does it really matter what Americans think? People were protesting long before it had its three mile run in the US. ;)

my first thought.

Bush should go. He'd find himself amongst kindred spirits.

I did inhale.

Lama, what Tibet needed was a great guerilla leader, not a great holy man.

Ian wrote: Much as I respect the Dalai Lama, what Tibet needed was a great guerilla leader, not a great holy man.

My comment: Um, and where did that work out well recently for a great guerilla leader against China? Surely not Vietnam.

__________________________________________
See the new Agonist Topic Section on Tibet

and not just another tinpot politico.

not even the profit motive line persuades beyond the financial subservience aspect of the political subservience. amoral hell, it's horrible horrible horrible. the point is it's just absurd to envision a US president's not attending the opening ceremonies having any real meaning or substantial impact given the reality. put yourself in the rooted out rioters shoes.

there are already enough heads of state from other countries that are not attending the Opening Ceremonies. There is no need therefore, for the U.S. to, hypocritically, drive home the point that the Beijing Olympics are not about "One World, One Dream".

A number of other international leaders have decided to skip the opening ceremony, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves and Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip.

House passes Chinese crackdown resolution

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a resolution Wednesday calling on China to end its crackdown on Tibet and release Tibetans imprisoned for "nonviolent" demonstrations.
art.torch.protests.ap.jpg

Tibetan monks protest in San Francisco along the Olympic torch's 85,000-mile route toward Beijing.

The vote was 413-1. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, who recently dropped out of the presidential race, was the lone congressman voting against it.

much more

That was excellently put.

We can boycott the opening ceremonies, but China won't care.

A boycott of the Olympics would deal a great blow to their sense of pride and honor which is a cherished value of Chinese culture.

What 'leverage' on the repression do you believe such caring would have?

and I don't know the answer. It might anger the Chinese enough that it will make matters worse for the Tibetans. But then again, no boycott and torch-relay fiasco would not have improved the Tibetan's situation either. It's difficult to 'read' the Chinese. What might soften their stance is anybody's guess. IMHO :)

all good points.

it's just we aren't who we're supposed to be as it is, and we have a difficult time even relating to ourselves at home. -i mean we're as far away from my our right mind as we could be.

MSN & Yahoo bugs me when i think of 'us' and china. it just sticks in my craw. on alternet i read a glowing article about rachel maddow joining MSNBC as a new progressive star and she speaks of how right the network is for her and what a counterpoint to Foxnews MSNBC is, and to me, it's all MS BS... and then i read about our slavery here, albeit unknown and hidden, in counterpunch:

http://www.counterpunch.org/schulte04102008.html

Disposable Workers in the U. S. in Economy
Slavery in the Fields

By ELIZABETH SCHULTE

José Vasquez couldn't stand any more.

On November 19, he and two other workers escaped through a ventilation hatch in the box trailer where they had been locked up for the night. For more than a year, the three immigrants and a dozen more were forced to work for the Navarrete family picking tomatoes in Immokalee, Fla.

They were made to pay $20 for "housing"--a locked van where they had to defecate in the corner--as well as $50 a week for food and $5 to take a shower in the backyard with a garden hose.

Earning just 45 cents for every bucket of tomatoes they picked in the blistering Florida sun for some 12 hours a day, the men were in perpetual debt to their captors. And the fear of deportation made defying the men who held them seem even more impossible. Any identifying documents they once had were locked away.

When investigators finally arrived a week later, they found the other workers bloody, bruised and beaten--a regular state of affairs, according to the workers. Mariano Lucas, one of the workers who escaped, told investigators he tried to take a day off a few weeks previously, and was beaten until he bled. One man had badly swollen wrists from being chained with his hands behind his back every night.

There's only one way to describe this abuse, according to Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney Doug Molloy: "Slavery, plain and simple."

No one disputes that slavery--abolished 150 years ago in the U.S.--is one of the ugliest chapters in American history. Yet just under the surface of the modern-day image of the U.S. as a beacon of democracy is an ugly secret: that slavery still thrives for thousands of workers.

Under the modern slave system, workers aren't bought and sold on the open market, as they once were in the U.S. South--but rather they were smuggled into the country and forced to work, all just beneath the radar of government officials and the public.

Last year's incident at Immokalee marked the seventh farm labor operation to be prosecuted for servitude in Florida--involving well over 1,000 workers and more than a dozen employers--in the past decade.

and i think.... well, i think we're not who we're supposed to be.

i don't know of many countries that are.

maybe canada...

Rich.

it was an analogy...

The idea that we are in charge of the world and should discipline those who are less enlightened is a large part of what enables the military-industrial complex to run this country. I hope you don't think that they give a damn about the plight of the Tibetans. They just need to have dragons to slay so they can keep us in a permanent war economy. Before 9-11 the US military was doing its level best to start something with the Chinese with its surveillance flights along their coast. They think far enough ahead to have several demons in waiting (the Russians, the Iranians, the Chinese, the Venezuelans, the drug mafia) so they can bring one out for display whenever public support for weapons' spending starts to sag.

The struggle between the Han Chinese and the Tibetans has gone on for a lot longer than the US has existed and neither side can claim to have consistently had the moral high ground. It is possible that, at some point, international public opinion could have an effect on the current deplorable treatment of the Tibetans, but it is highly unlikely as long as our provocative military behavior empowers the more authoritarian segments of the Chinese ruling class.

And it's not just our military behavior that is provocative. Our insistance on maintaining our consumerist economy and our high oil consumption make it difficult for those in China who would advocate following a more sustainable path.

If this continues more resource wars are inevitable. This inevitability is why any "serious" figure in either US political party supports the continuation of our overseas system of military bases. It should be obvious that any "serious" Chinese politician would have to support their increases in military spending.

It is up to us to stop this. (As individuals, as groups, whatever. But it is unrealistic to expect the government to take the lead.) We have to abandon the economic status quo and come up with something new. We need to create an environment in which people are confident enough that they won't be left hungry and homeless if the current system isn't maintained to be willing to try alternatives.

you bet. hence the long critical rant. our paternalistic attitude sucks. i agreed. seems you do as well.

we're not the center of the universe and we don't own the world.
you bet.

http://zuma.vip.warped.com/cotu.htm

you weren't unclear, not atall. good piece.
central point. can't be overstated or repeated too much.