Simmering

Via Boing Boing, a good explanation of why resentment in Xinjian province has simmered for some time, and what should be done now that it has erupted in such spectacular fashion.

UPDATE: Scott Horton, on the policies of cultural annihilation that the Chinese government chooses to enact against troublesome ethnic minorities. I don't know how anyone can read this and not feel some twinge of sympathy for the Uighurs, especially if they know anything about the history of our own country and how it dealt with the Native inhabitants.

UPDATE II: At the Big Picture, some remarkable scenes of the violence in Urumqi.

Uighurs

You may be familiar with the Uighur people as a result of our years-long detention (and recent deportation to Bermuda) of Uighur separatists held at Guantanamo Bay on suspicion of terrorism. It appears that, just as in Tibet, China's heavy-handed policy of cultural assimilation of minorities has sparked violent protests and riots in Xinjian province, half of whose population is Uighur:

As northwest China’s Xinjiang Province settled into tense stillness on Wednesday after three days of deadly ethnic violence, a Communist Party leader from the region pledged to seek the death penalty for anyone behind the strife that state news reports say claimed at least 156 lives.

Li Zhi, the party boss in Urumqi, the Xinjiang capital where the violence was centered, said that many suspected instigators of the riots had been arrested, and that most were students. His promise to seek the death sentence for those responsible came as China’s president Hu Jintao cut short his stay in Italy, where he had planned to attend a Group of Eight summit meeting, to return home and deal with aftermath of the riots, the worst ethnic violence in China in decades.

Mr. Hu had planned to meet with President Obama at the Italy summit to discuss climate change and other issues. China’s foreign ministry said in a written statement that he was returning to Beijing “given the current situation in Xinjiang,” where Sunday’s riots by ethnic Uighurs were followed Monday and Tuesday by reprisal attacks on the part of ethnic Hans.

The Uighurs, a Turkic ethnic group, once were the majority in Xinjiang but now comprise only about half of the province’s 20 million people. In Urumqi, the provincial capital of more than two million where the violence has been centered, Uighurs are greatly outnumbered by the Han, who make up some 90 percent of China’s population.

The immediate cause of the riots appears to have been rumors that Uighur men had raped Han Chinese women at a factory far from Urumqi, rumors that led Han Chinese to attack Uighurs, which in turn prompted attacks on Han Chinese by Uighurs, kicking off a cycle of ethnic violence. The proximate cause however, is China's policy of cultural annihilation, affected by the repression of the practice of Islam by Uighurs, as well as a state policy of encouraging Han Chinese to move to Xinjiang and so overwhelm the Uighur population. As in Tibet, China has expressed a policy of economic advancement, but the rising tide fails to lift all boats, as most of the benefits of the rapid economic growth go to the Han Chinese who have moved to the province. As in Tibet, Chinese leaders have responded to the violence by pouring troops into the region, and by rounding up those who they suspect of participating in or organizing the riots. As is always the case, there is no excuse for the killing of innocent men, women and children, no matter how grievous the injury inflicted upon your people. But Chinese leaders are well aware that their policies are the cause of this latest round of violence. So far the White House has only expressed "concern" about the rioting.

As a slight aside, here's the typical right-wing take on the violence in Xinjiang:

As with military coups, not all protests are created equal. Chinese officials have begun to blame foreign agitators for fomenting the violence in Urumqi and throughout the Xinjiang region, as did Iran with their unrest over the rigged presidential election. Unlike Iran, however, China has some factual basis for this claim. Al-Qaeda has recruited and trained Uighur radical Islamists, who want independence for Xinjiang in order to establish a Turkic theocratic state, just as the Taliban created in Afghanistan.

That doesn’t mean that other Uighurs don’t have legitimate claims on democratic reform and independence for better reasons, of course. The AQ-Taliban connection to the Uighurs makes it difficult to determine which forces are in play in Xinjiang at the moment, though. Broad assumptions in either direction would be a mistake, especially since the “freedom fighters” causing most of the trouble in that region don’t support freedom at all — just a change of tyrants.

Like a typical right-winger, Morrissey judges the validity of the Uighur's desire for freedom on what sort of freedom they'd like to have, and who they associate themselves with to get it (not what acts they perpetrate though; terrorism is okay, if it's perpetrated against a regime hostile to the United States.) Because the Uighurs desire a "Turkic theocratic state" (Morrissey demonstrating his command of Wikipedia with a reference to the Uighur's ethnic grouping) where the religious preference would be Islam, and because Uighur's are strongly suspected of having trained at Al Qaeda facilities (though only to return to China to fight the government there) their desire for freedom is not as legitimate as the desire of say, the Tibetans, whose religious preferences don't trigger pants-wetting on the part of right-wingers, and who do not affiliate with religious terrorists. Morrissey's judgement is not unusual in it's obtuseness, but it remains disappointing that right-wingers judge all matters in the world of foreign policy through their own peculiar lens. The Iranian dissidents are approved of, because they are opposed to a leader both feared and hated by the right. The dissidents in Honduras are not approved of, because they support a leader viewed with suspicion and disdain by the right. The rioters in Xinjian are not approved of because their separatists have mingled with Al Qaeda and because they are Muslim. None of this has anything to do with validity or invalidity of claims of religious or political oppression; it's all merely an ad hoc judgement based on who right-wingers do and do not approve of in the world. As an approach to foreign policy this is neither principled nor coherant (nor workable), but it makes perfect sense to a right-wing authoritarian who quivers under their sheets at night at the thought of Latin American electing quasi-socialist leaders, or Muslim terrorists slipping into their room at night to force them to wear burkas and pray to Allah.

UPDATE: Oh dear. Via Local Crank, more right-wing idiocy on the Uighurs. Honestly, who could have predicted that 9/11 would make right-wingers suckers for Chinese propaganda?

UPDATE II: And this post from Glenn Greenwald, who plays the thought exercise "What if the Uighurs were Christian?" You can probably guess his conclusion.

Twenty Years

"This anniversary provides an opportunity for Chinese authorities to release from prison all those still serving sentences in connection with the events surrounding June 4, 1989. We urge China to cease the harassment of participants in the demonstrations and begin dialogue with the family members of victims, including the Tiananmen Mothers. China can honor the memory of that day by moving to give the rule of law, protection of internationally-recognized human rights, and democratic development the same priority as it has given to economic reform." - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

Via The Big Picture.

Legislative Update XIV

Congress sent President Obama two bills this week aimed preventing foreclosures and regulating the credit card industry, though with the price of allowing guns in national parks.

Both chambers of Congress also quickly and unanimously passed and President Obama signed into law a bill aimed at saving billions of dollars in wasteful spending on weapons systems often delivered late and hit by ballooning cost overruns. The armed forces have also submitted to Congress their "wish lists" of spending priorities that did not make the president's Defense budget request, and the items on the list are about one-tenth as expensive as last year's.

The Senate passed $91 billion in war funding, including financing for the International Monetary Fund that may be a sticking point for the House. The Senate also voted 90-6 to strip funding to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay from a supplemental spending bill and bar funding for the transfer of prisoners to the United States. However, many Democrats said they were just waiting on a more specific plan from the Obama administration that the president began to lay out on Thursday.

The Senate confirmed President Obama's nominees for the FDA and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, while his pick to run the census moved toward confirmation as well. But Republicans, who used to believe in "up or down" votes for judicial nominees, blocked action on President Obama's first judicial appointment.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee voted in favor of the climate change bill currently under consideration by a 33-25 vote.

Finally, the full House rejected a GOP resolution that called for investigations into Speaker Pelosi's accusations against the CIA. Perhaps to mend fences, Pelosi is considering appointing a Republican on an economic crises panel. The Speaker will also be visiting China next week.

Obama names GOP Utah Gov. Huntsman as ambassador to China

Via Politico:

President Barack Obama named Republican Utah Gov. Jon M. Huntsman Jr. as his pick for ambassador to China, likely removing one of his strongest potential challengers in the 2012 presidential campaign from the running.

In an unusual Saturday announcement broadcast live on some cable networks, Obama acknowledged that Huntsman’s decision might not be easy for him to explain to the Republican Party.

And Huntsman said he, as a former national co-chairman for Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign, never expected “to be called into action by the person who beat us,” but added that "When the president of the United States asks you step up and serve in a capacity like this, that to me is the end of the conversation and the beginning of the obligation to rise to the challenge."

The move is freighted with political intrigue. Huntsman, who speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese, quickly emerged after November as one of the leading moderate GOP voices.

Huntsman is often mentioned as a potential Republican presidential candidate in 2012, although some of his advisers think the party's primary voters will be more prepared to accept his moderate views in 2016 if the party suffers a 1964-like cataclysm at the polls in 2012.

While conservative on social issues, Huntsman takes more centrist positions on the environment and gay rights. He shocked the Republican Party last year by announcing support for civil unions. He supported a regional cap-and-trade effort to reduce global warming, and has called on his party not to reject science showing that climate change is real.

In contrast to other Republican governors, he accepted his state’s allotment from the economic stimulus package – and, in fact, said in a February interview with POLITICO that $787 billion wasn’t large enough.

He was also critical of the Republican leadership in Congress, saying “we will be irrelevant as a party until we become the part of solutions and until we become the party or preeminence.”

The choice helps Obama burnish his bipartisan credentials as his efforts to work across party lines in Congress continue to run into trouble....

Hunstman will be replaced in Utah by Lieutenant Governor Gary Herbert until a special election in 2010.

This is definitely an interesting pick from the White House, one that could be pretty smart if it eliminates one of the more electable potential GOP challengers in 2012 (if he could have won the nomination, that is).

Not Exactly

In a long post about the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, Ross Douthat makes this minor point regarding comparisons of Iran to the Soviet Union:

I think a better analogue still would be Mao's China, where the evidence of fanaticism and recklessness throughout the 1950s and '60s - in Mao's public statements, in his brinksmanship around Korea and Taiwan, and in his domestic conduct - was arguably much more pronounced that anything from the post-Stalin Soviet Union. And of course China's recklessness arguably diminished after it joined the nuclear club in 1964, and by the 1970s Nixon and Kissinger were toasting Mao's health in Beijing. So there you go ...

Actually, it was not China that was playing brinksmanship in Korea. It was North Korea, the Soviet Union and more specifically, us. Stalin was more than happy to let Kim Il-Sung invade the South, so long as his fingerprints weren't all over an invasion. For his part, Kim Il-Sung was frothing at the mouth to invade and reunite Korea. Mao's concern, more than anything, was not to get into a shooting war with the United States over Korea, though he was happy to support North Korea in its war (to a point anyway.) And China would have succeeded in avoiding war had not Douglas Macarthur driven American troops almost all the way to the Yalu, dismissing increasing signs of Chinese intervention and concerns that China would never permit American troops so near their border.

A minor quibble with a minor point. But still, we should be accurate in our assessment's of history if our purposes in quoting it is to provide illumination of the present.

"Ghost Network"

Suspected Chinese hackers have upped the ante in cyberspace, hacking into almost 1,300 foreign machines around the world for unknown reasons, stealing sensitive documents and logging the activities of the users. So far this is the most sophisticated cyber spying operation uncovered. Actual cyberwar remains crude in comparison, though you can be assured that the Chinese government and other governments around the world are working on that too.

Morning Links

For your reading pleasure:

1. The Treasury Dept. is set to announce new regulatory controls over previously unregulated financial transactions.

2. The Pentagon says in a new report that China is seeking to boost it's military's power and effectiveness. China says we need to chill out. In the meantime, China prepares to force Tibetans to celebrate "Serf Liberation Day", the 60th anniversary of the Chinese invasion of Tibet.

3. 16 die in a Baghdad bombing.

4. American cities are dealing with an increase in "shantytowns" as the number of homeless rise. Hollywood producers Peter Samuelson wants to give them something better than cardboard boxes to live in.

5. Secretary Clinton bluntly admits that the failed U.S. war on drugs has contributed to rising violence in Mexico.

6. American taxpayers are paying for the expansion of settlements in the West Bank, if in a backhanded way.

7. New study says that most wrongful convictions in Texas stem from witness misidentification.

8. Lisa Falkenberg on Gov. Perry's stimulus fund logic (or lack thereof.)

9. The next American soccer star?

10. A question about student loan forgiveness tops the list at the new "ask the President" website.

Navy Upping the Ante

Just a little bit, by sending Aegis destroyer Chung-Hoon to the South China Sea to protect the Impeccable, the ship that was harassed by Chinese ships while conducting submarine surveillance.

"Impeccable" Was Sub Hunting

Just as I suspected.

Chinese Confront U.S. Surveillance Ship

In the oddest naval confrontation in human history, Chinese warships "aggressively maneuvered in dangerously close proximity" to a U.S. surveillance ship operating in the South China Sea:

The crew members aboard the vessels, two of which were within 50 feet, waved Chinese flags and told the U.S. ship to leave the area, the statement said.

"Because the vessels' intentions were not known, Impeccable sprayed its fire hoses at one of the vessels in order to protect itself," the statement said. "The Chinese crewmembers disrobed to their underwear and continued closing to within 25 feet."

After the Impeccable alerted the Chinese ships "in a friendly manner" that it was seeking a safe path to depart the area, two of the Chinese ships stopped "directly ahead of USNS Impeccable, forcing Impeccable to conduct an emergency 'all stop' in order to avoid collision," the statement said.

"They dropped pieces of wood in the water directly in front of Impeccable's path."

Emphasis mine. I would imagine that Chinese ships honing in on you is somewhat perturbing, especially when the half-naked sailors on the ships are throwing wood in front of your ship (which seems more an odd kind of insult than an actual tactic to stop or damage the rather large and metal-hulled Impeccable.) But in all seriousness, this is only part of a pattern of harassment that Chinese ships have aimed at American craft in the area:

The Pentagon cited three previous instances of what it described as harassment, the first of which occurred Wednesday, when a Chinese Bureau of Fisheries Patrol vessel used a spotlight to illuminate the the ocean surveillance ship USNS Victorious.

In that incident, which occurred about 125 miles from China's coast in the Yellow Sea, the Chinese ship "crossed Victorious' bow at a range of about 1,400 yards" in darkness without notice or warning. The following day, a Chinese Y-12 maritime surveillance aircraft conducted 12 fly-bys of Victorious at an altitude of about 400 feet and a range of 500 yards.

The next day, a Chinese frigate approached Impeccable "and proceeded to cross its bow at a range of approximately 100 yards," which was followed less than two hours later by a Chinese Y-12 aircraft conducting 11 fly-bys of Impeccable at an altitude of 600 feet and a range of 100 to 300 feet, the statement said.

"The frigate then crossed Impeccable's bow yet again, this time at a range of approximately 400-500 yards without rendering courtesy or notice of her intentions."

And on Saturday, a Chinese intelligence collection ship challenged Impeccable over bridge-to-bridge radio, "calling her operations illegal and directing Impeccable to leave the area or 'suffer the consequences,' " the statement said.

The consequences being the above-described incident I suppose. The Chinese have a history of making small-scale military maneuvers to indicate their disapproval with another nation's rhetoric or policies, so I'm guessing this has something to do with Secretary Clinton's comments on China and human rights. So, not that serious, but probably a unnerving to the crews of these ships (and somewhat amusing to us, admittedly.)

One more note: the Impeccable was towing an intelligence-gathering array, which was almost certainly being used to track the movement of Chinese submarines...possibly moving in and out of China's new submarine base on the Hainan island.

D.C. Circuit Overturns Uighur Decision

Yesterday the D.C. Circuit ruled that a federal district judge had exceeded his authority in ordering the release of seventeen Uighur detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay:

Only the political branches — the President and Congress — have the authority to decide when aliens may enter the U.S., the Circuit Court concluded by a 2-1 vote. A third judge on the panel found that the judge’s release order was premature, but did not join in the ruling against release at this time.

The majority concluded that “it is not within the province of any court, unless expressly authorized by law, to review the determination of the political branch of the government to exclude a given alien. With respect to these seventeen petitioners, the Executive Branch has determined not to allow them to enter the United States.”

[...]

The Circuit Court said it was not deciding at this point whether the President “may ignore the immigration laws and release [the Uighurs] into the United States without the consent of Congress.”

[...]

Circuit Judge Judith W. Rogers, while voting to overturn the judge’s release order, denounced the majority’s reasoning. She said the majority’s analysis “is not faithful” to the Supreme Court’s ruling last June in Boumediene v. Bush on detainees’ rights, and “would compromise both the Great Writ as a check on arbitrary detention and the balance of powers over exclusion and admission and release of aliens into the United States recognized by the Supreme Court to reside in the Congress, the Executive and the habeas court.” She also said the ruling’s analysis was unnecessary because the court could not yet know whether detention was justified under immigration law.

The Circuit Court decision appeared to be confined closely to the single issue of whether a federal judge may order release into the U.S. of non-citizens being held outside U.S. territory. The majority noted that the only claim by detainees that was before it was not “simple release” from Guantanamo, but whether a court could order the Executive Branch “to release them into the United States outside the framework of the immigration laws….The question here is not whether petitioners should be released, but where.”

The extent of the victory for the Bush administration's detention policies depends on which side you're one I suppose. From one angle, the appellate decision checks the authority of the judiciary to order the release of detainees. The majority tries to confine the issue merely to whether the judiciary has the authority to order the release of detainees into the United States against the wishes of the executive and outside the scope of immigration law, but the dissenting judge seems to think that the ruling is in the vein of prior rulings that have upheld executive authority to hold detainees without reason indefinitely. Either way they demurred on the question of whether the Uighurs could be released into the United States under present immigration laws were they to apply for admission.

Tibet

Driving into work this morning I heard a report that Chinese authorities arrested Tibetan protesters seeking the return of the Dalai Lama. That left me wondering what the situation in Tibet is like presently. Apparently, not good:

Scratch only a little bit, and Dorje, a Tibetan nomad, lets loose with a tirade at the people he simply calls "the Chinese," the majority Han who he says will get no respite from Tibetan frustration this year — or for generations.

"After I die," the 53-year-old grizzled herder says, "my sons and grandsons will remember. They will hate the government."

On the cusp of the first anniversary of a mass revolt on the Tibetan Plateau that marked the worst ethnic unrest in China in nearly two decades, many Tibetans still seethe at living under China's thumb. Some engage in small-scale civil disobedience. Others, including monks, brazenly display photographs of the Dalai Lama, the exiled leader they revere as a God-king but that China maligns as a "beast." Nearly all gripe about a lack of religious and political freedom.

Another imminent anniversary date adds to the sensitivity of the Tibet issue. March 10 marks 50 years since the Dalai Lama fled across the Himalayas to exile in India after a failed uprising against Chinese rule. Fearful of a spasm of new unrest, Beijing has closed off many ethnic Tibetan areas to journalists and made scattered arrests of organizers of resistance campaigns.

Tibetan monks, nomads and students interviewed recently by McClatchy said ethnic tensions have deepened in this eastern region of Qinghai province, which still remains open to reporters.

More than 1,200 miles separate this mountain town from Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. Ethnic Tibetans still predominate in this region, though, and two of the six most important Tibetan monasteries are in the dry, arid mountains that rise at the edge of the Tibetan Plateau.

At the Kumbum Monastery, which once housed 4,000 monks but is down to 800 today, a 29-year-old monk said Tibetans were defying China by refusing to celebrate the Lunar New Year, which Han Chinese celebrated on Jan. 26 and many Tibetans celebrate under a different calendar system on Feb. 25-27.

"How could there be celebrations? Last year, they shot so many of us," said the monk, who is not being identified to avoid reprisals against him. "Tibetan people are trying to stand up for ourselves by not celebrating."

If anything Tibetans are more frustrated and restless than at any time in recent memory, and there are no indications that will improve in the near future.

Clinton to China

Is she taking a new approach to China with her? Hopefully, so we'll have less columns like this one by Robert Kaplan, where the natural assumption appears to be that military conflict between China and the U.S. is inevitable.

China Death Penalty Unfair, Arbitrary

Boy, if you think we have problems with the death penalty in our country, you should be glad that at least this isn't China.

Seventeen Uighurs Freed

District Judge Ricardo Urbina of the Federal District has ordered the release of Seventeen Uighurs who have been held at Guantanamo Bay since they were handed over to the U.S. military by Afghanistan in 2001:

The judge, Ricardo M. Urbina of Federal District Court, ordered that the 17 men be brought to his courtroom on Friday from the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where they have been held since 2002. He indicated that he would release the men, members of the restive Uighur Muslim minority in western China, into the care of supporters in the United States, initially in the Washington area.

“I think the moment has arrived for the court to shine the light of constitutionality on the reasons for detention,” Judge Urbina said.

Saying the men had never fought the United States and were not a security threat, he tersely rejected Bush administration claims that he lacked the power to order the men set free in the United States and government requests that he stay his order to permit an immediate appeal.

The ruling was a sharp setback for the administration, which has waged a long legal battle to defend its policies of detention at the naval base at Guantánamo Bay, arguing a broad executive power in waging war. Federal courts up to the Supreme Court have waded through detention questions and in several major cases the courts have rejected administration contentions.

The government recently conceded that it would no longer try to prove that the Uighurs were enemy combatants, the classification it uses to detain people at Guantánamo, where 255 men are now held. But it has fought efforts by lawyers for the men to have them released into the United States, saying the Uighurs admitted to receiving weapons training in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The government abandoned it's efforts to prove that the Uighurs were enemy combatants as a result of a ruling this summer by a Federal Appeals Court in Parhat v. Gates, where the court held that one of the Uighurs could not be considered an enemy combatant by the Bush administration because he could not be proven by the administration's own standards to have engaged in hostilities against the United States. Unable to prove even that the men were enemy combatants, unable to prove even that they posed a security risk to the United States (relying instead on the fact that they perhaps posed a risk to China) Judge Urbina, with evident impatience ordered their release at the end of the week. A quote from the opinion (via Marty Lederman):

Normally, . . . the Court would have no reason to insinuate itself into a field normally dominated by the political branches; however, the circumstances now pending before the Court are exceptional. The Government captured the Petitioners and transported them to a detention facility where they will remain indefinitely. The Government has not charged these petitioners with a crime and has presented no reliable evidence that they would pose a threat to U.S. interests. Moreover, the Government has stymied its own efforts to resettle the Petitioners by insisting, until recently, that they were enemy combatants, the same designation given to terrorists willing to detonate themselves amongst crowds of civilians.

The administration even implied that the damage the men's release might have on U.S.-China relations was justification for their detention:

Several pages later in the transcript of today's hearing, the truth seeps out: On page 26 of the transcript, the DOJ lawyer says: "Certainly there would be concerns about our relationship . . . with other countries, say, for example, China, if the Court put the Government in a position of not being able to speak with one voice."

That is to say, allowing the Uighurs to live freely in the U.S. will upset China.

And perhaps it will. But as the Uighurs' counsel Sabin Willett noted, it's one thing to deny someone entry into the U.S. on the basis of such diplomatic considerations where they are voluntarily seeking such entry. But "I'd never heard anyone suggest before that our relationships with other nations are a lawful basis to hold somebody in a prison." Or as the judge simply put it, "an alternative legal justification has not been provided for continued detention."

Of course, it is completely obvious to you and I that the case of these men was never about justice. We have no objection, moral or otherwise, to those who wish to engage in armed insurrection against a dictatorial and totalitarian government (and in fact are quick to support such insurrections when they match our interests.) These men committed no crimes against our nation, pose no threat to our nation, and pose little threat even to the nation that they were at war with. Rather, the Bush administration has merely sought, time and time again, to establish the precedent that it can detain anyone it sees fit for as long as it likes with any justification they may or may not choose to provide, and that judicial (or any) review of their purpose and methods is completely inappropriate (a viewpoint that federal courts have steadily eroded.) If that includes locking up men innocent of a crime until the Bush administration sees fit to release them, or not, then so be it so long as this precedent for dictatorial executive authority is established. I'm sure Vice President Cheney and others would argue (in private, certainly) that the establishment of this authority, even at the cost of a gross miscarriage of justice, is vital to our national security. But there is no security worth the abrogation of our own Constitution, the ideal of which (if not the practice of) is the only thing that presently distinguishes us from self-interested powers of the past centuries.

Quit Moving The Olympics Around

Tony Perottet and Christina Larson (via Paul Glastris) think the real problem with the Olympics is that, by making the them a prize to be handed out to countries, we encourage politicization of the games and that we could stand to learn something from the ancient Greeks:

So how is it that the ancient Greeks managed to better insulate their Olympics from geo-politics? The answer is that they didn't move the venue every four years the way we do. Instead, with one exception, they always held the contests at the religious sanctuary of Olympia, in a politically irrelevant corner of the Peloponnese. Perrottet suggests that we follow the Greek's example and find a permanent home for the games in some safe little neutral country like Liechtenstein.

Of course, as the Greeks were nearly constantly at war with each other they had significantly more incentive to hold the games in a neutral location. Our problem is mainly that we don't see a tyrannical form of government as a disqualification for hosting the games, but we could avoid offending the tender sensibilities of the world's dictatorships by holding the games in the same place every four years.

Tibet Update (3/27)

Reports of unrest have quieted in Tibet and China in the last few days, but it's impossible to know if that's because the situation has calmed or because Chinese authorities have effectively closed off access by the outside world to troubled regions. Chinese officials permitted reporters back in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, on a guided "show tour" to demonstrate their peaceful control over the city, only to have the event interrupted by protesting monks. China reports that nearly 1,000 participants in the riots have surrendered to authorities, though it's quite likely that a substantial number of them did not so much surrender as they were rounded up by police. Despite Chinese claims that the unrest is at an end, it's clear that tensions are still simmering in Tibet and surrounding Chinese provinces. President Bush continues to press China on the issue of Tibet, and though calls for a boycott have still not gained widespread traction some European leaders have signaled their willingness to drop out of the Olympic games if Chinese repression continues.

Tibet Update (3/19)

It appeared Chinese authorities had for the most part brought Lhasa under control these last several days. But yesterday a bomb attack reportedly killed four policemen in Tibet's capital city, and scattered protests continue in Chinese provinces housing large Tibetan populations. China has continued to round-up suspected participants in the protest, claiming that it is in a "life and death" struggle in Tibet and it has responded by flooding potential areas of unrest with troops, desperate to avoid being caught off-guard again by protesters. European authorities are weighing how to deal with the delicate issue of China and the Olympics, but as this Reuters piece makes clear, when it comes to China and human rights we have to be careful not to bite the hand that feeds us.

China in Tibet

Via Andrew Sullivan, here's a somewhat dated Atlantic Monthly article by Peter Hessler called "Tibet Through Chinese Eyes" which attempts to document the Chinese approach in Tibet and its resulting effects. An excerpt:

Tibet had started to depress me, and I was looking forward to leaving. Strangely, it almost seemed worse for not being as bad as I had always heard. There were definite benefits of Chinese support, and I was impressed by the idealism and dedication of some of the young Han teachers I had met. But at the same time, most efforts to develop the region were badly planned, and it was frustrating to see so much money and work invested in a poor country and so much unhappiness returned. And often I felt that the common people, who knew little of Tibet's complicated historical and cultural issues, were being manipulated by the government in ways they didn't understand. But although I was certain that nobody was truly happy (most of the Han didn't like being there, and most of the Tibetans certainly weren't happy to have them), I wasn't sure who was pulling the strings. One could go straight to the top and probably find the same helplessness, the same strings. It was mostly the irrevocable mistakes of history, but it was also money—simple economic pressure that drove a mother away from her son to a place where the people did not want her.

China's domineering presence in Tibet, motivated simultaneously by nationalist and idealistic ideals similar to those in the minds of the missionaries and settlers of the 19th Century American West, was doomed to provoke conflict. And reading this article, it's hard to imagine how China could guarantee some measure of autonomy to Tibet even were they so inclined (which they are not.) In the end there can only be two results from China's occupation of China; independence, or complete assimilation.