More unrest in Tibet

For those of you who are interested in the Tibetan Nationalist movement and it’s goings on, here’s an interesting AP article for you (full version here):

BEIJING – Hundreds of Tibetans attacked a police station and government officials in northwestern China despite heightened security, prompting the arrests Sunday of nearly 100 monks, state media reported.

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The violence is the latest known incidence of unrest following a bomb explosion Monday in an unoccupied police station in predominantly Tibetan Ganzi prefecture in Sichuan province.

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A former resident of the area who now lives in Dharmsala, India, said the protesters were angry because they believed the man, a 28-year-old monk named Tashi Sangpo, jumped in the river to commit suicide after fleeing.

“When Tashi was being interrogated by the officials, he asked their permission to go to the toilet. He then went out and jumped into the Yellow River,” the source said on condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisals against his family still living in China. “The dead body is yet to be found.”

So here’s the chain of events as I understand it:

1) Tibetan nationalists plant a BOMB in a police station.

2) Chinese authorities take a nationalist into custody for questioning.

3) The suspect is allowed to use the bathroom and apparently runs off when no one is looking, jumps in the river, and (allegedly) commits suicide.

4) Protesters violently attack a police station in response to the alleged suicide.

So here’s my thoughts. First of all, this guy’s daring escape plan was pretty elaborate: ask to use the bathroom and instead run away. Obviously the notoriously brutal Chinese police were coming down pretty hard on him if he had to resort to such a daring plan as that, right? Yeah. Sure. Oh, by the way, that was sarcasm.

Second, they never recovered a body from the river so as far as any of us know he could still be alive and hiding somewhere. If I’d escaped from jail I probably wouldn’t let anyone find me. Granted, if he did commit suicide, his body is probably at the bottom of the river so it wouldn’t be a surprise that no one would find it. But still, who knows if there is any truth to the claim of his suicide?

Now, finally, the main point. We’re talking about people here who would PLANT A BOMB in a police station, and attack another. Last time I checked, blowing shit up is called terrorism. All the “Peace & Love” people with “Free Tibet” bumper stickers should probably know that they are supporting terrorists who are far from peaceful.

Let me state my position clearly. I am all in favor of national minorities demonstrating for their rights and the preservation of their culture. But there is a section of Tibetans who are very radical. They are pro-theocracy, racist nationalists who will resort to terrorism to ethnically cleanse their homeland of ethnic Chinese. I don’t hate Tibetans and I don’t want to repress or destroy their culture. I also realize that the Chinese police are not some ideally benevolent hug-fest people who can do no wrong. But the people behind the “Free Tibet” movement are not proponents of some progressive cause that we should support; their ideology and tactics are quite similar to that of the American Ku Klux Klan and it makes me sick to see people cheerleading for them.

Racism & Assassination plots

So I’m watching CNN Headline News and thinking to myself that this channel has gotten about as dumb as Fox News. Their new strategy to drum up ratings is apparently to take the inflammatory remarks and attitude of talk radio and Bill O’Reilly and apply it to moderate centrist politics. Has anyone else noticed this?

Well, anyway, on to the point: if you haven’t heard, a couple of Neo-Nazis have been picked up by the FBI for plotting to kill 88 black children, behead 14 of them, and cap their killing spree off by assassinating Barack Obama. The talking head lady on my television — who called these dudes “knuckleheads” — seemed to feel that the two would-be terrorists were the “death rattle” of racism; that these radical elements are making one last stand at the front line of a dying movement.

My view is not so optimistic. Just look at a John McCain rally. We’ve seen over the past month of his campaign that — despite his arguments to the contrary — the kind of nut bags that are hanging on to his campaign’s sinking ship are an embarrassment. People were shouting for Barack Obama to be lynched at McCain rallies before these two guys decided to plan an attempt. They are not isolated.

And while they may be radicals, that only seems to suggest to me that there must be a section of “moderate” racists. The television news will pick up a sensational story about assassination plots, but you have to tune your shortwave radio into Radio Netherlands to hear a middle-aged housewife telling you, and I quote, that “if Barack Obama wins I’m afraid that the blacks are going to take over.”

What does that even mean? Who, precisely, are “the blacks” and how are they going to take over? What’s going to happen when they take over? It’s ridiculous that people have this vague and unfounded fear. But you would be surprised how widespread this belief is. I’m sure that the editors and anchors on CNN have never been on a construction site or a shop floor or they’d know better.

What’s the answer? I don’t have the magic bullet. All I can suggest is a hard struggle against racism in every arena. But the first step is acceptance. We shouldn’t look at this recent plot as a sign that racism is about to die a natural death and we just have to tolerate it a little longer before it resigns itself to the dustbin. We should see this event as an example of just how real and significant 21st century racism is.

Hillary/Obama: why should I care?

There’s a trend among the far-left, and that is to write the Democrats off as no different than Republicans, and I think that’s really foolish. Look, I’m no more a lover of the Democrats than anyone else. I don’t have any illusions that we’ll elect Hillary president on day 1 and have the dictatorship of the proletariat on day 2. Bill O’Reilly might beg to differ with me, but unfortunately I’m not as optimistic about the strength of the left as he is. Both parties represent bourgeois interests; one is the party of aggressive expansion and the other is of moderation, but they both have monopoly capital pushing them along.

That being said, I think voting for a Democrat is still a good idea, for one simple reason: if they could make your life one single tiny bit better (or, more likely, prevent it from getting worse as rapidly as the Republicans want) wouldn’t it be worth the few minutes it took you to cast your ballot? I mean it’s not like you have to go to great pains to vote. If you’re too lazy to get out of the house, get an absentee ballot even. It doesn’t take much of a return to make your investment worth the effort.

I would have liked to see Gore win in 2000 and Kerry in 2004. Not because I’m a great fan of either of those men, but because they were progressive within the context of the system they worked in. There will come a time when they will no longer be, and then we can cast the Democrats aside. But I have to tell you that I see an even greater potential in the 2008 Dem presidential candidates, something I might actually be excited about.

Regardless of what you think about the candidates, you’d have to be completely hard-headed if you’re not in the least bit enthusiastic about the fact that, by this time next year, we will quite possibly have likely elected either our first woman or our first racial minority to the post of President.

I’m sure there are some far-left radicals who will downplay the progress this means for racially and nationally oppressed and women. They’ll have to in order to reconcile their supposedly materialist ideologies with their insistence on taking the moral high ground and abstaining from the vote. But we’re about to open the door to something very new and important in our political system, and I for one want to be a part of it.