This story was impossible to blog directly to the Hungry Vegetarian so here it is cut and pasted.
The Chinese Government is so full of shit i dont even know what to say.
By ALEXA OLESEN (AP) – 1 hour ago
BEIJING — Earthquake survivors say the Tibetan monks helped first, bringing food, pitching tents and digging through rubble after disaster hit far western China a week ago, killing and injuring thousands.
Now the Buddhist monks who responded first are being pushed out of the disaster area and off of state media — apparently sidelined by Beijing's unease with their heroism and influence.
Monasteries were given verbal orders this week to recall their monks. Amid hours of coverage for China's national day of mourning on Wednesday, no monks were visible in the official proceedings.
It was a jarring omission in light of their contributions to the weeklong rescue and relief effort following the quake, which killed 2,064 people and injured more than 12,000 others.
Tsebtrim, an ethnic Tibetan who works as a translator in Yushu, the county in Qinghai province hit hardest by the April 14 quake, was among thousands left homeless. He recalls heading to the horse racing grounds shortly after the earthquake with hundreds of others who heard it would be a safe place if the local dam broke.
"There were these monks from Sichuan's Ganzi who had put up all these tents, 100 tents, in just a couple of hours and they provided drinks and food," said Tsebtrim, 31, who like many Tibetans has one name. "That night, a lot of people didn't have a place to stay so I am really glad those monks showed up."
In the days that followed, Tsebtrim saw monks digging through rubble for survivors or bodies, first alone and then with Chinese soldiers. He also saw them handing out food and medicine.
"It really impressed me a lot," he said during an interview from Yushu, where he is helping run an aid station.
Chinese military officials said this week nearly all the roughly 12,000 soldiers who rushed to the quake area struggled with altitude sickness and many had trouble communicating with Tibetan survivors. Tibetan-speaking monks, many of whom live in high-altitude areas or frequently make pilgrimages to them, didn't have those problems.
They flooded into Yushu within hours, on motorbikes and packed in the back of trucks.
On Saturday, they held a cremation ceremony, preparing hundreds of bodies, praying and burning the corpses in a massive trench outside of Yushu.
Yet state-run broadcasters have given scant attention to their efforts, spotlighting instead the hard work of the military and the People's Armed Police as they delivered tents, water and food, and lifted injured people from cracks of crumbled buildings.
Monks also live in the quake zone, though they were not shown in media coverage Wednesday
Robbie Barnett, director of the modern Tibetan studies program at Columbia University, said the monks' contributions pose a dilemma for the communist leadership, which distrusts the Buddhist clergy because of their loyalty to the Dalai Lama.
Beijing insists the Dalai Lama is fighting for independence for Tibet, which the exiled spiritual leader denies.
Monasteries are tightly control by Communist Party authorities who routinely order political re-education campaigns for the monks. The tensions have occasionally erupted in violence.
"China has never faced this situation before, where the monks it has demonized for 15 years as potential enemies of the state turn out to be energetic contributors to social construction and community-building — the same role that the party has always claimed for itself," Barnett said in an e-mail.
"Perhaps that's why the work of the monks has been featured very little, if at all," on China Central Television, he said.
On Wednesday, a monk and a Tibetan activist in touch with people in the quake zone said monks from Ganzi in Sichuan and other surrounding areas had also been ordered to leave the earthquake zone.
Yixi Luoren, the head of Ganzi's Gengqing Monastery, said 150 of their monks went to Yushu but 120 had left by Wednesday on orders from the Religious Affairs Bureau and the Communist Party United Front department in Ganzi prefecture, where the monastery is located.
A rugged, deeply Buddhist region filled with monasteries and nunneries, Ganzi is known for its strong Tibetan identity and has been at the center of dissent for years.
"They told us to do so on the phone," Yixi Luoren said. "The authorities didn't tell us the reason, but we assume they might have worried that there are too many people there and wanted us to come home safely."
Radio Free Asia on Wednesday quoted a Tibetan man in Yushu as saying monks held a candlelight vigil on April 19 that officials feared might take on political significance. The report said the man had asked not to be identified by name.
Woeser, a Beijing-based Tibetan poet and activist, said Han and Tibetan acquaintances in the quake zone told her similar orders were given to monks from several other monasteries. She said the monks were upset and not willing to go but had no choice.
"A clear reason for the order wasn't given but it was very strict," said Woeser, who also uses just one name. "Local officials told them through translators in Tibetan 'You've done everything already. You've done too much. You have to leave Yushu now, otherwise there will be trouble.'"
Woeser said local Tibetans were frustrated because they believe the monks are still needed to help dig out the dead and perform funeral rites.
"There is an opportunity here for the state finally to recognize the immense cultural resources that the monks can offer," said Barnett, the Columbia University professor. "But it will take great cultural sensitivity and compromise on both sides for that to be achieved."
Associated Press researcher Yu Bing in Beijing contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Friday, April 16, 2010
Rachel Maddow to air documentary comparing Timothy McVeigh to ‘anti-government extremists’ | The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
She hit the nail right on the head. These people are the American Taliban
Rachel Maddow to air documentary comparing Timothy McVeigh to ‘anti-government extremists’ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
YOU DONT OWN THE GADSDEN FLAG
YOU DON’T OWN THIS FLAG
Tax day, April 15th 2010 was a big day for America’s cheapskates, gun nuts and bible huggers. It’s funny, at least ironic, that these cohorts of individuals are all the same person. Yes, it was a reason to get out your cheesy flag shirts (ones that would have gotten you arrested in the 60’s for wearing) and old man pants to complain how Barrack Obama has ruined the nation in the year and one half or so that he has been in office. He has been used as the all purpose scapegoat for everything and anything that the bible and gun crowd sees wrong in America. Unfortunately for the sane, these people reek of ignorance and menace and are really something the world doesn’t need at this particular time.
These folks ,the former millenialists of the end of the 20th century , figured out that god wasn’t going to come and rapture their foolish asses away , and have found a new way to annoy and whine their way into the already over run minds of Americans.
They think that we are being over taxed and that the Feds are just wasting our money on social programs and handouts to the immigrants that are here legally and illegally. What you never hear out of these people mouths is that we have utterly wasted trillions of dollars in wars whose whole purpose was to destabilize a region, drive up oil prices as well as to annoy our enemies Russia and China and inhibit their oil deals that they have made with Iran.
I guess America’s cheapskates are happy with the arrangement over there. I suppose the occasional funeral for a local boy or girl, or man or woman, makes them feel all warm and patriotic inside. That those poor unfortunates who were caught in between a strong urge to serve our nation and private sector business interests, that were just way too big to truly grasp, makes this group feel that the America that they were raised on still exists.
They bring a lot to the table this group. They realize that the racial demographic is quickly changing forever and that soon their whole “Birth of a Nation” vision of white protestant supremacy will be a long forgotten past part of American history. It couldn’t come soon enough for this vegetarian I will tell you what. These folks that go to these meetings have some real grievances against our government. So did the people who followed and psychotically propelled National Socialism of the late 1920’s and 1930’s in Germany. In fact, many of the same complaints that the bible and gun crowd in America have echo identically to what the majority of Germans who followed another, but sinister vegetarian. Little Adolf made sure that those Germans were terrified of Stalin’s drooling socialist hordes as well as the pestilential effects of European Jewry. In fact the Nazi’s irrevocably linked these phenomena together for their constituents. If you are really interested in understanding the similarities, please read Sally Marks; The Illusion of Peace: International Relations in Europe, 1918-1933
on the inter war years in Europe. As Bob Dylan so astutely said so long ago:
From the poverty shacks, he looks from the cracks to the tracks
And the hoof beats pound in his brain
And he’s taught how to walk in a pack
Shoot in the back
With his fist in a clinch
To hang and to lynch
To hide ’neath the hood
To kill with no pain
Like a dog on a chain
He ain’t got no name
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game.
Of course, this begs the question whose game and whose money is keeping this game afloat? Who do you think? Who is behind Sara Palin? Who are the interests with all of the money?
Oh And one last thing,Just remember this. You don’t own the Gadsden flag. It belongs to ALL AMERICANS, not just those who are trying to mobilize another masking ideology to subvert the multi cultural democracy that has evolved during the last century. Hitler used German mythos of the Teutonic Knights as a masking ideology to mobilize a fascist racialized agendas. I don’t see much of a difference with the tea party folks really. They hate the same people and probably could be talked into the same things the Germans. Dont Tread on Me, it cuts both ways fella.
New York Times, Great Oil Terminal Building in Russia,9 April 1928, 5; New York Times, Soviets Make Drive for Oil Markets,10,October 1928, 31.; New York Times, Sue Oil Companies for Soviet Seizures,21 June 1931,6; New York Times, Court Here Backs Big Soviet Oil Deal,11 March 1933,23;New York Times, Soviets Make Drive for Oil Markets,10,October 1928,31
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Prayers and help for the Tibetan earthquake victims.
As everyone is probably aware a large 6.9 to 7.0 earthquake has hit the Kyegudo region of Kham in eastern Tibet. The region is called Yushu County (Yushu prefecture, Qinghai province) by the Communist Chinese occupying government and most of the world media. The death toll is reaching toward 1000 and I am sure the totals will rise. This is not to mention the thousands that are injured and homeless both ethnic Tibetans and Chinese. Thrangu Monastery was destroyed and many of the monks are either dead or missing. The Tibet fund has reported that 85% of the homes in "Jiegu, a town of 100,000 people nearest the epicenter, were destroyed." Please send all your prayers to these peace loving people in Kham.
If you have any means whatsoever, even only five dollars please send them to the Tibet fund http://www.tibetfund.org/ You will be directly helping those suffering families in Tibet.
OM MANI PEME HUNG
OM TARE TUTARE TURE SOHA
If you have any means whatsoever, even only five dollars please send them to the Tibet fund http://www.tibetfund.org/ You will be directly helping those suffering families in Tibet.
OM MANI PEME HUNG
OM TARE TUTARE TURE SOHA
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