"Here is the China Exit Entry Administration"

For many months, I have received a SPAM phone message that is both in English and Chinese. This seems puzzling to me: why am I getting them, and in Chinese?

Here is the message I receive (I've gotten this five times in the past week):

Here is the China Exit Entry Administration. You have a new message. 你好！中国出入境管理局，你有一个新信息，请按九获取详细内容 

The Chinese says, "Hello! China Entry Exit Administration, you have a new message, please press nine for details." You can listen to my recording of the message here.

In the past, the message came as a call, but I've installed Google Call Screening so I never answer calls from numbers that I don't already know. But recently, the "calls" are coming straight into my phone as voicemail, without the phone ringing. 

This is a very strange message. First of all, who is it aimed at? As one online commenter noted, many "foreigners" (i.e. Americans) in the US are getting this message, and though it begins in English, it only has instructions in Chinese. The message seems to be bait for a scam of Chinese speakers. Spamming all of America to find a few gullible Chinese does not seem very efficient.

Since it is aimed at Chinese, why does the message start in English? It's almost as if the scammers feel that it's a high-class scam because it is bilingual. But I don't think the PRC government authorities send messages to their citizens in English and Chinese. 

And it's bad English at that! "Here is the..." is Chinese English. It should be, "This is the ...." 

At first I thought the "Exit Entry Administration" was fake, because the name sounds so funny in English. Apparently, it's a thing, or at least it was until 2018, when it was renamed the Immigration Department.

I've been curious as to why I'm getting these messages again, after many months of silence. Plus, the calls go straight to voicemail; my phone does not ring. Also puzzling is the fact that these calls are coming from different phone numbers from all over the US. And twice, recently, I got the messages two times within 10 minutes, same exact recording, but from phone numbers from different parts of the country.

I think this is an example of the cat and mouse game between spammers and phone companies. I recently heard on a podcast about AI that spammers also use AI and have gotten better at evading Google and Yahoo's spam identification. 

But my Google Call Screening is still doing it's job, because my phone does not ring. The spam call is going to voicemail, so I get the start of the recording, but I'm not getting interrupted, nor do I have a chance to push "9".

Next step is for Google to recognize the calls as spam and send them straight to the spam folder, which it is able to do for some calls. I'm going to start calling my spam folder the "Exit Entry Administration."

Small World Coincidences and Connections

My son is job hunting, and he was telling me a story the other day about how a friend’s brother-in-law knows someone who works in a company in which my son hopes to get a job, giving him some inside information. We laughed about how in many lines of work, everyone knows each other, so you have to behave professionally.

That led me to think about two stories I’ve recently come across where two famous people from completely different walks of life knew each other, and not just casually, but really well.

The first example is the story that when the actor Julia Roberts was born,  Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife Coretta Scott King paid the hospital bill.  The story seems improbable (both because two famous people in totally different fields are linked, and because in our racist society we are used to thinking white people have money and not that Black people need to help whites), but it’s true. Roberts’ parents ran a theatre school in Atlanta, and after the Kings were having trouble finding a program that would accept the King children, Roberts’ parents accepted them and the parents became friendly. The theatre school struggled (and in fact closed a few years after Julia was born), so the Roberts did not have money for the hospital bill, and the Kings helped them out. 

The other story is that the famous singer Carly Simon was close friends with the family of baseball legend Jackie Robinson. (As an aside, Carly is the daughter of Richard Simon, founder of the publishers Simon and Schuster. That is already quite a connection.) It turns out Carly’s parents helped the Robinsons buy a house in Stamford, CT, in the 1950s when they became aware that racist housing practices were making it difficult for the Robinsons to find a new larger home, even though Jackie Robinson, the first player in Major League Baseball to break the racist color barrier, was an All Star baseball player. They helped the Robinsons buy the first plot of land in Stamford owned by an African American. Afterwards, Jackie’s wife Rachel and Carly’s mother Andrea became close friends, and Carly hung out with the Dodgers at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. “The team had a special jacket made for her, with “Dodgers” printedon the back and ‘Carly’ on the front.” 

These stories of unlikely connections combine the divisions of occupations (theatre and church, popular song and sports), which make them surprising, but of course the racial element adds to the improbability of the connections, given the segregation of America.

I was lucky two weeks ago to be invited to celebrate the Passover Seder in a Jewish friend’s home. The Seder is a meal with many symbolic foods (e.g. matzah bread) at which stories are told about Exodus, to celebrates and remember the departure of the Israelites from enslavement in Egypt. One of the major themes of Passover is that Jews have experienced enslavement, and should remember that and help others who are not free, because only when everyone is liberated can the Jews (and everyone) be free. One passage we read at the Seder said something like this: 

"The Passover story is the Jewish people’s original story of becoming strangers in a strange land. It is the story that reminds us that we, too, have stood in the shoes of refugees and asylum seekers in search of safety and liberty. As we lift our voices in song and prayer, we call out together with those who long to be free. This year, there are still many who struggle towards liberation; next year, may we all be free." —Mark Hetfield, President & CEO, HIAS (from a website of Passover Quotes)

It is not a coincidence, therefore, that the Simons helped the Robinsons. First of all, Richard Simon was of German Jewish background (though his parents were members of the Ethical movement, a secular group that was like a church for the non-religious.) Second, Richard's wife Andrea was actually of Afro-Cuban and German descent (see clip from Finding Your Roots episode on Carly Simon here), and active in the civil rights movement. Given America’s “one-drop” rule, one could say that Andrea Simon “passed” for white, but she also fought for civil rights. 

It has long been noted that many Jews were involved in the civil rights movement, and we can see in Passover one of the reasons that many Jews support liberation from oppression. (Historical conflicts over Black Power and Zionism, and the current situation in Israel/Palestine, show that ideology is complex and contradictory, however.)

Finally, I find it fitting that in a website on “Passover quotes” intended for Jews we find the following quotes from African American thought leaders:

 "Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed." —Dr. Martin Luther King Jr

 "The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free." —Maya Angelou

 So true. Especially given that we live in a small world, where everyone is connected.

Election Day, 4 April 2023

I volunteer to serve as an election judge for elections because I think it is important to help assure election integrity. We get paid, but no one works the 15-hour-day plus travel time for the $240. I also do it because it gives me a chance to get out of my social bubble and to meet other people. Sometimes, however, I end up feeling like I should have stayed in my bubble.

This week’s local election in St Louis County had very few items on the ballot. Voters can vote anywhere in the county, so everyone’s ballot can be a bit different, depending on where they live. A few places had mayor’s elections, or school board election, but the ballot for many people only had one question: 

Proposition M

Shall St. Louis County impose an additional sales tax of three percent (3%) on all tangible property retail sales of adult use marihuana sold in St. Louis County, Missouri?

□ YES

□ NO

I served in a small town called Black Jack, which is a fairly prosperous African American suburban town in “North County.” We were set up in a school gym. Only 68 voters came during the 13 hours the polls were open, which meant we had a lot of time to sit and wait. That means it cost over $30 per vote just for the cost of election judges at that polling location. Sixty voters voted absentee, so turnout from my polling place was nine percent, half the overall county turnout of 18 percent. 

The low turnout is understandable; why bother to vote if there are so few items on the ballot? It is absurd that we have so many elections (often four per year, counting primaries), but it is impossible to change because politicians know that certain items are easier to pass on elections like this, when few people vote, or on presidential elections, when many more people vote, so different groups have an interest in keeping the status quo.

One of the rules for election judges is that we are not supposed to discuss politics. The trainers at the Election Board remind us of this before every election, and yet, people can’t keep their mouths shut. Early in the day, someone started saying something political and our Republican manager commented that we should not talk about politics. Everyone agreed, though Bob, another Republicans poll judge, commented that though we can’t talk here, we SHOULD talk more, because people mostly agree, at least 80%, he said. Mary, a white Republican poll judge, agreed, and added that we are all God’s children, so are basically alike. (I said nothing, and could not help but wonder if my Black fellow election judges agreed, but they also said nothing). Later, as I was standing with him near the scanner, a young Black judge who is Republican said about Proposition M, “Why would anyone vote to give politicians more money so they can just waste it?!” I did not know how to reply without getting political so I just ignored him and said nothing.

Interestingly, two voters commented, when they saw that their ballot only had Proposition M on it, “Of course I’m going to vote “Yes”! I don’t use it, so let those who do pay the  taxes!” So even this seemingly innocuous proposition elicited partisan polarization, with conservatives against taxes and liberals in favor of taxes.

In case you were wondering, Proposition M passed, with 65 percent voting "Yes."

We were 8 poll judges, four Republicans and four Democrats, present for nearly 15 hours, and since only 68 people voted, we had a lot of free time. It was a bit like we were characters in the movie The Breakfast Club (except that we weren't all friends at the end), or maybe more like the characters of Murder on the Orient Express, which was being performed as a play this week.  

There was Mary, who talked the entire time. She was insufferable. She was from the western rural part of the county, and mentioned that she had lived many years in Mississippi, as perhaps we could tell from her accent. She told us she ran a mission and sold Mary Kay products, and had been in India for 26 days. No one asked why she went to India, but she proceeded to tell us she was there saving people. The last two hours, she literally read the manual and asked us "pop questions" as she read along. "Did you know ‘wearing apparel specific to a candidate or issue’ counts as electioneering?" And 30 seconds later, "What is the correct order for setting up the poll pad?" I made a point of working the scanner, which was at the other end of the gym, so I could be far away from her, where I could only hear her in the background and could read my book.

Then there was Bob, originally from the Bronx, a graduate of the Merchant Marine Academy recently retired after working 40 years in insurance. Hearing I was an anthropologist, he said social scientists will probably be studying the pandemic for decades. I replied that, actually, after the 1918 Flu, people mostly forgot about it, and that there is evidence people are now also ready to move on. He somehow started saying that there was no way Covid came from the market in Wuhan, and that Covid was genetically created in a lab in Wuhan because it was too precisely designed. I did not know how to reply, since he was so vehement, so I cut the conversation off abruptly by telling him he was misinformed and went back to reading my book. 

Then there was Republican manager, a white woman about 65 years old, who was very competent and in charge. She managed to make everyone stick to the rule that we not start packing up until AFTER polls close at 7:00 pm. (In previous cases, some people always want to start packing early.) The Democratic manager was a nice Black woman, perhaps 10 years older, who for some reason gave each election judge some cream. She gave me a small vial of Dove face cream for men. Then she asked, “Mr. Joe, do you have bad joints or arthritis?” She said she had some cream from her church that worked very well. I told her I did not need it (yet).

One pair of judges were a kind couple. The husband seemed a bit addled; it took him a while to remember the process for checking people in and producing ballots. He had brought a box of donuts, but they were dated “made March 26, sell by March 28,” so were a week old and stale. Only two of the six were eaten by the end of the day. His wife greeted every voter with a loud, “Welcome to the poll judge sweepstakes! Come on down!” followed by a bellowing laugh. Most people coming in seemed to be amused.

And then we had the young Black Republican, who spent most of the day listing to his iPods, and then suddenly announced two hours before the end of the election that he had to leave. (Hm; I wonder if he’ll get paid.)

At the risk of seeming to be a misanthrope, I have to say the experience was not uplifting. The low turnout, the inability to avoid politics, and the confrontation with partisanship and China-bashing all left me discouraged. Tired after the long day, I came home to make dinner and watch a baseball game. To make matters worse, the Cardinals lost 2-5, losing the third game in the series and thus getting swept by the Braves.