Boycott the Ceremony???How weak....We, the humane people of the world should Boycott the Olympics!!! Have we no power at all in this Life?Where are the people of conscience, with means and organizations to create new structures? Why can’t Bill Gates join other global billionaires and demonstrate what the real use of all their wealth is for, by putting together an alternative athletic gathering? Why not design one that is located and cost accessable to more than just very wealthy people? That way millions more could show up to enjoy one another’s spirit and the thrill of watching those amongst us, that are superlative in their athletic fields.I would prefer that this be the year that the Olympic games were halted, ceased forever, because athletes and fans stated we would not go to China. Think of all the money that China will make by people going to this Olympics. That money will go to further suppress, and repress freedom in Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan. And the weight of the State boot on freedom-seekers on the Mainland, would be even heavier. Think about what one’s presence in those stands actually means....in the long run. One can be assured that the fees paid for a flight ticket, accomodations, food and Games admission tickets, all contribute to finanacing a long chain of human and ecological abuses. One's conscience has got to know the end of that wave of your moment of excitement and jubilation. Is it worth that? Boycott of the China games would leave that government which will financially benefit immensely from the proceedings, standing there with the shame and rejection that they deserve. Because I know that I certainly reject their behaviour.
China has had an infamous last 12 months.
Their latest resurge of imperial repression in Tibet is ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE.
Look at the scandals this year with the thousands of deaths caused by their pet food ingredient, toxic tooth paste, toys and other items they have flooded the world markets with. Is that allright with you? Do you want to support that? If you ate at a restaurant, and found sawdust in your salad, would you go back? No, you’d boycott and refuse to support them again.
And those leaders like Germany's Angela Merkel, and groups such as the International Olympic Organizing Comm., the U.S.Olympic Committee, that ’kowtow’ to vicious, brutal regimes that murder and annihilate cultures and people, and rob them of their sovereignty, will be discredited and more quickly removed from their positions of decision making. For it's obvious people, that ethical values and moral integrity, matter less, than material gain and power to them.
In fact my friends, have you forgotten the scandals of the International Olympic Committee in 1998. See the link below, that show there's been a history of this within that organization. These are not the values, and the type of people that we want to support as we go forward as a species of Life with great responsibility for how this world functions. We’ve got to start somewhere.
Come on Humane Beloved Beings.....this is one fight that’s worth it. Let’s All Boycott the 2008 Olympic Games in China. And I encourage you to make your displeasure with China's actions in Tibet known to your elected representatives, and the press, every chance that you get.
We need to take back OUR WORLD....and this would be a start in that direction.
Kentke
China blasts Dalai Lama, Pelosi on Tibet
By CARA ANNA, Associated Press WriterSun Mar 23, 3:20 PM ET
China accused the Dalai Lama on Sunday of stoking Tibetan unrest to sabotage the Beijing Olympics and also berated House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, saying she is ignoring the truth about Tibet.
This month's violence in Tibet and neighboring provinces has turned into a public relations disaster for China ahead of the August Olympics, which it had been hoping to use to bolster its international image.
The Chinese government said through official media that formerly restive areas were under control and accused the Dalai Lama, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, of trying to harm China's image ahead of the summer games.
"The Dalai clique is scheming to take the Beijing Olympics hostage to force the Chinese government to make concessions to Tibet independence," said the People's Daily, the main mouthpiece of the Communist Party.
The Tibetan spiritual leader called the accusations against him "baseless," asserting that he supported China's hosting of the summer games.
"I always support (that) the Olympics should ... take place in Beijing ... so that more than 1 billion human beings, that means Chinese, they feel proud of it," he said Sunday in New Delhi, India.
Pelosi's visit to the Dalai Lama in Dharmsala, India, on Friday was the first by a major foreign official since the protests broke out. The Democratic leader said if people don't speak out against China's oppression in Tibet, "we have lost all moral authority to speak on behalf of human rights anywhere in the world."
China's official Xinhua New Agency published commentary Sunday accusing Pelosi of ignoring the violence caused by the Tibetan rioters.
"'Human rights police' like Pelosi are habitually bad tempered and ungenerous when it comes to China, refusing to check their facts and find out the truth of the case," it said.
"Her views are like so many other politicians and western media. Beneath the double standards lies their intention to serve the interest groups behind them, who want to contain or smear China," it said.
(If this were about the inner-cities of the U. S. these officials would be accused of "smokin' crack", but since we're talking about Beijing....I think they must be smoking opium!! - Kentke)
Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said Sunday that Pelosi condemns the Chinese government's crackdown in Tibet and calls on it "to begin a substantive dialogue and to allow journalists and independent monitors into Tibet to find out the truth."
China's reported death toll from the protests in the Tibetan capital Lhasa earlier this month is 22. Tibet's exiled government says 99 Tibetans have been killed. Xinhua said Sunday that 94 people had been injured in four counties and one city in Gansu province in riots on March 15-16. The report also said 19 rioters had surrendered in Gannan, a prefecture in Gansu, but it did not give any details.
Despite the media restrictions imposed by the Chinese government, some information was leaking out. An American backpacker who traveled to Chengdu, the capital of western Sichuan province, said he had seen soldiers or paramilitary troops in Deqen in northwest Yunnan province, which borders Tibet.
"What was an empty parking lot by the library was full of military trucks and people practicing with shields. I saw hundreds of soldiers," said the backpacker, who would give only his first name, Ralpha.
There have been no reported protests in Yunnan.
Monks at the Gedan Song Zan Monastery outside of Zhongdian in northwest Yunnan prayed Sunday for peace and an end to the recent unrest among ethnic Tibetan populations in China. The monks, who characterized themselves as both Tibetan and Chinese, said they felt that the upheaval and riots had helped no one.
The government has insisted that stability has returned to the troubled areas. State broadcaster China Central Television said Sunday that electricity and telecommunications had been restored in Lhasa.
The official lighting of the Olympic torch is set for Monday in Greece, and some 1,000 police will surround Ancient Olympia to keep away pro-Tibetan protesters from the ceremony. The torch is scheduled to travel through 20 countries before the Beijing Olympics open on Aug. 8.
One of Thailand's six torchbearers withdrew Sunday in protest. Environmentalist Narisa Chakrabongse said in an open letter that she decided against taking part in the relay to "send a strong message to China that the world community could not accept its actions."
Meanwhile, a group hosting the Dalai Lama's visit to Germany May 14-20 said Sunday that the trip was still scheduled to take place. The trip is to include meetings between the Dalai Lama and various German state leaders.
Click on this link to offer your opinion: Say What You Like:
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=26285
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1999/olympic.probe/overview/
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=25234
Below are two articles from the Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontieres)organization.
Authorities obstruct foreign journalists, step up controls and propaganda in Tibet
March 20, 2008
Reporters Without Borders is outraged by the methods being used by the Chinese authorities to obstruct foreign journalists trying to cover the situation in the Tibetan regions, and calls for the immediate and unconditional return of the foreign press to Tibet and to nearby provinces with a sizable Tibetan population.
At the same time, the jamming of international radio stations has been stepped up in Tibet and Internet café owners are being forced to increase the surveillance of clients, while government propaganda continues to rage at the "Dalai Lama’s clique" and foreign news media.
"The Chinese authorities are in the process of dealing with the problem of Tibetan demonstrations by means of force and silence," Reporters Without Borders said. "After ridding Tibet and the neighbouring regions of undesirable observers - foreign journalists and tourists - the security forces are crushing the protests without the international community being able to watch."
The press freedom organisation added: "For the repression in Tibet to end, the United Nations must demand the return of foreign journalists and the dispatch of independent observers."
Reporters Without Borders has recorded more than 40 serious violations of the rights of foreign journalists since 10 March. They have been prevented from working freely in the cities of Lhasa, Beijing, Chengdu and Xining, as well as in other places in the provinces of Gansu, Sichuan and Qinghai.
One of the cases cited by the Foreign Correspondents Club of China is that of a Finnish TV crew that was arrested on 17 March in Xiahe (in Gansu province), where there had been Tibetan demonstrations against the Chinese government. The TV crew was threatened and its video recordings were confiscated despite its protests. "You don’t want to know what will happen if you don’t show us the footage," one of the policemen told reporter Katri Makkonen.
Police forced journalists working for British television channel ITV to leave Xiahe the previous day after stopping them and taking a note of their names several times. They were also filmed by plain-clothes police. ITV correspondent John Ray said their Chinese driver was "terrified" when the police took down the details of his driver’s licence and vehicle licence number.
Police in Chengdu (the capital of Sichuan province) prevented journalists working for US television network ABC from filming in a Tibetan district on 16 March. The police told them to keep moving and made them leave in a taxi.
Correspondent Louisa Lim of US National Public Radio was turned back at several police checkpoints as she tried to travel to Xiahe. She was then followed for about 300 km by an unmarked police car until she arrived at an airport. At least two French reporters suffered the same fate in this region adjoining Tibet. Several reporters and photographers working for the Associated Press news agency were also prevented from working freely.
Spence Palermo, a US documentary filmmaker, was sequestered in his hotel room in Xiahe on 14 March to prevent him from seeing Tibetan protests. In an account he gave to CNN, he said several hundred soldiers were sent to Labrang monastery, where he had just spent several days. BBC reporters were denied access to the village of Taktser in Qinghai province, where the Dalai Lama comes from. The village is surrounded by police. Journalists were also prevented from freely covering a small demonstration held in Beijing University on 17 March by Tibetan students, who lit candles. Dozens of the demonstrators were arrested.
In Tibet, Internet café owners have been ordered to prevent all "state secrets," including photos and videos, from being sent abroad. At the same time, the telephone service is still subject to extensive disruptions. Despite the blackout, some pictures of the recent protests continue to circulate and Reporters Without Borders was able to obtain footage of Tibetans who were shot dead in Lhasa and Amdo.
The Tibetan press is relaying violent statements by officials, including comments today by Zhang Qingli, the first secretary of the Communist Party of Tibet, talking of a "death struggle [with] the Dalai clique" and describing the Dalai Lama as "a wolf wrapped in a habit." Raidi, another Tibetan Communist Party leader, described the foreign press coverage as "outrageous and ill-motivated."
While state-owned Lhasa TV broadcast footage of the "agitators" behind the protests, the official Xinhua news agency reported that more than 100 demonstrators, described as rioters, had surrendered to the authorities. A Shanghai journalist told Reporters Without Borders that the Chinese media have been told by the Propaganda Department to use only Xinhua’s reports about the situation in Tibet.
Jamming of international radio stations has increased since the start of the protests. The director of Voice of Tibet, which is based in India, told Reporters Without Borders that the Chinese authorities have stepped up their use of small jamming stations located near cities to prevent the population from hearing of its programmes.
As Reporters Without Borders noted in Tibet in 2006, the authorities broadcast Chinese-language programmes and low-pitched noises, such as drumming and aeroplane noises, on the same frequencies as the Tibetan stations based abroad. Voice of Tibet has increased its daily broadcasts by two hours.
Jamming station in Lhasa
Jamming station near Lhasa
When the International Olympic Committee assigned the 2008 summer Olympic Games to Beijing on 13 July 2001, the Chinese police were intensifying a crackdown on subversive elements, including Internet users and journalists. Six years later, nothing has changed. But despite the absence of any significant progress in free speech and human rights in China, the IOC’s members continue to turn a deaf ear to repeated appeals from international organisations that condemn the scale of the repression.
From the outset, Reporters Without Borders has been opposed to holding the Olympic Games to Beijing. Now, a year before the opening ceremony, it is clear the Chinese government still sees the media and Internet as strategic sectors that cannot be left to the “hostile forces” denounced by President Hu Jintao. The departments of propaganda and public security and the cyber-police, all conservative bastions, implement censorship with scrupulous care.
Around 30 journalists and 50 Internet users are currently detained in China. Some of them since the 1980s. The government blocks access to thousands for news websites. It jams the Chinese, Tibetan and Uyghur-language programmes of 10 international radio stations. After focusing on websites and chat forums, the authorities are now concentrating on blogs and video-sharing sites. China’s blog services incorporate all the filters that block keywords considered “subversive” by the censors. The law severely punishes “divulging state secrets,” “subversion” and “defamation” - charges that are regularly used to silence the most outspoken critics. Although the rules for foreign journalists have been relaxed, it is still impossible for the international media to employ Chinese journalists or to move about freely in Tibet and Xinjiang.
Promises never keptThe Chinese authorities promised the IOC and international community concrete improvements in human rights in order to win the 2008 Olympics for Beijing. But they changed their tone after getting what they wanted. For example, then deputy Prime Minister Li Lanqing said, four days after the IOC vote in 2001, that “China’s Olympic victory” should encourage the country to maintain its “healthy life” by combatting such problems as the Falungong spiritual movement, which had “stirred up violent crime.” Several thousands of Falungong followers have been jailed since the movement was banned and at least 100 have died in detention.
A short while later, it was the turn of then Vice-President Hu Jintao (now president) to argue that after the Beijing “triumph,” it was “crucial to fight without equivocation against the separatist forces orchestrated by the Dalai Lama and the world’s anti-China forces.” In the west of the country, where there is a sizeable Muslim minority, the authorities in Xinjiang province executed Uyghurs for “separatism.”
Finally, the police and judicial authorities were given orders to pursue the “Hit Hard” campaign against crime. Every year, several thousand Chinese are executed in public, often in stadiums, by means of a bullet in the back of the neck or lethal injection.
The IOC cannot remain silent any longerThe governments of democratic countries that are still hoping “the Olympic Games will help to improve the human right situation in China” are mistaken. The “constructive dialogue” advocated by some is leading nowhere.
The repression of journalists and cyber-dissidents has not let up in the past seven years. Everything suggests that it is going to continue. The IOC has given the Chinese government a job that it is going to carry out with zeal - the job of “organising secure Olympic Games.” For the government, this means more arrests of dissidents, more censorship and no social protest movements.
This is not about spoiling the party or taking the Olympic Games hostage. And anyway, it is China that has taken the games and the Olympic spirit hostage, with the IOC’s complicity. The world sports movement must now speak out and call for the Chinese people to be allowed to enjoy the freedoms it has been demanding for years. The Olympic Charter says sport must be “at the service of the harmonious development of man, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.” Athletes and sports lovers have the right and the duty to defend this charter. The IOC should show some courage and should do everything possible to ensure that Olympism’s values are not freely flouted by the Chinese organisers.
The IOC is currently in the best position to demand concrete goodwill gestures from the Chinese government. It should demand a significant improvement in the human rights situation before the opening ceremony on 8 August 2008. And the IOC should not bow to the commercial interests of all those who regard China as a vital market in which nothing should be allowed to prevent them from doing business.
No Olympic Games without democracy!Reporters Without Borders calls on the National Olympic Committees, the IOC, athletes, sports lovers and human rights activists to publicly express their concern about the countless violations of every fundamental freedom in China.
After Beijing was awarded the games in 2001, Harry Wu, a Chinese dissident who spent 19 years in prisons in China, said he deeply regretted that China did not have “the honour and satisfaction of hosting the Olympic Games in a democratic country.”
Russian dissident Vladimir Bukovsky’s outraged comment about the holding of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow - “Politically, a grave error; humanly, a despicable act; legally, a crime” - remains valid for 2008.
Mendocino, California in Spring
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