You have either been misinformed or are deliberately making stuff up for some reason... spreading blatant lies like this is not going to help... because your so-obviously-made-up description of china
Dear sir, what exact blatant lies did I write, and why did the post make you so angry?
What exactly does the PRC law say about Chinese nationals' right to use encryption (or lack thereof)?
I am also aware that especially in the larger cities of China proper the Han-Chinese people (who are not suspected of any "anti-state activities") running their own computers are not generally bothered by the State authorities, especially since only a tiny percentage of them would be using encyption software not vetted by the State. I also hope you realize that the reality for people in the PRC Government's bad books (human rights activists, independent thinkers and writers) and in the so-called "autonomous regions" is somewhat different.
Pointing out the shortcomings of your unelected regime and its laws was in no way criticism of you as an individual, but as the modding is already showing there's a strong Hive Mentality among many Chinese which causes them to attack any critic of their rulers...
In case some people aren't aware of the realities in the PRC, all "laws" have been de facto written by the Chinese Communist Party and they are also subject to interpretation by the "courts" which are under direct rule of the Party. There is no separation whatsoever between the Party's executive and judicial arms, which is one of the reasons why the "People's Republic" of China is classified as an authoritarian state.
Measures for the Use of Encryption Products by Overseas Organizations and Individuals within China.
Announcement of State Encryption Administration
(No. 9)
The Measures for the Use of Encryption Products by Overseas Organizations and Individuals within China are hereby promulgated and shall come into force as of May 1, 2007.
State Encryption Administration
March 24, 2007
Measures for the Use of Encryption Products by Overseas Organizations and Individuals within China
Article 1 For the purpose of regulating the use of encryption codes and equipment containing encryption technologies (hereinafter referred in general as encryption products) by overseas organizations and individuals within China, these Measures are formulated in accordance with the Regulation on Commercial Ciphers.
Article 2 The use of encryption products by overseas organizations and individuals within China shall be governed by these Measures, excluding China-based embassies and consulates of foreign countries, China-based representative offices of international organizations and other institutions enjoying the corresponding privilege and immunity.
Article 3 The term "overseas organization" as mentioned in these Measures refers to an organization set up outside China under foreign law, including the branch institutions, offices, representative offices, etc. established by it inside China.
The term "overseas individual" refers to a person who does not have the Chinese nationality under the Nationality Law of the People's Republic of China.
The term "encryption products" as mentioned in these Measures refers to the products for which the information is subject to protection or security authentication on the basis of encryption technologies, including the encryption products made within and outside China.
Article 4 The State Encryption Administration (hereinafter referred to as the SEA) shall be responsible for the administration of the use of encryption products by overseas organizations and individuals within China.
The encryption administrative departments of all provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government shall undertake the relevant administrative tasks in accordance with these Measures.
Article 5 When an overseas organization or individual intends to use an encryption product within China, it (he) shall fill out a Form of Application for the Registration of Use of Encryption Products by Overseas Organization or Individual in advance and submit it to the encryption administrative department of the local province, autonomous region or municipality directly under the Central Government.
The encryption administrative department of the province, autonomous region or municipality directly under the Central Government shall, within 5 working days from the day when it accepts an application, examine the Form of Application for the Registration of the Use of Encryption Products by Overseas Organization or Individual and submit it to the SEA.
The SEA shall, within 20 working days from the day when the encryption administrative department of the province, autonomous region or municipality directly under the Central Government accepts an application, examine the Form of Application for the Registration of the Use of Encryption Products by Overseas Organization or Individual.
If it approves the use, it shall issue to the applicant a Permit to Use Encryption Product by Overseas Organization or Individual. A Permit to Use Encryption Product by Overseas Organization or Individual shall be valid for three years.
Article 6 Where an overseas organization or individual needs to use any encryption product imported from abroad, it (he) shall apply for a License for the Import of Encryption Product.
When such encryption product enters into China, the overseas organization or individual shall faithfully make a declaration and submit the License for the Import of Encr
In China and Chinese-ruled territories use or possession of encryption technology without permission from the Chinese Communist Party (aka PRC government) is an offense against the State/CCP. For those forms of encryption that the Party does permit to be used, eg. in online shopping, the Party must have the decryption keys.
Unlike individuals, companies may be permitted to use encryption without surrendering the keys to the State, but that only happens if the company has been deemed supportive of the Government, or if their presence in China otherwise benefits the State's objectives.
Since I have some Chinese fenqing (those mindless hordes attacking enemies of State during the Cultural Revolution but now ultra-nationalistic) on my tail this post will probably be modded into oblivion either immediately or eventually...
.. if you Mactards and Linux zealots* start smugging on about how the whole maintenance and vulnerability issue vanishes..
I pretty much concur with your concerns, but considering the all the network and OS (Linux & Mac OS) plumbing, would it be unthinkable to offer those people remote "terminals" featuring simplified task screens while the actual OS was running on beefy central systems... Come to think of it, we already have that, but it isn't currently packaged and marketed for the unashamed technophobe segment.
I've set up a couple of simplified Linux "nettop" boxes to relatives and they are quite comfortable using them as long as someone configures and keeps the machine going. A decade ago over half of French adults were comfortable enough with a relatively archaic xterm-looking videotex information system running over telephone lines. I suspect its success was partially due to the maintenance-free operation, unlike today's average complicated desktop computers which require a lot of superfluous knowledge to operate and maintain.
Most people who are able to use ATMs are also able to use a care-free "internet terminal" package. It is another question whether absolutely everyone should actually get on that "information superhighway" where bandits lurk left and right for your credit card number...
The content of my message was straight from any mainstream media in the free world and also supportive of ordinary Chinese people but apparently some CCP regime backer (a communist/fascist who supports Chinese regime's oppression) has kept me on his hitlist.
It is tragic that they can roam freely to suppress others' freedom of speech and opinion while no one is allowed to support those freedoms in China.
2009 will be a major anniversary for the 1959 Tibetan Uprising (which lead to tens of thousands of Tibetans fleeing their homeland), the 1979 Democracy Wall, the 1988/1989 Tibetan Uprising and the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre.
With the economy not growing fast enough to creat new jobs and millions of labourers being sent packing to their poor home provinces (often without pay), there are bound to be even more local "incidents" against the regime than the estimated 87,000 in 2007.
By targeting "internet porn" the Chinese dictatorship can flex their "penal muscle" and increase their leverage over various service providers (that is, play by our rules or you'll hang over porn which is impossible to totally weed out anyway).
You are a sad, sad case, but a fine showcase of fenqing inability to engage in anything remotely resembling a debate.
I gave you several detailed arguments and all you can do is resort to shouting "LIES LIES!!", "WEST IS EVIL" and "ALL THEIR LAND IS BELONG TO US!!" style nonsense without a single logical, let alone moral, point.
Without your ilk the absolute madness and destruction of the "cultural revolution" couldn't have been possible.
By "free country" you certainly wouldn't mean an "independent" Tibet, which would be a poverty-stricken theocracy where slavery would be , and which would be a Western protectorate. Some "free country" you're advocating, you worthless trash.
Dear Chinese supremacist fenqing,
In this context by "free country" I actually referred to any non-expansionist and non-genocidal country with a democratic government; i.e a decent country which doesn't represent a threat to its neighbours or its own people.
But now that you brought up your dictatorship's military-imperialist claims (and brutal rule) over China's neighbouring countries it would be a good time to set some facts straight:
1) Tibetans are non-Chinese in every respect: Through millenia of unique and unified Tibetan culture, by language and its written phonetic script which have nothing to do with Chinese, by their religion and beliefs which is a fusion of Tibetan Buddhism and the ancient Bon which originated in Central Asia, by their ethnicity (which the Chinese are taught to be inferior) and of course by their millenia of independent history (with the occasional war with neighbouring states, including the Chinese). Until the 1949 communist Chinese invasion, Tibet had its own central government, army, currency, flag, postal system, education system, diplomatic relations with its neighbours...
2) China's despot rulers' nominal claims over the Tibetan people stem from medieval ignorance by China's god-king emperors who were deluded enough to really believe that the whole world were subject to their divine rule. Such claims by any feudal overlords are considered lunatic nonsense in the modern era, except apparently in China, and they are the very definition of *imperialism*.
3) Tibetans have no desire to be ruled (and being wiped out as a nation) by any foreign military occupation, Tibetans were never asked if they want Mao's (the most murderous individual in human history) communist army to come in and subjugate them and since the 1949 invasion any chance to speak up for Tibetan rights has been brutally supressed.
4) The large Tibetan community in exile is run democratically through free and secular elections and even if the vast majority of Tibetans are devoted Buddhists there are no calls by any one to re-establish Vatican-style government in Tibet. Only CCP's propaganda aimed at domestic Chinese masses is repeating such lies ad nauseaum, and unfortunately some seem to believe that propaganda.
5) Unlike the Chinese, Tibetans have no overriding urge to become rich, militaristic and able to dominate other peoples (or even the world). Yet Tibet would be relatively wealthy if their extensive natural resources weren't being ripped off indiscriminately by the occupying Chinese military-industrial complex.
6) Try to look beyond your xenophobia for a moment and think about your claim of Tibetans wanting to become a "protectorate" of anyone. Of course, the Chinese CCP regime deems mere Tibetan calls for democracy and self-determination (both universal United Nations objectives) as immediate threats to its dictatorship.
Finally, angry Chinese nationalist fenqing like yourself invariably hate the pre-democratic Western imperialist and especially the Japanese empires for having dared to temporarily violate the integrity of the Chinese homeland (among many other lands) even partially. Yet you are now blindly supporting such military-imperialist aggression (and in a far more total and genocidal form) against China's peaceful neighbours? It is a sad time when a potentially positive civilization chooses to throw both morality and objectivity out of the window in their mad scramble to global domination.
I don't have a problem with MS making money. I'd much rather have the money go to MS and then get filtered back into the US economy and partially eventually back into my pocket than burned or sent to China where the money doesn't come back this way.
Surely you are aware that Lenovo (formerly Legend) is significantly owned by the Chinese Communist Party's state organs and their cronies, and that most (probably all) Lenovos are made in China.
Somehow I doubt that buying MS-preloaded Lenovos will help counter the masterfully engineered massive trade imbalance between the "People's Republic of China" and the rest of the world.
In this case buying a non-MS-preloaded device (but perhaps with a localized and locally supported version of Linux) that is built in a free country by a company not directly supporting China's military expansionism and trade/currency manipulation might be an option?
In fact, 0.6.3.7 fixed it already, but the latest version also sorts out some account switching issue... and while you're restarting Firefox, why not update your NoScript and Flashblock extensions as well.
"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.
Civilizations absolutely have collapsed due to lack of natural resources.
Interestingly enough, civilization can also "collapse" due to having "too plentiful" natural resources, namely when it has a militant neighbour which has no qualms of committing genocide in order to forever annex those resources.
"Tibet has a significant share of the world's reserves of uranium, lithium, chromite, copper, borax, and iron. Tibet has proven deposits of 126 minerals" etc etc.
Guess why the Chinese Communist (now Nazional-socialist) Party won't let the wholly non-chinese Tibetan people regain their independence? Besides territorial expansionism being CCP's raison d'etre, the people really enriching themselves from the rape of Tibet are almost exclusively CCP cadres or their family.
Tip: amd64 version is also for 64-bit Intel CPUs
on
Ubuntu 8.04 Released
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· Score: 1
I've seen some confusion due to the "amd64" naming and in order to get more fearless penguins marching to the 64-beat of Linux, here's the thing: the amd64 version is in fact meant for all 64-bit processors using the x86-64 instruction set. That includes practically all current mainstream processors from Intel.
If you are a fearful penguin you can google ahead on how to deal with potential issues with some proprietary packages, but those issues are few and getting fewer as more users take the leap.
Also be aware that upgrading an existing 32-bit install to amd64 requires a fresh install (although the most suicidal uptime freaks will find a way...). Old/home can still be reused as usual, unless you loaded it up with 32-bit binaries of course.
Having had a deep and long-time exposure both to the affairs of Tibet and China, what truly alarms me most personally is the ethnic Han Chinese population's near-total lack of compassion and will to understand the Tibetans' suffering and the very present threat of national extinction they are facing, like what happened to the "Inner" mongols, manchus and innumerable nationalities that the Chinese history has conveniently forgotten.
Even the majority of the ethnic Chinese who've settled into foreign democratic countries somehow pledge their loyalty to the Han empire and its policies. The growing "greatness" and resurgence of the Han Chinese empire is an end that justifies all means, unquestionably. Those who even dare to suggest *debating* about nationalist causes like the status of Tibetan people under Chinese rule, are ruthlessly attacked. (a case study: Grace Wang, Duke Uni.) That will set the parameters for the "national debate" among the Chinese. Either one conforms or one becomes an "enemy of the people"!
Nature or Nurture?
The modern-day Han ethnicity is an amalgam of innumerous east-Asian tribes which were over the millenia taken over and converted into following the "superior" culture which was later named after the Han dynasty. There are some ongoing genetic studies of the current Chinese population which might give us better understanding of the ways the dynasties expanded, whether it was by peaceful assimilation or by more militant means. Obviously the ruling CCP will have a keen interest in interpreting the results of any such studies.
Regardless of the genetics, since "modern" nationalism spread into China the ideology has been used very successfully to help e.g. southern Chinese to identify themselves as Hans (which wasn't the case as recently as in the 18th or 19th century). Since the beginning of the 20th century pretty much all Chinese who didn't strongly identify with one of the 50-60 so called national minorities, including those of mixed parentage, were invariably raised to follow the "higher" Han culture. The so called minorities also get immersed into thinking that the 90%+ Han majority are the "paternal" race with "proper culture". Without the right to learn about the history and rights of those minorities, and with centrally encouraged Han migration into the minority areas to solidify Han control, the remaining minorities will inevitably vanish; just as the earlier neighbours of the early "Han" dynasties were assimilated until only Han culture remained.
Now with even "overseas Chinese" identifying so strongly with their "ethno-cultural family", it would be interesting to learn to what degree the Han Chinese language, its ideogram-based script and other social factors (such as the Chinatown effect of Chinese sticking together and discouraging cross-cultural exchange or marrying even after generations "overseas") are behind this phenomenom. Is there some kind of a "first imprint effect" that steers many or most Chinese to simply follow the mainstream Chinese "thinking" as it is presently promoted by that mainstream? Do the people identifying themselves as ethnic Chinese feel unusually insecure living abroad, and the imprint somehow gives them a sense of belonging and purpose? In the Chinese thinking one never questions "family", and the mainstream thinking (also engineered by the CCP desperately needing a raison d'etre!) has rather successfully soldered together the concepts of family and the (great) Han nation.
Like most of my Tibetan friends (some of whom have suffered greatly in the hands of the Chinese), I don't hate the Chinese for what they've done to Tibetans (I know the blame lies in the system and control of it). In fact I am quite lucky to have a large number of intelligent Chinese friends with whom I can civilly debate, agree and disagree on various issues. What does cause me some personal pain is seeing presumably well-informed Chinese choosing to ignore the clear injustices the Han empire has committed in Tibet since Mao's 1950 invasion
"Free Tibet" is about Tibetans ruling themselves. Nothing more, nothing less.
Before the Chinese they were a feudal theocracy... in reading this.. http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html
it doesn't sound very "free"... to many movies of smiling peaceful monks, I reckon.
Ahhh Parenti! The leftist history scholar who never went to Tibet or spoke to Tibetans and who speaks neither Tibetan nor Chinese... Ask him what he thinks about China's swerve from communism to fascism.
These articles are under the Fact vs. Myth category alongside CCP propaganda so people can evaluate both sides on merit. The CCP only allows you to see their highly revised version of reality, wonder why is that?
Do you reckon the Tibetans are smiling now, behind the great wall of Chinese PLA and PAP troops?
After reading and hopefully understanding the above-mentioned articles, it would be nice to hear if you gained any understanding for the Tibetans' struggle for national self-determination.
Summary: China's de facto control over Tibet only started with Mao's military invasion, and the CCP should really try to stick one imperial claim instead of every fourth Chinese exclaiming TIBET ARE BELONG TO US SINCE FOREVER! NO, SINCE THE MONGOLS RULED OVER CHINA! NO, SINCE THE MANCHUS RULED OVER CHINA! etc...
On the other hand the Chinese regime's genocidal brutality against the occupied people in Tibet would invalidate even (imagined) de facto rule according to international laws of which even the PRC is nominally a signatory.
please provide an example of how the average Tibetan people, not just the clerical elite who apparently lost power, suffered from the changes brought by the annexation.
Besides the 1,2 million Tibetan casualties under Chinese rule, out of which some 400,000 starved to death (unpredecented in Tibet's history), another 200,000 were tortured to death etc.?
While other former colonial dominions have been developing their societies and political systems on their own accord, especially post-WWII, Tibetans have had all those rights and possibilities taken away from them.
If you're seriously interested, I suggest that you start by checking out my homepage above or simply google for "tibet" and "human rights". Those terms will catch very few Chinese websites.
If you're audio-visual type, here's a very recent British documentary, filmed undercover in Tibet by a Tibetan exile.
Another thing that the Chinese Communist Party likes to claim is that the Han Chinese have sunk billions of dollars into developing Tibet. Well, the Chinese have indeed built some infrastructure to aid the Chinese military, to help extract Tibet's large natural resources and more recently to promote the massive Han Chinese migration into the Tibetan homeland, but the CCP's own experts estimate the value of Tibet's oil, gas, uranium, industrial metal, timber, water and other resources to be several orders of magnitude larger than the Han-centric investments by the CCP.
Ultimately everyone except the CCP would hope to allow the Tibetans to hold a referendum on whether they wish to remain under Chinese rule or whether they'd prefer to be in control of their own affairs, as the inalienable right is enshrined in the United Nations' declarations, which even the People's Republic of China (or the CCP which equates itself as the PRC government) has signed and recognized.
Do you think the Tibetans might voluntarily remain under Chinese rule, or choose to represented by their own democratically elected government, like the one already operating in exile? And if they choose self-determination, why should the Chinese be violently opposed to that choice?
It is very sad that some Han Chinese settlers were targeted by some angry and frustrated Tibetan youth against the wishes of the Tibetan exiled government. Just try to have a little understanding for the Tibetans who've lived under murderous and pervasive Chinese repression since the 1950s.
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.
At the root of this whole shameful (both to the Chinese and to the Free World which chooses to do nothing) and tragic (to the Tibetans) issue of Tibet is China's perceived "suzerainty" or "ownership of the Tibetan territory, with the Tibetan people naturally included in the claim.
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 onstrong 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?
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?
Interesting that you should bring up the comparison to the European colonists and native Americans. A couple of years back the Tibetan rights activists got hold of a Chinese Communist Party (Department of Propaganda) manual for their frontline workers involved in arguing the CCP's side online and in the western media. This Guilt Trip argument that the Western colonial powers had done similar things in their history was top of the list. However for some reason they completely refrain mentioning the last dictatorships that engaged in such genocidal expansionism: Stalin (who Mao got his ideas from) and Hitler.
Also, the "West" (i.e. the western countries that engaged in colonialism; most did not and many were victims of their neighbours in Europe, too) has long ago seen the criminality of the old ways and has since sought to undo past damages. The fact that some colonial powers wiped out indigenous cultures, just like China has been doing to its past near-neighbours for centuries and millenia (check sometimes where the Han-chinese actually originate from), but later saw the error of their own ways should in fact give them some authority to speak from experience. If my great-great-great-.....great-grandparents were sent overseas by their unelected masters to do what we now know to be crimes against humanity, should I not be able to condemn those acts??
Do you think it is reasonable or even understandable for China to be committing such genocidal colonialism today (since the 1950 invasion), all the while keeping their own population in complete darkness over what really is happening and what the Tibetans really want in their own country?
And therein lies another massive difference between the tribal native cultures of the "new continents" and the Tibetans. The Tibetans were not only China's historical neighbours, with wars and peace treaties of their own (including an eternal peace treaty with the Chinese after the Tibetans had invaded the capital of China in the first century B.C.), their own army, central government, currency, postal system etc. The Chinese claims over Tibet are all the more ridiculous when they start referring to the Yuan dynasty... Those were the Mongol descendants of Genghis Khan who had invaded China too, and who agreed to a priest-patron relationship (without de facto control over governance) as protectors of Tibet after converting from Islam to Buddhism!
When the Mongol empire broke up, the remaining Chinese quarter continued the Buddhist relationship with Tibet (i.e. the "primitive" Tibet was trusted to provide spiritual services to the Chinese courts for centuries...), but nominally claimed Tibet as part of the known Chinese empire (just like they did with all their other neighbours), still without de facto rule over its affairs. And somehow that spiritual relationship was carried into the 20th century by the newly-crowned communist emperor "religion is poison" Mao whose first task after coronation was to send his communist army to invade (the CCP term is "peaceful liberation") Tibet for real.
Who told you that "the Chinese government has been doing this (genocidal subjugation) to Tibet for a period of centuries now"??
But nice going, the Guilt Trip argument again succeeded in deflecting some of the spotlight off the current and ongoing crimes by the Chinese regime against the Tibetan nation.
Now go and watch a documentary about the Tibetans living and dying under the Chinese occupation today, not in the 15th or 18th century when people still had no say in their own affairs anywhere. The events in that documentary, which includes footage and interviews from the last major uprising in Lhasa and its aftermath twenty years ago, resembles eerily the current crackdown being executed by the Chinese military and paramilitary since last week.
The Washington Post (article reprinted) has a more mainstream-orinted story on these attacks.
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...
Does this link work from behind the Chinese Communist Party's firewall?
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.
Thanks for the interesting link. Here's its introduction page as well.
Thanks to my reading habit I have several bookshop running friends in India. Only one of them is big enough to use inventory and accounting software from Tally Software who are quite popular in India among larger retailers and some larger family-run operations too. Back in 2005 Tally announced that they were going to port their shop management packages to Red Hat Linux, but I've yet to see any shipping products. Meanwhile the smaller retailers struggle daily with virus-infested XP boxes since their only machine is also used for internet access. I should really investigate if WINE could provide a bridge from the XP applications to native Linux solutions.
In Asia, and probably in other developing parts of the world as well, small businesses seldom use cash registers so a simple inventory and accounting package that is simple to use, install and maintain could be a big hit. Something that one could install and update from Debian/Ubuntu universe and have translated into gazillion languages too. There are a few specialized (and a few abandoned) OSS-based retail/POS offerings, but it might be useful if someone like Novell/SUSE or Canonical built a modular basic POS/inventory/accounting system which could then be tailored for various usage scenarios. Bookstores, coffeeshops, retail shops (single/chain) and repair garages all operate under similar principles, but they all prefer or require different user interfaces.
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Dear sir, what exact blatant lies did I write, and why did the post make you so angry?
What exactly does the PRC law say about Chinese nationals' right to use encryption (or lack thereof)?
I am also aware that especially in the larger cities of China proper the Han-Chinese people (who are not suspected of any "anti-state activities") running their own computers are not generally bothered by the State authorities, especially since only a tiny percentage of them would be using encyption software not vetted by the State. I also hope you realize that the reality for people in the PRC Government's bad books (human rights activists, independent thinkers and writers) and in the so-called "autonomous regions" is somewhat different.
Pointing out the shortcomings of your unelected regime and its laws was in no way criticism of you as an individual, but as the modding is already showing there's a strong Hive Mentality among many Chinese which causes them to attack any critic of their rulers...
In case some people aren't aware of the realities in the PRC, all "laws" have been de facto written by the Chinese Communist Party and they are also subject to interpretation by the "courts" which are under direct rule of the Party. There is no separation whatsoever between the Party's executive and judicial arms, which is one of the reasons why the "People's Republic" of China is classified as an authoritarian state.
Measures for the Use of Encryption Products by Overseas Organizations and Individuals within China.
Announcement of State Encryption Administration
(No. 9)
The Measures for the Use of Encryption Products by Overseas Organizations and Individuals within China are hereby promulgated and shall come into force as of May 1, 2007.
State Encryption Administration
March 24, 2007
Measures for the Use of Encryption Products by Overseas Organizations and Individuals within China
Article 1 For the purpose of regulating the use of encryption codes and equipment containing encryption technologies (hereinafter referred in general as encryption products) by overseas organizations and individuals within China, these Measures are formulated in accordance with the Regulation on Commercial Ciphers.
Article 2 The use of encryption products by overseas organizations and individuals within China shall be governed by these Measures, excluding China-based embassies and consulates of foreign countries, China-based representative offices of international organizations and other institutions enjoying the corresponding privilege and immunity.
Article 3 The term "overseas organization" as mentioned in these Measures refers to an organization set up outside China under foreign law, including the branch institutions, offices, representative offices, etc. established by it inside China.
The term "overseas individual" refers to a person who does not have the Chinese nationality under the Nationality Law of the People's Republic of China.
The term "encryption products" as mentioned in these Measures refers to the products for which the information is subject to protection or security authentication on the basis of encryption technologies, including the encryption products made within and outside China.
Article 4 The State Encryption Administration (hereinafter referred to as the SEA) shall be responsible for the administration of the use of encryption products by overseas organizations and individuals within China.
The encryption administrative departments of all provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government shall undertake the relevant administrative tasks in accordance with these Measures.
Article 5 When an overseas organization or individual intends to use an encryption product within China, it (he) shall fill out a Form of Application for the Registration of Use of Encryption Products by Overseas Organization or Individual in advance and submit it to the encryption administrative department of the local province, autonomous region or municipality directly under the Central Government.
The encryption administrative department of the province, autonomous region or municipality directly under the Central Government shall, within 5 working days from the day when it accepts an application, examine the Form of Application for the Registration of the Use of Encryption Products by Overseas Organization or Individual and submit it to the SEA.
The SEA shall, within 20 working days from the day when the encryption administrative department of the province, autonomous region or municipality directly under the Central Government accepts an application, examine the Form of Application for the Registration of the Use of Encryption Products by Overseas Organization or Individual.
If it approves the use, it shall issue to the applicant a Permit to Use Encryption Product by Overseas Organization or Individual.
A Permit to Use Encryption Product by Overseas Organization or Individual shall be valid for three years.
Article 6 Where an overseas organization or individual needs to use any encryption product imported from abroad, it (he) shall apply for a License for the Import of Encryption Product.
When such encryption product enters into China, the overseas organization or individual shall faithfully make a declaration and submit the License for the Import of Encr
In China and Chinese-ruled territories use or possession of encryption technology without permission from the Chinese Communist Party (aka PRC government) is an offense against the State/CCP. For those forms of encryption that the Party does permit to be used, eg. in online shopping, the Party must have the decryption keys.
Unlike individuals, companies may be permitted to use encryption without surrendering the keys to the State, but that only happens if the company has been deemed supportive of the Government, or if their presence in China otherwise benefits the State's objectives.
Since I have some Chinese fenqing (those mindless hordes attacking enemies of State during the Cultural Revolution but now ultra-nationalistic) on my tail this post will probably be modded into oblivion either immediately or eventually...
Sticking some chewing gum in any digital camera's beeper-hole should bring the decibels back down to illegitimate levels.
I pretty much concur with your concerns, but considering the all the network and OS (Linux & Mac OS) plumbing, would it be unthinkable to offer those people remote "terminals" featuring simplified task screens while the actual OS was running on beefy central systems... Come to think of it, we already have that, but it isn't currently packaged and marketed for the unashamed technophobe segment.
I've set up a couple of simplified Linux "nettop" boxes to relatives and they are quite comfortable using them as long as someone configures and keeps the machine going. A decade ago over half of French adults were comfortable enough with a relatively archaic xterm-looking videotex information system running over telephone lines. I suspect its success was partially due to the maintenance-free operation, unlike today's average complicated desktop computers which require a lot of superfluous knowledge to operate and maintain.
Most people who are able to use ATMs are also able to use a care-free "internet terminal" package. It is another question whether absolutely everyone should actually get on that "information superhighway" where bandits lurk left and right for your credit card number...
The content of my message was straight from any mainstream media in the free world and also supportive of ordinary Chinese people but apparently some CCP regime backer (a communist/fascist who supports Chinese regime's oppression) has kept me on his hitlist.
It is tragic that they can roam freely to suppress others' freedom of speech and opinion while no one is allowed to support those freedoms in China.
2009 will be a major anniversary for the 1959 Tibetan Uprising (which lead to tens of thousands of Tibetans fleeing their homeland), the 1979 Democracy Wall, the 1988/1989 Tibetan Uprising and the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre.
With the economy not growing fast enough to creat new jobs and millions of labourers being sent packing to their poor home provinces (often without pay), there are bound to be even more local "incidents" against the regime than the estimated 87,000 in 2007.
By targeting "internet porn" the Chinese dictatorship can flex their "penal muscle" and increase their leverage over various service providers (that is, play by our rules or you'll hang over porn which is impossible to totally weed out anyway).
You are a sad, sad case, but a fine showcase of fenqing inability to engage in anything remotely resembling a debate.
I gave you several detailed arguments and all you can do is resort to shouting "LIES LIES!!", "WEST IS EVIL" and "ALL THEIR LAND IS BELONG TO US!!" style nonsense without a single logical, let alone moral, point.
Without your ilk the absolute madness and destruction of the "cultural revolution" couldn't have been possible.
Dear Chinese supremacist fenqing,
In this context by "free country" I actually referred to any non-expansionist and non-genocidal country with a democratic government; i.e a decent country which doesn't represent a threat to its neighbours or its own people.
But now that you brought up your dictatorship's military-imperialist claims (and brutal rule) over China's neighbouring countries it would be a good time to set some facts straight:
Finally, angry Chinese nationalist fenqing like yourself invariably hate the pre-democratic Western imperialist and especially the Japanese empires for having dared to temporarily violate the integrity of the Chinese homeland (among many other lands) even partially. Yet you are now blindly supporting such military-imperialist aggression (and in a far more total and genocidal form) against China's peaceful neighbours? It is a sad time when a potentially positive civilization chooses to throw both morality and objectivity out of the window in their mad scramble to global domination.
Surely you are aware that Lenovo (formerly Legend) is significantly owned by the Chinese Communist Party's state organs and their cronies, and that most (probably all) Lenovos are made in China.
Somehow I doubt that buying MS-preloaded Lenovos will help counter the masterfully engineered massive trade imbalance between the "People's Republic of China" and the rest of the world.
In this case buying a non-MS-preloaded device (but perhaps with a localized and locally supported version of Linux) that is built in a free country by a company not directly supporting China's military expansionism and trade/currency manipulation might be an option?
In fact, 0.6.3.7 fixed it already, but the latest version also sorts out some account switching issue... and while you're restarting Firefox, why not update your NoScript and Flashblock extensions as well.
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.
Interestingly enough, civilization can also "collapse" due to having "too plentiful" natural resources, namely when it has a militant neighbour which has no qualms of committing genocide in order to forever annex those resources.
Check out the paragraph titled "Minerals & Mining":
"Tibet has a significant share of the world's reserves of uranium, lithium, chromite, copper, borax, and iron. Tibet has proven deposits of 126 minerals" etc etc.
Guess why the Chinese Communist (now Nazional-socialist) Party won't let the wholly non-chinese Tibetan people regain their independence? Besides territorial expansionism being CCP's raison d'etre, the people really enriching themselves from the rape of Tibet are almost exclusively CCP cadres or their family.
If you are a fearful penguin you can google ahead on how to deal with potential issues with some proprietary packages, but those issues are few and getting fewer as more users take the leap.
Also be aware that upgrading an existing 32-bit install to amd64 requires a fresh install (although the most suicidal uptime freaks will find a way...). Old /home can still be reused as usual, unless you loaded it up with 32-bit binaries of course.
May the .torrent be with you!
Even the majority of the ethnic Chinese who've settled into foreign democratic countries somehow pledge their loyalty to the Han empire and its policies. The growing "greatness" and resurgence of the Han Chinese empire is an end that justifies all means, unquestionably. Those who even dare to suggest *debating* about nationalist causes like the status of Tibetan people under Chinese rule, are ruthlessly attacked. (a case study: Grace Wang, Duke Uni.) That will set the parameters for the "national debate" among the Chinese. Either one conforms or one becomes an "enemy of the people"!
Nature or Nurture?
The modern-day Han ethnicity is an amalgam of innumerous east-Asian tribes which were over the millenia taken over and converted into following the "superior" culture which was later named after the Han dynasty. There are some ongoing genetic studies of the current Chinese population which might give us better understanding of the ways the dynasties expanded, whether it was by peaceful assimilation or by more militant means. Obviously the ruling CCP will have a keen interest in interpreting the results of any such studies.
Regardless of the genetics, since "modern" nationalism spread into China the ideology has been used very successfully to help e.g. southern Chinese to identify themselves as Hans (which wasn't the case as recently as in the 18th or 19th century). Since the beginning of the 20th century pretty much all Chinese who didn't strongly identify with one of the 50-60 so called national minorities, including those of mixed parentage, were invariably raised to follow the "higher" Han culture. The so called minorities also get immersed into thinking that the 90%+ Han majority are the "paternal" race with "proper culture". Without the right to learn about the history and rights of those minorities, and with centrally encouraged Han migration into the minority areas to solidify Han control, the remaining minorities will inevitably vanish; just as the earlier neighbours of the early "Han" dynasties were assimilated until only Han culture remained.
Now with even "overseas Chinese" identifying so strongly with their "ethno-cultural family", it would be interesting to learn to what degree the Han Chinese language, its ideogram-based script and other social factors (such as the Chinatown effect of Chinese sticking together and discouraging cross-cultural exchange or marrying even after generations "overseas") are behind this phenomenom. Is there some kind of a "first imprint effect" that steers many or most Chinese to simply follow the mainstream Chinese "thinking" as it is presently promoted by that mainstream? Do the people identifying themselves as ethnic Chinese feel unusually insecure living abroad, and the imprint somehow gives them a sense of belonging and purpose? In the Chinese thinking one never questions "family", and the mainstream thinking (also engineered by the CCP desperately needing a raison d'etre!) has rather successfully soldered together the concepts of family and the (great) Han nation.
Like most of my Tibetan friends (some of whom have suffered greatly in the hands of the Chinese), I don't hate the Chinese for what they've done to Tibetans (I know the blame lies in the system and control of it). In fact I am quite lucky to have a large number of intelligent Chinese friends with whom I can civilly debate, agree and disagree on various issues. What does cause me some personal pain is seeing presumably well-informed Chinese choosing to ignore the clear injustices the Han empire has committed in Tibet since Mao's 1950 invasion
Ahhh Parenti! The leftist history scholar who never went to Tibet or spoke to Tibetans and who speaks neither Tibetan nor Chinese... Ask him what he thinks about China's swerve from communism to fascism.
A Lie Repeated - The Far Left's Flawed History of Tibet
China's Favorite Propaganda on Tibet ...and Why It's Wrong
These articles are under the Fact vs. Myth category alongside CCP propaganda so people can evaluate both sides on merit. The CCP only allows you to see their highly revised version of reality, wonder why is that?
Do you reckon the Tibetans are smiling now, behind the great wall of Chinese PLA and PAP troops?
After reading and hopefully understanding the above-mentioned articles, it would be nice to hear if you gained any understanding for the Tibetans' struggle for national self-determination.
Summary: China's de facto control over Tibet only started with Mao's military invasion, and the CCP should really try to stick one imperial claim instead of every fourth Chinese exclaiming TIBET ARE BELONG TO US SINCE FOREVER! NO, SINCE THE MONGOLS RULED OVER CHINA! NO, SINCE THE MANCHUS RULED OVER CHINA! etc...
On the other hand the Chinese regime's genocidal brutality against the occupied people in Tibet would invalidate even (imagined) de facto rule according to international laws of which even the PRC is nominally a signatory.
And I don't even need to change the title here...
While other former colonial dominions have been developing their societies and political systems on their own accord, especially post-WWII, Tibetans have had all those rights and possibilities taken away from them.
If you're seriously interested, I suggest that you start by checking out my homepage above or simply google for "tibet" and "human rights". Those terms will catch very few Chinese websites.
The Tibet Justice Center also has some easy starting points.
If you're audio-visual type, here's a very recent British documentary, filmed undercover in Tibet by a Tibetan exile.
Another thing that the Chinese Communist Party likes to claim is that the Han Chinese have sunk billions of dollars into developing Tibet. Well, the Chinese have indeed built some infrastructure to aid the Chinese military, to help extract Tibet's large natural resources and more recently to promote the massive Han Chinese migration into the Tibetan homeland, but the CCP's own experts estimate the value of Tibet's oil, gas, uranium, industrial metal, timber, water and other resources to be several orders of magnitude larger than the Han-centric investments by the CCP.
Ultimately everyone except the CCP would hope to allow the Tibetans to hold a referendum on whether they wish to remain under Chinese rule or whether they'd prefer to be in control of their own affairs, as the inalienable right is enshrined in the United Nations' declarations, which even the People's Republic of China (or the CCP which equates itself as the PRC government) has signed and recognized.
Do you think the Tibetans might voluntarily remain under Chinese rule, or choose to represented by their own democratically elected government, like the one already operating in exile? And if they choose self-determination, why should the Chinese be violently opposed to that choice?
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?
Also, the "West" (i.e. the western countries that engaged in colonialism; most did not and many were victims of their neighbours in Europe, too) has long ago seen the criminality of the old ways and has since sought to undo past damages. The fact that some colonial powers wiped out indigenous cultures, just like China has been doing to its past near-neighbours for centuries and millenia (check sometimes where the Han-chinese actually originate from), but later saw the error of their own ways should in fact give them some authority to speak from experience. If my great-great-great-.....great-grandparents were sent overseas by their unelected masters to do what we now know to be crimes against humanity, should I not be able to condemn those acts??
Do you think it is reasonable or even understandable for China to be committing such genocidal colonialism today (since the 1950 invasion), all the while keeping their own population in complete darkness over what really is happening and what the Tibetans really want in their own country?
And therein lies another massive difference between the tribal native cultures of the "new continents" and the Tibetans. The Tibetans were not only China's historical neighbours, with wars and peace treaties of their own (including an eternal peace treaty with the Chinese after the Tibetans had invaded the capital of China in the first century B.C.), their own army, central government, currency, postal system etc. The Chinese claims over Tibet are all the more ridiculous when they start referring to the Yuan dynasty... Those were the Mongol descendants of Genghis Khan who had invaded China too, and who agreed to a priest-patron relationship (without de facto control over governance) as protectors of Tibet after converting from Islam to Buddhism!
When the Mongol empire broke up, the remaining Chinese quarter continued the Buddhist relationship with Tibet (i.e. the "primitive" Tibet was trusted to provide spiritual services to the Chinese courts for centuries...), but nominally claimed Tibet as part of the known Chinese empire (just like they did with all their other neighbours), still without de facto rule over its affairs. And somehow that spiritual relationship was carried into the 20th century by the newly-crowned communist emperor "religion is poison" Mao whose first task after coronation was to send his communist army to invade (the CCP term is "peaceful liberation") Tibet for real.
Who told you that "the Chinese government has been doing this (genocidal subjugation) to Tibet for a period of centuries now"??
But nice going, the Guilt Trip argument again succeeded in deflecting some of the spotlight off the current and ongoing crimes by the Chinese regime against the Tibetan nation.
Now go and watch a documentary about the Tibetans living and dying under the Chinese occupation today, not in the 15th or 18th century when people still had no say in their own affairs anywhere. The events in that documentary, which includes footage and interviews from the last major uprising in Lhasa and its aftermath twenty years ago, resembles eerily the current crackdown being executed by the Chinese military and paramilitary since last week.
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.
Thanks to my reading habit I have several bookshop running friends in India. Only one of them is big enough to use inventory and accounting software from Tally Software who are quite popular in India among larger retailers and some larger family-run operations too. Back in 2005 Tally announced that they were going to port their shop management packages to Red Hat Linux, but I've yet to see any shipping products. Meanwhile the smaller retailers struggle daily with virus-infested XP boxes since their only machine is also used for internet access. I should really investigate if WINE could provide a bridge from the XP applications to native Linux solutions.
In Asia, and probably in other developing parts of the world as well, small businesses seldom use cash registers so a simple inventory and accounting package that is simple to use, install and maintain could be a big hit. Something that one could install and update from Debian/Ubuntu universe and have translated into gazillion languages too. There are a few specialized (and a few abandoned) OSS-based retail/POS offerings, but it might be useful if someone like Novell/SUSE or Canonical built a modular basic POS/inventory/accounting system which could then be tailored for various usage scenarios. Bookstores, coffeeshops, retail shops (single/chain) and repair garages all operate under similar principles, but they all prefer or require different user interfaces.