Investigating allegations that Tibet riots had been staged

IMPORTANT UPDATE: The live blogger of Lhasa has responded -- point by point -- to the questions raised in this post. I have reposted the bulk of the following post side-by-side with Kadfly's response here.

Were the riots in Lhasa staged by Chinese soldiers? An investigation in two parts.*

PART II: THE MYSTERY DEEPENS (updated Wed April 2, 2008)

Anti-PRC sources have made at least two other claims backed by evidence. They suggest that apparent acts of violence in Lhasa had been faked by Chinese government agents or soldiers guised as Tibetans.

As my regular readers know, I have blogged the Tibet crisis since it broke. To me, perhaps the most perplexing angle was that which was provided by the traveler-blogger Kadfly. Today some of my earliest questions -- stemming from when I first read Kadfly's blog reports -- persist. Today, 1 photo and 1 video that had originally been posted by blogger Kadfly on March 14 are central to two claims -- made by anti-PRC groups -- that roting in Lhasa was "staged" by China.

Those who claim rioting in Lhasa was staged may not be aware of the fact that it was Kadfly who first posted the evidence. This post may well be the first published description of the connection.

I feel a kind of personal affinity with Kadfly. Kadfly found himself in a similar position to myself when I blogged the Thailand coup on the streets of Bangkok around midnight on September 19 2006. Like myself, he became "a citizen journalist" overnight. Kadfly was one of a handful of Western witnesses to the protests in Lhasa. He was its only live-blogger. I am proud to have been among the first bloggers to link to Kadfly (here). On March 19 Kadfly reflected on the situation in Tibet, blogging from Kathmandu:

Tibet, as I said above, is a complex issue: as I have seen in these protests, it is not simply a matter of the big, bad Chinese government versus the Tibetan underdogs, which is unfortunately how the media has tried to shape this issue. Why we (those in the 'newsroom' in the hotel on the 14th and 15th) decided to upload the video of the motorcyclist being attacked is because we had seen from the news that this was exactly what was not being reported. We suspected this might be the case from the very start when our photos began to be picked up by the media: my photo of the Chinese soldiers in the shield formation and the Tibetan man burning the Chinese flag might be very powerful, but do they really tell the story of what happened that day any better than a bus of civilians being stoned and a man lying on the pavement after having been brutally attacked? No, but these other photos would have taken too much effort to explain to an audience that has become used to the narrative of a bad China and a good Tibet. So yeah, there was never a hidden agenda. I don't think anyone in that room had particularly strong feelings on the issue: all we wanted to do was get the truth out, no matter how complex and how hard it was for people to swallow.

In the portions of the text which I highlighted above, Kadfly refers to two reports -- a video and a photograph of a burning flag -- that anti-PRC groups now cite as evidence of a Chinese plot to fake the rioting. Let's examine these claims and take a look at the evidence.

EXHIBIT A: The Biker Video

First, the video of the biker. For several days, this video was the only visual evidence available -- at least to me -- that the protests may have involved brutal attacks by Tibetans against Han Chinese in Lhasa. On Friday March 14 Kadfly had blogged:

I want to make one thing clear because all of the major news outlets are ignoring a very important fact. Yes, the Chinese government bears a huge amount of blame for this situation. But the protests yesterday were NOT peaceful. The original protests from the past few days may have been, but all of the eyewitnesses in this room agree the protesters yesterday went from attacking Chinese police to attacking innocent people very, very quickly. They appeared to target Muslim and Han Chinese individuals and businesses first but many Tibetans were also caught in the crossfire.

This video from Michael from Italy is an excellent example.

Kadfly had made a bold and -- at the time -- controversial assertion. It's a post that has since been cited by the Chinese group attacking CNN (see above); meaning Kadfly now figures prominently in Chinese attacks on the Western media. This article in China Daily concerning media bias in the West quotes Kadfly. Judging by a recent New York Times report, this campaign may be considered integral to the recent propaganda initiative of the Beijing government.

Kadfly's observations have since been collaborated by various tourists, the journalist for the Economist magazine, and others. But that was by no means the case when Kadfly posted his opinion. For several days, the outside world was in the dark about what was really going on inside Tibet. Upon first eading Kadfly's post, I thought it a pity that Kadfly had not provided further elaboration as to the specifics of what "the eyewitnesses in this room" had seen -- details.

Kadfly would later write (see above for the context):

. . . these other photos would have taken too much effort to explain to an audience that has become used to the narrative of a bad China and a good Tibet.

I was sorry to read that Kadfly felt this way -- I say this as a blogger who was simply trying to make sense of the Tibet situation at the time. When it came to Kadfly's assertion about ethnic violence, apart from the motorcycle video, he offered no other descriptions of actual attacks on Han Chinese or Muslims. This omission made it difficult for critically-minded overseas readers to fully accept his opinion about what was happening -- especially at a time when there were no reliable collaborating sources.

However, Kadfly's blogging opened our eyes, and his photographs are remarkable. Although Kadfly did us a great service by blogging the unrest in Tibet, contrary to what some sources in the Chinese blogosphere now claim, Kadfly's blog does not constitute evidence that Western news organizations lied about what happened in Tibet.

What about the video Kadfly supplied? In the video someone bashes a helmet-wearing motorcycle driver in the head with rocks. Kadfly had written:

This motorcyclist, who I assume the protesters identified as Han Chinese, was simply riding up Beijing Street when the video took place. He was not army, not police, not doing anything other than riding his motorcycle.

I watched the video myself, but this question nagged me: How had the attackers identified the man as Chinese? What was happening in Tibet? On the basis of this one video, and Kadfly's otherwise unsupported opinion, I could not decide. Neither could any other responsible member of the media.

Who was the motorcycle rider? Last week, someone representing the pro-Tibetan group "No Olympics" sent me a YouTube expose concerning the video of the motorcycle rider. The the expose video asserts that the man in the video was not easily identifiable as Han Chinese; that he did not seem to have been hurt (he was wearing a helmet, and no rocks appeared to have been aimed at his body); that people in Tibet are seldom seen wearing helmets; that large stones were conveniently available on pavement beside the bike; and that the driver-victim appears unafraid of his attackers (at the end of the video he walks away). Here is the video expose:



I don't think this expose video settles the question. We need to look into the circumstances surrounding the filming of the video. The video warrants professional analysis. And we need to hear what the Italian named Michael has to say.

EXHIBIT B: The man burning the Chinese flag

The second claim that some rioting in Lhasa was staged is presented by the fervently anti-PRC Epoch Times. The claim is based on what Kadfly calls his "very powerful" photo of "the Tibetan man burning the Chinese flag."

Kadfly has since removed this particular photo from his website. Why? He said he would be removing some photos so that the Tibetans pictured in the photos could not later be identified. On 19 March he blogged:

First, as Joakim and others have pointed out, a lot of the photos from the 'Lhasa Burning' post show people's faces and may lead to their arrest. As such, I will be taking these particular photos down - if you think other photos should be taken down for similar reasons please make a comment so that I know about it.

I will admit that I struggled with this decision for a little while: many of those shown in the photos were acting little better than violent thugs when the pictures were taken (e.g. in the flag burning photo one of those shown began throwing rocks at others in the hotel moments after I took the picture) so I'm unsure if they actually deserve any protection from the authorities. That said, I will keep those particular photos off my blog for now.

On March 16, I cut, saved, and posted this particular photo -- the one that has been called into question by the Epoch Times -- to illustrate the post at Jotman.com entitled "Kadfly's live-blogging of the Tibet crisis." To the left is the photo which was posted on Kadfly's blog, but which Kadfly has since removed (I modified the brightness of Kadfly's photo for effect).

Now, according to a March 29 article published in the Epoch Times, the photo at right

. . . is a copy of the picture of the same scene in Lhasa but with the man with the knife now missing, which was distributed after the man's identity was revealed at a rally in Darmasala.

The identity of the man with the knife is said to be that of a Chinese soldier. Not mentioned in the Epoch Times article is a more recent development: at a news conference on March 29, none other than the Dalai Lama appears to refer to the sword-wielding man in the photo; Dalai Lama also said troops disguised as monks had incited the violence. According to a recent news report:

In his most serious allegation against Beijing since unrest gripped Lhasa and other places this month, the Dalai Lama said that China had disguised its troops as monks to give the impression that Tibetans were instigating the riots.

"In one picture we see a (monk) holding a sword, but it is not a traditional Tibetan sword. We know that a few hundred soldiers have been dressed like monks," said the Dalai Lama, who has been living in India since fleeing his homeland in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule.

Is the Dalai Lama referring to the same sword photo mentioned in the Epoch Times article? If so, the photograph has been is elevated to a level of international controversy, with the China issuing an official denial of the allegation.

Evidence is accumulating that the Chinese regime orchestrated violence in Lhasa in order to discredit the peaceful protests of Buddhist monks.

According to the Dalai Lama's Chinese translator, Ngawang Nyendra, a witness reported that a Chinese policeman in Lhasa disguised himself as a Tibetan and joined the protesters holding a knife in his hand. This witness also recognized the man from BBC news footage and news photos provided by China.** (see Update)

A Chinese woman from Thailand (who prefers that her name not be used) was studying in Lhasa when the protests broke out in March. As one of her friends is a policeman, she visited him at the local police station quite often and got to know other policemen there.

After the protests on March 14, she and other foreigners were sent to the police station where she saw a man with a knife in his hand walking in with some arrested Tibetans. The man later took off the Tibetan-style clothes and put on a police uniform.

This woman was sent out of Lhasa with other foreigners the next day. When she arrived in India via Nepal, she recognized the policeman she had seen in Tibetan garb from BBC TV news and photos that the Chinese embassy had provided to the media.

The Epoch Times article continues:

On Xinhua and other Chinese -language Web sites friendly to the regime, after the rally at which the witness spoke, the policeman in disguise had disappeared from photos taken at the same scene in which he had previously been visible. Recently, the original man-with-the-knife photo has returned to these Web sites.

Ngawang Nyendra said, "This photo with this man in it was sent by the Chinese embassy to BBC and Radio Free Asia. The other photo was sent out later. They are exactly the same except the man has disappeared from the second photo.

"From the TV news footage, you can see this man attempting to stab other people with a knife. But in later shots you can't find this person any more. They were acting. After people raised questions about these shots, this footage never appeared on TV again."

Kadfly said he took photo in question. So he must have seen this scene unfold. We need to ask Kadfly to provide us with context behind the photo -- his input here could be invaluable.

The article also suggests that the China may have a history of staging riots in Tibet.

Final Thoughts

Although the Epoch Times article gave me a lot to think about, neither its account nor the "expose" of the motorcycle rider video had me convinced the rioting was staged. I have continued to remind myself that suspicious things sometimes have innocuous explanations -- as we saw with regards to the photograph of the soldiers carrying monk robes. But these other allegations have raised the nagging doubts to a level of urgency. And the more recent statement by the Dalai Lama convinces me that we must get to the bottom of this deepening mystery.

A motorcyclist wearing a helmet gets attacked and then appears to stick around: is this evidence of a staged attack? I would like to hear what "Michael from Italy" has to say about it. What about the man holding the sword? Kadfly might describe for us the situation -- as he remembers events unfolding -- when he took the photo. Most importantly -- concerning the fact that a swordsman disappears and reappears in the photograph -- we need to examine allegations of photo-doctoring by the PRC, first brought to light by the Epoch Times. The more recent allegations brought to the attention of the world by the Dalai Lama also merit further examination.

Questions have been raised about the rioters of Lhasa. The evidence presented here demands further inquiry.

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* Click here for PART I: CASE CLOSED
Update 1 (April 4, 2008): I just came across a newspaper article in the Christian Science Monitor by a reporter who spoke with Kadfly, someone named Paul, and a European (Michael the Italian?) at the time of the unrest.
** Update #2: ESWN blogger examines some of the evidence presented in the above post. He says, effectively, that the Epoch Times report is untrue because there is no record of the TV footage mentioned by the Dalai Lama's translator on YouTube: "If there was TV news footage, it would have been posted on YouTube or some other video-sharing site."
Update 3: Kadfly has posted some new photos and comments on the photo in question. "The "man-with-the-knife" is most definitely in the original" he writes.
Update 4 (April 17): Kadfly, now blogging from India, has just posted a detailed and extremely informative reply to questions raised in this post on his blog.
Update 5 (April 18): I have reposted the bulk of the following post side-by-side with Kadfly's response here.

China urban legend gets debunked

Were the riots in Lhasa staged by Chinese soldiers? An investigation in two parts (click here for PART II: THE MYSTERY DEEPENS)

PART I: CASE CLOSED

I first learned about this interesting photo yesterday via a comment by nan heyan grou chuan. He writes:

Those Chinese bloggers are stupid and worthless, let’s see them try to address this photo:

Now, if you go to this China news website you find a very different interpretation, summarized in a comment by George at Global Voices:

The first picture in the link shows that the tibet monks were changing their clothes to Chinese Public Security force uniform to fake suppression. This shows their intent to cheat the world. Their monk robes were still in hand. Their standing formation, monk’s haircut style (shaved) and white socks all betray their real identity. . . . Just like their master liar Dalai, they are trying to spreading lies about China in such a shameless way.

So who correctly interpreted the photo? The anti-PRC blogger or the PRC defender? The answer, it turns out, is neither. As EastSouthWestNorth blogger explains,* it's an old photo:

The photo had appeared first on the back cover of the 2003 Annual Report of the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy (see link). In all likelihood, this has more to do with some movie filmed in Tibet that required a cast of monks. Since real Tibetan monks will not appear as set extras, the next bet is to ask for the Chinese People's Liberation Army to lend its soldiers.

It would be interesting if we could identify where this old 2003 photo first reemerged.

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UPDATE: See this this post concerning a statement made by the Dalai Lama at a recent news conference.
Thank you to Anonymous who debunked this urban legend. This post was edited several hours after I first posted it to reflect input regarding the first photo from this reader in the old Comments for this post. (This post was edited a second time Tuesday morning, to clarify some points that had some readers confused. On April 2 I divided this post into two separate posts, this being the first of two segments).

What China should learn from Thailand

A Jotman reader commented on this blog:

The Western media claims to be fighting for human rights in China. Assuming it sees human beings in China, then listen to what they really want! Attacking their government which is trying to restore order after a deadly riot is obviously not what they want. So, whose rights are you fighting for?*

How is order being restored in Tibet and Southwestern China? That is the question. That is something not mainly Westerners, but especially Chinese people should be concerned about. A few years ago in Thailand, the Thai governments' efforts to "restore order" in the South resulted in the preventable asphyxiation of 70 Muslims (the 'Tak Bai incident').** Now Thailand has a raging insurgency on its hands in the Southern Provinces. And the Thais don't seem to know what to do about it.

One problem facing Thailand is that Muslims in the South of Thailand appear to have no widely respected leader who the Thai government could negotiate with. That is, even supposing Thailand got really serious about solving the Southern Thailand crisis, it still has no Dalai Lama figure who can claim to speak for the members of its most unhappy ethnic minority. China, on the other hand, is fortunate. In the personage of the Dalai Lama, China knows an influential moderate it could negotiate with.

Yet, the Dalai Lama is getting quite old, and so time for a peaceful resolution to Tibet situation may be running out for Beijing. And as the Thais are learning, once an insurgency begins -- like a wildfire -- it may be unstoppable. Future historians are unlikely to favorably judge the present leadership of China should they continue to snub the Dalai Lama. They overlook a golden opportunity to preserve the peace at China's peril.
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* I have edited the comment for clarity.
** At Tak Bai "those arrested were thrown by soldiers into trucks to be taken to an army camp in the next province of Pattani. The prisoners were stacked five or six deep in the trucks, and by the time the trucks reached their destination three hours later, many had suffocated to death." (Source: Wiki)

Photographer of the Khmer Rouge featured in The Killing Fields has died

Dith Pran, Cambodia's most famous and heroic photographer depicted in the 1984 movie The Killing Fields, has died. The NY Times reports:

Mr. Dith saw his country descend into a living hell as he scraped and scrambled to survive the barbarous revolutionary regime of the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979, when as many as two million Cambodians — a third of the population — were killed, experts estimate. Mr. Dith survived through nimbleness, guile and sheer desperation. . .

He had been a journalistic partner of Mr. Schanberg, a Times correspondent assigned to Southeast Asia. . .

A dramatic moment, both in reality and cinematically, came when Mr. Dith saved Mr. Schanberg and other Western journalists from certain execution by talking fast and persuasively to the trigger-happy soldiers who had captured them.

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More about The Killing Fields film at Wikipedia

Tibet and Chinese Nationalism

Beijing has chosen to stoke the fires of Chinese nationalism. The reaction was easy to detect in the Chinese blogosphere (see here). The Communist Party's propaganda initiative is described in an IHT article by Jim Yardley. Yardley expounds on the largest wave of nationalistic sentiment to hit China since the anti-Japanese protests of 2005. Yardley writes:

Playing to national pride, and national insecurities, the party has used censorship and propaganda to position itself as defender of the motherland - and block any examination of Tibetan grievances or its own performance in the crisis.

But the heavy emphasis on nationalism is not without risks. With less than five months before the opening of the Olympic Games, China's sharp criticism of the foreign press comes precisely when it wants to present a welcoming impression to the outside world. Instead, Chinese citizens, including many overseas, are posting thousands of angry messages on Web sites and making crank calls to some foreign media offices in Beijing.

The Chinese state media have also inundated the public with so many reports from Lhasa about the suffering of Han Chinese merchants and the brutal deaths of Chinese victims - with no coverage of Tibetan grievances - that critics have accused the government of "fanning racial hatred." Past nationalist upsurges have focused on outsiders, especially the Japanese, but Tibet is part of China, so the effect is to sharpen domestic ethnic tensions. . . .

Last week, a group of prominent Chinese intellectuals offered a rare contrarian voice by issuing a petition that called on the government to allow Tibetans to express their grievances and to respect freedom of religion and freedom of speech.

Liu, who helped draft the petition, said the government's attacks on the Dalai Lama and its censorship of state media coverage are the same strategy it used during the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations, when it jailed pro-democracy leaders as "black hands" and did not televise footage of soldiers firing on students.

"You can see the propaganda machine operating in full gear," Liu said. "That shows the true nature of the government. It hasn't changed at all."

Scholars often describe nationalism as the state religion in China now that the Communist Party has shrugged off socialist ideology and made economic development the country's priority. Dibyesh Anand, a Tibet specialist, said modern Chinese nationalism can be traced to Sun Yat-sen, the Chinese revolutionary who described the country's main ethnic groups - the Han, Manchu, Hui, Mongolian and Tibetan peoples - as the "five fingers" of China.

Today, Han Chinese constitute more than 92 percent of the population, but without one of those five fingers, China's leaders do not consider the country whole.

"The Communist Party has used nationalism as an ideology to keep China together," said Anand, a reader in international relations at Westminster University in London. He said many Chinese regard the Tibetan protests "as an attack on their core identity."

"It's not only an attack on the state, but an attack on what it means to be Chinese," he said. "Even if minorities don't feel like part of China, they are part of China's nationality."

This logic helps explain why Chinese nationalist sentiment has been inflamed by perceived Western sympathy for the Tibetan protests - an anger that has mostly focused on the foreign media.

Commentators in Chinese state media have said foreign news reporting has been more sympathetic to Tibetans in Lhasa than to the Chinese who lost their lives and property in the riots. Meanwhile, Chinese from around the world were infuriated when several Western news organizations mislabeled photographs of the police beating pro-Tibet protesters in Nepal as being from China.

Last week, Qin Gang, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, jousted with foreign reporters about their coverage, describing the Tibet coverage as a "textbook of bad examples" even as the government refused to allow journalists free access to Tibet or other restive regions in western China to investigate the crackdown.

There are signs that the government does not want to push nationalist anger too far. On Friday, in a shift, China Daily, the official English-language newspaper, ran a front-page story under the headline, "Tibetans also among riot victims."

Most Chinese people know little about Tibet's different interpretation of its history and regard Tibetans as having been granted special subsidies and benefits from the government to lift their economy. For many Chinese, the protests come across as ingratitude after years in which China has built roads, a high-altitude railroad and other infrastructure for Tibet.

The whole article -- one of the best I have read since this crisis broke -- is well worth reading. As I have blogged, the reaction on the part of Chinese bloggers to selected images in the Western media concerning Tibet ought to be seen within the context of the Party's overall propaganda initiative. The appeal to Chinese nationalism may account for its power.

How the Chinese view Tibet

Fallows blogs from Beijing:

Hype aside, my impression is that it is hard for people outside China to appreciate how strong and unified is the view on "the Chinese street" about the rights and wrongs of the Tibetan tragedy. From this internal perspective, Tibet has always, obviously, and indisputably been an integral part of China. And just as obviously and indisputably, through 50-plus years the people of Han China have sacrificed time, treasure, and manpower to bring Tibetans out of the feudal age and into modernity. And the thanks they get is.... this destructive outburst?

A history of fake rioters in Tibet?

The e Epoch Times referred to in this post, goes on to describe testimony that Chinese authorities had faked rioting in the past:

In his "Events in Lhasa March 2-10, 1989", the Chinese journalist Tang Daxian revealed how the CCP orchestrated violence as part of a plan to suppress the 1989 protests in Tibet.

According to the article, "On the dawn of March 5, the Armed Police in Tibet received the action order from the Chief Commander of Armed Police headquarter, Mr. Li Lianxiu.…The Special Squad should immediately assign 300 members to be disguised as ordinary citizens and Tibetan monks, entering the Eight-Corner Street and other riot spots in Lhasa, to support plain-clothes police to complete the task.

"Burn the Scripture Pagoda at the northeast of Dazhao Temple. Smash the rice store in the business district, incite citizens to rob rice and food, attack the Tibet-Gansu Trading Company. Encourage people to rob store products, but, only at the permitted locations."

The article continues:

According to the commentator Mr. Chen Pokong, "In this year's protest, the riot scene was quite similar to that of 1989. A group of young men in their twenties acted in a well organized way. They first shouted slogans, then burnt some vehicles near the Ramoche Monastery, and then broke into nearby stores and robbed them, and finally burnt scores of the stores.

"The actions seemed well planned and coordinated, and were conducted with skill. At the crossroads near the Ramoche Monastery, someone prepared in advance many stones of a similar size, each weighing a couple of kilograms. These stones magically escaped the attention of numerous policemen and plainclothes agents who flooded the city."

Mr. Chen's account of what happened this year is corroborated by the British high-tech spy agency GCHQ, whose satellites observed Chinese police incite the riots in Lhasa, according to a report in the G2 Bulletin.

Finally the Epoch Times article poses this question:

These accounts also help make sense of puzzling aspects of a report in the New York Times on the scene on the streets of Lhasa on March 14.

According to the NY Times, "Foreigners and Lhasa residents who witnessed the violence were stunned by what they saw, and by what they did not see: the police. Riot police officers fled after an initial skirmish and then were often nowhere to be found."

"One monk reached by telephone said other monks noticed that several officers were more interested in shooting video of the violence than stopping it. 'They were just watching,' the monk said. 'They tried to make some videos and use their cameras to take some photos,'" according to the NY Times.

Concerning this last point: I am reminded also of the observation of James Miles, the reporter for the Economist, who later told CNN: "I didn't see any attempt in those early hours by the authorities to intervene."

CNN statement on Tibet coverage

Tibet was not an easy situation to write about! Not for a blogger like me, and especially not for news networks that must go the extra mile to verify sources. Nonetheless, CNN has been subjected to relentless attacks on its coverage in the new media. As I blogged here and here, I believe the attacks on CNN concerning its coverage of Tibet to have been unfair, unreasonable, and unsubstantiated. CNN has now issued a statement concerning its coverage of the Tibet crisis. Money quote:

CNN refutes all allegations by bloggers that it distorts its coverage of the events in Tibet to portray either side in a more favorable light. We have consistently and repeatedly shown all sides of this story. The one image in question was used wholly appropriately in the specific editorial context and there could be no confusion regarding what it was showing, not least because it was captioned: "Tibetans throw stones at army vehicles on a street in the capital Lhasa." The picture gallery included in Tibet stories includes the image.

Fragmentation, Dimunition, Destruction

Mark Danner takes stock of the War on Terror in three words: by the fragmentation, dimunition, and destruction it has wrought.* Danner writes:

In September 2001, the United States faced a grave threat. The attacks that have become synonymous with that date were unprecedented in their destructiveness, in their lethality, in the pure apocalyptic shock of their spectacle. But in their aftermath, American policymakers, partly through ideological blindness and preening exaggeration of American power, partly through blindness brought about by political opportunism, made decisions that led to a defeat only their own actions -- that only American power itself -- could have brought about.

Sounds kind of like a self-inflicted jujitsu maneuver, doesn't it?

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*h/t Fallows.
Photo: shows Bush falling off a Segway scooter.

Fitna and the YouTube revolution

Like others, Sageman believes the Iraq war, which appeared to legitimize the idea of a rapacious West in conflict with Islam, was a spectacular own-goal for America. Unless the idea can be successfully countered, he says, America may find itself confronting not just a terrorist fringe but a substantial segment of the Muslim world, which would intensify and prolong the conflict to a disastrous effect.

- The Economist, "How jihad went freelance"

Recently, Holland saw the release of the controversial Geert Wilders film, Fitna.* The film prominently features the usual cast of jihadi nut-cases; the bearded outback characters who George W. Bush single-handedly turned into internationally renowned mega-villains. I can't help but think this film -- whether its purported purpose is to defend freedom of speech or serve as a warning -- only compounds this East-West problem in much the same way Bush did when he initiated his "War on Terror." The film seems to give free publicity -- not to mention fodder -- for those extremists who have hijacked Islam for their own purposes. To make extremists appear to be influential and historically potent is surely to hand them greater power. In today's media-delineated world, perceived power is quite easily convertible into to real power. To so empower an otherwise impotent enemy is to score "own goals."

Out of China this week comes rage about a Western media bias concerning Tibet. And as for "proof" of a CNN "plot" aimed against China, someone only needed to post a cropped photograph, and then make video about it along with various examples of slipshod newsroom editing ("Riot in Tibet: True face of western media" which is approaching one million views on YouTube). Another polemic guised as an authoritative history, "Tibet was, is, and always will be a part of China," has been viewed over two million times on YouTube.**

In the emergent Youtube culture, there is a market for history that packs an emotional punch -- whether the issue is the legitimacy of China's occupation of Tibet or the emergence of radical Islam. Viewer outrage can be choreographed. But the more serious injustices, issues open historically curious, dependent on reasoned argument and analysis and a sympathetic stretch of the imagination -- will uncovered and unexamined in this environment. Shock sells. And the are made to appeal to peoples preformed prejudices. (Islam? Terrorists. CNN? Biased to the core). The new passionate histories may be in English, but they seem tailor-made for ethnic groups, whether Han Chinese or white Europeans.

For those of us who hoped that personal broadcasting would free us from the metal blinkers of the broadcast TV, 2008 has been a rude awakening to the world wide war of images. More than any time before, as Marshall McLuhan put it, "the medium is the message."
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* Wikipedia has a plot synopsis for the controversial film Fitna.
** Government manipulation: Whether the topic du jour concerns radical portraying radical Islam as existential threat to the West, or extols China's claim to Tibet, it looks as if it would be relatively easy for a government to manipulate new media platforms like YouTube for covert propaganda purposes. I think we should keep this in mind.

Thai PM Samak talks about a coup

I guess it was passing the military police at all the intersections. It's funny but -- before I saw the relevant article today -- taking a cab though Bangkok yesterday it felt to me as if a coup was "in the air." I asked the taxi driver what was going on with all the military police everywhere. He said "the King is visiting . . ." (and he gave a place name I didn't recognize). A reasonable and perfectly innocent explanation. Nevertheless, thoughts of another coup lingered in my mind.

Perhaps the premonition was not absurd. According to a front page headline in this morning's Bangkok Post, Thai PM Samak says he thinks some people may be plotting another coup. Of course, this word comes from Samak who is gives the impression as being someone who shoots off his mouth without thinking much beforehand.

According to the Bangkok Post "a highly placed source in the army" says that some Thaksin classmates from the armed forces academy didn't agree with PM Samak's army reshuffling, and now they are trying to create division between Samak and top generals by spreading rumors of a coup.

"The military won't do it for sure," said Samak, citing his faith in General Anupong. The article notes that Samak has put trust in General Anupong. The pro-Thaksin Class 10 members don't want Samak and Anupong to become any closer, and so are claiming Lt-Gen Prayuth is preparing to stage the coup.

According to the paper, the only two people with the resources to stage another coup are Lt-Gen Prayuth and General Anupong. These men supervise "security affairs in Bangkok and the Central Region."

Other happenings:

• Yesterday also saw a major protest by the anti-Thaksin/anti-government called PAD (People's Alliance for Democracy). The Bangkok Post reports the number in attendance was "in the thousands." The protesters decried the government's plans to make changes to the country's charter.

• Thaksin now plans to return to Bangkok Sunday from London, 11 days earlier-than expected.

Incarceration and the American diet

New statistics show that 1 in 100 Americans is locked up in jail. For young African-American males, the ratio is an astounding 1 in 9 -- the highest for any demographic anywhere in the world. Could the fact America has such an obscenely high portion of its citizens imprisoned be related to the lousy American diet? To the fact many Americans of low income status -- including black males -- consume a diet consisting largely of junk and processed foods?

In an effort to explain the high rate of incarceration in the US, the "War on Drugs" is often cited. In the US many Americans face long prison sentences for relatively minor drug offenses. Some claim these laws penalized African-Americans unfairly (criminal penalties for possession of crack have been much harsher than those for cocaine). But why do so many Americans turn to drugs in the first place?

Self-medication is a commonly cited explanation. Could the insatiable appetite of Americans to to self-medicate -- to turn to drugs to improve their state of mind -- be linked to the nutrient-poor American diet which consists largely of processed foods? Crime and drug use both contribute to America's high incarceration rates. And both are likely linked to the lousy diets of many low-income Americans.
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More about the suspected link between crime and diet here.

Tibetans and Chinese have something in common

In the blogosphere, a number of pro-Beijing bloggers have been linking to a scholarly article by Michael Parenti which -- at first glance -- seems to represent a heroic effort to debunk "myths" about Tibet and the Dalai Lama. Parenti believes Tibet's past history to have been over-romanticized.

However, these bloggers seem to overlook the fact that Parenti is unequivocal that the future prospects for Tibetans under the rule of Beijing appear grim:

In the 1990s, the Han, the ethnic group comprising over 95 percent of China’s immense population, began moing in substantial numbers into Tibet. On the streets of Lhasa and Shigatse, signs of Han colonization are readily visible. Chinese run the factories and many of the shops and vending stalls. Tall office buildings and large shopping centers have been built with funds that might have been better spent on water treatment plants and housing. Chinese cadres in Tibet too often view their Tibetan neighbors as backward and lazy, in need of economic development and “patriotic education.” During the 1990s Tibetan government employees suspected of harboring nationalist sympathies were purged from office, and campaigns were once again launched to discredit the Dalai Lama. Individual Tibetans reportedly were subjected to arrest, imprisonment, and forced labor for carrying out separatist activities and engaging in “political subversion.” Some were held in administrative detention without adequate food, water, and blankets, subjected to threats, beatings, and other mistreatment.

Throughout China, writes Parenti: "Regional bureaucrats milk the country dry, extorting graft from the populace and looting local treasuries. Land grabbing in cities and countryside by avaricious developers and corrupt officials at the expense of the populace are almost everyday occurrences. . . . Cancer rates in villages situated along waterways have skyrocketed a thousand-fold. . . ." Parenti concludes: ". . . If China is the great success story of speedy free market development, and is to be the model and inspiration for Tibet’s future, then old feudal Tibet indeed may start looking a lot better than it actually was."

The riots are not the big story out of Tibet. How the recent protests were depicted by a Western news media -- organizations that had prohibited from reporting inside Tibet -- is certainly not the big story. I think the recent rioting needs to be understood with the context of modern China's approach to development. One might call it state-sanctioned crony capitalism run amok. That is the big story: China's policy of "development at all costs" and the high the price Tibetans are paying for it.

Because the reckless approach to development that is destroying Tibet is also destroying China's environment, depleting its resources, and ruining the health and well-being of the Chinese people. Chinese and Tibetan people have far more in common than they may realize.

Danger ahead: world rice shortage looms

Talk about potential political dynamite. World governments are about to face up to a severe shortage of rice. This comes as prices for corn, wheat and other grains are selling at a premium and in short supply.

Ominous developments:

• India has banned rice exports
• China and Vietnam have reduced export volumes
• "A rice shortage in the local market is very likely" says one Thai authority.*
  
• Uncertainties also remain: Iran and Indonesia -- two major consumers -- have yet to place orders for rice.
• Already the Phillipeans and Cambodia are facing rice shortages. Aid agencies working on the Burma border report they cannot meet the rice requirements due to the increasing prices. What does this development mean for people living inside Burma? Or for the North Koreans?
  

By the way, if you thought biofuels had a future, in the emerging geopolitical context of food scarcity, think again.**
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* Already, it's apparent when you go out to eat something at a local Bangkok restaurant that has gone amiss with Thai rice. The rice Thai establishments serve these days is of extremely poor quality (after living in Asia for a while one acquires a taste for quality rice). Thailand as been exporting its best rice, and what's left behind is not very tasty.
** These crops are partly responsible for the increasing food prices.
Source: Bangkok Post

The courage to risk getting it wrong

This is a follow-up to my earlier post about the recent attacks emanating from China's online communities against CNN's coverage of the unrest in Tibet. Rebecca MacKinnon at RConverstation writes:

Perhaps the Chinese government is feeling a little less worried lately about losing public support? Perhaps they are less worried that people will turn against the Communist Party after reading something in the Western media, now that it is no longer fashionable in many circles to believe what the Western media reports?

Rebecca points to Roland Soong, of EastSouthWestNorth blog, who has been following the controversy closely, translating Chinese sources. Roland quotes Chinese blogger Drunkpiano:

In the reports on Tibet, I did not find the right proportions in the reporting. The Economist called the rioters rioters, and they were the only ones. That is why many westerners (if not the majority) will get the impression from their media that "a group of peaceful demonstrators were mercilessly mowed down by the Chinese government." [my emphasis]

Drukpiano is correct about "proportions" being skewed.

However, skewed proportions are not in themselves evidence of CNN and Western media bias, unless the agencies happened to have been privy to credible reports that would have "set the proportions straight" as we now with the benefit of hindsight know them. The Economist was, in fact, the only Western news agency with a reporter in Tibet at the time -- and its report came several days after the unrest had calmed. CNN, in fact, was among the first to interview him (see this post).

So a most malicious attack against CNN seems to be based on the cropping of a single photograph. Is that fair? The weight of accusations leveled against CNN and the Western media are made with the benefit of hindsight -- which is always 20/20 as they say. They are made without due regard to the practical obstacles the news agencies faced. The seeming domestic propaganda victory for the Chinese government -- noted by Rebecca McKinnon in the above quote -- is lamentable. But we should not blame CNN or the Western media for it.

Look at the "offending" photos, then listen to the extremely harsh accusations being leveled against CNN; note the foul language, the hostility. To think someone constructed an entire website devoted to smearing CNN? This much is clear to me: the vehimence characterizing responses emanating from Chinese sources seems completely out of proportion to the alleged offenses.

As I wrote previously, this whole thing looks like a manufactured crisis to me. Just look who stands to benefit the most from it. First, as Rebecca pointed out, by discrediting the Western media, China makes its own "official" version of the news appear the more reliable. But here's what concerns me far more: By seeing that these accusations get blown out of proportion, China may feel it can gain greater compliance out of the Western media -- like CNN -- in the future, by holding them to task on their Tibet reporting today.

Because errors were made. Some were preventable. Other mistakes made by the Western media would not be so easy to prevent in the future. What we ought to be most concerned about is the prospect of the Western corporate media cowering to appease the authoritarian government of China.* Faced with a torrent of complaints from China, feckless media CEOs in New York or Paris may well decide to call up their news editors and tell them to back off, lest future business deals in China be put in jeopardy.

It takes courage for a news organization to risk making mistakes.
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* CNN has changed one of the "offending" photographs to appease those complaining about it. Also, CNN was not among those news organizations invited on an official tour of Lhasa today.

Foreigners not so welcome anymore

I recently blogged about how few countries' citizens can visit the US without a visa. More egregiously, US immigration officials have shown a predilection toward turning down visa applicants on a whim. And the US keeps the $100 fee even when an applicant is rejected. And then there are the horror stories.

For several years now, any number of US organizations have been choosing not to hold major meetings in the US, citing the difficulties their foreign members experience getting US visas to attend a conference. Now its impacting jobs. The NY Times reports:

Officials of large investment banks on Wall Street said the difficulty in obtaining visas for foreign workers, many of them graduates of American universities, had caused them to shift dozens of jobs to other financial capitals this year. In some cases, foreign-born professionals have grown weary of the struggle to get and renew a work visa in the United States and moved on to cities like London, where they say they feel more welcome.

Bush's war on PBS Frontline

I see that Frontline on PBS this week has a documentary called "Bush's War." That's what I've been calling it for a long time. It's not the "Iraq War." Iraq did nothing. Iraq didn't plan 9/11. It didn't have weapons of mass destruction. It DID have movie theaters and bars and women wearing what they wanted and a significant Christian population and one of the few Arab capitals with an open synagogue.

- Michael Moore*

America's public broadcaster has released a two-part documentary called "Bush's War." It marks the fifth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq and unintentionally the four-thousandth death of a US serviceman in Iraq (And God only knows how many dead Iraqis). According to one review: "It’s a scandal wrapped in a tragedy, with the first night (the build-up to war) a study in arrogance and the second night (shock and awe followed by insurgency) a chronicle of incompetence." The PBS website explains:

"Parts of this history have been told before," Kirk (the producer) says. "But no one has laid out the entire narrative to reveal in one epic story the scope and detail of how this war began and how it has been fought, both on the ground and deep inside the government."

Concerning the anniversary, Salam Adil at Global Voices reviews Iraqi bloggers' reactions. Adil writes: ". . . more and more I am hearing people saying the previous regime was better."
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* Latest from Michael Moore - see here.
You can view the documentary Bush's War online here.

Attacks on CNN concerning its coverage of Tibet

John Kennedy at Global Voices writes:

. . . Chinese netizens worldwide seized onto initial misreported details from the situation in Tibet and don't seem willing to let this one go. In fact, they've declared cyberwar on major western media outlets, and anti-CNN.com is campaign headquarters.

I think we ought to examine what is meant by the term "Chinese netizen." But before I get to that point, I want to say something in defense of CNN. I think it is wrong to accuse CNN of "intentional bias" in its coverage of the events in Tibet in the immediate aftermath of the protests for several reasons:

1. China's news media sources are routinely censored and notoriously unreliable. CNN simply could not take those reports at face value.
2. CNN had no correspondents in Lhasa and had no access to any other correspondents' reports until an Economist reporter and other observers had made their way out of the country.

To attack the integrity of CNN under these difficult circumstances seems unfair. If China wants to see better, more accurate reporting from CNN and other news agencies out of China, the government of China should:

1. Release those Chinese journalists, activists, and bloggers it has imprisoned;
2. Allow foreign and local journalists to travel around the country freely;
3. Stop censoring the Internet and tear down the Great Firewall.

Until these actions have been taken, criticisms of CNN "bias" emanating from China are somewhat misplaced. If CNN got the story wrong, the government of China is partly to blame.

Also, I think we ought to consider the strong likelihood that the recent attacks on the integrity of CNN are coordinated by the government of China. By some reports, China has tens of thousands of Internet censors. Perhaps the same people have been conscripted into disseminating the "party line" when they go online? Come to think of it, why wouldn't they have been?

Update: Most criticism of CNN and other coverage of the Tibet crisis by Western media sources concerns photographs that were cropped (excluding some acts of violence depicted in the cropped portion of the photo, often focusing on a single subject). This is very weak evidence for bias. Newsroom editors and webmasters make these kinds of decisions quickly. Moreover, whatever the photo, artistic values have to be weighted against news values.

A second accusation -- one in which CNN has not been faulted -- deserves to be taken a bit more seriously. This concerns the documented evidence that Indian or Nepali policeman were pictured adjacent to captions or stories describing the situation in Tibet, giving readers the impression that the officers pictured roughing up Tibetan demonstrators were Chinese soldiers (these demonstrations took place in India or Nepal). Although I do not consider this to be evidence of any "Western media conspiracy of lies," it does seem to point to a lack of professional rigor. (I noticed some of this sloppy journalism myself at the time). The most likely explanation? I suspect newsroom staff were themselves confused and mistakenly assumed the photos had been taken in Tibet.

New Update: I have written a follow-up to this post.

Thaksin interview revisited

It's entirely understandable that the elected government of Thailand would want to rewrite the charter written by the coup-installed interim government. Today Thai PM Samak declared his government's intention to do just that. What's most interesting to me is that this announcement -- as with several previous major announcements by the new government -- follow verbatim an agenda laid out by the former deposed PM Thaksin in his interview with the Financial Times (blogged here). The FT interview turns out to have been a most reliable blueprint for the country's future course.*
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* Under the pro-Thaksin PPP-led administration of PM Samak.

The Games of the XIV Dalai Lama

China is trying to convince its people that the Dalai Lama is behind the unrest in Tibet.

• "Dalai clique has descended into becoming an outright terrorist organization" (commentary on an official Shanghai news website).
• ". . . the Dalai Lama is scheming to take the Beijing Olympics hostage. . ." (People's Daily)

Of course this is nonsense. The simplest facts about the Dalai Lama disprove the propaganda:

• he does not support a boycott of the Beijing Olympics.
• he does not favor independence for Tibet, he only advocates greater autonomy.
• he does not sanction violent protest. In fact, he even threatened to resign if Tibetans' protests got any more out of hand.

The Communist Party of China is lying to its people -- nothing new about that. But this time is different. First, the whole world can hear the lie be told. Moreover, the world is very well acquainted with the target of the latest and most feeble attempt at character assassination by the Chinese state. It looks like -- in this Olympic year -- somebody forgot to tell China's leaders something crucial.

To most of us, the man China is trying to frame this time is no obscure "terrorist leader." Nor does he only represent Tibet. Far from it. He is many things to many people in many countries from many walks of life. Spiritual leader, religious icon, peace activist, philosopher king, resistance leader, guru, environmentalist, teacher, statesman, celebrity, author, meditation master, peacemaker, motivational speaker, and a supporter of science. Wherever the Dalai Lama travels -- be it Sydney, Berlin, or Chicago -- he is sure to attract an audience that rivals top entertainers. His company is sought by artists, scientists, politicians, religious leaders, spiritual seekers, royalty, actors, and multitudes of ordinary people. The Dalai Lama is a world historical figure of far larger importance than his government in exile; indeed, his message transcends Buddhism and Tibet. He is the religious man who talks about something larger than his own faith; the Tibetan who cares about the entire planet. He is quite simply "the most global citizen" of our age.

And China decided name this man as its enemy? What were they thinking?

Surely the time has come for the outside world to help the people of China get to know their most illustrious citizen. Help them to know him for the many things he is to us. The Olympics presents an opportunity for the world to share.

Let the Games of the XIV Dalai Lama begin!
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Illustration: by Jotman

Olympic torch lighting protest

China's government appears to have a public relations nightmare on its hands.

A member of Reporters Without Borders protested the torch lighting ceremony in ancient Olympia today, interrupting the speech by the president of China's Olympic Committee. It was well timed. We should expect this will go down as the first of many protests as the Olympic flame makes its way through cities on five continents and then into Tibet.

Long before the Tibet uprisings, Reporters without Borders called attention to the Chinese government's suppression of the media freedom, its censorship of the media, and its jailing of journalists and activists. China tends to call such incidents "internal affairs." An editorial in the Guardian (which I blogged about previously) explains why this is stance is not acceptable:

. . . Chinese authoritarianism is also bad for the world.

China is now the planet's largest emitter of carbon dioxide thanks to a poisonous power-generation programme. Censorship also makes it harder to check the spread of contagious disease and harder to expose the regulatory corruption that means unsafe goods find their way on to global markets.

We can sign treaties with China, negotiate deals, but at the end of all this, who is to hold the leadership accountable? In a nutshell, that's why the Chinese peoples' civil liberties -- especially press freedom -- matter to everybody.
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Photo: Reporters Without Borders - website.

Get the to Kenya!

Perhaps most thoroughly enjoyable and -- as it so happens -- helpful thing you can do for Africa. But there isn't much time. More here.

Global citizenship quote

"To the end of his life, Mr Ponticelli showed no interest in labelling anyone his enemy. He said he did not understand why on earth he, or they, had been fighting."

-from the Economist's obituary of Lazare Ponticelli, the last surviving French veteran of World War I

Taiwan election and the Tibet crisis

Ma Ying-jeou (former mayor of Taipei) of the Kuomintang party (KMT) was supposed to win this election easily. But with Taiwanese concerned over China's handling of the Tibet situation, the incumbent Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Frank Hsieh -- who is the former premier and Mayor of Kaohsiung -- may be gaining.

Ma wants the benefits of China's robust economy, while Hsieh wants to go slower and hold back in some areas.

More here and at Wikipedia (good for background).

Journalist's eyewitness account of Tibet uprising

CNN interviewed James Miles, of the Economist, said to be the only Western journalist in Tibet at the time of the uprising.

What I saw was calculated targeted violence against an ethnic group, or I should say two ethnic groups, primarily ethnic Han Chinese living in Lhasa, but also members of the Muslim Hui minority in Lhasa. . . Those two groups were singled out by ethnic Tibetans. . .

His account of the Chinese government's response is very interesting:

It seemed as if they were paralyzed by indecision over how to handle this. The rioting rapidly spread from Beijing Road, this main central thoroughfare of Lhasa, into the narrow alleyways of the old Tibetan quarter. But I didn't see any attempt in those early hours by the authorities to intervene. And I suspect again the Olympics were a factor there. That they were very worried that if they did move in decisively at that early stage of the unrest that bloodshed would ensue in their efforts to control it. And what they did instead was to let the rioting run its course and it didn't really finish as far as I saw until the middle of the day on the following day on the Saturday, March the 15th. So in effect what they did was sacrifice the livelihoods of many, many ethnic Han Chinese in the city for the sake of letting the rioters vent their anger.

. . . What I did not hear was repeated bursts of machine gun fire, I didn't have that same sense of an all out onslaught of massive firepower that I sensed here in Beijing when I was covering the crushing of the Tiananmen Square protests in June, 1989.

Miles' account largely jives with the story told by Australian tourist and the reports and photos of tourist-blogger Kadfly.

Obama, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and Mike Huckabee

The story broke: Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's longtime pastor -- their relationship went back twenty years -- was on record as having said some outrageous -- or at any rate discriminatory -- things about whites to his congregations. As Americans began taking note of Obama's radical-sounding preacher, Obama's candidacy stood at a crossroads. What would Obama do? Well, Obama chose to address the issue of American race relations directly in a speech that has already been viewed a million times on YouTube; that has been compared to John Kennedy's famous speech on his own faith in 1960.

• Editorial in the NY Times
• Transcript of the speech
• Here is the video of the speech:

"What is evident, though, is that he not only cleared the air over a particular controversy — he raised the discussion to a higher plane" wrote the New York Times in a recent editorial on the speech.

And the country may indeed be moving with him.

Wednesday, Mike Huckabee, the presidential candidate who recently dropped out of the race, addressed the controversy in an interview. The white Souther conservative Republican preacher had this to say about Obama's long-time black preacher, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright:

And one other thing I think we've gotta remember. As easy as it is for those of us who are white, to look back and say "That's a terrible statement!"...I grew up in a very segregated south. And I think that you have to cut some slack -- and I'm gonna be probably the only Conservative in America who's gonna say something like this, but I'm just tellin' you -- we've gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told "you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can't sit out there with everyone else. There's a separate waiting room in the doctor's office. Here's where you sit on the bus..."

And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.

Such unifying candor is remarkable, especially coming as this does in the midst of a presidential election. Whether or not Obama succeeds in his bid for the presidency, he made some impressive contributions to improving race relations.
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Hat-tip: Fallows who expounds on this further. He also has some good things to say about John McCain.

Chinese bloggers react to Tibet unrest

Local Chinese blogosphere reactions to the Tibet situation compiled and translated by Bob Chen at Global Voices:

• "Recently Tibet has been in insurgence. Wonderful state clashes with the insurgence, thus one of them must be an illusion."


• "The incident in Tibet is well-organized and planned. The western media see nothing about those thugs with knives in hand who killed innocent people, but tried to confused people by saying that our government is cracking down “peace demonstration”."


• "Why do those rebels rise up at this point? It happened because Taiwan is going to make referendum in March, and if it was passed, Taiwan would then be independent. Tibetans are answering the call of Taiwan! What would it be if Taiwan was independent? It would give U.S another military base in Asia, a base on which they can reach us."


• "We are trapped by the western countries. U.S firstly put us out of the list of human right violators and praised our progress, and then in 48 hours they reported the unrest in Tibet! It’s a mean plot to first drive the attention upon China and then threw us into a gaffe."

Note the paranoia and outlandish conspiracy theories concerning the United States. It's unfortunate that such sentiments characterize the reactions of these Chinese people to the unrest in Tibet. Rebecca McKinnon, discussing the divergent interpretations of the events in Tibet writes: "Dave* makes an astute observation that the East-West miscommunication madness is here to stay - and likely to get worse - between now and the Olympics."
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* Dave of Davesgonechina who has translated more Chinese netizen commentary.

Wen Jiabao ready to hold talks with the Dalai Lama

Why is this announcement burried deep inside most recent news reports? It seems to me headline-worthy news.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao is ready to hold talks with the Dalai Lama, U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown told Parliament in London yesterday.

``I spoke to Premier Wen this morning and I made it absolutely clear that there had to be an end to violence in Tibet,'' Brown said.

``The premier told me that, subject to two things that the Dalai Lama has already said -- that he does not support the total independence of Tibet and that he renounces violence -- that he would be prepared to enter into dialogue with the Dalai Lama,'' he said.

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Bloomberg

Eliot Spitzer, George W. Bush, and the sub-prime fiasco

The sub-prime mortgage fiasco has helped to detail the US economy. Eliot Spitzer is the former governor of New York State with a penchant for expensive call-girls. He was one guy who saw the economic train-wreck coming. One guy who tried to speak out before it was too late. Was it mere bad luck that he got caught with the call-girl? Greg Palast doesn't think so:

Here’s what happened. Since the Bush regime came to power, a new species of loan became the norm, the ‘sub-prime’ mortgage and its variants including loans with teeny “introductory” interest rates. From out of nowhere, a company called ‘Countrywide’ became America’s top mortgage lender, accounting for one in five home loans, a large chunk of these ‘sub-prime.’

. . . when the Bush regime took over, Countrywide and its banking brethren were told to party hearty – it was OK now to steer’m, fake’m, charge’m and take’m.

But there was this annoying party-pooper. The Attorney General of New York, Eliot Spitzer, who sued these guys to a fare-thee-well. Or tried to.

Instead of regulating the banks that had run amok, Bush’s regulators went on the warpath against Spitzer and states attempting to stop predatory practices. Making an unprecedented use of the legal power of “federal pre-emption,” Bush-bots ordered the states to NOT enforce their consumer protection laws.

Indeed, the feds actually filed a lawsuit to block Spitzer’s investigation of ugly racial mortgage steering. Bush’s banking buddies were especially steamed that Spitzer hammered bank practices across the nation using New York State laws.

. . . It was the night of February 13 when Spitzer made the bone-headed choice to order take-out in his Washington Hotel room. He had just finished signing these words for the Washington Post about predatory loans:

“Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.”

. . . Naming and shaming and ruining Spitzer – rarely done in these cases - was made at the ‘discretion’ of Bush’s Justice Department.

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Greg Palast, h/t Ten Percent

Photo: Kristen, Eliot Spitzer's call-girl via MyNews

Iraq war, five years on

There must have been a moment, at the beginning, when we could have said — no. But somehow we missed it.

-Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead

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Rick B, Ten Percent.

Australian tourist's video depicts mayhem in Lhasa Tibet

The video shows Tibetans smashing windows and setting fire to Chinese shops and cars, while people are heard cheering. It also shows Chinese security forces, but no clashes between them and the rioters.

"It's absolute mayhem on the streets," Smith said.

Other video released of the rioting was broadcast by the Chinese government's CCTV, and it did not include pictures of Chinese security forces.

Smith said as he made his way back to his hotel on Friday, he "met so many Tibetan people on the streets, so many young Tibetan boys just screaming for Tibet's freedom."

"We don't have any freedoms," one young Tibetan male shouted to Smith's camera.

"The Tibetan people are going crazy," Smith said.

You can watch the video at CNN.

Tibet Crisis: a letter from Hong Kong

A Jotman reader who is visitor to Hong Kong has been asking some "friends here in HK about the Tibet situation." He writes:

My overall impression was most of the Hongkongers don't care about the Tibet cause (if there is any) - although considerable media attention was given to it. The economic and cultural difference is too great. Hongkongers are modern urban folks that enjoy German cars, Italian fashion and fine food from all over the world. Pretty good living... why worry about some hillbillies? Tibetans are as far for them as the Martians.

Perhaps the reason for indifference was lack of any economic involvement with Tibet - but even if it was there, HK people would rather be pro-Chinese seeing in Beijing protection of their investments in Tibet. Overall, they seem to live by Coolidge's maxim "The business of Hong Kong is to do business"... Those very few that seemed somewhat sympathetic to Tibetans, appear to believe that Tibetans have rather done worse for themselves.

He describes a conversation with a young Hong Kong woman. She said the

Chinese government seemed to be much more lenient than she expected and by that it has probably gained more goodwill out of the situation than the rebels who resorted to violence. She also commented on disputable legitimacy of any religious form of rule and that the neighbouring theocratic states (Nepal, Bhutan) although enjoying independence are at a much lower stage of development than even Tibet under Chinese rule.

Finally, a businessman said he spoke with said, "the Beijing authorities have got a lot smarter since Tiananmen and now seem to have learned to use Western media to channel their own agendas." The reader concluded, "Overall, little sympathy for Tibetans... I saw much more friendliness towards Taiwan though, even among some Mainland Chinese."

Did Thai PM Samak order attack dogs to be used on Hmong refugees?

Blogger Fonzi has posted a report from a source claiming the Thai PM ordered that dogs be used against Hmong refugees. Money quote:

“Reliable and multiple eyewitness sources in Thailand have reported that Thai military officials, at the apparent direct order of Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej, in preparation for his upcoming trip to Laos, used teams of military attack dogs led by armed soldiers to intimidate and maul some 12-13 Lao-Hmong refugees at Ban Huay Nam Khao detention center as brutal preparation before forcing them back to the Communist regime,” stated Philip Smith, Executive Director, of the Center for Public Policy Analysis, in Washington, D.C.

Bangkok Pundit dug into this story further on his blog. Whether or not Samak personally ordered the use of dogs remains an open question in his view. Bangkok Pundit adds that there might well be a connection between repatriation of the Hmong and an energy deal that Thailand recently signed with Laos. He writes: "Now, this could just be a coincidence, but I have suspicions there was a link between the swapping of the energy for the Hmong given the timing."

Thai PM Samak defends Burma's junta

Thailand's PM Samak visited Rangoon last week and has since decided to spread good word about the junta. On his return to Thailand, the Thai Prime Minister said:

Myanmar is a Buddhist country. Myanmar's leaders meditate. They say the country lives in peace.

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AP via Fonzi.

Tibetans in Chengdu: Has China found its fear?

Update: I spoke to someone who was just on the phone with a non-Chinese observer in Chengdu. The word is that at least three people were killed in Chengdu in the past two days in ethnic disturbances. Warnings are being issued against visiting the province.

It's 12:30 in Bangkok, 01:30 in China

How are people in China interpreting the situation? It's nothing like I might have expected. Looks like China may have chosen to play the "fear of terror" card. John Kennedy at Global Voices searched the Chinese website Twifan "for reports of unrest having spread to the provinces surrounding Tibet." He translated what one resident of the Tibetan quarter of Chengdu in Wuhou district of Sichuan Province wrote on Monday night:

7:55 pm Monday, Fanfou user o8o8o8

I was just in the crowd and got the latest info! Chengdu's military district has already gone on highest alert, and troops have now been dispatched toward Tibet. Wuhouci Rd. going both north and south have been completely sealed off . . . Shuhan Rd. and another side street are completely filled with police cars which have stopped all traffic. A rough estimate, there's over 200 police, and over 100 police cars of every kind. There's also around 50 police motorbikes, patrolling the streets non-stop in formations of groups of three.

Where Wuhouci Rd. E meets Wuhouci Rd. W, there are also fire trucks. Both Wuhouci and Ximianqiao streets have completely become pedestrian streets, not a single car on either. Walking down the streets all you see are flashing police lights. Right now, you do not want to go into crowded areas and start pushing around.

The tons of explosives they shipped here to Chengdu from Tibet aren't to be seen now, they've disappeared. Police sent out an internal notice warning a few days ago, that [bleep]ists had entered Chengdu in an attempt to carry out terrorist strikes. These people have spent years overseas studying demolitions and are highly skilled at it, with cruel methods. Experienced police from all over Chengdu have been transferred here.

The message continues:

It's advised that everyone do their best to not go outside over the next few days and prevent the occurrence of any accidents. Starting yesterday, Chengdu police and the army have already locked off parts of the city and are doing inspections. Keep your activities away from areas with large numbers of buildings; if possible, please stay at home!

My first thought on reading the message was: my this sounds familiar! It sounds a lot like what an American living in New York or Washington D.C. might have written circa October 2001. (What's this about people studying overseas to do "terrorist strikes?")

Americans are familiar with the game by now. Been there, done that. Maybe the two countries have more in common than anybody thought, and cross-cultural understanding is not a pipe dream after all.

Dalai Lama resign?

The Dalai Lama continues to demonstrate something very rare: ethical leadership, the likes of which the world has not seen since Mahatma Gandhi. News comes in that the Dalai Lama might resign. CNN reports:

The Dalai Lama urged Tibetans to show restraint Tuesday, saying that "if things become out of control," his "only option is to completely resign," The Associated Press reported.

I think the Dalai Lama's recent statement could have two explanations.

First, there are reports of Tibetan involvement in rioting and other violence against Han Chinese. That's the gist of what was expressed by one tourist-blogger on the ground in Tibet, a blogger I linked to earlier, Kadfly. Now Dalai Lama may be aware of such reports* and have reason to believe that there is some validity to them.

The Dalai Lama's threat to resign could have a second strategic -- though not incompatible -- explanation. It could be calculated to jolt the Chinese government into reconsidering it's refusal to negotiate with him. After all, the Dalai Lama is a true moderate. If he steps out of the picture, who is to say the Tibetan resistance won't turn to more dangerous ways?

China may have more to fear from the Tibetan protests than many of us living in the outside world believe. The Han Chinese rule over 130 million people who are classified as "ethnic minorities." Theirs is an empire that has expanded and contracted many times over its long history. Many experts in the West assume China is in empire-expansion mode,** but they could be mistaken. The central government has shown many signs of weakness, particularly concerning its demonstrated inability to enforce the rule of law (i.e. with regards to pollution, healthcare, or peasants' rights).

China may regret losing such a moderate and influential ethnic leader as the Dalai Lama. The Chinese government is silly to overlook him today. A recent statement by US Sec. of State Rice is right on the mark.
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*Further evidence is this account of foreign resident of Lhasa published in the Guardian (hat-tip Anonymous): "Oh my God. Oh no. That's crazy. One hundred people are trying to stone one man. . ."
** Cover of this week's Economist is about China's "new imperialism."