OK. Speed is good. Super-speed is great. Low latency gets gamers all hot and bothered.
But. Why can't we use the already existing technology to provide (initially) slow but "pervasive" internet access everywhere? The developed world could easily afford to build a network of satellites that provides both "super-speed" data capabilities for their own wealthy subscribers while offering slower but free access to anyone else interested. Free internet access (ie. communications), independent of the policies of local regimes, could easily be considered a modern human right.
Instead of the token complaints of lack of media and communication freedoms in countries like China and their vassal dictatorships in North Korea and Burma, the West could give these oppressed people access to the outside world, and the ability to communicate within their local "firewalls" without pervasive state monitoring. Of course the possession of unauthorized (ie. fully monitored) communication devices is criminalized in such countries, so the devices would have to be not only affordable but also compact, perhaps identical to existing smartphones or PDAs. In places where satellite dishes are allowed or somewhat tolerated, there should be a way of converting existing dish/decoder combos into simple internet terminals.
I've no doubt that this could be done, but thanks to Dubuya's misguided quasi-religious "war of terror" and "partnering" with the likes of Putin and Hi Jintao (aka the Butcher of Tibet) and the resulting labelling of occupied Tibetans as "terrorists", the USA in particular seems to be in no mood for creating freedom of communications in such "partnering" countries, not when their dominant corporations would see no financial incentives in creating such network and in any case they tend to be extremely friendly with the ruling Chinese regime already.
And god forbid if those dangerous prayer and freedom(!)-chanting Tibetan "terrorists" would be able to use their own language to communicate freely and even "terrorize" the occupying Chinese army with details of their oh-so-liberating policies in Tibet!
Where's the union of peace- and freedom-loving democracies when we'd need it?
China is not fascist IMHO because they don't have an institutionalized ideology of racism and military expansionism.
That's both the funniest and saddest thing I've read all day week. Ethnic Han-chinese chauvinism and their regime's brutal military invasions and ongoing occupations of neighboring nations, to add to the sixty-odd so-called already sinicized "minority nationalities", is what defines the Chinese Communist Party's claims for "legitimacy" in the eyes of the actual Chinese.
Do you actually believe that the Tibetans, Mongolians or Uighurs -- all completely non-chinese people (in terms of language, script, history, ethnicity, identity, religion...) -- have any say in their own affairs?? Or is it possible that the massive Han-chinese army contingents based on their home soils along with the Chinese police and paramilitary forces enforcing the Han-chinese populated and controlled Party organs might have something to do with the current "chineseness" of these occupied peoples?
I was merely amending your post and hoping that the grandparent would also take notice.
Taiwan is historically (ethnically, culturally and linguistically) polynesian and while it was claimed by the Chinese emperors as a vassal territory to be sinicized (along with all known world known to them at the time), for a long time it relatively safe from Chinese colonization by virtue of inaccessibility. Early European explorers/colonizers followed by the Japanese and eventually the fleeing Chinese republican army (Kuomingtang) and civilians and the arrival of the industrial era in general changed all that. The indigenous people of Taiwan suffered quite badly under the racist Kuomingtang rule as well.
There are over 60 "recognized" "minorities" under Chinese rule, although most of them have for all purposes ceased to exist as a people, and the remaining ones merely "live on" as anachronistic (i.e. having been denied the chance of evolve on their own) dance and song troupes amusing Han Chinese and western tourists alike. Given proper international support which also forces the Chinese to look in the mirror and admit their so far remorseless imperialist past (and present), the Tibetans could still pick up the pieces of their destroyed nation and even show the rest of the world that non-violent struggle is, if not better than armed struggle, at least a feasible way of achieving self-determination, justice and human rights for their people. Both the corporatist West and the deeply indictrinated Chinese are evading their fundamental responsibility towards the Tibetan people being wiped off the map and the brotherhood of nations.
Some European colonialist states have indeed committed unforgivable crimes against the native peoples in many of their colonies. It is not that many generations ago when some supposedly civilized states considered slavery to be acceptable. Other imperial states like China, Russia and their cultural forefathers in pre-buddhist Mongolia instead colonized everyone in their own (ever-expanding) neighborhood; a somewhat different approach. All the current superpowers or wannabes still exhibit forms of cultural chauvinism and self-acclaimed superiority, Russia even hangs onto many neighboring territories as a sign (trophy?) of their "greatness", but only China has both the policy and the tools (total police state, complete lack of modern ethics and an endless supply of mostly willing ethnic Chinese to flood and sinicize their neighbors' territories with) to continue executing their Final Solution. But just look at the vast majority of today's existing and recognized states, and compare their justification for statehood to that of Tibetans... unique ethnicity, unique language and script, unique culture, unique religion, unique millenia-old history of statehood... all that of course in no way diminishes other states or peoples right of self-determination and freedom from fear and genocide, but just goes to highlight the rights of the Tibetans and the criminality of the Chinese occupation, launched only as recently as 1950!
FWIW, in a Communist Party manual which was leaked out a few years ago, the Party specifically instructs its stooges to always expound on the genocidal treatment of the native Americans as a means to shut up Americans or Europeans. A regime with no scruples using Westerners' morals against them in a bizarre twist on the "white man's burden"...
Well you only mentioned Tibet and East Turkestan (chinese: Xinjiang or "western frontier") which the Chinese communist army occupied after WWII when Mao Zedong took over China. Those two examples are admittedly the most criminal cases, with 100% of these completely non-chinese populations and their nations under brutally oppressive military occupation, merciless sinicization programmes and mass settlement of ethnic Chinese into their nations.
Your most significant omission was South Mongolia, the more populous part of Mongolia, where now after two generations of Chinese occupation and mass settlement barely over 10% of the current population are ethnic mongolians.
Still, after expanding the Chinese empire over Tibetan and Uighur (East Turkestan) territories the Chinese communists went further on to extract northern Pakistani and Pakistan-controlled Kashmiri territories in exchange of military and nuclear aid to the Pakistani regime. That partnership also helped the Chinese to geographically and politically isolate democratic India. (In Nepal the Chinese have played and armed all sides, from the Maoist guerillas to the King and now the post-royalist government; I am not certain if Nepal has made any territorial concessions to their "new neighbors" now occupying Tibet.)
In 1962 the Chinese invaded nothern India and annexed further high altitude territories historically inhabited by ethnic Tibetans but belonging to India.
On the eastern side of India the Chinese have allied with the Burmese military regime, again receiving territories from northern Burma in exchange.
Chinese Communist Party's army (the euphemisticaly named "People's Liberation Army") has also annexed small border territories from the little buddhist Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan.
In late seventies the "PLA" invaded Vietnam and managed to annex some Vietnamese territory but at a heavy cost.
Where's Manchuria (where the last, and foreign, emperor of China's Qian dynasty hailed from) today? Manchus purportedly represent one of the smaller four stars in the Chinese Communist Party's battle flag (aka the current chinese national flag; the big star in the middle represents the Han chinese), but where is their country, ethnic population or language now after over half century of CCP rule? Manchuguo has ceased to exist in any form other than its largely chinese-rewritten history.
North Korea has also surrendered some historical Korean territories to their Chinese backers in exchange for political and military support. The free (South) Koreans aren't too pleased about that.
The Chinese and Soviet-Russian communist empires also fought brief border wars in Central Asia swapping minor territories but without larger annexation of foreign land either way.
That probably covers most if not all of China historical and newly-acquired (through imperial expansion) neighbors!
Adding this ongoing feverish expansionism of the modern (communist party) era to the millenia-old assimilation and sinicization policies, it is absolutely ludicruous to claim that China isn't an imperialist state. What makes it even more sadly laughable is that the Chinese nationalists and ethnic Han chauvinists (incl. the State), who are the key proponents of China genocidal policies, just love to rail against foreigners over their mercantilist-era meddling in Manchu-ruled China.
In fact the whole massive Chinese propaganda machinery, from cradle to grave, is geared towards justifying Chinese imperialism and ethnic Han chauvinism and superiority over lesser "minorities" while bedeviling any foreign interference in "China's internal affairs" (which naturally includes all occupied nations and territories).
It so happens that Tokyo and Chicago are vying to be considered for the Summer Olympics in 2016. I would like to put together a campaign (from a variety of people, civil liberty/privacy groups, etc) to ask that the International Olympic Committee reject any host city application whose nation requires photographing/fingerprinting as a condition of entry. Such a condition violates the human dignity principle of the IOC charter, as well as potentially surpressing visitors to that host nation (since many believe that the dropoff in visitors to the US is related to US-VISIT.
While I agree with the sentiment of your idea, the International Olympic Committee is only concerned about the financial aspects of the application. Well, logistics too, but they don't give a damn is the efficiency of logistics is used for oppressive purposes as long as the financials give them green light.
When the IOC awarded the fabled Olympic Games to the oppressive dictatorship in Beijing they publicly (and superficially) declared that the Games would result in greater freedoms for the Chinese (term which they ostensibly apply to the neighbouring peoples under Chinese military occupation as well). However exactly the opposite is true. The Chinese Communist Party, with complete control over the police, paramilitary and military forces, has the logistical muscle to prevent any and all dissent aimed at the regime or their Berlin '36-esque olympic party. The foreign press was given nominally increased freedom (which ends exactly when the games are over!) to travel and report in most parts of actual China (while the occupied Tibet is completely out of bounds) but in reality all reporters are still followed by the regime, people talking to them are harassed or detained and the reporters may still get kicked out at the pleasure of the local or central Party cadres.
Simply put, the supposed openness of the Chinese regime and the human rights interests of the IOC are nothing but a sham. In fact, top IOC officials have even picked up the Chinese Communist Party habit of lashing out at the "annoying and meddling human rights groups" who are trying to raise the issue of worsening human rights conditions in China with the IOC. Instead of showcasing the brotherhood and equality between peoples on this planet, the olympics have now officially become just another faceless money-grabbing organization willing to (ab)use its commercial prominency for rehabilitating and normalizing the image of an oppressive dictatorship which continues to hold its peaceful neighbouring peoples under genocidal occupation...
What comes to the battle between Chicago (USA) and Tokyo (Japan) in vying for the olympic circus of 2016, it would appear that travelling to either destination subjects the visitor to the same humiliating and xenophobic treatment upon arrival. However the saddest thing about democratic or semi-democratic countries imposing these kinds of surveillance measures on foreign visitors is that it gives the authoritarian regimes fake justification for further increasing their own gestapo-like measures against any potential domestic opposition. Unbelievably, the Chinese regime even publically plays up their role as a "US partner in the war against terror" as they "strike hard" (also the name of the campaign) against the Tibetans, Uighurs or Mongols who dare to as much as speak about freedom from occupation.
Sadly, the American right-wing lead marketing campaign about terrorism (see: using external threats in world history and politics) appears to have turned all of East Asia (with the possible exception of Taiwan) back towards more xenophobic policies and even militarism. Well, if one strongly believes in the religious inevitability of armageddon then this is certainly the way to go!
The use of encryption by "citizens" *without providing the regime with the keys* is strictly forbidden.
Private "citizens" under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party are not allowed to hide their communications from that regime. Mere unauthorized possession of encryption tools equals intent to commit a crime against the regime by the CCP kangaroo courts.
Some foreign firms undoubtably use unapproved VPNs to have a secure link overseas and perhaps the Party now allows some large foreign businesses to do that "legally", but that has zero relevance regarding the rights of the "citizenry" (both the Chinese and their occupied neighbors) or the prevalent abuse of the Chinese "law" in suppressing dissent or even thinking about dissenting.
Domestic shopping via HTTPS is allowed (using regime-approved keys)... now there's a wonderful example of human rights with Chinese charasteristics!
'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
Besides this new-found respect for the military veterans, Google is starting to muscle their way into the gas business too!
Not quite prospecting for or exploiting underground resources quite yet, but many a career has started at the pump...
But seriously, for a company with a truly global customer base (not forgetting that infamous motto either) celebrating militaries must have been a difficult decision to make, although geotargetting obviously alleviates some of the obvious issues here. I mean, most of the world doesn't probably see the US military with admiring eyes at the moment, or even in recent decades. Despite being a pacifist a heart and considering war as the final, brutal alternative when a nation or people and their lives and freedoms are under the threat of extinction, I do have respect for the veterans and volunteers who've put their lives on the line to protect their people (or even other peoples!) or their rights and values against outside aggression.
Sometimes it is easy to know, given access to realistic historical and contemporary information, who were the aggressors (and invaders and colonizers) and who merely defended their rights, freedoms and lives. Unfortunately wars and their reasons are often obfuscated in political fog and extremely selective scripting of history. Even after the WWII most wars and invasions have been wars of choice and of political and/or territorial expansionism. The five UN veto-wielding former and current colonial powers have all used their position, power and military in the WWII-era to impose their will or rule upon other smaller nations. How many of those wars has been purely to help free a people from foreign (or even unpopular domestic) occupation or dictatorship?
I'm not keen on honouring veterans anywhere who've helped invade a foreign country for their own regime's political or material gain, without either absolute necessity or clearly altruistic and humanitarian reasons. Therefore it is all but impossible for a non-jingoistic person to celebrate a veterans' day in a large and powerful country with a "militarily active foreign policy". Meanwhile smaller countries tend have their own clearly defined independence or uprising remembrances (even if in places such remembrances are strictly and brutally suppressed, such as the March 10th (1959) in Chinese-occupied Tibet) which are based on defensive struggles.
Perhaps instead of celebrating the power of war and its tools, we should all start remembering that there are still too many unrepresented nations and peoples in our modern world. With some peoples under genuine genocidal occupation, who's going to support their rights and freedoms? While the West or the democratic world in general still has some financial and political edge over the rising authoritarianism we could even try using non-military means in support of freedom and liberty. Besides, I'd even feel some guilt celebrating my own people's day of freedom while my nation actively collaborates and trades with regimes engaged in violent expansionism and/or domestic dictatorship, thereby denying such freedoms from others suffering under ongoing oppression.
to all those Tibet etc apologists out there who know nothing about the historical, geographical and cultural contexts of China, please do us a favor and shut up, or at least gain a proper understanding of the issues before expecting a civilized reply.
Considering that the modern idea of civilized behaviour entails peoples' rights to such incomprehensible things as self-determination and the freedom of speech and religion and especially from the fear of remorseless genocide by expansionist neighbours, the chinese Han-chauvinists certainly have great deal of catching up to do in terms of civilization. The jingoistic Party indoctrination appears to work wonders on Chinese people's critical thinking faculties.
At least the Chinese haven't attacked any country in modern times.
I suggest you google for "Tibet", "East Turkestan" or "Xinjiang", or "South Mongolia" along with "occupation", "genocide", "oppression", "repression", "mass settlement of chinese", "paramilitary", "PLA" plus "exploitation", "oil", "gas" and "natural resourcing" just to get started.
I suppose the last sixty years and ongoing every single second counts as "modern times".
You could also look up communist China's history with pretty much every one of their neighbors (not forgetting the nations under ongoing genocidal occupation) to learn more about the CCP's "peaceful" foreign policy. (if, somehow, you're exposed to the Official CCP Truth then you can naturally forget any useful analysis of their murderous rule.)
It is fashionable (and largely true) to point out how screwed up the USA and their self-centered foreign policy really is, but they still have a long way to go before they can be compared with the likes of China (since Mao, and occasionally earlier too), Soviet Russia (esp. before 1991) or Nazi Germany (Hitler's 12 year reich). Or even the past European imperial powers like Spain or England.
Ownership links to the communist Party
on
Replacing a Thinkpad?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Besides Lenovo being partially "state-owned" and thereby directly funding the one-party dictatorship of China, the non-state Chinese owners are also generally deeply entangled in supporting the Party machinery. If guangxi ("connections" ie. corruption) was a huge problem under communism, it has really blossomed under the new and improved fascist system.
Most of the Taiwanese OEMs have practically all of their manufacturing facilities in China, but at least they aren't directly involved in feeding the Party hierarchies. One or two of the Taiwanese manufacturers have kept their facilities in Taiwan though. Google should help identify them.
The Japanese makers have likewise most of their factories in China, but there has been a recent trend to look at other less hostile and more democratic Asian countries to host more of the manufacturing.
Some China trivia: How many knew that the "peoples' liberation army" (PLA) is "constitutionally" loyal to the Chinese "communist" Party instead of the state or the "government"? Or that the current CCP and PLA head honcho Hu Jintao (aka "president of the PRC") was nicknamed the Butcher of Tibet thanks to his bloody crackdown on Tibetan demonstrators in Lhasa while he was the Party supremo there in the late 80s. In the immediate aftermath tens of thousands of Tibetans were forced to watch how the Chinese executed their freedom-fighters in a sports stadium. That bloody act loyal to the Chinese communist Party helped fast-track him into the top Party leadership. What if the Burmese generals were massacring monks and civilians in a neighboring country..?
GP: "Yeah, because they didn't seem heartless regarding Tianemen, or during the Tibet take over"
Alternately, "the liberation of a people under the heal of a backwards, feudal theocracy which used slavery and serfdom into the mid-Twentieth Century." Tibet's suffering through the Cultural Revolution was in many ways no worse than what fell Han China. The big difference is to whom the flotsam and jetsam of these countries appealed. The Nationalists could appeal to our foreign policy and our pocketbook, but, for the average person, they are just the losers in some far away conflict.
Last I saw those arguments supporting Mao's military invasion and the half a century of genocidal occupation was when I read Chinese Communist Party's propaganda leaflets extolling the loving wonderfulness of PPC's military occupation in Tibet.
Tibet was indeed backwards in many social and technological ways thanks to the country's near-total geographical and self-imposed isolation, no Tibetan has ever claimed otherwise, but they had began reforms already at the beginning of the 20th century and in any case no level of backwardness is an excuse for the destruction and murder in a massive scale that the Chinese immediately embarked upon. The real and total feudalism began with the invasion of Mao's communist troops in 1949. I strongly recommend that you familiarize yourself with the level of brutality and murder of the Chinese occupiers against almost excusively peaceful Tibetan civilians and nuns and monks. Out of Tibet's some 6000 monasteries, which in Tibet functioned both as "churches" and universities, less than ten survived without major damage. Some 6000 were totally destroyed and looted by the Chinese of all their invaluable artifacts and history. Refugees are "flotsam and jetsam" to you?
Some of my recent posts here (as well as my homepage URL above) have detailed the absolute injustice of CCP's imperial claims over the totally non-chinese people of Tibet, but to understand the devastating effects on ordinary Tibetan humans you need to look up some documentary films or better yet talk to the people who managed to escape from their homeland. Talk to a nun who's suffered enending torture while hung from the ceiling and who's been raped by camp guards and with electric cattle prods. Who can't sleep because of constant headaches and nightmares. Or walk or resume normal life because of life-long pain and physical problems. Look in her (or their) eyes and repeat your rant how you couldn't care less because their homeland in the Tibetan high plateau used be so backward!
Tibet, on the other hand, has managed to reinvent itself into some kind of New Age Sugarcandy Mountain to the Western Left and as a victim par excellence in the eyes of the Western anti-Communist. According to them, they didn't just annex what had been part of the Chinese sphere of influence since before there was a Dalai Lama, they destroyed a harmonious mountaintop kingdom which had no greater desire than its own and the World's spiritual well-being. Tibet is no longer a physical place; it's an idea. An idea which was created in the image of Victorian pulp literature. The Tibet in exile we now have has turned into a circus which is fully prepared to lie to its strongest supporters about the annexation and the Cultural Revolution's impact on the region--not in a frantic effort to retake the country in which they once lived, but to keep the circus moving.
What are you on about??
Tibet has been specifically and against the most basic Human Rights (as declared by the United Nations) seen all its rights of "reinvention" or self-determination ripped away by the occupying Chinese. If spiritualism, as an integral part of Tibetan culture, was practically the only thing the escaping Tibetans could bring along to exile, you're happy to tar it with your Western-style and Western-created "New Age" ridiculism? Western
Unfortunately, that is not my (very limited) experience. For example, an American-educated Chinese expatriate I knew who had been living in Virginia for several years still believed that Taiwan and Tibet both clearly belong to China, and that any talk otherwise was just insanity. Oppression can be pretty powerful if you don't know any different, and the ability and willingness to unlearn things that aren't true is not exactly mankind's greatest attribute.
And you replied:
"Um, I'm an American and I've never seen a map where Tibet isn't within China's borders. What are you talking about? And the US doesn't even recognize Taiwan as a country, but that's more debatable than Tibet."
Wouldn't it have been more honest to declare yourself as the "typical Asian nerd" of Chinese descent who calls Wuhan his hometown and flies the Chinese Communist Party's battle flag as his site's logo that you are instead of conveniently wrapping yourself in the US flag/passport? Just consider the post you were replying to. It was describing someone with strong ethnic blindfolds; apparently someone not totally unlike yourself.
Now, if you're still interested in some facts about Tibet instead of playing cheap retort games to put the Tibetans down as mere Han-Chinese property, consider the following:
Tibetans are not Chinese in any way.
Not in ethnicity.
Not in language, which is completely different and not just euphemistically a "dialect" like Cantonese etc.
Not even in the written script of the Tibetan language, which is closely related to Sanskrit or its other offspring Hindi. It's a phonetic script and nothing like the Chinese pictograms.
Not in culture, which again is totally different from their Chinese neighbours. Totally as in completely.
Not in religion; Tibetans created their unique form of Buddhism after Buddhism spread from the neighbouring India and fused with the indigenous Bön religion which had developed via Central Asian influences. Guess where the Tang got their Buddhism from?
Not even in history, as if that was somehow an excuse for genocide today, notwithstanding vague claims over the whole world by the often despotic feudal god-king overlords who ruled various parts of China!
When the Mongols invaded the Eurasian continent, from Eastern Europe to Northern India to most of today's China from late 1300s onwards and created an empire, they respected the Tibetans enough to adopt their religion and adopt Tibet as their spiritual home, not as vassals paying tax and tribute. When the Hans took over the eastern quarter of that Mongol empire, they kept the priest-patron relationship. (Some centuries earlier when the Tibetans were still a nation of warriors themselves they had invaded the capital of China and agreed upon an eternal peace between the two nations to stop the stupid warfaring for good!)
When the Manchus (Qing) took over the Empire, they too kept the spiritual link nominally alive, although generally the Qing were only relied upon as decent neighbours, decent enough to help in times of trouble because the Tibetans had long ago chosen to become a pacifist, monastic society. Instead of violence the Tibetans put their trust in geography, the Himalayas and vast deserts, Buddhist Mongolia and other neighbours, including the decency of their distant Manchu-ruled Qing neighbours.
So life went on. Tibet chose to remain isolated from the increasingly turbulent world, but they naturally had their own government as always, own currency, own flag, their own diplomatic relations with their neighbours, own postal system, a small army, their Tibetan history going back millenia. etc.
Eventually the Qing Manchus were struggling with both Western imperialism and
It is pointless to argue with an indoctrinated jingoist who responds to facts about his country's ongoing genocide of its neighbouring people(s) with anachronistic crap about mediaval god-emperor's claims and all the crappiness committed in the long-gone past by other imperialists.
You completely avoided any response to the fact that the Tibetan people, who are in every single way non-Chinese, have never wanted to be occupied, oppressed and flooded by hordes of alien Chinese settlers any more than your own ancestors wanted to becomes slaves to the Japanese.
So you want "justice" for your expansionist China but don't give a shit about the neighbouring people that you, without a least bit of remorse, continue torturing, raping and wiping out. Some might find such violent heartlessness and greed as a strength but I find it to be thoroughly rotten and sick. Mao himself, the world's most murderous dictator is history, would be proud of you.
It is always nice to receive historical pointers from a Chinese. I hope you would have access to other sources of information than only the material CPP allows and wants you to read. I have read translated CCP publications and have a number of Chinese and non-Chinese friends who've studied Chinese history (both proper and the CCP version) and let me tell you, the vast majority of the official Party-released material would be hilarious if it weren't inflicting such a serious brain damage upon the whole Chinese nation.
As it happens I am also familiar with the history of the British Empire, including the Great Game period towards the end of which this brief military incursion into Lhasa (lead by Sir Francis Younghusband who actually lived in Dharamshala in India which, in a twist of fate, would later become the seat of the Tibetan government in exile!) took place.
The purpose of that incursion/invasion was to extract diplomatic and trade favours and to prevent the Russians from using Tibet against the British-occupied India. The British incursion into Lhasa was just a very minor footnote in a century-and-half long Game of spying and political intrigue which was played farther in the west; between Kashmir and East Turkestan in the east to Turkey in the west.
In the early 1900s Tibet was a nearly complete vacuum militarily after the Tibetans had chosen to give up their past warrior ways several hundred years earlier to concentrate on building a wholly buddhist society. The arguments for not needing a strong army any longer were 1) support from the buddhist Mongolia, 2) The Himalayas protected Tibet from the south (although there were no large aggressive threats from that direction, and the Tibetans were largely unaware of modern techology in warfare, until 1903-1904 of course) and 3) the Chinese emperor had signed an eternal treaty of peace with Tibet (after Tibetans had invaded the Chinese imperial capital!).
The British contingent did end up massacring several thousand Tibetan troops on their way to Lhasa, albeit largely unintentionally since the Tibetans had no knowledge of e.g. machine guns. But the intention of an army of only couple of thousand (including porters) was not to occupy the nation of Tibet nor to subject Tibetans to genocidal oppression and to wipe out that whole nation. It was to extract diplomatic and trade guarantees from Tibet and to prevent other empires (mainly the Russians) from taking advantage of that mysterious and introverted country. After having "created" some diplomatic links and getting some vague guarantees (the 13th Dalai Lama had taken refuge in Mongolia at the beginning of the incursion), the British contingent left Tibet. They didn't even bother installing a puppet government.
Now what was your point in highlighting the 1903-1904 British incursion into Lhasa?
When the Chinese communist army invaded Tibet in 1949 - immediately after Mao had taken over Beijing and needed to keep his battle-hardened troops busy far away from all the political reorganization - it was a modern mechanized army of tens of thousands of troops with the sole objective of not just invading but completely occupying Tibet, in which the "PLA" succeeded by 1951. Hundreds of thousands of Tibetans were killed during the rather one-sided fighting and its immediate aftermath, which the Communist Party advertises as the "peaceful liberation of Tibet". During the first decade of occupation large number of Tibetans had been brutally tortured (often to death) and raped and by the end of 1960s over a million Tibetans (of a nation of seven million) had died under Chinese rule.
Today, after more than 60 years of complete and oppressive occupation, thousands of Tibetans remain languished in Chinese terror camps for simple crimes of thought (of religious or national self-determination). The torturing is well documented while the "trials" are always secret with no defense allowed.
The Chinese regime holds gestapo-like control over all
Their (the Chinese people's) country, their choice?
If the Chinese voluntarily wish to have dictatorship as their preferred form of government (forgetting the rights of the Chinese "political minorities" for the moment; I'm not talking about the 60-odd ethnic "minorities" aka former nations China has invaded and largely assimilated over the aeons) it would be hard to argue with their choice.
However it is not a choice the Chinese are either allowed to make (it's either Communist Party rule or prison/death) nor are they informed of the factual deeds of their regime thanks to the all-pervasive propaganda and Party control of all media and education.
So while the Party continues to spread hateful propaganda against the Western Imperialists and especially the Imperial Japan (which was forced to end their partial occupation of China - by those evil western imperialists as it happened - already more than 60 years ago), the Party rather conveniently forgets to inform its people of China's own genocidal imperialism that continues to this day. I already responded ("Nazional-Socialism gets forgetful approval") to another laissez-faire sinophile in another thread about the supposed respectability economic or military muscle supposedly brings without any moral aspect.
The point being, it's not just their country a long as they continue wiping out their neighboring peoples and lieing about it to their own people, not to mention bullying other free nations e.g. simply for allowing exiled Tibetans to visit and speak about stuff like non-violence!
Elsewhere you were asking people to debate "not in black and white terms" whether China is evil or not, but it appears obvious that you had already made up your mind so why troll for opinions if you've already found the National Socialist system of China (aka Chinazism) worthy of your admiration?
Germany was in absolute shambles after WW1 with scores of people dieing from starvation etc. so you could also argue that by grabbing power in early 1930s and establishing a national socialist dictatorship (aka nazism) to pull Germany out of the economic doldrums he simply rebuilt the Nazi-Germany into an acceptable or even admirable powerhouse. Invading territory lost in WW1 and more (in cahoots with "Uncle Josef"), or aiming to invade the oil fields of Caucasus was perfectly fine since Germany was becoming powerful in economic and military terms?
When the UK declared war against Germany in 1939 (the US wouldn't do that until after Pearl Harbor) it was based on a treaty with Poland and the coming large-scale holocaust was still a hopeful twinkle in Hitler's eyes.
"Communist" (at least back then) China OTOH started the expansion of their Lebensraum with multiple invasions immediately after the world most murderous dictator Mao had completed his bloody civil war in 1949:
South Mongolia has hardly any Mongolians left, it's 90% Han-Chinese inhabited now. But at least Mongolians had the northern part for themselves, bizarrely thanks to world's second most murderous dictator Stalin!
The Turkic people of East Turkestan are now a minority in their own lands, their oil and gas stolen by the Chinese and their religion and language suppressed.
Tibet was overrun in 1950 by Mao's armies, over a million out of a nation of 7 million deceased and their unique language, culture, religion, 2000-year old history and Tibetan identity suppressed Gestapo-style and of course their large national resources of oil, gas and various minerals are being stolen by the Han-Chinese while ever-increasing large-scale settlement of Chinese has left Tibetans in a minority in most areas of Tibet.
None of these invaded and now for generations oppressed nations which are still being systematically wiped off the map were related to the Han-Chinese ethnically, culturally, linguistically or even religiously (although historically Tibet was the source route of buddhism to China among other East Asian countries, how's that for a payback).
Now back to your original opinion: The fact that the Nazi-China regime has managed to raise the material living standards of maybe 25-30% of the population (by promoting consumerism of mainly chinese-produced goods while leaving larger number in poverty, while removing free healthcare, while creating massive problems with pollution and endemic corruption, while continuing to push twisted and hateful propaganda and "history" by strictly controlling all forms of media and education etc.) while also amassing foreign currecy (USD) reserves of over a trillion dollars makes them respectable and no less evil than other former (actual) colonial or expansionist powers? The current regime in Washington is certainly covered in warts but as far as I know even they aren't systematically and intentionally wiping (peaceful) nations and whole cultures and languages off the map and history books... and how many foreign countries was imperial Britain still occupying when they declared war against Germany in the name of "freedom"... should that have stopped them from standing up for the Poles?
Chinese dictatorship's role in protecting the Janjaweed genocide in Sudan (oil!) or the Pol Pot regime committing the unimaginable "killing fields" genocide in Cambodia (ideological reasons) have no bearing in your compass? Or the fact that China's current Party- and military supremo Hu Jintao earned the nick-name [b]Butcher of Tibet[/b] for his bloody suppression of Tibetan uprisings while being the Party overlord of the ludicrously
High-tech protest in Chinese-occupied Base Camp
on
A Geek On Everest
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· Score: 2, Informative
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.
A member of the Kremlin-backed "Putin-Jugend" (aka Nashi) has now claimed credit for organizing the attacks with his associates, saying it hadn't been coordinated by the ultra-jingoistic Nashi-group (thereby conveniently absolving direct responsibility from the Putin regime).
Chinese strip-mining and colonization of Tibet and the militarization of the historically "new border areas" facing India (since the 1950 invasion of Tibet by Mao's communist army) are all set to become that much more "ruthlessly efficient" once the "gaps" identified in geology, mechanical engineering, metallurgical engineering and aeronautical engineering by the junta in Beijing have been addressed. The massive Tibetan mineral deposits already scouted and mapped by the Chinese geologists will make sure that the occupying regime will no show mercy for the Tibetan nation as long as 1) the resources are there to be stolen and 2) the regime remains in absolute power.
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.
Most unexpected, considering that Lenovo is mostly owned by Chinese Communist Party regime-held corporations with their in-house Communist Party political officers and all, and the regime's environmental record since they converted from communism to the more lucrative fascism hasn't been anything short of catastrophic for the common Chinese people.
As an environmentally conscientious person I must give this particular corporation some credit for trying to do the right thing environment-wise, but I still wouldn't choose to allow my money to fund the militaristic policies of the Chinese state. Arrogant, expansionist and rich Chinese dictatorship is at the bottom of my personal wishlist.
Are they still allowed to use the IBM logo to fool people?
That Windows Personas countersite wasn't my effort; Yuri's the real quick thinker here. I just figured someone had to be on it and voilà!
Some of the early entries show promise and I'd expect it to feature on Slashdot any slow newsday now. Finding Microsoft profiling their mortal enemies the Linux users for their propaganda purposes unsurprisingly loosened a few tongues so why shouldn't the opposite have similar effect. There is a not insignificant number of MS apologists here on Slashdot to continue arguing Monkeyboy's case ad nauseaum...:-)
* People who believe that collaboration is a Good Thing (tm)
Even though the great majority of Linux users are by now non-developers (a fact that has Monkeyboy & Co worried about Linux having reached the "good enough for most people" level), the idea of open and public cooperation (+ open standards), or rather awareness of their value, remains strong in the Linux user community. Somehow I doubt that MS would be keen to shine light on this aspect of Linux usership.
"Collaboration Without Borders" makes for a great PR story as well; it's something that juxtaposes with the various unnecessary global rifts caused by corporatism (incl. multinational giants dominating over indigenous industries, esp. in the developing world) and the regrettably aggressive unilateral acts by some bigger countries.
Interestingly, someone just put up a Windows Personas site. I wonder if the two "personas" sites should exchange link banners...:-)
Slashdot Mirror
But. Why can't we use the already existing technology to provide (initially) slow but "pervasive" internet access everywhere? The developed world could easily afford to build a network of satellites that provides both "super-speed" data capabilities for their own wealthy subscribers while offering slower but free access to anyone else interested. Free internet access (ie. communications), independent of the policies of local regimes, could easily be considered a modern human right.
Instead of the token complaints of lack of media and communication freedoms in countries like China and their vassal dictatorships in North Korea and Burma, the West could give these oppressed people access to the outside world, and the ability to communicate within their local "firewalls" without pervasive state monitoring. Of course the possession of unauthorized (ie. fully monitored) communication devices is criminalized in such countries, so the devices would have to be not only affordable but also compact, perhaps identical to existing smartphones or PDAs. In places where satellite dishes are allowed or somewhat tolerated, there should be a way of converting existing dish/decoder combos into simple internet terminals.
I've no doubt that this could be done, but thanks to Dubuya's misguided quasi-religious "war of terror" and "partnering" with the likes of Putin and Hi Jintao (aka the Butcher of Tibet) and the resulting labelling of occupied Tibetans as "terrorists", the USA in particular seems to be in no mood for creating freedom of communications in such "partnering" countries, not when their dominant corporations would see no financial incentives in creating such network and in any case they tend to be extremely friendly with the ruling Chinese regime already. And god forbid if those dangerous prayer and freedom(!)-chanting Tibetan "terrorists" would be able to use their own language to communicate freely and even "terrorize" the occupying Chinese army with details of their oh-so-liberating policies in Tibet!
Where's the union of peace- and freedom-loving democracies when we'd need it?
That's both the funniest and saddest thing I've read all day week. Ethnic Han-chinese chauvinism and their regime's brutal military invasions and ongoing occupations of neighboring nations, to add to the sixty-odd so-called already sinicized "minority nationalities", is what defines the Chinese Communist Party's claims for "legitimacy" in the eyes of the actual Chinese.
Do you actually believe that the Tibetans, Mongolians or Uighurs -- all completely non-chinese people (in terms of language, script, history, ethnicity, identity, religion...) -- have any say in their own affairs?? Or is it possible that the massive Han-chinese army contingents based on their home soils along with the Chinese police and paramilitary forces enforcing the Han-chinese populated and controlled Party organs might have something to do with the current "chineseness" of these occupied peoples?
Taiwan is historically (ethnically, culturally and linguistically) polynesian and while it was claimed by the Chinese emperors as a vassal territory to be sinicized (along with all known world known to them at the time), for a long time it relatively safe from Chinese colonization by virtue of inaccessibility. Early European explorers/colonizers followed by the Japanese and eventually the fleeing Chinese republican army (Kuomingtang) and civilians and the arrival of the industrial era in general changed all that. The indigenous people of Taiwan suffered quite badly under the racist Kuomingtang rule as well.
There are over 60 "recognized" "minorities" under Chinese rule, although most of them have for all purposes ceased to exist as a people, and the remaining ones merely "live on" as anachronistic (i.e. having been denied the chance of evolve on their own) dance and song troupes amusing Han Chinese and western tourists alike. Given proper international support which also forces the Chinese to look in the mirror and admit their so far remorseless imperialist past (and present), the Tibetans could still pick up the pieces of their destroyed nation and even show the rest of the world that non-violent struggle is, if not better than armed struggle, at least a feasible way of achieving self-determination, justice and human rights for their people. Both the corporatist West and the deeply indictrinated Chinese are evading their fundamental responsibility towards the Tibetan people being wiped off the map and the brotherhood of nations.
Some European colonialist states have indeed committed unforgivable crimes against the native peoples in many of their colonies. It is not that many generations ago when some supposedly civilized states considered slavery to be acceptable. Other imperial states like China, Russia and their cultural forefathers in pre-buddhist Mongolia instead colonized everyone in their own (ever-expanding) neighborhood; a somewhat different approach. All the current superpowers or wannabes still exhibit forms of cultural chauvinism and self-acclaimed superiority, Russia even hangs onto many neighboring territories as a sign (trophy?) of their "greatness", but only China has both the policy and the tools (total police state, complete lack of modern ethics and an endless supply of mostly willing ethnic Chinese to flood and sinicize their neighbors' territories with) to continue executing their Final Solution. But just look at the vast majority of today's existing and recognized states, and compare their justification for statehood to that of Tibetans... unique ethnicity, unique language and script, unique culture, unique religion, unique millenia-old history of statehood... all that of course in no way diminishes other states or peoples right of self-determination and freedom from fear and genocide, but just goes to highlight the rights of the Tibetans and the criminality of the Chinese occupation, launched only as recently as 1950!
FWIW, in a Communist Party manual which was leaked out a few years ago, the Party specifically instructs its stooges to always expound on the genocidal treatment of the native Americans as a means to shut up Americans or Europeans. A regime with no scruples using Westerners' morals against them in a bizarre twist on the "white man's burden"...
Well you only mentioned Tibet and East Turkestan (chinese: Xinjiang or "western frontier") which the Chinese communist army occupied after WWII when Mao Zedong took over China. Those two examples are admittedly the most criminal cases, with 100% of these completely non-chinese populations and their nations under brutally oppressive military occupation, merciless sinicization programmes and mass settlement of ethnic Chinese into their nations.
Your most significant omission was South Mongolia, the more populous part of Mongolia, where now after two generations of Chinese occupation and mass settlement barely over 10% of the current population are ethnic mongolians.
Still, after expanding the Chinese empire over Tibetan and Uighur (East Turkestan) territories the Chinese communists went further on to extract northern Pakistani and Pakistan-controlled Kashmiri territories in exchange of military and nuclear aid to the Pakistani regime. That partnership also helped the Chinese to geographically and politically isolate democratic India. (In Nepal the Chinese have played and armed all sides, from the Maoist guerillas to the King and now the post-royalist government; I am not certain if Nepal has made any territorial concessions to their "new neighbors" now occupying Tibet.)
In 1962 the Chinese invaded nothern India and annexed further high altitude territories historically inhabited by ethnic Tibetans but belonging to India.
On the eastern side of India the Chinese have allied with the Burmese military regime, again receiving territories from northern Burma in exchange.
Chinese Communist Party's army (the euphemisticaly named "People's Liberation Army") has also annexed small border territories from the little buddhist Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan.
In late seventies the "PLA" invaded Vietnam and managed to annex some Vietnamese territory but at a heavy cost.
Where's Manchuria (where the last, and foreign, emperor of China's Qian dynasty hailed from) today? Manchus purportedly represent one of the smaller four stars in the Chinese Communist Party's battle flag (aka the current chinese national flag; the big star in the middle represents the Han chinese), but where is their country, ethnic population or language now after over half century of CCP rule? Manchuguo has ceased to exist in any form other than its largely chinese-rewritten history.
North Korea has also surrendered some historical Korean territories to their Chinese backers in exchange for political and military support. The free (South) Koreans aren't too pleased about that.
The Chinese and Soviet-Russian communist empires also fought brief border wars in Central Asia swapping minor territories but without larger annexation of foreign land either way.
That probably covers most if not all of China historical and newly-acquired (through imperial expansion) neighbors!
Adding this ongoing feverish expansionism of the modern (communist party) era to the millenia-old assimilation and sinicization policies, it is absolutely ludicruous to claim that China isn't an imperialist state. What makes it even more sadly laughable is that the Chinese nationalists and ethnic Han chauvinists (incl. the State), who are the key proponents of China genocidal policies, just love to rail against foreigners over their mercantilist-era meddling in Manchu-ruled China.
In fact the whole massive Chinese propaganda machinery, from cradle to grave, is geared towards justifying Chinese imperialism and ethnic Han chauvinism and superiority over lesser "minorities" while bedeviling any foreign interference in "China's internal affairs" (which naturally includes all occupied nations and territories).
While I agree with the sentiment of your idea, the International Olympic Committee is only concerned about the financial aspects of the application. Well, logistics too, but they don't give a damn is the efficiency of logistics is used for oppressive purposes as long as the financials give them green light.
When the IOC awarded the fabled Olympic Games to the oppressive dictatorship in Beijing they publicly (and superficially) declared that the Games would result in greater freedoms for the Chinese (term which they ostensibly apply to the neighbouring peoples under Chinese military occupation as well). However exactly the opposite is true. The Chinese Communist Party, with complete control over the police, paramilitary and military forces, has the logistical muscle to prevent any and all dissent aimed at the regime or their Berlin '36-esque olympic party. The foreign press was given nominally increased freedom (which ends exactly when the games are over!) to travel and report in most parts of actual China (while the occupied Tibet is completely out of bounds) but in reality all reporters are still followed by the regime, people talking to them are harassed or detained and the reporters may still get kicked out at the pleasure of the local or central Party cadres.
Simply put, the supposed openness of the Chinese regime and the human rights interests of the IOC are nothing but a sham. In fact, top IOC officials have even picked up the Chinese Communist Party habit of lashing out at the "annoying and meddling human rights groups" who are trying to raise the issue of worsening human rights conditions in China with the IOC. Instead of showcasing the brotherhood and equality between peoples on this planet, the olympics have now officially become just another faceless money-grabbing organization willing to (ab)use its commercial prominency for rehabilitating and normalizing the image of an oppressive dictatorship which continues to hold its peaceful neighbouring peoples under genocidal occupation...
What comes to the battle between Chicago (USA) and Tokyo (Japan) in vying for the olympic circus of 2016, it would appear that travelling to either destination subjects the visitor to the same humiliating and xenophobic treatment upon arrival. However the saddest thing about democratic or semi-democratic countries imposing these kinds of surveillance measures on foreign visitors is that it gives the authoritarian regimes fake justification for further increasing their own gestapo-like measures against any potential domestic opposition. Unbelievably, the Chinese regime even publically plays up their role as a "US partner in the war against terror" as they "strike hard" (also the name of the campaign) against the Tibetans, Uighurs or Mongols who dare to as much as speak about freedom from occupation.
Sadly, the American right-wing lead marketing campaign about terrorism (see: using external threats in world history and politics) appears to have turned all of East Asia (with the possible exception of Taiwan) back towards more xenophobic policies and even militarism. Well, if one strongly believes in the religious inevitability of armageddon then this is certainly the way to go!
Private "citizens" under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party are not allowed to hide their communications from that regime. Mere unauthorized possession of encryption tools equals intent to commit a crime against the regime by the CCP kangaroo courts.
Some foreign firms undoubtably use unapproved VPNs to have a secure link overseas and perhaps the Party now allows some large foreign businesses to do that "legally", but that has zero relevance regarding the rights of the "citizenry" (both the Chinese and their occupied neighbors) or the prevalent abuse of the Chinese "law" in suppressing dissent or even thinking about dissenting.
Domestic shopping via HTTPS is allowed (using regime-approved keys)... now there's a wonderful example of human rights with Chinese charasteristics!
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.
Details of his imprisonment and the secret Communist Party "court" ruling only leaked out because his case was an unusually
Not quite prospecting for or exploiting underground resources quite yet, but many a career has started at the pump...
But seriously, for a company with a truly global customer base (not forgetting that infamous motto either) celebrating militaries must have been a difficult decision to make, although geotargetting obviously alleviates some of the obvious issues here. I mean, most of the world doesn't probably see the US military with admiring eyes at the moment, or even in recent decades. Despite being a pacifist a heart and considering war as the final, brutal alternative when a nation or people and their lives and freedoms are under the threat of extinction, I do have respect for the veterans and volunteers who've put their lives on the line to protect their people (or even other peoples!) or their rights and values against outside aggression.
Sometimes it is easy to know, given access to realistic historical and contemporary information, who were the aggressors (and invaders and colonizers) and who merely defended their rights, freedoms and lives. Unfortunately wars and their reasons are often obfuscated in political fog and extremely selective scripting of history. Even after the WWII most wars and invasions have been wars of choice and of political and/or territorial expansionism. The five UN veto-wielding former and current colonial powers have all used their position, power and military in the WWII-era to impose their will or rule upon other smaller nations. How many of those wars has been purely to help free a people from foreign (or even unpopular domestic) occupation or dictatorship?
I'm not keen on honouring veterans anywhere who've helped invade a foreign country for their own regime's political or material gain, without either absolute necessity or clearly altruistic and humanitarian reasons. Therefore it is all but impossible for a non-jingoistic person to celebrate a veterans' day in a large and powerful country with a "militarily active foreign policy". Meanwhile smaller countries tend have their own clearly defined independence or uprising remembrances (even if in places such remembrances are strictly and brutally suppressed, such as the March 10th (1959) in Chinese-occupied Tibet) which are based on defensive struggles.
Perhaps instead of celebrating the power of war and its tools, we should all start remembering that there are still too many unrepresented nations and peoples in our modern world. With some peoples under genuine genocidal occupation, who's going to support their rights and freedoms? While the West or the democratic world in general still has some financial and political edge over the rising authoritarianism we could even try using non-military means in support of freedom and liberty. Besides, I'd even feel some guilt celebrating my own people's day of freedom while my nation actively collaborates and trades with regimes engaged in violent expansionism and/or domestic dictatorship, thereby denying such freedoms from others suffering under ongoing oppression.
Here's something to get you started.
Considering that the modern idea of civilized behaviour entails peoples' rights to such incomprehensible things as self-determination and the freedom of speech and religion and especially from the fear of remorseless genocide by expansionist neighbours, the chinese Han-chauvinists certainly have great deal of catching up to do in terms of civilization. The jingoistic Party indoctrination appears to work wonders on Chinese people's critical thinking faculties.
I suggest you google for "Tibet", "East Turkestan" or "Xinjiang", or "South Mongolia" along with "occupation", "genocide", "oppression", "repression", "mass settlement of chinese", "paramilitary", "PLA" plus "exploitation", "oil", "gas" and "natural resourcing" just to get started.
I suppose the last sixty years and ongoing every single second counts as "modern times".
You could also look up communist China's history with pretty much every one of their neighbors (not forgetting the nations under ongoing genocidal occupation) to learn more about the CCP's "peaceful" foreign policy. (if, somehow, you're exposed to the Official CCP Truth then you can naturally forget any useful analysis of their murderous rule.)
It is fashionable (and largely true) to point out how screwed up the USA and their self-centered foreign policy really is, but they still have a long way to go before they can be compared with the likes of China (since Mao, and occasionally earlier too), Soviet Russia (esp. before 1991) or Nazi Germany (Hitler's 12 year reich). Or even the past European imperial powers like Spain or England.
Most of the Taiwanese OEMs have practically all of their manufacturing facilities in China, but at least they aren't directly involved in feeding the Party hierarchies. One or two of the Taiwanese manufacturers have kept their facilities in Taiwan though. Google should help identify them.
The Japanese makers have likewise most of their factories in China, but there has been a recent trend to look at other less hostile and more democratic Asian countries to host more of the manufacturing.
Some China trivia: How many knew that the "peoples' liberation army" (PLA) is "constitutionally" loyal to the Chinese "communist" Party instead of the state or the "government"? Or that the current CCP and PLA head honcho Hu Jintao (aka "president of the PRC") was nicknamed the Butcher of Tibet thanks to his bloody crackdown on Tibetan demonstrators in Lhasa while he was the Party supremo there in the late 80s. In the immediate aftermath tens of thousands of Tibetans were forced to watch how the Chinese executed their freedom-fighters in a sports stadium. That bloody act loyal to the Chinese communist Party helped fast-track him into the top Party leadership. What if the Burmese generals were massacring monks and civilians in a neighboring country..?
Throw in a bunch of typical private investor types and a megalomaniac boy-wonder CEO and they've got all the "right" boxes checked.
Last I saw those arguments supporting Mao's military invasion and the half a century of genocidal occupation was when I read Chinese Communist Party's propaganda leaflets extolling the loving wonderfulness of PPC's military occupation in Tibet.
Tibet was indeed backwards in many social and technological ways thanks to the country's near-total geographical and self-imposed isolation, no Tibetan has ever claimed otherwise, but they had began reforms already at the beginning of the 20th century and in any case no level of backwardness is an excuse for the destruction and murder in a massive scale that the Chinese immediately embarked upon. The real and total feudalism began with the invasion of Mao's communist troops in 1949. I strongly recommend that you familiarize yourself with the level of brutality and murder of the Chinese occupiers against almost excusively peaceful Tibetan civilians and nuns and monks. Out of Tibet's some 6000 monasteries, which in Tibet functioned both as "churches" and universities, less than ten survived without major damage. Some 6000 were totally destroyed and looted by the Chinese of all their invaluable artifacts and history. Refugees are "flotsam and jetsam" to you?
Some of my recent posts here (as well as my homepage URL above) have detailed the absolute injustice of CCP's imperial claims over the totally non-chinese people of Tibet, but to understand the devastating effects on ordinary Tibetan humans you need to look up some documentary films or better yet talk to the people who managed to escape from their homeland. Talk to a nun who's suffered enending torture while hung from the ceiling and who's been raped by camp guards and with electric cattle prods. Who can't sleep because of constant headaches and nightmares. Or walk or resume normal life because of life-long pain and physical problems. Look in her (or their) eyes and repeat your rant how you couldn't care less because their homeland in the Tibetan high plateau used be so backward!
What are you on about??
Tibet has been specifically and against the most basic Human Rights (as declared by the United Nations) seen all its rights of "reinvention" or self-determination ripped away by the occupying Chinese. If spiritualism, as an integral part of Tibetan culture, was practically the only thing the escaping Tibetans could bring along to exile, you're happy to tar it with your Western-style and Western-created "New Age" ridiculism? Western
And you replied:
Wouldn't it have been more honest to declare yourself as the "typical Asian nerd" of Chinese descent who calls Wuhan his hometown and flies the Chinese Communist Party's battle flag as his site's logo that you are instead of conveniently wrapping yourself in the US flag/passport? Just consider the post you were replying to. It was describing someone with strong ethnic blindfolds; apparently someone not totally unlike yourself.
Now, if you're still interested in some facts about Tibet instead of playing cheap retort games to put the Tibetans down as mere Han-Chinese property, consider the following:
Tibetans are not Chinese in any way.
Not in ethnicity.
Not in language, which is completely different and not just euphemistically a "dialect" like Cantonese etc.
Not even in the written script of the Tibetan language, which is closely related to Sanskrit or its other offspring Hindi. It's a phonetic script and nothing like the Chinese pictograms.
Not in culture, which again is totally different from their Chinese neighbours. Totally as in completely.
Not in religion; Tibetans created their unique form of Buddhism after Buddhism spread from the neighbouring India and fused with the indigenous Bön religion which had developed via Central Asian influences. Guess where the Tang got their Buddhism from?
Not even in history, as if that was somehow an excuse for genocide today, notwithstanding vague claims over the whole world by the often despotic feudal god-king overlords who ruled various parts of China!
When the Mongols invaded the Eurasian continent, from Eastern Europe to Northern India to most of today's China from late 1300s onwards and created an empire, they respected the Tibetans enough to adopt their religion and adopt Tibet as their spiritual home, not as vassals paying tax and tribute. When the Hans took over the eastern quarter of that Mongol empire, they kept the priest-patron relationship. (Some centuries earlier when the Tibetans were still a nation of warriors themselves they had invaded the capital of China and agreed upon an eternal peace between the two nations to stop the stupid warfaring for good!)
When the Manchus (Qing) took over the Empire, they too kept the spiritual link nominally alive, although generally the Qing were only relied upon as decent neighbours, decent enough to help in times of trouble because the Tibetans had long ago chosen to become a pacifist, monastic society. Instead of violence the Tibetans put their trust in geography, the Himalayas and vast deserts, Buddhist Mongolia and other neighbours, including the decency of their distant Manchu-ruled Qing neighbours.
So life went on. Tibet chose to remain isolated from the increasingly turbulent world, but they naturally had their own government as always, own currency, own flag, their own diplomatic relations with their neighbours, own postal system, a small army, their Tibetan history going back millenia. etc.
Eventually the Qing Manchus were struggling with both Western imperialism and
You completely avoided any response to the fact that the Tibetan people, who are in every single way non-Chinese, have never wanted to be occupied, oppressed and flooded by hordes of alien Chinese settlers any more than your own ancestors wanted to becomes slaves to the Japanese.
So you want "justice" for your expansionist China but don't give a shit about the neighbouring people that you, without a least bit of remorse, continue torturing, raping and wiping out. Some might find such violent heartlessness and greed as a strength but I find it to be thoroughly rotten and sick. Mao himself, the world's most murderous dictator is history, would be proud of you.
As it happens I am also familiar with the history of the British Empire, including the Great Game period towards the end of which this brief military incursion into Lhasa (lead by Sir Francis Younghusband who actually lived in Dharamshala in India which, in a twist of fate, would later become the seat of the Tibetan government in exile!) took place.
The purpose of that incursion/invasion was to extract diplomatic and trade favours and to prevent the Russians from using Tibet against the British-occupied India. The British incursion into Lhasa was just a very minor footnote in a century-and-half long Game of spying and political intrigue which was played farther in the west; between Kashmir and East Turkestan in the east to Turkey in the west.
In the early 1900s Tibet was a nearly complete vacuum militarily after the Tibetans had chosen to give up their past warrior ways several hundred years earlier to concentrate on building a wholly buddhist society. The arguments for not needing a strong army any longer were 1) support from the buddhist Mongolia, 2) The Himalayas protected Tibet from the south (although there were no large aggressive threats from that direction, and the Tibetans were largely unaware of modern techology in warfare, until 1903-1904 of course) and 3) the Chinese emperor had signed an eternal treaty of peace with Tibet (after Tibetans had invaded the Chinese imperial capital!).
The British contingent did end up massacring several thousand Tibetan troops on their way to Lhasa, albeit largely unintentionally since the Tibetans had no knowledge of e.g. machine guns. But the intention of an army of only couple of thousand (including porters) was not to occupy the nation of Tibet nor to subject Tibetans to genocidal oppression and to wipe out that whole nation. It was to extract diplomatic and trade guarantees from Tibet and to prevent other empires (mainly the Russians) from taking advantage of that mysterious and introverted country. After having "created" some diplomatic links and getting some vague guarantees (the 13th Dalai Lama had taken refuge in Mongolia at the beginning of the incursion), the British contingent left Tibet. They didn't even bother installing a puppet government.
Now what was your point in highlighting the 1903-1904 British incursion into Lhasa?
When the Chinese communist army invaded Tibet in 1949 - immediately after Mao had taken over Beijing and needed to keep his battle-hardened troops busy far away from all the political reorganization - it was a modern mechanized army of tens of thousands of troops with the sole objective of not just invading but completely occupying Tibet, in which the "PLA" succeeded by 1951. Hundreds of thousands of Tibetans were killed during the rather one-sided fighting and its immediate aftermath, which the Communist Party advertises as the "peaceful liberation of Tibet". During the first decade of occupation large number of Tibetans had been brutally tortured (often to death) and raped and by the end of 1960s over a million Tibetans (of a nation of seven million) had died under Chinese rule.
Today, after more than 60 years of complete and oppressive occupation, thousands of Tibetans remain languished in Chinese terror camps for simple crimes of thought (of religious or national self-determination). The torturing is well documented while the "trials" are always secret with no defense allowed.
The Chinese regime holds gestapo-like control over all
If the Chinese voluntarily wish to have dictatorship as their preferred form of government (forgetting the rights of the Chinese "political minorities" for the moment; I'm not talking about the 60-odd ethnic "minorities" aka former nations China has invaded and largely assimilated over the aeons) it would be hard to argue with their choice.
However it is not a choice the Chinese are either allowed to make (it's either Communist Party rule or prison/death) nor are they informed of the factual deeds of their regime thanks to the all-pervasive propaganda and Party control of all media and education.
So while the Party continues to spread hateful propaganda against the Western Imperialists and especially the Imperial Japan (which was forced to end their partial occupation of China - by those evil western imperialists as it happened - already more than 60 years ago), the Party rather conveniently forgets to inform its people of China's own genocidal imperialism that continues to this day. I already responded ("Nazional-Socialism gets forgetful approval") to another laissez-faire sinophile in another thread about the supposed respectability economic or military muscle supposedly brings without any moral aspect.
The point being, it's not just their country a long as they continue wiping out their neighboring peoples and lieing about it to their own people, not to mention bullying other free nations e.g. simply for allowing exiled Tibetans to visit and speak about stuff like non-violence!
Germany was in absolute shambles after WW1 with scores of people dieing from starvation etc. so you could also argue that by grabbing power in early 1930s and establishing a national socialist dictatorship (aka nazism) to pull Germany out of the economic doldrums he simply rebuilt the Nazi-Germany into an acceptable or even admirable powerhouse. Invading territory lost in WW1 and more (in cahoots with "Uncle Josef"), or aiming to invade the oil fields of Caucasus was perfectly fine since Germany was becoming powerful in economic and military terms?
When the UK declared war against Germany in 1939 (the US wouldn't do that until after Pearl Harbor) it was based on a treaty with Poland and the coming large-scale holocaust was still a hopeful twinkle in Hitler's eyes.
"Communist" (at least back then) China OTOH started the expansion of their Lebensraum with multiple invasions immediately after the world most murderous dictator Mao had completed his bloody civil war in 1949:
None of these invaded and now for generations oppressed nations which are still being systematically wiped off the map were related to the Han-Chinese ethnically, culturally, linguistically or even religiously (although historically Tibet was the source route of buddhism to China among other East Asian countries, how's that for a payback).
Now back to your original opinion: The fact that the Nazi-China regime has managed to raise the material living standards of maybe 25-30% of the population (by promoting consumerism of mainly chinese-produced goods while leaving larger number in poverty, while removing free healthcare, while creating massive problems with pollution and endemic corruption, while continuing to push twisted and hateful propaganda and "history" by strictly controlling all forms of media and education etc.) while also amassing foreign currecy (USD) reserves of over a trillion dollars makes them respectable and no less evil than other former (actual) colonial or expansionist powers? The current regime in Washington is certainly covered in warts but as far as I know even they aren't systematically and intentionally wiping (peaceful) nations and whole cultures and languages off the map and history books... and how many foreign countries was imperial Britain still occupying when they declared war against Germany in the name of "freedom"... should that have stopped them from standing up for the Poles?
Chinese dictatorship's role in protecting the Janjaweed genocide in Sudan (oil!) or the Pol Pot regime committing the unimaginable "killing fields" genocide in Cambodia (ideological reasons) have no bearing in your compass? Or the fact that China's current Party- and military supremo Hu Jintao earned the nick-name [b]Butcher of Tibet[/b] for his bloody suppression of Tibetan uprisings while being the Party overlord of the ludicrously
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.
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.
As an environmentally conscientious person I must give this particular corporation some credit for trying to do the right thing environment-wise, but I still wouldn't choose to allow my money to fund the militaristic policies of the Chinese state. Arrogant, expansionist and rich Chinese dictatorship is at the bottom of my personal wishlist.
Are they still allowed to use the IBM logo to fool people?
Some of the early entries show promise and I'd expect it to feature on Slashdot any slow newsday now. Finding Microsoft profiling their mortal enemies the Linux users for their propaganda purposes unsurprisingly loosened a few tongues so why shouldn't the opposite have similar effect. There is a not insignificant number of MS apologists here on Slashdot to continue arguing Monkeyboy's case ad nauseaum...
* People who believe that collaboration is a Good Thing (tm)
Even though the great majority of Linux users are by now non-developers (a fact that has Monkeyboy & Co worried about Linux having reached the "good enough for most people" level), the idea of open and public cooperation (+ open standards), or rather awareness of their value, remains strong in the Linux user community. Somehow I doubt that MS would be keen to shine light on this aspect of Linux usership.
"Collaboration Without Borders" makes for a great PR story as well; it's something that juxtaposes with the various unnecessary global rifts caused by corporatism (incl. multinational giants dominating over indigenous industries, esp. in the developing world) and the regrettably aggressive unilateral acts by some bigger countries.
Interestingly, someone just put up a Windows Personas site. I wonder if the two "personas" sites should exchange link banners... :-)