Running Tibetan conflict thread

The '36 Summer Olympics were awarded to Berlin in April 1931, almost 2 years before the Nazis grabbed power.

 

The IOC could have taken it away from them. Did they? Nope.

 

I'd be shocked if a terrorist act took place. Totalitarian regimes tend to be pretty good at cracking down on that kind of thing. They'll just round up all the undesirables a couple of months before the Games.

 

This comes from the guys who gave a damn about freeing Tibet long before the sh!t started hitting the fan recently: the Beastie Boys. Check out the 3/16 blog (should be right on the home page).

http://www.beastieboys.com

 

Wait… When did this happen? China has a load of shit going on, but this… no. At least be honest with the criticism.

FACT!

 

Are we talking about THOSE Beastie Boys?

 

If the US threatened a boycott, China could threaten to foreclose the entire nation.

Tibet (and Nepal and Bhutan) has always been one of the places I wanted to visit. Now, with China destroying the culture by sending tens of thousands of Chinese to live there, I don't know if I'd go on a free trip.

 

Sorry, Pastor.

In China, couples are permitted one, at most two, children. Too frequently a girl is a disappointment.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1506469.stm

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5953508/

 

It's how you see so many suburban matrons pushing little Chinese girls around in strollers over here.

 

I'm well aware of the rules. You are allowed one child. If both parents having children are one child, they are allowed two children. They are actually allowed to have more, but they are taxed on it so heavily that almost nobody can afford it.

This rule mostly applies to the urban regions. Those that live in the more rural areas hardly ever are faced with the issue of having more than one child as there is less government oversight and less government involvement.

However, this is a far far far cry from placing female infants in the streets to die. That is utterly absurd and I'm certain that in my multiple trips over there, I would have seen that occur once or twice.

Parents don't always want a girl because when the daughter marries she moves to where the man's family is. Thus, they see the child less, etc. However, other rules in place have given more money to families that do have a female child because they recognize that there is a ratio problem (I'm certain that I did not help in this).

Again, nobody is putting female babies in the streets to die.

 

From the 2001 BBC link above:



On the garbage dumps that surround Beijing, scavengers from time to time will find a newborn baby girl amid the stinking refuge.
Sometimes she is still alive.

Chen Rong makes her living from scavenging garbage, and over the years she has found five little girls on the tips.

She brought them all home to her one-room brick shack and she and her husband try to give them a chance.

In China, couples are permitted one, at most two, children. Too frequently a girl is a disappointment.


Every year, say researchers, perhaps a million girl foetuses are aborted and tens of thousands of girl babies are abandoned.

"One baby died before we even got her home," says Mrs Chen. "Another garbage scavenger had taken her clothes and then left her to die.

"I was the only one who would pick her up. I couldn't bear to see her die.

"Parents shouldn't throw away their children. This shouldn't be happening."


But Chinese society is throwing away its little girls at an astounding rate. For every 100 girls registered at birth, there are now 118 little boys - in other words, nearly one seventh of Chinese girl babies are going missing.

"Some of those girls are alive, they are just not registered," says Professor Zhai Zhenwu, of Beijing's People's University. "Some are abandoned, but many are aborted when the parents find out the foetus is a girl.

"This is a huge problem for China. We already have about 20 million boys who will never be able to marry because there aren't enough women.

"That number rises by 1.5 million every year.

"It will bring crime and prostitution. It will destabilise China."

Jhiu Hongying is 19 and pregnant. The pressure on her to produce a boy is huge. Family and community demand it. A boy will bring status. He will continue the family line.

"Boys are the best, because they can work," says the girl's mother, Zhang Hongying. "They're stronger.

"If my daughter has a son, everyone will celebrate.

"All the neighbours want her child to be a boy."

At a Beijing temple, women come to pray that the foetus in their womb is that of a boy. Chinese tradition despises the girl child. This powerful cultural preference for sons is heightened by the one-child policy.

The result - millions of nameless baby girls in China are simply disappearing.

 

Right, and I'm not really buying it. Abortions are damn near on demand. The concept of throwing the baby away makes little sense. The taxes are hit at birth. Thus having the child itself would create the cost.