[phoenix]

This olympic games are going to be fairly ridiculous. In terms of pollution and security and such forth. Esp with the media coverage of rioting of late.
I was so happy when my boyfriend said that China was organising all of its own even staff and not outsourcing anyone. There was no way I wanted him there for this. Last year he did the asian games and moved between qatar and dubai, and TBH Im sure he was safer there than he would have been in China.

The world sucks balls.

[phoenix]

Originally Posted by Lurker

This whole thing, giving China the Olympic games etc with everthing that is happening there, reminds me of the lead up to the second world war with everyone appeasing Germany, allowing them to invade Poland etc.

I was going to say that, but there are plenty of countries who have had awful awful foreign policies who have been allowed to have the games. *cough* the US.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Katy

That's why I love him. In the midst of a crisis he'll offer to let the UN examine his poo.

ha ha ha yes.

i thought that's as far as he'll go on the "piss on you" avenue-- very subtle. in my own paranoid interpretation anyway, ha ha ha.

[Lurker]

Originally Posted by phoenix

I was going to say that, but there are plenty of countries who have had awful awful foreign policies who have been allowed to have the games. *cough* the US.

True, but it's not just the foreign poilicy. I think China is slightly more totalitarian than US. Anyway, they still shouldn't have it, nor should those other countries.

[racehorse]

STAND WITH TIBET


Dear friends,

After decades of repression under Chinese rule, the
Tibetan people's frustrations have burst onto the
streets in protests and riots. With the spotlight of
the upcoming Olympic Games now on China, Tibetans are
crying out to the world for change.

The Chinese government has said that the protesters
who have not yet surrendered "will be punished". Its
leaders are right now considering a crucial choice
between escalating brutality or dialogue that could
determine the future of Tibet and China.

We can affect this historic choice--China does care
about its international reputation. China's President
Hu Jintao needs to hear that the 'Made in China' brand
and the upcoming Olympics in Beijing can succeed only
if he makes the right choice. But it will take an
avalanche of global people power to get his
attention--and we need it in the next 48 hours.

The Tibetan Nobel peace prize winner and spiritual
leader, the Dalai Lama has called for restraint and
dialogue: he needs the world's people to support him.
Click below [ you may need to type in the web-site]
now to sign the petition--and tell absolutely everyone
you can right away--our goal is 1 million voices
united for Tibet:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/tibet_end_the_violence/97.php/?cl_tf_sign=1


China's economy is totally dependent on "Made in
China" exports that we all buy, and the government is
keen to make the Olympics in Beijing this summer a
celebration of a new China, respected as a leading
world power. China is also a very diverse country with
a brutal past and has reason to be concerned about its
stability -- some of Tibet's rioters killed innocent
people. But President Hu must recognize that the
greatest danger to Chinese stability and development
comes from hardliners who advocate escalating
repression, not from Tibetans who seek dialogue and
reform.

We will deliver our petition directly to Chinese
officials in London, New York, and Beijing, but it
must be a massive number before we deliver the
petition. Please forward this email to your address
book with a note explaining to your friends why this
is important, or use our tell-a-friend tool to email
your address book--it will come up after you sign the
petition.

The Tibetan people have suffered quietly for decades.
It is finally their moment to speak--we must help them
be heard.

With hope and respect,

Ricken, Iain, Graziela, Paul, Galit, Pascal, Milena,
Ben and the whole Avaaz team

PS - It has been suggested that the Chinese government
may block the Avaaz website as a result of this email,
and thousands of Avaaz members in China will no longer
be able to participate in our community. A poll of
Avaaz members over the weekend showed that over 80% of
us believed it was still important to act on Tibet
despite this terrible potential loss to our community,
if we thought we could make a difference. If we are
blocked, Avaaz will help maintain the campaign for
internet freedom for all Chinese people, so that our
members in China can one day rejoin our community.

Here are some links with more information on the
Tibetan protests and the Chinese response:
BBC News: UN Calls for Restraint in Tibet -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7301912.stm
Human Right Watch: China Restrain from Violently
Attacking Protesters -
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2008/03/15/china18291.htm
Associated Press: Tibet Unrest Sparks Global Reaction
-
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gSSpPcDOPMoAiRLhPUyezuCRiXBQD8VFDD680

New York Times: China Takes Steps to Thwart Reporting
on Tibet Protests -
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/18/world/asia/18access.html?ref=world

--------------------------------------------

ABOUT AVAAZ


Avaaz.org is an independent, not-for-profit global
campaigning organization that works to ensure that the
views and values of the world's people inform global
decision-making. (Avaaz means "voice" in many
languages.) Avaaz receives no money from governments
or corporations, and is staffed by a global team based
in London, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Paris, Washington
DC, and Geneva.

[max]

Signed. Let's give it a try, everyone.

[tesla69]

the first Dalai Lama was installed by the Chinese...

excerpt by Michael Parenti
In old Tibet there were small numbers of farmers who subsisted as a kind of free peasantry, and perhaps an additional 10,000 people who composed the “middle-class” families of merchants, shopkeepers, and small traders. Thousands of others were beggars. There also were slaves, usually domestic servants, who owned nothing. Their offspring were born into slavery. 15 The majority of the rural population were serfs. Treated little better than slaves, the serfs went without schooling or medical care, They were under a lifetime bond to work the lord's land--or the monastery’s land--without pay, to repair the lord's houses, transport his crops, and collect his firewood. They were also expected to provide carrying animals and transportation on demand.16 Their masters told them what crops to grow and what animals to raise. They could not get married without the consent of their lord or lama. And they might easily be separated from their families should their owners lease them out to work in a distant location. 17
As in a free labor system and unlike slavery, the overlords had no responsibility for the serf’s maintenance and no direct interest in his or her survival as an expensive piece of property. The serfs had to support themselves. Yet as in a slave system, they were bound to their masters, guaranteeing a fixed and permanent workforce that could neither organize nor strike nor freely depart as might laborers in a market context. The overlords had the best of both worlds.
One 22-year old woman, herself a runaway serf, reports: “Pretty serf girls were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wished”; they “were just slaves without rights.”18 Serfs needed permission to go anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture those who tried to flee. One 24-year old runaway welcomed the Chinese intervention as a “liberation.” He testified that under serfdom he was subjected to incessant toil, hunger, and cold. After his third failed escape, he was merciless beaten by the landlord’s men until blood poured from his nose and mouth. They then poured alcohol and caustic soda on his wounds to increase the pain, he claimed.19
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.

[Katy]

Originally Posted by racehorse

STAND WITH TIBET

http://www.avaaz.org/en/tibet_end_the_violence/97.php/?cl_tf_sign=1

Signed.

[tesla69]

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.32
Heinrich Harrer (later revealed to have been a sergeant in Hitler’s SS) wrote a bestseller about his experiences in Tibet that was made into a popular Hollywood movie. He reported that the Tibetans who resisted the Chinese “were predominantly nobles, semi-nobles and lamas; they were punished by being made to perform the lowliest tasks, such as laboring on roads and bridges. They were further humiliated by being made to clean up the city before the tourists arrived.” They also had to live in a camp originally reserved for beggars and vagrants--all of which Harrer treats as sure evidence of the dreadful nature of the Chinese occupation.33
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.34

[Katy]

China still had no right to do what they did. They merely replaced one system that they saw as backward and corrupt with their own. Tibet was a very isolated place well into the 20th century, a lot of it's customs were similar to the kind of lives people in other countries lived hundreds of years earlier. China took advantage of their naivete, of Tibet's unfamiliarity with the modern world, they exploited every aspect of the Tibetans culture for their own gain. Tibet was (according to the Dalai Lama and others) actually on the brink of significant social change when the Chinese invaded. The Dalai Lama was a forward-thinking man even then, he wanted to establish better ties with the outside world and a fairer more modern social system within Tibet. (And he CERTAINLY recognises the importance of it now. The Chinese cannot argue that, were Tibet to become independent again, it would return to it's previous state of theocracy and primitive serfdom.) Tibet lost it's chance to evolve independently. It was easy for the Chinese to not only do what they did, but also to justify it. They still call it a liberation and make it sound like a noble crusade. But any country could call an invasion a liberation by pointing out the flaws in another society and claiming they were freeing the people of the country from those flaws. Doesn't make it right.

[Johnny "Magic Fingers"]

So what's new?

This is all just another dissonant tone in the fucked-up cacophony that is the modern world these days. If it's not China, it's Iraq, or Israel/Palestine, or Sudan, or Zimbabwe or . . . you get the picture.

At least the world is standing up and taking notice. And we're talking about it and it's in the news - for the time being 'till the next flashpoint in the world

So I hope it's resolved quickly and for the good of all people.

Australia is forging close links with China these days, and there's been a bunch of Aussie millionaires created thanks to the mining boom as a result of China's appetite for our copper, steel and a shitload of other resources.

With so much money coming in, I doubt our Mandarin-speaking Prime Minister (Kevin Rudd) will do anything to rock the boat.