Behind the anti-China Olympics campaign

[Wanted Man]

Behind the anti-China Olympics campaign

By Gary Wilson

Published Mar 27, 2008 8:53 PM


Can there be any doubt that the U.S. government is behind the attacks on China targeting the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing?


The events that unfolded at the lighting of the Olympic flame March 24 in Greece were most revealing. A protest briefly disrupted the ceremonies. The news reports all said that the protest was about Tibet.


Three protesters were arrested, but then immediately released. None were Tibetan.


The three French men, it turns out, are all from a notorious right-wing organization that’s funded by the governments of France and the United States as well as some of the richest capitalists in the world. They all are employees of the outfit called Reporters Without Borders.


Based in France, the group gets funding from the U.S. government’s National Endowment for Democracy as well as the Soros Foundation and the Center for a Free Cuba. U.S. State Department Special Envoy Otto Reich is a trustee of the Center. He was also the lawyer for the Bacardi liquor dynasty that was kicked out of Cuba, along with the hated dictator Fulgencio Batista. The president of the Center is Frank Calzón, a former leader of the terrorist organization Cuban American National Foundation.


Reporters Without Borders unmasked
“Reporters Without Borders Unmasked” is the title of a report by Diana Barahona on Counterpunch.org. RWB has an “obsession” with Cuba, which Barahona says can be directly traced to its funding. What may not be obvious is that the Center for a Free Cuba is a front organization for U.S. covert operations against Cuba. It is completely funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, an agency that has long fronted for U.S. covert operations.


RWB does not just target Cuba, though Cuba has been its primary target for many years—the Cuban press generally refers to RWB as an ultra-reactionary organization with ties to counterrevolutionary terrorists. At the time of the U.S. contra war against the Sandinista government, the RWB carried on operations against Nicaragua.


Today it also has operations targeting Venezuela, Bolivia, Iran, People’s Korea, and the Palestinians, according to a report by French journalist Salim Lamrani. (“The deceit of Reporters Without Borders,” ZNet.com)
RWB was merely fulfilling its contract with the U.S. government when it carried out the little disruption of the Olympic Games opening ceremony. It got maximum publicity in the compliant U.S. media for its anti-China message.



NED: CIA of the 21st century
The shadowy hand of the National Endowment for Democracy can be found in many of the anti-China reports over the last few weeks.


The NED is a U.S. government agency that does in the post-Cold War era much of what the CIA had been doing during the U.S. counter-revolutionary operations against the Soviet Union. In fact, that’s almost exactly how its role was described by the NED’s first acting president, Allen Weinstein, who said, “A lot of what we [the NED] do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” (Washington Post, Sept. 22, 1991)


In the U.S., little is known about the NED except for its public relations handouts. The big business-controlled press usually just repeats what’s in those handouts.


Australian writer Michael Barker, in a report last Aug. 13 published by Canada-based Global Research, detailed at that time the rise of groups aimed at breaking Tibet away from China, all of which were NED-funded.
The International Campaign for Tibet, for example, not only is funded by the NED but also has a board of directors that includes several former assistant secretaries of the U.S. State Department and former U.S. AID officials.


The Tibet Fund is another NED payee, as is the Tibet Information Network and the Tibetan Literary Society, Barker reports. Also getting funds from the NED is the Tibetan Review Trust Society, which publishes the English-only Tibetan Review magazine. Finally, Barker says, the NED also set up the Voice of Tibet short-wave radio station.


About 38 percent of the U.S. government’s nonmilitary China-related programs are allocated through the NED. According to the NED’s Web site, other recipients of its China funds include the Gu-Chu-Sum Movement of Tibet, the Tibetan Women’s Association and the Longsho Youth Movement of Tibet.


All this raises more questions than answers about what is now happening in China. Many events that are reported to be about Tibet focus on the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Like the disruption of the Olympic torch lighting in Greece, the commentators quoted most frequently in the U.S. media are not Tibetans; most are from the U.S. and say they are speaking for the Tibetans.


The anti-Olympics campaign is clearly based in Washington, not Tibet.
In China, economic advances have been made in Tibet. The current leaders of People’s China have chosen what they call the market road to socialism. They attribute their great economic boom to this policy. But capitalist market relations by their very character breed inequality and promote divisions among peoples, breaking down the bonds of socialist solidarity. Nevertheless, China still retains strong traditions and political, social and economic institutions based on its great revolutionary past.


The question is to what extent rising inequalities may have facilitated the imperialist campaign against China now focused on Tibet.
Articles copyright 1995-2008 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

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[RedFlagComrade]

Bullshit!China is a is not a communist country.It has runaway exploitative capitalist economic policies with a tiny number of super rich corporations exploiting millions of impoverished peasants and hard right nazi social liberty policies as regards personal freedom and free speech.Theyre a one party gov for fucks sake!Saying that they are truly a communist country is helping capitalist probaganda that seeks to use chinas noteriety to defame communism.China today is the totalitarian society with the negative aspects of stalinism and lassez-faire capitalism that George Orwell(a socialist by the way) was describing in the book 1984,or so close its uncanny.Mao was a murdering lunatic tyrant.They ruthlessly callously supply the guns for the genocide in Darfur in Sudan.They have committed countless atrocities against the people of china.A true leftist would say-Boycott the Beijing Olympics!Free Tibet!

[Zurdito]

http://www.zeenews.com/articles.asp?aid=435040&sid=SPO

There was an interesting event in London today: the British state repressing pro-Tibet campaigners - arresting at least 35 - so that the torch could pass safely through London. They even had officials from China there alongside them.

From The Times website:


The Government said that it would not consider scrapping the London torch relay in 2012. ?It would be quite wrong for London to be intimidated by the threat of protest,? Tessa Jowell, the Olympics Minister, said. ?We cannot foresee what the circumstances will be in four years but I hope that what will prevail is a celebration of the ambitions of our athletes, the Olympic movement and a free democracy.?

Gordon Brown, ignoring calls to snub China for its crackdown on protests in Tibet, welcomed the Olympic flame behind Downing Street?s steel gates in front of a vetted crowd. Meanwhile, demonstrators and police clashed just yards away outside Parliament. The Prime Minister did not hold the torch, which was passed between the heptathlete Denise Lewis, and Ali Jawad, a paralympian, but posed for a picture with it after a posse of Beijing minders were eventually persuaded to stand aside.

Some "anti-imperialists" the Chinese government are eh?

[RedStarOverChina]

http://www.zeenews.com/articles.asp?aid=435040&sid=SPO

There was an interesting event in London today: the British state repressing pro-Tibet campaigners - arresting at least 35 - so that the torch could pass safely through London. They even had officials from China there alongside them.

From The Times website:



Some "anti-imperialists" the Chinese government are eh?
Britain is holding the Olympics 4 years later...does it want China to boycott the Olympic for its war in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Doesn't matter what you think of China, you are NOT supposed to jump onto the bandwagon against China. Imperialist countries attack each other for their own reasons, and that's got nothing to do with us.

What Kautsky did during WWI should serve as a warning to us...NEVER SIDE WITH ANYONE IN AN IMPERIALIST CONFLICT!

[Wanted Man]

RedFlagComrade: gee, thanks. Have you even read the position that the article takes on China? Anyway, that's a different subject.

Zurdito: well, that's a first. Here, the police did practically nothing while protesters tore down the fence of the Chinese embassy, removed the Chinese flag and flew a Tibetan one. If this had been a protest against America, all participants would already have been sitting on their knees in a cage with plasticuffs cutting in their wrists.

[Zurdito]

Zurdito: well, that's a first. Here, the police did practically nothing while protesters tore down the fence of the Chinese embassy, removed the Chinese flag and flew a Tibetan one. If this had been a protest against America, all participants would already have been sitting on their knees in a cage with plasticuffs cutting in their wrists.

So do you congratulate the British police?

[Wanted Man]

No, just exposing imperialism's hypocrisy. I don't really care to side with either the police, or the employees and useful idiots of the National Endowment for Democracy, the George Soros foundation or Reporters Without Borders.

But it was bound to happen at some point, of course the cops are not going to allow endless interference with the massive corporate fest of the Olympics.

All that, of course, does not change the political campaign from the USA and EU against China, which is what this thread is all about.

[RedFlagComrade]

RedFlagComrade: gee, thanks. Have you even read the position that the article takes on China? Anyway, that's a different subject.

Sorry I just saw an article about china and jumped straight in!My bad. Still i stand by what i said.

[Ultra-Violence]

I think its funny america has become so anti-china latley its riducoulus but man is the air quality bad thier fuck how do you live some where like that!?

any ways Like some one said above This was Bound to Happen WW3

[RedStarOverChina]

Roughly 1/4 of China's pollution is caused by productions aimed to satisfy foreign demand. Then there are foreign companies exporting tons of their own waste to China for China to process.
Of course, China is not the only victim in this. Nigeria is also an important destination for Western waste--especially used computers which are infamous for their ability to pollute the environment.

[ckaihatsu]

There was an interesting event in London today: the British state repressing pro-Tibet campaigners - arresting at least 35 - so that the torch could pass safely through London. They even had officials from China there alongside them.


Could this indicate a rift in U.S.-British relations? Blair had to go in order to get the token British force out of Basra to begin with....


Chris




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[Lisa]

The Dalai Lama and these protesters are all on the payroll of the CIA, so what does that say?

[An archist]

The Dalai Lama and these protesters are all on the payroll of the CIA, so what does that say?
Sure, all those protesters are paid by the CIA:rolleyes:

[RedStarOverChina]

Well, they seem too uninformed to be working with the CIA.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twHzXN3kNTs

[ckaihatsu]

All reports of the violence speak of youths in their 20s being involved in the rampage. A Muslim steamed bun shop owner, who was stabbed, reported that several vandals broke into his shop in the tourist zone. "They came to beat us directly and we didn't dare put up any resistance, only begging," he said, "I know some of them. They were nice people before."

The explanation offered by the national and local Communist Party is hollow, although the spark for the riots and bloodshed was the monks' and the Dalai Lama's campaign; the cause of the riots was something totally different. Tibet has seen an influx of Chinese businesses; the wealth accumulated all over China by the newly rich has opened opportunities for investments large and small. Those who fail to benefit are the Tibetan unemployed and migrant workers from the villages.

In the state sector in Tibet, where employment opportunities are booming, Tibetan nationals are unlikely to get the jobs. They are easily out-skilled by the vast pool of potential recruits from every corner of China, thus fostering nationalist resentment.


The Riots in Tibet

By Heiko Khoo

Tuesday, 18 March 2008

http://www.marxist.com/the-riots-in-tibet.htm

[RedHal]

Sure, all those protesters are paid by the CIA:rolleyes:

Surely you understand the corporate media's ability to shape people's opinion on issues. As an anarchist, you understand the CIA's ability to penetrate and manipulate movements. In the Tibet case it's not even a covert operation, it's widely known that the CIA/NED funds the "Free Tibet" movement. This is the same NED (National Endowment for Democracy) that gives millions of dollars to the Venezuelan opposition. I don't think anyone's that stupid to think these dollars go into the pockets of protestors :rolleyes:

[ckaihatsu]

Tibet, History and the CIA

By Gary Wilson
Published Mar 19, 2008 10:03 PM,

Original title : Tibet and the March 10 commemoration of the CIA's 1959 'uprising'

http://www.workers.org/2007/world/tibet_0327/

Has Tibet become the front line of a new national liberation struggle? Or is something else happening there?

The U.S. news media are filled with stories about events unfolding in Tibet. Each news report, however, seems to include a note that much of what they are reporting cannot be confirmed. The sources of the reports are shadowy and unknown. If past practice is any indicator, it is likely that the U.S. State Department and the CIA are their primary sources.

One frequently quoted source is John Ackerly. Who is Ackerly? As president of the International Campaign for Tibet, he and his group appear to work closely with the U.S. government, both the State Department and Congress, as part of its operations concerning Tibet. During the Cold War, Ackerly's Washington-based job was to work with "dissidents" in Eastern Europe, particularly Romania in 1978-80.

A private international security agency in Washington, Harbor Lane Associates, lists Ackerly and the International Campaign for Tibet as its clients, along with former CIA Director and U.S. President George H.W. Bush and former Pentagon chief William Cohen.

AP, Reuters and the other Western news agencies all quote Ackerly as a major source for exaggerated reports about the clashes that have just occurred in Tibet. For example, MSNBC on March 15 reported:

"John Ackerly, of the International Campaign for Tibet, a group that supports demands for Tibetan autonomy, said in an e-mailed statement he feared 'hundreds of Tibetans have been arrested and are being interrogated and tortured.'"


Qiangba Puncog

Qiangba Puncog, a Tibetan who is chair of the Tibet Autonomous Regional Government, described the situation quite differently at a March 17 press briefing in Beijing.

According to china.org.cn, China's state Web site, the Tibetan leader said that allies of the exiled Dalai Lama on March 14 "engaged in reckless beating, looting, smashing and burning and their activities soon spread to other parts of the city. These people focused on street-side shops, primary and middle schools, hospitals, banks, power and communications facilities and media organizations. They set fire to passing vehicles, they chased after and beat passengers on the street, and they launched assaults on shops, telecommunication service outlets and government buildings. Their behavior has caused severe damage to the life and property of local people, and seriously undermined law and order in Lhasa.

"'Thirteen innocent civilians were burned or stabbed to death in the riot in Lhasa on March 14, and 61 police were injured, six of them seriously wounded,' said Qiangba Puncog.

"Statistics also show that rioters set fire to more than 300 locations, including residential houses and 214 shops, and smashed and burned 56 vehicles. ...

"Qiangba Puncog also claimed that security personnel did not carry or use any lethal weapons in dealing with the riot last Friday. ...

"The violence was the result of a conspiracy between domestic and overseas groups that advocate 'Tibet independence,' according to Qiangba Puncog. 'The Dalai clique masterminded, planned and carefully organized the riot.'

"According to Qiangba Puncog, on March 10, 49 years ago, the slave owners of old Tibet launched an armed rebellion aimed at splitting the country. That rebellion was quickly quelled. Every year since 1959, some separatists inside and outside China have held activities around the day of the rebellion. ...

"Any secessionist attempt to sabotage Tibet's stability will not gain people's support and is doomed to fail, he said."


Meeting in New Delhi

Whatever is taking place in Tibet has long been in preparation. A conference was held in New Delhi, India, last June by "Friends of Tibet." It was described as a conference for the breakaway of Tibet.

The news site phayul.com reported at the time that the conference was told "how the Olympics could provide the one chance for Tibetans to come out and protest." A call was issued for worldwide protests, a march of exiles from India to Tibet, and protests within Tibet--all tied to the upcoming Beijing Olympics.

This was followed by a call this past January for an "uprising" in Tibet, issued by organizations based in India. The news report from Jan. 25 said that the "Tibetan People's Uprising Movement" was established Jan. 4 to focus on the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The beginning date for the "uprising" was to be March 10.

At the time the call was issued, U.S. Ambassador to India David Mulford was meeting with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India. U.S. Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky made a similar visit to Dharamsala last November. Dobriansky is also a member of the neocon Project for a New American Century. She has been involved in the so-called color revolutions in Eastern Europe.
Phayul.com reports that the Tibet "Uprising" group's statement says they are acting "in the spirit of the 1959 Uprising."


The 1959 uprising

Knowing more about the 1959 "uprising" might help in understanding today's events in Tibet.
In 2002 a book titled "The CIA's Secret War in Tibet" was published by the University Press of Kansas. The two authors--Kenneth Conboy of the Heritage Foundation and James Morrison, an Army veteran trainer for the CIA--proudly detail how the CIA set up and ran Tibet's so-called resistance movement. The Dalai Lama himself was on the CIA payroll and approved the CIA's plans for the armed uprising.

The CIA put the Dalai Lama's brother, Gyalo Thodup, in charge of the bloody 1959 armed attack. A contra army was trained by the CIA in Colorado and then dropped by U.S. Air Force planes into Tibet.

The 1959 attack was a CIA planned and organized coup attempt, much like the later Bay of Pigs invasion of socialist Cuba. The purpose was to overthrow the existing Tibetan government and weaken the Chinese Revolution while tying the people of Tibet to U.S. imperialist interests. What does that say about today's March uprising, that's done in the same spirit?

[Cheung Mo]

So are these Chinese "communists" the same people who delivered Allende supporters to Pinochet's torturers and death squads when they sought refuge in the Chinese military? Any conflict between Washington and Beijing is no more a conflict between the interests of workers and the interests of bosses than a conflict of interest between ISPs and the entertainment industry over online civil liberties or a conflict of interest among bourgeois state lotteries, corporate casinos, and online poker rooms. Any benefit to workers and to humanity as a whole is a fucking side-effect. It's like arguing that the CIA supports gay rights because Solidarity had a more progressive record on this issue than the Kremlin's satellite government did. Or like arguing that the racist and pseudo-medical propaganda that makes it a crime to get stoned was intended to stop me from smoking as opposed to protecting powerful interests scared to shit of having to compete against hemp and cannabis products (whose peddlers and advocates, in turn, do not necessarily have class interests at heart...Marc Emery and Ron Paul anyone?).

[Vanguard1917]

So do you congratulate the British police?


No, you don't have to take sides with the police to oppose the demonstrations. For example, i fully oppose Christian fundamentalist demonstrations outside of abortion clinics. But i would also fully oppose police intervention against such demonstrations. The same goes for all demonstrations and protests in capitalist society.

[Zurdito]

No, you don't have to take sides with the police to oppose the demonstrations. For example, i fully oppose Christian fundamentalist demonstrations outside of abortion clinics. But i would also fully oppose police intervention against such demonstrations. The same goes for all demonstrations and protests in capitalist society.

That's the correct position yes. In practice it hasn't been the Stalinist position regarding repression in bourgeois states though, hence my question to De Baron.

[RedHal]

Statement opposing anti-China campaign
Tuesday, April 8, 2008

A PSL press release

We are opposed to the campaign of disinformation and demonization that is targeting the People’s Republic of China (PRC.) The timing of the campaign is linked to China’s hosting of the 2008 Summer Olympics. That the Olympics are taking place in China is of historic significance and great pride to all the country’s people. It was less than six decades ago that China emerged from a century of colonialist humiliation at the hands of the same big powers that are spearheading the China-bashing campaign today.

Washington is providing financial, political, diplomatic and propaganda support to the racist demonization effort, supposedly because of concern for “human rights.” This is the same government that is directly responsible for the death of one million Iraqis since 2003.
While one out of every three Iraqis have been killed, wounded or displaced since 2003 the US government is eager to have people in the US., especially students, protest any government other than their own. One pretext for the anti-China campaign is the fact that the PRC has trade relations with Sudan. The US wants to overthrow the government of oil-rich Sudan and replace it with a puppet. It has supported “rebel groups” who are prolonging the civil war. The people of the Sudan, who are suffering greatly, are cynically used as a fund raising vehicle by organizations that have raised tens of millions of dollars but have never spent a penny actually helping the people of Sudan, including those who live in the Darfur region.
Demonization campaigns against particular countries and their leaders are not just media exercises. Over the last two decades, such campaigns have preceded the invasions of Iraq and Panama, the bombing war against Yugoslavia, the coups in Haiti and attempted coup in Venezuela, and a threatened war against Iran. The pattern is clear and so too is the danger.

Regarding Tibet, for many centuries a region of China, the hand of Washington in the latest events is obvious for anyone who wants to see. For more than 50 years, the CIA and other U.S. government agencies have trained, funded, coordinated and supported the old feudal and repressive regime in Tibet represented by the Dalai Lama. The CIA front group the National Endowment for Democracy funds the International Campaign for Tibet, the Tibetan Youth Congress, the Tibetan People’s Uprising Movement and the Dalai Lama himself. The U.S. maintains close ties with the Tibetan “government-in-exile” in India, whose real aim is to break away a region making up a quarter of China’s territory. These U.S. actions constitute an effort to de-stabilize and dismember the Peoples Republic of China. The progress in education, women’s rights, employment and health care would be immediately eviscerated if the old serf-owning ruling elite, represented by the Dalai Lama, was brought back to power.

No one, least of all progressive people, should be misled about what is really going on. The real motivation for the anti-China campaign has nothing to do with human rights or liberation, and everything to do with an agenda of global domination.

We the undersigned call for an end to the disinformation and demonization campaign against China, and a halt to the attempts to boycott and disrupt the 2008 Olympics.

Initial Signers:
Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General
Muna Coobtee, Party for Socialism and Liberation
Tony Gonzales, American Indian Movement-West*
Richard Becker, Western Region Coordinator, ANSWER Coalition*
Dave Ewing, Co-Chair,U.S.-China Peoples Friendship Association,San Francisco
Willie Bartolome, Coordinator, Philippine Peasant Support Network (Pesante)-USA
Arturo P. Garcia, Philippine Immigrant Network for Empowerment
Bob Anderson, Stop the War Machine, Albuquerque, New Mexico*
Chuck Kaufman, Co-Coordinator, Nicaragua Network*
Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Civil Rights Attorney
Peter Erlinder, Law Professor, former President of the National Lawyers Guild
Riva Enteen, member, National Lawyers Guild
Idriss Stelley Foundation
Education Not Incarceration, San Francisco Chapter
San Francisco Village Voice Community Radio
Mesha Monge Irizarry, San Francisco Bayview National Black Newspaper reporter*
Gilberto López y Rivas, Professor and Journalist
Beatrice Eisman, U.S.-Vietnam Friendship Association*
Mario Santos, National Coordinator,Alliance for a Just and Lasting Peace in the Philippines—USA
Jim Lafferty, Interim General Manager, KPFK 90.7 FM Pacifica Radio* and Executive Director, National Lawyers Guild, Los Angeles*
Ecumenical Fellowship for Justice and Peace-Los Angeles
Judi Cheng, New York City, NY
Eli Stephens, Left I on the News
Allen Cooper, Veterans for Peace, GI Rights Hotline*
Peing Baclig, Justice for Filipino American Veterans (JFAV)*
Jack Vergara, Echo Park Community Coalition (EPCC)*
Pons De Leon, First Quarter Storm Network (FQSN)-USA-
Harald Neuber, journalist, Germany
Jazy Bonilla D.C.16 IUPAT Organizer *
Dr. Carmen Mercedes Baez, Argentina
Eladio González, (toto) Ernesto Che Guevara Museum, Argentina
Tara Hui, activist, San Francisco
Christine Araquel, Chair, Kabataang maka-Bayan (KmB,Pro-PeopleYouth), USA
Riya Ortia, UGNAYAN, NJNY
Ernesto Arce, Pacifica Radio, KPFK 90.7FM, Los Angeles*
Salvador Cordon, Coordinator, FMLN, Northern California
*Organizations for Identification Only

[Dean]

Britain is holding the Olympics 4 years later...does it want China to boycott the Olympic for its war in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Doesn't matter what you think of China, you are NOT supposed to jump onto the bandwagon against China. Imperialist countries attack each other for their own reasons, and that's got nothing to do with us.

What Kautsky did during WWI should serve as a warning to us...NEVER SIDE WITH ANYONE IN AN IMPERIALIST CONFLICT!

Opposing Chinese Imperialism doesn't mean support that of the U.S.. Should I also be considered an ally of the U.S. because I oppose the wars in the Middle East? I don't think so. The atrocities visited upon the Tibetan people are no political issue, and should not be treated as such: it is a case of cold, violent oppression which is being used by the west as a political tool. We shouldn't ignore it for this reason: we should fight for self-determinism, regardless of who is for or against it.

[piet11111]

The Dalai Lama and these protesters are all on the payroll of the CIA, so what does that say?

why pay the puppets if you control the puppeteer ?

the dalai lama in my eyes the Khomeini of tibet only he lost his country to the chinese.

nobody can deny that china's annexation lifted tibet from a feudal hell-hole into a somewhat modern country.
i believe that the chinese people still have a lot of revolutionary potential (they are clearly not pleased with their government so revolution is possible) for tibet independence would cut them off from a potential chinese revolution.

[Lisa]

Statement opposing anti-China campaign
Tuesday, April 8, 2008

A PSL press release

We are opposed to the campaign of disinformation and demonization that is targeting the People’s Republic of China (PRC.) The timing of the campaign is linked to China’s hosting of the 2008 Summer Olympics. That the Olympics are taking place in China is of historic significance and great pride to all the country’s people. It was less than six decades ago that China emerged from a century of colonialist humiliation at the hands of the same big powers that are spearheading the China-bashing campaign today.

Washington is providing financial, political, diplomatic and propaganda support to the racist demonization effort, supposedly because of concern for “human rights.” This is the same government that is directly responsible for the death of one million Iraqis since 2003.
While one out of every three Iraqis have been killed, wounded or displaced since 2003 the US government is eager to have people in the US., especially students, protest any government other than their own. One pretext for the anti-China campaign is the fact that the PRC has trade relations with Sudan. The US wants to overthrow the government of oil-rich Sudan and replace it with a puppet. It has supported “rebel groups” who are prolonging the civil war. The people of the Sudan, who are suffering greatly, are cynically used as a fund raising vehicle by organizations that have raised tens of millions of dollars but have never spent a penny actually helping the people of Sudan, including those who live in the Darfur region.
Demonization campaigns against particular countries and their leaders are not just media exercises. Over the last two decades, such campaigns have preceded the invasions of Iraq and Panama, the bombing war against Yugoslavia, the coups in Haiti and attempted coup in Venezuela, and a threatened war against Iran. The pattern is clear and so too is the danger.

Regarding Tibet, for many centuries a region of China, the hand of Washington in the latest events is obvious for anyone who wants to see. For more than 50 years, the CIA and other U.S. government agencies have trained, funded, coordinated and supported the old feudal and repressive regime in Tibet represented by the Dalai Lama. The CIA front group the National Endowment for Democracy funds the International Campaign for Tibet, the Tibetan Youth Congress, the Tibetan People’s Uprising Movement and the Dalai Lama himself. The U.S. maintains close ties with the Tibetan “government-in-exile” in India, whose real aim is to break away a region making up a quarter of China’s territory. These U.S. actions constitute an effort to de-stabilize and dismember the Peoples Republic of China. The progress in education, women’s rights, employment and health care would be immediately eviscerated if the old serf-owning ruling elite, represented by the Dalai Lama, was brought back to power.

No one, least of all progressive people, should be misled about what is really going on. The real motivation for the anti-China campaign has nothing to do with human rights or liberation, and everything to do with an agenda of global domination.

We the undersigned call for an end to the disinformation and demonization campaign against China, and a halt to the attempts to boycott and disrupt the 2008 Olympics.

Initial Signers:
Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General
Muna Coobtee, Party for Socialism and Liberation
Tony Gonzales, American Indian Movement-West*
Richard Becker, Western Region Coordinator, ANSWER Coalition*
Dave Ewing, Co-Chair,U.S.-China Peoples Friendship Association,San Francisco
Willie Bartolome, Coordinator, Philippine Peasant Support Network (Pesante)-USA
Arturo P. Garcia, Philippine Immigrant Network for Empowerment
Bob Anderson, Stop the War Machine, Albuquerque, New Mexico*
Chuck Kaufman, Co-Coordinator, Nicaragua Network*
Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Civil Rights Attorney
Peter Erlinder, Law Professor, former President of the National Lawyers Guild
Riva Enteen, member, National Lawyers Guild
Idriss Stelley Foundation
Education Not Incarceration, San Francisco Chapter
San Francisco Village Voice Community Radio
Mesha Monge Irizarry, San Francisco Bayview National Black Newspaper reporter*
Gilberto López y Rivas, Professor and Journalist
Beatrice Eisman, U.S.-Vietnam Friendship Association*
Mario Santos, National Coordinator,Alliance for a Just and Lasting Peace in the Philippines—USA
Jim Lafferty, Interim General Manager, KPFK 90.7 FM Pacifica Radio* and Executive Director, National Lawyers Guild, Los Angeles*
Ecumenical Fellowship for Justice and Peace-Los Angeles
Judi Cheng, New York City, NY
Eli Stephens, Left I on the News
Allen Cooper, Veterans for Peace, GI Rights Hotline*
Peing Baclig, Justice for Filipino American Veterans (JFAV)*
Jack Vergara, Echo Park Community Coalition (EPCC)*
Pons De Leon, First Quarter Storm Network (FQSN)-USA-
Harald Neuber, journalist, Germany
Jazy Bonilla D.C.16 IUPAT Organizer *
Dr. Carmen Mercedes Baez, Argentina
Eladio González, (toto) Ernesto Che Guevara Museum, Argentina
Tara Hui, activist, San Francisco
Christine Araquel, Chair, Kabataang maka-Bayan (KmB,Pro-PeopleYouth), USA
Riya Ortia, UGNAYAN, NJNY
Ernesto Arce, Pacifica Radio, KPFK 90.7FM, Los Angeles*
Salvador Cordon, Coordinator, FMLN, Northern California
*Organizations for Identification Only


I'll sign my name to that.

Do you have a URL for this? Great post.

[RedHal]

you can goto the PSL site http://www.pslweb.org/ they seem to be the only organisation taking a stand on this CIA campaign

[RedHal]

In September 2003, the Dalai Lama said that the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan may have been justified to win a larger peace, but that it was too soon to judge whether the Iraq war was warranted. "I think history will tell," he said in an interview with The Associated Press, just after he met with President Bush.

"In principle, I always believe nonviolence is the right thing, and nonviolent method is in the long run more effective," he said, but some wars, including the Korean War and World War II, helped "protect the rest of civilization, democracy." He said he saw a similar result in Afghanistan - "perhaps some kind of liberation."

For somebody who claims to be "half-Marxist and half-Buddhist" and who preaches non-violence, don't you think it's very odd and inherently contradictory for the Dalai Lama to be preaching what is essentially a fundamentally immoral Randian "the means are justified by the ends" approach? Try telling that to the majority of people in Iraq!

A year later, in November 2004, he visited Stanford University where he addressed (for a price of course - tickets didn't come cheaply) a large audience on the subject, which the Stanford Review reported on as follows:

"On the subject of the Iraq war, the Dalai Lama presented a relatively consequentialist view. 'It is still too early to say whether it is right or wrong. I think another few years, then we’ll see, then history will show whether this war was really justified, because it brought a good result. So, up until now, I think difficult to say. At least the motivation, to bring democracy, freedom, and that goal is right, a right goal.'"

The American historian Howard Zinn had this to say in response: "I've always admired the Dalai Lama for his advocacy of nonviolence and his support of the rights of Tibet against Chinese domination, but I must say I was disappointed to read his comment on the war in Iraq , because this is such an obvious, clear-cut moral issue in which massive violence has been used against Iraqis with many thousands of dead."

Adrian Zupp, writing for [I]Thinking Peace, expressed confusion: "So, given his intelligence and enormous sense of compassion, why doesn't the Dalai Lama question the leader of the free world about the downside of globalisation? About 'Star Wars II' and the Bush administration's flagrant disregard of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty? About the unlawful attack on Iraq? Civilian body counts? Why doesn't he even pose such questions rhetorically in the media?"

I agree with Norman Solomon, who rightly points out that by not speaking out against such murderous imperialism amounts to taking a political position. Solomon writes: "Let the great spiritual teachers basking in acclaim today learn how to emulate Martin Luther King Jr., who in 1967 explicitly condemned 'racism,' 'militarism,' and 'economic exploitation' while also having the moral fortitude to denounce the Vietnam War."


Yes, well, His Holiness's wishy-washy stand on such human rights issues doesn't surprise me at all. In fact, it's exactly what I have come to expect from him. The fact that His Holiness prefers to be vague on such issues is because he doesn't want to offend his main financial and political benefactor - the U.S. State Department. It's the same reason why he supports anti-abortion legislation, India's nuclear testing, and why he tried to help convince the world that there was no need to put Chile's Pinochet on trial - all of his positions reflect those of the U.S. State Department. Simple as that.

Yes, he's a real progressive character, this Dalai Lama, and really deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize too, isn't he?

And the whole reason why he is so popular is because he preaches safe vacuous messages - all of his messages are vague and politically safe. As Adrian Zupp points out, "his various books sell very well: The Art of Happiness, a collection of conversations with author Howard C. Cutler, sold more than 1.2 million copies and was on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly two years. People are prepared to pay considerable money to see him in person too. Tickets for his talk at the FleetCenter, titled “The Global Community and the Need for Universal Responsibility,” ranged up to $100, and in New York City, his final stop, tickets for his teaching sessions were priced at $400 each ($1200 and $3000 for VIPs and big donors) and all sold out well in advance."

And just exactly what do people get to hear for their money? Hollow and vague New Age advice on the "importance of compassion", about “reducing destructive emotions,” about "tolerance", about “internal disarmament,” about restraint, and about the role of intelligence in facilitating these things. What I find incomprehensible is why people would part with so much money to hear someone lecture on such needs. One must be tolerant and learn how to disarm your own internal anger - O.K., fine. Who could disagree with that? And who needs to be given such advice anyway?

http://discussions.pbs.org/viewtopic.pbs?t...ew=&start=0 (http://discussions.pbs.org/viewtopic.pbs?t=68073&postdays=0&postorder=asc&topic_view=&start=0)

This is from an Aussie Teacher that has lived in China for 5 years. Gotta love this "man of peace" Dalai Lama, he sure loves to talk about peace but when it comes to the "greateest purveyor of violence"- MLK, his financial backer, his holiness will keep his mouth shut.

Disappointed that Howard Zinn has fallen for this phony.