Posts by Bob Munro
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Actually, I think the debate in the comments below the column is is the best part. It's vigorous and interesting.
It's nearly as good as PAS.
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Ed Douglas, the climbing correspondent of the Guardian helps sort out our views on the Tibet situation.
Putting the Olympic flame on the summit of Mount Everest must have seemed a great idea to the planning committee of the Beijing Olympics. What better expression of China's inexorable rise to superpower status could there be? Everest was the crowning glory for the Queen in 1953. So it would be for China's political elite.
Now the game is up.
He also unravels some of the complexities of how to react when faced directly with overt power when he wrote about the shooting of a young nun in front of western climbers last year.
Chinese Police recently shot and killed a 17-year-old Tibetan nun in full view of Cho Oyu Base Camp. Should mountaineers care? Ed Douglas thinks so.
It is shocking footage. A line of people is shuffling up a shallow snow-slope from left to right. They are trying to hurry, and you can almost hear their panicked breathing in the thin air at 19,000ft. One of the black shapes is out in front, moving a little faster than the others. Then it drops like a stone.For Vaclav Havel it is all too familiar
The reaction of the Chinese authorities to the Tibetan protests evokes echoes of the totalitarian practices that many of us remember from the days before communism in Central and Eastern Europe collapsed in 1989: harsh censorship of the domestic media, blackouts of reporting by foreign media from China, refusal of visas to foreign journalists, and blaming the unrest on the "Dalai Lama's conspiratorial clique" and other unspecified dark forces supposedly manipulated from abroad. Indeed, the language used by some Chinese government representatives and the official Chinese media is a reminder of the worst of times during the Stalinist and Maoist eras. But the most dangerous development of this unfortunate situation is the current attempt to seal off Tibet from the rest of the world.
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Just another Tibet link. This time James Miles of the Economist
in an interview with CNN on what he observed in Lhasa last week.What I saw was calculated targeted violence against an ethnic group, or I should say two ethnic groups, primarily ethnic Han Chinese living in Lhasa, but also members of the Muslim Hui minority in Lhasa. And the Huis in Lhasa control much of the meat industry in the city. Those two groups were singled out by ethnic Tibetans. They marked those businesses that they knew to be Tibetan owned with white traditional scarves. Those businesses were left intact. Almost every single other across a wide swathe of the city, not only in the old Tibetan quarter, but also beyond it in areas dominated by the ethnic Han Chinese. Almost every other business was either burned, looted, destroyed, smashed into, the property therein hauled out into the streets, piled up, burned. It was an extraordinary outpouring of ethnic violence of a most unpleasant nature to watch, which surprised some Tibetans watching it.
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Russell and All:
Bloody great points raised, which I'll pay the respect of a decent response when I'm not such a blot head.
Another little piece to this puzzle regarding a response to the unrest in Tibet. Seems that Hu Jintao the present President of China was in charge of Tibet during the last brutal crackdown in 1989.
Jonathan Mirsky provided this background to Hu’s tenure in Tibet when he met George Bush in 2002
It was soon after Hu's arrival in Lhasa that I met him there. I was then the China correspondent of The Observer, a London Sunday newspaper. I asked him how he was enjoying his new job. He told me how much he disliked Tibet's altitude, climate and lack of culture. His family was in Beijing, he said, a safe and healthy place in comparison. When I suggested that he must have made some Tibetan friends, he replied that if there were ever a disturbance in Lhasa he feared no Tibetan would protect him.
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But what would be the effect of a boycott? Would the leadership recognise the error of its ways, or just seek vengeance?
Yes - probably have no positive effect at all. But that's the beauty of the sports boycotts. They make people feel good without it affecting them directly. Trade sanctions of course can hit us in the pocket so we don't do them so well.
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As I noted yesterday, I have some qualms about Locke's unwaveringly negative views about interacting with China. Sometimes it seems like the acceptable face of xenophobia.
This on The Guardian site shows China not doing PR very well and providing plenty of ammunition for their critics.
They are probably already on their way to guaranteeing some sort of boycott of the games with the whole carry on of taking the Olympic flame through Tibet and to the top of Everest still to go.
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I think his point was amateur posing as expert on everything
Which probably has some truth in it, but as usual not all. This is the beauty of forums like this. Russell or someone else places some material, fact and opinion both, online and many others tease it out as far as they want to take it. This seems to be a genuinely new model of public discourse.
A fine example for me was the PAS postings on the 'terror' raids. Many posters had some little piece of the puzzle, which they contributed. I know personally I went from thinking this has to be a load of bollocks to thinking perhaps the Police probably had no other choice.
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It turns out the tdiamond engagement ring is essentially a 20th century invention, helped along by clever advertising courtesy of the De Beers diamond cartel.
I worked on a De Beers commercial once where the budget seemed unlimited. The crew was helicoptered on to the lower Tasman glacier where it is a giant rubble pit with faces of dirty ice. As the ice melts in the sun rocks are continually rolling down. The Brazilian female model dressed in nothing but a fawn scarf draped carefully had to walk a few paces with smoke machines giving the affect of a primordial, I guess diamond making, landscape. This took all day from before dawn to the last possible light for flying at the end of the day. The crew said the model had spent the previous day knee deep in a cold river near Queenstown.
One of the crew told me about spending a week with the director, driving him all around the South Island looking for this particular shot he had in mind of a telegraph pole with a certain backdrop - and never found it.
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This post has been put here as the thread seems to have died.
This is just a bit of a heads up regarding the unrest in Tibet and the coming taking of the Olympic Flame to the top of Mt Everest in May. Some good direct first hand information is coming out of Tibet from Radio Free Asia
A number of New Zealanders are involved in guided climbing expeditions on both the South (Nepal) and North (China) sides of Mt Everest so it's possible that any news worthy items around then might have a New Zealand component.
Last year more than 240 climbers from about 20 expeditions summited from the South and a similar number from the North. Just about all of these are guided parties with large logistical and Sherpa support.
Russell Brice from Himex
is the main player on the North side. Russell left New Zealand in the early nineties and began the first guiding from the Chinese side. He is a dominant figure there and other expeditions rely on his organisation. Russell’s Sherpas put in all the fixed rope from the below the North Col right to the summit at the beginning of each season. Guy Cotter from Wanaka runs Adventure Consultants who operate mainly from the South.Both these companies employ a number of Kiwis.
The Chinese plan to take the Olympic Flame to the summit. They had a successful dress rehearsal last year. Their worst nightmare would be to arrive there and be met by a group of grinning climbers holding a ‘Free Tibet’ flag, surrounded by the latest communication technology.
Consequently the Chinese have banned other expeditions on the North side until after the flame has been to the top, probably about 10 May.
Yesterday the Nepalese authorities also banned climbing to the summit while the flame is up there. It seems the carrot the Chinese used was some large ‘loans’. Shades of their activities in the Pacific.
Normally the Chinese use a big stick to enforce their will but both the focus on the Olympics and modern technologies are making it harder to do that and not be noticed. Last year western climbers filmed and reported the shooting of a young nun from a party of Tibetans attempting to escape across the Nangpa La mountain pass.
To follow how this all unfolds Explorers Web is already reporting extensively on the Tibetan unrest and the twists and turns of the bans on climbing. They do have a bee in their bonnet about Russell Brice as I’m sure we will see over the next two months. Alan Arnette blogs extensively on Everest happenings, is himself on an expedition from the north and is very fair and impartial.
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Yes, they should have drilled down a bit further.
*boom boom*
Exactly. How could they top that?
And you have to be quick.