You Can Help: Call for Writers, Mentors, Researchers and Translators
Many hands make light work - you don't have to do this alone, join us ! Make a difference !
Who We Are:
Our organisation, “Freedom Alliance” exists to connect people who support our aims: Sovereignty, Freedom and Democracy. We do not define ourselves as an anti - CCP alliance, but if we are described as such, we won’t argue much. We are based in and focused on Australia, but have global concern and seek global allies.
The Publication:
The purpose of the recently launched “Prairie Fire Magazine”, is to fight the “information warfare” battle against the CCP narrative, and become a vehicle for sharing information and promoting cooperation amongst our supporters.
The origin of the name is from the Chinese idiom, “A single spark will start a prairie fire” (星星之火，可以燎原 / xīng xīng zhī hǔo, kě yǐ liáo yúan). The expression was made famous outside China by Mao’s use of it in a fiery speech in 1930 encouraging the seemingly defeated Chinese Communist Party to refuse to give up. We believe Australia has only begun to wake up, and take actions to guard our sovereignty, protect our freedom and preserve our democracy. We want to start our fire. Our opponents will understand what we mean.
Over a period of decades we have endured a salami slicing of Australian democracy, and the white anting of our educational and governmental institutions. We have demonstrated apathy about action, and confusion about what action could or should be taken. We have not been united. Protest and agitation is mainly carried out by refugee communities without significant support from other groups, even where their problems root cause is the same (CCP). They lack support from the wider community who’s understanding of the issues are fuzzy but are developing an understanding that CCP influence and interference is not someone else’s problem.
Divided we fall.
Goals of Prairie Fire:
For the last 60 000 years, the indigenous people of the Australian continent applied fire as part of management of the land. It became part of the ecology of the continent, it leads to renewal and rebirth. We do not seek a fiery wave of destruction, we seek both a reversal of CCP gains in this country and a renewal and refreshing of the democratic functioning of our nation.
We wish to facilitate better understanding of the issues that our country faces and foster discussion of strategies that can be employed. It’s not enough to say “someone” or “the government” should do x or y, what can “We The People” do ? and how do “We The People” coordinate individuals and groups to create if not one voice, then at least a collection of harmonious voices, working to achieve shared goals, and build common purpose based on positive values, not merely opposition to the CCP.
Type of Writing:
We aim for 600 to 1200 words but if you are convinced people will read more and can persuade us (we like reading !) then nothing gets rejected outright. Pictures, and links to other sources are suggested, especially links to an under-read academic report or an overlooked (or suddenly more relevant) news article that people should know about.
We request that the topics relate to and support our values: Sovereignty, Freedom, Democracy.
Opinions are great, but we like the idea of “seeking truth from facts”, even if the people who use that expression actually don’t live up to it. If you state something is a fact, it must actually be true, and the evidence that it is true must be available (links to other sources, for example).
We are currently only publishing in English, but intend that all documents should be available in bi-lingual form (Mandarin) by the end of 2022. If you want it printed in another language, we are open to doing that, but will want at least an English language copy as well. If you submit in Chinese we are pretty handy with post machine translation tweaking, but are not a professional translation service.
Writers:
We seek writing from activists, about their activities, motivations, ideas and plans. We cannot support you if we don’t know who you are or what you are doing. Our readers might, if they know more about you.
We seek writing from academics, who specialise not only in fields of sinology, political science, military strategy, history and economics, but from a larger range of fields where dealing with the emergence of China as a major presence requires study and communication to enable the wider public to understand its importance. An example most people wouldn’t think of would be oceanic studies, where China’s antarctic activities, maritime militia and massive fishing fleet, interest in krill harvesting and other issues have become contentious. Note we are not looking for endless demonisation of China (others have this covered), but as then Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jie Chi remarked during an ASEAN forum in 2010 “China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that’s just a fact.” This alone, makes for enormous impact in sometimes unexpected fields of study, that all have real world impact. The CCP then takes this problem and multiplies it. Or not - you tell us !
Odds are many academics have spare op-eds and modifiable executive summaries of past work that can be quickly updated, linked to in the article and contributed without major effort. No need to re-invent the wheel, play to your strengths, especially if it is suddenly topical.
Odds are if you wrote a great analysis of Taiwan / China relations that twenty other academics read three years ago, it can be easily repurposed for our astonishingly fast growing audience, and help people who do not have deep knowledge of an issue get on top of it fast - and fight misinformation and CCP Shill Public Opinion Guidance.
An example of this would be our promotion of Rolland Nadege’s “China’s Vision For A New World Order” (NBR Jan 2020).
At time of writing, 25% of readers of “The Beginners Guide To CCP Shill Spotting” had clicked on the link to her article. That’s 166.5 new people who read her important and interesting report as well as ours. In addition to the academics, think-tankers, journalists and political staffers who are signing up in droves, there are a horde of readers from all sorts of backgrounds who are curious to get smarter about China, and the 0.5 must be someone who just read the executive summary,-which is still better than nothing.
Promoting the useful and debunking the idiotic, are important goals for us.
We seek writing from journalists, - perhaps you can popularise your work or spruik your new book ? or aspiring journalists - perhaps you can build your CV with us ?
Podcasts and videos can also be considered.
You may want to use your own name to promote your profile and work.
You may want to use a pseudonym, ie if you have relatives, friends or business partners in China, and you fear they may suffer due to your exercise of freedom of speech in Australia, or if being a contributor risks being a career limiting move. Either way, you still own your contribution and it can be used elsewhere or removed at any time at your request.
Mentoring and Assistance:
Expert in a field but too busy to write something yourself ? Our young and energetic writers would love to have an expert point out mistakes of fact or analysis in their writing and direct the focus of further research or re-writing. Actually that’s a complete lie, but as editor I’d like to be able to direct them to an expert who could do that, to free myself up for growing the readership and admin work. Not enough people know about us yet.
Consulting to our writers, helping them write an article of your suggestion may also be an alternative to using a pseudonym. If they are any good, they’ll save you time, and give you ideas for your next op-ed in mainstream media that you actually get paid for.
Researchers:
We would like assistance from people with strong English and Chinese language skills. Tasks involve following, collating information and raising to our attention important topics from all media, but especially Chinese language media in China, Australia and elsewhere (Solomon Islands anyone?). Legal, ethical intelligence gathering. Basically reading the news like you would anyway, but with a notepad available to record the existence of articles that cover whatever we are tracking, or whatever you think we should be writing about, and forwarding us the relevant articles or information. Build the case file.
Translators:
Machine translation is a modern miracle but there is still a need for assistance from people with a high facility in two languages, and the main ones for us are Chinese and English. This could be to help a writer check understanding of an article in a language other than their native language before citing it, or it could be managing the process of translating an article written in one language into another. We have a backlog of English language articles waiting to be translated into Chinese.
Thanks for reading this far ! Please retweet or forward to any one you think could be interested to help.
PS. Freedom is not free, we are not asking for your money, please don’t ask us!
Yours in Solidarity:
Simon JianDan (简单）
Supreme Editor
Prairie Fire Magazine
Freedom Alliance
contact us on:
email: simonjiandannew@outlook.com
twitter @jiandie131