R. Venkatesan Iyengar

10 May 2008, Saturday

MeriNews

The snow-clad icy heights of Mount Everest were treated to a rare spectacle on May 8, 2008. Five Chinese climbers, all dressed in red, unfurled the Chinese national flag, the Olympic flag and a flag, bearing the Beijing Olympic logo atop the world’s highest peak and shouted jubilantly, “Long live Tibet, long live Beijing!”

Literally translating the Chinese government’s dream of taking the torch onto the Himalayan heights, one of the climbers carried the Olympic torch in the last few steps to the top of Everest. Interestingly, the climber who took the Olympic torch to the summit happened to be a Tibetan woman, did not go unnoticed by the world.

David Morgan | Washington | May 9

Reuters - The FBI on Friday said an investigation into the sale of counterfeit Chinese computer components to the U.S. government has recovered about 3,500 bogus devices with a retail value of $3.5 million.

The criminal probe, code-named Operation Cisco Raider, came amid concerns that counterfeit network components could enable hackers to access secure U.S. government databases, according to sources with knowledge of the investigation.

But one U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the components discovered by the FBI are not believed to have made government computer systems more vulnerable.

Penang, Malaysia | May 8

BBC - A religious court in Malaysia has allowed a Muslim convert to leave the Islamic faith, in what is being hailed as a landmark ruling.

Penang's Sharia court ruled that Siti Fatimah Tan Abdullah was free to return to Buddhism, following the collapse of her marriage to a Muslim man.

War - with Tibet.

Check.

Famine - Drought, flood, and absence of Rice in Asia.

Check.

Pestilence - Outbreak of viral hand, foot and mouth disease hits Beijing to which children are susceptible.

Check.

Death - Cyclone hits Burma which will also bring on more of the above throughout the region.

Check.

Reporting by Nick Macfie; Editing by Ian Ransom | BEIJING | May 5, 2008

Reuters - A bus "burst into fire" in Shanghai killing at least three people during the rush hour on Monday, the official Xinhua news agency said.

The cause was not immediately known, Xinhua said, but it dropped reference to an "explosion" which it reported earlier in the day.

"Sources with the Shanghai Traffic Control Centre said that the bus suddenly burst into fire," Xinhua said. "In addition to the deaths, another three passengers suffered severe burns."

Rangoon | May 4

BBC - A tropical cyclone has killed at least 243 people in Burma and damaged thousands of buildings, according to state television.

Parts of the Irrawaddy region were hit particularly badly, with three out of four buildings reportedly blown down in one district.

May 3

BBC - Envoys of the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, are due to hold talks with officials in China, the Dalai Lama's office says.

Two Tibetan envoys are expected to arrive on Saturday for talks on ending the crisis in Tibetan areas of China.

This would be the first contact between the two sides since anti-China protests in Tibet in March turned violent.

Chinese state media has renewed its criticism of the Dalai Lama, who it blames for masterminding the protests.

This is a charge the Dalai Lama has always denied.

He and the Tibetan government-in-exile have been based in India since fleeing Tibet in 1959.

Darren Schuettler | Bangkok | May 2

Reuters - A proposed "OPEC-style" rice cartel in Southeast Asia will go nowhere due to the inability of governments to cooperate with each other and control output from their farmers, analysts and traders said on Friday.

Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej, a TV chef whose main contact with rice is cooking it, has revived the long-dormant idea of a price-setting body involving producers Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia.

The proposal, which threatens to add to global food supply fears amid record high rice prices, failed to gain traction seven years ago when it was first floated by Bangkok -- and most see little chance it will fare better this time around.

"I don't think it would work. All they can do is agree on a price, but they can't control the supply like oil," said Graham Catterwell, an economic analyst with 30 years of experience in Thailand and the region. "It's going nowhere."

more at the link

Paul Alexander | Manilla | May 2

AP - Asian countries sought Friday to tame the spiralling rice market, with Thailand proposing an OPEC-style cartel for exporters and the Philippines shoring up supplies while aiming to end its status as the world's largest importer.

The moves came as prices for rice and other food staples have been rising rapidly around the world, sparking violent protests in Haiti and Egypt along with concerns of unrest elsewhere amid profiteering and hoarding.

Manny Mogato | Manila | May 1

Reuters - Malaysia said on Thursday it will not abandon the peace process in the Philippines' troubled south, where Muslim rebels are fighting for autonomy, despite the withdrawal of its peacekeepers starting this month.

"We are not abandoning the peace process. We have provided the platform for the peaceful process to continue, and we are looking into maybe a new format as to hasten the peace process," General Abdul Aziz, head of the Malaysian defence forces, told reporters after talks with senior Philippine generals in Manila.

Unarmed Malaysian peacekeepers have been posted in the southern Philippine region of Mindanao since 2004 to help bring an end to nearly 40 years of conflict that has killed more than 120,000 people and displaced 2 million. see sidebar for background

April 30

ABC.net.au - China has marked the start of the 100-day countdown to the Beijing Olympics with songs, a mass run and even prayers, hoping to put behind it the tumultuous events of the past month which have taken much of the gloss off preparations.

Unlike run-ups to recent Olympics, Beijing's preparations have kept to plan and some stadiums and infrastructure have even been completed ahead of schedule.

The city has spent $US35 - $US40 billion on improving infrastructure, including a new airport terminal and subway lines, as well as $US2.1 billion to cover the cost of running the Games.

But the city's smooth preparations have been overshadowed 100 days out by the torch relay's troubled journey around the globe, with protesters targeting China's human rights record, in particular its policies on Tibet.

April 28

BBC - Forty-three people have died and 247 were injured after two passenger trains collided in eastern China, said state media agency Xinhua.

Ten carriages of one train reportedly toppled into a ditch in the pre-dawn crash at Zibo city, Shandong province.

A train travelling from Beijing to the eastern city of Qingdao reportedly derailed and hit the other, which was going from Yantai to Xuzhou.

The head of the Ministry of Railways, Liu Zhijun, is at the scene.

The crash happened at 0443 local time on Monday (2143 BST on Sunday), and rescue workers and local government leaders are at the scene.

Dharamshala, India | April 26

AFP - The Dalai Lama on Saturday welcomed China's offer of talks to help resolve unrest in his Tibetan homeland but warned that anything other than "serious discussions" would be meaningless.

In a move welcomed around the world, Chinese state media said Friday that government officials would meet soon with a representative of the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader.

"I have not received yet any detailed information (about the talks) but basically talk is good," the Dalai Lama said on his return to his northern Indian base of Dharamshala after a visit to the United States.

The Buddhist icon told reporters at the airport in Dharamshala he wanted "serious discussions about how to reduce Tibetan resentment and a thorough discussion" of the problems in Tibet.

Chinese investment in the continent could help fight poverty in ways western money never did

A shipment of weapons from China destined for Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe is an obvious cause for the west to denounce Beijing's involvement in Africa. But western business and political leaders have already been watching China's re-engagement with the continent with trepidation. China is setting up Confucius schools, laying out roads and railways, and stitching together deals to buy its commodities - oil, platinum, gold and minerals. Perhaps not since the first wave of independence during the late 1950s has there been such a buzz in Africa. And crisis meetings, conferences and summits are being hurriedly put together as the US, the EU and Japan scratch their collective heads over how to respond.

Here are the key sponsors of the Olympics targeted by Human Rights Watch:

The 12 highest-level corporate benefactors of the Beijing Games

Atos Origin
Coca-Cola
General Electric (GE)
Manulife (parent company of John Hancock)
Johnson & Johnson
Kodak
Lenovo
McDonald’s
Omega (Swatch Group)
Panasonic (Matsushita)
Samsung
Visa.

GE is in an especially prominent position as a TOP Sponsor and the parent company of NBC, which is the US broadcaster of the Games.

In advance of the Beijing Olympics, Human Rights Watch has documented an increase in human rights abuses directly related to preparations for the Games.

(huliq.com) Human Rights Watch . . . reminds us that China ‘remains a one-party state that does not hold national elections, has no independent judiciary, leads the world in executions, aggressively censors the Internet, bans independent trade unions, and represses minorities such as Tibetans, Uighurs, and Mongolians’. Social unrest arising from distress about housing, migration, political freedoms, poverty and other domestic issues is dealt with severely.

www.hrw.org/english/docs/2006/01/18/china12270.htm

Moreover, in asserting that a country’s domestic politics are its own affair alone, China aims to prevent the international community from scrutinising its interactions abroad. But in joining the global community, China must realise that this is not how the world works today. We have moved beyond the 1950s. Decades of marching against the Bomb, of anti-colonialist and anti-apartheid campaigning, a string of anti-poverty events linked up across the globe, the coming together of civil activists from all over the world to work on poverty, the emergence of an international climate-change coalition, the wide-spread revulsion of the American invasion of Iraq, the creation of international agreements on blood diamonds and corporate corruption – these and other global movements demonstrate that citizens and states increasingly see events, wherever they take place, as interconnected.

As I near the end of my chapter on China I feel a growing sense of relief. Attempting to meld ancient and medieval China, plus my own travels and adventures there has been taxing, to say the least. Add to this the secondary goal of describing the origins of the Silk Road and the proximate cause of the trade plus the beginnings of the war between steppe-based nomads and civilization (a war that didn't end, in reality, until the Manchu conquered China in the 16th century and then were promptly assimilated--not to mention Ivan the Terrible's destruction of the Kazan Khanate about the same time) based on thin, barely discernible and always strange ancient Chinese texts has been a task I'm afraid I was utterly unprepared for.

Debby Wu | Taipei | April 19

AP - The United States may post Marines at its unofficial embassy in Taiwan - a small but symbolically significant change in its delicate political relationship with the self-ruled island.

A State Department advertisement in the English-language Taipei Times newspaper called for contractors to construct quarters for Marine security guards at a new U.S. compound in the capital, Taipei.

Since the U.S. switched its recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979, there have been no marine guards at its Taipei facility - the American Institute in Taiwan - in keeping with its deliberately low political profile.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_genocide

Cultural genocide is a term used to describe the deliberate destruction of the cultural heritage of a people or nation for political, military, religious, ideological, ethnical, or racial reasons.

Relevance to International Law

As early as 1933, Raphael Lemkin proposed a cultural component to genocide, which he called "vandalism".[1] However, the drafters of the 1948 Genocide Convention dropped that concept from their consideration.[2] The legal definition of genocide was confined to acts of physical or biological destruction with intent to destroy a racial, religious, ethnic or national group as such.[3]

Published on openDemocracy (http://www.opendemocracy.net)

China and Tibet: the true path
By Wang Lixiong,
Created 2008-04-15 11:59

Wang Lixiong is a Beijing-based writer. He was the organiser of the twelve-point statement [0] on Tibet by twenty-nine Chinese intellectuals, released on 22 March 2008. This article was published in the Wall Street Journal [1]. It was translated from the Chinese by Perry Link [2] of Princeton University.

The recent troubles in Tibet are a replay of events that happened two decades ago. On 1 October 1987, Buddhist monks were demonstrating peacefully at the Barkor - the famous market street around the central cathedral in Lhasa [3] - when police began beating and arresting them. To ordinary Tibetans, who view monks as "treasures", the sight was intolerable - not only in itself, but because it stimulated unpleasant memories that Tibetan Buddhists had been harbouring for years (see Tubten Khétsun, Memories of Life in Lhasa Under Chinese Rule [4] [Columbia University Press, 2008]).

George over at Electric Politics has a post up addressed to me about Tibet. Give it a read. Suffice it to say, I think our major disagreement right now, although I will comment in detail later, is that I think Bush, if problems continue in Tibet through the Olympics, should sit out the opening ceremonies. But, more on Tibet, China and the US later, first give George a read.

Amanda Gentleman & Hari Kumar | New Delhi | April 17

NYT - The Olympic torch made a strange and lonely procession through central Delhi on Thursday, with the event so overshadowed by fears of the anti-Chinese protests that marred its appearances in other cities that no members of the public were allowed close enough to witness it.

The 70-odd Indian athletes and celebrities who carried the torch down Delhi’s widest avenue were outnumbered by thousands of watchful members of India’s security forces, who managed to stamp out any pomp and excitement, transforming the occasion into a tense security operation.

India has the world’s largest population of exiled Tibetans, about 100,000, who fled their homeland after China crushed an uprising there in the 1950s, and their presence had made Olympic organizers particularly anxious about this stage of the torch’s journey to Beijing, where the Games will begin on Aug. 8.

Andrew Jacobs | Beijing | April 17

NYT - The Chinese authorities have detained a high-profile Tibetan television reporter who is also a popular singer, suggesting that the government crackdown following the disturbances in and around Tibet has yet to run its course.

The reporter, Jamyang Kyi, an announcer at the state-run television station in Qinghai, a western province bordering Tibet, was escorted from her office on April 1 by plainclothes policemen in the city of Xining, according to colleagues and friends. The authorities also confiscated her computer and a list of contacts, they said.

Her husband, Lamao Jia, said he has had no word from his wife for more than a week and does not know where she is being held. “She is in serious trouble, I’m very worried for her safety,” he said in a telephone interview on Thursday. “I’m very sorry. I can’t say more.”

http://www.shambhala.org/community/sns/index.php?id=329

Apr 17, 2008

The Sakyong, Jamgon Mipham Rinpoche, is deeply concerned with the unfolding crisis affecting Tibetans and many others worldwide. He earlier asked that we dedicate our practice for the benefit of all those affected. In order to assist individual practitioners as well as all those leading practices at Shambhala Centres and groups, he would like each session to begin with the reading of the following short dedication. This dedication would follow the opening gongs and precede any opening chants.

Prior to sending this message to the Shambhala community the Sakyong asked the President of Shambhala to confer with the Office of Tibet, who confirmed that this dedication is in accordance with the wishes of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and carries his blessings.

Dharma Punk at MySpace posts additional updates on Tibet that are sometimes not posted here at The Agonist:

Dharma Punk's MySpace Blog