Slashdot Mirror

Maybe I can put your mind to rest.

http://media.phayul.com/?av_id=147&av_links_id=323

"It was scary because they (at the American embassy in Chengdu) warned me if I was low profile now, I will be high-profile, and I will be followed once I enter Tibetan regions. They told me to watch out for guys who look too comfortable smoking a cigarette. They told me to not trust anyone. They advised me to memorize the angle of my computer and cell phone when I leave my hotel room, so I can tell if they've been moved when I return. They said to be especially careful with my camera. The tech specialist at the Embassy said that she strongly suspects that Chinese intelligence has some kind of deal with Google because gmail appears not to be safe in China. They said, 'It's safe to assume that everything you do is being watched.'"

She later quotes a couple of totally weird "Gmail notifications" (written in broken english), purportedly coming from "The Gmail team".

It'd be interesting to see the full email headers, but there seems to be increasing evidence that despite Google has publically resisted the Chinese Communist Party's demands of cooperation (unlike Microsoft and Yahoo who both collaborated) the CCP regime is indeed able to intercept Gmail traffic.

Under CCP's rule, all personal encryption to which the CCP doesn't have keys has been declared illegal. This presumably includes the easily available HTTPS encryption used in browsers and which Google also uses for Gmail.

Whether the CCP has struck a deal with Google (or someone inside Google), they can read HTTPS traffic or it is simply a case of CCP keyloggers in all internet cafes, the issue should be thoroughly studied and the public be warned accordingly, if necessary. Especially when in China, and in particular in Tibet, the most innocuous messages can easily result in imprisonment, serious bodily harm or even death.

Some people will still be willing to take that risk in order get information out of China or Tibet, but all email users there should be prominently warned if there is any suspicion that the service may be compromised.

What would the Chinese people be doing today if they'd been under constant genocidal foreign rule for two or three generations, under daily humiliation, millenia of their invaluable cultural heritage destroyed, their own language, religion, identity and history all but banned and twisted to serve the occupiers, their homeland flooded with ever greater numbers of aliens who consider themselves culturally and racially superior...?

The Han Chinese hate even the partial and relatively brief Japanese invasion in the 1930s and the trade imperialism by the Western colonial powers as absolute evils so why can't they possibly understand why the totally non-Chinese people of Tibet are desperate for their own freedom from colonial brutality under China?

But importantly, what the CCP proparanda machine isn't telling to the Chinese people is that the riots in Lhasa on the 14th of March started only after several days of *peaceful* demonstrations (starting on March 10th, the day of Tibetan Uprising in 1959) during which the Chinese paramilitary (PAP) violently beat and imprisoned a number of Tibetan monks. Monks are revered in Tibet as if they were one's family members, which they often are!

Also, there has been dozens of large demonstrations (in chinese) all over Tibet (more than half of which was annexed into neighbouring Chinese provinces in the 1960s by the Chinese communists!) consisting of tens of thousands of Tibetans. All have been violently suppressed by the PAP, with hundreds of Tibetans dead (nearly 200 confirmed), hundreds more wounded or badly injured without medical care and several thousand Tibetans detained in the not-very-pleasant Chinese jails where abuse and torture in endemic, especially for the Tibetans.

These demonstration against Chinese misrule are still flaring up daily with the same results.

So yes, it is very sad that some young Tibetans' emotions boiled over and some Hans were attacked and some died while hiding inside the Chinese-owned buildings, but please, please try to also look at these issues from the Tibetans' perspective.

Yes, the western media also made some mistakes in labelling a few photos (though do realize that the Nepalese police were indeed beating and jailing Tibetans there at China's behest and for no other reason), but don't you think that the security cam footage from Lhasa, repeated ad nauseaum by the CCTV, was extremely selectively screened for propaganda purposes, and not just by mistake? The Chinese security apparatus has surveillance cameras at absolutely every part of Lhasa.

If the CCP has nothing to hide, why did they evict all foreigners and journalists from all Tibetan areas? Why are they promising massive 100,000 yuan (or well over $1000) reward for anyone who may have filmed the demonstrations and especially the bloody crackdowns that inevitably followed? Why is the CCP confiscating Tibetans' mobile phones, cameras and computers? Why does the CCP refuse even international (UN) observers and medical groups entry into Tibet?

"Free Tibet" is about Tibetans ruling themselves. Nothing more, nothing less.

It is extremely rare to find a Chinese person who is willing to even listen to the Tibetans' own arguments about their millenia of independent history, not to mention about the horrors perpetrated by the CCP regime after Mao Zedong's 1950 invasion. Google for Grace Wang at Duke Uni. and "burned in oil" to learn how the true Chinese patriots deal with those of their own who merely want to promote debate.

For the Han Chinese race, and not just those still within the Great Firewall of China, this perceived imperial right to rule over neighbouring peoples has become an obsession, which is all the more ironic since the #1 pet hate of the Hans, basically taught since kindergarten, is against the foreign imperialists who "humiliated China" in the 19th and 20th centuries. The Chinese are taught, and this ideology only arose in the late 18th century, that the now billion+ overpopulated Han nation will violently break up if they allow their neighbouring peoples to regain their freedom and independence. (Why is that, btw.?)

Here's a fairly compact Aussie radio programme, with a transcript, about the reasons why the Chinese rulers claim that Tibet and Tibetans are theirs to do what they wish. Basically, the Chinese regime claims that since both Tibet and China were (albeit in very different ways) ruled or under the protection (as Tibet was) by the same foreign power during roughly the same period, after that foreign rule had collapsed the Chinese emperor automatically assumed (perceived) ownership over Tibet as well, despite having no de facto control or rule over the Tibetan nation.

The ultra-nationalistic Chinese you may have seen screaming LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! to pro-Tibetan demonstrators during the CCP's recent global torch parade tend to shout slogans like "TIBET BELONGS TO CHINA!", but if you somehow manage to ask them on what basis, they'll either continue screaming or come up with wildly different historical explanations, ranging from a marriage between a powerful Tibetan king and a Chinese princess (they always forget the Tibetan and Nepalese princesses somehow) in the first millenium to the claims of the foreign Mongol rule (known as the Yuan dynasty in China) in the 13th and the foreign Manchu rule (the Qing dynasty for the Chinese) in the 17th centuries as giving the Mao Zedong's China the absolute right of ownership over Tibet. (waitasec, I thought the communists were totally against any such feudal claiming of lands and peoples??)

If only such mediaval imperial babble was the end of it, but unfortunately the brutal oppression and systematic destruction of Tibetan cultural heritage, identity and language which started with Mao's invasion in the 1950s is still going on strong today. Even sadder is that very few Chinese either know or choose to believe the horrors China has committed in Tibet over the last half century. Some, like the well-known Chinese dissidents Wei Jinsheng and Henry Wu Hongda, who spent years in a Tibetan prison unit alongside Tibetan prisoners of conscience, have told about their experiences, but why would the proud Chinese of today choose democracy and the admission of their own shame when the Communist Party is hauling in foreign money and promising unprecedented global power?

International law be damned.

How much longer do the Tibetan people have to suffer until the Chinese learn that there are higher and more positive values in life than genocidal jingoism?

It is extremely rare to find a Chinese person who is willing to even listen to the Tibetans' own arguments about their millenia of independent history, not to mention about the horrors perpetrated by the CCP regime after Mao Zedong's 1950 invasion. Google for Grace Wang at Duke Uni. and "burned in oil" to learn how the true Chinese patriots deal with those of their own who merely want to promote debate.

For the Han Chinese race, and not just those still within the Great Firewall of China, this perceived imperial right to rule over neighbouring peoples has become an obsession, which is all the more ironic since the #1 pet hate of the Hans, basically taught since kindergarten, is against the foreign imperialists who "humiliated China" in the 19th and 20th centuries. The Chinese are taught, and this ideology only arose in the late 18th century, that the now billion+ overpopulated Han nation will violently break up if they allow their neighbouring peoples to regain their freedom and independence. (Why is that, btw.?)

Here's a fairly compact Aussie radio programme, with a transcript, about the reasons why the Chinese rulers claim that Tibet and Tibetans are theirs to do what they wish. Basically, the Chinese regime claims that since both Tibet and China were (albeit in very different ways) ruled or under the protection (as Tibet was) by the same foreign power during roughly the same period, after that foreign rule had collapsed the Chinese emperor automatically assumed (perceived) ownership over Tibet as well, despite having no de facto control or rule over the Tibetan nation.

The ultra-nationalistic Chinese you may have seen screaming LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! to pro-Tibetan demonstrators during the CCP's recent global torch parade tend to shout slogans like "TIBET BELONGS TO CHINA!", but if you somehow manage to ask them on what basis, they'll either continue screaming or come up with wildly different historical explanations, ranging from a marriage between a powerful Tibetan king and a Chinese princess (they always forget the Tibetan and Nepalese princesses somehow) in the first millenium to the claims of the foreign Mongol rule (known as the Yuan dynasty in China) in the 13th and the foreign Manchu rule (the Qing dynasty for the Chinese) in the 17th centuries as giving the Mao Zedong's China the absolute right of ownership over Tibet. (waitasec, I thought the communists were totally against any such feudal claiming of lands and peoples??)

If only such mediaval imperial babble was the end of it, but unfortunately the brutal oppression and systematic destruction of Tibetan cultural heritage, identity and language which started with Mao's invasion in the 1950s is still going on strong today. Even sadder is that very few Chinese either know or choose to believe the horrors China has committed in Tibet over the last half century. Some, like the well-known Chinese dissidents Wei Jinsheng and Henry Wu Hongda, who spent years in a Tibetan prison unit alongside Tibetan prisoners of conscience, have told about their experiences, but why would the proud Chinese of today choose democracy and the admission of their own shame when the Communist Party is hauling in foreign money and promising unprecedented global power?

International law be damned.

How much longer do the Tibetan people have to suffer until the Chinese learn that there are higher and more positive values in life than genocidal jingoism?

It should be emphasized that the exiled Tibetan groups based in India are extremely vulnerable to China's attacks and snooping since they often operate on aging hardware running obsolete and unpatched Windows software, partly out of necessity since some Tibetan-language word-processing tools that they're familiar with only run on obsolete MS platforms and partly because they're only now beginning to realize that Linux can also be made to work for them both on the servers and desktops. In fact the government in neighboring Bhutan has already created a comprehensive Dzongkha (a Tibetan-like language using the same script) version of Linux.

Equally huge problem is that most Tibetans in exile will naturally try to communicate with their family and friends back in the Chinese-occupied Tibet, but they don't realize that their unencrypted emails, "yahoo chats" and mobile text messages are all being monitored and logged by the Chinese authorities. Even if they don't exchange any sensitive information, simply receiving messages from outside China's control makes any Tibetan a suspect. Actually just being a Tibetan makes one a suspect under the eyes of the Chinese colonial masters...

This one's certainly blocked since it belongs to exiled Tibetans' domain which has for years been under heavy attacks by the CCP's electronic warfare corps.

Since the biggest problem with China is that the masses simply don't know anything else other than the "information" managed by the Party's Ministry of Propaganda, it is imperative that the West begins to pay more attention to the right of the Chinese people to access news sources outside their regime's control. It'd be a start if the US and the EU would not just approve of but actually promote the creation of peer-to-peer filesharing and streaming sites. Strangely, most of the current p2p streaming sites seem to operate from China and Taiwan, but they're strictly centered around "harmless" stuff like sports, entertainment and local dramas without a whiff of anything resembling social or political content.

'Those people don't deserve their activities to be protected - they're illegal.' They deserve to have their activities protected unless those activities are wrong and it really isn't for Hushmail to say whether or not they are wrong. Illegal really has nothing to do with it. Many things were illegal in Nazi Germany or are illegal in China, or Russia, or the United States, or that doesn't mean they are wrong or immoral. Many laws are innately immoral.

In China rule by a fascist (i.e. capitalist/national socialist dictatorship) one-party clique, the use of encryption by "citizens" is strictly forbidden. Some people do use GPG, but at a risk of being detained at the regime's whim. Most ethnic Chinese consider themselves "historically conditioned" to complying with their regime's rules and restrictions, as long as they themselves and their empire grow richer. However the Chinese regime is also holding several non-Chinese peoples (in Tibet, Mongolia and East Turkestan) under brutal and even genocidal occupation since the communist dictator Mao ordered his communist army to invade their territories immediately after seizing power in China in 1949 (after the USA had defeated the Japanese who had occupied parts of China, Manchuria and Mongolia until 1945).

In order to wipe these non-Chinese nations off the map in eternity, Mao's regime embarked on systematic "Final Solution" plan which involved ripping off these nations' natural resources for exploitation by the ethnic Chinese "master race" and building up a massively militarized Chinese-controlled police state.

In Tibet over a million Tibetans have perished after their country was turned into a one huge gulag, with hundreds of thousands suffering from torture and rape before dying. The Chinese-built road, rail and air transport infrastructure aimed at relieving Tibet from its great natural resources is also used for settling massive numbers of Han-Chinese migrants in the Tibetan territories, leaving Tibetans increasingly in a minority in their own country! Meanwhile Tibetan culture, language, religion and history (all completely non-Chinese) are being systematically wiped out in order to permanently stamp Tibetans as an inferior and backward "Chinese" untermenschen (sub-humans) without proper identity.

Now, according to the "law" written by the occupying Chinese "communist party" clique, it is illegal to discuss any matters which might somewhow give legitimacy to Tibetans' calls for actual self-rule. But since the Tibetans' 2000-year-long independent history, language and its sanskrit-based script (distantly related to Hindi), old Buddhist religion originally from India and their unique fusion of south and central Asian culture and identity are all inherently non-Chinese, practically any talk of native Tibetan affairs can be ruled to be "splittism", with punishment familiar to the victims of Stalin and Hitler.

A few months ago, on August 1, a Tibetan man named Ronggyal Adrak walked on the stage during a massively policed Tibetan "cultural event" in the Tibetan province of Kham and called for the Dalai Lama (equivalent to Pope to Catholics) to be allowed to return to Tibet from exile.

"When I shouted 'Long live the Dalai Lama' and called for the release of Tibetan political prisoners, I was detained and then formally arrested." "The main reason was that there is nobody in Tibet who does not have faith in, loyalty to, and the desire to see the Dalai Lama," he told the court. "On the contrary, the Chinese government sends out propaganda saying that the Tibetans inside Tibet have no desire to meet him and have lost faith in him." "That is wrong, and we have no freedom to say so." The judge told Ronggyal Adrak that his crimes were "very severe."

Details of his imprisonment and the secret Communist Party "court" ruling only leaked out because his case was an unusually

Getting work visas seems to be an issue for Germans. Here is a story about a guy being deported from Thailand for the same reason:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?showtopic= 130082

He lucked out getting a suspended sentence on the jail time.

And here is an article where a Tibetan was deported from Germany when he was trying to attend a conference in Brussels (he was only in transit):

http://www.phayul.com/news/article.aspx?article=Ge rman+airport+authority+deports+on+baseless+ground+ %3A+Chairman+Karma+Choephel&id=16744&c=1&t=1

Conclusion: This sort of thing happens all over the world, and you really need someone experienced to set up your papers.

Using inexpensive off-the-shelf gear they managed to broadcast a live video of the protest before the Chinese "People's Armed Police" caught wind of the "evil Freedom banner" they were holding and quickly grabbed them into custody. But the video had already been streamed into safety and in near real-time uploaded to various video-streaming sites.

"Jeff's wireless received the video from Shannon's camera transmission, and sent the signal through an analog-digital converter that output firewire into his MacBook computer...not much different from using a WII or Playstation or Final Cut. Quicktime Broadcaster downsized and compressed the video to a data rate the satellite connection could handle (220kbps at 15 frams/sec, compressed eventually to 100 kbps), and sent it via satellite (Inmarsat system using a BGAN Java program) to a Students for a Free Tibet computer, which was also running Quicktime Broadcaster. They immediately uploaded the three minute video to YouTube. As a backup, Flickr, YouTube, Pando and other accounts were set up on the computer to upload images and video in the event Quicktime Broadcaster failed to send video, but an Internet connection was still live".

Being protected by foreign passports the protesters had to only endure verbal threats, separation from fellow protesters, sleep depravation etc. for less then three days before being deported from the Chinese-occupied Tibet. However for the exiled Tibetan member of the crew the price of taking part in the protest was far heavier since he would now be banned from returning to his homeland... until Tibet regains it freedom, or at least until the Chinese people change their criminal and expansionist CCP regime to one which doesn't commit systematic genocide against China's historical neighbours.

For indigenous Tibetans living under Chinese oppression any action calling for freedom in Tibet will without exception result in far more horrifying treatment involving unimaginable forms of torture and years, even decades of imprisonment in one of the many Chinese concentration camps like Drapchi outside Lhasa. More than a few Tibetans - often young buddhist nuns or monks - have died in the Chinese gulags and this horror show has continued for several decades. Even people like the visiting EU Commissioner for Human Rights is denied access to these Tibetan prisoners of conscience.

More information about this Base Camp protest and the Tibetan struggle in general can be found from the Students For A Free Tibet and Phayul websites.

Thank your lucky stars right now if you weren't born as a Tibetan, or if you did, that you've never heard about the vague terms of "the UN declaration of human rights" or "solidarity"... although sometimes what you don't know can still hurt you badly.

Luckily, or "double-luckily", for the expansionist Chinese junta, the territories of East Turkestan they grabbed from the turkic muslim Uygur people across the vast Taklamakan desert were far easier to exploit for oil, gas, minerals and even uranium since unlike Tibet (aka The Roof of the World) the Uygur homeland lies at or even below sea level.

And for some reason the islamic world is too busy hating the "West" to pay attention to their Uyghur brothers being wiped off the map in actual fact.

Thank your lucky stars right now if you weren't born as a Tibetan, or if you did, that you've never heard about the vague terms of "the UN declaration of human rights" or "solidarity"... although sometimes what you don't know can still hurt you badly.

Luckily, or "double-luckily", for the expansionist Chinese junta, the territories of East Turkestan they grabbed from the turkic muslim Uygur people across the vast Taklamakan desert were far easier to exploit for oil, gas, minerals and even uranium since unlike Tibet (aka The Roof of the World) the Uygur homeland lies at or even below sea level.

And for some reason the islamic world is too busy hating the "West" to pay attention to their Uyghur brothers being wiped off the map in actual fact.

Thank your lucky stars right now if you weren't born as a Tibetan, or if you did, that you've never heard about the vague terms of "the UN declaration of human rights" or "solidarity"... although sometimes what you don't know can still hurt you badly.

Luckily, or "double-luckily", for the expansionist Chinese junta, the territories of East Turkestan they grabbed from the turkic muslim Uygur people across the vast Taklamakan desert were far easier to exploit for oil, gas, minerals and even uranium since unlike Tibet (aka The Roof of the World) the Uygur homeland lies at or even below sea level.

And for some reason the islamic world is too busy hating the "West" to pay attention to their Uyghur brothers being wiped off the map in actual fact.

Thank your lucky stars right now if you weren't born as a Tibetan, or if you did, that you've never heard about the vague terms of "the UN declaration of human rights" or "solidarity"... although sometimes what you don't know can still hurt you badly.

Luckily, or "double-luckily", for the expansionist Chinese junta, the territories of East Turkestan they grabbed from the turkic muslim Uygur people across the vast Taklamakan desert were far easier to exploit for oil, gas, minerals and even uranium since unlike Tibet (aka The Roof of the World) the Uygur homeland lies at or even below sea level.

And for some reason the islamic world is too busy hating the "West" to pay attention to their Uyghur brothers being wiped off the map in actual fact.

Quote from a recent Rolling Stone article "The End of Tibet"

The small concrete room smells of urine. In the corner, a young woman lies on a metal cot, moaning softly and vomiting up blood. A former Buddhist nun, she is recovering from an operation on her stomach to fix internal injuries caused by beatings from Chinese guards. Her roommate, Lhundrub Zangmo, speaks in a whispery monotone. Zangmo's head is no longer shaven, and her straight black hair falls over her tight sweater emblazoned with the words The Coolest Boy. But even though she has left the clergy, Zangmo remains deeply religious. She has plastered the walls of the tiny room with photos of Buddhist deities and the Dalai Lama, leader of Tibetan Buddhists.

It has been only a few months since Zangmo and her friend fled Tibet on foot over the Himalayas to this squat, block-shaped center for Tibetan refugees in India. The two women had been imprisoned along with a group of other nuns, some for as long as sixteen years. They were first arrested in 1990 for staging a protest in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, to demonstrate their outrage over China's continuing presence in their native land. As the women chanted "Free Tibet," Chinese police moved quickly, knocking them to the ground and dragging them to jail before their protest could attract attention. Inside the prison, Chinese authorities subjected the nuns to a brutal routine. "Police stuck electric prods into my vagina and then hung me from the ceiling," Zangmo says softly. Her voice doesn't waver, but she looks away. Some of her friends lost consciousness as soon as guards pushed the cattle prods inside them, but Zangmo remained alert throughout the torture. "I was totally, totally frightened," she says.

Police eventually transferred the women to Drapchi, the most feared prison in Lhasa. According to human rights organizations like the International Campaign for Tibet, there are hundreds of political prisoners in Tibet, the majority of them Buddhist clergy. Scores have died from torture at the hands of Chinese authorities: electric shock, hanging, forced blood extraction. "They tried to pull my arms out of my sockets, and beat my legs and arms with metal bars and shocked me," recalls Phuntsog Nyidron, another nun who was imprisoned at Drapchi. "I was worried they could easily kill me." After repeated beatings, a monk named Lobsang Choephel hanged himself at Drapchi, his body dangling from the iron bars of his cell.

The punishment was most severe for those who refused to give up their faith. "In Drapchi, there were numerous demonstrations," Zangmo says. One day, four nuns refused to renounce their Buddhist beliefs in front of the Chinese guards. "They were beaten until they died." Zangmo stares at the floor and starts to cry, her voice breaking. "They died together."

Well over hundred thousand Tibetans have since escaped the Chinese rule over their fatherland ("phayul" in Tibetan) and settled in refugee communities in India and in third countries. A large number have died attempting to escape, either by the harsh elements of the Himalayas or in the hands of the Chinese military hunting them down.

A great many Tibetans, mainly young children travelling in groups accompanied by a couple of adults, have also made the perilous journey into India to be able to study (free subjects without Chinese indoctrination and in their own language) in the exile-run schools in India (like the Tibetan Children's Village in Dharamsala) before returning back to their families in the Chinese-occupied Tibet.

Now, this Wi-Fi mesh network, which is being built by some great foreign volunteers in coordination with the Tibetan exile administration, is aimed at connecting the various local institutions in a seriously hilly areas of the Himalayan foothills. The objective is to enable the sharing of information between these locations, not to create a first-person-shooter gaming network. The exiled Tibetans are extremely serious about their education *and* their ability to communicate and campaign for the freedom of their homeland in the modern world. This mesh network is aimed at facilitating both of these needs.

Incidentally, since the Wired story went public on Thursday, and possibly thanks to some blindly "patriotic" chinese hackers learning about this Wi-Fi mesh from this Slashdot story, the Tibetan exiles' network has now come under DDoS attack after initial scanning from IPs in China.

Well over hundred thousand Tibetans have since escaped the Chinese rule over their fatherland ("phayul" in Tibetan) and settled in refugee communities in India and in third countries. A large number have died attempting to escape, either by the harsh elements of the Himalayas or in the hands of the Chinese military hunting them down.

A great many Tibetans, mainly young children travelling in groups accompanied by a couple of adults, have also made the perilous journey into India to be able to study (free subjects without Chinese indoctrination and in their own language) in the exile-run schools in India (like the Tibetan Children's Village in Dharamsala) before returning back to their families in the Chinese-occupied Tibet.

Now, this Wi-Fi mesh network, which is being built by some great foreign volunteers in coordination with the Tibetan exile administration, is aimed at connecting the various local institutions in a seriously hilly areas of the Himalayan foothills. The objective is to enable the sharing of information between these locations, not to create a first-person-shooter gaming network. The exiled Tibetans are extremely serious about their education *and* their ability to communicate and campaign for the freedom of their homeland in the modern world. This mesh network is aimed at facilitating both of these needs.

Incidentally, since the Wired story went public on Thursday, and possibly thanks to some blindly "patriotic" chinese hackers learning about this Wi-Fi mesh from this Slashdot story, the Tibetan exiles' network has now come under DDoS attack after initial scanning from IPs in China.

Details of such a heinous thought crime can be found here.

In the past the US of A took a much stronger stand against such obscene human rights violations by the Chinese regime and other dictatorships, but it is very clear that the current regime in Washington has neither the intention nor moral standing to help oppressed and occupied peoples. You see, the dictators in Beijing are among Bush's "staunchest allies" in this bizarre "global war of terror" where the occupied and the oppressed are considered to be the "terrorists"!

Dubya's inaugural address (2005) now reads like a sad mockery of the Freedoms the USA used to claim to be representing:

Today, America speaks anew to the peoples of the world:

All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.

Democratic reformers facing repression, prison, or exile can know: America sees you for who you are: the future leaders of your free country.

The six million Tibetans living in the world largest concentration camp they once knew as their homeland meanwhile haven't even got a clue that the "world's most powerful man and the leader of the Free World" ever uttered those words. Even possessing a copy of the UN's Human Rights Declaration is enough to get a Tibetan slammed into the Chinese prison camps...

It is easy to forget that by agreeing to censor its search engine in cahoots with the Chinese dictatorship, Google is now also helping repress millions of Tibetans who have suffered under harsh military occupation by the Chinese since 1950.

Since people tend to be more familiar with the horrors of the Jewish Holocaust or Stalin's invasions and gulags, what if Google had made a business pact with the Nazis or Stalin providing their ignorant populations with entertainment and "harmless legitimate-looking facts" while suppressing all knowledge of the horrors those regimes caused to the people they oppressed?

This is what Google (and Microsoft and Yahoo) are doing in China today. All knowledge of the Chinese crimes against the Tibetan nation or the Tibetan people's struggle to regain their independence are systematically wiped out from their search results as if none of it ever happened, at the behest of the ruling Chinese Communist Party dictatorship.

What is the point of having an "information service" which covers up the most crucial information relating to massive human rights violations? A glorified pacifier to placate the ignorant masses while their ruling regime is busy carrying out genocide to its horrible conclusion?

An estimated 1,500,000 Tibetans (!!) have already perished under the Chinese occupation (nearly a fifth of total population), Tibetan language, buddhist religion, identity and history are systematically suppressed while the CCP is promoting Chinese settlers to overrun Tibet demographically. Not to mention Tibetan natural resources being stolen, nuclear waste dumped there and more nuclear missile sites being built to threaten all democracies south of the Himalayas. Or the brutality of the CCP's paramilitary police against the large number of Tibetan political prisoners being held in secret camps across Tibet. The Chinese population should be allowed to compare these facts to the current feed of Communist Party-driven anti-Japanese propaganda over that brutal, if partial invasion that ceased to take place over sixty years ago. Which invasion is supposed to be less evil and why?

Google's Chinese (dis)service will compliantly keep any of this information from reaching the Chinese or the Tibetans under Chinese occupation because an unelected and expansionist regime wanted them to collaborate.

This shouldn't be only about self-centered westerners worrying about their god-given personal privacy, although privacy is of course extremely important even in democracies with other safety mechanisms against abuse. No, it is far more sinister when corporations from the "democratic world" are helping cover up a holocaust or genocide being committed by their business partners!

What we need is search, webmail etc. services which are guaranteed to remain neutral and safe without turning evil at the first profit-motive. Or which are not subject to American "shareholders uber alles" mentality which corrupted Google. Could/should such services be based in Switzerland or Sweden, both historically neutral territories without track record of collaborating with dictatorial regimes? Would they need massive financing, thereby potentially subjecting them to the whims of the moral-free financial markets, or could enough of their functions (CPU load, distributed and encrypted storage) be offloaded, a la bittorrent, to contributing users and neutral, respectable institutions?

How could the OSS communities help build safe alternatives to Google's morality and privacy-compromised offerings?

In the meanwhile some Tibetan support groups are promoting

The new rail link will not only speed up China's environmentally disastrous exploitation of Tibet's national resources but also hasten the systematically executed demographic disaster which is intended to turn Tibetans into a disenfrancised and sinociziced minority in their own country, not unlike Mongolians after the chinese communists took over "Inner Mongolia" and extended China's railway network there.

China is already using occupied Tibet, historically a neutral buffer state between India and China, as a military and nuclear missile base overlooking South Asia. Part of the Indian planners' realization of the need for an improved road network to complement the existing railways has undoubtably been China's communist-era expansionism towards India (including China's still unresolved invasion of north Indian territories soon after Tibet had been occupied), and Chinese military's ability to easily disable India's railway network with a sneak missile attack from their bases in Tibet.

In ideal world the democratic nations would have a common policy of supporting the economic development of democratic developing countries like India while refusing to prop up expansionist dictatorships like China through trade and investment.

Unfortunately for democratic principles, the special interest groups behind the leaders of the currently rich democratic nations are finding it more lucrative to do just the opposite.