Time off...
hi guys, i'm going on vacation tmw... will be less productive but will try to write if there're big things out there. will be in hong kong perhaps may check out the olympic torch run too :P
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Chinese Canadian 150 years culture online project launched
CCNC release - The Chinese Canadian National Council (CCNC) is proud to present the Chinese Canadian 150 Years Culture Online Project (CC150).
This exciting new online project showcases writers, musicians, videographers and artists in the Chinese Canadian community. The new website at www.ccnc.ca/cc150 brings together a special collection of exceptional work, based on the theme of 150 years of continuous Chinese community in Canada with many submissions from youth. There are more than 40 new works presented, with the majority from young Chinese Canadians.
“Through this community-based effort, we hope to provide a venue to share our experiences and our stories and to instill pride and cultural understanding,” Colleen Hua, CCNC National President said today. “With Asian Heritage Month just around the corner, we encourage the public and Chinese Canadian communities to connect, interact and to build understanding and respect for diversity.”
Objectives of the Chinese Canadian 150 Years Culture Online Project:
Features of the Chinese Canadian 150 Years Culture Online Project:
BC home sales down in Q1 2008
BCREA - British Columbia Real Estate Association (BCREA) reports residential sales dollar volume on the Multiple Listing Service® (MLS®) in BC dipped 1.8% to $8.9 billion during the first quarter, compared to the same period in 2007. Residential unit sales declined 13.5% to 18,635 units during the same period. The average MLS® residential price in the province reached $478,423, up 13.5% from the first quarter of 2007.
“The housing market lost some steam during the first quarter,” said Cameron Muir, BCREA Chief Economist. “Eroding affordability has squeezed some potential buyers out of the market, while uncertainty about the duration and impact of a weak US economy and housing recession likely has some consumers sitting on the sidelines.”
“Despite weakness in the forest sector, economic fundamentals in the province remain strong and continue to underpin housing demand,” added Muir. “A 25% increase in the number of homes for sale is providing home buyers with more selection and reducing the chances of competing bids on the same property.”
March MLS® residential sales volume fell 12.4% to $3.48 billion compared to March 2007. Residential unit sales declined 22% to 7,128 units in March, while the average MLS® residential price increased 12.3% to $488,796 compared to March 2007.
Blogger has to defend himself on first Lhasa reports, photos
Kadfly, the American blogger who happened to be in Lhasa when the riots broke out in March and who shot all the important photos of the riots which were then used by Reuters, NYT etc, has been under attack for b×××sh*ting for not standing on the side of Tibetans. He was also accused by some messages left on his blog that question if he was an agent for the Chinese government. He recently defended himself in a post:
(on the video) The man initially rode up Beijing Donglu slowly, with apparently no idea of what was happening. When an initial stone was thrown at him, he slowed his bike down and stared behind him quite naturally, probably wondering why anyone would throw a rock at him. That is when he realized the entire street was trying to peg him, and he sped up for a few seconds before coming to a complete stop and pleaded with the crowd on the north side of the street to stop attacking him. This is when the other man rushes up to him and the video begins.This is what he has to say about "media bias":
Afterwards when we were in the hotel we also wondered how the crowd was able to identify this man as Chinese. Some believed that the crowd were basically attacking anything that drove past but I remember seeing a truck drive through Beijing Street that no one stoned and people actually waved at, so in my opinion the crowd was able to tell between friend and foe somehow. I think it is very possible the man-with-the-knife is an undercover police officer but I am less sure about the motorcyclist attack being staged (unless the main attackers were undercover police officers just attacking an innocent bystander to get the crowd riled up). The attack was vicious and brutal, and very similar to the attack that left the man in the suit bleeding on the ground a few minutes later (there's a picture of him from "Willie" in the original 'Lhasa Burning' post). It seemed like everyone on the street were throwing stones at the motorcyclist, so unless they all were Chinese agents I have trouble believing it was staged (though only a few people took part in the more vicious hand-to-hand assault). I suspect maybe the way he was dressed or the type of bike he was riding tipped the crowd off to his identity, or the fact he had a helmet, when very few Tibetans use one according to the YouTube expose on Jotman's post. Or maybe the crowd really were just attacking everyone and everything and somehow the truck had managed to communicate it was on their side, or they had been throwing stones at it and I just didn't see this. Anyways, after he escaped the attack apparently the man went back to retrieve his bike but it was taken from him again and one of the bigger fires was then started using it ("Willie" witnessed this, not me).
I wouldn't say I believe Western news organizations actively lied about what happened in Tibet. I will stick with the weaker position that they certainly did not actively try to report all parts of the story. That the rioters were violent was not well reported in the initial hours (and to an extent, still isn't): there was much more emphasis on the Chinese crackdown when to our knowledge, they did not even yet have basic control of large parts of the city. No matter what, I think the evidence against the Western media isn't good: they have definitely cropped pictures that have given the protests a more peaceful feel (I'm thinking of the infamous trucks photo) and they have definitely used pictures of Nepalese riot police responding with force against Tibetans in stories about what was happening in Tibet. Sure, the Chinese news agencies might be doing the very same (if not worse), but as I have said to Blogdai, I and others rightfully hold the Western news media to a higher standard.It made me uncomfortable to learn that this young man, Kadfly, would have received so many negative responses for only reporting on what he saw. Does that mean the pro-Tibet sect cannot admit they have done anything wrong? Does that mean that they believe the level of violence should be accepted?
Having said that, though, as I wrote my buddy's blog UglyChineseCanadians, the blindness I recently see in those “patriotics” also scares me. Their nerves are so sensitive that anyone who express a slight variation from what they say would be considered “traitors”. (believe it or not, Jin Jing, the one-legged woman fencer who protected the torch with her body, who had been hailed as a "hero" and an "angel", was declared a "traitor" by Chinese netizens recently after she talked to Reuters, expressing she's against boycotting French store Carrefour.)
This kind of irrational patriotism is the last thing we want to see. It’s stupid and destructive. And it reminds me of the Boxer Rebellion during the end of the Qing dynasty. I’m against the media bias thing too. But the recent crazy patriotic sentiments of the Chinese is making me nervous.
BTW, here's a good and balanced piece of commentary published on The Guardian's website:
China's incompetence in its treatment of the crisis in Tibet should come as no surprise. The Chinese regime is, quite simply, a victim of its inability to reform itself. China saw in the Olympics a symbolic opportunity to consolidate and celebrate its new status in the world. Caught by surprise in Tibet, and by the virulence and popularity of what they described as "anti-Chinese" sentiments, China's rulers have resorted to the traditional tools of authoritarian regimes, turning their citizens' deep nationalism and sense of humiliation against western critics.[Read More....]
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But the west's hypocrisy nearly matches the Chinese regime's incompetence. The moment the international community "bestowed" the Olympics on China, the west demonstrated how little consideration it actually gives to human rights and democracy. The idea that the Chinese regime would quickly reform the country into an open, moderate, and benevolent giant was either a fraud, a gigantic misperception, or wishful thinking.
The dilemma posed by China for democratic regimes is understandable. Caught between their desperate need for finance and markets and their need to respond to their citizens' sentiments, they oscillate between condemnation and reassurance of China, struggling to find a coherent path that defends the West's principles without damaging its economic interests.
China blamed for master-minding patriotic protests
The Times of India published an editorial title "Counter View: Chinese have a right to protest". Quite interesting.
....Although the protests may be stage-managed, as some have suggested, there is every indication that the depth of nationalistic fervour in China has taken even the government by surprise. Restraint is being urged at every step, though the government has stopped short of outright condemnation. In any case, these protests are as legitimate as those in Paris or London. Portraying the outcry as merely a sham is to ignore the danger that an alienated China poses to the world. If the Chinese are feeling offended, perhaps it is time for the rest of the world to try to understand their grievance.Compared to a commentary appeared in Time:
Pushing China into a corner is unlikely to help the world. It will merely achieve a growth in militant Nationalism that will, in a sense, allow the government to continue its human rights violations. In other words, an image of China as a nation beset by unfair attacks might lead to it becoming even more hostile to the views of the western world.
The divide between how the Chinese view themselves and how they are perceived in the world should be narrowed instead of making it wider. It will be wise, therefore, to engage China on different terms and avoid tensions from spiralling out of hand over the Olympics, which the Chinese are justifiably proud of being called upon to host.
The biggest risk for the Chinese government is that the protests simmer until the Beijing Summer Olympics begin in August. The authorities hope to show the world how China has changed in the three decades since Deng Xiaoping launched economic reforms. But it will be difficult to present a friendly, progressive face to the world if citizens are indulging in anti-foreign antics.Okay.
When Chinese protest, it's indulgence. When Tibetans protest, it's for freedom.
This is how the Wall Street Journal portrays the protests:
Condemnation of Chinese government policies is being received in China as attacking the nation as a whole, arousing public resentment. The most vocal responses are seen overseas as government-sanctioned nationalism run amok, further reinforcing negative images of China.When Chinese protest, they further reinforce negative images of China. When Tibetans protest, they put China's human rights record into the light.
From NYT:
In a sign that the government was still allowing anti-foreign sentiment to spill over into rare street demonstrations, thousands of people rallied on Sunday in front of Carrefour markets in six cities, including two, Harbin and Jinan, where there had not been protests earlier.When Chinese protest -- peacefully -- they are brainwashed nationalists. When Tibetans protest -- violently -- they are fighters against oppression.
...In recent days, the government has called on citizens to temper their fury at the West, but it has not acted to halt public demonstrations, which have been stoked by newspaper editorials, Internet postings and text messages sent to millions of cellphones.
On Sunday, the state-run People’s Daily newspaper called for a cooling of passions, although it stopped short of condemning the demonstrations or the spreading boycott campaign against French goods. “As citizens, we have the responsibility to express our patriotic enthusiasm calmly and rationally and express patriotic aspiration in an orderly and legal manner,” the newspaper said in a front-page editorial.
When China says the Dalai Lama is behind the Lhasa riots, it is China's attempt to vilify His Holiness. When Chinese protest, it is China who master-minding the whole thing.
So what do you want? You want to see the protesting Chinese being shot down as the way the Tibetan propaganda told you the Tibetans were? (I'm not saying China's state-owned media aren't hammering out propaganda. But please be aware that propaganda is from both sides; another article on propaganda in here.)
As the above Times of India editorial suggests, many westerns still believe these massive protests are sponsored by the Chinese government. The Chinese are still being seen as brainwashed nationalists with no ability to think independently. How sad.
On the Tibet issue, WSJ says:
Protests advocating Tibetan independence mystify most Chinese, who have been taught all their lives that Tibet has long been part of China. And the deeply emotional Chinese response to the Tibet protests has also surprised some Westerners.The western media should also asked if they have been taught all their lives that Tibet has never been part of China.
The following paragraph seems to be used as balancing, but the phrase "albeit still limited" is still judgemental. "Limited" in what standard? Who set those standards? Why can't you reflect on the fact that China has made a lot of progress in merely 30 years? Compare the current state with what it was.... not comparing with the West who has enjoyed industrialization and economic development for over 100 years.
Many Chinese who are critical of their own government also feel Western condemnations of China fail to acknowledge its advances in recent decades, from lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty to expanding the freedoms -- albeit still limited -- that Chinese enjoy.To the West: please try to understand why we are angry. Think about if you were us.
More readings:
China should be careful in making use of nationalistic feelings
Han Chinese not humans?
A big blue earth for all of us
Have the media missed the real Tibet story?
Here's maybe proof of 'orchestrated violence' in Tibet [Read More....]
Mind it: it's propaganda from BOTH sides
Daily Kos wrote an in-depth investigation into how the US and Tibetans might have successfully hammered out a propaganda. Please read the article in full here. Really worth reading, no matter which side you're on. (Thx David in Niagara Falls for the link)
The propaganda war is on and there are two sides to this coin.From here, Daily Kose presented his/her investigation. It's a long and thorough piece, so please be patient reading through the end. [Read More....]
Point in fact for the purpose of this discussion: The Chinese media is controlled by the communist government. No question. Do they use their media to further their cause? Certainly.
Who is on the other side of the coin?
You may be surprised...
This is where the news is fed....
The Chinese are not particularly good at propaganda outside of their sphere of influence. Their expertise is to control the narrative by shutting down sources of information internally. In these times of immediate access to damn near every iota of information, this is a losing battle for the Chinese.
The stifling of information also gives any opposition opportunity to fill the void with their "ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one's cause or to damage an opposing cause".
As a result, it is difficult to get information out of Tibet. We are forced to rely on other sources. The leading source of "information" from Tibet and into Tibet is Radio Free Asia (RFA).
Messing Torch Run plan starts in May 2007!
German-Foreign-Policy.com also published a shocking article detailing backroom events leading up to the Lhasa uprising and recent Olympic torch run disruption. I begin to believe that there may be some credits in China's claims that the uprising and torch run mess are orchestrated by the "Dalai Clique". After all, if things covered in this article are true, the Chinese Communists aren't that evil.
BTW, the Globe and Mail earlier reported that:
Last May, the Dalai Lama's Tibetan government-in-exile put together a meeting in Brussels of all the major Tibet organizations — there are hundreds, and they're organized under a Washington-based umbrella group, the International Tibet Support Network. There, the exiled Tibetans decided that the Olympics should be the single focus of their activities for the next 15 months, and they hired a full-time organizer for the Olympic-disruption campaign.Let's go back to the German-Foreign-Policy.com article:
- Conference reports and the research of a Canadian journalist reveal that a German Foreign Ministry front organization is playing a decisive role in the preparations of the anti-Chinese Tibet campaign.
- According to this information, the campaign is being orchestrated from a Washington based headquarters. It had been assigned the task of organizing worldwide "protests" at a conference organized by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation (affiliated with the German Free Democratic Party - FDP) in May 2007.
- The plans were developed with the collaboration of the US State Department and the self-proclaimed Tibetan Government in Exile and call for high profile actions along the route of the Olympic Torch Relay and are supposed to reach a climax in August during the games in Beijing.
- The campaign began already last summer and is now profiting from the current uprising in the west of the People's Republic of China that is receiving prominent coverage in the German media. The uprising was initiated with murderous pogrom-like attacks by Tibetan gangs on non-Tibetan members of the population, including the Muslim Chinese minority. Numerous deaths of non-Tibetans provoked a reaction of the Chinese security forces.
- According to the research by a Canadian journalist, a conference organized by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation (FNSt) gave the impetus to the current anti-Chinese Tibet campaign that violently forced the interruption of the Olympian Torch Relay in Paris last Monday. The conference was the fifth "International Tibet Support Groups Conference," that was held from May 11 - 14, 2007 in Brussels.
- According to FNSt information this conference was supposed to do nothing other than the four preceding conferences - "coordinate the work of the international Tibet groups and consolidate the links between them with the central Tibetan Government in Exile."
- The German foundation, which is largely state financed, began the conference preparations in March 2005, and coordinated its plans with the Dalai Lama at his headquarters in the self-proclaimed Tibetan Government in Exile in Dharamsala, India. More than 300 participants from 56 countries, 36 Tibetan associations and 145 Tibet support groups were represented at the conference.
- After several days of consultations the conference ended with a concerted "plan of action". The paper is entitled "Roadmap for the Tibet Movement for the Coming Years" covering four areas of interest: "political support for negotiations", "human rights", "environment and development" and "the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing."
- The results of the conference are directed to the Tibetan people as well as "their supporters around the world." Rolf Berndt, a member of the FNSt's executive council in Brussels, declared that the Olympic Games "are an excellent opportunity" to publicly promote the cause of the "Tibet Movement". The conference participants agreed to make the Olympics the single focus of attack for their activities for the next 15 months.[6] They hired a full-time organizer for their campaign, who has since been directing the worldwide Tibet actions from their Washington headquarters.
- The anti-Chinese Tibet campaign, initiated under the direction of a German Foreign Ministry front organization (Friedrich Naumann Foundation) and a high-ranking representative of the US State Department, is developing its full efficacy in the aftermath of the uprisings in West People's Republic of China that began only a few days before the start of the Torch Relay.
- The pogrom-like mob-violence not only created the necessary media profile for the current Tibet campaign, initiated with the help of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, it also permits an insight into the character of Tibetan separatism. The "prime minister" of the Tibetan "Exile Government," who had participated in the formulation of the plan of action at the May 2007 Tibet Conference in Brussels, had already at the end of the 1990s, expounded in the German media on his views of the future of non-Tibetans, who had immigrated to Tibet over the past 50 years. In the case of a successful secession, they will have to "return to China, or if they would like to remain, be treated as foreigners."
- He explained the planned measures: "they will, in any case, not be allowed to participate in the political life." The prospect of discrimination against all non-Tibetan members of the population was anticipated in mid-March by mobs in their bloody attacks on Chinese and members of the Muslim minority.
Anti-Free-Tibet opinions are not tolerated in the West: German experts
German-Foreign-Policy.com, an independent online publication by journalists and social scientists, reveals in an article how the US and Germany have cooperated in using Tibet to weaken and destabilize China, a rising power deemed a threat to the West. This article tells us how the whole "Free Tibet" movement was created in and manipulated by the US-Germany axis.
- Not least among the consequences, the Tibet campaign is also stimulating an anti-Chinese atmosphere in Germany leaving a dwindling amount of room for criticism. Opinions that are at variance with the anti-Beijing mainstream are, in the meantime, being punished. In Cologne a sinologist's lecture on the theme of Tibet had to be cancelled at the last minute. The organizers had criticized the one-sided western media reporting and sought to initiate a differentiated debate of the conflict. This intention led to the cancellation on short notice of the rental contract for the location in the Cologne Community Center. Those responsible for the community center made it known that no "anti-Tibetan" events would be tolerated.
- Several front organizations of German foreign policy have for years been supporting the Tibetan exile structures in Dharamsala, India. This includes support for organizational measures enabling the "government in exile" in Dharamsala to orchestrate its activities against the People's Republic of China worldwide. Particularly the Free Democratic Party (FDP) affiliated Friedrich Naumann Foundation and the Heinrich Boell Foundation (affiliated with the Green Party) are cooperating with the "government in exile" and other exile Tibetan institutions.
- Front organizations of US foreign policy are working toward the same objectives. Already in the 1950s Washington was intervening in Tibet with millions of dollars, at the time, even supporting Tibetan armed uprisings against the People's Republic of China. German organizations took up the question of Tibet around the end of the 80s, at a time when China was beginning its rise to become a global competitor of the west. The current activities are apt to greatly weaken China. These supplement other German-US measures aimed at thwarting the rise of their East-Asian rival.
- The US logistical and military support for the armed Tibetan rebellions, beginning in 1957, was aimed at destabilizing the communist government. The intervention outlasted the Dalai Lama's flight into exile in Dharamsala, India, where, after 1959, a Tibetan "government in exile" was called into being. According to official documents from the government in Washington, during the 1960s the CIA was paying up to $1.7 million per year to maintain "operations against China." Up to $180,000 was given directly to the Dalai Lama.
- German organizations have become intensively engaged in the Tibet question since the 1980s, when the People's Republic of China began an economic upswing that has now placed it in the top ranks of global commercial statistics. Already at that time political strategists were predicting the possibility of China's rise to becoming a major power and foresaw rivalry between China and western powers. Using contacts to Tibet by "alternative" political circles, who had converted to Buddhism, the Green parliamentary group, through hearings and parliamentary resolutions, placed the questions of autonomy and the demands for secession in that region of China on the political agenda of the Bundestag in 1985.
- Tsewang Norbu, a former assistant of the Dalai Lama, helped shape policy on Tibet, first as an employee of the Green parliamentarian Petra Kelly and, since 1992, as an employee of the Green Party affiliated Heinrich Boell Foundation. In addition, Norbu founded the German-Tibetan Cultural Society and, over an extended period of time, presided as its vice-chairman. He also works as a "special correspondent" for the US financed "Radio Free Asia" (RFA). RFA is among the news sources of western reporting on the recent uprising in Tibet.
- German foundations' activities around Tibet touch one of the most sensitive spots in Chinese policy. Not only do they represent interference into the domestic affairs of that nation, they also threaten the People's Republic's territorial integrity. "To a certain extent, Tibet is the cornerstone of a fragile multi-ethnic state," writes a policy advisor at the Institute of Asian Studies of the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA) in Hamburg. "A horror scenario for Beijing is that beginning with Tibet, a conflagration develops." One finds "designated on a map published in a 1990 autobiography of the Dalai Lama (...) alongside Greater Tibet also 'East Turkestan,' as the area where Moslem Uygurs settled, Inner Mongolia and Manchuria."[11] The secession of these regions would have drastic consequences: "the remaining Chinese settled areas would have shrunk to a third of the People's Republic."
- In fact, the current Tibet campaign, with the participation of German organizations, is but an example of Berlin's and Washington's growing anti-Chinese policy. In Africa, Germany and the USA are now openly agitating against China. Aggressive competition is being practiced also in Latin America as well as in Central Asia. India is seen as a possible counter-balance for the containment of the People's Republic.
Here's maybe proof of 'orchestrated violence' in Tibet
Slowly, we are getting more rational analyses from the West looking at what really might have happened in the recent riots in Lhasa and its adjacent areas. This compilation might look long, but it contains the most insightful research and most convincing analysis I've seen so far after days and nights of researching on the topic. I hope this post will help many readers better understand the Tibet issue as well as the reasons behind the recent Tibetan riots and disruption of the torch run.
Richard M Bennett is an intelligence and security consultant, AFI Research. He recently wrote in Asia Times and Journey to the East exploring the possibility of an "orchestrated plan" to recent riots in Tibet, which was planned by the international Free Tibet movement and the US intelligence.
China has been accusing the Dalai Lama of orchestrating the riots. However, the accusation remains in the rhetoric but China has been charged for "demonizing" the Dalai Lama because China did not present any proof. Bennett's analysis may provide a glimpse of what may have happened.
Given the historical context of the unrest in Tibet, there is reason to believe Beijing was caught on the hop with the recent demonstrations for the simple reason that their planning took place outside of Tibet and that the direction of the protesters is similarly in the hands of anti-Chinese organizers safely out of reach in Nepal and northern India.
Similarly, the funding and overall control of the unrest has also been linked to Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, and by inference to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) because of his close cooperation with US intelligence for over 50 years.
Indeed, with the CIA's deep involvement with the Free Tibet Movement and its funding of the suspiciously well-informed Radio Free Asia, it would seem somewhat unlikely that any revolt could have been planned or occurred without the prior knowledge, and even perhaps the agreement, of the National Clandestine Service (formerly known as the Directorate of Operations) at CIA headquarters in Langley.
Respected columnist and former senior Indian Intelligence officer, B Raman, commented on March 21 that "on the basis of available evidence, it was possible to assess with a reasonable measure of conviction" that the initial uprising in Lhasa on March 14 "had been pre-planned and well orchestrated".
Could there be a factual basis to the suggestion that the main beneficiaries to the death and destruction sweeping Tibet are in Washington? History would suggest that this is a distinct possibility.
F. William Engdahl recently wrote in Canada-based Global Research that George W. Bush is playing geopolitical game with China as "part of an escalating US strategy of destabilization of China which has been initiated by the Bush Administration over the past months."
Engdahl describes that Washington is playing the 'Tibet Roulette' with China.
As the Chinese government itself was clear to point out, the sudden eruption of anti-Chinese violence in Tibet, a new phase in the movement led by the exiled Dalai Lama, was suspiciously timed to try to put the spotlight on Beijing's human rights record on the eve of the coming Olympics. The Beijing Olympics are an event seen in China as a major acknowledgement of the arrival of a new prosperous China on the world stage.
The background actors in the Tibet "Crimson revolution" actions confirm that Washington has been working overtime in recent months to prepare another of its infamous Color Revolutions, these fanning public protests designed to inflict maximum embarrassment on Beijing. The actors on the ground in and outside Tibet are the usual suspects, tied to the US State Department, including the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the CIA's Freedom House through its chairman, Bette Bao Lord and her role in the International Committee for Tibet, as well as the Trace Foundation financed by the wealth of George Soros through his daughter, Andrea Soros Colombel.
Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has accused the Dalai Lama of orchestrating the latest unrest to sabotage the Olympic Games "in order to achieve their unspeakable goal", Tibetan independence.
Bush telephoned his Chinese counterpart, President Hu Jintao, to pressure for talks between Beijing and the exiled Dalai Lama. The White House said that Bush, "raised his concerns about the situation in Tibet and encouraged the Chinese government to engage in substantive dialogue with the Dalai Lama's representatives and to allow access for journalists and diplomats."
President Hu reportedly told Bush the Dalai Lama must "stop his sabotage" of the Olympics before Beijing takes a decision on talks with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said.
In fact, a colleague of mine did a research last night and discovered that the lamas who were responsible for stirring up the riots were all of the "Yellow Hats" sect, which is directly under the Dalai Lama. Some "Black Hats" lamas refused to participate were even threatened by their Yellow Hats colleagues.
Engdahl continues to analyze:
The events in Tibet since March 10 have been played in Western media with little regard to accuracy or independent cross-checking. Most of the pictures blown up in European and US newspapers and TV have not even been of Chinese military oppression of Tibetan lamas or monks. They have been shown to be in most cases either Reuters or AFP pictures of Han Chinese being beaten by Tibetan monks in paramilitary organizations. In some instances German TV stations ran video pictures of beatings that were not even from Tibet but rather by Nepalese police in Kathmandu.
The western media complicity simply further underlies that the actions around Tibet are part of a well-orchestrated destabilization effort on the part of Washington. What few people realize is that the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was also instrumental, along with Gene Sharp's misnamed Albert Einstein Institution through Colonel Robert Helvey, in encouraging the student protests at Tiananmen Square in June 1989. The Albert Einstein Institution, as it describes itself, specializes in "nonviolence as a form of warfare."
Colonel Helvey was formerly with the Defense Intelligence Agency stationed in Myanmar. Helvey trained in Hong Kong the student leaders from Beijing in mass demonstration techniques which they were to use in the Tiananmen Square incident of June 1989. He is now believed acting as an adviser to the Falun Gong in similar civil disobedience techniques. Helvey nominally retired from the army in 1991, but had been working with the Albert Einstein Institution and George Soros' Open Society Foundation long before then. In its annual report for 2004 Helvey's Albert Einstein Institution admitted to advising people in Tibet.
Ultimately, here's why the US has to destabilize China:
Washington policy has used and refined these techniques of "revolutionary nonviolence," and NED operations embodied a series of ‘democratic' or soft coup projects as part of a larger strategy which would seek to cut China off from access to its vital external oil and gas reserves.
The 1970's quote attributed to then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a proponent of British geopolitics in an American context comes to mind: "If you control the oil you control entire nations…"
The destabilization attempt by Washington using Tibet, no doubt with quiet "help" from its friends in British and other US-friendly intelligence services, is part of a clear pattern.
It includes Washington's "Saffron revolution" attempts to destabilize Myanmar. It includes the ongoing effort to get NATO troops into Darfur to block China's access to strategically vital oil resources there and elsewhere in Africa. It includes attempts to foment problems in Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan and to disrupt China's vital new energy pipeline projects to Kazakhstan. The earlier Asian Great Silk Road trade routes went through Tashkent in Uzbekistan and Almaty in Kazakhstan for geographically obvious reasons, in a region surrounded by major mountain ranges. Geopolitical control of Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan, Kazakhstan would enable control of any potential pipeline routes between China and Central Asia just as the encirclement of Russia controls pipeline and other ties between it and western Europe, China, India and the Middle East, where China depends on uninterrupted oil flows from Iran, Saudi Arabia and other OPEC countries.
What is behind the strategy to encircle China? Engdahl says:
In this context, a revealing New York Council on Foreign Relations analysis in their Foreign Affairs magazine from Zbigniew Brzezinski from September/October 1997 is worth quoting. Brzezinski, a protégé of David Rockefeller and a follower of the founder of British geopolitics, Sir Halford Mackinder, is today the foreign policy adviser to Presidential candidate, Barack Obama. In 1997 he revealingly wrote:
‘Eurasia is home to most of the world's politically assertive and dynamic states. All the historical pretenders to global power originated in Eurasia. The world's most populous aspirants to regional hegemony, China and India, are in Eurasia, as are all the potential political or economic challengers to American primacy. After the United States, the next six largest economies and military spenders are there, as are all but one of the world's overt nuclear powers, and all but one of the covert ones. Eurasia accounts for 75% of the world's population; 60% of its GNP, and 75% of its energy resources. Collectively, Eurasia's potential power overshadows even America's.
‘Eurasia is the world's axial super-continent. A power that dominated Eurasia would exercise decisive influence over two of the world's three most economically productive regions, Western Europe and East Asia. A glance at the map also suggests that a country dominant in Eurasia would almost automatically control the Middle East and Africa. With Eurasia now serving as the decisive geopolitical chessboard, it no longer suffices to fashion one policy for Europe and another for Asia. What happens with the distribution of power on the Eurasian landmass will be of decisive importance to America's global primacy….".
This statement, written well before the US-led bombing of former Yugoslavia and the US military occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq, or its support of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline, puts Washington pronouncements about ‘ridding the world of tyranny' and about spreading democracy, into a somewhat different context from the one usually mentioned by George W. Bush of others.
It's about global hegemony, not democracy. It should be no surprise when powers such as China are not convinced that giving Washington such overwhelming power is in China's national interest, any more than Russia thinks that it would be a step towards peace to let NATO gobble up Ukraine and Georgia and put US missiles on Russia's doorstep "to defend against threat of Iranian nuclear attack on the United States."
The US-led destabilization in Tibet is part of a strategic shift of great significance. It comes at a time when the US economy and the US dollar, still the world's reserve currency, are in the worst crisis since the 1930's. It is significant that the US Administration sends Wall Street banker, former Goldman Sachs chairman, Henry Paulson to Beijing in the midst of its efforts to embarrass Beijing in Tibet. Washington is literally playing with fire. China long ago surpassed Japan as the world's largest holder of foreign currency reserves, now in the range of $1.5 trillions, most of which are invested in US Treasury debt instruments. Paulson knows well that were Beijing to decide it could bring the dollar to its knees by selling only a small portion of its US debt on the market.
Copyrights are those of the authors. These paragraphs are posted here only for the readers' convenience.
[Read More....]Gazette: Western media unfair to China
Montreal Gazette - Thousands of Chinese found they were able to access the BBC News website for the first time last week after years of strict censorship. Emails from these new readers flooded into the BBC. Much to the surprise of its editors, most of the comments were critical of their coverage.
The negative feedback so shocked the BBC that its Asia bureau chief Paul Danahar, who is based in Beijing, felt it necessary to respond to this criticism and explain the BBC's challenges of reporting in China.
Danahar acknowledged that the BBC's reporting on Tibet drew much ire from Chinese readers. He defended the BBC by pointing out that it was the first foreign broadcaster to obtain pictures showing the ethnic violence against Han Chinese by Tibetans in Lhasa. He claimed that as a direct result of the BBC's broadcast of these pictures, the Dalai Lama called for an end to the violence.
Not mentioned in his article is the fact that before the publication of these pictures, the Western media were uniform in their condemnation of Chinese brutality and the crackdown. Even after the pictures' publication, the West is still critical of China's handling of the situation in Tibet.
When casualty figures were reported, Chinese official figures were put in juxtaposition with the figures provided by the Tibetan government in exile, always worded in a fashion that suggested the official figures are less trustworthy. What is not clear is that if the Dalai Lama learned of the Tibetan violence against ethnic Chinese only through BBC broadcasts, how was he able to provide any casualty figures?
Our own media are not immune to this bias when it comes to China. Reports of faulty toys, trade imbalance, labour practices, environmental issues, paint China as a hellish place. Reports of economic boom, military build-up and nationalistic sentiments describe China as a menacing superpower soon to challenge the West for a dominant and dominating position in the world.
The result of all this sensationalist, biased reporting is a very badly understood China.
The cover of a recent issue of Maclean's magazine showed a police officers beating up an escaping Tibetan monk. Splashed across are these words: "Butchers and Monsters," promoting an article written by John Fraser titled: "The brutality in Tibet is no surprise. Communist China will never change."
The article was a standard anti-China diatribe. The author is, however, entitled to his opinion. What was disingenuous about the picture is that the policeman in question was not Chinese. In a small caption at the bottom of the picture, the magazine acknowledged that the photo depicted a Nepali police chasing away a Tibetan demonstrator in Katmandu.
China's population size makes it a formidable economic entity. In reality, China is a poor Third World country just starting out on its road to development. At this beginning stage of development, it encounters much systemic difficulty. Its political system is totalitarian although no longer communist except in name; it lacks a well developed judicial system; there is rampant corruption; labour standards are minimal and recent. These problems need to be acknowledged, criticized and corrected. However, we need to understand that they cannot be corrected overnight.
China's Tibet policy can be seen only in this context. It is not a perfect policy. It might even be a bad policy. It is however a policy derived from a national objective of economic development. As a nation, China and its people have elected to rid themselves of poverty by embracing market reform. Along with success, however, economic development has also brought an increasing income gap, environmental degradation and rampant corruption. In Tibet, these negative consequences might well have been magnified through the lens of ethnic tension.
Here in the West, we need to recognize that the negative consequences of China's development need to be solved gradually but persistently through continued dialogue and engagement. Reporting should be balanced rather than sensational.
Ethnic-based riots and violence should be condemned. Dialogue between the Dalai Lama and Beijing should be championed.
Finally, a word on the Olympics and the call for boycott by some in the West. China's handling of Tibet, though often hamhanded, has basically stayed the same over the last 20 years. It has certainly not worsened since the Olympic committee awarded the Games to Beijing.
Ethnic riots planned by some Tibetans with a certain political objective have been quite effective with the help of sympathetic Western media. However, any boycott of the Games or its opening ceremony will be interpreted by the Chinese people (ordinary people who are understandably proud of their collective achievement) as hypocritical and antagonistic.
A confident, prosperous, and accepted China is more likely to become a liberal democracy than a humiliated, rejected, and paranoid People's Republic.
By John Chen, associate professor of medicine at McGill University.
More readings:
Western media bias and 'Tibetan complex'
Global TV fabrication
CTV, TorStar blasted for biased reporting on Tibet issue
We demand honesty from our 'free' press: activist
Mainstream media bias against China is live and thriving: US tourist
Biased media reports 'unite all Chinese'
More on media bias
Evidence of Western media bias
The secrets of Free Tibet movement
"Democratic Imperialism": Tibet, China, and the National Endowment for Democracy
Michael Barker, doctoral candidate at Griffith University, Australia
Published in Global Research, Canada
Barker's article details the secrets behind the Free Tibet movement:
- Jim Mann (1999) notes, "during the 1950s and 60s, the CIA actively backed the Tibetan cause with arms, military training, money, air support and all sorts of other help."
- According to formerly secret US intelligence documents (released in the late 1990s), it turned out that '[f]or much of the 1960s, the CIA provided the Tibetan exile movement with $1.7 million a year for operations against China, including an annual subsidy of $180,000 for the Dalai Lama".
- By 1969, however, it appears that covert support for the Tibetan cause had either served its geopolitical purpose (or it was decided that these operations were simply no longer effective), and the CIA announced the withdrawal of its aid for the Tibetan revolutionaries.
- That said, support for the Tibetan freedom fighters was still provided by the Indian and Taiwanese governments 'until 1974, two years after President Richard Nixon normalized U.S. relations with China" (as were the U.S. subsidies for the Dalai Lama, which also continued until 1974): however, thereafter – especially once the Dalai Lama urged the fighters to put down their weapons – the violent resistance collapsed and the 'CIA quietly paid to resettle the survivors".
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was established in 1984 with bipartisan support during President Reagan's administration to "foster the infrastructure of democracy – the system of a free press, unions, political parties, universities" around the world. Considering Reagan's well documented misunderstanding of what constitutes democratic governance, it is fitting that Allen Weinstein, the NEDs first acting president, observed that in fact "A lot of what we [the NED] do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA".
So for example, it is not surprising that during the 1990 elections in Nicaragua it is has been estimated that "for every dollar of NED or AID funding there were several dollars of CIA funding".
By building upon the pioneering work of liberal philanthropists (like the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations') – who have a long history of co-opting progressive social movements – it appears that the NED was envisaged by US foreign policy elites to be a more suitable way to provide strategic funding to nongovernmental organizations than via covert CIA funding.
Indeed, the NED's 'new' emphasis on overt funding of geostrategically useful groups, as opposed to the covert funding, appears to have leant an aura of respect to the NED's work, and has enabled them, for the most part, to avoid much critical commentary in the mainstream media.
The seminal book exposing the NED's 'democratic' modus operandi, is William I. Robinson's (1996) Promoting Polyarchy, which as its title suggests, lays out the argument that instead of promoting more participatory forms of democracy, the NED actually works to promote polyarchy.
Robinson argues that the NED's active promotion of polyarchy or low-intensity democracy "is aimed not only at mitigating the social and political tensions produced by elite-based and undemocratic status quos, but also at suppressing popular and mass aspirations for more thoroughgoing democratisation of social life in the twenty-first century international order."
His book furnishes detailed examples of how the NED has successfully imposed polyarchal arrangements on four countries, Chile, Nicaragua, the Philippines, and Haiti; while similarly, Barker (2006) has illustrated the NED's anti-democratic involvement in facilitating and manipulating the 'colour revolutions' which recently swept across Eastern Europe.
More recently, both Barker and Gerald Sussman (2006) have provided detailed examinations' of how the NED works to promote a low intensity public sphere (globally) through its selective funding of media organizations. This article will now extend these three initial studies by critically examining the NED's support for Tibetan media projects from 1990 onwards.
Here is a list of Tibetan groups funded by the NED uncovered by Barker:
- The International Campaign for Tibet (ICT)
- The Tibet Fund
- Tibet Information Network
- The Tibetan Literary
- Tibet Multimedia Centre
- Tibetan Review Trust Society
- The Voice of Tibet
In conclusion, Barker says:
[Read More....]This article has demonstrated the close ties that exist between the Dalai Lama's non-violent campaign for Tibetan independence and U.S. foreign policy elites who are actively supporting Tibetan causes through the NED.
This finding is particularly worrying given the high international media profile of many of the groups exposed in this article, especially when it is remembered that the NED's activities are intimately linked with those of the CIA.
This funding issue is clearly problematic for Tibetan (or foreign) activists campaigning for Tibetan freedom, as the overwhelmingly anti-democratic nature of the NED can only weaken the legitimacy of the claims of any group associated with the NED.
In this regard it seems only fitting that progressive activists truly concerned with promoting freedom and democracy in Tibet should first and foremost cast a critical eye over the antidemocratic funders of many of the Tibetan groups identified in this study.
Only then will they be able to reappraise the sustainability of their work in the light of the NED's controversial background.
Once this step has been taken, perhaps progressive solutions for restoring democratic governance to Tibet can be generated by concerned activists, so that Tibetan people wanting to reclaim their homeland will able to be more sure that they are bringing democracy home to Tibet, not polyarchy.
China urges control over nationalistic feelings
Just one day, China's state-owned media have changed tones. Anyway, I'm glad that the Chinese government is realizing about the danger of irrational nationalism. That helps settle my previous worries.
AFP — China has urged its people to contain their patriotism, in the first sign Beijing may be growing uncomfortable with a nationalist outburst over the Tibet issue that it has tacitly supported.[Read More....]
A dispatch issued late Thursday by state-controlled Xinhua news agency railed against "despicable" Western media coverage of the unrest in Tibet and said resulting Chinese indignation should be "cherished."
But it also said nationalist energies should be expressed in a "rational" way and focussed on building the nation.
"Patriotic fervour should be channeled into a rational track and must be transformed into real action toward doing our work well," said the report.
China's government and state media have repeatedly condemned what they call bias in foreign coverage of China's crackdown on Tibetan riots, which erupted in Lhasa on March 14 and spilled over into other Tibetan-populated regions.
The government's stance appears to have helped fuel attacks on the Chinese Internet directed at foreign media.
A number of online campaigns have been launched, including one calling for a boycott of French goods due to protests against China's Tibet policies that threw the Beijing Olympic torch relay's Paris leg into chaos last week.
Web users also have set up the website www.anti-cnn.com that criticises the US-based news network's alleged anti-China bias.
On Friday, the email boxes of major news organisations in Beijing, including AFP, were flooded with emails furious over "vicious distortions" in Tibet coverage.
China's Communist Party government, which swiftly quashes any expressions of public opinion it does not like, has so far allowed the attacks.
Xinhua's report appears to fit a pattern in which the control-conscious government has given free rein to such sentiments when it serves party interests, but curb them when they appear to be spiralling out of control.
After US forces mistakenly bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, large anti-US protests were allowed in China before the government put an end to them.
In 2005, protesters were allowed to throw rocks and eggs at Japan's embassy in Beijing, among other anti-Japanese actions, triggered by a range of grievances between the two Asian rivals.
Tories 'pick and choose' which human rights to support: First Nations
Let's expose one more time the kind of double standard the West uses when it comes to human rights.
[Read More....]Canada Continues Offensive Campaign Opposing UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
First Nations Leadership Council release - In a statement delivered to a meeting of the Organization of American States Working Group to Prepare the Draft American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (" OAS Working Group") in Washington DC, the Canadian Government has declared that it will no longer actively participate in negotiations on the Draft American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples ("Draft American Declaration").
Canada has formally reserved its position on the final text under negotiation. However, if the final document "does not adequately address Canada's concerns", Canada has indicated that it would attempt to block consensus unless two conditions are met: the document adopted clearly indicates that Canada does not support it and that there is an explicit understanding that the text therefore does not apply to Canada.
In doing so, Canada has continued its offensive campaign against the rights of Indigenous people in Canada and around the world by maintaining its rejection of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples ("United Nations Declaration") as the "starting point or minimum outcome for further negotiations" on the Draft American Declaration.
"In its statement to the OAS Working Group, the minority Conservative government has again demonstrated immense disrespect for the human rights of indigenous peoples", said Grand Chief Edward John of the First Nations Summit political executive. "Canada's attempts to "pick and choose" which human rights standards apply to it violate the rule of law in Canada and threaten the international human rights system. We urge the Canadian government to play a constructive role in deliberations on the Draft American Declaration, to drop its unreasonable conditions and to not block consensus on the final text."
The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted the United Nations Declaration on September 13, 2007. Canada was one of only four States to vote against the United Nations Declaration.
The rights recognized by the United Nations Declaration constitute the "minimum standards for the survival, dignity and well-being of the indigenous peoples of the world". The majority of American States have supported the use of the United Nations Declaration as the baseline for negotiations on the Draft American Declaration.
Canada's statement to the OAS Working Group directly defies the motion passed by a majority of Parliamentarians in the House of Commons on April 8, 2008 calling upon the Government of Canada to endorse the United Nations Declaration, and for Parliament and the Government of Canada to "fully implement the standards contained therein".
"OAS member states have a duty to ensure the minimum standards set out in the United Nations Declaration are upheld in the draft American Declaration" stated A-in-chut (Shawn Atleo), Regional Chief of the BC Assembly of First Nations.
"BC First Nations urge the Government of Canada to continue working with OAS member states and indigenous peoples to build on the important foundation of international human rights standards set out in the historic United Nations Declaration. Let us work together to leave a legacy for future generations that we can all be proud of."
"Canada, under the leadership of Prime Minister Stephen Harper continues to wantonly exploit the lands and resources of the indigenous peoples of this country. It is despicable to witness the lengths governments and companies have gone to use Canadian courts to jail Indigenous people for protecting their territories," said Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, President of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs. "We call on the entire international community to witness that Canada has prosecuted and imposed jail terms on indigenous leaders of the Agonquin Ardoch and Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nations for their efforts to protect the birthright of their children and human rights of their peoples. Once again, at the international level, Canada has disgraced itself by demonstrating its racist and highly prejudicial attitudes towards the land and human rights of Indigenous Peoples here in Canada and throughout the world."