Found this brilliant piece by Slavoj Žižek writing for the London Review of Books

The media imposes certain stories on us, and the one about Tibet goes like this. The People’s Republic of China, which, back in 1949, illegally occupied Tibet, has for decades engaged in the brutal and systematic destruction not only of the Tibetan religion, but of the Tibetans themselves. Recently, the Tibetans’ protests against Chinese occupation were again crushed by military force. Since China is hosting the 2008 Olympics, it is the duty of all of us who love democracy and freedom to put pressure on China to give back to the Tibetans what it stole from them. A country with such a dismal human rights record cannot be allowed to use the noble Olympic spectacle to whitewash its image. What will our governments do? Will they, as usual, cede to economic pragmatism, or will they summon the strength to put ethical and political values above short-term economic interests?

There are complications in this story of ‘good guys versus bad guys’. It is not the case that Tibet was an independent country until 1949, when it was suddenly occupied by China. The history of relations between Tibet and China is a long and complex one, in which China has often played the role of a protective overlord: the anti-Communist Kuomintang also insisted on Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. Before 1949, Tibet was no Shangri-la, but an extremely harsh feudal society, poor (life expectancy was barely over 30), corrupt and fractured by civil wars (the most recent one, between two monastic factions, took place in 1948, when the Red Army was already knocking at the door). Fearing social unrest and disintegration, the ruling elite prohibited industrial development, so that metal, for example, had to be imported from India. (more…)

Globally, the Tibet issue has been blown beyond belief by the media. I am compelled to ask that over one million civilians are dead in Iraq for no reason - no weapons of mass destruction and no chemical weapon stockpiles have been discovered - there is a stench of corpses and ashes everywhere. A civilisation has been destroyed, ruined. Has anyone inquired about this barbaric conduct of the so-called “civilised” West?

Has anyone questioned why all laws, rights, Geneva conventions are being violated at the Guantanamo Bay; and why there is a genocide of sorts underway in Afghanistan. (more…)

BOOK REVIEW: Investigating the ‘China threat’ by Khaled Ahmed 

 The fact that Globalisation has been allowed to sink to the level of a darwinist race among the inward-looking developed economies and third world new aspirants, has imperilled the normal sanity of response

Will Hutton is a British writer, weekly columnist, a governor of London School of Economics, a former editor-in-chief for The Observer in London, and he fears that the US might extend its trigger-happy policies to its troubled economic and strategic relations with China. He thinks America and Britain are particularly vulnerable to this kind of recklessness after abandoning their historical commitment to the ideals of Enlightenment. He thinks China has pulled itself up as it was wont to do in history but is vulnerable to the pluralism its burgeoning economy would require in the days to come. He wants the West to wait for that internal development. (more…)