Martin

You're right again. Gee, I hate to discuss when having to admit the other one is right

Again: no democracy, even not an authocracy (sp?), mostly an olygarchy (sp. again... too lazy to have spell check)

BTW, I travel quite a bit into Dirtland ( is what we call, tongue-in-cheek, the Mainland here, no offence towards mainlanders, please) and because of that I really am in favour for the Chinese Govt to control its subjects!
(That's only a very personal and thus not objective statement from my part.)

Martin

Don't get me started about the violet ones, exception made for the real Ireland. As for the green: I only see one that has to remain green,the 2 others ought to be returned to the grey status.
Anyway, I'm out of there, so they don't get my tax bucks anymore

Slartibartfas

Well Ireland is only therfore violet because otherwise Britain would kill the agreement Ireland had regarding North Ireland. So effecitvely there is only one reason for both countries to have that special status: Britain.

Rumania and Bulgaria are a different story for sure. But the hope dies at last that they will gt onto a reasonable level as well. The corruption there is a real problem though. Hey, but we were not so stupid this time, both Rumania and Bulgaria have obligations other members have not. If they dont get their administration job done efficiently, they will loose all the money that is otherwise coming from the EU and might as last consequence even loose their voting powers in the EU. Hopefully this will be motivation enough for them.

PS: You overlooked Cyprus. Soon they get from their capital easier to Reykjavik than from the south of their capital into the north of it... but things luckily are on the move again as well, towards a solution hopefully.

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Martin

Glad to hear that. I only was in Romania on a holiday in the early 70s... (oops that tells you a lot about my age!) In those days the Genius of The Carpats was still in charge. Twas quite a turn-off, believe me. The delta of the Danube on the other hand was worthwile visiting, especially on board of the little boat of a local fisherman who gave the late "genius" the middle finger by inviting me into his community.

Slartibartfas

Rumania is not that bad anymore I think. Granted, in the rural areas you will still see many horse carriages. But they are progressing.

Sibiu/Hermannstadt (Transylvania) was European cultural capital in 2007 and it did its job quite fine I think.



http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...rmannstadt.jpg


...
but we are getting seriously off topic I dont want to completely derrail this thread. But I invite all Chinese posters here, if they want to know something about Europe, dont bother asking me, or open a thread about it.

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Martin

I'll visit Tibet as soon as I'm allowed.
Only problem, a personal one: my system and I hate pressure altitudes above 3000 meters.

Maybe I'll have to stick to other parts of China then.

(BTW, not sure if "German town": "Hermann stadt" is a thing/place I want to go to.)
Cheers, I'm off for today.

Slartibartfas

Perhaps the Chinese government should look more into the matter of getting corruption on local level under control. Thats one of the largest problems China faces currently I think. Without good administration level on local level their laws they make on national level does not count all too much (just think about workers protection vs exploitation, product quality/safety, environmental issues, ... those issues are also for the Chinese economic success of vital interest)

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cncncn

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About This Site
This website is established to expose the lies and distorted facts in the western media. The site is maintained by the individual volunteers, who are not associated with the businesses or government officials.
We are not against the western media, but against the lies and fabricated stories in the media.
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Esta página está fundada por internautas individuales por voluntad propia con el fin de revelar cómo algunos medios de comunicación manipulan la verdad a través de sus discursos que no son imparciales. Es un sitio web non-lucrativo y non-gubernamental.

No estamos en contra de la prensa, sino sólo de los reportajes parciales de ciertos medios de comunicación.
No estamos en contra del pueblo occidental, pero sí en contra de los prejuicios.

Ce site est en cours de construction. Ce que vous voyez est juste une partie de ce que nous avons collecté C'est un site non-officel construit par le peuple. Nous voulons vous montrer la réalité à derière des reportages distordus artificiellement par les médias occidentals. Nous ne sommes pas contre les médias, mais nous sommes contre les mensonges de média. Nous ne sommes pas contre les Occidentaux, mais Nous sommes contre les perceptions fourvoyées. Brief, les médias occidentals utilisent largement les photos d'origine Népale et Indienne dans les reportages de manifestation dans la région Tibétaine. De plus, ils modifient(couper, commenter rossardement) les vrais photos

Diese Webseite ist zurzeit noch in Bearbeitung, die Informationen, dieSie hier lesen können, sind nur die Spitze eines Eisbergs. Diese Webseite wurde von freiwilligen Internetnutzern eingerichtet. Siesoll dazu dienen, die einseitigen, weit von den Wahrheiten entferntenBerichterstattungen der westlichen Medien zu entlarven. Unsere Seiteist non-government, nicht-kommerziell und ausschließlich sachlichorientiert. Wir haben nichts gegen den Westen, aber wir sind gegenVorurteile und gegen den hegemonialen Diskurs des Westens!

today's tibet morden bridge
terriost fired fire engine

it this peace
demonstrate?

who can help this poor man?

LostInTranslation

Those are exactly the pictures I saw. You may also notice that the gallery title says: photos from Ngaba protest-March 16. If I am not mistaken, Ngaba is also known as Aba in Chinese, locating in Sichuan province, hundreds of miles from Lhasa. Beijing admitted shooting shortly after it took place, like I have said a few times before. The alleged Tibetan's death in March 14th's riots in Lhasa has never been substantiated. Reporters from 14 (?) independent news agencies including the Associated Press (U.S.), NHK (Japan) and someone from Britain... (as you might have imagined, bbc and cnn did not get the invitation) just finished their Tibet tour, and foreign diplomats will follow in the next few days. Not so surprisingly, they found no evidence of police's shooting at protesters, a fact that has been documented in numerous tourists' stories, and the reports by foreing correspondents who were actually in Lhasa during the riot.

I think Prof. Goldstein laid out some very good suggestions for a peaceful resolution of the Tibet problem at the end of his book. It is a very challenging task, but not mission impossible. From Beijing's point of view, Tibet is of vital importance to China (I will elaborate in my response to Martin's comment), and of course Beijing will not entertain any discussion of Tibet independence. Maintaining the sovereignty of the country, social stability and economic growth are the three most important tasks CCP faces today (roughtly in that order), and in these areas, it has the overwhelming support from ~1.4 billion Chinese people.

My view is that it is definitely not Beijing's policy to treat Tibetans on unequal terms, in fact, its ethnic minority policy is skewed in favor of minorities. It is a different story when the policy was carried out locally, however, and I would not be too surprised if some Tibetans are beaten arbitrarily. This is not a problem unique to Tibet, it happens everywhere in China. It is just in Tibet, there are other issues, ethnic, religious, etc. superimposed on that, and it gets the headlines a lot more than in other parts of China.

Good for you My wife was not quite happy with my spending time posting on this forum, as she put it: the western people are just as brainwashed as we were, and perhaps even worse, because at least we know we were brainwashed, and you are not going to change them. For the first part, I somewhat agreed, the western people do have access to all the information if they so desired, unfortunately, most are content with what has been fed onto them, and do not bother to question what the media (and the special interest groups behind them) want them to know. For the second part, I am just happy that someone here was willing to see stories from a different angle (even though just skimming through). Thank you for proving my point to my wife

I do have the inclination, but unfornately not the time. Between work, life and family, I don't really have much time discussing politics. I already sacrificed my sleep time to discuss Tibet, and I just cannot sacrifice my work or family to discuss more.

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What we've got here is... failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach. --CHL

LostInTranslation

I hope when you said "pathetic lie", you didn't mean my response. Or perhaps I didn't word my response correctly, when I said "they had to take preventive measures", I meant they had to prevent bad things from leaking out should they arise, not that they were safeguarding the foreign correspondents. That pathetic lie you referred to is just a diplomatic phrase, after all, you wouldn't expect them to say "we are going to sweep through the city, and things may get ugly, and we don't want you to report those", would you?

I am glad to hear that you agree with some of my analyses Blaming the Dalai clique is Beijing's usual rhetoric, and it is to their best interests to tie Dalai Lama himself with the more radical elements of his government-in-exile.

I didn't say that it is what Beijing wants to do, it was just someone's opinion I read it somewhere. In fact, Beijing wants to relegetimize its position in Tibet, and nothing works more magic than bringing Dalai Lama home. However, just like the more moderate leaders in Beijing, Dalai Lama is carrying a lot of baggage of his own. Some Tibetans now believe that violence is the only way out, and were just waiting to capture the next opportunity when China is thrown into chaos and weakens. For now, their goal is to keep Tibet's problem alive, and if they have to resort to violence, they would not refrain. I think the international community needs to remind them that violence begets violence, and urge them to go back to Dalai's more moderate approach. For that, I think the West has done a very very poor job this time.

Goldstein has outlined two possible outcomes of the Tibet problem, and I think the policy makers in the free world need to seriously consider which one they would like to see, and act accordingly.

Beijing's reluctance to talk with Dalai also has some historic reasons, with the most recent one being the Panchen Lama debacle. You have to realize that just as Beijing might be bankrupt in its credibility in the west, Dalai Lama himself probably already overdrafted from Beijing's Bank of Trust.

Indeed they are. These videos told two things: one, the U.S. has played a not so graceful role in the past and aggravated the Tibet problem which also caused a lot of mistrust that will take years to go away; two, the opposition to occupation did not garner wide supports from the Tibetans back then, and I suspect not so nowadays either. Beijing has done a lot of bad things to Tibetans during the Cultural Revolution, and those were neither unique nor specific towards Tibetans either. The very core of the Chinese culture, such as the Confusiusism (if that's a word) and Taoism were also severely demonished. The new leaders started to correct the wrongs since the early 1980s, and they will continue doing so barring major turmoils in China which may trigger the hardliner takeover. Eventually they might win over Tibetan's heart in addition to their stomach, and solve the Tibetan problem peacefully with or without Dalai Lama. The west can help in this course, or they can resort to the old ways.

__________________
What we've got here is... failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach. --CHL