Pope Hypocrite and religious envy syndrome - International Theology

We would all like to know which God is doing the ‘blessing,’ Ratzinger, you shameless hypocrite and loathsome fascist! One thing is CLEAR, it certainly is not the prince of peace, Jesus Christ, who the Pope claims to represent!

‘God bless America’ my grandmother’s wrinkled arse! Integrity is a word the world has little use for these days but such are the times in which we live! People today tolerate the most obvious lies, brazen hypocrisies and all manner of vile crimes from their leaders.

The Pope openly aligned himself with the world’s number one mass murderer, George W Bush! In an address to the UN the Pope called for other nations to intervene when states fail to protect human rights. OK, fine; form a coalition to intervene in the Iraq holocaust; there is no greater human rights travesty in the world today!

DO IT, Ratzinger! Demonstrate to the world what type of religious leader you are, form a coalition to stop the carnage in Iraq – talk is cheap and hypocrisy even cheaper.

It is little wonder that today’s religions have lost their appeal and become irrelevant. With men like the Dalai Fraud and Ratzinger leading their respective faiths, who needs imaginary devils?

We hear that Tibetans suffer “demographic aggression” and “cultural genocide”. But we do not hear those terms applied to Spanish and French policies toward the Basque minority. We do not hear those terms applied to the US annexation of the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1898. And Diego Garcia? In 1973, not so long ago, the UK forcibly deported the entire native Chagossian population from the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. People were allowed one suitcase of clothing. Nothing else. Family pets were gassed, then cremated. Complete ethnic cleansing. Complete cultural destruction. Why? In order to build a big US air base. It has been used to bomb Afghanistan and Iraq, and soon maybe to bomb Iran and Pakistan. Diego Garcia, with nobody there but Brits and Americans, is also a perfect place for rendition, torture and other illegal actions.

When the Olympics come to London in 2012, the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu will certainly lead the demonstrators protesting the “demographic aggression” and “cultural genocide” in Diego Garcia. The UN Secretary General, the President of France, the Chancellor of Germany, the new US President and the entire US Congress will certainly boycott the opening ceremonies.

The height of hypocrisy is this moral posturing about 100 dead in race riots in Lhasa, while the USA, UK and more than 40 nations in the Coalition of the Willing wage a war of aggression against Iraq. This is not “demographic aggression” but raw shock-and-awe aggression. A war crime. A war on civilians, including the intentional destruction of the water and sewage systems, and the electrical grid. More than one million Iraqis are now dead; five million made into refugees. The Western invaders may not be doing “cultural genocide” but they are doing cultural destruction on an immense scale, in the very cradle of Western Civilization. Why is the news filled with demonstrators about Tibet but not about Iraq?

And as everyone knows but few dare say, “demographic aggression” and “cultural genocide” can be applied most accurately to Israel’s settlement policies and systematic destruction of Palestinian communities. On this, the Dalai Lama seems silent. Demonstrators don’t wave flags for bulldozed homes, destroyed orchards, or dead Palestinian children.

The Chinese Context

The Chinese government is responsible for the well-being and security of one-fourth of humanity. Race riots and rebellion cannot be tolerated, not even when done by Buddhist monks.

Chinese Civilization was already old when the Egyptians began building pyramids. But the last 200 years have not gone well, what with two Opium Wars forcing China to import drugs, and Europeans seizing coastal ports as a step to complete colonial control, then the Boxer Rebellion, the collapse of the Manchu Dynasty, civil war, a brutal invasion and occupation by Japan, more civil war, then Communist consolidation and transformation of society, then Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Such events caused tens of millions of people to die. Thus, China’s recent history has good reasons why social order is a higher priority than individual rights. Race riots and rebellion cannot be tolerated.

Considering this context, China’s treatment of its minorities has been exemplary compared to what the Western world has done to its minorities. After thousands of years of Chinese dominance, there still are more than 50 minorities in China. After a few hundred years of European dominance in North and South America, the original minority cultures have been exterminated, damaged, or diminished.

Chinese currency carries five languages: Chinese, Mongolian, Tibetan, Uigur, and Zhuang. In comparison, Canadian currency carries English and French, but no Cree or Inuktitut. If the USA were as considerate of ethnic minorities as is China, then the greenback would be written in English, Spanish, Cherokee and Hawaiian.

In China, ethnic minorities begin their primary schooling in their own language, in a school administered by one of their own community. Chinese language instruction is not introduced until age 10 or later. This is in sharp contrast to a history of coerced linguistic assimilation in most Western nations. The Australian government recently apologized to the Aboriginal minority for taking children from their families, forcing them to speak English, beating them if they spoke their mother tongue. China has no need to make such apology to Tibetans or to other minorities.

China’s one-child-policy seems oppressive to Westerners, but it has not applied to minorities, only to the Han Chinese. Tibetans can have as many children as they choose. If Han people have more than one child, they are punished.

There is a similar preference given to minorities when it comes to admission to universities. For example, Tibetan students enter China’s elite Peking University with lower exam scores than Han Chinese students.

China is not a perfect nation, but on matters of minority rights, it has been better than most Western nations. And China achieved this in the historical context of restoring itself and recovering from 200 years of continual crisis and foreign invasion.

Historical Claims

National boundaries are not natural. They all arise from history, and all history is disputable. Arguments and evidence can always be found to challenge a boundary. China has long claimed Tibet as part of its territory, though that has been hard to enforce during the past 200 years. The Dalai Lama does not dispute China’s claim to Tibet. The recent race riots in Tibet and the anti-Olympics demonstrations will not cause China to shrink itself and abandon part of its territory. Rioters and demonstrators know that.

Foreign governments promoting Tibet separatism and demonstrators demanding Tibet independence should look closer to home. Canadians can campaign for Québec libre. Americans can support separatists in Puerto Rico, Vermont, Texas, California, Hawaii, Guam, and Alaska. Brits can work for a free Wales, and Scotland for the Scots. French can help free Tahitians, New Caledonians, Corsicans, and the Basques. Spaniards can also back the Basques, or the Catalonians. Italians can help Sicilian separatists or the Northern League. Danes can free the Faeroe Islands. Poles can back Cashubians. Japanese can help Okinawan separatists, and Filipinos can help the Moros. Thai can promote Patanni independence; Indonesians can promote Acehnese independence. New Zealanders can leave the islands to the Maori; Australians can vacate Papua. Sri Lankans can help Tamil separatists; Indians can help Sikh separatists.

Nearly every nation has a separatist movement of some kind. There is no need to go to Tibet, to the top of the world, to promote ethnic separatism. China is not promoting separatism in other nations and does not appreciate other nations promoting separatism in China. The people most oppressed, most needing a nation of their own, are the Palestinians. There is a worthy project to promote and to demonstrate about.

Danger of Demonstrations

These demonstrations do not serve Tibetans, but rather use Tibetans for ulterior motives. Many Tibetans, therefore, oppose these demonstrations. Many Chinese remember their history and see the riots in Lhasa and subsequent demonstrations as another attempt by foreign powers to dismember and weaken China. There is grave danger that Chinese might come to fear Tibetans as traitors, resulting in wide spread anti-Tibetan feelings in China.

Fear that an ethnic minority serves foreign forces caused Canada, during World War 1, to imprison its Ukranian minority in concentration camps. For similar reasons, the Ottomans deported their Armenian minority and killed more than a million in death marches. The German Nazis saw the Jewish minority as traitors who caused defeat in World War 1; hence deportations in the 1930s and death camps in the 1940s. During World War 2, both Canada and the USA feared that their Japanese immigrant minorities were traitorous and deported them to concentration camps. Indonesians fearing their Chinese minority, deported 100,000 in 1959 and killed thousands more in 1965. Israel similarly fears its Arab minority, resulting in deportations and oppression.

Hopefully, the Chinese government and the Chinese people will see Tibetans as victims of foreign powers rather than agents of foreign powers. However, if China reacts like other nations have in history and starts systematic severe repression of Tibetans, then today’s demonstrators should remember their role in causing that to happen.

Conclusion

The demonstrators now disparaging China serve only to distract themselves and others from seeing and correcting the current failings of their own governments. If the demonstrators will take a moment to listen, they will hear the silence of their own hypocrisy.

The consequences of these demonstrations are 1) China will stiffen its resolve to find foreign influences inciting Tibetans to riot, and 2) the governments of the USA, UK, France and other Western nations will have less domestic criticism for a few weeks. That is all. These demonstrations can come to no good end.

Australian Greens want church to pay Youth Day bill

Monday Apr 21 10:11 AEST

The Catholic Church, not NSW taxpayers, should pay the multi-million dollar bill for World Youth Day, The Greens say.

It's been revealed the July event will cost NSW taxpayers $86 million in transport, accommodation, traffic management, security and for emergency medical units.

The figure, released by the NSW government, does not include the $42 million compensation to the Australian Jockey Club and the racing industry to secure Randwick Racecourse for the overnight vigil and mass to be held by the Pope on July 20.

"The Catholic Church is the organisation that will gain the biggest benefit from this event, not the people of NSW," Greens NSW MP Lee Rhiannon told ABC Radio on Monday.

"It's a clear promotional event and, therefore, they should be footing the main part of the bill.

"The $86 million for accommodation and transport is a huge amount of money and means the economic benefit that we were promised is now being whittled away."

Part of the government spending will cover the cost of an extra 450 daily CityRail services and an extra 16,500 bus services.

The government has estimated World Youth Day will bring at least $150 million to the state.

More than 200,000 pilgrims from 177 countries are expected to descend on Sydney for the six-day event to be attended by Pope Benedict XVI.

The chief executive of the World Youth Day (WYD) coordination authority, Roy Wakelin-King, told The Sydney Morning Herald the cost was significantly less than the $390 million it cost to put on the Sydney Olympics.

As well as the additional costs, there will be massive road disruptions, with the Sydney Harbour Bridge closed for 12 hours on July 19 and more than 300 road closures and 500 clearways over the week.

Nine kilometres of roadblocks will allow 180,000 pilgrims to walk from North Sydney, across the bridge, through Darling Harbour and on to the racecourse.

© AAP 2008

ANN ARBOR, Michigan (Reuters) - The Dalai Lama on Sunday urged the world to work for a sustainable planet while pro-China demonstrators accused him of lying about the turmoil in his homeland.

There were no arrests among the 300 to 400 people who showed up outside his speech at a University of Michigan sports arena where the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader spoke to about 8,300 people in an Earth Day-themed lecture.

The demonstrators repeatedly chanted "Dalai Liar!" and cheered when a plane circled overhead trailing a large banner reading "Dalai Please Stop Attacking Olympic Flame."

The vast majority of the demonstrators appeared to be of Chinese ancestry and wore white shirts emblazoned with "Support Beijing Olympics 2008" and red shirts printed with the Chinese flag.

"Tibet Belongs to China and So Do I" read one sign in the crowd.

Beijing has accused the 72-year-old Dalai Lama of being behind March 14 riots in Lhasa and unrest that followed in other ethnic Tibetan areas, as part of a bid for Tibetan independence and to ruin the coming Olympic Games.

The Dalai Lama has said he wants autonomy for Tibet, not a separate state, and has denied he orchestrated the unrest, which China says killed 19 people. Exiled Tibetans have given a far higher death toll.

The situation has resulted in demonstrations against and attacks on the Olympic torch as it travels around the world ahead of the summer games in Beijing.

The Dalai Lama avoided the Tibet issue in his lecture, saying he was not there to teach politics but to talk about the need to take care of the environment.

"Taking care of Earth is like taking care of your home," he said, adding that burning the furniture to keep warm is foolish.

"This blue planet is the only home," he said, and its inhabitants should see one another as equals.

He is scheduled to meet on Monday on the Michigan campus with the U.S. special envoy for Tibet, Paula Dobriansky, the 11th such meeting the two will have had.

The U.S. State Department said last week Washington was not likely to offer any new initiatives but that the two would discuss the U.S. view that Chinese authorities should engage the Dalai Lama directly in a discussion.

(Writing by Michael Conlon in Chicago; editing by Cynthia Osterman)

© Thomson Reuters 2008

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