent unrest by protesters in territory, annexed in 1951 (as depicted in one of Brad Pitt’s finer performances) (AFP).

Who knew Bjork had this much pull?

I’ve been conflicted about the Tibet issue ever since reading Globe and Mail columnist and author Jan Wong’s Red China Blues about a decade ago after traveling to the country in question. She reached two conflicting but not necessarily contradictory conclusions:

1. Cultural genocide was indeed taking place as Chinese flooded into the area. This was despite some Chinese administration laws that provided financial and social services benefits to native Tibetans in varied ways, akin to Canadian benefits to First Nations people who live on reserves. The young generation of Tibetans that had never known their own independent country were undoubtedly assimilating into the Chinese nation.

2. China has been a modernizing influence to Tibet. The old days of the religious theocracy are long-gone (albeit replaced by a geriatric Communist dictatorship), along with superstitions and an aversion to technology. Economically, Tibetans are far, far better off than they would have been under the old system. In a land where freedom is measured differently than in the West, improvements in economic status can be akin to improvements in personal freedom — not quite democracy, but not something to be sneered at.

Wong is just one commentator. But her words, particularly coming from a perspective that initially wanted very much to condemn all aspects of the Chinese occupation (consistent with Wong’s awakening to the horrors of the Chinese dictatorship), still carry weight for me.

To be sure, Chinese interference in the ancient land of Tibet is a tragedy. Tibetans have been killed, tortured and imprisoned for struggling for their nation’s freedom. Right now, the odds of Tibetans regaining their independence through anything short of a total collapse of the Chinese central government look slim.

Canadian political commentator and author Terry Glavin notes when talking of hope that humanity may have when dealing with the larger questions of our long term survival as a species that one can never totally discount the possibility of dumb luck, sheer chance, and the unbreakable tenacity and ingenuity of human beings. So long as hearts desire it, hope for Tibet springs eternal.

NATO went to war against Serbia’s war-mongering regime in 1999 because of an inordinate raise in property taxes in Kosovo. The Rwanda genocide is more properly termed the “municipal rezoning” conflict.

Not true, of course. Taxes and city bureaucracy may suck, but they had never been mentioned seriously as tactics for ethnic cleansing — until Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas weighed in this week. On the widely-read Yahoo! News site, the headline reads “Abbas accuses Israel of Ethnic Cleansing” One would naturally assume this is just more rhetoric to describe Israel’s recent incursion into Gaza to stop a relentless barrage of missiles emanating from the territory. Nope.

Reading further down, Abbas’ meaning becomes clear: “Our people in Jerusalem are under an ethnic cleansing campaign. They are suffering from a series of decisions like tax hikes and construction prohibitions.”

Interesting. Does Abbas have any comment on the decade-old Palestinian law that provides a death sentence — usually by summary execution involving torture and/or bullets to the brain — to Palestinians who sell land to Jews (Frontpagemagazine.com)? Just so everybody is absolutely clear on the rules.

By the way, since I was recently protesting for press freedom with Reporters Without Borders against some of the more outrageous examples of media censorship via bloodletting, exactly how did Hamas-run, media-unfriendly Gaza get a free pass from the list?