Back to Tibet and the Olympics...

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“The prize reaffirms our conviction that with truth, courage and determination as our weapons, Tibet will be liberated. Our struggle must remain non-violent and free of hatred.”

~ Dalai Lama
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Watching the news this evening on TV and I saw my first summer '08 Olympics ad. Which for me is just a prompt to provide an update.



First... I just have to provide a link to this story, provided by the Students for a Free Tibet:

Dalai Lama offers help to the Chinese

THE Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader, has made a gesture of goodwill to China by announcing that he wants to donate to the Chinese earthquake fund, despite Beijing’s denunciations of the “Dalai clique” and its description of him as “a demon”.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, he said he was worried that a gift to the victims would be misunderstood by China, which accuses him of helping to foment the riots that struck Tibet in March.

The Dalai Lama, who is due to meet Gordon Brown in London this week, adopted a conciliatory tone in his remarks on China, giving strong backing for the Olympics and expressing his desire to become a fully fledged Chinese citizen. “At the moment I am a refugee. But I would like to return to Tibet as a member of China’s Tibetan minority,” he said.

Although many of his supporters have called for a boycott of the Olympics, the Dalai Lama said he would have liked to attend them. “It is right that China should have been awarded them,” he said. “It has the world’s largest population and a great and ancient culture. In normal circumstances I would very much like to have gone to Beijing as a spectator.”

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Amazing that the Dalai Lama practices what he preaches. There is a lesson there I think we could all heed.

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Out of New Jersey comes this story:

Olympics boycott cry grows louder

The quote I want to provide deals with the fact that Tibet is not China's only human rights issue:

Speaking from his Washington, D.C., office yesterday, U.S. Rep Chris Smith, R-Hamilton, an advocate of religious freedom and human rights in repressive countries around the world, said the "grandiose hoopla" of the opening ceremonies will be all about hypocrisy.

"At the very least, we should boycott (the opening ceremonies). Unfortunately, propaganda is ever present, and the Chinese are denying facts about their own government. There is a steady stream of propaganda about (the spiritual practice) Falun Gong, religion and the West."

Smith has criticized China for forced sterilization and persecution of Christians and other religious minorities.


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Another good read is this column from the Boulder (CO) Daily Camera, written for the LA Times by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar:

Jabbar: Olympics Boycott questions: '68 vs. '08

Should we boycott the Olympic Games to protest China's arrogant human rights performance, its political imperialism, its shoddy exports that recently have left some Americans ill or dead?

The answer is no. While it may seem disingenuous to be playing games with countries that aim weapons at us, the same claim can be made about us by many other countries.

I am of a mind that the actions of Smith and Carlos made a difference in 1968. However, this Olympics is an entirely different situation that requires different tactics to achieve a satisfactory resolution. Instead of turning our backs, we need to continue a dialogue with the Chinese.

The more we talk with each other, the more we understand each other and can reach compromises that will benefit the lives of those we are trying to help. Jackie Robinson once said that the great thing about athletics is that "you learn to act democracy, not just talk it." That's what our athletes will demonstrate to the 1 billion Chinese who may be watching.
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For me... I say continue with the boycott pressure. I mean if Ronald Reagan was able to be an instrument in the falling of the infamous Berlin Wall, surely the Dalai Lama can be one of the instruments of peace that tears down the Red Wall.


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PS...

One of the problems with walls? Just as soon as you tear one down, 2 more go up. That Medusa thing, dontcha know...

Israel/Palestine:



US/Mexico:



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“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”

~ Albert Camus

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aaah...

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“Do not think of how big the universe is, it will merely hurt your head.”

~ Buddha

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U.S. Jewish Leaders Urge Boycott of Olympics

-snip-

In a statement, the group said it is urging a boycott because it believes China is using the Olympic Games as a way to deflect attention from its human-rights record, much the way that Nazi Germany used the 1936 Olympic Games to distract attention from its persecution of Jews.

-snip-

So... it seems China is squirming a bit under all this global visibility. Do nations have egos?

We still have a ways to go but there are signs of change -- or at least some minor tremors -- that China doesn't like the criticism. Well, duh... considering that China's purge of Tibet is half a century old and some 1 million people are dead and/or disappeared... and now more people are becoming aware of China's assault on a very peaceful Tibetan civilian population... I hope they squirm right out of Tibet.

On the news front, this was the headline I saw this morning on GoogleNews that prompted this post:

Dalai Lama's office: Envoys leave for China for Tibet talks (and let me know if this link breaks, the article is only an hour old)

-snip-

Beijing has faced a chorus of calls from world leaders to open a dialogue. The decision comes as something of a reversal in the face of Beijing's relentless claims that the Dalai Lama and his followers had orchestrated March's violence in Tibet.

The recent protests in Tibet marked the most widespread and sustained action against Beijing's rule in decades, focusing attention on accusations that China's policies in the Himalayan region are eroding its traditional Buddhist culture and mainly benefit Chinese who moved there since its 1951 occupation by Communist troops.

-snip-

The people of Tibet deserve help. This is not a political issue, this is not an issue of religion, this is an issue of import to all humanity. We cannot exist for long in a world as tumultuous as ours by ignoring the daily wrongs perpetrated against people by governments anywhere.

Since I became aware of the scope of world hunger some 30 years ago, the number of people that starve to death or die from malnutrition related disease has not changed. There are still tens of thousands dying each day. How is it that governments can afford huge military arsenals? How does it happen that day after day humanity marches on and nothing, really, changes? Is this wave of humans spreading across the globe like a snowball rolling downhill, getting bigger and bigger, rolling faster and faster as it gains weight and momentum... and all of us swept along for the ride, knowing that there is a bottom, somewhere, to this hill...?

How do we make governments accountable? The problems today are as old as the day when humans began living in communities and hierarchies became established. But today it is happening on a scale that is an indictment that should appall each and every one of us. And nowhere is there any religion that is founded upon any truth, that advocates vioence against another. If there is a monk, a preacher, an imam... a rabbi... whatever... that advocates death, that calls another an enemy... that one is an imposter, a fake and a fraud. And the same for governments.

Being 56 years old I remember a lot of the politics shadowing the Olympics over the years... John Carlos and Tommie Smith lowering their heads and giving the black power fist raising salute in Mexico City's 1968 Olympics:



...the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics:



and there were those games I don't remember (borrowing from Wikipedia's Olympics page here):

...the 1956 Olympic Games which were boycotted by the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland, because of the repression of the Hungarian Uprising by the Soviet Union; additionally, Cambodia, Egypt, Iraq, and Lebanon, boycotted the games due to the Suez Crisis...

And some I do...

- In 1972 and 1976, a large number of African countries threatened the International Olympic Committee with a boycott, to force them to ban South Africa (Apartheid), Rhodesia, and New Zealand...

- In 1976 China itself used the Olympics to make a political statement when it told the Taiwan Olympics team it could not compete using the name "Republic of China"...

- Sixty-five nations refused to compete at the Moscow Olympics in 1980 because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan...

- The Soviet Union and 14 of its Eastern Bloc partners (except Romania) countered by skipping the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984, arguing the safety of their athletes could not be guaranteed there and "chauvinistic sentiments and an anti-Soviet hysteria are being whipped up in the United States"...

- Even pot/marijuana/reefer/ganja has held a position as an Olympics controversy when snowboarder Ross Rebagliati was stripped of his Gold Medal in 1998's Japan Winter Olympics for testing positive for cannabis, a medal later restored to Rebagliati when (IMHO) the situation came to the point where no one officially wanted to call the much maligned herb a "performance enhancing drug."

But now... even the world's highest mountain has become part of Olympic's controversy:

Olympic torch to scale Everest amid tight security

-snip-

The flame could reach the summit as early as this weekend or early next week. Already, one American climber, who has been carrying a pro-Tibet flag, was kicked off the mountain and heavy security is reportedly enforcing the no-climb rule in effect from May 1 to May 10 in Nepal, which, like China, controls access to part of the mountain. Nepal's forces have reportedly been urged to shoot at protesters.

-snip-



Humanity is not well. Its governments are even worse... if you are one of those agreeing with those of us calling for pressure on China over its human rights shame, please keep the pressure on. Tell your friends -- and your enemies if you have them -- to boycott the Olympics, tell President Bush to boycott the opening ceremonies...

And in one final note... I did not know that China was involved in Darfur (Sudan, Africa), but the recent announcement by Steven Spielberg to resign as artistic advisor to the Olympics because of China's muliple problematic situations involving Tibet and Darfur, brought that aspect of the issue to my attention. It seems China buys 2/3 of the oil produced by Sudan:

-snip-

while selling it weapons and defending Khartoum in the U.N. Security Council. Fighting in Darfur has killed more than 200,000 people since 2003.

-snip-

So... remember... Boycott: the sound of one hand not opening a wallet.


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We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark. The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

~ Plato
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More Olympics

(I was going to put this image below with the other Olympic graphics... then I realized how well it went with my opening quote, so... here it sits...)


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“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”

~ Elie Wiesel
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Truly... this will be an interesting build-up to the Olympics. Protests continue to shadow the Torch as it makes it way towards China:

China will be watching (Australia's Herald-Sun)

Australian Federal Police chiefs have cancelled leave.

The cost of the security operation for the five-hour event is estimated to run close to $1 million.

The Chinese Government has insisted that several of its controversial paramilitary security guards will protect the torch, but federal police say they will take complete responsibility.

Overseas, the Chinese security officers have been labelled "thugs" for their aggressive behaviour.

Just three Chinese attendants will accompany the Olympic flame on Thursday.

And this line in particular caught my eye:

Some politicians have created headaches for police by declaring public's right to protest during the event.

I wasn't aware that politicians declared our right to protest. I always thought it one of those immovable, immutable universal laws of nature and reality. Huh... the things I learn...

Japanese Temple Refuses to Host Olympic Torch Relay

The Zenkoji Temple officials say monks at the temple are concerned about the way fellow Buddhist monks are being treated in China and about the safety of the temple and its worshippers. The temple is located in Japan's northern city of Nagano, and was originally to be the starting point of the relay in Japan.

Thailand prepares for troubled Olympic torch relay

The torch, whose worldwide journey before the Games in August has turned into a public relations debacle for China's leaders, made its way to the kingdom overnight from India, where many people were arrested.

Thai officials have warned they will deport foreigners who try to disrupt the relay but, unlike at several previous stops, Thailand has not made plans to shorten its leg of the flame's globe-trotting extravaganza.

-snip-

Jacques Rogge, head of the International Olympic Committee, has said the protests have thrown the Olympics into "crisis," and reminded China that it pledged to improve its rights record when it proposed to host the Games.
Beijing has told Rogge to stay out of "irrelevant" politics and insisted the demonstrations are not in keeping with the Olympic spirit.

A good read here from SF Gate: China-Tibet-Olympics: Medals for highest-pitched rhetoric?



Tibet protesters clash with Nepal police, 130 detained

KATHMANDU, April 18 (Reuters) - Maroon-robed monks and nuns with shaved heads scuffled with police at a pro-Tibet demonstration in Kathmandu on Friday, in the latest of a series of protests against China.

Authorities said they detained 96 men and 34 women.

"Resolve the crisis in Tibet through dialogue, not guns," a yellow-banner carried by demonstrators read. "China plays games with human rights," read another banner carried by some protesters wearing yellow sleeve-less jackets.

Others displayed a big portrait of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader.

"Stop killings in Tibet, we want peace," shouted a protester who gave his name as Karma. Four police later hauled him into a waiting van.

Nepal has seen almost daily anti-China protests, except for a short break during last week's national elections.

And in a story that gladdens my heart, Canada's indigenous population may be joining the ranks of Olympics protestors... at the 2010 Olympics (reminiscent of a line I remember -- I think from Gary Snyder -- "women, playing drums, flying over Tibet"):

Squamish band will likely protest at Games despite its support for Olympics

Squamish band members will likely protest at the 2010 Olympic Games despite the chief signing an agreement with the Vancouver Organizing Committee to support the event.

"There will be some level of protest, and I hope so, too," Squamish First Nation Chief Bill Williams said Thursday.

"We are going to be working with VANOC, but we have 3,500 members and not all want to be part of the Olympics. They want to talk about the children and the hardships in the community and they have the full right to do that."

Williams said natives across Canada have the highest ratings in all the worst quality-of-life scenarios.

"We have the highest rate of people incarcerated, the highest rate of children dropping out of schools, the highest rate of children in the child-care system and I could go on and on," Williams said.

"I myself as an aboriginal male have the shortest lifespan."

Williams was reacting to a warning in Ottawa yesterday from Phil Fontaine, Grand Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, that natives could protest at the 2010 Olympics to highlight their "desperate conditions."

In March 2007, three members of Vancouver's Native Warriors Society cut down the Olympic flag at Vancouver City Hall.

-snip-

Fontaine likened the lives of some native communities to those of Tibetans under Chinese rule.

"We find the Tibet situation compelling," he said. "The Tibetans are disenfranchised people. The situation here is similar, but it's different in this sense - the poverty we're talking about exists in Canada's own backyard.



Interesting, the graphics that come out of these movements. Here are a couple I ran across doing my search for pics for today's post:





What a strange, strange world in which we find ourselves today... truly the ends of the string of time have spiraled and now come so close to touching... the oldest of cultures and societies coming to face head-on the juggernauts of modern technocracy.

Which again, has to do with that Two-Row Wampum.

Oh yeah... before I forget... I've come up with what I can only describe as a Buddhist-based definition of the word "boycott"...

Boycott:

the sound of one hand not opening a wallet.

And you can quote me on that one.

Peace.
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“To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.”

~ Abraham Lincoln

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