I knew a lady who came from Duluth
Bitten by a dog with a rabid tooth
She went to her grave just a little too soon
Threw a late howl at the yellow moon
Tibet: China ‘ready for for talks with Dalai Lama’
Britain called for a resumption of negotiations between China and Tibetan representatives yesterday after Gordon Brown announced that he had spoken to the Chinese Premier and would meet the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, in May.Last night China’s state media admitted for the first time that riots had spread to two provinces outside Tibet, but Beijing claimed that order was returning to the restive Himalayan region.
Mr Brown took the Commons by surprise when he informed MPs that Wen Jiabao, the Chinese Prime Minister, had told him in a telephone conversation yesterday that he was ready to enter into a dialogue with the Dalai Lama, provided that he did not support the total independence of Tibet and that he renounced violence.
USA
On War’s Anniversary, Bush Cites Progress
‘Strategic Victory’ Is Near, He Asserts
President Bush sought yesterday to convince a skeptical public that the United States is on the cusp of winning the war in Iraq, arguing in a speech at the Pentagon that the recent buildup of U.S. forces has stabilized that country and “opened the door to a major strategic victory in the war on terror.”
Vice President Cheney said separately that it does not matter whether the public supports a continued U.S. presence in Iraq, and he likened Bush’s leadership to that of Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.After a reporter cited polls showing that two-thirds of Americans oppose the Iraq war, Cheney responded: “So?”
Hillary Clinton’s schedules shed little light on work as first lady
Just-released records show she was active but are short on details and long on redactions.
WASHINGTON — Federal archivists Wednesday released 11,000 pages of schedules from Hillary Rodham Clinton’s eight years as first lady, but the material offered little to support her assertion that her White House experience left her best prepared to become president.The records show she was an active first lady who traveled widely and was deeply involved in healthcare policy, but they are rife with omissions, terse references and redactions that obscure many of her activities and the identities of those she saw.
For months, Sen. Clinton has faced calls to speed the release of about 2 million pages of material from her time as first lady. The records are stored at her husband’s presidential library in Little Rock, Ark. But it seems doubtful that the schedules made public Wednesday will satisfy those who complain that Clinton touts her experience in her husband’s White House, yet refuses to offer details about her precise role.
Middle East
‘We live in a nightmare.
Death and carnage is everywhere’ Ali, Baghdad resident
In most cities of the world a person might expect to be feted for surviving a single bomb attack. In Baghdad, survival stories can be found on every street corner.Ali is a painter and a student at the academy of art in north Baghdad. A few years ago he moved to the Baghdad suburb of Karrada, where many artists live because of its art market.
When I meet him, Ali is limping slightly. A white bandage protrudes from the sleeve of his striped jumper, and he frequently drops his left shoulder so that his arm rests on his thigh. These are the only outward signs of the injuries he sustained in the previous week.
In a shy, soft voice Ali tells me how he had been standing with a friend in Karrada when a bomb went off at the side of the road. “I heard an explosion very close by,” he says. “I saw smoke and chaos and people screaming. I saw my friend Hassan, who was running and carrying a child who had lost an arm. I saw a nice-looking girl – the Karrada girls, you know how
The final battle for Basra is near, says Iraqi general
By Kim Sengupta in Basra
Thursday, 20 March 2008General Mohan al-Furayji, the Iraqi commander in charge of security in the south of Iraq, has warned his troops they must prepare for the final battle to defeat the Shia militias terrorising Basra.
For the British force based at Basra airport, the general’s strategy raises the spectre of a return to the city they left last September after a summer of incessant attacks by the gunmen.
General Mohan is determined that the armed Shia groups have to be defeated before the provincial elections in the autumn. Failure to do so, he maintains, will mean the gunmen will take over what is left of the degenerating political process, making it impossible to shift them in the near future. No date has been fixed for the drive against the militias in Basra, he said yesterday. But he also delivered an uncompromising warning to his troops: they must be ready for a decisive military push, and it will come soon.
Europe
Challenge to TGV as Ryanair brings budget air travel to France
By John Lichfield in Paris
Thursday, 20 March 2008Ryanair, Europe’s most successful low-cost airline, is going nose to nose with Europe’s largest and most successful high-speed railway system.
The Irish-based airline announced yesterday that it was starting cheap flights in May from Beauvais airport, 50 miles north-west of Paris, to Marseilles. Ryanair will also try to break into the German domestic market for the first time with flights between Frankfurt and Berlin.
The French internal travel market has proved a difficult hunting ground for cut-price airlines, faced with the dominance of the national carrier, Air France, and, above all, with the success of the TGV – the high-speed rail services run by the state-owned SNCF.
Europe’s last divided city in sight of peace
By Daniel Howden, Deputy Foreign Editor
Thursday, 20 March 2008The solution to Europe’s longest-running conflict could begin with the agreement to remove two barricades dividing Ledra Street in Nicosia tomorrow. The reopening of the main commercial thoroughfare in the continent’s last divided city would send the strongest signal yet that a peace deal for the Mediterranean island is finally in the offing.
Cyprus’s new president, Demetris Christofias, will meet the Turkish Cypriot leader, Mehmet Ali Talat, tomorrow with the symbolic end to the division of the famous street widely expected to be the first gesture agreed to by both sides.
Asia
Fahmida Mirza takes her seat as Pakistan’s first woman Speaker
A former doctor with a striking resemblance to Benazir Bhutto made history in Pakistan yesterday by becoming the first woman to be elected Speaker in the National Assembly.With her head covered by a long purple scarf, Fahmida Mirza took her seat to thunderous applause, having won 249 votes in the 342-seat Lower House of parliament.
Bail denied for Khmer Rouge head
A UN-backed tribunal has rejected an appeal for bail from the Khmer Rouge’s most senior surviving member.
Judges ruled that Nuon Chea, deputy to the group’s leader Pol Pot, must remain in custody ahead of his trial.The octogenarian faces charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, relating to the Khmer Rouge’s four-year rule in the 1970s.
More than one million Cambodians are believed to have died under the brutal Maoist regime.
Nuon Chea, who is thought to have been the ideological driving force behind the regime, denies committing any crime.
Afica
Chad peace force ‘to shoot back’
The head of the European peace force in Chad has told the BBC that his troops will return fire if rebels attacked any refugee camps under its protection.
Gen Pat Nash was speaking for the first time since a Eufor soldier was killed two weeks ago on the Chad-Sudan border.His comments came as Chad’s government was accused by a rights group of killing and displacing people in border raids into Central African Republic.
Eufor’s role is to protect civilians fleeing the border region’s conflicts.
US-based Human Rights Watch says more than 1,000 people from the CAR have been displaced or forced to flee into southern Chad and are now living in refugee camps.
Removed Ghanaian dies of cancer
A Ghanaian woman who was removed from a Cardiff hospital where she was receiving cancer treatment and flown home after her visa expired has died.
Ama Sumani, 39, passed away in Accra, Ghana, hours after being told that friends and family had found doctors in the UK and South Africa to treat her.They had also raised more than £70,000 from donations to pay for drugs which were not available in her home country.
Her friend Janet Simmons said: “She said she was too tired to fight.”
Ms Sumani, a widowed mother-of-two, died at about 1600 GMT on Wednesday in Korle-Bu hospital in Accra, said Mrs Simmons.
8 comments
Skip to comment form
[ Note: this stitches together several previous comments of mine on this matter ]
Hopefully, if national Olympic teams won’t threaten “official” boycotts, then individual athletes should do so.
Hopefully it will become a wave.
China fears bad press about how it’s just a backwards, unsophisticated, bunch of thuggish rubes, undeserving of “1st World Status” more than it does bombs or missiles or any kind of military threat. Much more. It’s a matter of national pride. Of ego. Of “face” (and saving it).
Besides “saving face”, whose influence cannot be underestimated when it comes to China, pragmatism, being “practical” both internally and in foreign affairs (real politik) is part of the Communist leaders’ DNA.
And, from a “practical” standpoint, it makes “domestic tranquility”/economic sense for the Communist Party Leaders to make China a rapaciously capitalistic country — otherwise they’d already be dead or otherwise out of power.
It made sense to lobby like hell to bring the Olympics to Beijing: to show that the Party could bring prestige and respect to China. It makes sense (in their view of the word “sense”) to brutally suppress the Tibetans — lest any other minority or otherwise prospectively “uppity” group get ideas… So, Western Nations (and India, Japan, and the ROK) ought to do what they can to, not necessarily “isolate” China (in the old sense of economic isolation — ain’t gonna happen), but, rather to ridicule, to express shock at such thuggary, to question the “maturity” of China (which would REALLY get under their skin, given it’s 5,000 year old history and pride in that history). This will very much get under the Communist Party Leaders’ skin – it should, and it combines the “losing face” hammer both internally and externally.
Just sayin’. . .
And just as Bush thinks he can “save face” by acting like a bloated, inflamed, arrogant asshole all the time (which, of course, is always counterproductive to U.S. interests), so too do the Communist Party Leaders think that brutal repression of Tibet helps them “save face” and brings grudging “respect” from the ranks of nations. Also, for them to admit that the generation before them screwed up by annexing Tibet, would be too much of a loss of face for them.
Again, this is where other nations need to make it clear to China that, as practical, cost/benefit analyses go, the benefits of respecting Tibetan autonomy outweigh the “costs” of losing face within China proper.
At the very least, we should not let China have its cake and eat it, too: China should know that there are significant, face-losing consequences to brutalizing Tibet.
Mu . . .
Can make one howl at the moon even without the aid of the rabid dog.
Thanks for the nice poem to start my day off.
anyone heard from him?
I just found out that the Chicago Sun Times has featured Docudharma on their site and they selected my story about the Minneapolis anti-war rally as their sample blog story.
That’s more coverage (in photos) than the Star Tribune gave the story. Indeed, the Strib in their print edition even paired a mediocre photo of the crowd scene with a photo from DC showing some pro-war supporters who were marching there. The 10 who usually turn out for to counter our rally stayed home this year. The Strib tries to present a balanced view: half the administration’s view and half the people’s view (they don’t care that a clear majority know that the war was a mistake and want it to end).