They're the reason your clothes don't stink

Hmm why even continue...this pretty much says it all, thanks Titcho.

APRIL 11,2007: Unless you're a Tibetan, disrupting the Olympic torch relay is plain wrong. (If you are a Tibetan it's hopeless and counterproductive, but more understandable.)

It's true that much of the Chinese population is rather ignorant when it comes to Tibet. So is much of any country's population when it comes to just about anything political. Unfortunately, judging by the comments on the ABC website, where educated Australians get their news, many educated Australians are pretty ignorant of some important points:

- March 14 riots were riots - very bad race-hate riots in which innocent people were beaten to death and burned alive for being ethnic Chinese. (Also plenty of videos on Youtube). The kind of riots that would clearly be put down by force in any place you care to name. How would the Australian government respond to Aboriginal riots, including killings and burnings, against whites and asians in Australia?

- China does in fact have a historic claim to Tibet. Like almost everything political in China it's complicated, but generally when China has been strong, Tibet has been part of China and when China has been weak, Tibet has been independent or autonomous. China is strong now, and there isn't a hope in hell of it letting Tibet go.

- The claims of the Chinese military killing Tibetans are unverified. The fact is we don't know what's happened, and not knowing what happened isn't doesn't exactly constitute a "brutal crackdown". In fact, in the words of the Economist's correspondent - the only foreign reporter in Tibet, who was there until the 19th, 4 days after the riots finished - "It was only when they felt safe I think that there would not be massive bloodshed, that they actually moved in with that decisive force".

- The furore about the "shady" Olympic torch "thugs" is pure and blatant demonising and hatemongering behalf of the media. Media thug Andrew Bolt's blog on the subject started as "Rudd won't let Chinese invade" and has been updated to "So they are coming after all". But these guys are actually nothing out of the ordinary.


- The Dalai Lama was funded for decades by the CIA and supported the Iraq war. He didn't order the riots - it was clearly against his interests to do so. But he isn't "a simple monk". (And the theocratic state he ran before the commies invaded was not exactly all rainbows and sunshine.)

- The Chinese government doesn't care about "international shame" - in fact it helps it in its only real objective: maintaining power in China.

To top it all off, not even the Dalai Lama is calling for Tibetan independence.

As for the Chinese people, it's probably better they don't know the realty of these Paris, San Francisco and London protests. They genuinely are looking forward - like crazy - to welcoming the world to come and see how far they've progressed. And the fact is they have come a very long way, and a good 90% of them - or well over 1 billion of the people on this earth - are more than content to be hosting the Olympics. To overlook this, to deny or attempt to spoil for over 1 billion people the celebration of tangible (and historically unprecedented) progress that they are so eagerly awaiting would be, well . . . we should have a hell of a problem with them, as a people, for that to be justified.

But in fact, barely anyone is claiming or admitting to having a problem with the Han Chinese people, who don't actually have much more in the way of human rights than the Tibetans.

Don't forget how genuinely they deserve this, the Chinese. Our richness is in a very real way subsidised by the ordinary Chinese, as they have been and continue to work their arses off to better their own position - in many cases pulling themselves out of poverty as well - by their hard, hard labour. Though unintentional they've enriched the the positions of each other and people all over the world. If it wasn't for them, plenty of us would probably still only have our "sunday best" as a change of clothes. How could anyone in their right mind deny that number of people an occasion like this that they both deserve and desire, just because we don't like their government?

Not only that, as i mentioned above, the international criticism only serves to help that government we don't like. Having those thousands of reporters in the country before, during and after the Games is likely to teach the government some lessons about the advantages of allowing information to flow.

The Chinese government's heavy handedness and lack of understanding of minorities' concerns is stupid. The Chinese government's jailing of dissenters is stupid - these guys get virtually no mainstream international attention until they get locked up. The government's controls on information are to an extent unfathomable, because they involve so much history, and we find them abhorrent. Somehow despite this, plenty of Chinese citizens are as well informed as other truth-seeking 'global citizens'. "The rest" may wallow in apathy (majority) and/or blind slogan-shouting (minority), but that's a pretty apt summary of the populations of western countries like the US and Australia. Does this mean the Australian and US people deserve to be similarly penalised for their government's actions?

Yes, says Matt Taibbi: "We can't focus for more than ten seconds on anything at all and we're constantly exercised about stupid media-generated non-scandals . . . What a bunch of turds we all are."

Ha ha ha. But while our apathy means we get who we deserve ruling us - people who stand for nothing - the Chinese can't be blamed in the same way. After a torrid century in which China lost successive wars and was in parts occupied by foreign powers and subjected to long periods of warlord rule, little wonder unity was seen as the first step towards a decent life. Now as the people get richer, and keener to protect their individual rights, I think it is pretty inevitable that they're going to be granted.

By bringing the world to China the Olympics can only help to bring that about. As for the Tibetans, they probably look at examples like East Timor as a reason to keep fighting, and the Olympics as a reason to keep fighting NOW. But East Timor got free because the Indonesian people brought Suharto down. Ironically the Olympic torch protests, by causing Chinese people to rally as they have behind the government against the "outside forces" it says are pitted against China in its moment of glory, are actually making the Chinese people less of a threat to the Chinese government.