A Political Glimpse from Ireland

A Lesson From The Dalai Lama

I was doing my end of the night browse through Digg when I came across the headline that Time had released their list of the 100 most influential people. Number one on that list for “Leaders & Revolutionaries” was the Dalai Lama which is quite fitting given the strength of the character the man has shown in recent months considering the deaths of over 100 of his people at the hands of the Chinese government. Despite all of this adversity, he has chosen the peaceful course for his country which is simple autonomy rather than pure independence. Can you imagine making such a decision? Can you imagine the harmony that must  exist in the man’s soul to deal with adversity on a daily basis? I simply cannot since I quite often lose patience over the simplest things therefore the lesson I would like all of us to take away today is one of “Patience.” Patience in all things especially politics.

Nationalism Fanatics

Well I have decided to create a whole new category today and make two posts in one day because of a conversation I had with a Korean friend of mine this morning. This did not see quite the coverage that it should have got here in the West but some Pro-Chinese demonstrator’s beat up some Pro-Tibetan demonstrator’s in Seoul during the Torch Relay. This video is quite disturbing however I must state that the Chinese people in this video do not represent the whole of China but merely a fringe few who have taken nationalism/patriotism a fair bit too far. This kind of behavior is intolerable and also gives credence to my theory that the nationalistic tendency in China is only increasing rather than abating as the Olympics draws closer. Nationalism/Patriotism can be deadly and I hope people around the world realize that you should be proud of your country but that pride must be balanced with logic, common sense and control. This video is in Korean but you don’t need to understand the language to feel my disgust.

The Party Line

This is going to be the second non-American related post in two days which is a record for me but I just received another email from Mr. Howard Kuff who is one of the few Westerners that have ever been to Tibet and seen the reality of the situation there. Many Chinese have accused Westerners like myself of not understanding the situation and that we should comment once we have visited Tibet. Here is a man who has been there and verifies what the Western Media has been saying about the oppression of the Tibetan people by the government of China.

You can find his website at http://www.changing-history.com, where you can also purchase his book which I plan to do at the end of the month once I get paid since I seemed to have squandered my money on the wonderful world of electronics again. Mr. Kuff further goes on to give his theory as to why China is so insistent about Tibet:

China wants world power. Water is the key to the future. Tibet is the key to the waters of Asia. It will take the World to force China to give this up. Control of water is control of humanity. We are all water and we all share water. China seeks domination. The people of Tibet are simply pawns in China’s quest for power.

I know this sounds a bit hard to believe that water is key to the future but many people overlook the issue of changing environment because it is quite convenient and makes our lives easier but millions of people around the world do not have access to clean water. Water is a key component of our human nature so given the fluctuating state of the global climate; wouldn’t it make sense that sometime in the future as the population of the world expands, that we will start to run out of this precious substance? I think so and given the fact that we just had the first World Water Day on March 22nd, perhaps this is something to think about. Here is an excerpt from the UNESCO World Water Day Report:

According to the Millennium Development Goals Report 2007, an estimated 1.6 billion people must acquire access to improved sanitation over the period 2005-2015 to meet the MDG target on sanitation. If trends since 1990 continue, the world is likely to miss the target by almost 600 million people.

To those of you who still doubt the assertion that China is trying to control the water, I urge you to adopt that as a premise (Also examine Mr. Kuff’s website) and follow along with my argument. Let’s look back at yesterday’s post, the Chinese in essence sold weapons to an unstable and illegitimate government for the sake of money or destabilizing the government. Which ever way you side, neither of these situations would have been good for Southern Africa however I think we can come to the conclusion that China is going to continue to try to flex its power over the coming years in order to make up for years of mediocrity. This is a shame and I hope that the Chinese people will eventually see through the shallow nature of the CCP’s policies. Tibet was free before China and deserves to be free now. The Tibetans are not Chinese and have a unique culture, tradition and understanding of the world. I honestly hope that the world will not fall for the CCP’s tricks in their efforts to cloak their actions with the “peaceful” Beijing Olympics.

This is a beautiful photo I got over at 看不见的西藏～唯色博客, the lady who runs the blog is Tibetan and lives in China and gives us the story on the ground whereas most News outlets are continuously tailed by Chinese policeman when they enter China. I really admire this lady because you cannot dispute what the is saying in there and the worst part of this whole story is that her blog has been hacked into twice with her passwords change because the nationalistic tendencies of some Chinese people cannot be controlled. Seriously, leave this excellent blogger alone and get over the Party Line.

The Politics of the Patriot

Well this past week has been a bit hectic for me in part because I have personally taken a lot of flak on my positions regarding Taiwan and Tibet from my Chinese friends. The issue was further exacerbated this week by someone whom I thought had some respect for me but ended up turning quite nasty in our discussions over the subject. This person was not the only person that angered me but I have accepted circumstances as they  are. That being said I don’t approve of that kind of discourse and I simply cannot understand why some Chinese people assume this stonewalled position on China and its policies. There is literally no room for argument and if you do try to argue you end up being harassed by people or called names that I would rather no repeat in my blog. Needless to say after this past week I have come to realize that amongst my Chinese friends here in Ireland, I have a lot fewer friends than I once thought. Additionally I would like to state to any other Chinese person out there reading this blog or anyone else for that matter, I won’t tolerate racist or harassing comments or emails. Any further emails like that will be reported to your ISP and they can deal with your lack of intelligence.

I have been following the China/Tibet issue quite closely in the “western biased” media and found that the Chinese people are becoming more nationalistic than they already were. I was watching a segment on Al-Jazeera where they interviewed the girl (Jin Jing) below who “saved” the torch from the hands of a Tibetan protestor. She went on to say in the interview that the person who tried to disrupt the relay would get his just desserts if he happened to die. What???

I think this girl’s actions and words are symptomatic of a larger issue that has taken over the Chinese populace. One of unfettered national pride, don’t get me wrong, I admire this girl for the athlete she is but actually advocating the death of someone else who was just trying to draw attention to the crisis in his home country (Tibet). That is simply wrong and the fact that she was glorified by the Chinese media shows something seriously wrong with CCTV and the other state-run media outlets.

I don’t understand how the people of China can confuse the issues here, people in the West do not have anything against the people of China or Chinese culture but we are protesting the thousands of people that have died or are silenced each year because they oppose the government. Just look at the USA, there are more than a handful of people who publish the craziest stories about the American government that could be considered “subversive” but do you see these people imprisoned for such activity, I think not.

The next big headline today is that the CNN website was attacked using a DOS (Denial of Service) attack by Chinese attackers with the rumor being that it was actually sponsored by the Chinese government. A DOS attack is when a website is bombarded with millions of service requests at one time so that it eventually shuts down from all the strain.  This is another demonstration of the government of China having gone too far; CNN has reported both sides of the story and focuses on the truth of the plight of the people in Tibet. If Chinese people want to criticize anything, they should focus on the lack of coverage by CCTV of anything other than the pro-Han side of the story.

A famous Oscar Wilde quote comes to mind:

 Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious

Some people often are a bit confused from where this quote comes from which is Life of Samuel Johnson (1791):

Patriotism having become one of our topics, Johnson suddenly uttered, in a strong determined tone, an apophthegm, at which many will start: ‘Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.’ But let it be considered that he did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak of self-interest.

Now this quote does not only apply to the people of China but to people all around the world. There is a fine line between blind nationalism and doing the right thing. At the moment the Chinese arguments for Tibet revolves around some antiquated historical fact, come on! This is not the past, we live in the present where every single person on this earth is entitled to their basic human rights.

In case some of you don’t remember the UN charter for human rights, please click the above the link but the most relevant right and the one that I most believe in is:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

My biggest problem with China and the Olypmics on a personal level is that they claim that we should all come together in peace and harmony in the spirit of brotherhood. How can their be brotherhood when according to the human rights journal Dui Hua published in America, we only know about 5% of the dissidents that are jailed in China. There is no brotherhood when the minorities in Tibet like the Uighurs and the Tibetans are slowly ceasing to exist thanks to the Han majority. Lastly there is no real freedom in China until people, journalists and dissidents can publish whatever they want in criticism of the government, until CCTV shows both sides of a story and until the Chinese government fires their 30,000+ censors.

It’s a shame that the East and the West are so divided about the issue of the Olympics but having spoken to quite a few of my friends, they all  agree China should have never gotten the Olympics since if you look back to the last Olympics in Greece, things went super smoothly. I hope and I really do mean this that China and the West can work closer together and get past this issue of “The West trying to keep China down.” That is simply not true.

A Face of Tibet

I have been sitting on this article for a while in part because I was busy with other things and I also wanted to make sure that the photo that I am about to publish on this blog is as legitimate as I can determine. If you are reading this second line, I would like to warn you that the picture below is not for the faint of heart but I merely illustrates the contradictory nature of the Chinese presence in Tibet. President Hu recently stated this past weekend:

Our Conflict with the Dalai clique is not an ethnic problem, not a religious problem, nor a human rights problem.

I think everyone would agree with me when I state that this is a human rights problem because the picture at the end of this post is of a young man who is just 2 years older than me and is now dead. His death was not due to natural causes because if you look closely at the photo, you can see a single bullet wound close to the sternum which is there to protect the heart. We can assume the bullet pierced his heart so hopefully his death was quick and painless. This photo was obtained from wikileaks.org where they also host other photos and videos. I chose this photo from a lot of 120 because it was the only photo that has the relevant information attached to the jpeg.

Not many people aware but most photo’s taken with digital camera’s include some extra bits of data like the time the photo was taken, the kind of camera, exposure etc… The date attached to this photo is stated as March 15th which if we look back at the news archives was when the Tibetan government in exile reported that 30 people died during unrest in Lhasa (AFP). Thus we can assume that this young man was one of the 30 people that died that day. According “extra information” attached to the file, the photo was taken at 623pm on March 15th with a Canon Digital Ixus 800 IS. I have never heard of this camera before but having looked at some detailed specifications, I can surmise that it was the easiest as well as the cheapest camera to buy in Tibet or smuggle into the country to take these photos.

I would like to apologize to anyone who is offended by this photo and also to the parents of this young man. I do not mean to offend but merely provide a face to the people who do not believe as well as those who do, to illustrate that this is a real crisis and not something manufactured by the Western media as many people might believe.

I hope through writing this blog entry that people will take this human rights crisis more seriously and send a message to the Chinese government that treating people this way will not be tolerated. Furthermore I hope President Bush will not attend the Olympics like he has stated he will do and follow the lead of Nancy Pelosi and denounce the Chinese government and its policies more fervently than he has already done so.

Lastly I would like to apologize to many of my Chinese friends who might think that I am attacking them or their culture. This is so far from the truth because I admire Chinese culture but I do not like and will never support the Chinese government. I hope one day that people in China will be able to make their own choices and have free access to information without falling prey to the CCP’s theology.