Free China! Free Tibet!

Support human rights, for God’s sake!

That Rex Murphy is a laugh and a half. Do people really take him seriously?

OPEN QUOTE

Whatever wrongs and new oppressions introduced by the Chinese after 1959, they did ABOLISH SLAVERY and the Tibetan serfdom system of unpaid labor. They eliminated the many crushing taxes, started work projects, and greatly reduced unemployment and beggary. They established secular schools, thereby breaking the educational monopoly of the monasteries. And they constructed running water and electrical systems in Lhasa.

By 1961, Chinese occupation authorities expropriated the landed estates owned by lords and lamas. They distributed many thousands of acres to tenant farmers and landless peasants, reorganizing them into hundreds of communes.. Herds once owned by nobility were turned over to collectives of poor shepherds. Improvements were made in the breeding of livestock, and new varieties of vegetables and new strains of wheat and barley were introduced, along with irrigation improvements, all of which reportedly led to an increase in agrarian production.

In 1980, the Chinese government initiated reforms reportedly designed to grant Tibet a greater degree of self-rule and self-administration. Tibetans would now be allowed to cultivate private plots, sell their harvest surpluses, decide for themselves what crops to grow, and keep yaks and sheep. Communication with the outside world was again permitted, and frontier controls were eased to permit some Tibetans to visit exiled relatives in India and Nepal.39 By the 1980s many of the principal lamas had begun to shuttle back and forth between China and the exile communities abroad, “restoring their monasteries in Tibet and helping to revitalize Buddhism there.

[The Dalai Lama’s] Drepung monastery was one of the biggest landowners in the world, with its 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 great pastures, and 16,000 herdsmen.

The serfs were taxed upon getting married, taxed for the birth of each child and for every death in the family. They were taxed for planting a tree in their yard and for keeping animals. They were taxed for religious festivals and for public dancing and drumming, for being sent to prison and upon being released. Those who could not find work were taxed for being unemployed, and if they traveled to another village in search of work, they paid a passage tax. When people could not pay, the monasteries lent them money at 20 to 50 percent interest. Some debts were handed down from father to son to grandson. Debtors who could not meet their obligations risked being cast into slavery.20

The theocracy’s religious teachings buttressed its class order. The poor and afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles upon themselves because of their wicked ways in previous lives. Hence they had to accept the misery of their present existence as a karmic atonement and in anticipation that their lot would improve in their next lifetime. The rich and powerful treated their good fortune as a reward for, and tangible evidence of, virtue in past and present lives.

END OF QUOTE

Get a life Rex.

I guess that’s a good enough reason to kill people. Those Tibetans are so ungrateful. Especially the dead ones.

how does this differ from american diplomacy?

If there’s one thing the NED knows how to do, it’s throw a party.

OPEN QUOTE

China has said that Tibetan rioters killed 18 “innocent” civilians and one police officer during protests against Chinese rule in the region’s capital Lhasa.

Citing the Tibet regional government, Xinhua, the state news agency, said on Saturday that the 19 victims were confirmed dead by Friday night in the unrest that rocked Lhasa last week.

The report was made as China stepped up pressure on the protesters on Friday, releasing photos of wanted suspects who were captured on film in the worst rioting against Chinese rule in Tibet in nearly 20 years.

The report added that 241 police officers were injured, 23 seriously, and 382 civilians were injured, 58 seriously.

“Rioters set fire to seven schools, five hospitals and 120 residences,” the Xinhua report said.

“Eighty-four vehicles were burnt down and 908 shops were looted.”

Looking at all the protests that have erupted all around the world gives you a pretty good idea of the extent to which the NED has penetrated the Global Activist Community.

Quite impressive, actually.

QUOTE continues

“If freedom loving people throughout the world do not speak out against China’s oppression in China and Tibet, we have lost all moral authority to speak on behalf of human rights anywhere in the world,” Pelosi said before a crowd of thousands of cheering Tibetans, including monks and schoolchildren.

END OF QUOTE

Wow. That’s just incredible chutzpah. Read my lips, Nancy, you have NO MORAL AUTHORITY. GTF our of Iraq and Afghanistan and stop paying for genocide in Palestine while you’re at it.

Rex Murphy is Canadian.

tears for my people

I’m in no way supporting the status-quo Tibetan feudalism here but the Chinese/pseudo commie/capitalist alternative hasn’t been that much better for any Chinese territory. I suggest you read the Mao biography by Jung Chang and Jon Holiday. China is a totalitarian state has been a totalitarian state and the revolution itself was nothing more than a passing of the baton at the expense of the common peasant.

The Pentagon has decided that confrontation with China is desirable.
(good luck with that, fools).

The protests are an attempt by western meddlers to stage another colored revolution.

everything else is bullshit

Citizens of the west cannot influence China. Only governments can attempt that.
And only when they don’t have worse records themselves…

Why don’t you spend your time pressuring your own governments over your own abysmal human rights records?
They won’t listen? They don’t represent you? Then overthrow them ffs.

Free Iraq!
Free Afghanistan!
Free Palestine!
Hell, while we’re at it, Free Hawaii!

That Rex Murphy is a laugh and a half. Do people really take him seriously?

Actually they do. While looks comes before content on US media … content comes first on CBC.

Read … don’t just look Micro. You’re supposed to be beyond finger painting age.

Those who ruled China in 61 would have those who rule today shot.

digital blockades and sit-ins like this one need to be written for all Chinese embassy and consulate websites, as well as the official Beijing Olympics website itself…

Read … don’t just look Micro. You’re supposed to be beyond finger painting age.

LMAO, micro pwns you bro

good god i hate internet lingo

I did notice that Rex Murphy is Canadian, actually. I didn’t think it mattered. Does it matter that he’s Canadian? Just because Canada is in Afghanistan? Not ALL Canadians want Canada to be in Afghanistan.

But. I know it’s not nice to make fun of people, just because they seem a little cuckoo. Sorry. I will try and restrain myself in the future.

The Chinese “brutally ransacked” Tibet pretty much the same way Fidel “brutally ransacked” Cuba. Of course the Lama class wants all their property “back”, and their serfs, and their slaves. Duh.

It can’t be all that much fun living off of US taxpayers. Anyone know what the Dalai Lama’s cost of living is these days?

Jesus Micro.. maybe you should try and understand why exactly the Tibetan people are angry now before condemning the entire lot because of your interpretation of history.

It’s actually not MY interpretation. I’m getting it almost exclusively, I’ll admit, from Michael Parenti . . .

OPEN QUOTE

Michael Parenti received his Ph.D. in political science from Yale University. He has taught at a number of colleges and universities, in the United States and abroad. Some of his writings have been translated into Arabic, Bangla, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

END OF QUOTE if you want to check his latest out, he quotes a lot of sources. Give it a whirl. I experienced a distinct before and after.

OPEN QUOTE

In November 2005 the Dalai Lama spoke at Stanford University on “The Heart of Nonviolence,” . . . What of the four years of carnage and mass destruction in Iraq, a war condemned by most of the world—even by a conservative pope—as a blatant violation of international law and a crime against humanity? The Dalai Lama was undecided: “The Iraq war—it’s too early to say, right or wrong.” Earlier he had voiced support for the U.S. military intervention against Yugoslavia and, later on, the U.S. military intervention into Afghanistan.

END OF QUOTE That’d be caso serrado para mi. He’s either a mindless flunky or a fascist. There ain’t a whole helluva lot of room in between.

I left off saying anything when the Dalai Lama did his photo op thing at the White House — with all those warmongers — because Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese monk) went to the White House to try and explain because he was sure it was all a misunderstanding and I am a Buddhist and I believe that what Moby Dick is suffering from is, in fact, misunderstanding — but just yesterday I decided to go with Parenti’s fact based reasoning. Voila. I do that sometimes.

My practice has also been very much influenced by Pema Chodron — who teaches in the Tibetan tradition — and I promise you, I WANTED to believe in the Spiritual Leadership coming from that neck of the woods. But it just didn’t work out that way.

Peoples are led or forced into war and peace, serfdom and wage slavery, revolt and quiescence. Look at the Germans, Italians and Japanese on the way to WWII. The American, French, Mexican and Russian revolutions. The Tibetan masses had centuries of love hate relationship with totalitarian Buddhist regimes even while the Han co-created them, and the Tibetans in the majority have gone along with much of the more direct, even forceful programs of Chinese inclusion of them in the Chinese tumolt from war to revolution to evolution.

This is a particularly dramatic and unstable time in human history with powerful forces of capitalist imperialist integration and anti-capitalist imperialism using all of their power to consolidate in competition or opposition to one another, much like a continuation of the cold war.

The Dalai Lama has been in the U.S. camp for half a century or more and cannot be trusted, and many subgroups among the Tibetans and even the masses can be rallied, even like the Nazis, to produce a Kristallnacht against the ethnic Chinese in their Lhasa. The Chinese have been trying to quell violence among the Tibetans in a few provinces of China with Tibetan populations including Tibet.

Those goading the Tibetan separatist desires are trying to take advantage of the facts that it takes a long time for underdeveloped areas to become economically stable, just and peaceful. The world is full of places where tremendous bloodshed and war is fullblown and the autonomous province of Tibet is not one of them, and last week does not even come slightly close to making it one of them.

“Free Quebec”
~Rex Murphy

Seriously.

Tibet is no longer a country and Tibetans are just another ethnic group within China.

The suppression of their alleged nationalistic aspirations shouldn’t be confused with an actual armed and violent occupation by foreign troops such as we see elsewhere in Asia, such as Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Chinese government should absolutely show more restraint in dealing with these demonstrations within their country by their own citizens, but this is an internal Chinese problem, not an international crisis as many are framing it.

The best thing for all involved would be to follow the instructions of their spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and forget the mob violence and avoid the repression it provokes.

Peace,

The main point in this posting was to point out a major news network taking such a stance. We’re talking Canadian national television. Sure, there are many non institutional news outlets calling for boycott but this is major.

Tibet is the triggering event. Many have waited for an opportunity to raise the question of human rights in China but, as it is said, it is an internal matter.

Circumstances were needed to really get some slack on China’s people: Tibet brings in circumstance and the Olympics bring in leverage.

China was the number one Rolls Royce buyer last year while workers are bunked by tens in containers for barracks making our one dollar consumer products.

China’s government is corrupt and callous. It’s current existence is an affront to those who believed in the revolutionary ideals and continue to do so.

Tibet is the excuse. Helping Chinese hold the reigns of their destiny is the real issue. We cannot afford tyranny in China. This will bring us all to war.

Peace

“END OF QUOTE

Get a life Rex.”

I bet if those pesky insurgents were pacifists the US would be actually do some good in Iraq. Of course it would still be an occupation taking away Iraq’s freedom to decide their future for themselves and they’d still be evil fucks who invaded and conquered another country. People always do some good for those they conquer so that they can claim to be helping them. Of course shooting people in the mountains and the repression they are showing now shows what is really going on.

Or maybe the Chinese are just misunderstood….

“Tibet is no longer a country and Tibetans are just another ethnic group within China. “

Yeah… you go tell them that! I’m sure they’ll be very happy to have such wonderful western people help them sort out their confusion…

“but this is an internal Chinese problem, not an international crisis as many are framing it.’

The oppression and violence against people is of everyones concern. especially when the only reason the oppressors are getting stronger and more powerful is we supply them with money.

“The best thing for all involved would be to follow the instructions of their spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and forget the mob violence and avoid the repression it provokes.”

Because it’s worked so well so far!

RE.: Lot08 – the masses can be rallied, even like the Nazis, to produce a Kristallnacht against the ethnic Chinese in their Lhasa.

The central task of Feudalism, I know San Carlo gave us the habit of calling them capitalists (that guy and I don’t always see eye to eye), the central task of Feudalism — and Neofeudalism ain’t no different as far as that goes — is the quest the reduce the cost of labor in order to optimize profit margins.

Current fashion systems also dictate that the worthy opponent is the Will to Empire, as if homogenized control systems were themselves the problem. But no. I beg to disagree and I hope Hugo will forgive me. The worthy opponent is the Will to Pool rather than Distribute Profit. Human rights violations are symptomatic of that will.

Nazi Europe was an economic recovery program. “Anti-Semitism” was a useful “in-basket”. A way to organize the central task and reduce the likelihood that “the problem” will ever be accurately diagnosed and treated. Those were work camps those people were dying in. The people they exterminated weren’t fit to work. Pure and simple. A fair number of them were Jewish because that was a convenient organizing principle. No more, no less.

Sophisticated propaganda systems can weave whatever out of nothing. As they did in Rwanda and Yugoslavia. By all reports Kosovo was a best-case multi-ethnic society before the Neofeudalists set their cap at it.

The poor third estate, unless they are unusually educated, like the Serbians and or the Cubans, will never know what hit ‘em.

The European diasporas of North America, be they from North North America or South North America, appear to have no idea what kind of a monster their tax dollars have unleashed on the planet. It would appear that the indigenous peoples of Europe are equally out to lunch.

A fair number of them were Jewish because that was a convenient organizing principle. No more, no less.

They didn’t do themselves any favors by declaring war against Germany in 1933

Though perhaps this is another example of the kind of media manipulation you speak of?
very feasible…

I’d definitely agree with mike c. We’re not talking about a problem confined to any one nation state. We’re talking about trans-nationals — also known as Profit-Systems From Hell (PSFH). And there’s no question. China has an infection.

But that infection is posited on US American consumer spending. The “triggering event” is that the greenbank is tanking because consumer spending is two thirds of the US GDP and, unfortunately, the jobs have gone to China.

Sometimes Canada’s major news networks take a stance independent of the US centric Corporate propaganda machine. It is indeed instructive that, in the case of the Dalai Lama and the situation in Tibet, they did not.

Probably because the United States owes “Canada” a great deal of Money.

According to Edwin Black, author of, among other things, IBM and the Holocaust. 1933 was when Judea agreed to STFU about Nazi anti-Semitism in exchange for that small plot of land we are all being told we must call “Israel”.

That Agreement was signed off August 7, 1933 . Dachau opened for “business” in June of 1933. But, at first, they just filled it up with Communists, Social Democrats & homosexuals.

So my guess is that your News headline was part of the Negotiating Process.

Meanwhile the U.S. and Britain were closing immigration quotas.

Hitler became Fuhrer in 1934 and the official persecution of Europe’s Jews didn’t begin until 1935.

The date on CC’s Newspaper Headline is March 24, 1933

Not_Urberche, those “pesky insurgents” are Blackwater.

The Dalai Lama didn’t call for calm until the Chinese openly accused him of inciting the violence.

Remember?

The oppression and violence against people is of everyones concern. especially when the only reason the oppressors are getting stronger and more powerful is we supply them with money.

The current conflict in “Tibet” is not about political independence.

It is about the current unjust pattern of economic development.

“Tibetans” are in direct competition with the Han Chinese majority for economic power within what was formerly “Tibet’ and are currently losing this competition because the Hans Chinese are generally the better trained and educated of these two ethnic groups and are highly motivated to succeed economically, as they’ve relocated themselves and families in search of economic advancement.

Money and power, as always, is the core issue of the current crisis.

Migrations of large numbers of people in search of bettering themselves economically is always a destabilizing factor in any society, modern or steeped in historical culture.

Go to Houston, TX and ask around about “Katrina victims.”

The Chinese army has cracked down on these protests and those organizing them to prevent further violence and the possibility of major rioting that would create even deeper divisions between these two major cultural groups living and working in the region.

This is not the classical “military occupation.”

It is an internal security measure to prevent the escalation of ethnic violence in a region of rapid, though admittedly uneven economic development.

Peace,

“Tibetans” are in direct competition with the Hans Chinese majority for economic power within what was formerly “Tibet’ and are currently losing this competition because the Hans Chinese are generally the better trained and educated of these two ethnic groups and are highly motivated to succeed economically, as they’ve relocated themselves and families in search of economic advancement.

Dont forget the fact that Han Chinese are extremely racist.

The rest of what you wrote was pretty much rubbish too. I suggest you go to Tibet, or even talk to a Tibetan before you say anything further.

How’s this for rubbish, Memnoch07?

Today Tibetans are outnumbered by the Han Chinese population in their own homeland.

POPULATION: 6 million Tibetans and an estimated 7.5 million Chinese, most of whom are in Kham and Amdo.

LANGUAGE: Tibetan (of the Tibeto-Burmese language family). The official language is Chinese.

MAJOR ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS: Rampant deforestation in Eastern Tibet, poaching of large mammals

ECONOMY:

Tibetans: predominantly in agriculture and animal husbandry.

Chinese: predominantly in government, commerce and the service sector.

There’s the rub, the information above was retrieved from the Official Website of the Dalai Lama’s government in London and is somewhat dated as they haven’t bothered to update this site since 1996.

Tibetan independence indeed.

The Dalai Lama, not me, should visit Tibet and find out for himself what time it really is.

Sometimes no Peace

This site is maintained and updated by The Office of Tibet, the official agency of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in London. This Web page may be linked to any other Web sites. Contents may not be altered.

Last updated: 30-Sept-96

See also (still Parenti) OPEN QUOTE

Both the Dalai Lama and his advisor and youngest brother, Tendzin Choegyal, claimed that “more than 1.2 million Tibetans are dead as a result of the Chinese occupation.” The official 1953 census—six years before the Chinese crackdown—recorded the entire population residing in Tibet at 1,274,000. Other census counts put the population within Tibet at about two million. If the Chinese killed 1.2 million in the early 1960s then almost all of Tibet, would have been depopulated, transformed into a killing field dotted with death camps and mass graves — of which we have no evidence. The thinly distributed Chinese force in Tibet could not have rounded up, hunted down, and exterminated that many people even if it had spent all its time doing nothing else.

Neofeudalists are REALLY bad with Real Numbers.

Or they think we are.

I wasnt taking exception to any stats. It was your portrayal of Tibets being somehow jealous of the Chinese peoples work ethic or something. The chinese are systematically racist.

Its the system, the people who run it, and that fact that it is in their country that pisses Tibetans off. If Tibetans want jobs in chinese factories they can move to China.

Dont be a tool.

The reality is that this is a somewhat crowded planet with limited resources and the Tibetan minority in China is almost certainly faced with eventual integration and finally assimilation into the Han Chinese majority.

This isn’t a classical genocidal movement (think cowboys and Indians) on the part of the Chinese government.

It is simply the inevitable course of the socio-economic development of Chinese Asia.

Peace,

Its the system, the people who run it, and that fact that it is in their country that pisses Tibetans off.

If Tibetans want jobs in Chinese factories they can move to China.

Just watched Fastfood Nation a few nights back.

We’re all pissed off.

Peace,

It is faced with eventual integration. But it is not a simple inevitable course of development, it is planned. And it is not necessary.

You really should come to China and check it out. I love it here, but the nationalism and racism will scare you if you choose to really look at it.

Memnoch07, I get enough nationalism and racism to keep me up nights right here in the good old Upper Peninsula of Michigan, U.S. of A.

I’ll have to take a pass on China, for now anyway.

Peace,

Germany Warns China Olympics at Risk: The Associated Press reports, ‘‘Germany’s foreign minister has warned China that its response to the crisis in Tibet may jeopardize the Summer Olympics in Beijing.’‘

Carrying a Torch for Tibet: China joins a long, proud tradition of countries carrying out brutal political crackdowns in honor of the Olympics.

Germany? That’s bizarre.

I’ll have to take a closer look at that Foreign Minister. Foreign Ministers make on of this planet’s best cribs.

Kouchner backtracks on boycott call

Kouchner est une pute.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel vowed that her country would always stand by Israel, that she was committed to halting Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and that rocket attacks by Palestinian militants in Gaza on Israeli towns and cities were a criminal act.

Well, in all fairness to the good Chancellor… what German politician is gonna come right out and say ‘Fuck the Jews’ at this stage?

The point is that she’s saying “Fuck the Palestinians” — in essence supporting what is essentially a genocide against the indigenous semitic population of Palestine — because, actually, neither she nor her little posse have any shame whatsoFNevah.

That’s how come they can support the Neofeudal annexation of Kosovo, not to mention NATO’s Bombing of Yugoslavia, and — to close the loop — the Dalai Lama’s ultra-transparent Counterop insurgency.

The Role of the CIA — Behind the Dalai Lama’s Holy Cloak

This is my favourite bit from the Parenti article:

“In April 1999, along with Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, and the first George Bush, the Dalai Lama called upon the British government to release Augusto Pinochet, the former fascist dictator of Chile and a longtime CIA client who was visiting England. The Dalai Lama urged that Pinochet not be forced to go to Spain where he was wanted to stand trial for crimes against humanity.”

I wonder if the Tibetians drink Buckfast?

Free Scotland!!!!1111!!!!

Oh, and in case I haven’t said it already: Free Tibet, Fuck China.

Fuck it with a big, broken dick…

Speaking of dickless . . .

German news television regrets error in covering Tibet riots

OPEN QUOTE

“We have accidentally created the impression that it is a scene of the unrest in Tibet with Chinese security forces involved. We regret this error,” the statement added.

The RTL Aktuell, a main news program of the RTL TV, along with the German Bild newspaper and the Washington Post, have been found using on their websites pictures of baton-wielding Nepalese police in clashes with protesters in Kathmandu, claiming that the officers were Chinese police.

But what about the Scottish!!11!!!

don’t they deserve their freedom

Tibet is a teapot tempest.

Not if you are a Tibetan…

OPEN QUOTE

CNN has posted a picture on its website showing people running in front of a military truck. The original picture uploaded by Chinese netizens, however, also shows mobsters throwing stones at the truck.

Afghanistan and Iraq are occupations.

The German newspaper Berliner Morgenpost posted a picture on its website in which police in Lhasa rescued a young man of Han nationality assaulted by rioters. But the caption distorted the fact as “insurrectionist taken away by police.”

OK – so Micro’s point is that the Chinese are within their rights to kill Tibetans? Maybe you could explain that again.

Sure. The Neofeudal Press is, quite simply making everything up. People reported hurt in Tibet’s unrest, if the pictures we have are any indication, were being hurt by the NED’s indigenous assets.

Or the Neofeudal Press would have used different pictures. Wouldn’t they?

The Chinese MIC are rescuing people . . . voila, from das Beeb :

OPEN QUOTE

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) released a picture on its website showing China’s armed police officers helping medical staff move a wounded person into an ambulance.

The website’s caption said that “there is a heavy military presence in Lhasa,” neglecting obvious “First Aid” and red cross signs on the ambulance.

AGAIN, they’ve got pictures, but they don’t have the pictures they need to support their allegations. Why not?

Maybe because there were no incidents that support the headlines they wanted to splash all over the place.

How desperate do you have to be?

They don’t need no steenkin pictures. They are the sheep herders!!!11!!!

Zoe – OK – so Micro’s point is that the Chinese are within their rights to kill Tibetans? Maybe you could explain that again.

Micro heard that there is a Chinese person out there who likes Hugo Chavez. That’s enough for him, really…

besonderes request fur Der TCS und Die kleine Zoie

Free Scotland, NOW!!!!1111!!!!!

Violence on the part of the Tibetans is counterproductive.

And it’s been going on sooooooo long . . .

and, and…...

the Chinese have a right to a biblical homeland…..

and

they’re trying to drive the Hans into the sea!!!!
\
and, and…...

they won’t be happy until all the Hans are in ovens

and, and…...

Never Again!!!111!!!

and, and…...

you lot are AntiScotites!!!!

and Hogmany Deniers

The Scottish invented unwashed men in kilts, haggis and the bagpipe solo. They deserve whatever they get…

On Edit: Haggis and the Bagpipe Solo is gonna be the name of my awesome new band when I get around to it…

There’s NO PROOF that the Chinese have done ANYthing to even vaguely warrant the allegations being levied against them.

Give me some proof dolly pies. Then we can talk.

Shit. There’s someone here I’m not supposed to call dolly pie. I can’t FN remember who it is. What am I gonna do!!!!!?????!!!!

I actually have not heard of any Chinese who like Hugo Chavez. Fix that baby if you can. That’d make me happy for sure.

You can call me dolly pie all you want, Micro. I find it endearing…

Meanwhile CNN is trying to talk down the 4,000 US soldiers that came home in body bags by pointing out how many people died in WW2, Korea and Vietnam.

Isn’t that charming?

Especially since one thing we know for sure is that both Korea and Vietnam were apocalyptic illegal invasions. In fact, Iraqi casualties have not begun to approach the number of Asians killed by the United States in Korea and Vietnam.

Caracas — Venezuela on Monday signed deals to supply crude and fuel oil to China… Senior officials at the ceremony said Venezuela would double its exports to China, sending some 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude there in 2007… Chavez said China had given its approval to a long-discussed US$6 billion investment fund, for development work in Venezuela. China would supply US$4 billion with Venezuela chipping in the remaining US$2 billion.

I like being called dolly pie meself.

See? I tell no lies!!!

One, that’s old news and two, it’s not personal, or political. It’s bidness. Try again please (I’m really looking forward to this).

Wow. I’ve just been having a look at the pictures of the “Tibetan” diaspora’s demonstrations. They really went to town. No wonder you guys are freakin out.

One, that’s old news

No, it’s ongoing news. They’re gonna be shipping 1 million bpd to China by 2012.

two, it’s not personal, or political. It’s bidness.

When they get to 1 million bpd it’ll be personal, and all bidness at this level is political.

okay

How does that compare to what Chavez is shipping to Bush Country? I forget.

My god… i just derailed a thread and made it about CHAVEZ!!!

Damn it, Micro! You are contagious!!!

Sweatshops

This is what we have ignored and what should be our real aim in pressuring China.

But then we should boycott our own selves also for uncritical consumerism.

OK – so Micro’s point is that the Chinese are within their rights to kill Tibetans? Maybe you could explain that again.

Damn, that was ridiculous.

Stick to blogs about shitting yourself, Zoe.

“But what about the Scottish!!11!!!
don’t they deserve their freedom”

Then they Should have objected to their king becoming king of england

The Scots need to be objecting to their economy becoming more like Ireland’s. PDQ. Or you’re toast amigos.

“The Scots need to be objecting to their economy becoming more like Ireland’s” – Why everything is perfect with Irelands economy, the rich get richer and the poor get heroin…

Been watching the ‘news’

All the footage of violent protest being ‘violently quelled’ is of protests taking place in Nepal and India, neither of which are controlled by the Chinese authorities. As MD said it appears the Sheep-Herders don’t have the required footage of what they like to call ‘violent suppression of dissent’, to back up their claims. I’m not saying it’s not happening just that there doesn’t appear to be much evidence that it is happening to the extent the Sheep-Herders would have us believe.

In a world where many phones now have cameras (even in Tibet they have mobile phones, definately in the urban areas, which is where the rioting is taking place apparently) I’m astonished that the Sheep-herders have not managed to obtain much footage of what they assure us is widespread.

But then these are the same people that deliberately lied to us about Saddam’s non-existant ‘Weapons of Mass Distraction’ so I don’t hold out much hope that what they are reporting reflects the reality of what is happening in Tibet. Constantly telling me about violence in Tibet while showing video of violence in Nepal and India (ie: violence in NOT-Tibet), makes me a little suspicious.

Why everything is perfect with Irelands economy, the rich get richer and the poor get heroin

and it’s not even decent heroin. . . . .And the coke is mostly amphetimine. Suckers

It’s absolutely mind-boggling, given a world as dangerous and unjust as the one we find ourselves in these days, that during the fifth anniversary of the U.S.- British invasion and the brutal occupation of Iraq that has followed that Tibetan nostalgia was the headline news.

Sometimes no Peace

‘No Momentum’ for Olympic Boycott: John Hadoulis reports for Agence France-Presse, “Protests against China’s rights record and crackdown in Tibet disrupted ceremonies on Monday to light the Olympic flame for the Beijing Games.” (TruthOut.org)

Rex is awesome – I’d love to see him do longer pieces than he currently tackles with his CBC Television comments, Cross Country Checkup, and his newspaper columns.

Rex could also take the entire CBC staff in a streetfight any day (including George Stroumboulopoulos, excluding Mansbridge).

On a related note, I found the commentary by another Canadian journalism icon, Gwynne Dyer, regarding Tibet to be quite interesting:

Tibetan independence is not on the horizon By Gwynne Dyer

The monks who marched through Lhasa on March 10 to mark the anniversary of the Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule in 1959 did not want to wreck China’s Olympic year. But they knew that Chinese troops would be less likely to shoot them this year than most. And so it proved: the monks were arrested, but the crowds of Tibetans who gathered on the following days to demand their release were not harmed.

The dilemma facing the Chinese troops was that if they didn’t shoot, the crowds would inevitably grow bigger, for most Tibetans dream of independence and fear that the mass immigration of Han Chinese to Tibet is a form of cultural genocide. By March 14, the crowds had become so bold that it was they who turned to violence, attacking Chinese civilians in Lhasa and looting and burning Chinese-owned shops, banks, and hotels.

The Chinese news agency Xinhua says that 10 people were killed in Lhasa on March 14. The Tibetan government-in-exile said at the time that 80 were killed, and accounts by foreign tourists in Lhasa support the higher figure. But so far, by most accounts, the victims have mostly been Han Chinese settlers killed by angry Tibetans.

This doesn’t fit the simple foreign narrative of peaceful protesters and wicked Chinese, but nationalism, whether Tibetan or Fijian, is not an inherently tolerant and peaceful phenomenon. Foreign troops who hold their fire are still foreign occupiers, and innocent Chinese civilians who were encouraged by their own government to come and set up businesses in Lhasa are still unwelcome foreign agents of cultural genocide.

(Rest of article in The Georgia Straight)

I wasn’t doing business with Beijing anyway.

Boycott everything.

Boycott pants.

Some of you will have seen the Rambo 4 review but it’s especially interesting in this context. Key Takeaway : Burma is still very much a target.

I’m not sure people are quite clear on what it means for the United States of “Freedom and Democracy” to decide that some poor nation needs to be “saved”.

You’d think after 5 years in Iraq they’d have figured it out. It’s not like the Defense Industry Corporations were shy about destroying villages to save them in Vietnam.

In short? When the Corporate Mass Media masses start clamoring for your freedom? it’s duck and cover time.

Re.: Tango’s Dyer piece : what a biZARRE thing for occupiers of Afghanistan to say. Do you think she has the Random Access Memory?

OPEN QUOTE from das Dyer

Foreign troops who hold their fire are still foreign occupiers, and innocent Chinese civilians who were encouraged by their own government to come and set up businesses in Lhasa are still unwelcome foreign agents of cultural genocide.

END OF QUOTE LOL

OPEN QUOTE some more

In Afghanistan, a coalition of charities on the ground says a large part of international aid is being wasted and exploited for donor gain. In a new report, the Agency Co-ordinating Body for Afghan Relief, known as ACBAR, says as much as 40 percent of aid to Afghanistan is being sent back to donor countries in the form of corporate profits and consultant salaries. Some foreign contractors in Afghanistan make as much as half a million dollars per year. The average consultant salary is $200,000, 200 times the annual take of an Afghan civil servant.

END OF QUOTE

I’d say Cultural Genocide is putting a bit mildly.

OPEN QUOTE some more

Responding to repeated demands from the Canadian establishment, the minority Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the official opposition Liberals have agreed to extend the Canadian Armed Forces’ (CAF)

2,500 Canadian troops and a squad of some 15 Leopard tanks are deployed to the southern Afghan province of Kandahar, which historically has been a bastion of the Taliban and is currently the frontline in the US-NATO counter-insurgency war in support of Hamid Karzai’s US-installed government. mission in southern Afghanistan for another two-and-a-half years.

END OF QUOTE

Oh Canada.