Seriously, every time I hear arguments similar to your coworkers, I say the same damn thing, “WTF are you doing here?”
I’ve also heard things like, “Canadians are just not competitive, too laid back, and/or lazy,” and it makes me roll my eyes, like they don’t understand the culture here and just think the US is more “healthily” competitive, people are somehow “more motivated” to work, etc.
“Like seriously, WTF are you still here?”
I grew up in another part of the world and I know what “not competitive” looks like; people literally do not want to care about competition, and their only response when actual competition comes around (inevitably when there’s a similar business in town) would be to lower prices and hammer them ads when a better player comes around. They’re so lazy that they would set up a business, treat their employees badly, have literally no proper vision and path for their business, and expect their business to auto-pilot to success, and for some, their businesses will somehow survive. Workers are also lazy; pushing responsibilities around is basically the national work culture, and those with any sense of responsibility ends up getting burdened by all the work people push around. You can certainly survive and actually thrive here if you know how to protect your time and energy, and continually skill-up (most people don’t do that), but work will feel like a slog a lot of the times just cause of all the above reasons.
Makes me think that the government should be consulting trustable people who speak Chinese before jumping to these conclusions. This just feels like they’re frantic and possibly extreme in their view of China. We can dislike the Chinese government and be wary of its many machinations, but we should also judge fairly, lest we undermine our own credibility and essentially give the CCP ammo to label the Canadian government as an extremist and xenophobic.
Also, I would say that Chinese, American, and Russian-controlled media all need to be taken with caution. I understand that the US is a more immediate threat, but the other two have long known to be in the game, and especially the Chinese cause they have large diasporas here, and has a large social media arm worldwide.
I can read Chinese so I can verify that the few articles that were linked are linked certainly don’t seem to mention anything negative about Carney. That translation you’ve shared there is accurate.
I was being rather cautious about the source while reading, cause the official source mentions that this is the channel where mis/disinfo was spread about that Lib MP who had to be removed due to election interferences (sorry, can’t recall his name at the moment). But so far, nothing stands out to me here. The article does seem like a base where they could build their own narrative though, since they don’t cite anything (eg when quoting Carney), making it hard to verify whether a statement was truly said or not, and mixing truths and lies is exactly how they like creating false narratives, to make it incredibly tedious to disentangle truths from lies.
As for the other article, nothing stands out too. It’s written quite a lot more sensationally (eg. something like “Trump’s strategy is as such: ‘You (you being Canada here) either kneel down and be our (American) son, or get roasted (by me) on Twitter till you become a shut-in’”). It’s clear that this isn’t a credible news source, but the Chinese (in Asia, not just China, as there are large Chinese diasporas who aren’t Chinese citizens, e.g. Singaporeans and Malaysians) are used to consuming news from these sorts of non-credible channels.
That said, yeah, I’m confused about how and why the gov seems to have selectively linked these articles to say that false narratives have started. There’s potential for it, but these don’t seem to be it
Or better, help people transition away from American products. 50% tongue-in-cheek (it’s hard to help people make that change for a variety of reasons, but hey!)
But let’s reduce income taxes so that the government gets less money to run long-underfunded public services, maintain long-ignored public infrastructure, and fight the war. Oh, did we forget about the promise of some amount of financial support to people affected by the trade war.
A broken clock is right twice of the day, but we don’t call it a working clock. And it’s worse when the clock actually works somewhat and changes its speed to match more times of the day.
I think you’re either quoting the wrong article, or misread the article. The article talks about the new ownership of The Observer, which is a sister publication to The Guardian.
It’s odd that this “The Standard” publication is the only one that seems to talk about the selling of the Observer and how it was handled, with some even smaller publications. That said, The Standard is majority owned by a Russian oligarch, sometimes sensationalize titles and events, and don’t always have their facts right.
Just to add to your comment, case in point, The Guardian sometimes covers Canadian news, and has recently published a bit more about current Canadian political events. They operate mainly in the UK but have a US office. They are independent and don’t have a corporate backer, and have been working relentlessly covering the events in the US since the new admin took power.
Digressing a bit, I’d urge people to use tools like GroundNews to find out the political leanings and maybe even the corporate owners of news outlets that you come across, and use that to your own judgement.
They’ve been spamming some attack ads about some fake strawman Carney on YT pretty damn aggressively. And idk if I’d ever call whatever they’ve had these last couple years a platform.
You’re the kind of Trudeau lover that no matter what evidence is presented, you’ll always believe that he’s just some kind of freaking god. He’s gone, good riddance. May we never hear from him again. Go cry in your cereal lol.
Quoting your comment for posterity.
I didn’t even talk about Trudeau or how much I like him or not, and literally gave you a chance to explain what you’re trying to say through the link.
But I think we all see what kind of person you are now.
It’s quite hard indeed, especially given that the current, dominant North American culture is one seeped in a high degree of hedonism. We don’t typically hear stories of how people endured decades-long of hard work and inconveniences to achieve something significant. I know they exist; I’ve talked to a good number of people to know they do, but we just don’t all hear them in a manner where it’s broadcasted.
In East Asia, there are many such stories that go around, even as stories for children. The narrative around education itself is molded by it; study hard and well, and you’ll most likely end up with a good job, which means potential for a good and comfortable life. Outside of education, certain tv shows like to go into stories that span multiple years that shows the struggles humans go through in their lives, and how they will be rewarded or punished by their earlier actions. Take the Hong Kong, Taiwanese, Japanese, and Filipino dramas that span literally hundreds or even thousands of 30-to-45-minute episodes, some of which are still ongoing.
That said though, Western culture has taken a strong hold of the younger demographic in East Asia, so instant gratification is also a growing problem there.
While I don’t think East Asian culture sets itself out to dissuade people of self-gratification, it sets up people’s expectations of the different kinds of gratification you can get through life, some of which clearly require years to attain.
And I don’t think people don’t really know of it here either. We understand that teaching can be a very rewarding career, not in terms of how much you’d make, but that we’d better the lives of the young, and it may lead to them carrying that torch and passing it forward. It’s also slightly more tangibly rewarding when old students come see you years down the road and thank you for teaching and guiding them. These are stories that can be told, and they can stick because they’re touching, human stories.
So yeah, I’m not sure how we can actually tell people that we shouldn’t just focus on instant gratification, in a society where it’s so deeply engrained into their psyche. It would be quite the fundamental shift in culture. I think there are steps we can take, eg via education and messaging through mediums like entertainment and the news.
I wrote “eyeing” but that’s an understatement — I’ve been mouthwatering. I’m a bit of a sucker for things I can tinker with. I don’t need a new phone at the moment, but the day may come soon.
I’ve looked around and yeah, that’s my impression too, that the 5 doesn’t work with certain bands, but I don’t think I’ve seen a definitive list.
I did see that some people have used some middleman service to get the 4.
You mentioned the Fairphkne and I’ve been eyeing it too. Has anything changed with how we can actually get it here? Or do we still have to do our homework and check if it’ll work with our existing providers or get a new plan?
Seriously, every time I hear arguments similar to your coworkers, I say the same damn thing, “WTF are you doing here?”
I’ve also heard things like, “Canadians are just not competitive, too laid back, and/or lazy,” and it makes me roll my eyes, like they don’t understand the culture here and just think the US is more “healthily” competitive, people are somehow “more motivated” to work, etc.
“Like seriously, WTF are you still here?”
I grew up in another part of the world and I know what “not competitive” looks like; people literally do not want to care about competition, and their only response when actual competition comes around (inevitably when there’s a similar business in town) would be to lower prices and hammer them ads when a better player comes around. They’re so lazy that they would set up a business, treat their employees badly, have literally no proper vision and path for their business, and expect their business to auto-pilot to success, and for some, their businesses will somehow survive. Workers are also lazy; pushing responsibilities around is basically the national work culture, and those with any sense of responsibility ends up getting burdened by all the work people push around. You can certainly survive and actually thrive here if you know how to protect your time and energy, and continually skill-up (most people don’t do that), but work will feel like a slog a lot of the times just cause of all the above reasons.