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:-( Beijing Olympics -- A Lot of Unhappy People

Back on the topic of the Olympics, rather than Wolfman's unwillingness to simply dismiss and condemn everything related to the Chinese government, this story on CNN caught my eye.
 
Hmmm...

What county is upwind of Beijing? Lets go there, and build and launch thousands of foil tagged paper balloons filled with hydrogen... Make them intercept each and every harmless one.

No... That would be mean.
 
Wolfman said:
* A lot of the higher-class prostitutes in Beijing are Mongolian; so Mongolian women are being targeted and made to leave Beijing.
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plumjam said:
How do you know this, Wolfman?
And, more importantly, do they make you feel like Genghis Khan? ;)
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Are Mongolian women particularly hot for some reason? Or just kind of exotic, like the African woman's window had a small line outside it in Amsterdam's red light district?


It's true! :)
 
Beerina said:
Are Mongolian women particularly hot for some reason? Or just kind of exotic, like the African woman's window had a small line outside it in Amsterdam's red light district?


It's true! :)
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Its not so much that they're exotic. Its that they're trained extensively before coming to China. They speak excellent English (most Chinese prostitutes do not), they know lots of 'tricks' to make a man happy, etc.

And if you get caught, it is two 'foreigners'...which is treated much less seriously by the authorities than if a foreigner is doing it with a Chinese woman (which causes the entire nation of China to lose face, of course).

And no...I don't know this from personal experience. However, it is a frequent topic of discussion here.
 
Wolfman said:
I would hesitate to make any predictions at all, simply because so much depends on what happens during the Games.

Take a worst-case scenario: someone actually does make a terrorist attack (or multiple attacks) at the Games.
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An unsophisticated group, Black September, pulled it off in 1972. Modern terrorist groups are varied in their level of sophistication, and the security measures to prevent their successful pulling of some stunt/slaughter certainly improve since Munich.

But the sordid fact is that "there is no security."

For the sake of people in Beijing, including an old high school buddy of mine, I hope no terrorist attack takes place. I am not optomistic.

DR
 
DR, I would more suspect attacks on aircraft en-route to China as a possibility. When you know in advance where the security attention is going to be, its much more likely that you will attack where it is not.

For example, suppose some religiously radicalized air force pilots of some nation bordering china decide to take it upon themselves to arm an aircraft and attack a plane from Israel? I really doubt they will have a fighter escort all the way to Chinese airspace, and if it is a suicide mission, a fighter has a lot more range than if it is a sortie you plan to return from.

But yeah, I expect the worst regardless of the fact that I can always imagine the worst!
 
Wolfman said:
. . Not only do I condemn it absolutely, but I have close friends here who lost family members there.
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The way read it, you were implying that 100's were an acceptable number and that 1000's were not. I will not let a third party tell me what to think. Now that it has come directly from you. I apologize for misinterpreting what you wrote.

I have some financial investments in China and I will say they have done very well for me. I do fear that these upcoming Olympics may show the dark side of China, instead of the shining jewel of the orient they want everyone to see. I hope it comes off good for them. Good for them will also be good for me.

I also understand your position in China can be perilous. If you do say the wrong thing, you could wind up in prison at the whim of some bureaucrat. Good luck to you.
 
This ad is so annoying it made the news in Australia:


The company behind the advert is the same company behind the Opening Ceremony uniforms of the Chinese Athletes which has been compared to Tomato Scrambled Eggs:

"When the Chinese delegation comes out, they will certainly catch the eyes of the audience," the outfit's designer, Liu Ruiqi, told The China Daily.
The state-run newspaper didn't make it clear whether the Liu Ruiqi it quoted was the same Liu Ruiqi who is the chairman of the Hengyuanxiang Company Ltd, which selected the winning design from thousands of entries in a year-long competition.
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a_unique_person said:
I saw a picture in the local paper of the Nepalese police beating up Tibetan protesters in Tibet. I could be wrong, but some of the police looked distinctly Western, with pale skin and blond hair.
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Ummmm...Nepal is a separate country, no way there are Nepalese police in Tibet.
 
Wolfman said:
Although no exact count is possible, I fully believe that quite likely hundreds of people died at Tiananmen Square. But not thousands...a figure that Geoffrey York has used very frequently in numerous reports about China. The only sources that he's able to cite are A) a report that was made on the day of the massacre, in the midst of massive confusion (and a report that was later revised by the same organization that made the initial report), and a single author who was not even present at the event in question.

By contrast, as I mention in my reply, I personally know several people who were there, and one whose brother was killed that day. Not a single one of them comes even close to "thousands" of people killed. And if you want to argue that perhaps they are afraid of the government, then how about Chinese dissidents from the Tiananmen Square protests who have since left China, and now live in Canada, and the U.S. Surely, if thousands of people had been killed that day, they would be the first ones to declare that...yet to my knowledge, not a single one of them makes such a claim.

And if you check out any of the numerous human rights groups that address the Tiananmen Square Massacre, you will likewise find that they pretty much universally put the numbers in the hundreds. These are people who are pretty strongly anti-Chinese...yet even they don't claim it was "thousands" of people killed.
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Here is an eyewitness account that supports your claim.

"As a researcher in 1989 for Human Rights Watch in Beijing, Robin Munro witnessed first hand the weeks of pro-democracy demonstrations in the city and the People's Liberation Army's final assault on June 3-4."

...Can you describe that what happened on the night of June 3 and [the morning of the] 4th out there and your personal experiences?

<long response> ..... <final words below>

... Reports in the week after June Fourth stated that troops had assaulted the monument about 4:30 a.m. and massacred all the students on the monument, saying that thousands of students had been shot down in cold blood. That didn't happen, and had it happened, I wouldn't be here today -- as simple as that. ...
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I can't post a link because my post count is less than 15. Just Google for "Robin Munro PBS" and click on the first link.


Also Google for "Black Hands of Beijing". Click on the second link. (The first link the Amazon page for the book.)

I hope Robin Munro is credible enough for Geoffrey York.
 
cgallaga said:
Wolf can I ask an aside? What do you think of the depiction of events in the movie Gate of Heavenly Peace?
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I haven't seen it, although I'd like to. It is, for obvious reasons, rather difficult to get a copy in China; and the Great Firewall has prevented my attempts to download it from other sources.

But others I know here who have seen it -- including a few Chinese -- seem to feel that it mostly deals with the issues fairly.
 
I'll agree with the consensus you note. I thought it was very good, very moving, and showed quite well the varied sides including he cultural systems/issues. I think it gets a pretty good review as well because both sides thought it treated their side unfairly of course it was panned by Beijing but also and protesters like Wer kaizi and Chai Ling.
 
Looks like the Chinese government is backtracking on some of the pre-Olympics assurances as well.

China restricts Web access at Olympics
China was under fire Wednesday in another controversy leading up to next week's Olympic Games, this time after admitting foreign journalists will not have unrestricted Internet access as promised.

Adding to the controversy was the International Olympic Committee's acknowledgment that it knew and "negotiated" over the censorship plans.
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Yup, very true; there are a number of other promises that they've gone back on, as well. I'm not going to attempt to justify this; only to point out that there are gov't officials here who very much disagree with these decisions, and are quite angry/disappointed because of it. For the most part, the people who made the initial promises were at the municipal level of government (the Beijing government); the people who are insisting on these changes, and breaking the initial agreement, are at the national level of government.
 
Par for the course where governments are concerned, anywhere. Anybody remember

 
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