kablagh! random thoughts and commentaries on the news
Celebs, Olympics, China, and the news
From the IHT:
“WASHINGTON: For the past two years, China has protected the Sudanese government as the United States and Britain have pushed for United Nations Security Council sanctions against Sudan for the violence in Darfur.
But in the past week, strange things have happened. A senior Chinese official, Zhai Jun, traveled to Sudan to push the Sudanese government to accept a United Nations peacekeeping force. Zhai even went all the way to Darfur and toured three refugee camps, a rare event for a high-ranking official from China, which has extensive business and oil ties to Sudan and generally avoids telling other countries how to conduct their internal affairs.
So what gives? Credit goes to Hollywood — Mia Farrow and Steven Spielberg in particular. Just when it seemed safe to buy a plane ticket to Beijing for the 2008 Olympic Games, nongovernmental organizations and other groups appear to have scored a surprising success in an effort to link the Olympics, which the Chinese government holds very dear, to the killings in Darfur, which, until recently, Beijing had not seemed too concerned about.
Farrow, a good-will ambassador for the United Nations Children’s Fund, has played a crucial role, starting a campaign last month to label the Games in Beijing the “Genocide Olympics” and calling on corporate sponsors and even Spielberg, who is an artistic adviser to China for the Games, to publicly exhort China to do something about Darfur. In a March 28 Op-Ed article in The Wall Street Journal, she warned Spielberg that he could “go down in history as the Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing Games,” a reference to a German filmmaker who made Nazi propaganda films.
Four days later, Spielberg sent a letter to President Hu Jintao of China, condemning the killings in Darfur and asking the Chinese government to use its influence in the region “to bring an end to the human suffering there,” according to Spielberg’s spokesman, Marvin Levy.
China soon dispatched Zhai to Darfur, a turnaround that served as a classic study of how a pressure campaign, aimed to strike Beijing in a vulnerable spot at a vulnerable time, could accomplish what years of diplomacy could not.
Groups focusing on many issues, including Tibet and human rights, have called for boycotts of the Games next year. But none of those issues have packed the punch of Darfur, where at least 200,000 people — some say as many as 400,000 — mostly non-Arab men, women and children, have died and 2.5 million have been displaced, as government-backed Arab militias called the janjaweed have attacked the local population.”
I have a lot of respect and admiration for celebs Mia Farrow and Spielberg. I hope they and their fellow celebs would develop similarly profound insights, passionate views, and take strong action on other issues such as the invasion of Iraq and the continued occupation of Palestinian territories so those concerned may likewise take action as China did in Sudan.
I was wondering if Mr. Spielberg already knew that China violates human rights and support human rights violators when he accepted the consultancy for the Beijing Olympics. It makes one wonder whether he realised this only now, or he accepted the consultancy just so he can resign in the most grandstanding manner that he just did.
I’ve been watching the news and I’ve never seen the Western media feature any good news on China. When the news is on China, you can be sure it is bad news – from lead-laced dolls from Mattel to the Chinese support to the junta in Myanmar.
I’m not defending China’s actions in Sudan and Myanmar, but I guess the question really is whether China is behaving any worse than any of the powerful countries in the world now. What the news aren’t saying are perhaps equally interesting: for example, the recent feature on Chemical Ali – who’s awaiting execution for his principal role in the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds in Northern Iraq. I wonder where he got the chemical weapons. Or in other words, who sold Saddam Hussein and his cousin those chemical weapons? Who makes chemical weapons? Is there any good use for chemical weapons?
I recall one of the reporters embeded in the invasion forces joined a raid by US troops of an alleged laboratory and warehouse in Basra where suspected chemical weapons are stored and manufactured. In the abandoned warehouse, the journalist and the soldiers found evidence of materials used for making chemical weapons, including gas masks and other paraphernalia. They examined the materials and realised the labels and instructions are in English. We never heard of the raid and its results again.
The same with Cuba, all we hear from the US media is how evil Castro has been for staying in power for so long and how he espoused communism. Almost nothing is mentioned of the fact that Cubans have longer lifespan, lower infant and maternal mortality rates, has universal health care (and apparently not only for its citizens), higher literacy rates, and higher overall HDI than the US. They are better baseball players and boxers, too. More importantly, they can do the mambo. Thanks to Michael Moore for his documentary Sicko, now US citizens know where to get medical attention if they can’t afford it in the US.
Thanks or no thanks to the US-led economic and trade embargo on Cuba, the country is also the most advanced in the development of organic agriculture. That’s another healthy option for US citizens.
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Celebs, Olympics, China, and the news
From the IHT:
But in the past week, strange things have happened. A senior Chinese official, Zhai Jun, traveled to Sudan to push the Sudanese government to accept a United Nations peacekeeping force. Zhai even went all the way to Darfur and toured three refugee camps, a rare event for a high-ranking official from China, which has extensive business and oil ties to Sudan and generally avoids telling other countries how to conduct their internal affairs.
So what gives? Credit goes to Hollywood — Mia Farrow and Steven Spielberg in particular. Just when it seemed safe to buy a plane ticket to Beijing for the 2008 Olympic Games, nongovernmental organizations and other groups appear to have scored a surprising success in an effort to link the Olympics, which the Chinese government holds very dear, to the killings in Darfur, which, until recently, Beijing had not seemed too concerned about.
Farrow, a good-will ambassador for the United Nations Children’s Fund, has played a crucial role, starting a campaign last month to label the Games in Beijing the “Genocide Olympics” and calling on corporate sponsors and even Spielberg, who is an artistic adviser to China for the Games, to publicly exhort China to do something about Darfur. In a March 28 Op-Ed article in The Wall Street Journal, she warned Spielberg that he could “go down in history as the Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing Games,” a reference to a German filmmaker who made Nazi propaganda films.
Four days later, Spielberg sent a letter to President Hu Jintao of China, condemning the killings in Darfur and asking the Chinese government to use its influence in the region “to bring an end to the human suffering there,” according to Spielberg’s spokesman, Marvin Levy.
Today in Americas
Groups focusing on many issues, including Tibet and human rights, have called for boycotts of the Games next year. But none of those issues have packed the punch of Darfur, where at least 200,000 people — some say as many as 400,000 — mostly non-Arab men, women and children, have died and 2.5 million have been displaced, as government-backed Arab militias called the janjaweed have attacked the local population.”
I have a lot of respect and admiration for celebs Mia Farrow and Spielberg. I hope they and their fellow celebs would develop similarly profound insights, passionate views, and take strong action on other issues such as the invasion of Iraq and the continued occupation of Palestinian territories so those concerned may likewise take action as China did in Sudan.
I was wondering if Mr. Spielberg already knew that China violates human rights and support human rights violators when he accepted the consultancy for the Beijing Olympics. It makes one wonder whether he realised this only now, or he accepted the consultancy just so he can resign in the most grandstanding manner that he just did.
I’ve been watching the news and I’ve never seen the Western media feature any good news on China. When the news is on China, you can be sure it is bad news – from lead-laced dolls from Mattel to the Chinese support to the junta in Myanmar.
I’m not defending China’s actions in Sudan and Myanmar, but I guess the question really is whether China is behaving any worse than any of the powerful countries in the world now. What the news aren’t saying are perhaps equally interesting: for example, the recent feature on Chemical Ali – who’s awaiting execution for his principal role in the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds in Northern Iraq. I wonder where he got the chemical weapons. Or in other words, who sold Saddam Hussein and his cousin those chemical weapons? Who makes chemical weapons? Is there any good use for chemical weapons?
I recall one of the reporters embeded in the invasion forces joined a raid by US troops of an alleged laboratory and warehouse in Basra where suspected chemical weapons are stored and manufactured. In the abandoned warehouse, the journalist and the soldiers found evidence of materials used for making chemical weapons, including gas masks and other paraphernalia. They examined the materials and realised the labels and instructions are in English. We never heard of the raid and its results again.
The same with Cuba, all we hear from the US media is how evil Castro has been for staying in power for so long and how he espoused communism. Almost nothing is mentioned of the fact that Cubans have longer lifespan, lower infant and maternal mortality rates, has universal health care (and apparently not only for its citizens), higher literacy rates, and higher overall HDI than the US. They are better baseball players and boxers, too. More importantly, they can do the mambo. Thanks to Michael Moore for his documentary Sicko, now US citizens know where to get medical attention if they can’t afford it in the US.
Thanks or no thanks to the US-led economic and trade embargo on Cuba, the country is also the most advanced in the development of organic agriculture. That’s another healthy option for US citizens.