We have a friend, let’s call her Liz. Liz lives in the northern part of China. She's of eastern European descent and speaks five languages, including, of course, Chinese. She teaches English to Chinese as an occupation, and saves dogs from being butchered for dog meat as a passion.
We have known Liz for quite some time now. A quiet person of distinction, she gives everything she has to save these dogs in a country that cares little for animals and has no laws for their protection. Liz is quite successful, a one person dynamo, she has saved possibly thousands of dogs from being carved up for the discerning Chinese pallet.
It is not a quiet life Liz leads, as the system and a significant portion of the people dislike animals. On many occasions trucks loaded with wonderful dogs show up demanding extortion money, or else they drive straight to the slaughterhouse. Liz has a hard time saying no. She currently is taking care of more than 100 rescued dogs. Where to shelter them, what to feed them, how to cure them?
But the protagonist of our story is not Liz or the life on the cusp of insanity she lives. The main character of our tale is an unknown male with an Indian accent. Perpetually broke, Liz is always trying to raise money to help pay for her dog rescue efforts. One day three weeks ago she woke up to find that her charity's Instagram account had been hacked. The hacker was demanding ransom for return of the account. 'Are you ready to pay and get your account? Give me money' the message said. The hacker was demanding 7,000 pounds (9,300 USD). Liz does not have that kind of money and even if she did she would not want to incentivize the criminals. She refused. Again and again the hacker demanded to be paid. Liz reported him to Instagram and Facebook.
A few days later the hijacker gave up on collecting from Liz and new messages began appearing on her charity page offering crypto currency lessons and get rich quick schemes, all with flashy pirated photos. One by one the hacker worked his way through the charity's followers, asking for money to be sent to the hacker's Gmail account with desperate pleadings to help save dogs. Then all of the charity's prior Instagram posts were deleted. Liz warned her followers not to give money to the hacked Instagram page.
“How low can you get you scumbag”, “robbing a poor rescuer with no money that’s trying to help dogs, you are the face of evil”, “nice, do you know this is a dog site saving animals from being eaten for lunch”. A deluge of messages started to show on the hacked Instagram page, all disgusted, all hateful of the hacker. Yet the hacker remained undeterred, didn’t give a crap that everyone thought he was the lowest piece of shit on earth. What he cared about was money, only money. He had no honor, no self-respect, and certainly no conscience.
To this organization once again the episode illustrates how horrid some of us can be. We have all read about the Nazi guards pushing children through the gas chamber room doors, but they seem to be aliens from a different age, stories in a book, more history than reality. This encounter however is right here and now. How can we ever save ourselves from climate horror or nuclear devastation or virus apocalypse if some of us are capable of robbing charities with no money helping animals that are on the way to being butchered?
Liz never did get her Instagram account back. Instagram never helped her or even reached out to her (more corporate scumbags). The evil hacker never got any money from Liz. If he scammed some people with his phony ads, that’s all he got. Yet through all this he remained undeterred, not fearful of the authorities or Instagram or Liz, resolute that his greed was the supreme justification for being as evil as can be. Meanwhile this asshole human being has increased Liz’s page followers from 6,500 to 10,500!
May the Lord save us from ourselves.
