Hold Fast

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34cLHNfFiZg

Chalk up another instance of the Chinese trying to control every little instance of Tibet in the rest of world (illegally occupying the nation does not appear to be enough). The New York Times Arts Beat blog reports that two Chinese film makers are pulling their entries to the Palm Springs International Film Festival because […]

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New York Times columnist and frequent Chinese government apologist Nick Kristof has only mustered this Tweet in response to the jailing of Liu Xiaobo for advocating democracy in China.
@NickKristof The great Liu Xiaobo sentenced to 11 yrs by Chinese govt. For shame, Beijing.
Kristof’s column ran today. It was not on the Liu Xiaobo sentencing. He […]

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The Wall Street Journal has an interview of former Czech president and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Vaclav Havel. In it Havel speaks about Obama’s handling of China and the Dalai Lama and the elemental mistakes he is making in his policy towards Tibet and appeasement of China. After comparing Obama’s early dealings with China to […]

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Leading Chinese political dissident Liu Xiaobo was sentenced by the Chinese government to 11 years in jail for “inciting subversion of state power”; additionally Liu is banned from speaking or writing about politics at all for two years. Liu is one of China’s most high profile advocates of free speech and democracy. He was on […]

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Up at the Huffington Post, Josh Schrei has a provocative take on President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. Schrei writes:
Obama’s speech, in all its wandering glory, smacked of the somewhat bewildered attempts of a true American son to reconcile his deep seated idealism against an almost impossible pragmatism. Along the way, it inadvertently summarized […]

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Saturday’s New York Times had a must-read article on Chinese artist and political dissident, Ai Weiwei. Ai was the primary architect of China’s Olympic Birds Nest stadium, yet became an outspoken critic of the Chinese government leading up to the Olympics in response to the government’s repression of petitioners and rights advocates. Ai has faced […]

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Josh Schrei has written an open letter to President Obama following his trip to China. It’s powerful, honest and true. Here’s a passage:
As a lifelong Tibet supporter, I have endured 15 years of meetings with Senators, Representatives, and Chiefs of Staff and have been told roughly the same thing in every single meeting. We have […]

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There was a great deal of hoopla last month when President Obama broke with tradition and declined to meet with the Dalai Lama when he was in Washington, DC. While no American president has had a formal state visit with the Dalai Lama in the Oval Office, presidents of both parties have made it tradition […]

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The Times Online:
China rounds up dissidents as President Obama touches down in Beijing
Chinese officials have rounded up dozens of Beijings’s tiny coterie of activists and petitioners in case any dissident tries to approach President Obama, who arrived in the city today.
The arrests continued to gather momentum even as Mr Obama told an unprecedented question-and-answer […]

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My friend Josh Schrei has a powerful rebuttal to the Chinese government’s statements that Obama should support their position on Tibet because he is black and a fan of Abraham Lincoln. Here’s a good chunk:
President Obama, we will not insult your intelligence — as your current hosts have –  by explaining to you why it […]

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