Thursday, August 21, 2008

The Dalai Lama's New Degree

In case you missed it - I know I did - last month the London University bestowed an honorary PhD upon the Dalai Lama. No sooner done than the Chinese press/ government mouthpiece went into a furor over the indignity of it all. And very quickly, vice-chancellor Brian Roper made an apology for having done(!) He apologized for any "unhappiness" that the degree award had caused, clarified a spokesperson for the university, not for the award itself... a spectacle of slip-sliding down the slope of spinelessness.

In other sino-news, reports today indicate that the Chinese killed a number (possibly 140) of unarmed civilians in Tibet, right in the middle of the Olympics in Beijing. With reporters banned from Tibet and dazzled in Beijing there is no direct knowledge of what the Chinese are really up to. Most of China is closed.

Pre-Olympics, the Chinese cracked down on religious (Christian) believers and organizations in China, except for the state-run "church" that George Bush visited, which is actually an atheist organization camouflaged as a church.

Other reports from the Olympics - which I didn't watch, but cannot avoid - indicate that children are removed from their parents at very early ages, possibly 5 years old or less, and are warehoused full-time in training units for participation in future Olympic games. And there is the unresolved issue of China cheating on the ages of the younger children in the gymnastics competition, with the Olympic Committee doing nothing.

All in all, China is no more nor less than it was before the Olympics, before Tienanmen, before the dislocation of huge populations to make room for the construction of the imitation icons of western wealth. It is still a place of state-run deception, the middle kingdom in pursuit of its re-establishment as center of the universe. Perhaps the most stomach wrenching news is that China owns over a half a trillion dollars of US National Debt. It is second only to Japan in foreign owners. Not something to think about while trying to get to sleep at night.

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