1) Slovak word of the day is bolest', for what my thighs, arse and hamstrings are feeling. Yesterday morning I played squash for the first time, and will definitely play again. It is a gruelling game which requires you to save for new knees for your second fifty years, but extremely satisfying. I think I probably came last in the tournament, but it was none the less thrilling for that. I also suck at ping pong, but I've played that before so can say it with some certainty. After cycling home, I fell into bed and headbuzz lost out to body mutiny; I slept the sleep of the greedy, right in the middle of the day. Now, having decided the hair of the dog was the best cure and cycled ten kilometres, I am in a hot bath getting tender. But I taught myself to cycle with no hands, so all is very good.
2) If you'll allow the contrivance, Tibet is supposedly quite a spiritual place, so let us call it the soul, in contrast to material, mechnical China, which can be the body. So, Beijing: what should be done? For basic side-taking, it's hard to not go for the underdog, but that is made more complicated when every ethnic Han Chinese shop in Lhasa is burned to the ground by the cuddly people of unfree Tibet. Don't get me wrong, I think Free Tibet is right - a group more or less clearly defined, having suffered decades of foul suppression by an infinitely more powerful neighbour, should have the right to its (monkocratic) self-setermination. And since the Tibetans aren't even asking for independence, rather autonomy (presumably meaning being left entorely to their own thing and bargaining with China on an equalish footing), Chinese intransigence loses the ethical battle for me. (Yes, they're worried about the rest of the empire splitting up, but I'm not one for big countries; the more splitting up, under federal structures, the better.)
But the tone with which Tibet is approached is somewhat disappointing, like the more black and white attitudes you hear toward Kosova, or Palestine, or any of the number of less sexy cases. Maybe it's a selfish and aesthetics-based view of the world but I much prefer arguments to be made thoughtfully and with a view to solving a problem. Recognising that more will inevitably be created in so doing (viz a thousand examples, including the last time the West boycotted the Olympics, due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to get rid of the people who then launched jihad on said West).
Eventually you realise that everyone is bad in the right circumstances. I thought There Will Be Blood was a fine film, and it made this point among others very nicely.
(Regarding the persecution of Han Chinese by ethnic Tibetans recently, what can we do other than deplore all violence? And where does that leave those throwing off their yokes? In Estonia, Russians who were settled there by the Soviet leadership are now legally, in an EU country, second-class citizens - but on the other hand, all they have to do is learn Estonian: easy, right?)
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Well first up, its been said before, but I think its significant. The 2012 olympics will be held in London and will they be as filled with protests about the recent frequent human rights violations of the UK in terms of our current crop of wars?
The olympics itself is nolonger a viable operation, and possibly it never was, the whole one world thing constantly proving the fact that all are divided. The Berlin Olympics before the War and the triumph of Jesse Owens and all that was nothing more really than a pantomime. The americans were happy to beat the germans in sport but reluctant to commit when it came to the actual business of intervention. And also of course for all their champion was black they were hardly treating black people well when they weren't winning sports for them.
My attitude to the Tibetans is that their violence, like the palestinians and the rest, is understandable. Understanding why doesn't make it right. But when you are a superior force, like Isreal or China, and you are treating people in terrible ways, you have no excuse, since what you are hurting people for is to maintain power rather than trying to free yourself. Violence begats violence and all that and these oppressive regimes create the very terrorism they then react against as justifciation for more abuse. And so the wheel turns.
What I always hate is the way that violence by oppressed people is always treated as so outrageous. It is surely what we must expect. I like the fact than Ghandi and Dr King and all them existed, and they are of course what we should aspire to, but they are rare, most people are not nearly so able to keep their rage in check.
That said an individual Isreali or Han Chinese can be understood when they react with hate if their family etc... has been killed or whatever by a freedom fighter.
The answer here, like for so many things, can be found by watching The Wire, well not the answer but the way forward in terms of understanding how inidividuals exist within the structures that oppress and create them.
(I didn't put a link to anything to do with the TV series the wire, just in case their were any spoilers there, just one day get hold of a copy of series one and watch it. Follow that with series 2 - 5 and then we can talk ;-)
The Olympics are, as they have always been, about providing PR for those in power. All countries make themselves look respectable despite their governmental policies. China is hosting the games, despite the general fear and or disgust with the country, because they are an ecconomic juggenaunt and we have no option but to do what they want. They make all our cheap clothes and their are more of them than us.
The torch and all the rest is all just spin. The only way to treat it is to ignore it completely, to pay it attention is to do exactly what they want. Sport is all very well and good but when you make it international all the fun and trouble that exists within it is about nationalism, it doesn't matter what bollocks you mutter about hope and love and being united, it is us against them. Thats the way it is. The world cup is much more honest.
I am not a fan of the whole one world attitude anyway. For a start it always results in really offensive songs.
China hasn't just hurt the tibetans, it commits human rights abuses on its own all the time, but few of the countries who will compete in the olympics can say anything different about themselves.
ps I love squash too, haven't played it since I was a teenager sadly. If you ever fancy a game when you are in london I'm up for it. When I was a teenager I used to ride everywhere no hands, dunno if I could do it now, but I used to even turn corners no handed, by leaning. Ah those were the days... when I had time to be energetic.
The Olympics bore me, but your analysis seems pretty good.
Violence by oppressed people is understandable, and in many cases fine and good and to be supported, especially in as desparate and one-sided a case as Tibet-China. I wouldn’t even go so far as to say that the Tibetans are suffering structural violence (understood by me as existing in a situation where basic rights are violated by the system you find yourself in, with no clear and dominating responsible party. Structural violence is for me the closest existing thing to original sin, in that it taints us all, more as we get more wealthy, without our having done anything to contribute other than existing in a system. I may still watch The Wire, as I’m told it’s good). At least, the structure that oppresses them is clearer than most.
But ‘violence’ is not one category of things. It is violent to burn cars and barricade roads, or to throw stones at tanks, or to blow up local politicians, or to deliberately set fire to shops with the shopkeepers inside. However, all of these elicit different responses from me. The only way in which the latter gets even considered as being forgiveable is that these ‘settler’ shopkeepers may be consciously and obviously part of a military subjugation, frequently reinforced and with apartheid going on. I don’t have the impression that was the case in Tibet. ‘Freedom fighter’ is a noble phrase, and shouldn’t be given just on the basis of someone’s mindset.
Agree about one worldism (I wish I hadn't clikced the link to the song), but we have to also recognise that the idea of universal human rights tries to push the world toward oneness in limited ways.
Tried leaning yesterday - lots of fun!
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