We'll make our own history, thank you very much.

The Chinese government aren't very good at hiding their intentions. Maybe it has something to do with the difference between how Eastern and Western minds work, but this latest move is so blatant it would be laughable if it wasn't so pathetic.

They're opening their own museum dedicated to Tibetan history.

Um, what?

This museum will tell the "official" version of history, regardless of facts, for the purpose of changing international minds about who is historically the proper ruler of Tibet.

Luckily, for those of us interested in the truth, anyone who deviates from the official Party line has their reputation ruined, their research confiscated, and are occasionally arrested.

Evidence . . . . you mean something like the written history of Tibet, kept by monks for a few thousand years? That kind of evidence? Or the kind of evidence that comes out of Beijing's collective anal cavities?

What a bunch of dickheads.

Next project by Lian Xiangmin et al will be building the George W. Bush library.

Supposedly George Orwell was ill, disillusioned and dying when he wrote 1984. This view is supposed to explain why the novel is so unremittingly dark and has such a negative view of humanity.

I think China shows that Orwell was merely prescient, perhaps even optimistic. I also think the government of China read 1984 and thought it was a how-to manual.

"He who controls the past, controls the future"

Screw a museum, I wonder what their text books have been saying for awhile now? I can imagine that they've been edited up for over a generation or so by now.

Mao came to power in 1945 . . . that would be about the last time the textbooks weren't edited to protect the population from thinking.

I don't know how many textbooks there were before that. Not all that many.
(Small point of accuracy: 1949, not 1945.)

Official PRC position on the Tibet Autonomous Region:

Ok, not really, but it's probably not too far from the truth. Here are the official "White Papers" of Chinese governmental policies (including their position on Tibet).

Sorry. I used wiki. I'm a bad researcher

Gaah, I hate this specious horseshit.

Prior to the Chinese invasion in 1950, China and Tibet were under the same rule only twice: during the Yuan (1271-1368) and Qing (1644-1912) dynasties.

Problem is, those dynasties were the two periods when China was under foreign rule - the Yuan were the Mongols, the Qing the Manchus. During those periods China and Tibet were under the same rule, but it wasn't Han Chinese rule; the Han Chinese and the Tibetans were both subjects of the Mongols/Manchus, of whose empires China and Tibet were only a part.

Today China claims that the Mongols and Manchus - and their dynasties - were "Chinese," but this is arrant nonsense. Despite all Chinese claims to the contrary, Tibet was never a part of China until Mao's armies marched in and made it so. For China to insist that Tibet has "always been a part of China" is rather like India insisting that the United States has "always been a part of India" because both nations were once British colonies.

Sorry to get pedantic here, but as I said, this kind of shameless revisionism really riles my ass.

It always reminds me of the bumbling of the "Evil Soviet Plots" in movies from the 1980s. They're so easy to see through it's pathetic.

I feel bad for the Chinese people as well as the Tibetans.

I was going to study abroad there but the fact that their internet get turned off frequently has made me second guess.

I agree. The Chinese people get screwed over by their government as much as anybody else. Like the people who got evicted with like a day's notice so their apartments could be torn down to make room for the Olympic complex

One link among many possiblities.

As much I complain about America, I'm fucking thrilled I'm not Chinese.

I am at a loss for words.

FYI signing up for the NYT is free and I have never been received emails from them

Power politics 101 lesson one; small countries on the boarder of larger countries should try to keep the larger nation happy.

I just read the same story elsewhere, it's pretty sick. The Olympics is supposed to be about the spirit of international unity. Now it seems that the torch relay itself has become the antithesis of what it is supposed to represent. Any one killed to protect the "undying flame" is a travesty. The torch itself has already burned out many times, constantly needing to be rekindled from "backup flames". Metaphorically, the flame died out long ago... Come to think of it, wasn't it the Nazis who started the whole flame relay for propaganda reasons in the first place? Who says that the Olympics aren't supposed to be political? I don't think they'll have the balls, but I hope some countries boycott the Olympics this year.

True. The relay was supposed to be a symbol of Nazi idealogical. The actual flame concept comes from ancient Greece. They kept a flame burning during the duration of the games.

Something about Prometheus stealing the flame from the Gods or something... I like the Greek historical version then the modern spectacle that it is today...

Greek:


Chinese:

You know if there are any deaths at the olympics due to seperatists or protests, do you think that will cause people to rethink this whole trade with china thing that we have going on?

Nope.

If lead-painted toys and antifreeze-tainted toothpaste and deadly pet food can't make us rethink the most-favored-nation trade status with China, do you really think a few dead "liberal protesters" would?

No. Americans really don't give a shit. I think we'd wipe monk's blood off a toy if our kids like it.

Or the complete lack of protection for intellectual property, prison manufacturing of export goods, contaminated heparain more, an execution rate that gives Bush a hard-on and ....

No people want cheap goods and do not give a damn about the cost in lives or freedom as long as they can save money.

Below is part of the sophisticated process in manufacturing heparain

I disagree, I think if it were given the amount of press time that something like this should be given people would want change.