Chinese and Taiwanese Movies on DVD - Borrow them at Burnaby Metrotown Library

For those who use such things, the automated  check-out system at the

Metrotown Branch of the Library. At the time it went operational, a

smiling staffer assured me that "not a single job was lost." I never

use it myself. The blue finger points to the Chinese media section.

TAX WEEK IN BURNABY

The line has been long this week at Burnaby City Hall, as many ratepayers enjoy the annual ritual of meeting their property taxes. For those who wait last minute, here is a tip. When you get as far as the elevator, don't forget to take off your hat, turn to the left and smile. Each taxpayer gets a photograph taken as we snail by. It won't be long until facial recognition software is added to the mix. I asked, and a nice lady at the counter assured me it was not installed yet... but maybe next year.  To amuse myself while waiting, I sorted memories of the past year, identifying the municipal services I receive for my generous contribution to city coffers.  One certainly has to be the DVD lending collection at the Metrotown Library, which I partake of several times per year.  I have a robust DVD collection of my own, but I enjoy viewing and studying foreign film, and the Criterion editions are just too expensive for a single viewing. The library has most, if not all of the movies known as the  Criterion Collection.

Superb Lending Collection -

Chinese and Taiwan DVDs

The Burnaby library collection of movies, documentaries and television series on DVD is truly massive, and if you love watching quality video, you certainly must spend an hour familiarizing yourself with what is available for borrowing. (This is an example your tax dollars at work!) I used to have favourite shops I enjoyed visiting and purchasing from, but very few local retailers continue to stock DVDs. Our library system purchased most of the DVD catalog from C & L Multimedia, a  family business that has become the leading supplier in Greater Vancouver. They also supply the U.B.C. and S.F.U. campuses. Both of those universities have film-studies  programs.

The collection is on the main floor, but I must point out that a special collection of Chinese and Taiwanese DVDs has been assembled, and it is shelved with the Asian books and magazines, in the n.e. corner of the building. I took a photograph this week to accompany this introduction to the service.  I do not know how much of the collection is currently out on loan, but it was very easy for me to fins a couple of movies to enjoy this week.

The best way to show what you can expect to find in this China - Taiwan DVD Collection  is to describe the two movies I borrowed and watched this past week.

BLIND SHAFT 盲井 is a Chinese crime-drama directed by Li Yang 李杨. The story, released in 2003,  unfolds in an extremely interesting, and also quite ugly, rural landscape that you may have read about in the news. There exists in China a very dangerous  archipelago of quasi-legal coal mines, most of which are notorious for exploiting poor migrant labourers, often to the point of death. This is an amazing film that was shot in a working coal mine, and on the streets of a miserable mining town. The packaging notes quote a review in The Village Voice that described BLIND SHAFT as "Part neorealistic expose, part noir thriller." That is actually a rather accurate summation of Li Yang's modus. A superb film!

STRAY DOGS 郊遊 is a 2013 Taiwan film that I had read about, and was thrilled to discover in the Metrotown Library collection. As I once lived and worked in Taiwan, I have an acquired taste for its national cinema, and I even have a couple of Tsai Ming-Liang's movies at home. But STRAY DOGS caught me off guard. I was not prepared for the intensity of my response to its principle ideas and its carefully constructed images. I take movies quite seriously and usually watch good films alone. As per habit, I immediately started imposing on family and friends, because an encounter with visual story-telling at this level, is something we often continue to process, in part by describing it to others.   I could give the story away in a paragraph, but that would be a cultural sin.  I expect to sit to a second viewing later this summer, if only to test my lasting impressions.

"THE EIGHT HUNDRED"
Political prejudice has delayed
China's best movie of 2019.

Chinese war movies seem to exist in only two varieties.  A quality production that tells a story well, or botch that is a total waste of time. NETFLIX is currently running a Chinese war film that is so bad, Bruce Willis should donate his pay-cheque to charity. AIR STRIKE  (2018) is ghastly, and Willis' performance is nothing short of an insult to cinema. By way of contrast, I am expecting great things from THE EIGHT HUNDRED,  a large-budget production that is a vivid (and admittedly embellished) retelling of one of the great Chinese victories of the Sino-Japanese War. In history it serves a similar function for China as Dunkirk did for Britain only a few years later. It was a defining moment of  sacrifice and patriotism that has actually been an inspiration to folks on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.  

The Battle of the Sihang Warehouse, was a rear-guard action conducted by a picked battalion. The Japanese has flanked the Chinese defensive line and were poised to overrun the Chinese half of Shanghai in 1937.  You may not have heard of it, but the brave stand on Soochow Creek was a notable  battle of its day, and well-covered by the British and American newsreel cameramen, who were filming from vantage points in the Foreign Settlements. In fact, the opposite side of the creek was British territory, and three men of the Royal Welch Fusiliers were killed during the Japanese assault. The story of the so-called  "doomed battalion" has been covered by four previous Asian movies made between 1938-1975 - one each made in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan. The Japanese rarely credited the Chinese army with having  credible combat skills, but they were forced to admit that the defence of Sihang Warehouse had been exceptional. The Japanese Naval Landing Force suffered 200 dead, compared to only ten Chinese defenders. Japan cinema in the 30s was experimenting with social realism, and it was films like "A Naval Brigade of Shanghai" (1939) that proved too much for the Nippon government to stomach. Film censorship ensued.

Allegory in a wartime propaganda poster.

We see China savagely tortured by an army 

of Lilliputians - Japanese Naval Infantry.

This 2019 rendition is expected to become the definitive account and it is definitely a Hollywood-style action picture. In fact several American experts were hired to do  a breakout of action sequences, and several foreign actors have speaking roles.  The official movie trailer shows that the combat is not limited to "the stand" inside the row of concrete warehouses, but spills  into the streets of Shanghai and the sky above. That allows for a truly massive body count on both sides.

Unfortunately the movie's opening at the Shanghai International Film Festival has been cancelled, due to naked political prejudice.  Some whiny communist committeemen are interfering with the release, and may even demand heavy censorship before THE EIGHT HUNDRED gets out of limbo. They just cannot live with the fact that the hero soldiers commanded by their "class enemies" were serving in the Koumintang's National Army, and it was the Sun flag dramatically hoisted in defiance of Japanese assault troops, not the Red flag.  If this nonsense persists, the money spent in promotion will be pissed away, and the film will lose momentum. It was just announced that the films premiere, scheduled for July 6, has been cancelled. We China film fans may end up, oh the irony!, of having this movie debut in North America not on big screens, but on NETFLIX.   

The official trailer for  THE EIGHT HUNDRED

is found onYoutube - HERE. 

Metrotown Murder Case - DNA DRAGNETS ARE HERE TO STAY

DNA-SPYING JUGGERNAUT

I started paying attention to DNA analysis about fifteen years ago, when I read an article describing how a Seattle high school was teaching basic DNA sequencing. I thought, "Fantastic! Their first hire might still be minimum wage, but at least they avoid a dead-end job, like flipping hamburgers." Then in 2012, I read a very credible report that American spooks were secretly collecting the DNA of all foreign leaders, while going to extraordinary lengths to clean up after Barack Obama. Secret Service duties included denying foreign enemies any opportunity to collect his DNA - hair, saliva, semen, skin flakes, etc. [Obama's original, signed and dated, birth registration in Hawaii was secured with equal vigilance.] Our American cousins had "weaponized" DNA, as they do with almost everything they touch. What Washington may do with the Trudeau DNA is anyone's guess, but the Canadian government has failed to warn our citizens about the perils awaiting those who volunteer DNA samples to the Yanks. That is a dereliction, or it is a leakage of their own intentions. 

One month ago I collected a chat-string that was archived on an open Facebook site. Their topic was, personal experience with the DNA Testing kits sold by ANCESTRY.Com and 23andMe. Of the 76 comments in the chat-thread, half offered a verdict on DNA test results. The group was a split between the 'Satisfied" or 'Sceptical'. Several of the disappointed consumers had clearly been influenced by what they learned from an investigation conducted by the MARKETPLACE program on the CBC television network: DNA ANCESTRY TESTS. They now understood they had wasted their money.

What I expected to read, but did not, was some mention of two 'good news' stories from 2018, filed by CBC reporters. One case involved two half-brothers in New Brunswick, men in their 80s who did not know they shared a father. It was a curious niece who initiated the DNA test. The other case was of two sisters, also in their 80s, who had been separated by adoptions. Recently they were re-united as a result of DNA test results injected into the genealogy Internet data-stream. Testimonials sell product and I note ANCESTRY has a SALE on this Canada Day week.

 In this recent video, Canadian journalist James Corbett

does not mince words. "Took an Ancestry DNA test? You

might be a 'genetic informant' unleashing secrets about

your relatives. Corbett's video is available HERE.

The CBC MARKETPLACE investigation, in consultation with accredited experts, identified a number of problems with the basic science used by the heavyweights in the DNA testing business, as well as questionable business practices. The show's dramatic narrative was its insistence on an explanation for how the five testing companies could generate widely divergent reports on identical twins, the Agro sisters. The team at Yale University who evaluated the five DNA reports insist the results should be uniform, if they hope to be deemed credible science.

Program length and the limits of viewer engagement, forced CBC journalists to concentrate on two key points. 1) The sequenced DNA from the Agro twins was compared to reference sets (the largest sets include millions of samples) assembled from people who originate from all inhabited regions of the world. Unfortunately each company creates its own approximation of the borders of ethnic regions. Their choices are "arbitrary" and this will cause "discrepancies" when two or more DNA reports are compared. 2) Sample-to-set comparisons are only made possible by the use of custom algorithms, and each company uses proprietary software. "The way [each of] these calculations are run is different." What the consumers are paying for are low resolution scans that produce little more than an "ethnicity estimates," which will in fact change over time as the reference sets increase in size. If you choose to become pen-pal with a far-distant stranger whose DNA correlates with your own, that's a bonus.

The CBC report failed to address a dangerous situation that is now an open-secret. Several U.S. companies that started out selling access to their genealogy databases, for a fixed monthly fee, have now morphed into billion-dollar DNA testing labs, intent on making huge profits selling client genetic data to "Big Pharma" and to all Law Enforcement and Spy Agencies who come calling. 

DNA testing revealed the "Golden State Killer" was former-cop Joseph James DeAngelo.

His courtroom expressions of contempt - scowls and grimaces, made his menacing mug as 

familiar as Freddy Krueger. Several artfully-staged press conferences in 2018 rendered 

Mr. DeAngelo the designated POSTER BOY FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT GENOMICS.

THE "GOOGLE OF GENOMICS"

We are just beginning to understand the ramifications of "surveillance capitalism" - emerging economies dependant on the commercial exploitation of digital oceans of behavioural data. What began with the seduction of the gullible onto the Social Media platforms, was just a bit of foreplay compared to the promised capabilities of the 5G network connecting the "Internet of Things". We are actually expected to applaud Orwellian tidings of a mad, mad world in which even the marriage-bed will be configured to record individual performance and levels of satisfaction, and relay that hot and desirable data stream to the corporate gods. The Internet Tycoons of tomorrow will anticipate our every mood and desire, processing the data generated by cities populated by two-legged lab rats. The Silicon Valley Billionaires created this dangerous behemoth for their benefit, not ours. Trillionaires and governments will merge in the new "surveillance economy".

Google is the 'gold standard' for companies that currently trades a "free service" of dubious value, for unlimited usage of personal data. The 'platinum standard' will be established by that company which is first to offer whole genome sequencing, free of charge. Imagine how the suckers will line up for a "free" sequencing - their complete genetic makeup on a single DVD. Information they do not understand and cannot use, a plastic token in exchange for corporate ownership and unlimited use of their genetic information.

Millions of us will be horrified by these predictions, and some consider resisting. The softening up process involves false promises and outright lies. Who hasn't heard this one: "The families of the wrongfully convicted deserve justice." Perhaps, but one man's freedom should never be dependant on fingerprinting and gene-printing an entire nation. Totalitarianism is not an antidote for a broken judicial system. In 2018 there was an avalanche of hype about the potential for solving "cold cases", using DNA databases. Police agencies and DNA experts held joint press conferences but offered few facts about what is really going on. ANCESTRY.COM, which is now the leading for-profit genealogy company in the world, (the Government of Singapore is an equity stakeholder) is privately held and therefore does not have to disclose much. ANCESTRY has though, boasted of its stockpile of DNA data, the fruit of fifteen million processed DNA kits. They further claim that in 2018 ANCESTRY handled only ten requests for cooperation with law enforcement. All those legal orders concerned credit card fraud and identity theft. Such companies let "Cold Case" stories "sell" the public on the concept of mass DNA sampling, but all such programs (Corporate and Law Enforcement) are forward-looking. The past is only incidental.

THE FBI PLUMBERS ARE BACK

In the 1930s J. Edgar Hoover ran aggressive media campaigns pushing his creepy idea of families voluntarily registering fingerprints with the FBI - "for their own benefit". Today it is your genetic fingerprints the FBI seeks, and they will not scruple to ask for them. Years ago the FBI went rogue, developing and deploying software enabling covert access to any common computer or. "The Bureau" has become a massive Intelligence Agency operating globally, and it is has the staff and budget to collect data it expects to need in the future. It will use DNA archives built today to enforce laws that do not even yet exist, and to destroy foreign opponents of the American Empire. In that dystopian future it will be a serious crime to seek simple privacy, because "stealing" data-flow from government and corporations will equate with theft of money.

You may remember the televised-trial of the "Golden Gate Killer" in 2018. Joseph James DeAngelo was an ex-cop turned serial killer and rapist, who evaded detection for decades. It was only when detectives tapped into the capabilities of commercial genomics websites that the case was cracked. By identifying and targeting a dozen distant relatives, investigators tracked back and arrested a shadowy fugitive killer, by then a 72 year old man. The media, predictably, played up the case and the public swallowed everything they were told. In fact public opinion polls helped solidify the idea that the public fully supported "DNA dragnets" as a necessary law enforcement methodology. Legislators went to work, and starting in California, added DNA swabbing to fingerprinting, at time of booking the accused. Worse, police officials everywhere, including Canadian sleuths, placed hands over hearts and swore an inability to conceive of doing their job without access to large-scale genome archives, coupled with the best technology available. It is already projected that within five years, the FBI (and RCMP?) will deploy mobile DNA sequencing technology to the crime scene, and retrieve a preliminary match within minutes. Of course any such curbside-DNA test will implicate a large number of people, all related by blood.

What you don't know, because it is not openly publicized, is that the FBI has been helping itself to commercial genome databases for some time. Their intrusion was exposed because in one case the purloined genome files, formatted in an unusual way, gave the data-thieves trouble. The Bureau phoned the offices of FamilyTreeDNA and boldly demanded free access. The company CEO, in an interview with FORENSIC MAGAZINE revealed that he was threatened with "a virtually endless succession of subpoena after subpoena" if he would not grant open access. The company caved.

Lex Calla has put together a short Youtube that will take

you through the Marrisa Shen (申小雨) story. It is HERE.

BURNABY IN TURMOIL 2017-18

Here in Burnaby, the benefits of an ethnically diverse community are very apparent. We all enjoy living here, and (gasoline taxes aside) there is is little to complain about. My wife is an active member and supporter of a Chinese temple in Metrotown, and there is a well-attended mosque two blocks from our home. Newcomers tend to want and need traditions such as religion, much more than do the greying generation of Canadians. Generally speaking, everyone gets along. Still, incidents do occur. Take the case of Marissa Shen, a young Chinese who was murdered on July 18, 2017 in Central Park, Metrotown. Her killing traumatized this city, and public safety became a hot-button local issue during the last election cycle. At the time the 13-year old was killed, I was one of those who jumped to conclusions. A good friend of mine who provides counselling to many newcomer families who struggle to adapt, had described the support given the Shen family before the girl's murder. (Marrisa was actually quite typical of girls her age and background.) My assumption was she had simply encountered a cunning fox on Social Media, and had considered the nearby park a safe arena. (Kids these days think they are invulnerable.) An intensive DNA Collection Dragnet proved me wrong, but police tactics rang alarm bells that should trouble you too.

DNA DRAGNET  IN  B.C.  TARGETS
MIDDLE-EASTERN  REFUGEE MALES

The only thing the American news industry loves more than a mass-shooting incident, is a complex serial killer investigation. Speculation, investigation, the take down, and a court room drama. A clever killer is better than Crazy Glue for keeping bums in seats, faces fixed on millions of flat screen TVs.  In August of 2018 the latest sensation was Joseph James DeAngelo, the so-called Golden State Killer, who was arraigned in August 2018.  DNA testing had been a constant factor in the investigation for almost twenty years,  first implicating and then exonerating many suspects. Then, in January of 2018, detectives tried something different - they uploaded DNA evidence to the website of GEDmatch, an "open source" archive of results collected primarily from family history enthusiasts. Bingo! Genealogical DNA identified almost twenty distant relatives of the elusive rapist-murderer, all of whom instantly fell under intensive investigation. The track-back to DeAngelo was easy. The decades old mystery was cracked and Mr. DeAngelo instantly became, what I fairly term,  The Poster Boy for Law Enforcement Genomics.  [Ref: Sacramento Bee article "'Open-source' genealogy provided missing DNA link to East Area Rapist, Investigator Says "]

Up here in Burnaby, Canada,  law enforcement agencies were under equally intense pressure to solve the murder of a young Chinese immigrant - Marrisa Shen.  The precise moment our local police bosses signed contracts with PARABON NANOLABS is still their secret, but the Shen case was clearly a test-bed for sleuthing methods that have forever changed how our cops go about their business. What we are currently witnessing is a perfect storm of privacy-obliteration.  The marriage of  two immensely powerful and insatiable beasts, on the one hand BIG intrusive governments and on the other, GREEDY immoral corporations. In the very near future, as high-speed DNA matching is added to the ubiquitous data-matching (ie. spying) routinely conducted by our federal, provincial and even municipal governments across Canada. In the future your family DNA profile will be matched not only against samples taken from murder and rape suspects, but to investigate such mundane "crimes" as real estate speculation and the surreptitious dumping of trash. Here in B.C., such Orwellian measures are being considered. Over in Toronto, condo associations are already forcing pet owners to register DNA, simply to catch pesky poopers.

A suspect in the Shen murder was arrested on September 7, 2018. He was identified as  Ibrahim Ali, a Syrian refugee who had been sponsored for entry into Canada by a Vancouver Christian church. The unmarried Syrian male had been here less than three months before he murdered a child in a Burnaby public park. RCMP - IHIT held a televised press conference three days later. A police spokesperson praised "our many partners [who] worked tirelessly for over a year to find answers", and offered a few statistics ... more than 1,300 residents near the crime scene canvassed, over 600 interviews conducted, over 2000 persons of interest identified and subsequently eliminated, and over 1000 hours of video image collected from 60 locations. The significant "notable partner" NOT named at the presser was the American genomics company PARABON NanoLabs. The role of that co-investigator, or details of the contract may come out in the trial. We can know about Paragon in advance, because a defence lawyer, who had access to the evidence and who spoke to CBC NEWS, spilled a trade name. "The analysis is called DNA phenotypic - also known as "Snapshot DNA" (see graphic above) - and it has provided leads and arrests in several cold cases in the United States by helping investigators predict the appearance or even ethnicity of a suspect." Here is a promotional graphic for the SNAPSHOT KINSHIP INFERENCE model.

It was Cornelia Naylor, an intelligent reporter, who uncovered the story of how RCMP - IHIT had really broken the case. "Marrisa Shen investigators may have done DNA sweep of Middle Eastern Men - BURNABY NOW, November 13, 2018. The local television affiliates of CTV and CBC followed her lead, and within a week it was out in the open. The DNA Dragnet had been nothing short of kick-ass. "The NOW has learned numerous Middle Eastern men living in the Lower Mainland - some of whom came to Canada to escape persecution in totalitarian regimes - were called up seemingly randomly and asked to provide voluntary DNA samples in relation to the killing." Soon individual Syrians and Kurds spoke to reporters, and it became very clear that none of the 2000 men who "volunteered" DNA samples did so unwillingly. What else can one do? Burnaby resident Ayub Faek asked "Why me?" He was assured, "Not only you. Many people." Our federal troopers have the guns, our governments their 24/7 electronic surveillance programs, and our society its reputation for yielding to all that coercive power without a whimper. We get, what we are going to get. And often.

JUST THE BEGINNING

I still recall some of the more naive comments shared on that FACEBOOK chat page, and I wonder if they will ever understand what they have stumbled into. But it was a CBC report that gave some urgency to my research. "Vancouver Police using same DNA technique that caught suspected Golden State Killer" - CBC May 30, 2019. "For the first time, a Canadian police force has confirmed it's using the same genetic genealogy technique that finally caught the suspected Golden Gate Killer, to solve a cold case of it own. Vancouver police have hired U.S. firm Paragon NanoLabs to search all available genealogical records in hopes of finding any link to a suspected miller's DNA. ... Parabon scours public genealogical sites such as GEDmatch and FamilyTreeDNA, which allow police to access their databanks. Most other well-known DNA testing companies don't cooperate with law enforcement without search warrants." 

Did you catch that? The American contractor will search "all available genealogical records".  Over 2000 immigrant men in Greater Vancouver, many of them refugees from war zones,  have just had their first encounter with a DNA Dragnet. Their personal genomes are now locked inside databases that will be consulted and matched against the records provided by millions of people who are determined to play with things they do not understand.   What once existed only in the realm of Dystopian fiction is now our reality.  And as Orwell made so very clear in his prophetic work, NINETEEN EIGHTYFOUR,  the precious freedoms the "Prols" surrender to Big Brother, they will never, ever get back.

The bitter irony in all this?  Over 2000 entirely innocent immigrant men have been aggressed against by the Canadian state.  Each will respond to that aggression in their own way. All responses are entirely understandable. Worse, not a single detective or crime lab boffin will have regrets about perpetrating those acts of aggression against innocent parties. They are proud exponents of state power, they relish that power, and they covet even more intrusive capability.   As to the suffering of the Shen family, who are the greatest victims of the "refugee system", which is a political process, they have no recourse. The trial of Ibrahim Ali will soon get underway, and we will learn nothing useful from that process.