PLA agents instigated unrest
to justify crackdown
Paul Joseph Watson |
|
Britain's GCHQ spy agency has confirmed the fact that Chinese People's Liberation Army agents posing as monks staged violent riots in Tibet in order to justify a brutal crackdown, but that the demonstrations have now escalated beyond Beijing's control.
According to a report in today's Epoch Times, "GCHQ analysts believe the decision was deliberately calculated by the Beijing leadership to provide an excuse to stamp out the simmering unrest in the region, which is already attracting unwelcome world attention in the run-up to the Olympic Games this summer."
Fearing that legitimate demonstrators would become more active in the months leading up to the Beijing Olympics, Chinese authorities planned to create a pretext to crush the movement by instigating violence that would sour global opinion towards the Tibetans.
According to the report, GCHQ's geo-positioned satellites in space were able to obtain images proving that the Chinese had infiltrated agent provocateurs into Lhasa. PLA agents posing as monks were responsible for setting fire to buildings and killing non-ethnic Chinese citizens as well as police in an attempt to demonize the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan freedom movement.
However, according to the report, "What the Beijing regime had not expected was how the riots would spread, not only across Tibet, but also to Sichuan, Quighai and Gansu provinces, turning a large area of western China into a battle zone."
Though the report seems to explain why images showed supposed Tibetans protesters inexplicably burning their own villages, it has to be cautioned that Epoch Times is a traditionally pro-Tibetan news outlet and there's no doubt that propaganda is being used by both sides.
It's probable that Chinese PLA agents instigated some of the violence but the fact that young Tibetans are engaging in violence completely of their own accord is largely accepted.
As the report points out, many of the Dalai Lama's supporters are "young, unemployed and dispossessed and reject his philosophy of non-violence, believing the only hope for change is the radical action they are now carrying out"
On a personal note, having visited Tibet myself and experienced some less than cordial interactions with the Tibetan people, it has to be said that they are certainly not deserving of the angelic tag some quarters of the media lavish upon them - being tribal, aggressive and spiteful towards foreign visitors as well as hostile towards tourists from the Chinese mainland.
As we reported on Monday, former Chinese Communist Party official Ruan Ming was the first to accuse China of staging the violent riots in order to demonize Tibetans in the eyes of the international community, justify a brutal paramilitary police crackdown and force the Dalai Lama to resign.
"The demonstration on March 10 was meant to be peaceful. You can see from the pictures that the demonstration was all monks," he explained, adding that the CCP carefully introduced violent unrest in order to "deceive the world".
By BRAD STONE
The New York Times
Published: March 28, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO — Comcast, the country’s largest residential Internet provider, said on Thursday that it would take a more equitable approach toward managing the ever-expanding flow of Web traffic on its network.
The cable company, based in Philadelphia, has been under relentless pressure from the Federal Communications Commission and public interest groups after media reports last year that it was blocking some Internet traffic of customers who used online software based on the popular peer-to-peer BitTorrent protocol.
Comcast said it would change its fundamental approach to playing Internet traffic cop. Instead of interfering with specific online applications, it will manage traffic by slowing the Internet speeds of its most bandwidth-hogging users when traffic is busiest.
“In the event of congestion, the half percent of people who are overutilizing an excessive amount of capacity will be slowed down subtly until capacity is restored,” the chief technology officer for Comcast, Tony G. Werner, said. “For the other 99.5 percent, their performance will be maintained exactly as they expect it.”
Mr. Werner said he hoped to have the new system in place by the end of the year.
The change was part of an announcement by Comcast on Thursday that it had been working with BitTorrent, a company that was co-founded by the creator of the BitTorrent protocol. The start-up, based in San Francisco and supported by venture capital, helps media companies deliver their files over the Internet using BitTorrent technology. Consumers also use the protocol to share large files like movies.
The companies said they have been working together for the last year on ways to optimize BitTorrent applications for the Comcast network. They said they would publish their findings to Web forums and standards groups so that other software makers, peer-to-peer services and I.S.P.’s could adopt them.
“What we really want is not only for Comcast to be a better network but for all networks to be better,” the president of BitTorrent, Ashwin Navin, said.
Comcast has taken a public flogging since its network management practices came to light. Consumer groups filed a complaint with the F.C.C. and asked it to declare the cable company in violation of the commission’s network management principles.
Comcast’s practices were subjected to additional scrutiny at a contentious commission hearing in Cambridge, Mass., last month. Another hearing is scheduled at Stanford in Palo Alto, Calif., next month.
Thursday’s announcement will not necessarily end the cable company’s public troubles. Comcast and BitTorrent said their collaboration showed the corrective power of the market and obviated the need for further federal oversight. But in a public statement, the commission chairman, Kevin J. Martin, vowed continued scrutiny and expressed concern that the old filtering practice would continue at least through the end of the year.
Marvin Ammori, general counsel at Free Press, one of the public interest groups that petitioned the F.C.C., urged the commission to continue pursuing the matter. “The only reason Comcast came to the table and made a deal with BitTorrent is because of the unrelenting pressure,” he said.
Many proponents of the network neutrality principle, which would require I.S.P.’s to treat all Internet packets equally, have expressed a preference against any sort of filtering and urged Comcast and its rivals to instead invest in adding bandwidth.
Mr. Werner of Comcast, showing little patience for that argument, said that Internet service providers in Japan, with the fastest network speeds on the planet, had to manage their traffic.
You'll forgive me if I don't believe you?
Monday I saw a big ugly red SUV with
a Jesus fish magnet on parked alongside* a known brothel. It was right near the side gate and door.
There is an empty lot across the street, and any neighbors' place would
mean a longish walk: it's very unlikely they were visiting elsewhere.
*The joint's on a corner; how funny is that?
Friday, March 21, 2008
BEIJING (AP) -- A major earthquake struck a sparsely populated region of western China early Friday. Some houses collapsed, but there were no injuries, state media reported.
The 7.2-magnitude quake hit at 6:33 a.m. (2233 GMT Thursday), about 140 miles southeast of the city of Hotan in southwest Xinjiang province, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
A spokesman for China's Earthquake Administration said it was a 7.3 magnitude quake. There were no reports of injuries, he said, and the area is sparsely populated.
There were four aftershocks in the region, ranging from 5.0 to 5.2 magnitude, according to a notice on the Web site of the administration.
The earthquakes occurred around the towns of Ahqan and Bostan, just north of the Kunlun mountains, with a total population of around 13,400 people, according to Chinese state media.
China's state-run television channel, CCTV, said that some houses had collapsed, but that no one was hurt.
Dale Grant, a USGS geophysicist, described the area as "very seismically active," but said Friday's temblor was the biggest there on record.
Xinjiang is a predominantly Muslim region with a culture that is distinctly different from that of China's ethnic Han majority.
China's Earthquake Administration said the last earthquake in the Hotan area struck in 1992, with a magnitude of 5.9.
In 2003, a 6.8-magnitude quake killed 268 people in Bachu county in the west of Xinjiang.
China's deadliest earthquake in modern history struck the northeastern city of Tangshan on July 28, 1976, killing some 240,000 people.
Why couldn't this quake've hit harder, and only where the bastard politicos hang?
By LILY HINDY
The Associated Press
Thursday, March 20, 2008
NEW YORK -- China forced the last remaining foreign journalists out of Tibet on Thursday, and stepped up restrictions on Internet and radio reports from people within the country, a media watchdog said.
Georg Blume, a correspondent for German newspapers Die Zeit and taz, and Kristin Kupfer of the German EPD news agency, left Thursday after being confronted by an official who threatened to cancel their Chinese visas, Reporters Without Borders said.
Earlier this week, Economist correspondent James Miles and a group of 15 Hong Kong reporters also were forced out.
"If they don't have anything to hide, then why are they making foreign journalists leave? It's clear that they don't want any witnesses," said Vincent Brossel, who heads Reporters Without Borders' Asia desk.
Beijing has warned foreign tourists and journalists to stay away from a huge expanse of territory across four provinces, acknowledging that last week's anti-government protests have spread far beyond Tibet's borders.
The protests, led by Buddhist monks, started peacefully but erupted into rioting on Friday, drawing a harsh response from Chinese authorities. The Chinese crackdown has drawn worldwide attention on the country's human rights record, threatening to overshadow Beijing's attempts to project an image of unity and prosperity in the lead-up to the Olympic Games in August.
The German left-leaning daily taz posted a story on its Web site protesting Blume's expulsion.
"Apparently the Chinese government cannot tolerate any further Western witnesses in Tibet. That is, for us, no real surprise - the position of the People's Republic on press freedom is well known," wrote Reiner Metzger, the newspaper's deputy editor.
Reporters Without Borders said Chinese authorities are using "jamming stations" to block radio broadcasts out of Tibet and have asked Internet cafe owners to increase the surveillance of their clients.
The group also obtained a message it said was being sent to Tibetans living outside of Tibet from the "Internet Surveillance Bureau," which said: "It is forbidden to post news about Tibetan events ... anyone infringing on this ban will have their IP address sent to the police who will take the necessary steps."
By CARLEY PETESCH
The Associated Press
Thursday, March 20, 2008
NEW YORK -- Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and 25 other Nobel laureates on Thursday condemned the Chinese government's violent crackdown on Tibetan protesters and called on Beijing to exercise restraint.
"We protest the unwarranted campaign waged by the Chinese government against our fellow Nobel laureate, His Holiness the Dalai Lama," the group said in a statement released by Wiesel.
Wiesel told The Associated Press that the group wanted renewed negotiations between China and the Dalai Lama, who won the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize.
"The latest events are dramatic and the main thing is to stop the present oppression, persecution and violence," Wiesel said.
"I don't understand the Chinese hierarchy there," he added. "Why are they afraid of Tibet?"
Led by Buddhist monks, protests had begun peacefully in Lhasa early last week but erupted into rioting on March 14, drawing a harsh response from Chinese authorities.
The crackdown drew worldwide attention to China's human rights record, threatening to overshadow Beijing's attempts to project an image of unity and prosperity in the lead-up to the Aug. 8-24 Olympics.
Wiesel, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, said he is close friends with the Dalai Lama and that the Tibetan leader has repeatedly said he is not asking for a sovereign independent Tibet. "All he wants is religious and cultural autonomy," Wiesel said.
That autonomy, the statement said, "is fundamental to the preservation of the ancient Tibetan heritage."
When asked what he would do if the Chinese did not agree to talks, Wiesel said: "If they don't agree and the violence goes on we will have to ask for more, maybe the reconsideration of the Olympics ... but we are not there yet."
Wiesel said it was not the time for the international community to take actions such as boycotts. But he said pressure for peace and dialogue is needed until we "hear reports from the Tibetan themselves that all has been restored and the prisons are opened."
Tibetan exile groups have claimed that 80 people were killed during the protest and its aftermath, while Beijing maintains that 16 died and more than 300 were injured.
Worthy to announce her decision at news conference
Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said today that she will hold a news conference at 11 a.m. Monday to reveal her decision about whether to charge Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick in the text message scandal.
Worthy's probe stems from a Free Press report in January that revealed that text messages between Kilpatrick and then-chief of staff Christine Beatty showed the pair lied at a police whistle-blower trial last summer when they testified they were not romantically involved. The trial, and subsequent settlement of two police lawsuits, cost taxpayers more than $9 million.
A Free Press report recently revealed that other text messages raised questions about whether a friend of Kilpatrick and Beatty received favoritism in the awarding of city contracts.
State has 2,236 more people unemployed in week
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 20, 2008
WASHINGTON — The number of newly laid-off workers filing for unemployment benefits rose last week to the highest level in nearly two months, providing more evidence that the weak economy is having an adverse impact on the labor market.
The Labor Department said Thursday that applications for jobless benefits totaled 378,000 last week. That was an increase of 22,000 from the previous week and was a far bigger jump than had been expected.
The four-week average for new claims rose to 365,250, which was the highest level since a flood of claims caused by the 2005 Gulf Coast hurricanes.
The current economic slowdown, which many economists believe has already turned into a full-blown recession, is starting to show up in the labor market in terms of higher layoffs and weaker hiring numbers.
The total number of payroll jobs fell by 63,000 in February, an even bigger decline that the drop of 22,000 jobs in January, which had been the first monthly decline since mid-2003.
“We have no doubt that the trend in claims is upwards and is approaching the levels seen in the earlier stage of the recession in 2001,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics.
Part of the increase in benefit applications in recent weeks occurred because of a three-week strike at a major parts supplier to General Motors Corp., which has forced GM to close all or part of 28 plants, affecting more than 37,000 hourly workers.
The number of unemployed workers who are receiving benefits totaled 2.865 million, the largest amount since late August 2004.
The Federal Reserve this week cut a key interest rate by a sizable three-quarters of 1%, wrapping up the most aggressive two months of credit easing by the central bank in a quarter century.
The Fed has also greatly expanded its loans to cash-strapped banks and used a Depression-era process to supply money to Wall Street investment houses in an effort to keep a serious credit squeeze from pushing the country into a deep recession.
For the week ending March 8, 28 states and territories reported an increase in jobless claims and 25 reported declines. The states with the biggest increases were California, up by 3,755; Michigan, up by 2,236, and Indiana, with an increase of 2,158. The layoffs in Michigan and Indiana were attributed in part to higher layoffs in the auto industry.
The states with the biggest drop in claims two weeks ago were New York, down by 13,504, and Connecticut, which fell by 2,228.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
BALTIMORE (AP) -- Three zebras from Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus briefly escaped from their downtown venue, but were quickly corralled by their trainer and two handlers.
Mali, Giza and Lima spotted an open door at the 1st Mariner Arena on Thursday and dashed onto Hopkins Place, but were rounded up a half block away.
Carrie Coleman, a veterinary technician for the circus, said it was a frightening incident, because the animals were in traffic lanes before returning to the sidewalk.
"They may have thought they were headed home," Coleman said, adding that the zebras were not hurt.
The same three zebras, plus a fourth, made a similar escape in June during the circus' visit to Colorado Springs, Colo.
Photo Credit: By Mehgan Murphy -- Smithsonian Institution Photo
